Seconds from IMPACT! United Airlines flight 1722

This incident only took a couple of

seconds

, but what caused this giant triple seven to suddenly begin diving towards the sea, just a minute after takeoff, raised many questions when it first happened: was it due to inexperienced pilots? Did they make mistakes or was it something like that? completely different than what caused it, stay tuned on December 18, 2022, the Hawaiian Islands were in the grip of a severe winter storm moving from the southwest bringing with it strong thunderstorms, gusty winds and hail during these types of conditions at work. The situation for pilots and air traffic controllers quickly becomes very complicated as many aircraft will generally be forced to abandon their normal arrival and departure route to avoid flying through storm cells.

Now, even outside of these worst cells, moderate to sometimes severe turbulence can be experienced, making

flight

difficult. Pretty unpleasant and that's exactly what it was that day on the ground in Maui, two United Airlines pilots were sitting on a bus taking them from their hotel to Kow Louis Airport, where they were scheduled to operate United Airlines Flight

1722

to San Francisco. As they looked out the windows of their cars, they could see the rain falling and the palm trees buffeted by the gusty winds around them. They knew there would be a challenging start to the

flight

ahead, but as an airline pilot that kind of comes with the job now both pilots were well rested and in good spirits, it was around lunch time and, except for the weather On departure, they were looking forward to a good flight ahead, the plane they were going to fly was 22 years old.

The old Boeing triple seven two two two had no recorded technical failures and was arriving in Maui at the same time these two pilots were approaching the airport. On board the return flight were the eight cabin crew members who were currently en route. Flying these pilots back to San Francisco on their second flight of the day, when news of this incident hit the media, there was much initial speculation as to whether or not these pilots were part of a wave of inexperienced new hires and therefore Therefore, a sign of a potentially unsafe trend within the industry caused by the impending shortage of pilots, so in reality it was like this, you could probably say yes and no, in this case the captain, who was 55 years old, had more of 19,600 hours total time and 5 of them had flown the Boeing triple seven, which is a very respectable experience, but as my friend Juan Brown pointed out on Channel's Black O'Leary, only 300 of those triple sevens had flown as captain, according to final report.

It doesn't say this clearly, but there is a possibility that the captain may have operated the Airbus A320 between his experience as a co-pilot on Triple 7 and when he returned as captain, which is how it is often done on major

airlines

, if so. out. Okay, so the captain was relatively new to the left seat of the Triple 7 and as Juan pointed out in his video, the Airbus on the Boeing Triple 7 handles very differently even though they are both fly-by-wire aircraft on the Airbus. You simply have to use your side stick to point the nose of the plane where you want it to go and then the plane will come out of trim basically it will do what you tell it to do, but in the Triple 7 you will have to remember to trim the plane. yourself and react to what forces you to understand that long engines and flaps can cause like on any other Boeing airplane, then I emphasize that these types of handling differences could become important.

The co-pilot was also quite experienced with around 5,300 hours in total. time, but he was very new to this particular type with only 120 hours, this probably also meant that he was relatively new to the company again. The final report did not specify this, but that relative inexperience could be the reason for one of the misunderstandings that will lay the foundation for what is about to happen. While sitting on the bus, the pilots thought they should take advantage of the time and began to review During the pre-flight briefing, the captain contacted a United Airlines dispatcher who advised him about the challenging weather around the Hawaiian Islands.

They then decided together on a new alternative route that should take them away from the most severe parts of the storm. The two pilots also observed the technical condition of the air police, which was fine and thumbless, but everything seemed reasonably good, the bad weather was definitely the biggest problem when they arrived at the airport, the first officer bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee before heading straight to the gate where the plane had just arrived when they boarded. On board and introduced themselves to the cruel purser, who is the head of the cabin crew, they began by telling them about the very turbulent arrival they had just gone through and this further highlighted the complicated weather they had in front of them.

The captain thanked the purser. for the update and then informed the crew that he wanted them to remain seated during the departure to ensure that no one was injured by the expected turbulence, the person agreed and after this, the captain who was to be the flight pilot for the stage entered I entered the cockpit and began to prepare for departure while the first officer went out for a walk, then from the looks of it, it definitely sounds like it was the first officer's weather for a walk. The foreign officer received a text message from a friend telling him about a severe turbulence incident that had just occurred on a Hawaiian Airlines plane arriving in Maui, several people had been injured on that flight, which could include another episode.

