Multinational Force and Observers Flight 1285R

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Multinational Force and Observers Flight 1285
Douglas DC-8-63 (CF), Arrow Air JP5941304.jpg

An almost identical Douglas DC-8-63 from Arrow Air
Accident summary
Accident type Stopped flow at takeoff due to icing and incorrect weight calculations
place Gander , CanadaCanadaCanada 
date December 12, 1985
Fatalities 256
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type United StatesUnited States Douglas DC-8-63PF
operator United StatesUnited States Arrow Air
Mark United StatesUnited States N950JW
Departure airport Cairo International Airport , EgyptEgyptEgypt 
1. Stopover Cologne / Bonn Airport , Federal Republic of GermanyGermany Federal RepublicFederal Republic of Germany 
2. Stopover Gander International Airport , CanadaCanadaCanada 
Destination airport Fort Campbell , Kentucky , Kentucky , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Passengers 248
crew 8th
Lists of aviation accidents

On December 12, 1985, a Douglas DC-8-63PF crashed on the multinational Force and Observers flight 1285R ( flight number : MF1285R), unofficially also referred to as Arrow Air flight 1285 , after a stopover on the Gander International Airport . The machine was on a charter flight operated by Arrow Air on behalf of the US Department of Defense and was supposed to transport soldiers from the Peacekeeping Force Multinational Force and Observers from Cairo to Fort Campbell , Kentucky . All 256 people on board were killed in the accident.

It is the worst aviation accident on Canadian soil and the worst air accident in the history of the US military. At the time of the accident, it was also the worst incident involving a Douglas DC-8, until six years later a Nationair Canada plane crashed on Nigeria Airways flight 2120 .

plane

The machine of the American Arrow Air ( registration number : N950WJ, c / n : 46058, s / n: 433 ) was one of only six Douglas DC-8-63PFs built. She was delivered to the US American Eastern Air Lines on February 24, 1969 . The PF sub-type had the reinforced floor of the DC-8-63 cargo version, but no cargo hatch on the main deck. Eastern Air Lines was the only customer to opt for this special variant in order to be able to carry soldiers with baggage on military charter flights . On February 5, 1974, the aircraft was taken over by the Union de Transports Aériens (UTA), which it leased to Air Afrique in November 1974 for two months . In May 1981 the machine was damaged on a take-off in Casablanca ( Morocco ) as a result of uncontained engine failure on the left wing and the horizontal stabilizer . UTA sold the Douglas DC-8 immediately after its repair in November 1981 to Miami- based leasing company International Air Leases (IAL). The owner of this leasing company was George Batchelor, who also owned the majority of the airlines Arrow Air and Capitol Air . The aircraft was immediately leased to Capitol Air, from November 1983 to Arista International Airlines and from July 1984 to National Airlines , which operated it for Air Algérie from September 1984 . From November 1984 IAL leased the machine to Arrow Air.

background

In August 1981, the MFO peacekeeping mission began on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt , in which US soldiers also took part. Commercial aircraft operated by civil airlines were used for regular exchanges between US troops, with the United States Department of Defense awarding the charter contracts through public tenders. The airline Arrow Air had received the order to transport military personnel from McChord Air Force Base, south of Tacoma ( Washington ), to Cairo and to bring the soldiers previously deployed in Egypt back to Fort Campbell ( Kentucky ).

To fulfill the order had Arrow Air DC-8 provided the use of a Douglas on three weekly flights pairs. Stopovers in Gander ( Canada ) and Cologne / Bonn had been planned for all outward and return flights , with only refueling in Gander and additional crew changes in Cologne / Bonn. On the second return flight to the USA, the Douglas DC-8-63PF used had an accident while taking off from Gander.

Flight history

When she crashed on the flight MF1285R machine is still in the UTA was in operation

On December 10, 1985, the second departure from McChord Air Force Base to Egypt had been delayed, causing the plane to arrive in Cairo four hours late. On the first leg of this outward flight, the pilots noticed that the exhaust gas temperature of engine no. 4 (far right) was 40 Kelvin above the standard value, but still within the tolerance limit. They reduced the power of this engine when cruising and documented the problem in the logbook.

In Egypt, 248 soldiers of the rose 101st Airborne Division on board, previously with two special flights of Egyptair had been transported from the base Ras Nasrani in the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo. Until the delayed Douglas DC-8 arrived, their baggage was temporarily stored in a separate area of ​​the airport. The machine took off at 20:35 UTC for the stage to Cologne / Bonn, where it landed at 01:21 UTC. A new cockpit crew, consisting of two 45-year-old pilots and a 48-year-old flight engineer, took over the aircraft. The refueled Douglas DC-8 took off at 02:50 UTC from Cologne / Bonn Airport for the onward flight to Gander, where it landed at 5:34 a.m. local time (9:04 UTC ) in darkness and light snowfall. The outside temperature was around -4 degrees Celsius. While the aircraft was being refueled and the cabin was being cleaned, the passengers stayed in the terminal. After arriving at freezing temperature , the precipitation temporarily turned into sleet , which, according to the majority of the accident investigators, froze on the upper side of the wings. Before the onward flight, the flight engineer carried out the external check. The crew did not request a de-icing of the aircraft.

the accident

At 10:15 a.m. UTC, the machine took off from runway 22 for its onward flight. The machine took off at a speed of 309 km / h, which was well above the minimum take-off speed. The take-off run was 300 meters longer than would have been expected for a machine with the assumed take-off weight. It was subsequently determined that the actual take-off weight was around six tonnes above the weight that the pilots had assumed and on the basis of which they had determined the take-off speeds. Eyewitnesses later reported that the machine had problems gaining altitude after taking off. Immediately after taking off, the speed initially rose to 319 km / h, but then fell again. After the machine had flown over the adjacent Trans-Canada Highway at a height of about 40 meters, it quickly lost altitude as the angle of attack increased .

