This One Made Me CRY! The Incredible story of United Airlines flight 1175

the 13th of February 2018 was a beautiful day in San Francisco on the west coast of the United States the visibility was well over 10 miles hardly any clouds and only light winds a perfect dat for flying in other words this was exactly what Captain Christopher Benham thought as he was heading out towards San Francisco airport in the morning he was a tall distinguished 57-year-old Captain with proud Iranian Heritage who had just like me dreamed about becoming an airline pilot ever since he was a little boy through hard work and dedication he had then managed

to achieve this goal and worked his way up through the United Airlines organization to the point where he was finally a commander and a Czech Airman on the mighty boing trip 7 at the time of this flight he had MOS just over 13,600 hours of Total time and had during his career flown almost all of the large boeings including the 737 747 757 767 and now the Boeing Triple 7 which he was actually reasonably new one at this point with only 360 hours flown on it he was in a particularly good mood this morning since

he was flying over to Honolulu Hawaii which was one of his absolute favorite destinations and a route that he flown loads of times over his career and was therefore very comfortable with as he entered the crew room he soon met up with his colleague first officer Paul AER which he had actually never flown with before this flight Paul was 60 years old and also very experienced he had just over 11,300 hours in total of which around 10,000 had been flown on the Triple 7 but this was only going to be his second flight from San

Francisco to Honolulu since he was normally based in Washington DC the two pilots found it really easy to talk to each other and they soon started looking through their pre-flight briefing material and the weather looked great for the entire flight with only some cloudy weather expected over Honolulu at the end of the flight but everything was well within planning requirements when the pre-flight check was completed they ordered the fuel and then they walked over to the cabin crew to brief them about the flight the flight time was expected to be around 4 hours and 40

minutes with only some occasional turbulence and with 364 passengers planned once everyone had asked their questions and were ready the whole crew them walked together out to the gate where their shiny Triple 7 was waiting for them it was an amazing looking machine which had been bought new by United 23 years earlier and was now basking in the sunlight with all sorts of catering and fueling going on around it at the bo 7 is an absolutely amazing aircraft and if you've ever had a chance to look at oneup close there's one thing that that I

guarantee you will stand out it's two gigantic engines these engines are going to play a very Central role in The Story So before we continue I want to explain a little bit more about them the pratton Whitney 477 engines have a fan diameter of 112 in or 2.8 M meaning that the outer diameter of the fan cowling is almost as wide as the body of the boing 737 that I fly these enormous engines are a big reason why The Airliner has become as popular as it is because generally the larger the engine fan diameter is

the more efficient the whole engine is and why is that then well what drives an aircraft forward is essentially the reaction force created by sucking air into through the front of the engines and then accelerating it backwards if we want to increase that Force we either have to accelerate the same amount of air a lot or accelerate a larger amount of air a little bit as engine technology has become more mature it has become clear that the second option is way more fuel efficient so that's why we constantly see bigger and bigger engines being created

as the bigger fans will increase the bypass ratio meaning the amount of air that flows past the engine core and therefore the total air mass accelerated but making engines bigger also has some drawbacks as the engines gets bigger so does all of the involved components which means a significantly higher weight and at a certain point that weight increase will outweigh the performance increase by the bigger fan meaning that the engine has then reached its maximum size in order to counteract this the engine manufacturers are always working on new designs that will allow the components to

become lighter and therefore enable the engines to become even bigger in the case of the pw4000 series engines one of the strategies used to achieve this was to hollow out the Titan ium allo fan blades and therefore create empty chambers inside of them obviously this reduced the weight substantially in the 101 cm long individual fan blades but it also introduced a problem since these blades would be subjected to incredible forces during their lifespans there needed to be a way to inspect them on regular intervals to make sure that there were no fatigue cracks appearing now

if the blade is solid this is relatively easy but if there are Hollow chambers within them it becomes substantially more complicated to do Bratt and Whitney obviously were aware of this and had been working on different ways of doing these inspections since the engines were introduced back in 1984 initially they used ultrasound and x-ray technology but in 2005 they came up with a new solution called thermal acoustic Imaging or tii the way that worked was by using sound energy to create vibrations inside the fan blade material and if there was a crack present the surfaces

