Air Crash investigations 2022 - MayDay Rogue Pilot Scandinavian Flight 751

He seemed to be the one who really enjoyed his job December 27, 1991 He is in command of a state-of-the-art DC-9 The

flight

will take him to the limit of his abilities as his engines fail and his plane falls from the sky I was in a nightmare Stockholm Scandinavian 751 we are

crash

ing into the ground now what caused the most baffling accident in swedish history is nothing investigators could have imagined what they finally discover will strain rasmussen's lifelong relationship with airplanes to the extreme. moment I really felt like I didn't trust the plane, it's been two days since the snow and ice, passengers boarding a Scandinavian Airlines

flight

to Copenhagen mid-morning find the cabin very uncomfortable.

It was very hot inside the plane when we entered because there were heaters on during the night and I saw that when passengers boarded they also wanted to take off their jackets and shoes and since it was like a sauna, is it possible to lower the heat now? Ulf Sedermark, 34, has been with the airline for four years, he is the first officer on today's flight, there was a light snowfall, the temperature was just below zero and there were light winds. We were going to fly from Stockholm to Copenhagen and then to Warsaw, back to Copenhagen and on to Barcelona that day, it would be quite a long slog. day stefan rasmussen just finished an exterior inspection of the plane the danish

pilot

is in command this morning in those more than 12 almost 13,000 hours that i have been sitting here i put the plane and put it back like a bag of rooks and when it gained momentum on the wings we merge together the plane that rasmussen is strapping down today is an almost new dc-9 easily identifiable by its two rear engines now everyone should know that the door remains open even in the days before terrorist threats flying with the cockpit open door is unusual, it's just one of the ways Rasmussen has endeared himself to the crews and passengers he flies with.

I always had my cabin door open because I discovered that if we had it open and they could see there was a human being there. they trust you for me it felt good that the door was open it just feels like you have a connection more than if the door was closed the winter weather has delayed this flight but rasmussen won't compromise security for the schedule where are we now with If the winds didn't end, they already finished the bottom part now they are doing the top part, thanks under the instructions of captain Rasmussen, the ground team had already defrosted the plane once, now they are giving it another pass and it took a but they had problems getting rid of the snow on the top of the wing, so we are a little late to your response.

This kind of delay is a routine matter. flies DC-9 for the airline as a passenger this morning. He is scheduled to command another flight later. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. I hope you had a good Christmas. We're just clearing our wings because we had a little snow overnight and when it's over we'll be ready to take off for warmer weather. Carefully selected the best airline cabin crew to take care of you today. We all hope you have a good flight. Finally, Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 is cleared to continue. There are snow drifts that the crew must avoid on the way to the runway.

It was nice of you to clear the snow well, that would have made it too easy to approach the runway holding point zero eight rogers seven five one you are free for takeoff spoilers automatic brake armed takeoff disarmed runway update done checklist verification completed said power despite winter conditions takeoff is routine v1 rotate team up team up selected wolfie read out loud team heard things that were different just 25 seconds into the flight while the plane is climbing there is a problem when you hear things that are different from the anomaly, suspicions There was a very big role in the plane, almost like an explosion, it was another banging noise, but I thought: what have I never heard before?

It is obvious that the source of the noise is the correct engine, that sounds serious. I think it's a compressor stall I took the right throttle and moved back a little bit, but then it got really strange because the engine performance increased when I reduced the total, it's like you're sitting in your car and you're turning to the right, You get confused, we're not supposed to call the booth every once in a while I thought this is an emergency. I have to call the captain, but captain rasmussen doesn't answer the call. He's too busy trying to figure out what's going on with his plane.

I couldn't see anything on the instrument, they were pretty stable and have a pretty normal range and no problem, but I could hear them drawing every second, look for telltale signs of attack or structural failure and I looked over here. I kept the impression because if you have a pump or a cargo door and something is torn off and that will give a decompression in the cabin, the pressure levels are stable, but the crew has other concerns. I saw smoke on it, it's not burned. Should we do something like that at 3,200 feet above the ground? The emergency increases.