Go ahead anyway, the first officer showed that text message to the captain later, when he entered the cockpit and they both agreed that they would have to exercise extreme caution during departure, they continued preparing the plane and completed the instructions while the crew boarded the 271 passengers who were scheduled for the flight, when it came time for performance calculations, the first officer tried to take the 80 degrees, but it didn't work for some reason, so he had to call the tower to get that information. Instead, the tower informed them that the winds were reasonably light at that time from a slight direction of around 10 knots and at the time they were using runway exit 2-04, the first officer who had ample previous experience flying between the Hawaiian Islands commented on the fact that it was very unusual that the Robert 2 0 was being used, but thought it probably had to do with a In any case, the difficult weather affected the rivals because the winds were light recently .

His performance software suggested that flaps 20 and a D-rated confidence should be used for departure. D-rated confidence means that the engines will not produce maximum thrust when the takeoff thrust is established. It is stated that they will only produce as much as is necessary to perform a safe takeoff, of course taking into account all applicable margins, and we, As pilots, we decide how much speed to use depending on external circumstances, we always use a reduced takeoff confidence if we can. because it causes less noise, burns less fuel and most importantly, saves a lot on engine wear, which extends the life of the engine.

Now the only reasons we would use maximum thrust is in case takeoff performance really requires it or if there are environmental reasons to do it this way. strong crossed wheels, for example, or a wind shear warning. Now there was also another little oddity with this outing and I'll tell you all about that right after this, before we continue. I just want to say a huge thank you to today's sponsor, nordvpn, whose product I actually use more and more nowadays and that's because Norwood allows me to go pretty much anywhere in the world I want with the touch of a button and that has made me allowed me to follow my favorite Swedish hockey team from home here in Spain, as well as watch other geofence content, but that's not all I use frequently or to check better prices when booking rental cars, hotels and even flights, since that the application allows me to avoid the dynamic prices that many of these companies use today.

Now I know that may seem a little unfair against those companies, but I figure if they can change prices well based on location, then we can too. Additionally, that note also works as a first layer of protection against people trying to spy. access your personal data Place unwanted cookies and other nasty things, but of course you should also be very wary of suspicious email links and things like that. If you want to try a note yourself, use the link below, which is nordvpn. The .com pilot by clicking that link will give you four months absolutely free when you sign up for a two-year contract, plus you support my channel and remember that Nord always offers you a full 30-day money back guarantee, thank you Sir, now we return to In the story, as I mentioned before, the pilots decided to use flaps 20 for takeoff and this is significant since flaps 15 is by far the most common takeoff configuration on the Boeing Triple 7 200.

Now, a curiosity with the triple seven is that if flaps 20 are used for takeoff, when the flaps retraction begins, the pilots will not go from flaps 20 to 15, which is the next step of the return. , but directly to flaps 5 and they will simply skip flap 15. So this is what the captain planned to do. As he had done throughout his Triple Seven career so far, another thing we need to discuss here is the way the different flap settings and their respective maximum speeds are displayed on the pilot's main flight displays. Minimum flap speeds are usually displayed as a bit.

Flap error with an associated number located on the speed tape located on the left side of the main flight screen. Now, in the case of flap 20 departure, the flap 20 error may not be displayed, but when the nose is lowered for positive acceleration. The speed trend is observed and the speed is high enough to begin retracting the flaps. The palatal angle requests flaps 5 and pilot monitoring will first verify that the turn is safe and then select flaps 5. This procedure will continue as airspeed is maintained. accelerating so that when the 5 flap error is paused, one will be selected and so on until the flaps are fully retracted now, as the flaps on the slat increase the overall area and camber of the wing quite a bit, they are obviously Subject to certain maximum speed limitations the more fins you have selected the lower the maximum speed and that is shown on the speed tape as an alternating black and red barber pole.

If for any reason we were to exceed this maximum speed for a given fin configuration, it could cause damage to the fin mechanism. and therefore, we must report any flap overspeeds to engineering so that the appropriate maintenance check can be performed. Because of this, we always monitor the speed tape while accelerating to make sure the trimmer's pulse continues to rise as we retract the flaps. and if they don't, it could be a first indication of a problem with the flaps, such as the flaps getting stuck or twisted, for example. Now this will all become quite relevant very soon, when the pilots were fully ready they contacted Maui Tower to request push back and start clearance, this was received and during push back the pilots could hear that the wind was starting to vary between zero three zero degrees and 190 degrees and also that there were low level windshield warnings in effect and that the runway news had already changed from Runway 2-0 to zero two, as I mentioned earlier, the wind shear, which is when the wind suddenly changes direction or intensity, is one of the reasons that prevents the use of d-rated takeoff thrust and that is because if the aircraft is in wind shear, it will need all the confidence margins of the engine that can obtain, so the pilots finished their recoil and engine start and then entered their FMC and changed all their planning to the new runway, again selecting flaps 20 as the exit. flap configuration, but this time they would use full thrust, instead they would also manually re-enter V1 rotation and two speeds, but the use of speeds associated with D-rated takeoff, as that was allowed under the United agreement and it would be more conservative.