inside of that crack would then start rubbing up against each other creating a heat signal which could be detected using a thermal sensor this was a brilliant IDE and relatively simple compared to other techniques so preton Whitney quickly rolled it out wide and after that only if there was a positive indication on the tii would the blade be sent for further non-destructive testing using other Technologies but since TI was considered a new and emerging technology there initially were no defined training and certification regimen for the inspectors who were going to use it and there were

a lot of fan blades who needed to be inspected the blades who were fitted to the aircraft in this story had gone through tii inspections in both 2010 and 2015 and the inspectors had noticed something looking a bit odd on one of the blades but had written it off as an issue with the overlaying paint layer on that blade now you might ask what's the point of this check if discrepancies are written off without further investigations and that's a valid point but it all becomes a little bit more clear when you think back of that

lack of training that I mentioned earlier you see on similar inspections using other Technologies the required minimum training was 40 classroom hours followed by 1,200 hours of practical training but the inspectors who was handling the inspections of these involved fan blades had only received a total of 40 hours of practical training that's it there had been more training offered but unfortunately the involved inspector had not been able to attend that training since he was working through a huge inspection backlog at the time and there were also other factors like the fact that the inspections were

taking place in a room where a lot of sunshine regularly came in which could create ghost images on the thermal scans making the evaluations even harder to interpret and together all of these factors had allowed a fan blade number 11 on this number two engine on the aircraft to develop a tiny little crack inside the hall of space near the root of the blade this crack was completely impossible to see with the naked eye but kept growing bigger and bigger for each cycle that the engine operated anyway when the pilots had left their bags in

the cockpit the captain looked through the technical log book and saw that the aircraft was completely clean with no recent technical issues logged after that it was time to start a pre light inspection which in United Airlines is always done by the first officer so he went outside and started his normal clockwise inspection where he checked that all of the probe covers were removed that there were no leaks indications of bird strikes or any other damages to any of the components and he spent quite a long time checking each engine to make sure that the

giant fan blades had no damages on them you see even tiny damages can cause vibrations and loss of thrust so this is something that we Pilots all always pay attention to but everything looked completely normal so he finished his walk around and then returned to the cockpit for the rest of the pre-flight at this point there were no indications of the kind of Mayhem that would soon follow but before we get to that there is this I hate getting spam messages and emails or even worse Robo calls but thankfully that's happening a lot less after

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priority for you then give incog a try using the link here below which is incognit doccom pilot that will give you an exclusive 60% discount on the annual plan if you act fast that's also been met up by another colleague first officer Ed Garin who wanted to ask if he could hit her ride with him back to Honolulu he had just finished an earlier shift and was eager to get back home for his rest days but he had also seen that the flight was almost fully booked so he asked if there was any chance that

he could join the pilots in the cockpit Captain Benham greeted him happily and joked that if he was going to sit up front he might also have to do some work and they both laughed not knowing just how true this would actually turn out to be now Ed also mentioned that he had just completed his line training and that's a fact that will soon come to play a very important role in this story in any case while first officer Paul was out doing his walk around Captain benam continued setting up the aircraft for departure so

when Paul got back into the cockpit they could immediately start briefing and preparing for their departure at this point Captain Benham also asked if Paul had any preferences on who should act as pilot flying for the leg and Paul answered that he would love to do that since he wanted to get some experience on this route so that's what they decided to do and soon the lead Purser popped her head into the cockpit and advised them that all passengers had been boarded and that the crew was ready to go this meant that there were now

363 passengers and 15 crew members on board the aircraft the pilots completed their last few checklist as well as their briefing for a departure from Runway 28 left and soon after that first of the pole requested push back from Stand 80 they started their engines and then taxi it out toward the runway holding Point all checks were completed in normal way with no anomalies noted so at time 0938 Pacific Standard time after a grueling 38-minute taxi first off the P finally moved the trust levers forward for takeoff and the giant Bo Tri 7 started accelerating

down the runway the takeoff and initial climb were completely uneventful and once the gear and flaps were retracted the flights soon receiv received their clearance join their Oceanic route toward Honolulu which is actually one of the longest uninterrupted overwater routes in the world there are other routes who are longer but they all have alternate airports on islands along the way whilst the stretch between San Francisco and Hulu is just over water the aircraft climbed in steps up towards its final Cruise altitude of flight level 380 or 38,000 feet and once up there the crew started

