Taca B737 of Airport Landing 1988

[nomorecatering]

In 1988 a Taca B737 made a sucessful off airport forced landing in New orleans on a leve bank.

The Boeing engineers did an insitu engine change and test pilots flew it out. aparently the used a paved acces rd.

Does anyone have any details of that departure, photos, video. Just trying to find the rd on google earth.

[vlkyplky]

had the same questions earlier, there is air accident investigation series episode about it, then google it up, there is couple of pictures of A/C on the bank and actually the take off from the muddy banks possibly on youtube. thats about what I could find as photographic evidence ;)

[broadreach]

Google "taca 737 levee" and a number of clips will appear

[DaveReidUK]

The Boeing engineers did an insitu engine change

It's quite hard to do any other sort. :O

[broadreach]

Hmmm, have we got a new environmentally sustainable idea going? Rice fields as low cost arrestor systems?

[magpienja]

The Aircrash Investigation Prog detailing that incident is doing the rounds on the Discovery Chan at the moment...

I watched it the other night and it showed lots of pictures of the aircraft on the levy and the actual take off after the engine change...very lightly loaded they said it was airborne in 375mts,

They went on to say it was back in service in less than a month,

The take off was certainly very impressive to watch...they normally re-run these progs many time over the weeks so keep your eyes open for it.

Nick.

[Lu0724]

Air Crash Investigation its pretty good explaining what happened, I have heard the story from the F/O that was on that flight its pretty thrilling..! I recommend you watch that episode.

Interesting fact is that the plane still flying for SouthWest Airlines now..

[magpienja]

I'm sure in the prog they said it was operational with a month,

The actual take of video is well worth watching talk about STOL.

Nick.

[CargoOne]

Just bringing this tread up after watching Mentor Pilot YouTube video on TACA flight 110 - well worth of watching. However I have one question


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/734x324/screenshot_2023_03_23_at_21_41_20_f5b53fb1ffd235434073d35e17 e4dbad5331b999.png

How is that possible to have 13,5k hours at the age of 29? I have seen a number of FTLs from that region, I think most of them have a limit of 1000 per annum, although I recall seeing 1200 somewhere. TACA is a sort of "better" kind of airline in the area and I doubt they let him do 1500-2000 per annum, Let alone the story about medical class 1 with just one eye. No doubt he did a great job, but his number of hours at the time of incident is mind bogging. Any comments/idea?

[condor17]

Was a 737-300 . I went onto 733s in '88 . From the incident when both flames put out by V heavy rain . A new procedure came in for flying in V heavy rain , eng. fan speed had to be at 55% N1 ...
When at low spd , 250-210 kts , speedbrakes out , gear down , 55% N1 ... She would not descend
Unofficial work around , was to close the throttle on one eng , 't other at 55% .. bit of sideslip . after a minute or so spool up the idle one then idle the 55%er .
Fairly quickly a new profile fan hub design was rolled out , and the centre of hub pointed rubber ' wiggler ' disappeared . With a much more rounded hub resulting with no flame out problems .

rgds condor

[tdracer]

Was a 737-300 . I went onto 733s in '88 . From the incident when both flames put out by V heavy rain . A new procedure came in for flying in V heavy rain , eng. fan speed had to be at 55% N1 ...
When at low spd , 250-210 kts , speedbrakes out , gear down , 55% N1 ... She would not descend
Unofficial work around , was to close the throttle on one eng , 't other at 55% .. bit of sideslip . after a minute or so spool up the idle one then idle the 55%er .
Fairly quickly a new profile fan hub design was rolled out , and the centre of hub pointed rubber ' wiggler ' disappeared . With a much more rounded hub resulting with no flame out problems .

rgds condor
They also changed the shape of the 'splitter' between the core and fan streams - I don't know details (I wasn't involved - learned this from a co-worker who was involved) but the combination of spinner and splitter shape changes caused a much higher percentage of any rain/hail bypassing the core and going out the fan duct.
Lots and lots of testing went into that...

[condor17]

td , I didn't know that about the splitter .
Please pass a belated thanks to your mate for making us safer . It is/was appreciated , the UK/Europe can be wet !

Couple of engineering tales . Came out to do the walk around to find a sailing / engineer mate lying in the cowl filing away at a fan blade .
''Gary , 'wot are you doing ? ! ''
'You had a small 'ding' on this blade , so dressing it out . Will have to do the opposite one as well .''
'But with that coarse file ? '
' Yep , it's no prob. it's in the MM [ maintenace manual ] '

ATC , gave a delay [ its LHR ] to our pushback ; time came to go . No I/C contact with Gary on headset !
Called Beatech [ eng dept ] on co. frq. They nipped out of office and woke up Gary .
CFM 56-3 cowl perfect shape/size and in the sun for a lay down, result Gary snoozed off ......
Suppose we could have gone to a blow cycle on starter motor to wake him !

rgds condor .