Aviation's Most Fatal Design Flaw - Turkish Airlines Flight 981

[@tango6nf477]

A few years after this I was travelling on a DC10 from Manchester to New York . We taxied to take off only to return to the terminal and be asked to disembark owing to a fault. 2 hours later we were back onboard and took off. Once airborne the pilot spoke over the intercom and apologised for the delay and inconvenience. He explained that as we were about to take off they discovered that a cargo door was not locking, but don't worry we took it off and put another one on. That was a very long flight and every one was on edge all the way, great applause when we landed. Flew in these a few times really comfortable aircraft, a pleasure to travel in.

[@bunglejoy3645]

He said don't worry we've put another cargo door on as though they had gone and bought one from B+Q😮

[@usmale49]

Too bad that this DC-10 didn't get the repair it needed for the cargo door! I guess money over the lives of passengers was more important? Disgusting to say the very least. Thank you for creating, uploading and sharing!! Very good video! 🛫🛬😥

[@kenpalmer1965]

These are some very interesting videos you have uploaded here. I was not aware of many of these incidents. Thank you very much for sharing them.

[@williamkennedy5492]

I remember the "world in action " current affairs program on this, a gentleman's agreement so the aircraft wouldn't get an AD- airworthiness directive. The DC10 killed a lot of people !

[@TheMaximac]

Flight 981 was an accident, not an incident. It's important to understand the distinction regarding aviation. (Captain retired)

[@facu5661]

Mauricio PC , magistral como siempre

[@Bruno-tm3xo]

Years later, a United captain and his crew lost all hydraulic and managed to bring the aircraft back to Sioux Falls ……unfortunately the landing didn’t go all that well and about 100 passengers lost their lives. Still, amazing performance

[@zarlev9083]

I also watched another video about this crash where this should have been preventable, as there was a way to avoid the cargo door issue. But the fix they implemented wasnt known, becaus the people that checked the cargo door in paris was not aware of it... reason being, the instruction thing was writen in Turkish and English only, and the the person(or more) couldnt read it.

[@cchris874]

Turns out that's not what happened. The baggage handler was not responsible for checking the door. That was specifically the task of the airline. In fact, he closed the door exactly as instructed.

[@cchris874]

@@zarlev9083 I'm not following, unless this was meant as a reply to my other post??

[@sludge8506]

If instructions are printed in a language I don’t know, I will not proceed.

[@None-zc5vg]

@@sludge8506 But I'm at the bottom of the food-chain, job-wise, life-wise, and I won't be holding things up out there on the apron when a door won't close properly, no sir, I'll let them fix it at the other end. Let someone else get fired for rocking the boat.

[@slowpoke3102]

On DC-10s the cargo door was not the reason the plane would crash. L-1011 and 747 both also had rip of cargo doors. All had to do adjustments to fix. The actual reason for the accident was a brace in the floor structure failed. The floor would sever all the hydraulic lines both needed fixing. Once fixed the DC-10 flew for 30+ years major accident free . . . L-1011 was the best of these and actually the best selling '747' had more faults that have been hidden also Boink will not admit (along with problem-ed history of the best selling '737.' Boinks problems didn't just begin in the last 20 years. Their misfortunes didn't get all the deliberate bad press. I guess that's politics for ya. Go figure

[@cchris874]

But the floor wouldn't have failed if the door hadn't failed. So they were both major factors.

[@B1970T]

Just one point for your cgi . A Cherokee taxiing that close behind a heavy jet at IDLE power , would have rolled it a couple of times, forget about it , at taxi power. You can also imagine what would happen to that truck, total destruction. Otherwise, a very nice vid!

[@davidpowell3347]

Yes,drive behind those engines when one or all of them rev up a bit,the blast could flip a vehicle over and send it blowing away like a super hurricane or tornado ! I think even if a couple hundred yards away.

[@flyingattheforest]

My grandpa's cousin was in THY flight 981, actually he wents from the Istanbul to Londra but pilots gave him 2 days of Paris vocation for many times went campaigns. Even he saw entired the whole crash moments, and still the fear in his eyes doesn't pass

[@blackvulcan100]

Of course this could not happen these days......or could it ?

[@ThatBearHasMoxie]

This is disgusting McDonnell-Douglas knew the DC10 was a flying coffin and he let those poor people fly on it anyway. Ugh.

[@cchris874]

To be as fair as possible, while I do agree it was disgusting, not as dramatic as some might think. In theory, the initial modifications right after Windsor would have made it literally impossible to force the door shut. Over 400lbs would have been needed. But could MD have foreseen that Turkish Airlines might do the unthinkable, and tamper with the safety mechanisms? They did just that, at most a few months before Paris, turning the locking pins the wrong way, among other no-nos. That is why the plane stayed in one piece until 1974.