One thing to remember when performing a full thrust takeoff is that if there is no wind shear to deal with the airplane, it will accelerate and climb faster than normal since it has a lot of excess thrust as they were now testing to the pilots. a queue of planes in port and they used that time tocarefully informing what actions would be taken in the event of a predictive warning on the windshield during takeoff or actual wind shear Once they took off, they finally reached the holding point and were free to line up. They climbed a 02 weight runway behind the departing Airbus A321, so they did and since they now had to wait a few minutes to get enough separation from the previous plane, they had plenty of time to study the weather radar image on their navigation screen and make sure Since there were no storm cells in the media departure direction, the captain had weather radar selected on his navigation screen and the first officer had terrain, which is a pretty standard setup for a sortie like this at the time. 4 1449 United Airlines Flight

1722

was cleared for takeoff on Runway 02 Surface wind was then reported to be 140 degrees at 10 knots in moderate rain, wipers turned on high, captain moved thrust levels to forward to first stabilize the engines and then push the toga, causing the outboard throttle to set maximum Thrust intake, the aircraft accelerated rapidly down the runway due to the higher than normal thrust setting, but the rotation was completely normal, followed by gear retraction and an initial climb attitude of around 12 to 15 degrees, the aircraft gained altitude rapidly and soon began to experience moderate turbulence which caused the speed to begin to fluctuate.

The captain was flying manually at this point and You probably had to work pretty hard while trying to judge the exit ahead to make sure no storm cells appeared. When the plane reached 1,000 feet, the outboard throttle reduced the truss from takeoff thrust to climb thrust and this also coincided with the altitude. minimal flap retraction, this meant that the captain now slightly lowered the know to start accelerating the plane and retracting the flaps and now things will start to happen very quickly, which I am going to tell everyone. It took place in 30

seconds

and is worth remembering, as the speed was accelerating, the captain asked for flaps 5 to be selected.

He then looked down at his speed tape and saw that the maximum speed for his current flap setting was approaching quickly. The first officer thought he had heard the captain ask for flaps 15 and since those were the next flaps he didn't think to question, remember he only had about 120 hours on the type so perhaps he didn't think it was a open command to asked at the same time the captain asked for this new flap setting, the tower controller also called them and asked them to change to Honolulu control, the first officer responded to this chord changed to the departure frequency and no selected flow 15 while she called the new controller, she was immediately cleared to continue climbing to 16,000 feet and the controller also informed her that there was an extreme invitation in all quadrants and that they were cleared to avoid weather at their own discretion.

The first officer read this message again. and then proceeded to set 16,000 feet on the mode control panel and then selected weather radar on his navigation screen while this was happening the captain was still looking at his main flight screen he was waiting for Barber's pools to start moving The flaps had 5 maximum speeds, but as he continued accelerating he had the sensation that the Barber's posts were moving in the opposite direction. Now the top speed actually increased a little, but only about 20 knots, not the 40 knots he expected. He saw the speed increasing rapidly and understood that this would likely lead to overspeed to try to minimize, so he decided to override the outboard throttle and back off the thrust slightly, now this caused the huge suspended engines to decelerate slightly and thus Therefore, creating a downward sliding pitch momentum that caused the airplane to pitch forward a little, but it was still climbing at this point.

Remember that on a Boeing you still need to balance the airplane and take care of it very carefully, especially during configuration changes. The captain's attention was now focused on what was happening with the flaps in his mind, the flaps should have been moved to flaps 5 and since that was not happening he was now anticipating some sort of flap malfunction and began to look at the cast to see if there were any emergency procedures that needed to be done. do and since there was nothing there and no bells had been heard, he called flaps 5 again twice and then looked at the first office to verify that he was indeed selecting flaps 5. but as this course seemed to divert his attention from his main screen flight for about 10 seconds to try to resolve this, the captain had not realized that the nose down pitch motion had continued and had now moved to approximately 0 degrees pitch and was still moving now the first The officer had noticed this and thought it was a little strange that the captain was leaning forward in response to a high-speed event, but due to the moderate turbulence, he wasn't sure if the captain was actually reacting to some kind of difficulty. handling or wind shear or if they might even have some kind of difficulty. instrument magnification type of problem, remember that this all happened in a matter of just a few seconds.

