Hong Kong Plane Crash 1988

[Gualtar Pennington]

The aircraft commander was Captain Robert L. Schornstheimer, an Airline Transport Pilot with 8,500 flight hours, of which 6,700 hours was in the Boeing 737. First Officer Madeline Lynn Tompkins also held an Airline Transport certificate. She had flown 8,000 hours, with 3,500 in the B-737. A Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controller was on the flight deck as an observer.

Descending through 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) he began to slow the airliner, but below 170 knots (195.6 miles per hour/314.8 kilometers per hour), it became less controllable so he maintained that speed for the approach to the runway. At the normal point in the approach, the crew lowered the landing gear but the green light for the nose gear did not illuminate. The manual system was activated. The green light did not come on, but neither did the red light. Captain Schornstheimer felt that it was imperative to get the airliner on the ground, so there was no time to troubleshoot the landing gear.

The Boeing 737 landed on Runaway 02 at Kahalui Airport at 13:58:45, just over ten minutes since the emergency began. The thrust reverser of the number two engine was used to slow the airplane and when it rolled to a stop, the emergency evacuation was begun.

When the fuselage decompressed, Chief Flight Attendant Clarabelle Ho Lansing had been standing in the aisle at Row 5. She was thrown out of the airplane and fell to the ocean, 24,000 feet (7,315 meters) below. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Cape Corwin coordinated a three-day search along with Coast Guard and Marine Corps helicopters, airplanes and other ships. Her body was never recovered.

Flight Attendant Jane Sato-Tomita sustained serious head injuries and was unconscious. Flight Attendant Michelle Honda and many passengers were also injured by flying debris and the effects of decompression.

Boeing 737-297 N73711 was damaged beyond repair. It was scrapped in place. At the time of the accident, the airframe had accumulated 35,496 hours (TTAF) with 89,680 cycles. The cause of the fuselage failure was fatigue cracking around rivets as a result of the vast number of pressurization/depressurization cycles it had experienced, as well as operation in a salty coastal environment. During the NTSB investigation, a passenger reported having seen a crack in the fuselage when boarding the flight, but did not say anything about it to the crew.

Captain Schornstheimer remained with Aloha Airlines until he retired in 2005. Mimi Tompkins also stayed with Aloha and rose to the rank of captain. When Aloha Airlines ceased operations in 2008 she went to Hawaiian Airlines.

The Boeing 737-200 series was a short-to-medium range narrow body twin-engine civil transport. The -200 first flew 8 August 1967. It had a flight crew of two and could carry a maximum of 136 passengers.

Ye-6T/1 was powered by a Tumansky R-11F2-300 afterburning turbojet engine and carried a liquid-fueled Sevruk S3-20M5A rocket engine mounted under the fuselage. The rocket produced 29.42 kilonewtons (6,614 pounds of thrust) at Sea Level. The prototype carried sufficient rocket fuel for 100 seconds burn time.

Georgy Konstantinovich Mosolov was born 3 May 1926 at Ufa, Bashkortostan, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He was educated at the Central Aviation Club, where he graduated in 1943, and then went to the Special Air Forces School. In 1945 he completed the Primary Pilot School and was assigned as an instructor at the Chuguev Military Aviation School at Kharkiv, Ukraine.

In 1953 Mosolov was sent to the Ministry of Industrial Aviation Test Pilot School at Ramenskoye Airport, southeast of Moscow, and 6 years later, to the Moscow Aviation Institute. He was a test pilot at the Mikoyan Experimental Design Bureau from 1953 to 1959, when he became the chief test pilot.

Georgy Mosolov set six world speed and altitude records. He was named a Hero of the Soviet Union, 5 October 1960, and Honored Test Pilot of the Soviet Union, 20 September 1967. The Fdration Aronautique Internationale awarded him its Henry De La Vaulx Medal three times: 1960, 1961 and 1962. The medal is presented to the holder of a recognized absolute world aviation record, set the previous year.

Colonel Georgy Konstantinovich Mosolov, Soviet Air Forces, Hero of the Soviet Union, died 17 March 2018, at Moscow, Russia, at the age of 91 years. He was buried at the Vagankovsoye cemetery in Moscow.

The clipper, bridging the last 700-mile gap in the America-Asia service, placed the final link in an airplane chain whereby it is possible to encircle the world in less than a month, using scheduled commercial planes.

The craft brought 2500 pounds of American cargo, including 100,000 letters and newspapers from the United States only six days old. The papers left Alameda, Calif., last Thursday aboard China Clipper, being transferred to the Hongkong Clipper at Manila.