[@sparkyobrian6417]

design flaw- yes! however had the maintenance manual been followed the failed actuator mount would have been discovered before flight.

[@cchris874]

What maintenance item was not followed?

[@andrewwatson1206]

A young gentleman called Ian Fuller who worked with my dad in Blackpool was killed on this flight. Left to become a fashion model and was flying back from orley to London

[@dingledav]

A gentlemans betrayal of that dc10.

[@escapetheratracenow9883]

346 people died a horrible death from a known defect, and forty-odd years later, the same number of passengers died an even more terrifying death on two 737 Max aircraft and it's MCAS systems that weren't explained properly to pilots to save Boeing a few dollars.

[@jeliop1]

Don’t forget the ones with Airbus planes because they want to use a joystick.

[@sludge8506]

981 was human error. But, wow, this terrible accident *50* years ago must be related to today. Thanks for informing us of this. 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

[@None-zc5vg]

​@@jeliop1The joysticks' fatal flaw was that they weren't connected: each 'stick ' operated independently, hence the AF 447 stable-stall into the ocean.

[@jeliop1]

I never said otherwise; still, a flaw.@@None-zc5vg

[@timothypropst238]

@@None-zc5vgAirbus side-stick have never been connected. They operate independently. They have a red takeover button to disable the other pilots side-stick. When you press that button an aural voice says “priority left” if the captain presses his button or “priority right” if the FO takes control. There’s also a light in front of the pilots that points to the side who has priority. If both side-stick are actuated at the same time you’ll hear “dual input” and the inputs are summed. If one pushes full down and one pull full back, they are summed and in this case the airplane will do nothing as they cancel each other out. I was an Airbus captain and flew the airplane for years. My favorite plane.

[@williamgeorgefraser]

I knew someone who was supposed to be on this flight but didn't take it because he didn't like the DC-10.

[@Bren39]

"gentlemen agreements where prohibited" ..2024.. That must be news to FAA and Boeing.

[@BestEachDay]

I flew overseas in that model in the early 80's.

[@marcmcreynolds2827]

Examination of the door showed that the SB had apparently been started (by some unknown entity) but not finished, and without documentation of the work. There were also a couple of other undocumented modifications done to the latching mechanisms. My guess (the French accident board report which talks about the above didn't speculate) is that someone at the airline decided to improvise with a door which had been giving them problems. One way or the other, after the fixes triggered by the American Airlines incident, this became the only cargo door which subsequently failed. Even forty years on, the type has continued to serve with the USAF: The last squadron of KC-10s won't retire until around September of this year.

[@None-zc5vg]

... and hundreds of people are still very dead

[@marcmcreynolds2827]

@@None-zc5vg Welcome to aviation! People (like me) do what they can to make things as safe as possible, knowing that people's lives may depend on it. But it's a long chain, as I suggest above, and it's hard to insure than every link is strong -- especially out towards the ends. So occasionally people die, and as you noted they stay dead. On one occasion I even had a chance to make a difference near the top of a chain, arguing to the STS Orbiter's program manager for needed safety improvements. I failed in that instance, but then ironically along came Challenger. Suddenly they had plenty of new money plus downtime, and used some of it to accomplish my wish list (e.g. drag chute).

[@djpalindrome]

The tanker version presumably did not have a cargo door at all, much less an inherently unsafe design

[@marcmcreynolds2827]

@@djpalindrome Good question. I compared photos, and the Extender's boom operator station is where the aft cargo door was. A lot of the KC-10 was straight DC-10-30, but I made a bad assumption. Another thing I found interesting was that the streamlining fairing for the wing root was able to be extended farther aft as a result. Presumably for less overall drag, but maybe mattered for smoothing the airflow impinging on the boom? As for "inherently unsafe design", I would be glad to debate that with any other airliner engineers present. I used to have a list of airliner types which have experienced in-flight cargo door openings (not necessarily failures), and it covered a lot of what's out there. Most of those never made the general news since a crash wasn't involved (how many people know about engines falling off of 727s etc?). To me, the real failure here was foot dragging on the floor venting. Handle that properly, and a cargo door opening wouldn't be that big of a deal regardless of how the flight control cables are routed.

[@cchris874]

@@marcmcreynolds2827 The details are presented in a few of the books on the crash. It must have been someone at the airline as the evidence showed these changes could not have been made more than a few months before the crash. This is why the plane was able to stay in one piece until March of 1974. This evidence also suggests that even an AD might not have prevented the crash. The calculations showed that the THY-adjusted lockpin rogue settings required just 13 lbs of pressure to close the door. The support plate would have increased the amount of pressure to over 400 lbs ONLY IF THE LOCKING PINS WERE AT THE NEW POST WINDSOR PRESCRIBED SETTING. But after THY tampered with the mechanism, the support plate would have only tripled the amount of force required, meaning about 39 lbs. This is why the baggage handler reported the door closed, if anything, more easily than usual. Thus the frightening thing is, even had the correct work been done at Douglas before the plane was sent to THY, a few turns of a wrench would still have brought the plane down. Thus the AD crucially depended on THY making it very clear this tampering was a big NO NO. Given the state of the airline at that time, that would have been a big question mark. Poor Douglas. As much as the crash was still mostly their fault, I can't help but feel a tiny twang of sympathy for them: could they have foreseen this reckless behavior by THY, without which these modifications would in all likelihood have worked?

