Northwest Airlines Flight 255

Northwest Airlines Flight 255
	An identical aircraft from the company
Accident summary
Accident type	Stall at take-off due to not activated buoyancy aids
place	Romulus , 25 miles west of Detroit
date	August 16, 1987
Fatalities	154
Survivors	1
Injured	1
Fatalities on the ground	2
Injured on the ground	1
Aircraft
Aircraft type	McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 (MD-82)
operator	Northwest Airlines
Mark	N312RC
Departure airport	Tri-City Airport
1. Stopover	Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport
2. Stopover	Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport; (planned, not reached)
Destination airport	John Wayne Airport
Passengers	149
crew	6th
	Lists of aviation accidents

Debris from the aircraft on Middlebelt Road

Northwest Airlines flight 255 was a scheduled flight of Northwest Airlines , which was to lead on August 16, 1987 from Saginaw with stops in Detroit and Phoenix to Santa Ana . However, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 (MD-82) used had an accident shortly after take-off in Detroit, killing 154 people on board and two on the ground. The four-year-old passenger Cecelia Cichan was the only survivor seriously injured.

Aircraft and crew

The aircraft was a twin-engine McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 (MD-82) with the air vehicle registration N312RC . On board Flight 255 there were 149 passengers, two pilots and a four-person cabin crew.

Course of the accident

The take- off rotation (lifting of the front landing gear) occurred approximately between 1200 and 1500 feet (360 to 460 meters) before the end of the runway at Detroit Airport. Immediately after the climb began , the aircraft rolled about 35 degrees in both directions around the longitudinal axis at an altitude of less than 50 feet (15 meters). It stalled , causing the aircraft to turn 40 degrees to the left. The tip of the left wing on a lamppost tore off about 0.5 miles (800 meters) behind the end of the runway, causing kerosene to escape from the fuel tank and catch fire. The plane continued to turn to the left, hit more lamp posts, a car rental company building, and then hit Middlebelt Road . Lying on the roof, the machine skidded down the street until it crashed into the overpasses of a railroad line and Interstate 94 .

Crash victims

The only survivor from the plane was a four year old girl from Tempe, Arizona. Her parents and her six-year-old brother were killed in the crash. After the crash, the girl lived with relatives in Birmingham, Alabama , who kept her out of the public eye. Among the 154 passengers on board was Nick Vanos , a center for the Phoenix Suns basketball team . Two drivers were killed on the ground in the crash. Another person was seriously injured and four were slightly injured. All bodies were transported to a hangar at the airport, which was used as a temporary morgue.

Cause of accident

Regarding the likely cause of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board determined “that the pilots had not worked through the taxi checklist and therefore had not ensured that the flaps and slats were extended to the required position for takeoff. Contributing to the crash was that the take-off warning system was not receiving power, which meant that the pilots were not warned that their aircraft was not properly configured for take-off . The reason for the lack of power supply could not be determined. "

As part of the accident investigation, the voice recorder in the cockpit (CVR) provided evidence that the pilots had not processed the taxi checklist . The investigators also found that the acoustic warning of stall had been heard in the cockpit, but in an atypical way: the word "stall" was usually used by both the left and right audio channels output, whereby an echo should result from a time delay, so that the word should have sounded like "stall-all". However, the recording of Flight 255 showed that only the word "stall" had been heard.

Further analysis showed that the take-off warning had not been heard before the take-off from the runway . The investigations then led to the power supply of the Central Aural Warning System (CAWS): The 28-volt DC circuit responsible for the left audio channel including the take-off warning and echo during the stall warning was on the fuse with the designation P- 40 interrupted. The NTSB was unable to determine whether the fuse had responded, whether it had been switched off on purpose, or whether the current flow was otherwise interrupted despite the fuse being inserted.

One assumption is that the P-40 fuse was deliberately switched off by the crew in order to suppress disruptive warnings in the context of maneuvering area movements. Other pilots on DC-9-80s (MD-80s) admitted that this is done occasionally, although it is not an officially approved practice. The fuse is usually reactivated shortly before the start, but in this case this has probably simply been forgotten.

aftermath

In memory of the victims, a black granite memorial plaque was erected, surrounded by blue spruce . It is on the top of the hill near Middlebelt Road and Interstate 94, the site of the accident. The commemorative plaque shows a dove with a ribbon in its beak with the inscription: "Their spirit still lives on ..." (Your spirit still lives on ...). To the right and left of it are the names of those who died in the crash.

A memorial to the victims of the accident, many of whom were from the Phoenix area, stands next to City Hall in central Phoenix, Arizona.

On August 16, 2007, the 20th anniversary of the crash, a memorial service was held at the site of the accident. For some of the people who were affected by the accident, it was the first time they returned there.

filming

In the 2nd episode of the 9th season of the Canadian documentary series Mayday - Alarm im Cockpit , the accident was filmed as Cockpit Chaos (Alarming Silence) in English and as Chaos in the Cockpit in German.

Web links

Northwest Flight 255 Memorial

42.240266 -83.328225Coordinates: 42 ° 14 '25 " N , 83 ° 19' 41.6" W.