completing their paperwork and then chit chatted a bit between themselves about their previous experience and plans that they had for the week ahead the first 3 hours and 30 minutes of the flight continued in the same standard way with only position report fuel checks and acars messages sent regarding weather and wind and Captain Benham chuckled about the fact that he had flown to Honolulu countless times in his career so far but he had never seen a solid covering Cloud layer stretching from 2000 to 33,000 ft over the islands as they were now planning to see

soon they entered an area of F to moderate turbulence and therefore asked on aulu control if they could descend 2,000 ft down to Flat Lev 360 in order to try to get out of it this was approved and first officer Paul dialed it in on the mode control panel and let the outter pilot initiate a cruise descent the same way as he had done thousands of times before they were now about 200 nautical miles Northeast of Honolulu with around 40 minutes of the flight still remaining when the crack in the number 11 fan blade had

reached a point of no return within a millisecond the giant fan blade separated in a clean cut about 3 and 1/2 CM above its rout it shot outwards with an incredible force and almost immediately impacted the adjoining blade which also shattered and went inwards into the engine core racing even more havoc in there the number 11 fan blade then started moving forward inside of the protective barrel and when it hit the edges it created multiple high energy shock waves which ultimately exceeded the certified specifications of the forward inner barrel as well as the cowling this

meant that those parts soon failed and were then immediately ripped off the engine this is known as a fan blade out or FBO event and it's something that the engines are tested to be able to sustain during certification the protective Barrel directly surrounding the blades are constructed from incredibly durable cavlar but the forward barrel and the aerodynamic engine cowling is not it later turned out that part of the engine Inlet used during Certification testing had been made out of aluminium which had a greater ability to yield and deform than the carbon fiber reinforced polymer that

was the part that was ultimately used in production that was found to be one of the reasons for the quick destruction of the forward partch while the Kevlar casing actually stayed reasonably intact but when those forward sections of the engine disappeared parts of the fan blade which was still spiraling forward managed to escape the encasement and shot straight into the side of the aircraft but through an incredible Act of lock they impacted the body exactly at a place where a Stringer a structural part of the body was located just below one of the passenger Windows

this meant that the blade fragments didn't puncture the cabin which could have been catastrophic for the passenger sitting next to it and even worse would have caused an immediate depressurization of the aircraft luckily that didn't happen but in the cockpit none of the pilots had any idea of what had just crippled their aircraft they only heard an enormous explosion and then it felt like the aircraft had literally hit a brick wall the deceleration was so severe that Captain benam and first officer aers almost slammed their heads into their glare shield and within 1 and a

half second the aircraft had lurched into a 45° r Bank was also ya sharply in the same direction this was incredibly disorienting as it all happened very fast and literally came from nowhere and with no prior warning one second they were flying along nicely and in the next their aircraft was literally snap rolling over its right wing and shaking like it was about to break up Captain Benham being the training captain that he was immediately realized the gravity of the situation and called out I have controls he grabed the control wheel as the outer pallet

and outer throttle both disengaged and then glanced down onto his engine displays to confirm what he thought must be a catastrophic engine failure when he did that he saw to his amazement that the engine instruments both showed completely normal values so he called out what what happened to get some help identifying the failure and first officer Paul a just responded I don't know the engan instruments are normal in the corner of his eye Captain Benham now also saw how the air speed who just a few seconds ago had been steadily at Max 0.83 had started

slowing down rapidly and he knew that he now had very little time to react whatever this was it was coming from the right side as the aircraft was both ya and rolling that way so he instinctively pushed left Rudder and gently gave maximum aons towards the left all he could think about was trying to keep the blue side up on this primary flight display while it's also pushing the left trust lever all the way forward to get as much trust as it possibly could to slow down the deceleration at these altitudes it's very important to

not move the controls too fast that can cause Max shock waves to form and the fact that the aircraft was already banking 45° meant that they were already experiencing higher than normal G forces something that also increases the aircraft stall speed Ed the first officer on the jump seat now called out um maybe we've had an inflight Collision now that would definitely explain the explosion extreme vibrations and sudden loss of controls that they were now experiencing but they were at 36,000 ft and had seen nothing on their teast there just shouldn't be anyone else at

