Talk:United Airlines Flight 811

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Numbers[edit]

The numbers of fatalities, survivers, crew and passengers dont sum up right: 337 passengers +18 crew equals 355 in total. 347 survivors +9fatalities makes 356...

Indeed, the survivors numbers' was off by one: it should have read 346 & not 347! But next time you can fix it yourself! :) --Vlad 12:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image[edit]

I would remove the image of the EPR indications, because the B747-100 doesnt have EICAS displays. Dougsnow (talk) 14:58, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A Few Points...[edit]

Nice article, although I've had to clean it up here and there. However I am confused about the section reading: "As a result, Boeing instructed the airlines to conduct a simple test: Close the outer handle, then press the switch to open the door. Unexpectedly, it actually worked."

What does this mean? What was this test supposed to prove? (It's slightly out of context here, but makes no further sense in context) If someone understands, please rewrite this sentence.

Also, I am surprised that the article doesn't state any adverse effects on passengers due to decompression beyond the initial injuries. The article says the plane was without oxygen - surely there must be some documentation of resulting hypoxia? If the passengers did survive unscathed, then what were the factors that allowed them to do so? A speedy descent, perhaps?

GM Pink Elephant (talk) 21:38, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just watched the Air Crash Investigation/Air Emergency/Mayday/whatever episode somebody posted to YouTube here (legally or not) about the crash before reading the article and it said that closing the door handle was supposed to disable electricity to the locks. However, on aging planes the wires can become frayed, allowing a short circuit to give power to the locks. It may have also proved that the aluminum things that were supposed to keep the locks in the closed position did not work.
As for the oxygen, the show did mention a fast, emergency decent but did not mention any health effects. Jason McHuff (talk) 01:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Double or Single switched?[edit]

An electrical switch designed to cut electrical power to the cargo door when the outer handle was closed was faulty; the motors could still draw power.

In railway signalling, important circuits are double switched, so that two false feeds of the right polarity are needed to cause a false green. How about Flight 811?

Tabletop (talk) 12:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the case of all 747 cargo doors, at the time, only the powered cable (circuit) was open-circuited by the switch. Any short-circuit from a live source would cycle the door-lock motor. Lin (talk) 11:38, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is N1?[edit]

Could an expert clean up some of the jargon in this article? For example what is N1? Jschnur (talk) 02:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aircraft engines, just like car engines, are monitored for their rotational speed using a tachometer. However, unlike a piston engines, many turbine engines have multiple rotating assemblies called spools which can turn at different speeds, requiring multiple tachometers. These tachometers are referred to as N1 and N2; some engines such as the RB211 include an N3. So basically, when the article says that the pilot was getting low or no N1 reading, it means that a large part of the engine either wasn't turning or the tach was broken. Shreditor (talk) 00:03, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that Shreditor. I have used your helpful explanation in the article. I hope you don't mind. Jschnur (talk) 03:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, the engine and gauge diagram shows the wrong kind of engine (tape) gauges. United did not have those kinds in the cockpits of their 747-100s. They all were equipped with the analogue (round) engine gauges. You can see what those kind actually looked like, here. EditorASC (talk) 11:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seat rows[edit]

The article currently states "two rows of seats (8G-12G and 8H-12H)". Could someone check that? That would seem to be 5 rows. If 8 and 12 were adjacent, then it should probably be a comma, not a dash and a note explaining that 8 and 12 were adjacent rows. --J Clear (talk) 14:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorted. It was five rows by two columns of seats that were lost. --66.92.238.5 (talk) 15:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a diagram of where these seats were located in the plane, that can be included in the article? I haven't flown in a plane, so don't really know the seat configuration. Don't bother if finding a diagram is too much trouble, just would make it easier to visualize. Bucky winter soldier (talk) 21:24, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Disappointing picture[edit]

I'm greatly disappointed in the lack of quality photos in this article. I'm sure free use rules (or whatever they're called) are to blame, but damn--when this happened there were dozens of graphic photos showing the damage in broad daylight. And that was before the internet. I would have to think that one of these could be used. This was simply a shocking sight to those who were around back then. 98.71.252.15 (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I mean look at this; it tops anything this article has by far. 98.71.252.15 (talk) 02:56, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The picture that you link to was from a different aircraft and incident than this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.109.229.227 (talk) 01:44, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with "on this day" statement[edit]

the blurb for "on this day" says that nine passengers were killed "when their seats were sucked out of the plane." as a result of uncontrolled decompression. It is basically impossible that the decompression "sucked" the seats out of the plane. The seats may have been blown out of the plane by virtue of the fact that the plane was moving at ~Mach 0.9 when a piece of the hull failed, but they were almost certainly not "sucked out" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.138.223.87 (talk) 14:31, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pan Am flight 125[edit]

I've added a {{cn}} tag to the section of the article about Pan Am flight 125, which apparently suffered a similar incident in 1987 at Heathrow. I've not been able to find any reference to this on the AAIB website or in any contemporary news reports. Did it actually happen? If so, there should be some official record of it which we can link to. If not, it should be removed from the article. Tevildo (talk) 20:07, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

References from the FAA and NTSB have been added. Thanks for the research! It seems as though the incident wasn't reported to the AAIB, but we now have reliable sources for its occurrence. Tevildo (talk) 10:49, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A 1989 Flight news article on the Fight 811 accident here: [1] - it mentions an incident that resulted in an airworthiness directive the previous year - 1988
... and another 1989 Flight article which mentions the 1987 Pan Am Heathrow incident here: [2] and a 1990 one that also mentions the Pan Am October 1987 Heathrow incident here: [3]— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.215.233 (talk) 12:01, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Investigator-Err[edit]

A bit disturbing, is the wikipedia refusal to mention 

  NTSB investigator err.