We are celebrating the welding of the last link in world air communication. The lessening of the physical gaps is the surest way of ending misunderstandings which have occurred between nations in the past.

The China Clipper, NC14716, was the first of three Martin M-130 four-engine flying boats built for Pan American Airways and was used to inaugurate the first commercial transpacific air service from San Francisco to Manila in November, 1935. Built at a cost of $417,000 by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland, it first flew on 20 December 1934, and was delivered to Pan Am on October 9, 1935.

Entering service in 1934, the airline had originally named the NC823M West Indies Clipper. This was changed to Pan American Clipper, and later, Hong Kong Clipper. The airplane crashed on takeoff and sank near Antilla, Cuba, 7 August 1944.

The Ryan NYP, registration N-X-211, has been towed from the Ryan Airlines Company factory in San Diego, California, to nearby Dutch Flats for its first test flight. Air Mail pilot Charles A. Lindbergh, representing a syndicate of St. Louis businessmen, has contracted with Ryan to build a single-engine monoplane designed for one man to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean, from New York to Paris.

William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who captured a famous photo of Earth looking like a blue marble from space, was reportedly killed in an airplane crash in Washington on Friday. He was 90.

Anders is best known as the Apollo 8 lunar module pilot who captured the iconic photo of Earth looking like a blue marble from space. He called the photo, named "Earthrise," the most significant contribution he made throughout his astronomical career.

The Apollo 8 mission, which paved the way for Apollo 11's historic lunar landing seven months later, was fraught with risk. The mission took 16 weeks from conception to launch, compared to similar ones that took at least a year to execute. Flight simulators couldn't be used because they weren't finished.

Anders was born in Hong Kong on Oct. 17, 1933 but grew up in San Diego. In 1964, Anders became a NASA astronaut working in fields including dosimetry, radiation effects and environmental control. He retired from the Air Force Reserves in 1988. By 1991, he served as chairman of General Dynamics Corporation from 1991 to 1994.

Once it is recovered from the water, the aircraft will be examined at an offsite facility by the NTSB. Investigators will gather tracking data, air traffic control communications recordings and the pilot's flight experience.

China Airlines Flight 611 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Taipei to Hong Kong, China. On May 25, 2002, the Boeing 747-209B airplane broke apart while flying over the Taiwan Straits and crashed into the water after 25 minutes takeoff. There are no survivors among 225 people on board.

The Boeing 747-209B that flew China Airlines Flight 611 was registered as B-1866. This was changed to B-18255 on May 18, 1999. The plane was delivered to China Airlines on July 31, 1979. It was powered by 4 Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines.[1] At time of crash it had flown for 64,394 hours, taking off and landing 21,180 times.[1]

On February 7, 1980 the tail of the plane struck the runway while landing at Hong Kong airport.[2] The plane was then ferried back to Taipei. A temporary repair was done on February 8, 1980, while a permanent repair was done from May 23 to 26, 1980.[2] Later it was discovered the repair was not done to Boeing repair standards.[3] It was also discovered that from 1997 a total of 29 corrosion inspections were not completed.[2] When the repair patch was recovered from the crash site, there was evidence that deep scratches had been polished out, thinning the metal.[4] Several fatigue cracks were found in the scratches.[4] Crash investigators estimate a crack of about 6 feet (1.8 m)71 inches may have caused the plane to break up.[4]

There were 206 passengers on the flight to Hong Kong. Of there, there were 190 Taiwanese people. Of the other 16, nine were from the People's Republic Of China and 5 were from Hong Kong. There was also one person from Singapore and one from Switzerland.

On May 25, 2002, B-18255 was actually going to be sold to Orient Thai Airlines. This was the plane's last day of service with China Airlines.[6] Takeoff was at 3.07 pm, and the plane was cleared to climb to 20,000 feet. At 3.16 pm the plane was again cleared to climb and maintain 35,000 feet.[7] At about 3.30 pm, the plane was about to reach 35,000 feet when it suddenly disappeared from the radar systems of the air traffic controllers.[1] Communications were also lost. No distress signals were sent out. However, two Cathay Pacific planes nearby received flight 611's emergency location-indicator signals.

Later, the investigators discovered that Flight 611 broke apart in mid-air when as it was reaching 35,000 feet.[1] Just before reaching cruising altitude, the tail section separated from the aircraft. The Boeing 747 rapidly nosed over into a dive, and the aerodynamic forces tore the remains of the aircraft apart, killing all 225 people on board.[6] This was one of the worst disaster in aviation history involving explosive decompression.[8] China Airlines has had nine fatal crashes between 1970 and 2002. This is the worst record in commercial aviation.[9]

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