The 25th Anniversary of the Crash of Delta 191
By Mike Smith of Meteorological Musings. ( a video and reconstruction follows – Anthony)
At 9:30am this morning, a long-overdue memorial to the victims of Delta Flight 191 was dedicated at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport’s Founder’s Plaza. The crash occurred twenty-five years ago, August 2, 1985, at 6:06pm.
The Lockheed L-1011 departed Ft. Lauderdale enroute to Dallas and Los Angeles, but crashed short of the runway in a violent storm known as a microburst (a description of a microburst is here). One hundred thirty-seven passengers and crew lost their lives along with one motorist. A number of the survivors had life-altering injuries. The stories of loss (for example, www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/31/2375338/the-weekend-that-redefined-loss.html ) are simply overwhelming.
For the eight years prior to the Delta crash, there had been a fierce controversy within meteorology and aviation over Dr. Ted Fujita’s theory that an undiscovered atmospheric phenomena that he named a “downburst” had caused a string of jetliners, starting in 1973, to crash. As I explain in Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather, the consensus was that Dr. Fujita had misinterpreted what was actually occurring in these thunderstorms.
In spite of volumes of evidence in his book and in peer-reviewed papers, the consensus in meteorology was downbursts didn’t exist.
After Delta 191 crashed, Dr. Fujita was brought in to investigate and, within a few months, found data that convinced even the doubters that downbursts (and their smaller version, microbursts) were mortal hazards to aircraft. Other investigations were also conducted including the National Transporation Safety Board’s and those of various attorneys retained by the airline, the government, and the victims. A messy, too-long trial followed the crash where people like Gene Skipworth, the air traffic controller who competently attempted to guide the flight to a safe landing, were dragged through the mud.
My copy of the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the crash. For the first time, the NTSB determined a microburst was a cause of a plane crash.
With the benefit and perspective of time, we can look back and realize: For all of the tragedy of that evening and its immediate aftermath, a great deal of good has come out of the Delta crash.
read the rest here:
The 25th Anniversary of the Crash of Delta 191
Video:
cagw_skeptic99 says:
August 2, 2010 at 12:17 pm
You could put this on Tips and Notes. You could add this to a post after most of the on-topic discussion has occurred. I don’t know about everyone else, but I make a point of ignoring off topic comments from people who pounce on a new post. I figure those commenters couldn’t care less about the topic or the discussion, all they want to do is get noticed, even though 99th isn’t that much better than being the 142nd quickest draw in the west.
It’s probably a good thing I’m not a moderator here. 🙂
Mike McMillan says:
Of course, the difference being that this one is based on testable, provable principles….
Hmm a consensus of meteorologists you say held up the acceptance of the microburst. I sure hope we dont get any more of those pesky consensuses.
Hi everyone, Mike Smith here.
First, I’d like to thank Anthony for cross posting my piece on Delta 191. That tragedy became a milestone in the history of both meteorology and aviation. But, it is especially important that we remember the families and friends of the victims today.
I am writing after viewing the comments to note that there is a parallel between the rejection of Fujita’s microburst theory and today’s ongoing controversy pertaining to ‘global warming’ that I came to realize as I was writing my book, “Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather.” That parallel is that many people initially rejected Fujita’s hypothesis out of envy, not because of his evidence. I was a member of the American Meteorological Society’s aviation meteorology committee at that time and I was attending aviation and aviation meteorology conferences. Many times I heard, “I’ve never seen a microburst in MY research!” Or, my institution, the [fill in the blank with the name of several research institutions], the finest in the world, has never found the microburst; Fujita couldn’t have found one.” As silly as it seems now, those sentiments were expressed with surprising frequency.
Some of the same behavior Judy Curry has noted (“tribalism” and reluctance to engage critics) in the global warming controversy was evident in the history of the theory of microbursts 25-30 years ago. Fujita was proven right, the “consensus” was proven wrong.
By noting this, I am not trying to say one side in the AGW debate is right or wrong. I am saying that we need to do a much better job of talking to each other and determining the scientific validity of evidence (which is the only thing that is important) rather than worrying about who is producing the evidence.
Mike
There have been few glider crashes which included a couple of deaths in Australia where the pilots have either got caught chasing the lift along the front of a thunderstorm and have got into very severe downdrafts instead and have been forced to land close to and ahead of the thunderstorm or have tried to get home to their field as a thunderstorm [ s ] bore down on that same field.
They were caught in the low level downburst which usually only extends to a couple of hundred feet high above ground in our relatively benign thunderstorms here and perhaps some 5 kilometres or so out from the storm front.
There are often downdraft velocities of some thousands of feet per minute in the front of these types of storms which are usually accompanied by an even more severe downburst and even wind reversals at low level which just destroys airspeed in that situation followed by the almost inevitable stall at a low and irrecoverable height with the very strong possibility of a resultant crash.
Of course with a glider, you can’t just open the tap and try to out climb the sink rate or even modify the downwards velocity.
You have to wear what you have got and got yourself into!