The right engine shuts off when we have flown for a little over a minute. The right engine had a very, very brief moment where I thought I was in a nightmare and was just dreaming. I was confused I was really confused two seconds later the left engine also goes out the plane now has no power one engine goes down and then another engine I thought it was not true it was not true it was not real less than a minute and Half an hour after takeoff, the DC-9 started falling from the sky and after that it was completely silent and I think that was the worst moment for me, just being in the air and it was so quiet it was like a bird was staying in the sky.

Then I started to get scared, the engine relay as the

pilot

s tried to restart their engines, things got even worse, the left engine bursts into flames. I saw the exhaust gas temperature rising rapidly. The maximum temperature was around 680 degrees Celsius and an engine fire could spread to the rest of the plane. Should I pull? If Sademak pulls the left engine extinguisher, he will never be able to restart it. He pulls the handle to put out the fire from his seat. Captain Per Homeburg can see that the crew is on Flight 751 in trouble is now falling at a speed of 1,200 feet per minute, but air traffic controllers at Stockholm Airport have no idea that the plane is in trouble.

Islander Stockholm Scandinavian 751 good morning sk 751 climbs to flight level 180 we have problems with our engine I need to get back to our pretty roger suddenly the radio goes out as a result of the failed engines only the correct engine can provide power but now it spins too slow to generate electricity the motor has no propulsion so the only energy you have is your height? With time running out, the pilots of Flight 751 must find a way to restart the correct engine or

crash

into the field below Scandinavian Airlines. Flight 751 is now falling out of the sky at 20 feet per second, oh.

Can I help Captain Per Homburg, who boarded the flight as a passenger and becomes part of the flight crew? He came out of the cabin and said: Is there anything I can help you with? I don't think I even said yes. I said start. the apu, if the auxiliary power unit can be launched, will bring back the radio and instruments, so I simply handed him the emergency checklist and began to concentrate on controlling the flight to see that we maintained speed and attitude that we had our wings level. I managed to turn on the auxiliary power unit, so my flight instruments were supplied from there, but for some reason Captain Rasmussen's instruments won't come back online.

He managed to fly the plane basically by feel. He also restored the cabin. Current danger. Stockholm air traffic control instructs. The pilots must return to Scandinavian Airport 751. Can they turn right with radar vectoring heading for 0-1, but the plane is now only 1600 feet off the ground and First Officer Sadermark's attempts to resuscitate it are not working? course but we are trying to restart our engines making a 180 degree turn back to Stockholm could be catastrophic. I really had the feeling that if the plane turned at that moment we had stalled, when you are coming back you are losing a lot of energy. so the safest thing is to go straight keep the wings level, that means you will use less energy from your altitude so you can maintain your speed you can maintain 2000 feet we cannot maintain two thousand feet descending we are at sixteen hundred feet and descending homburg wants rasmussen focus your attention on finding a landing spot look ahead look ahead i was yelling at stefan just to look ahead and observe the flight path emergency crouch crouch crouch like this we shouted crouch i don't know how many times crouch crouch crouch keep your seat belts on security buckled while passengers buckle rasmussen considers where to land his plane he looks ahead and I had an idea that heading north could take us out into the Baltic Sea in that frozen weather and that's an excellent runway, but instead he finds himself gliding helplessly over a dense forest.

I saw that green area and I saw that little point of light in the middle of the forest, but it really seemed short. Well, still well, just 500 feet above the ground, Captain Rasmussen lifts the nose of the plane to slow it down in hopes of softening the hard landing. The pine trees from above look very soft. I could use the trees almost as a pillow if I went down the left turn. get down and keep your knees i braced myself for heavy impacts if it's an emergency landing we don't have engines i just thought this was going to be a crash landing stockholm

scandinavian

751 we're crashing to the ground now i wasn't afraid until we were flying through the trees then I was afraid and I knew we weren't going to make it.