[@nickberis1249]

That is such a sad story those poor people🙏

[@duaneadams9010]

The registration ZK-NZR on the Air New Zealand DC 10-30 is now a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner

[@pop5678eye]

Despite 'gentleman's agreements no-longer being allowed' the FAA continues to let airlines and aircraft manufacturers mostly self-regulate. As we've seen well into the 2010s and even 2020s Boeing itself also keeps evading oversight until someone gets hurt.

[@cchris874]

Yeah, basically the FAA has become on big gentleman's agreement. Or should one say, ungentlemen's agreement.

[@chriswatson6231]

Im no engineer or aeronautics expert. But even i look at that tail engine in disbelief. We're all told how fuze pins allow engines to "snap off clean". But what about the tail engine, if that goes you lose your tail. Common sense tells you all three hydrolics lines must squeeze through this narrow to the elevators, meaning the lack of separation between hydrolic circuits doesn't provide redundancy because they're not spaced apart. And last for me as a non engineer is all control lines in the floor. The floor dies through cargo decomp. blowout, or floor dies because of fire in cargo hold. Either way, redundancy systems fail all together. To me redundancy means one hydrolics and wiring bundle on the floor, one in the roof and the third some other place. Mind you, i believe Boeing put all their eggs in the roof conduit- same problem. Diversification in placement location surely is what has a chance of true redundancy

[@jeanettenorman7052]

I enjoy your videos. Thanks

[@GonuKhan-i7s]

Can i use your video (few clips) in my monetised youtube video? I will give credit to your channel.

[@kevincarlson668]

Decades ago,I read that some poor baggage handler at Orly was first blamed for the cargo door failure.I can't remember his name,but it was Middle Eastern.The big guy blaming the little guy(McDonnell Douglas/ground crew) is nothing new.Remeber NASA blaming Morton Thiokol O rings after the Challenger debacle?

[@screwdriver5181]

Pity the airline industry didn’t take lessons from railway signal engineers. Whenever a safety critical command is given another system checks the result and does not assume that it has happened.

[@darrenbyrne4622]

That DC10 been rolled out of the hanger looks like one of Air New Zealands

[@1PITIFULDUDE]

80 million dollars in compensation? What a joke. People should have gone to prison.

[@b_altmann]

There was still some Spanish copy left, the bit explaining that collapsed floor

[@MPCFlights]

Yeah missed that caption

[@fxsrider]

Which flight sim is used to make these?

[@JustARandomBlueE2]

Prepar3d

[@johannesbols57]

A French member of ground crew closed the cargo door improperly because the instructions to close it weren't in French. Funny how France tried to rope Continental Airlines into court over a piece of a DC-10 on the runway that caused AF4590 to crash...

[@speedbirdoneone]

Hydraulic fuses would have prevented the loss of hydraulic fluid. They could have the deployed the spoilers which would caused the nose to pitch up. So many design flaws in douglas designs.

[@skipcampbell4226]

That was a full ship!

[@rossryder944]

The cargo door failure led to a collapse of the floor of the passenger cabin, resulting in the ejection of the two rows of seats, with passengers strapped in them. All of the controls to the tail of the plane, including the middle engine, were lost because the cables and wires all ran under the floor of the cabin and were severed. No amount of time or effort could have lead to a recovery of this flight. The many crashes of the DC-10 ultimately caused the business failure of McDonnell Douglas, a company that could have been as successful as Boeing..

[@cchris874]

But there weren't all that many related to the design of the aircraft. I get about 2 and a half crashes.

[@rossryder944]

@@cchris874 Agreed. But the public perception of the DC-10 aircraft was spoiled by the fact that when one went down, the news coverage of the huge numbers of people lost was devastating.

[@dt-wq7ql]

I dont fly but I could still be a victim if these flying things crash on my house.

[@biff5856]

It doesn't seem that FAA and MD learned from this. The FFA to trust MD to do the right thing, and MD putting the bottom line of shareholders profits, CEO bonuses, sales and just plain cost cutting.

[@None-zc5vg]

In the case of the design-weaknesses revealed by the 'Windsor Incident' of 1972, there should have been an immediate AD-issue on ALL DC-10 airframes, instead of a cosy "take-your-time-about-it" "gentlemens' agreement which helped to cause hundreds of deaths.

