TV Tonight

[Ivan Taclue]

Disaster in the Air

6 Jan - 2000 hrs Channel 5 new series!
Tonight Flt 811 loosing its cargo door in flight causing 9 fatalities. Documentaries about air dissasters, its causes and solutions

[kaikohe76]

The showing to night on Channel 5 of yet another Aircraft Disaster programme is in my opinion criminal. Yes the show may be true to life and well made ????, but surely at this time and under the current circumstances, what bl..dy good will it do. The only effect will be to further the worries of the majority of the travelling public, who unfortunately lap all thse disaster programmes up. I would have thought a certain amount of discretion would have been a good idea here, sadly but not surprisingly the channel 5 programme will go ahead.

[paulo]

Not good timing...

...but an interesting documentary though. Production quality up there with the excellent Black Box series.

The parents nicking the investigation documents! As bare faced cheek goes, that's not bad. :eek: :}

[747FOCAL]

Is this in the states or the UK?

[Ivan Taclue]

Exactly my feeling! It's not often we get to see a balanced view of such a catastrophy.

I for one will want to see the next episodes too.

747focal

it's Channel 5 in the UK but obviously referring to the United 811
747 flight in 1989

[simon brown]

Agree the timing was a bit poor in view of Saturdays events, but a well balanced documentary, and testament to how well Boeings are built. Seeing an aircraft with a gaping hole like that in the side that was still able to fly should instill some confidence in the structural integrity of modern aircraft.....although the door shouldnt have come apart in the first place.....

[Basil]

They didn't make it at all clear how marginal control would be in level flight in that condition. The aileron control was in the middle. Even with full rudder it would only have been a touch off full deflection.

The tech detail ref the doorlocks was very interestingly presented.

[beamer]

I don't know how true to lfe the acting was relative to the cvr but
the First Officer and Flight Engineer did bot show up too well - always seems to be that way in this type of programme somehow !

[BRISTOLRE]

Next weeks program same time, same place looks at the Swissair MD11 accident off of Nova Scotia.

[Basil]

The timing of events on finals was a bit out but would only have been noticed by jet transport flight crew.
I thought the FE was quite convincing - i.e. when asked a question he had to alter his train of thought and didn't produce the punchy macho reply so beloved of Propagandawood.
In all of my operations (3 companies flying B747) the FO would normally have been given the aircraft to fly whilst the captain and Flight Engineer dealt with the problems.
Having done this one in the sim (Thanks a lot, Don! ;) ) the crew did very well to control the aircraft and get it safely on the ground - respect!

Ref sim exercise; it was one of the few occasions when my pulse rate shot up and I wasn't sure if we were going to make it or not.

The parents of one of those killed are much to be admired for their courageous and dogged pursuit of the truth, esp nicking a couple of boxes of undisclosed NTSB docs from a press conference :ok:

[No comment]

Agree about the programme being well balanced.

Not sure if it was bad timing or not as, in a way it was possibly a good thing as it showed that the crew overcame a lot of odds and managed to get a crippled overweight bird on the ground. It wouldn't have taken much for the 747 to end up in the Pacific.

I hadn't heard about the Campbell's separate investigation before the programme. Quite an interesting piece. I missed a few bits of the programme but what was the father's job? Was he an aircraft engineer by trade?

[Ivan Taclue]

No Comment

I believe he was a Mechanical Engineer, just a good all-rounder!

[smandkjc]

I did a 3 year engineering course at high school.
I restored British sports cars for many years and just have a good knowledge of how things work.
Several airline pilots in the family and our other son has recently qualified as a helicopter pilot.
Thanks for the kind comments.
Kevin Campbell