that altitude you see above 18,000 ft in the US all airspace is controlled with mandatory transponder use so if there would have been anyone else up there they should have seen it anyway with full deflection on both Rudder and Aeron the stricken Tri 7 now started slowly rolling back towards Wings level again but with the air speed still decreasing all of this except for the strange engine indications were typical for a severe engan failure and Captain Benham knew that if this was the case the aircraft would not be able to maintain its altitude for much

longer a twin engine jet can depending on type and weight normally keep an altitude of around 21 to 24,000 ft on one engine but never 36,000 this meant that he needed to start descending immediately otherwise the aircraft would soon stall and he could potentially completely lose control on top of all of this they were now shaking so badly that the pilots had problems focusing their eyes enough to see their instruments in front of them and to reach for specific controls and meanwhile this was happening a sickening sound of twisting metal could be heard from behind

them a sound similar to what you would hear in a sinking submarine as the pressure starts crushing it 35 seconds after the start of this nightmare the engine instruments for the right-and engine suddenly started blanking one by one what had actually happened was that the entire eec the computer in charge of reporting values to the engine instruments had been ripped away when the engine cowling separated so what the pilots had been looking at was just the last reported values from the engine before the failure had occurred which had stuck in the screen memory due to

a lack of other inputs this finally confirmed to the crew that they were indeed dealing with some kind of severe damage to the right hand engine and Captain Benham therefore asked first officer poll to please start executing the engine severe damage checklist from the ecl their electronic checklist in other aircraft like the boing 737 that II this type of failure includes something known as memory items meaning items that has to be done from memory without reference to a checklist but in the tri 7 this that had to be done from their internal electronic checklist in

their aast but the problem now was that the aircraft was shaking so badly that the first officer simply couldn't reach to use the aast at all and this is where experience once again comes in is if both Pilots have been operating with memory items in previous aircraft which meant that they now could just go through them from memory so Paul started reading out out the throttle confirm off off andian trust lever confirm close close andian start lever confirm cut off cut off all three Pilots made sure that they didn't rush these steps because previous accidents

had taught them that it's very easy to misidentify a failure like this and end up shutting down the wrong engine once these items had been completed the vibrations subsided slightly but were still very bad so they all agreed to add one more point to the checklist to pull the engine fire switch this step would completely isolate the right engine and shut off all of its fuel oil and hydraulics so they looked at each other number two fire handle confirm pull confirmed and they pulled it once this step was done the vibrations finally reduced from about

15 on the scale from 1 to 10 down to about 7 still really bad terrifying for the passengers but now at least manageable using their aast and their electronic checklist was still very hard so instead Ed on the jump seat pull up his iPad and started running through the checklist verbally remember he was still fresh out of training and he was there really really familiar with all of these checklists from his recent Sim and this turned out to be a great help now here it's probably a good idea to also look at how this crew

were dividing their different roles Captain Benham was still hand flying the aircraft and even though he' been able to slightly reduce the amount of Aer on and Rudder input he was still using a lot and it took up most of his capacity to just keep the aircraft straight and reasonably level because of that he took full advantage of all available resources in the cockpit which included his jump seating colleague Ed who was tasked with helping first off the pole with everything that he needed including the checklists performance calculations and overall monitoring Captain Benham made made

it absolutely clear that he had very limited capacity to oversee the checklist handling which he would normally do so he was concentrating on aviating and would continue to do so for as long as it would take by being very clear here and by delegating effectively the crew was able to contain a catastrophic failure within a very quick time frame this serves as an excellent example of how crew resource management is supposed to work and also a great great adherence to the golden rule of Aviation aviate navigate communicate this meant that the next step was to

navigate and communicate Captain benam asked Ed if he could call in the emergency to our traffic control and make them aware of the fact that they were now descending Ed immediately complied and called Mayday to Honolulu control telling them that United Airlines flight 1175 were suffering from some type of severe damage and needed to proceed directly towards the airport whil it's also descending this was followed by a long pause by air traffic control it clearly took a while for the controller to really appreciate the gravity of what he had just heard he eventually came back