[@Uswesi1527]

From the first day , the DC10 was a total failure, nothing , but flaws .

[@MarcusTomatos]

A pile of shite like the 737 Max. Just waiting for the next one to go down.

[@marcmcreynolds2827]

An airliner with a better safety record than its 747-100 contemporary... and still flying to this day, including with the USAF. Edit: Sorry, I forgot that the subject of this thread is "bashing things you don't really understand".

[@Uswesi1527]

You’re absolutely right. The DC -10 was disastrous. Mc Donnell Douglas was reported paid $$$$ millions in bribes to sell the DC-10 . But where was FAA and NTSB , unknown.

[@melvyncox3361]

Terrible crash.Very sad Fortunately the DC-10 turned out to be a successful and very reliable aircraft.

[@Milesco]

You're kidding, right?

[@melvyncox3361]

​@@MilescoWell, actually it turned out to be.The ATR 72/42 has a worse record now.....

[@melvyncox3361]

​@@MilescoWell actually it turned out to be.The ATR 72/42 has a worse safety record now.......

[@DavidDragonetti]

Well Gentlemen's agreements continued in the US....Look at the 737 Max . Boeing said it was ok and the FAA just believed them......America is about profit first and everything else second

[@yvetteandjorgenlarsen9753]

No America has succumbed to GREED. The love of money is the root of all evil

[@DavidDragonetti]

@@yvetteandjorgenlarsen9753 Well that's basically what i said!

[@Uswesi1527]

A” gentleman’s agreement “ cost the lives of 346 innocent human beings. What about their families and dependents ?! Evaporated with the wind.

[@Tonystark-ey8oe]

Hola amigo friend❤❤❤

[@djpalindrome]

Completely unairworthy shitbox that violated every precept of fail safe design. An inherently unsafe cargo door design that was never fixed even after having been identified as the cause of a previous accident. No pressure vents to prevent the floor from collapsing from cabin depressurization. No check valves to prevent the loss of fluid, leading to loss of all flight controls.

[@cchris874]

Not literally every safe precept of design concept. There are some systems that exceeded the certification requirements.

[@saganich74]

Most fatal design flaw, meanwhile in England………🤔

[@peterresetz1960]

What in England ? That the airliner with the square windows falls from the sky like a Meteor. Bad design there.

[@chrishumphrey2074]

If referring to the comet, De Havilland was at the leading edge with metal fatigue poorly understood. The post 1970 issues referred to here are based on shocking company expedience.

[@nielsdaemen]

Still using FSX?

[@MPCFlights]

These are old from my main channel but now in english

[@RickTheClipper]

WTF the spanis text in the most interesting point is a shame

[@Mark1-l6o]

Please do American 191

[@palco22]

Then came Robert Hood, Jr to fix things and McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing and now look how Boeing is doing. Greed is king !

[@johnpeterson4325]

Maintenance/ Safety VS Profits = PEOPLE DIE

[@kathryneast6919]

Should never have happened

[@RickShortt]

Hopefully it was cheaper to pay damages than to make safe planes in the first place!! Profit over safety. Nothing new there

[@Milesco]

Okay, is anyone going to translate the Spanish text that appears at 8:32?

[@vitorgoncalves8320]

"But this time they weren't so lucky, the cabin floor collapsed damaging the plane's hydraulic lines, making it uncontrollable."

[@Milesco]

​@@vitorgoncalves8320 *Thank you.* 👍 I don't know what the producers of this video were smoking, but it must've been some pretty strong stuff!

[@MeaHeaR]

Butt FAA did Gentlé-Mánn agreement upon Max 8 "Airé-Crâfts" ¿¿¿¿

[@Rosemarienahwegezic-w9x]

It was a design flaw of the door that's why people died

[@Rosemarienahwegezic-w9x]

No disagree 😅

[@Rosemarienahwegezic-w9x]

😮no its way something to do with the designs airplane design the doorframe of the door just like the other one 747flaw of the door so no dissagree😅😮 very sad just the same😮😮

[@davidanderson1889]

I have a crazy idea. I wouldn't blame anyone to call me crazy for saying this, I think it's crazy too, but in some way my idea makes sense I think. What if a third attempt was made and then in response someone makes an attempt at the democrat candidate. Wouldn't that be the spark that ignites the powder keg and bring about what the left so desperately craves, more power and dictatorship? A scenario like this could be very easily explained away by the politicians and the media in saying that the right wingers have reacted like the radicals they are and now we need to implement all the nasty stuff that really in the Patriot Act. You know, the ugly parts they never told the public about ;-)

[@IanMcLean-zi3rv]

😅

[@Rosemarienahwegezic-w9x]

No it's the doorflawit happen on th 747 as well so no not to safe money boeingfault