I've been listening to a lot of these episodes to get through work and a lot of these accidents seem to involve DC 10's and McDonnell Douglas. Has this airplane really had so many accidents? Doors flying off engines falling off...
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DC Can Suck It
DC-10s were involved in 4 high profile accidents in the 70s and 80s, including the deadliest single plane accident on US soil, AA Flight 191 in Detroit (1979). Also, high profile ones like New Zealand Flight 901 (1979) which incredibly flew directly into a mountain in Antarctica during daytime and fair weather conditions. Turkish Air Flight 981 (1974), the second deadliest single plane crash in the world, where a cargo door opened midflight. And of course United Airlines 232 in 1989, in which hydraulic systems failed due to the explosion of an engine, and the pilots miraculously were able to land the plane with no control other than varying throttles and 60% of the passengers survived. That was pretty much the end of the DC-10.
The sad irony is that the DC-10 actually was a pretty good aircraft.
Flight 191's disaster occurred because lazy American Airlines maintenance workers failed to follow proper procedures to remove an engine for maintenance; in their haphazard process they bent a connection, which later failed and caused the plane to lose that same engine on take-off.
United Airlines 232 also was caused by the failure of airline maintenance workers.
New Zealand 901 was 100% pilot and airline error. It had nothing to do with the plane whatsoever.
Only with Turkish Airlines 981 was the aircraft itself to blame. The cargo door design was the cause. McDonnell Douglas corrected this on future planes when the design fault was found. This crash was the earliest of the 4 big DC-10 incidents, occurring in 1974. But the DC-10 was doomed by 1989, after three more accidents that had nothing to do with the design of the aircraft itself.
tl;dr
Except for a tragic cargo door accident in 1974, which was remedied on future aircraft, there have been no deadly crashes caused by design faults of the DC-10. The subsequent accidents that did involve the DC-10 were caused by pilot and/or airline error.
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It`s not a design `fault`, exactly, but a tri-jet design that involves an engine mounted on the tail section, always sort of runs (or ran) the risk of losing all hydraulics in case of an uncontained compressor stall. It`s almost surprising that United 232 is the only such mishap (at least I can`t recall any others from top of my head).
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New Zealand 901 was 100% pilot and airline error. It had nothing to do with the plane whatsoever.
American Airlines Flight 191 crashed in Chicago at O'Hare airport, not in Detroit.
shareThe 747 was involved in just about as much tragedies, also high profile ones. Tenerife (now the worst crash of all time), Japan Air Lines in 1985 (biggest single aircraft disaster), Air India, TWA 800, etc. but it hasn't gotten as bad a rap as the DC-10.
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