He now asked the captain about the launch, but received no immediate response. Instead, the captain asked for flaps. I'm probably still worried and focused on the impending speed flap. Condition now there is also another possible explanation for the captain's forward pitching motion and that is an autographic illusion. This was not mentioned in the final report, but since the plane was accelerating here and the captain was looking away from his instrument, that acceleration could have been interpreted momentarily. by your inner ear as a slight increase, it is seen that our balance organs cannot distinguish between an acceleration and an increase, since both affect the small hairs of our inner ears in exactly the same way, if that were the case, then could have been momentarily reacting to that perceived increase without even thinking about it, it wouldn't have been the first time that the tomatographic illusion had caused a decrease like this.

I already covered the crash of Atlas Air Flight 3591 earlier in this series, where some autographic footage The ocean was a big culprit to watch that video after this, the plane had reached a maximum altitude of around 2000 feet before it began to dive towards the water below. The first gpws warning announced was according to the office's first rate. The descent accelerated followed by the rate of descent and rose at this stage, the first officers felt movement in the clouds outside their peripheral vision, they looked up and saw that the sea was now coming towards them as they passed through the clouds, it was So when he really realized the dangerous position they were in now the plane was descending more than 10 degrees and was still getting worse, the captain asked for the flaps to be raised and at the same time the first officer and the gpws asked for them to be raised.

They will rise together in unison. the maximum vertical speed was recorded at 8,536 feet per minute at an altitude of 1,386 feet and the lowest pitch was around -15 degrees. The captain responded immediately by beginning to pull up on his control wheel as the gpws continued to scream too low to In the rain, this pull caused a vertical G load of about 2.66 G and finally, when the plane reached its point lower than 748 feet above the sea, the giant triple seven finally began to move its nose toward the sky again. The captain initially reduced confidence slightly again, probably to avoid flapping over the speed they still had, but they soon added maximum thrust according to their controlled flight and the terrain.

Seafood Escape maneuver, the aircraft now pitched up to 23 degrees nose up and reached a maximum climb speed of 8,680 feet per minute before the captain returned. The nose to the flight directors readjusted the plane and finally engaged the autopilot from the moment the captain looked away from his main flight display until they were in the most critical part of this incident, it had only taken a few 10 seconds this is a clear indication of how quickly things can happen if you lose concentration during a critical light phase, especially during challenging positions like this. The crew continued to climb toward their cruising altitude and had to continue avoiding storms and moderate turbulence for the remainder of the time.

Once they leveled off, the captain contacted the purser to check on the status of both passengers and crew when, fortunately, everyone had been sitting with their seat belts fastened during this ordeal and, in fact, They were expecting some pretty bad turbulence, so everyone was fine and as there was no indication of anything wrong with the plane, the crew decided to continue their flight to San Francisco during the cruise, the pilots reported what had happened and decided to file a report every one when they arrived at the base, which was the The correct thing was to make an approach and finally land in San Francisco and, of course, the plane had already reported the excess flaps, so they were met by engineers upon arrival to verify the flaps even though the pilots reported this.

Through the correct channels, the incident did not initially trigger a full investigation, but just two months later, the airstream highlighted the incident in one of its excellent articles and that is when the FAA and NTSB began their own investigations, unfortunately by then. Both the cockpit voice and the flight data recorder have been overwritten, so this report is based on interviews with the pilots and adsb data, as well as everything they were able to recover from the quick access recorder. of the aircraft. The report ultimately said that the incident was caused by a miscommunication between the pilots that led to a failure to manage the aircraft's vertical flight path airspeed and pitch aptitude.

The result of the investigation led United Airlines to modify one of its pilot training modules, as well as launch a cross-company awareness campaign describing what had happened and what could be learned from it now, before anyone starts. To write in the comments below how irresponsible this was and how it could never happen to you, think about how many times you've looked away for just a few seconds while driving. In your car, things like this happen and we as an industry learn from it by adapting driver training and awareness. This is what these reports are for now.

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