Airborne Express Flight 827

Airborne Express Flight 827
An identical Douglas DC-8 of the Airborne Express
Accident summary
Accident type	failed stall test
place	at Narrows , Virginia , United States
date	December 22, 1996
Fatalities	6th
Survivors	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Douglas DC-8-63F
operator	Airborne Express
Mark	N827AX
Departure airport	Piedmont Triad International Airport , Greensboro , North Carolina United States
Destination airport	Piedmont Triad International Airport , Greensboro , North Carolina United States
Passengers	3
crew	3
Lists of aviation accidents

The Airborne Express Flight 827 (flight number IATA : GB827 , ICAO : ABX827 , call sign: ABEX 827 ), was a test flight of the airline Airborne Express on December 22, 1996. In this test flight, there was a stall and the subsequent crash of the machine , with all six people on board killed.

plane

The machine that crashed was a Douglas DC-8-63F, which was finally assembled at the Douglas plant in Long Beach , California . The rollout of the machine took place on April 14, 1967. The aircraft had the factory number 45901, it was the 293rd Douglas DC-8 from ongoing production. The DC-8 was delivered new to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines on July 15, 1967 with the aircraft registration PH-DEB , where it was given the name Christophorus Columbus . In June 1984 the machine was sold to Air World Affairs , which leased the machine back to the airline and shortly afterwards became part of ATASCO Leasing . From June 13, 1984 the machine with its new aircraft registration number N929R was leased to Capitol Air , and from October 20, 1984 to National Airlines . The machine was then converted to a freighter and was then shipped to Emery Worldwide from January 1986 . From June 1988 Aerolease was the new owner and lessor of the machine. From June 17, 1996 the machine was in operation with the Airborne Express . The four-engine long-range - narrow-body aircraft was equipped with four engines of the type Pratt & Whitney Jt3d-7 equipped. At the time of the accident, the machine had completed a total of 62,800 operating hours, which accounted for 24,234 take-offs and landings.

Flight plan and purpose of the flight

A test flight was carried out with the machine, which was necessary after a major maintenance measure. The overhaul of the aircraft was carried out by Triad International Maintenance Corporation (TIMCO). During the major overhaul, the aircraft received major avionics upgrades. All four engines were removed. Two of them have been overhauled and the other two have been completely replaced with different JT3D-7 engines. Hush kits were installed on all engines to reduce noise. The aircraft stall warning system has been tested and declared functional.

Flight 827 was originally scheduled to operate on December 16, but was delayed due to maintenance. A flight attempt on December 21, carried out by the same crew, had to be canceled due to a hydraulic problem.

The flight was flown under instrument flight rules , the machine was to fly northwest first to the New River Valley in Pulaski County, Virginia, then to Beckley, West Virginia, followed by other waypoints in Kentucky and Virginia, and finally return to Greensboro. The flight should take two hours.

Inmates

There were two flight captains on board, one piloted the machine, the other monitored the flight, and a flight engineer and three mechanics from the airline were in the machine.

The pilot in the role of captain was the 48-year-old Garth Dale Avery, who had worked for the Airborne Express since 1988 and had 8,087 hours of flight experience, of which he had completed 869 hours in the cockpit of the Douglas DC-8. During the flight he sat in the right pilot's seat.

The captain in the role of first officer was 38-year-old William Keith Lemming, who had worked for the Airborne Express since 1991 and had completed 8,426 flight hours, 1,509 of which on the DC-8. He sat in the pilot's left seat.

The flight engineer was Terry Waelti, 52, who, like Captain Avery, had been employed by the Airborne Express since 1988. Waelti had 7,928 flight hours, of which he had completed 2,576 hours with the Douglas DC-8.

The three technicians were 48 year old Edward Bruce Goettsch, 39 year old Kenneth Athey and 36 year old Brian C. Scully. Goettsch and Athey both worked for Airborne Express, while Scully worked for TIMCO.

Course of the flight and course of the accident

The machine took off on December 22, 1996 at 5:40 p.m. and after take-off rose to 9,000 feet (approx. 2,700 meters) and then to 14,000 feet (approx. 4,300 meters) altitude. Shortly after reaching an altitude of 14,000 feet (approx. 4,300 meters), the aircraft flew under icing conditions, as recorded later by the cockpit voice recorder . Captain Lemming noted that the machine was forming ice. The ice played no role in the accident.

During the flight, several landing gear, hydraulic and engine tests were carried out without any particular incident. At 6:05 p.m. the flight engineer Waelti announced that the next stall would be carried out. The crew should slow down the aircraft until the shaker stick activates and then regain control of the machine. Captain Avery stated the stall speed was 122 knots (226 km / h) while Waelti said the stick-shaker would activate at 128 knots (237 km / h). The flight crew gradually slowed the aircraft by 1 knot (1.9 km / h) per second.

At 6:07 p.m. the engine power was increased. A jerk was detected one minute later at 6:08 pm, but this is considered normal during a stall test. There was a rattling noise. At a speed of 145 knots (approx. 269 km / h) the machine suffered an actual stall. The stick shaker did not activate itself, however, and it was never heard on the recordings on the voice recorder. The flight crew gave maximum thrust and pushed the aircraft nose down in order to fly the machine out of the stall. At 6:09 p.m., air traffic control asked the crew whether they had initiated an emergency descent, which Captain Avery said in the affirmative. This was the last radio message from the machine.

At 18:09:36 the ground proximity warning system was activated. Three seconds later, the machine crashed into a mountain. All six people on board were killed and the aircraft was destroyed.

Accident investigation

According to the flight data recorder , the aircraft's nose and wings were oriented 26 and 52 degrees downward on impact, respectively.

The NTSB simulated the stall in a simulator. In the simulation, the shaker stick was activated at 144 knots (166 mph; 267 km / h). Despite the intensification of the stall, no unexpected drops in the aircraft nose or roll angle occurred in the simulator. The decreasing airspeed caused the nose to rise.

In 1991 another Airborne Express DC-8 had stalled during a test flight, but the flight crew was able to fly out of it and continue testing without incident. In the 1991 incident, the stick shaker was activated at the same time as the jerk movement.

The flight crew was aware that they were stalling. However, Captain Avery did not notice the incorrect flight control inputs from Captain Lemming. Nor did he try to take control of the plane himself. The NTSB could not determine the reasons for the collapse of crew resource management , but suspected that this was possibly due to the fact that both pilots were captains.

swell

• Accident report DC-8-63F, N827AX in the Aviation Safety Network
• Operating history DC-8-63F, N827AX on planespotters.net

Coordinates: 37 ° 19 ′ 18 ″  N , 80 ° 53 ′ 3.6 ″  W.