A Tristar 1 operated Delta Air Lines flight from San Diego to Los Angeles took off at midnight on April 12th, 1977. During control checks, the left elevator jammed in the full nose up position, causing a terrifying hour in dark skies and bad weather.
Captain Jack McMahon, who wrote an in-depth report for the July 1978 issue of Air Line Pilot magazine, was one of the flight attendants who helped the 41 passengers.
The aircraft lifted off at 126 knots with no control input, followed by a nose-up pitch excursion that could not be countered by a full nose-down control input. Even with full nose-down trim and full forward controls, the jet kept pitching up even though he tried to trim it down. The aircraft had a roll to the left that required aileron input to counter. The aircraft was about to go out of control and crash in the Pacific Ocean as the speed kept bleeding off.
McMahan wrote that he was overwhelmed with concern for his passengers, and that the cause of the crash would be put down to pilot confusion, rather than the mechanical difficulties they were experiencing. The week before, a Southern Airlines DC-9 crashed in Georgia with the loss of 63 lives, and the week before that, a collision between two planes killed 583. McMahon thought that accidents happen in threes.
The flash of insight came from these realizations. He pulled the throttles back in order to make a low-airspeed emergency happen. Their airspeed gradually rose through 140 knots. There was an increase in thrust on engine number one. A degree of control over the speed had been regained but the aircraft was still climbing steeply and would soon bust its 10,000 feet level off clearance The controller at Coast Approach told the pilot that they had him on radar and all altitudes were clear. We will remain with you.
With constant power changes, a gentle descent to a level off at 10,000 feet was achieved, with an overall power setting equivalent to climb power, which was needed because of the drag of the high pitch angle.
It was necessary to make a decision on where to land. The ability to force the plane onto the runway once it entered ground effect was one of the main concerns of McMahan.
The short coastal hop to Los Angeles had only been made possible by the top up of the tanks. It would take a while to get staffed and activated at the two military and space facilities that were closed after 10pm. Las Vegas and Phoenix were open with clear skies but required a minimum altitude of over 12,000 feet for clearance.
Despite the bad weather, Los Angeles was nominated as it was nearby, the approach was over water, and it was familiar to all the pilots. A straight-in approach to runway 6 right was requested.
It was possible to recover half an inch of control column movement from the full forward stop after the first flap setting of four degrees and ten degrees. The approach checks were completed and for the first time, the crew thought they might have made it. Abandoning the approach and trying for a water landing in the dark was considered when the landing gear was extended. The power change was a success, and flaps 18 were selected to bring them back onto the glidepath. McMahan vowed to not try for flaps 22 or even much of a flare, just get it on the ground.
Touchdown was at 165 knots, 1,000 feet deep into the two-mile strip of California blacktop; the nose stayed persistently skyward to the last, eventually dragged to Earth by a full reverse on the Roll-Royce engines. The flight had been over an hour. It was possible to taxi to the gate and the passengers disembarked on time.
A group of people swarmed over the plane. Water from rain, fog and mist dripped down through the structure of the tail onto a bearing. The water was sucked into the bearing by the changes in pressure that the plane had experienced. The bearing broke. The elevator was stuck when McMahan checked his flight controls.
The passengers and pilots took off for Dallas after they switched to another Tristar. A passenger wrote a note on the way to Dallas saying that he was going to be late for a connection. How are you going to deal with it? McMahan said he would do the best he could.
The cover image is from the Wikimedia Commons.
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