I didn't think I should die. I knew I had to die. I said my prayer to God and then a moment later we were in a strange situation. world after coming to a complete stop I feel the smell of airplane fuel I thought, okay, we're going to explode and I look around and I see the snow because there was a big crack in the fuselage of the plane right in front of it on the ground Everything was quiet and I woke up. It may have only been a fraction of a second. I was afraid that my spine was broken and I wouldn't be able to walk again, so I remember sitting there and I was shaking my head. toes and feet just to see if I could control them.

I had pain in my hand because I had broken a bone in my hand and I was bleeding a lot from my forehead, so I was trying to clean all the blood that was coming down in front of my eyes and Stefan told me that we had to get off the plane after going through 125 meters of pine forest. The pilots now fear that the damaged plane could catch fire. Dozens of passengers escaped through brakes in the fuselage walls. but the captain per homburg was unconscious due to the accident, everything happened so fast that no one could assimilate what happened, so I tried to stay with the group of passengers I had there, but I also knew the feeling we had.

I had to wait a long time for the rescue teams to arrive. Help will arrive soon. Fortunately no fire materialized. A suffocating plane. Many passengers are starting to freeze. Most people were standing in their shirts. Tshirts. Very very little clothes. Few even had shoes. They are now at risk of hypothermia so I focused on being affectionate, maybe I did it for my own cycle so I needed a hug and it was also comforting to comfort someone else. The wreckage of Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 is located just 15 kilometers northeast of Stockholm Islander. airport the fuselage has broken into three pieces in the chaos of the moment no one knows how many people have died in the accident the rescuers arrive in a matter of minutes and treat the frozen survivors they take the captain per homeburg out of the cabin unconscious he landed on the wall in On impact he slid down the wall and fell to the floor, sustaining serious damage, cutting his eyelid and also causing his shoulder to be in front of him. 92 of the passengers suffered injuries, only eight are considered serious, but when the crew takes a count they are surprised to learn that of the 129 people who boarded flight 751, not a single one died in the accident.

They all survived. It was like a shock just to take it in. It was a fantastic comment. the happiest captain in the world we were all alive it was a great moment reporters tell the remarkable story to the world as the swedish accident investigation board or saib takes over the case

scandinavian

airlines alerts its own tory holtground investigators to lead its team . The most unusual thing is that the plane crashes in a wooded area and everyone survives and I had never heard of it before the police kept everyone off the scene.According to the area around the plane, about 100 meters away we had a complete plane.

Nothing reaches Henrik Olander from Saib. We worked on the evidence and we all started planning the documentation of the accident site, which means photographing the entire final approach through the forest that you know and spotting photos of all the parts that were scattered all over the place, the two black boxes that Cockpit conversations and stored flight data are recorded and retrieved immediately. Investigators talk to survivors. They all tell a similar story. Would you mind telling me what he saw and heard loud engine sounds moments after the fight started? The smoke in the cabin and finally the total loss of power. and an engine on fire you have a twin-engine airplane and you're not really supposed to lose both engines at the same time the pratt and whitney turbofan engines are sent to a scandinavian airlines repair shop for further examination investigators are eager to speak to the captain Rasmussen about the incident, but to his dismay, Scandinavian Airlines takes it to the media first.

The first question: what did you think when the boat's engine refused to run? The normal case is that key witnesses, such as crew, etc., should remain in the canteen. Until they met with the board of inquiry, European media celebrated Captain Stephen Rasmussen as a hero for landing the DC-9 without engine power, but investigators considered the possibility that he or his co-pilot made mistakes that caused the crisis first, the owner and glory always falls to a captain, but so do setbacks. I knew that being a person in the press spotlight would be a very different situation and I told myself: the only thing you can do now is give them the whole story and then pray that they find the reason lars lindbergh is an investigative representative of the Swedish airline pilots association examines the wreckage for signs of mechanical or structural failure We knew that both engines had failed for some reason so I was worried when I first saw the engines in the workshop and was surprised that this was everything they found.