Look through this wiki-page on NTSB's _INVESTIGATION_ of UA811/ 24Feb89: 

 Not any acknowledgement of investigator-err,
  the USA's "independent" Safety Board
 had both the Boeing-version,  and the Campbells' hypothesis
 {wiki' blocks that link to the video describing  Kevin Campbell's  correct P.C. for UA811} .

Similarly, on two other wiki-pages

 USA's NTSB and 
[N840TW/4Apr79]]
 wiki-participants  blocked explicit acknowledgement of
misconduct or investigator-err.

Censored? Is the topic of NTSB-err simply blasphemy?

Related: Scientific Misconduct, and NTSB's Party System . IGhhGI (talk) 20:19, 23 September 2016 (UTC)IGhhGI (talk) 03:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hinge Configuration[edit]

Wouldn't having hinges that opened from the front (like a car door) prevent this problem? (opening against the wind flow) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.76.231.228 (talk) 04:54, 24 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it would to some extent, but it would be much more difficult to engineer the door hinge due to the curvature of the lower fuselage. In addition, the higher pressure inside the pressurised hold would almost certainly overcome the effect of the air stream, so the door would blow open anyway.
If the door had merely blown off the accident would probably not have been fatal, it was the tearing away of part of the fuselage and cabin skin above the door that led to the fatalities, several unfortunate passengers being blown out of the aircraft, with at least one of these hitting an engine.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.13 (talk) 10:55, 24 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Photo[edit]

Any possibility of finding, and including, an actual photo of the landed plane showing the damage? 2600:8800:785:1300:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 09:40, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We had one up until a few days ago — Flt 811 damage.JPG — but W EXPRESS TRAIN changed it for some reason. Probably because the other one was a bit old and grainy. There are plenty of clear colour photos on the web but they're subject to copyright so we can't use them unless someone can arrange to get hold of one legitimately. Rodney Baggins (talk) 14:54, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've just found a couple of good photos in the UAL811 article in Airscape magazine and I've requested their permission to upload one or both to Wikimedia Commons. We can but hope. Rodney Baggins (talk) 15:21, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I emailed the Airscape magazine (where I found good pics) and this was the reply I got from the editor, David Foxx:
Thanks for reaching out, and I’m sorry for the slow response. If you haven’t guessed from airscape, I’m a big fan of Wikipedia and a financial contributor when I’m able. (After something of a drought recently, I’ll be able to resume that support this year.) So I’d be more than happy to help you with these images – if it was up to me. The two you’ve chosen are both from the same news video coverage that, only as far as I know, came from PBS. However I suspect the original source was a local Honolulu station. I used the material rather cheekily, on the basis that it was not-for-profit / educational – and I would quickly remove it if anyone asked. In other words they’re sadly not mine to give.  Most of the other images in that article came from Robert Butler. If you have no luck with the vidcaps, I’d be more than happy to connect you with Robert or ask on your behalf and I’m sure he’d be delighted to clear them.
What to do next? I have no experience in this type of thing so maybe someone else might take it up with PBS or this Robert Butler. It really does seem a shame that we can't get anything better than that grainy image, and the CGI picture has also been disqualified now. Rodney Baggins (talk) 16:54, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What is the problem with using File:747-ua2.png? I know it is user-created and not from an official source, but it still shows exactly what happened in the flight. Funplussmart (talk) 18:37, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Cant possibly show what happened in flight as it is a guess, so misleading at best and we dont normally use such images. MilborneOne (talk) 18:41, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ghost edits[edit]

Anyone noticed there's something strange going on in the lead section? Every couple of days an IP is using it as a test bed for unit conversion and then just as mysteriously deletes it and goes away until the next time! Very odd. It almost looks as if they have a bot running specifically to do this for some unknown reason. The edit is always removed so it doesn't leave any lasting vandalism but it's just getting a bit irritating now so I wondered if there was anything we can do to stop it. I've already tried warning them on their Talk page but it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Rodney Baggins (talk) 06:13, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I first noticed it 4-5 weeks ago but I never did anything about it. Maybe get an admin involved? - Samf4u (talk) 15:02, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I brought it up in the Teahouse and the advice was to just warn the IP user, so that's what I did but it hasn't made any difference yet. If it continues I'll see if I can get an admin involved, maybe block the IP. Rodney Baggins (talk) 16:49, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have semi-protected it for a few months but we need to be watch the IP doesnt choose another article for "testing". MilborneOne (talk) 17:01, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Typo in caption of the first picture of the article[edit]

Typo: "An NTSB photograph from the final report depicting the damage down to United 811"

"damage down" should be damage DONE 2600:1700:BF10:69D0:A8B5:3D9E:A2AD:F06C (talk) 22:16, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Final Resting Place?[edit]

I notice the link to a google maps, followed it, saw nothing. Any ideas? or just a gag link?

98.224.129.251 (talk) 22:07, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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