The united airlines flight 173 crash could have been evaded with a few simple steps. The airplane was approaching Portland, Ore from JFk airport New York on December 28th 1978 when the pilot realized that there was a predicament with the landing gear. He immediately ordered for the emergency safe landing of the 189 passengers on board. He circled the plane for more than twenty minutes while trying to communicate with the air controllers on the possible approach strategies to apply. The airplane had a scheduled stop at Denver airport before it arrives to its final destination Portland airport. It took off at Denver with 46500 pounds of fuel, which was enough for the completion of its last leg of the destination, which was estimated to take 2½ hours. Everything was going according to the plan until when the landing gear was lowered but only a loud noise came out of the right main landing gear.
Captain Malburn Mc Brown was so occupied with assessing the emergency safe landing of the plane that he totally forgot to keep track of the fuel level for sustaining the airplane in the air. For almost an hour, flight 173 circled in the environs of Portland before running out of fuel and crashing six miles in the suburban woods of Portland killing 10 passengers and injuring 23. Luckily, there was no post-crash explosion; this was most likely because the airplane had totally run out of fuel. Miraculously, out of the total 189 people on board 179 lives were saved.
The human error that manifested itself from this incident was not that of lack of communication between the on board crew and the air traffic control unit, but it was the problem of failing to correctly relate time on air and the remaining distance with the on-board fuel reserve. They were too occupied with correcting the landing gear setback and planning for an emergency crash landing. In fact, it was later revealed that there the landing gear had no problem. It is the captain’s blunder not to carefully monitor the airplane’s fuel state while the other two-crew members charged with monitoring the fuel level failed to wholly comprehend the criticality declining fuel level.
In reaction to this flight 173 crash, the cockpit training procedures were re-evaluated with a greater focus on the conception of the Cockpit Resource Management (CRM). The traditional ‘sky god’ captain figure that made all the decisions was abandoned and replaced with a more revolutionary concept that emphasized on teamwork and effective communication in the aviation industry. Cockpit Resource Management, currently referred to as Crew Resource Management (CRM), is a resourceful training that entails aviation awareness, skills, proper communication, attitude control, leadership and problem solving as a team. Over the years, CRM has proven to be a jewel in the aviation and has had numerous positive effects in various recent emergencies.
The National transport Safety Board (NTSB) findings concluded that the 1st officer was the one responsible for checking the fuel level since he was the flight engineer accountable for controlling the whole airplane’s systems. The report further says that the first officer knew that the aircraft was running out of fuel but informed the captain when it was too late. This crash was a decisive moment in the aviation safety movement since the accident exposed major flaws in the aircraft management system. The NTSB indicated in their report “this captain culture hinders interaction, communication and ample monitoring” , they claimed that this culture was endangering the lives of the passengers on board.
“While the resolution to abort landing was justifiable, the incident occurred because the crew became excessively absorbed with diagnosing the technical hitch and totally ignored that the plane was becoming fuel starved” the NTSB report read. The safety body indicated that this crash is a possible recurring problem if something was not done on time. This report resulted in the breakdown of the cockpit management and the response strategy to emergencies in times of aircrafts malfunctioning. They stated that the chief contributing factor to the accident was mostly because of the breakdown of communication between the crew members and the pilot, since the fuel situation had been noticed by the pilot and the crew but failed to communicate with the captain.
The recommendation that topped the National Transport Security Board report was that of a system that promotes effective communication and coordination in the aviation industry. They simply explained that effective communication is whereby the receiver decodes exactly what the sender sends on time. An excellent instance of teamwork and communication in the aviation industry was during the safe landing of the flight 232 crash at Sioux City, Iowa after experiencing an unusual and fatal engine failure. The engine number one and three were functioning appropriately but engine number two, which was mounted at the tail, had totally blown off. Through sober communication, the plane was brought to a safe landing without causing any deaths. Therefore, a conclusive statement can be made that safe skies can be achieved if only effective communication is practiced
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Smith, Daryl R. Controlled Flight into Terrain (cfit/cftt). New York [u.a.: McGraw-Hill, 2001. Print.
