On Thursday, May 5, 1983, a widebody jet powered by three Rolls-Royce RB.211 engines was scheduled to fly from Miami to Nassau with 172 passengers on board. Smaller jets are usually the preserve of the 40-minute, 180-mile hop, but a quick short haul out-and-back between longer legs can be a good way to squeeze more value out of an asset.
Richard Boddy was brand new to the Tristar and was in charge of N334EA. The presence of Steve Thompson, a supervisor check captain in the co-pilot's seat, who had 16,946 hours including 282 on the type, was due to the fact that he had just 13 hours on type. The flight engineer was Dudley Barnes. The cabin was in charge of by a woman who had fourteen years of experience as a flight attendant.
When the flight was airborne out of Miami at 08:56 it was already descending through 15,000 feet into a rainy Nassau and the engine oil pressure in the tail began to drop. Boddy decided to shut the engine down and go back to Miami, where the weather was better. They were given the green light to go back up to 20,000 feet.
Needles in the pressure gauge dropped to zero, which seemed impossible, as each engine's oil supply is a completely closed system. The flight engineer radioed the tech ops centre in Miami to see if there was a common electrical source that could cause a cascade of failures. The number two AC bus was checked but there were no discrepancies.
In an overnight service, O-ring seals were removed from all three engines, and not replaced.
The aircraft flew on only engine number one after the number three engine overheated and failed. The best drift on a single engine was minus 500 feet per minute.
A couple of minutes later, and still out of sight of land, engine number one seized up and the giant jet turned into a glider, finally fulfilling the Eastern Airlines marketing name given to the Tristar. The airspeed of 225 knots was the best for best glide.
The crew was given the ability to operate all the flight controls and instruments when the auxiliary power unit was fired up. The Coast Guard was informed by Miami ARTCC that a passenger jet and helicopter were going to be forced to make an emergency landing. A helicopter and a C-130 Hercules were diverted to help. There were three more choppers and a falcon ready to go. The first Coast Guard falcon was able to briefly intercept Eastern 855 but soon lost sight of it. In the cabin, the flight attendants swung into action, rebriefing the passengers on life jackets and exits, preparing life rafts, selecting Able Bodied Persons to sit near exits to assist with the evacuate, and preparing the cabin for what would undoubtedly be a violent ditch.
The pilots were able to restart the engines on their third attempt at 09:38 as they sank through 4,000 feet, 22 miles away from land. The descent towards the dark frothing sea was arrested at 3,000 feet and a gradual climb on just the one engine was achieved, topping out at 3,900 feet. The passengers were kept in the brace position for 50 minutes after they left the airport.
The smoke was reported as stopped after the control tower observed smoke in engines one and three. Engine number two couldn't generate enough power to taxi to the gate so Eastern 855 shut down and was towed to the gate. One of the closest shaves in aviation history took place when a widebody jet was forced to ditch into the Atlantic. The engines were rendered useless by the lack of lubrication.
More than 100 passengers were sent a questionnaire by the National Transportation Safety Board. It was finished and returned. The data showed how much attention was given to safety.
Only 46 people said they had read the safety card, despite 81 saying they recalled the preflight safety briefings. The life jackets were under the seat. The life jacket demonstration was repeated many times. The life jacket was difficult to locate and to remove from the storage compartment. It was difficult to remove it from the package. They had some difficulties wearing their life jackets. 57 were able to put on their life jackets while seated with their lap straps fastened, while 33 were not able to do so. One person commented that he inflated his life jacket because he didn't want to wait until he was in the water to find out that the life jacket wouldn't inflate. They were told to use a specific exit. A flight attendant or another passenger helped them.
The small number of passengers in first class in the forward cabin were able to benefit from being able to sit near a flight attendant and remain in eye contact, and the instructions from flight attendants were clear and professional. The passengers in the small rearmost cabin were very impressed with the cabin crew who were very precise and well informed about emergency procedures. A male flight attendant in the back of the plane demonstrated how to wear a life jacket.
In the second and third cabins, most passengers thought the flight attendants spent too much time talking to the Able Bodied Persons that were selected to help with crowd control. Many people did not remember seeing flight attendants, but they could hear announcements on the PA. There was a lack of information about exit door operation, the use of life rafts, and conflicting instructions on the correct brace position, among other things. People who had personal contact with flight attendants praised their professional manner, despite the fact that many passengers felt neglected and uneducated.
The fog of war can be said to be the cause of a lot of the confusion. If one of the engines had not been able to be started, there would have been a lot of deaths in the water landing. The naivete of airline passengers in the 1980s is a factor that needs to be considered. There was no panic and the passengers were part of the solution when the plane went down in the Hudson River. That is for grace under pressure.
Eastern 855 was part of an evolutionary process that made flying safer. Oh yeah, phew!
The cover image is from Wikimedia Commons.
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