Talk:Northwest Airlines Flight 85

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Old AFD[edit]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Northwest Airlines Flight 85

This AFD is no longer relevant WhisperToMe (talk) 09:49, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Court testimony[edit]

This source:

"How I Saved A 747 From Crashing." Jalopnik.

Says there was court testimony in 2006 about this. Where can I find it? WhisperToMe (talk) 17:09, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Additional source[edit]

Apparently an ALPA article was posted at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_33_17/ai_106872569 but the link breaks and robots.txt prevents the relevant text from being visible on web.archive.org WhisperToMe (talk) 17:09, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Names of crew/interviewees in Mayday, and statements[edit]

The Mayday program says the crew were:

Captain John Hanson (he is interviewed on the program)
First Officer David "Dave" Smith
Captain Frank Give(?) - The relief crew member
First Officer Mike Fagan (he is interviewed on the program) - The relief crew member

Also interviewed on the program:

Flight attendant Kathy Brecklin
John Doherty (Northwest fleet training captain)
Carolyn Deforge - NTSB investigator who oversaw the event
Sylvie Dionne - Metallurgist specializing in aircraft components

WhisperToMe (talk) 17:14, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

More Deforge statements:

31:17-31:25/44:59 "It was very surprising to us when we found out what type of failure had occurred and that the effects it had had on the aircraft's uh, controllability"
31:42-32:02/44:59 "They opened up the access panels in the tail, and they noticed that the end cap on the control module had separated. The end cap is uh, circular piece about two and a half inches in diameter. It had had [sic] completely fractured all of the way around its diameter and had then fallen off."
32:30-32:41/44:59 "When the end cap came off, it allowed a piston inside the module to move further than its design limit was intended, and that is what resulted in the rudder hardover."
32:50-33:13 "It was certainly something that was not anticipated by the designers and, when we examined the hardware, uh, it was definitely beyond the scope of what you normally encounter as an engineer when you're doing a failure investigation. Normally you see something that's an internal failure, not an actual mechanical failure of the housing itself."
34:54-35:07 "The fact that this had a purely fatigue failure with no apparent origin to it, such as a deficiency or a defect made us question the, uh material properties of the housing itself"
35:46-35:57 (after it was revealed the material was not the cause) "It was driving all of (us/we?) crazy. We were very frustrated when we realized it. All of the paths we chased down didn't give you that aha, eureka moment."

Mayday says: Hanson said it was the first B747 in the line, and the first Northwest flew. It was the oldest B747 produced in the world. The records stated that it was a test plane before being sold to Northwest. It flew for 55,000 hours and taken off over 7,000 times, more takeoffs and landings than most 747s with that number of hours in the air.

Deforge said:

37:02-37:12 "We were concerned that it had been exposed to more stress than we had expected and it [sic] that may have caused it to fail"
37:21-37:29 "We were very concerned about those operators in Asia that used the 747-400 on short haul flights."

(but the module is broken and could not be tested - Mayday said that testing the rest of them would not be practical)

37:37-37:42: "You would have essentially had to have grounded the fleet to remove all of the units."

Mayday said that NTSB recommends that airlines test the power control module more vigorously and more regularly (this seems to be the airworthiness directive talked about in the article right now) as a way of pre-emptively preventing future failures

37:54-38:00 "We instituted a repetitive inspection cycle requirement"

Mayday said that the root cause of failure is never found. Four years later, an Air France Cargo plane had to make an emergency landing (program doesn't say where, couldn't find BEA report so it may have taken place outside of France), lower rudder failed on 747-400, circumstances are similar to NW85.

38:25-38:39 "The unit was sent to Parker Hannifin in California for repair, and when they opened the box and looked at it, their eyes got really big, they immediately quarantined it, and called everyone, and said 'Oh my gosh, you're not gonna believe what just showed up on our doorstep!'"

Mayday says there is possibility that investigators can explain mysterious failures if AF module shows signs of fatigue.

Deforge: 38:50-38:59 "We immediately focused in on the fracture surface again, in the same area, and did many of the checks that we had done the first time around."

Mayday said that in this case it seemed to be different: there was no sign of fatigue: it was a manufacturing defect

Deforge: 39:06-39:19 "We actually found a deficiency in the bottom of the threaded boor section, we found a very sharp radius at the bottom of the threads, which is where the crack had profagated(?) from"

So this one didn't explain where the NW85 failure came from

Deforge: 39:39-39:47 "Without knowing the why, you can't really take the appropriate corrective action and, as an investigator, that's frustrating"
Deforge: 40:30-40:45 "We still don't know, actually, the root cause of the Northwest failure, but because of what we found with the second Air France failure, we needed to take corrective action to prevent similar failures from occurring."

Mayday said investigators recommend attaching special plugs to control module, in the event of another failure, the pieces will prevent rudder from moving too far in any direction

Deforge: 40:57-41:06 "The changes that we've made to the control modules in the 747-400 fleet will prevent any future events of a rudder hardover"

Mayday said an airworthiness directive made the plugs mandatory WhisperToMe (talk) 19:58, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

n661us?[edit]

Isn´t this the 747-400 prototype? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.114.15.251 (talk) 20:40, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What's a "hardover?"[edit]

For those of us who aren't intimately familiar with all aspects of aviation terminology, perhaps defining a rudder hardover would be useful. I came to this page from List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft specifically to get an answer to this question. I can conjecture based on context that it means that the rudder suddenly went hard left and stayed there unmoving; but I don't know. And I've studied for my private pilot license (never actually got it), and have simmed a lot on VATSIM both as pilot and controller; I've pored through the NTSB database, so I would say that while I'm by no means an expert on the subject, I know more than the average bear. A "hardover" is a term I've simply never encountered. Defining it in the article, however briefly, might be well advised. J^♯m (talk | contribs) 22:08, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing this up here. I have added "In a rudder hardover the rudder is driven to its full deflection and stays there." Is that clear enough? - Ahunt (talk) 23:01, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed there was a citation needed tag that someone added for the sentence just above, so I found a definition of rudder hardover in an unrelated NTSB report. The cite I added points to that report's Glossary page. The cite also includes a quoted definition of rudder hardover, as the NTSB defines it, so readers don't have to bother downloading/opening the PDF. - Itsfullofstars (talk) 23:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jargon in lead[edit]

I see (just above) that this was already fixed in the body copy - thanks. But I do think that to have experienced a rudder hardover event in the lead, without explanation, is still asking a bit much. Can it please be reworded, or explained in parentheses, or something, so that non-technical readers can get it more quickly? Thanks DBaK (talk) 10:50, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed - Ahunt (talk) 12:07, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant, many thanks DBaK (talk) 21:14, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ages of the crew members[edit]

Does anyone know the ages of the four pilots? Those are commonly included in airliner accident pages. CriticalMaster95 (talk) 03:52, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why is that encyclopedic? Did their ages contribute to the accident? Seems more like WP:TRIVIA. - Ahunt (talk) 12:03, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]