Most freighters with large doors have limits on opening the door whilst on the ground and the wind is above a certain speed, due to the force exerted. In flight at say 200 kts this force would be considerably higher.

IIRC the BAE146 airframe can distort slightly to the extent where the door can’t be closed until the wind speed dies down.

Boeing built pretty solid aircraft back in the day.

NG1

Try looking up Fine Air....

What does a takeoff stall and crash due to miss-loaded cargo have to do with a cargo door opening in flight?

The flight data on this will be interesting to view. The directional stability would have been degraded greatly, and possibly asymmetrically, so it is fortuitous that it was at low speed and low altitude for better damping functions, but, impressive anyway. An ASB at the very least or an AD would be a reasonable course of action.

Nice to see the plane in one piece after that episode.

I've seen more than one of these on both small twin jets and four engine aircraft. nothing special in handling. In the DC8 the pilot didn't even know it had popped other than the noise increase. I always remember the co-pilot/flight engineer walking back to the gaping hole with a shocked look on his face as I was looking up from directly underneath (in a chase car) after it came to a stop. I vaguely remember the twin somewhere in Texas and reviewed the FDR but without scouring my harddrive I don't recall performance details in the ATB

Hi,
rather strange. Cargo doors do give a red light in the cockpit when they are not locked.
That´s a very obvious light...
Looking forward to the investigation result

krismiler

"Most freighters with large doors have limits on opening the door whilst on the ground and the wind is above a certain speed, due to the force exerted. In flight at say 200 kts this force would be considerably higher."

For the aircraft in question, limits are 25 kts to open the door fully, 45 kts to open to the horizontal-ish.

Not Fine Air, think it was Tampa.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....db1ffa818.jpeg

Klauss

"Cargo doors do give a red light in the cockpit when they are not locked. That´s a very obvious light..."

Depending on the operator, the Door Indication System can be an MEL item.

In that case, the aircraft can be despatched with the system inop, provided that an external visual check of the locks is made before departure.

That typically involves a cherry-picker, torch and (if necessary) a means of cleaning the 8 Plexiglass viewports through which the latches can be checked. What could possibly go wrong?

treadigraph

Yes, DC-8-63F of TAMPA Colombia. Freight door opened while rotating at MIA. Cause never determined (per FAA).

...or if the aircraft is parked on slightly sloping ground, as I saw once on an RAF VC10 at Brize. Main deck cargo door wouldn't lock closed so some jumping up and down on the port wingtip did the trick.

It's been known to happen with several freight door equipped airframes. I've got a story about a 'twisted' VC10 here: https://www.vc10.net/Memories/everyt...f.html#Twisted

The cargo door light is amber on this one and you can't miss it, there are indicators at the operating panel and last the ramp agent does a walk around and checks for the doors closed.

Not familiar with this aircraft, but some operators of the 757 cargo version also have a RED main cargo door warning light above the nose gear green light to indicate that the "main cargo door isn't, closed, latched and locked".

Not this one. On the door control panel there is a column of four amber lights. As the door closes they go out sequentially from the bottom indicating in order: closed, latched, locked, vent doors closed. On the same panel there is a master red light which goes out when the door is closed, latched, locked. All these lights are really bright. The master light is repeated on the Cp instrument panel immediately to the right of the PFD and is either red or amber, also very bright. Hopefully this helps.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....42b86502c2.jpg

Indicator lights 6-9 are, respectively, Vent Door Open, Not Locked, Not Latched, Not Closed.

DH,

Thanks for the information.
Will be interesting to see what information is released after the mishap.
Glad everything turned out well and kudos to the crew.

Jhieminga

Cprrect,, had a couple at Brize myself where they couldn’t shut the door after refuel with it open, offloading fuel, shutting it then refuelling again always sorted it.

Surprised nobody picked it up, same thing happened to a 757 freighter in 2014, it was updated on AVH yesterday:
The incident was blamed on ice/snow blocking/freezing the latches. That may well have been the case with DHL too with he current cold spell in Europe.

I seem to recall a B747 passenger plane having problems with its cargo latches as well and long ago a couple of DC10s used brute force on those nasty latches to force the door closed for awhile.

So to flesh this out we need to understand what fail safe features exist on the B757