American Airlines Flight 96
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American Airlines Flight 96 was a regular DC-10 commuter flight operated by American Airlines, with a scheduled route from Detroit, Michigan to Buffalo, New York.
The flight is notable because it suffered explosive decompression, due to cargo door failure, on 12 June 1972 while flying over Windsor, Ontario; it is thus sometimes referred to as the 'Windsor incident'. The failure of the cargo door took out many of the aircraft's hydraulic systems, leading to serious problems operating its control surfaces. The plane had no rudder power, and little responsiveness in the elevators or ailerons. However the crew, led by Captain Bryce McCormick, were able to apply differential thrust in the DC-10's wing engines to turn the aircraft, and use what elevator control they had to maintain vertical stabilisation. It had happened that while converting to the DC-10, McCormick had practiced in a simulator controlling the plane in this fashion, in the worst-case scenario of a hydraulic failure.
Despite the aircraft (N103AA) being severely damaged, the crew made a successful emergency landing at Detroit, and all persons on board evacuated safely. The incident highlighted a serious design flaw in the cargo doors of DC-10 aircraft whereby the door could appear closed but be ineffectively sealed. However, the fault was not satisfactorily repaired, and a subsequent cargo door blow-out occurred in another DC-10 two years later (Turkish Airlines Flight 981), killing all 346 on board. At the time, the Turkish Airlines accident was the worst aviation disaster in history.
Many commentators subsequently blamed the aircraft manufacturer, McDonnell Douglas, and other aviation authorities, for failing to learn lessons from the Flight 96 incident and redesign the cargo door system (although there had been some redesign of the system, it had been implemented voluntarily and haphazardly by various airlines). If the warning signs of Flight 96 had been heeded, the latter disaster may have been avoided.
The Flight Number 96 designation is still used today on its Boston-Manchester (UK) route.
References
- Macarthur Job (1996). Air Disaster Volume 2: pp.136-139
- Nicholas Faith (1996, 1998). Black Box: pp.157-158
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