with say again just to verify that this was actually happening but he then quickly found his composure and asked the crew for the number of souls on board as well as the fuel remaining those are standard questions needed to prepare the emergency services for a possible worst case scenario and is almost always asked a situation like this and Ed gave him that information but after he had done that all three Pilots just looked at each other for a few seconds it had just sunk in that there were over 350 people on board this flight whole

families possibly hold Villages whose lives were likely affecting many thousands more they just had to get this aircraft safely down on the ground now I normally advise against letting emotions get involved when the with sudden and complicated emergencies because generally it's better to try and fall back onto train procedures and decisionmaking models as emotions have a way of increasing stress to levels where effective decision- making can become very difficult but in this case it seems to have worked as a catalyst for the crew to maintain even higher Focus the aircraft was now steadily descending and

Captain Benham asked his first officer to calculate the best speed and altitude for a drift down procedure this is something that we use when we want to maximize our time at higher altitudes and therefore extend our range as much as possible while Paul was calculating the values they also quickly determined that the best airport for landing would be their destination Honolulu but it was still around 200 nautical miles away and they had no idea how damaged their aircraft was or how long it would stay together this meant that they would need to drift it down

gently to make sure they wouldn't make the damages worse and also to maximize their chances of actually reaching the airport Captain Benham had already firewalled the remaining left engine when the explosion occurred and that's something that we normally only do in extreme circumstances like in the terrain Escape maneuver if we do that we only keep it firewalled for a limited amount of time to not over stress the engine but Captain Benham now felt that he needed all the trust he could possibly get in order to keep the aircraft under control so the engine was just

left firewalled at full thrust first of support soon determined that the best speed and altitude for a drift down would be 230 knots and 23,000 ft by decelerating to that speed with maximum thrust set this would keep the aircraft descending with minimum possible vertical speed but as Captain Benham started accelerating the aircraft and the speed started getting back towards 245 knots the aircraft suddenly started shaking even more and soon the stick Shaker also activated they were about to stall now that shouldn't have been happening at that speed but there it was happening anyway and all

Pilots are taught that the only way to get out of an impending stall is to immediately lower the angle of attack Captain Benham reacted instinctively and immediately lowered the nose but by doing so the vertical speed increased to 3 to 4,000 ft per minute and if that descent rate were to be continued the aircraft would hit the water way before reaching Honolulu so what was going on here why was the aircraft stalling at such a high air speed where the drift down tables were suggesting an even lower speed to fly well when those tables were

made they were calculated with single engine performance but with the nonfunctioning engine still in one piece what this crew was now dealing with was a severely damaged engine missing most of its aerodynamical fairings that would guide the air smoothly past the cowling and then over the wing what this meant was that the air flow was now severely interrupted over the right wing which lowered the amount of lift that that Wing could produce that was actually what had caused that rapid roll to the right as the explosion occurred and was now also causing the much higher

stall speed on that Wing that they were now experiencing but the pilot still had no idea about this the Bole 7 has no external cameras that can be accessed from the cockpit so whilst stabilizing the aircraft at a slightly higher air speed around 245 to 255 knots captain Benham now took another decision he asked Ed the jump seating first officer if he could go back through the cabin and have a look at the state of the engine and then report back Ed nodded and immediately started making his way back towards the aircraft midsection close to

the wings and a few minutes later he came back with a truly terrifying video on his mobile phone in it the full scale of the damage could be clearly seen and also how the damaged fan was still windmilling with the whole engine oscillating from sight side to side due to the unusual aerodynamic forces that was now acting upon it there was no way of telling how long this engine would actually stay connected to the airframe or if the departing debris had damaged any other part of the aircraft behind it as it disintegrated with the air

speed now under control and the stick Shake AC quiet the dentate had dropped to a more manageable 1,00 to 1,200 ft per minute as the aircraft ascended through roughly 33,000 ft at this point they entered the IC Cloud layer which they had seen during their pre-lap briefing which also meant that they would now lose all outside visual references until they broke out of the clouds at around 2,000 ft hopefully close to the airport but what about what was happening behind them then what about the cabin crew and passengers well this would have been an absolutely