There were a number of pieces that were completely missing and this was something we hadn't seen before until this point. To find out what happened, investigators must find the missing parts now found somewhere in snow-covered fields and forests. A detailed study of the engines of Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 reveals exactly which parts are missing. Parts of this plane were falling apart. breaking off parts of both engines and then what you do is you go deeper and document everything and you try to find the root cause and you see how it all comes together. The missing pieces could be the key to figuring out why the plane's two engines shut down within seconds of each other, but they could be anywhere along the 15-kilometer route the plane covered during its flight. short flight must be found investigators use flight data recorder to map plane's journey and determine where engine parts may have fallen constructions along plane's path recovery team finds 500 fragments just a fraction of what Many are missing.

Some of the titanium blades actually appear to have been on fire. It has this titanium fire inside both the right and left engines, and this titanium fire is a unique event. It requires very, very high pressure and very high temperature for a titanium blade to ignite. Fire investigators delve into the cause of the engine problem. The left engine fuel line is badly dented. She was obviously hit by a rapidly moving piece of metal inside the engine. The impact caused it to break. This piece came off. It came off and hit the fuel. line and that fuel line cracked fuel sprayed onto the hot engine the engine was clearly falling apart during the flight that sounds serious the discovery explains the fire in the left engine and why so many pieces were found so far from the crash site, but Investigators are left wondering why the engines broke down in the first place.

One important clue comes from the passenger and crude because the left engine caught fire. The cockpit voice recorder picked up these sounds, you can hear that and we could correlate it to the time when the damage occurred. See that on the flight data recorder the sounds are familiar to investigators and leave no doubt that the DC-9's engines began to work shortly after takeoff. Jet engines depend on a constant flow of air for combustion. A series of fans move the incoming air through several stages of compression. but when that flow is interrupted, the fuel at the back of the engines ignites violently and shoots forward, that's the search, you can do a small search and you can do a big search and you can do a full search on the whole engine, this search sounds serious.

The process was very violent, so after a very short time we had a plane with two engines that could not be restarted and that did not generate any thrust. Basically, you had a giant glider. At that point, take a closer look at the fan blades from the front. the motors explains why they were boosting they are badly dented by not effectively directing the air to the back of the motors this damage that twisted the fan plate started this process you have this disturbed air in the fan you have this rotating fan which then activated this all the breakdown, the compressor surge and then the whole process that led to the dual motor failures, but what exactly destroyed the blades.

There are ways to tell if it is coming from stone rubber ice etc., you can see it by the shape of the damage. Ice causes very specific damage. It's kind of like a soft dent. Analysis of the dent patterns on the fan blades is conclusive. They were hit by ice. Now researchers want to find out where the ice could have come from, if it was during the previous 24 hours. the accident they know that stockholm had been hit by rain and snow in the hours before the takeoff of flight 751 it was a situation with a temperature of around zero degrees it was a dry snow shower in the morning they learned that the dc-9 arrived from Zurich on The previous night, with their fuel tanks more than half full, they had a fairly large amount of reserve fuel or bypass fuel in their wings, where at about -20 degrees Celsius the conditions that night were ideal for the transparent icing on the surface of the wing and here.

You had very, very cold fuel on the top of the wing, and as the temperature dropped overnight, it started snowing, raining, and finally snowing, so there was a layer of ice on the bottom, sleet, and snow on the wing. the top, about 10 inches total. wings in the morning responsibility for deicing the plane ultimately falls to captain rasmussen insists he was aware of the overnight buildup investigators question whether the pilot did everything he could to ensure his plane was completely ice-free rasmussen claims he gave technical instructions to de-ice the plane completely I didn't walk with the plane it was cold it was freezing I noticed there was still frost on the wings the chief technician ordered a second round of de-icing I was really convinced the plane was clean and so was he was he where are we now the wings are not finished at all they have done the bottom the cockpit voice recorder supports rasmussen's testimony you understood it once and looked at it then I said one more time and then I have Actually the second one A total of 850 liters of liquid was once sprayed on the plane, but it is possible that the liquid was defective and was not powerful enough to melt the thick layer of ice that had accumulated on the wings overnight.

