The Flight 981 Disaster: Tragedy, Treachery, and the Pursuit of Truth (Air Disasters) Hardcover – October 3, 2017

The books <Destination Disaster> and "The Last Nine Minutes" have been the standard references for THY flight 981. Covering every last conceivable detail, one might wonder if a new book could add anything new. Yet this account, the first in a new series of books on airline disasters, doesn’t just rehash what we already know, but adds many unexpected new details. And it does so in style by a first class writer, unlike so many drably written safety books by airline pilots. Especially engaging was the previously untold story of journalists Paul Eddy and Elaine Potter (Destination Disaster authors) and their surreptitious detective work where they risked arrest in copying thousands of private documents, without which we would not have had any of these books, nor the full story. That part reads like a thriller. Yet another fascinating tidbit that hadn’t occurred to me: the uncanny synchronization of the Windsor and Paris events with the Watergate scandal.I do have a few criticisms, the most important being the somewhat truncated and incomplete account of the contributing factors to the crash. In judging McDonnell Douglas especially, it pays to understand more precisely what was done and not done, and by whom. The most important of the immediate post-Windsor fixes, contained in Service Bulletin 52-37, was the re-setting of the cargo door’s lock pins. This alone would have increased the amount of force needed to close the vent door to 215 lbs, making it impossible to force shut, even without the support plate. I couldn’t find reference to this anywhere in the book, though that could be my oversight. As another example, the evidence is not far from beyond reasonable doubt that Turkish Airlines practiced unauthorized maintenance, including disarming or extinguishing the cargo door warning mechanisms, adding unauthorized metal fillers (shims), and most critically, re-setting the locking pins in the opposite direction to that recommended by the Service Bulletin, making the door even easier to close, so that when the baggage handler at Paris pulled down on the vent door, he felt almost no resistance.My attention drifted briefly during the extended bios of McDonnell and Douglas. Going back to the 1800s, we are informed that Douglas’ father was “a cashier at a Wall Street bank and an avid sailor who passed along his love of sailboats and the ocean to his son…” I wouldn’t have minded this kind of personal portait, except that it went on for too many pages.One final thought. While I wouldn’t take issue that MD was guilty of covering up information, obsessed with profit margins, to me this was not a “worst case” example of corporate greed, as some seem suggest. While MD were in denial, they were probably convinced the door problem had been solved. Unlike say the case of the *GM* pick up trucks, where cost-benefit results in an “acceptable” number of deaths, no company in its right mind would deliberately risk a record-breaking air disaster with hundreds of death in a single swoop. If MD could have foreseen the Paris disaster they would have fixed the problem immediately. A Paris crash would be (and indeed was) a most unwelcome blow to the image of the DC-10. In theory, by 1974 every plane should have had a support plate and the readjusted lock pin setting, meaning that a 400 lb safety barrier should have stood between the door and its handler. Could MD have foreseen the faulty paperwork? Was upper management aware of it? And could they have ever guessed that a mechanic at Turkish Airlines would do the unthinkable, turn the lock pins the wrong way, and extinguish the door's cockpit warning light? Human nature being what it is, MD probably felt the door was safe by March of 1974.Finally, though sensitive stuff, it would be nice if future additions included the Douglas support team’s spine chilling hand written observations of the early Turkish Airlines’ [THY] DC-10 operation. For example, “F/E’s [Flight Engineers] do not recognize a malfunctioning airplane . . . . Failure to recognize weight and balance errors as high as 40,000 pounds. . . .The F/E’s stare at the N1 [thrust], but do nothing regardless of how high low or staggered the N1 RPM may be. . . .” If any of 981’s passengers had read these reports before boarding flight 981, many would surely have canceled.Indeed the Flight 981 story says almost as much about the Turkish Airlines of 1974 (which can in no way be compared to the hugely safer Turkish Airlines of of today) as it does about MD. They are intertwined throughout, and IMO at least, his new book, along with the Wikipedia entry as well as the standard account of the accident, tend to skimp or ignore altogether this most fascinating part of the narrative.All said, this book is a most welcome companion to the earlier two. One of the better air investigation books I’ve read.

I enjoyed this one. It does NOT give a "you are there" feel, but rather does give an incredible overview of all facets of the crash and investigation overall. A little bit technical in some places, but a very engrossing read.Worth the time for any air crash documentary lover.

This new book examines two accidents involving the new (in 1972-4) McDonnell Douglas DC-10. The first, an American DC-10 flying between Detroit and Buffalo in 1972, ended with a successful and safe landing back in Detroit after a rear cargo door failed after the aircraft pressurized around 11,000 feet while the aircraft was climbing. The cargo door was blamed for the accident, which hadn't been closed properly in Detroit by ground personnel. When it blew out, the rear floor collapsed, resulting in a total hydraulic failure, rendering the aircraft unflyable by flight controls. The crew landed using differential engine thrust, a practice the Captain, newly qualified, had actually prepared for in a flight simulator.The second accident, suffered by a Turkish Airlines THY DC-10 in 1974, flying Paris-London, resulted in 346 fatalities, and was the worst aviation disaster in history at that time. The exact same flaw caused the accident, a rear cargo door being forced closed, but not actually locked, which failed and caused a depressurization and subsequent loss of all hydraulic power to boost flight controls. In the aftermath of the first accident, an Airworthiness Directive (AD) was supposed to be enacted by the FAA in order to force operators of the new DC-10 to fix the issue, but instead a gentleman's agreement by the CEO of McDonnell Douglas aircraft to the FAA superseded this formal design flaw fix.This book examines both accidents, their aftermath and the aircraft design, manufacturer and the corporate culture of both the aircraft maker and the aviation authorities. It details the accident investigation of the THY DC-10 specifically, and the realization that a fatal flaw hadn't been re-designed or repaired by the aircraft manufacturer. If the cargo door closing problem had been fixed, most likely the second fatal accident wouldn't have occurred.I highly recommend this book/audiobook if interested in aviation history, aircraft accidents or bureaucratic mis-steps. It is a detailed account of two accidents from the early 1970's that is very interesting and riveting.

This book was well-written and engaging. As someone who works in aviation safety, it is quite disheartening with stories emerge that show our industry acting in ways counter to safety. Exposing these stories and retelling them for new generations to learn from is important and Ms. Chittum has done an excellent job on that score.I do have one issue with the book regarding its very brief retelling of the UA 232 (Sioux City crash). Ms. Chittum uses a very broad brush to indict the hydraulic system design of the DC-10. What she fails to mention is that the hydraulic system had diversity specifically to avoid single point failures and afford aircraft control in the event of loss of two out of the three systems. The fact that shrapnel from the catastrophic engine failure resulted in damage to all three systems was an effect of not understanding the extent of trajectories possible for this type of failure. The diversity of the hydraulic system was similar to other manufacturers at the time. The FAA moved quickly to reexamine and update requirements for unconstrained rotor burst to account for what, up that point, had not been considered possible trajectories from this type of engine failure as well as insist on damage detection means (e.g., shutoff valves to isolate portions of the hydraulic systems). It is easy in hindsight to say the engineers should have foreseen this particular failure mode, but then everything is much clearer in hindsight. The loss of UA 232 was not due to the same type of negligence and poor design that brought down flight 981.

A tale of double dealing and political chicanery and downright deception of the most inhuman kind. Mcdonnell Douglas were counting the dollars profit instead of counting the bodies.After Paris I vowed never to travel on any MD aeroplane and never will. I did travel on the L1011 Tristar several times and it was a comfortable experience. An elegant design with cutting edge safety features, Such a pity that this episode finished Lockheed's passenger aircraft production for good.