terrifying experience for all of them during the first 15 minutes of this emergency the pilots were completely consumed by controlling the aircraft securing the engine and finding a safe new flight envelope to maintain and this meant that none of them had had any chance to make a PA to the passengers to reassure them explain to them what was going on all passengers who were sitting on the right side of the aircraft close to the wings were able to clearly see the mangled engine rocking forth and back outside their windows and this combined with the absolutely

extreme initial vibrations would have likely scared even me if I was on board as the situation got more and more on under control Captain Benham asked the lead perer to come into the flight deck to give her a briefing by himself and to project some calm onto the situation he was very transparent and explained that they had suffered severe damage to the right engine and possibly to even more parts of the aircraft that he couldn't see he also told her to start preparing the passengers for a possible ditching at Sea he did this because he

knew that the cabin crew procedure needed to do this could last as long as 25 minutes which was more L exactly the time he calculated that they had left airborne and he also informed her that they would be calling brace brace brace about 2 minutes prior to Landing now Captain Benham didn't actually think at this point that they would have to ditch but he didn't know just how the aircraft would react when they started slowing it down for landing and extending flaps and on top of that he knew that there would be no harm in

having the cabin prepared for the worst case scenario again this is excellent thinking on behalf of the captain it's always better to be safe than sorry and this way the cabin crew would be busy with their drills which would also keep them and the passengers occupied and prepare them mentally for an evacuation if that would be needed later on after this point all Communications with both air traffic control the cabin crew and the passengers were delegated to Ed on the jump seat so that the two pilots could focus solely on getting the aircraft safely down

on the ground the flighted attendance ended up doing an absolutely fantastic job caring for the passengers and preparing the cabin for the coming emergency landing was had kept updating them every 10 minutes or so about the progress Air Traffic Control also did a great job by not overburdening the pilots with questions and just giving them the info and clearances that they asked for and kept all of the other traffic out of the way now notice how all members of this situation worked like one big organism utilizing each other's strength keeping each other updated without overburdening

anyone with questions and non-essential information for any budding Pilots or really anyone out there this is a behavior that's really worth remembering I also want to point out here that this scenario would have felt very different from any training scenario that this crew had ever encountered in the simulator the simulators are not equipped to simulate the level of vibration that they were now experiencing and on top of this this engine failure behaved very differently from the way that it was normally simulated the changed aerodynamics from the mangle engine also impacted the way that the aircraft

needed to be handled and several systems including the E's the fire loops and all automatics had been removed by the explosion but even though this was so different the hundreds of simulator hours that these Pilots had accumulated together as well as the thousands of hours of actual flight experience they shared had created something known as resilience resilience is where you can utilize all of your previous knowledge and experience to tackle completely new situations that you might face other great examples of resilience was the miracle of the Hudson and Quant slight 32 both of which I

have previously covered on this channel and this by the way is also exactly the kind of things that I love to discuss with my patreons on our monthly Zoom Hangouts please consider joining you to if you want to support me and my team and take part of the work that we do anyway first off S Phil now also got into contact with the airline via satcom and briefed the operations officer about what was going on so that the airline could start getting their crisis center ready meanwhile Captain Benham kept counting in his head if he

could just continue descending with around 1,000 to 1,200 ft per minute with the distance and speed that they now had they should be able to reach the airport by getting a direct routing toward the final they had also saved around 7 Minutes of FL time which could become crucial if it turned out that they couldn't AR rest The Descent rate down towards the end so at this point it was all about continuing to fly and also start getting the aircraft ready for the landing more and more non-normal checklists also started popping up on their aast

which the crew needed to take into account since they had been flying with Max thrust set on the still working left engine it had consumed much more fuel and expected which also meant that they were eating into their diversion fuel on top of this this had also caused a fuel imbalance between the left and the right main tank since the left engine was only using fuel from the left hand side all of this was being dealt with by first officers Paul and Ed whilst Captain Benham was completely focused on just keeping the stricken bird flying