The machine crashed into a wooded area between the highway and Gander Lake . It grazed some treetops and an empty building 1,100 meters behind the runway, until finally the right wing got caught in the trees and broke off. The kerosene of the machine, which was fully fueled for the last part of the flight, triggered a widespread fire. All 248 passengers and 8 crew members were killed.

Accident investigation

Wreckage of the crashed machine in a hangar at Gander Airport

On the day of the crash, an anonymous caller logged on to a French news agency in Beirut and claimed to have caused the machine to crash on behalf of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization . The US and Canadian governments ruled out a terrorist attack shortly thereafter.

After the investigation into the accident began, the Canadian aviation safety authority CASB quickly determined that the aircraft had not been de-iced before departure. After checking the weather data from the day of the accident, five out of nine members of the committee of inquiry came to the conclusion that at the time of the crash, atmospheric conditions had prevailed that favored the formation of hoar frost. It was also assumed that the first ice deposits could already have formed on the wing leading edge and surface on the approach to Gander, when the aircraft had been in a closed cloud cover for around seven minutes.

The investigators also found that the airline's weight calculations for each passenger and item of luggage were incorrect. It was assumed that statistical values ​​are used for the average passengers. The calculation ignored the fact that almost exclusively young men with a sporty stature sat in the machine.

In their final report, the investigators wrote that the authorities were unable to determine the sequence of events that led to the accident, but the evidence suggests that the machine lost buoyancy shortly after take-off at a height at which it could no longer be intercepted. The most likely cause of the stall was an icing of the leading edges and tops of the wings. Other factors such as loss of thrust on engine # 4 and incorrect speed calculations could also have contributed to the accident.

The remaining four of the nine members of the CASB investigation group contradicted the report. They said there was no evidence that the wings were icy. In the counter-opinion it was assumed that "a fire on board, resulting from explosions of unknown occurrence, led to a serious failure of [flight control] systems". In fact, several eyewitnesses driving their cars on the Trans-Canada Highway described a fire or a glow on the underside of the fuselage. This thesis contradicts the fact that no debris whatsoever was found along the short flight path of the machine that would have indicated an explosion before the crash.

The counter-opinion objected to the fact that the data from the old stainless steel foil flight recorder were only of limited significance, as they only recorded a limited number of parameters such as altitude and speed, thrust and vertical speed. The investigative work was made more difficult by the fact that the microphone of the voice recorder was already defective before departure and thus no information could be obtained about the situation in the cockpit.

consequences

The “Silent Witness” memorial, designed by the Kentucky artist Steve Shields and erected at the Gander Lake crash site. In the background a Douglas DC-8 taking off

A memorial to the victims was erected at the crash site, near the shores of Gander Lake, and another at the Fort Campbell military base. A Garden of Remembrance was also created in Hopkinsville , Kentucky , north of Fort Campbell.

Former Canadian constitutional judge Williard Estey published a criticism of the final reports in 1989, in which he stated that the available evidence does not support either of the two identified causes of the accident.

In 1991, former CASB investigator Les Filotas, who testified before the United States Congress that it was impossible that the machine had crashed because of a thin layer of ice, published a book in which he summarized his thesis of an explosion on board executes.

The counter-opinion slowed down progress in the aircraft de-icing procedures . In 1989, a Fokker F-28 crashed on Air Ontario Flight 1363 due to icing in Canada . As a result, public trust in the Canadian investigative agency CASB was irreparably damaged. The Canadian government dissolved the agency in 1990 and replaced it with the newly formed Transportation Safety Board of Canada .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Accident report DC-8-63 N950JW , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 6, 2019.
  2. ↑ Remembering peacekeepers 30 years after Army's worst air disaster. In: Bangor Daily News. Retrieved April 27, 2020 (American English).
  3. ↑ Accident Report of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Rzjets, Operating History of the DC-8-63PF N950JW , accessed April 1, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Aviation Occurrence Report, Arrow Air Inc. Douglas DC-8-63 N950JW, Gander Airport, Newfoundland, December 12, 1985. (PDF) In: Canadian Aviation Safety Board . November 14, 1988. Retrieved March 16, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Terror bomb ruled out in Canada's worst crash. In: Montreal Gazette. December 13, 1985. Retrieved March 16, 2019 .
  7. ^ A b Dissenting Opinion, Arrow Air Inc. Douglas DC-8-63 N950JW, Gander International Airport, Newfoundland, December 12, 1985. (PDF) In: Canadian Aviation Safety Board . November 14, 1988. Retrieved March 16, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Canada Judge Rejects New Gander Crash Probe. In: Los Angeles Times. July 22, 1989. Retrieved March 16, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Les Filotas: Improbable cause: dissent and deceit in the investigation of Canada's worst air disaster. Seal Books, Toronto 1991, ISBN 0-7704-2488-0 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 54 ′ 43 "  N , 54 ° 34 ′ 27"  W.