I have sat at some 6000 feet in a glider a few kilometers away watching a small ground level microburst appear from what seemed to be just an average and innocuous cumulous cloud with a small but heavy column of rain falling from it.
The roiling dust laden couple of kilometres wide doughnut shaped ring of the microburst spreading out from the shower at ground level was a most impressive sight and was an excellent lesson to me, even with some two and half thousand hours in gliders, on the care that is needed when flying around what may appear to be the most innocent of minor storm systems.
Now do you want to know about those very near lightning strikes when flying around thunderstorms in a glider!?
I thought not! Nothing that mustard colored underpants can’t hide!
Yup; “TDWR” (Terminal Doppler Weather RADAR) operated by the FAA (not the NWS) and not the same as NEXRAD or the WSR-88D series …
In fact, the TDWR are C-Band (5 GHz) RADARs as opposed to S-Band (2.8 GHz) as the WSR-88D NWS RADARs are.
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O Lord, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.
Of course I felt great pity for everyone on that flight, but for some reason I always felt particularly sorry for the lone man killed on the ground – he was driving on Hwy 114, just north of the landing strip, when the planes landing gear went through his car and crushed it flat as a pancake. He had just moved to the city a week before, and had never driven on that road before. It’s amazing to think of how much trouble he had to go to just to meet his appointment with death falling blindly out of the sky that day.
Delta 191 was carrying several thousand pieces of US mail in it’s cargo bay, since Delta had a contract with the USPS. I remember the pictures of half burnt mail spread all over the grassy field where the wreckage was. Apparently the Post Office gathered up all that scattered mail and delivered everything that still had a readable address on it, since 3 weeks after the accident, I got a clear plastic bag with a half burned, water stained envelope inside. Creepiest part was the stamp on the outside of the bag which proclaimed, in all caps, “THE USPS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONDITION OF THIS ITEM”. They didn’t say that this had been one of the pieces recovered from that field – they didn’t have to.
I kept it for quite a while, although I haven’t been able to put my hands on it for a few years now. Not that I mind if it’s gone – I never liked the way it made me feel when I held it.
The airline consensus these days is to not attempt a landing until the downburst has subsided or moved off the approach path, so not all consensi are bad.
A man with experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion
— Dave Ramsey
“Of course I felt great pity for everyone on that flight, but for some reason I always felt particularly sorry for the lone man killed on the ground – he was driving on Hwy 114, just north of the landing strip, when the planes landing gear went through his car and crushed it flat as a pancake. He had just moved to the city a week before, and had never driven on that road before. It’s amazing to think of how much trouble he had to go to just to meet his appointment with death falling blindly out of the sky that day.”
It was his 28th birthday and we was on his way to his birthday party.
Re Mike Smith:
That’s all we are saying.
If AGW is so scientifically sound, why do it’s practitioners spend so much time hiding their evidence and demonizing their opponents?
If the Earth’s climate really is on the cusp of disaster, then I want to know about it. Why is it so difficult for me to see the evidence for myself?
So many flight 191s went down in the span of about a year that the airlines stopped using that number to designate a flight. Those of you who travel frequently have a look at the screens. No 191s.
The other flight 191 was American 191 in Chicago which crashed on takeoff in 1979. Its engine fell off shortly after takeoff. The crew was not able recover. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191 .
<a href = http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/02/25-years-ago-today-an-event-that-changed-meteorology-and-aviation/#comment-446358"<Jim
And NEXRAD was a joint project with the Airforce, NOAA, and FAA. It was a competition between Unisys and Raytheon. After NEXRAD was awarded to Unisys, the FAA decided that it didn’t satisfy their needs and awarded a contract to Raytheon for TDWR.
There’s the saying that the two things you don’t want to see being made are sausage and politics, but I’d add a third: government procurements. I may have worked out in the end, but the process was ugly.
I flew through DFW the next day returning from a visit to my grandparents. My dear younger brother, sitting by the window, loudly informed my mother (and everyone else in the cabin), “Look, there’s a burned airplane!” I’m surprised that he lived to adulthood. 🙂
Microburst training is now standard curriculum in aviation. Mostly we are taught to avoid them, but also how to recognize and try to fly out of them. I’ve never tangled with one in a glider, just dodged them in power planes (ah, lovely Denver).
John A says:
August 3, 2010 at 2:55 am
If the Earth’s climate really is on the cusp of disaster, then I want to know about it. Why is it so difficult for me to see the evidence for myself?
For that you need the special Warmist goggles; shade #10 is best. These filter out harmful, cognitive dissonance – producing direct observations, inconvenient facts, and other evidence based on the scientific method.
Grant money, career, and fame based on “seeing the evidence” also help immensely.
Any glider pilot can tell you that some bits of the sky go upwards, and some go downwards. And some bits go down like the proverbial lead balloon.
Its not rocket science. What goes up must come down.
Airliners try to stay out of thunderstorms, but even a large CuNim can produce a large downdraft. Had full power one day, just to stay level. That’s about a 2,000ft/min downdraft.
An acquaintance of mine died in the crash. I’ll never forget that day.