the two first officers started crossfeeding fuel from the right tank to the left engine as they passed around 10,000 ft descending and at this point Ed also fastened the shoulder harnesses on Captain Benham seat belt since he wasn't able to do this himself due to the sheer difficulty of the handling that he was experiencing after this it was also time to start briefing the approach so Ed took the weather for Honolulu which still was overcast but with thankfully good visibility and winds for landing Honolulu approach soon handed them over to the Honolulu tower frequency and

when first off the PLL called them up they were advised that they could expect radar vectors for an ILS approach into Runway Z4 right but that was no good both Captain Benham and Ed on the jump seat were familiar with the airport and knew that Runway C for right was quite short and wouldn't be long enough for the highspeed single ending approach that they now had ahead of them r with 08 left was long enough but unfortunately closed for some type of work on that day so Paul instead asked for Vector to watch Runway 08

right a long enough Runway but unfortunately without an ILS approach on that Runway there was only a non Precision gps-based Arnav approach available meaning that the crew would now soon have to fly a manual single engan non-precision approach in full instrument conditions accompanied by some of the heaviest vibrations that they had ever experienced quite a challenge but Captain Benham wasn't worrying too much about that yet he was more focused on making the runway in the first place he asked Paul to tell air traffic control to give them vectors as close to land as possible since

the waves might be smaller on the Le side of the island and therefore more survivable in case they would have to attempt the ditching now this is something that I think that a lot of people might not fully appreciate you see Landing in water with an airliner of this size would be an extremely challenging maneuver to successfully achieve landing on water in any situation is hard but if you have a stretch of smooth water like Captain Sully had in the miracle of the Hudson it's still reasonably doable trying to do so in the massive waves

of the Pacific Ocean is a completely different ball game and Captain bam knew this so trying to overfly cmer Waters was a really smart thing to do now the tower controller initially tried to tell the pilots to level off at various altitudes but this was turned down by the crew they still needed full Trust on the left engine to maintain speed in The Descent and did not want to end up in another approach to stall situation by leveling off for no good reason once the controller on the understood this he just left them alone with

free range to intercept the Arnav Approach at their own discretion and here again the crew showed evidence of remarkable teamwork since the captain was solely focused on just handling the massive shaking bird the two first offices together started setting up and briefing for the approach and all three Pilots decided that Ed from the jump seat would be acting as kind of a Precision approach radar or par based on what he saw on the navigation display this meant that he would be telling Captain Benham how to turn and descend kind of like turn right onto heading

075° now continue straight ahead increase descent rate Etc he did this all to minimize the workload and to try to stabilize the approach as much as possible now this is not taught anywhere but a great adaptation to a situation and use of resources and yet another reason why it's a poor idea to try to reduce the number of pilots in the cockpit as they were intercepting the approach they kept the aircraft slightly high and fast on purpose to make sure that they would have enough energy to make the runway even if something further would happen

remember they were still not sure how the aircraft would react when they started extending the flaps and gear or if it would be even possible based on the damages that they had when first officer Paul started briefing the M approach procedure Captain Benham softly stopped him Paul the there would be no mised approach we are using full thrust on the left engine just to keep the speed and descent if we get the flaps and gear out we will only have one chance to land this thing now if you think that he was being over dramatic

here he wasn't he had previously sent Ed out to also check on the back of the aircraft as he felt like the aircraft wasn't handling properly even with the damaged right engine in mind when Ed came back from that second check he had said that the back of the aircraft was was fishtailing left to right so violently that he had problems even focusing to see the panicked faces of the passengers in the back this had led the crew to expect that there might also be further damage to the tail which they couldn't see and it

was very hard to say just how long this aircraft would stay together they needed to land it as soon as possible now they had decided to try and land with 20° of flaps using a speed of 145 knots on the final provided they were able to decelerate that much it with the air crops still flying as they descended down the extended approach they now gently started slowing down which would also meant more and more Rudder needed from the captain as the rud becomes less and less aerodynamically efficient as the speed decreases they extended one step

of flaps then two and the aircraft was thankfully still behaving okay at time 12:34 Honolulu time the huge Tri 7 finally broke through the clouds and the pilots could see the runway Straight Ahead first off the Paul reported this to the Tower and were immediately clear to land all Emergency Equipment was now standing by for them 20 seconds later they selected the landing gear down and soon received three green lights indicating that it was all down and locked this was a huge relief for everyone as the aircraft was still maintaining its speed reasonably well even

with this added drag when they passed 500 ft first officer pole called out brace brace brace of the PA to make sure all passengers and crew were ready in the brace position for the landing and immediately after this flaps 20 was selected now they were only seconds away from The Landing the giant Tri 7 finally swooped in over the threshold and was immediately followed by the emergency vehicles who were waiting for them Captain Benham was now in a Trans likee State and all he could focus on was getting this aircraft down gently Not to cause

any further damage and to start breaking he had to get this right at time 12:37 and 15 seconds the main landing gear touched down so smoothly that some of the people on board didn't even notice it Captain Benham immediately started to gently break and he later said that this was one of the best Landings that he had done in his entire career the aircraft slowed down to taxi speed and roll gently out onto taxiway Romeo golf where it was brought to a complete stop first of the Paul looked over towards Captain Benham and said to

him you can let go now Captain because he saw that his captain was still squeezing the controls and Trust levels as hard as he had been doing during the last 40 minutes now it was time to do the next step since an emergency is not over just because the aircraft has landed the crew got into contact with the Emergency Services who were now assessing the aircraft from the outside and was soon told that apart from a small hydraulic leak there was nothing else requiring an immediate evacuation the crew acknowledged this and passed that information on

to our traffic control who gave them a clearance to continue taxing on their own power onto stand and once they reached there the shocked passengers and crew erupted in shears as the engine was finally turned off and that thought actually actually brings some tears to my eyes when I think about it anyway everyone then disembarked normally and were met by the Emergen response team from United Airlines at the gate the pilots had exited the cockpit at that point to say goodbye to each one of the passengers some were crying some were trying to show a

brave face but towards the end a blonde little girl came up to the captain and told him with a smile that was so cool best roller coaster ride ever before she exited together with her presumably less impressed mother life is all about perspectives now as soon as they had landed the phones of the pilot all started lighting up with calls from the company but they were well aware of the procedure they needed to follow when something like this happened first of all they should always call their Union hotline to get the appropriate legal advice it

is really important not to say the wrong things in these situations so as sad as it sounds this is what we all should do the cockpit voice recorder was also protected something that would become crucial for the coming investigation together with the flight data recorder and all after having shut everything down correctly and made the appropriate Tech log entries the crew left the aircraft outside the pilots followed the engineers and mechanics around to look at the damage and they took some photos some of which you can see here both Pilots were initially grounded on full

pay pending investigation which is standard protocol but they were soon back in the air again with only the finest comments from the airline the investigation showed that the catastrophic engine failure had been caused by the fatigue crack that explained about before and it shown a very harsh light on the tiai inspection procedure where the inspectors had been seeing but not highlighting this crack several years earlier this led to several improvements on this procedure as well as an increased inspection interval of the fan blades of these particular engines and the additive of a stronger engine containment

structure unfortunately though this didn't stop a very similar accident from happening at the later point also including a United boing Triple 7 which increased this scrutiny even further and in a very funny twist the passengers on board that second aircraft was after the incident booked on to a new aircraft to complete the trip and that aircraft was the very same aircraft that I've told you about in this story which had been returned to service after repairs it really is a very small world now the actions of these Pilots have been used as positive CRM stories

for training both by United and other airlines after this thing happened and Captain Christopher Benham and first officer Paul AER were on the 18th of July 2019 awarded the superior airmanship award by the airline pilots Association for the skill and teamwork in this accident now there is also another reason why I've chosen to make this video right now in my summer house in Sweden during vacation and that is that on the 8th of August this year 2024 Captain Christopher Benham made made his very last commercial flight before retirement he flew together with his family to

London where his dream of becoming an airline pilot had originally started and on behalf of my entire team I would like to send our heartfelt congratulations to Christopher for a career well served as well as our best wishes for his retirement very few Pilots are ever put in the ultimate challenge of their skills and knowledge and you should be proud of the way that you and your team handled it on this day Captain Benham has also written a book about this experience and his life and it's a really great book I will put a link

to it in the description below where you can also find links to my merch and my patreon crew have an absolutely fantastic day wherever you are and I'll see you next time or maybe in my next patreon hangout bye-bye