Technicians analyze samples of the liquid used to melt the plane. -Ice Flight 751, if we found no discrepancies, there was nothing wrong with any of the fluids used, but when investigators interview the maintenance team that worked on the plane, they begin to wonder if the de-icing team was thorough enough in their efforts, the ground staff insists. that after they sprayed the wing it seemed to be clean, but that appearance was deceptive, it looked perfect because the light eyes on the top of the fuel tanks cannot be seen. Eyes clear, a technician inspected the front of the wing and found no ice.

He didn't know there was ice further back, out of reach, there were no provisions for ladders or anything he could use to climb onto the wing of the ice shelf, it looked bright and nice, he couldn't see any ice on top of it. the wheel and the plane took off as soon as the plane took off, icing became a problem on this plane, the engines are placed behind the wings and as the plane turned and the wings flexed to support the weight of the plane, this ice The roots of the wings loosened and were sucked directly into the engine.

The ice damaged the fan blades on the front of the engines and eventually caused them to begin shaking. No one expected this to happen, but it could happen, but it happened when ice breaks off from the wings during flight. This is not a problem for most aircraft, but the location of the DC-9 engines makes them more susceptible to being hit. The Pratt and Whitney engines on Flight 751 were designed to withstand this type of ice ingestion. The disaster investigators must explain something else. They know that a pilot's incorrect reaction can make surges worse. They review flight data to see what these pilots did when the emergency occurred.

The first thing you do when you perform a search, if you recognize it, is that the search is to reduce the pole. Captain of course you just pull the throttle back and then you have to balance the incoming fuel and the incoming air and that's what I did but the flight data recorder tells a different story why does the engine power increase ? It clearly shows that in the moments after the thrust was reduced, but then seconds later it was increased beyond maximum power, yes, it didn't add up because the rpm increased to 110 percent at the throttle position, it shouldn't be the only thing that could move.

The throttles on the clamp were the pilot's hand, but if Rasmussen didn't push the throttles forward, something else did, it would explain the captain's confusion when his engines began to rev as a pilot when you've gone through the training you've done. . All your emergency training through the simulator and now you have a system that is doing something you don't expect. It's very confusing despite your tireless efforts. The researchers cannot find any possible explanation for the increase in thrust. The frustrating part of the investigation was that I couldn't understand why the system did what it did so, almost two months after the accident, the plane's manufacturer provided the answer.

The culprit is something new. Automatically increases thrust during ascent. Swedish authorities learned that thrust or atr had recently been automatically restored. Introduced as a safety feature on Scandinavian Airlines planes, it existed because the FAA had discovered that some pilots were slowing down considerably while taking off and landing to reduce noise in residential neighborhoods. The ATR was designed to make it impossible for them to accelerate again to dangerous levels, so As soon as it was turned back on, the system activated, investigators found that when Rasmussen reduced power to eliminate engine surge, the system read this as a dangerously low power setting and pushed the throttles forward, the increased thrust worsening the surge until the engines destroyed themselves.

The investigation concludes that the pilots had taken appropriate measures to clear the waves and avoid the catastrophe, but the computer code that governs their efforts was interrupted by a strip of grain and some caused the trunk to move and caused the engines to stall. because it already had too much fuel, but in a few seconds both were completely destroyed. The system was so new to Scandinavian airlines that no one had heard of it and it was confusing for everyone because we didn't know about the system that we knew about. he had no information about the sas system he didn't know the system existed on his plane we hadn't bought that modification and he snuck through another system because he didn't know about the atr rasmussen didn't know he could only save his plane by shutting it down the news that The automatic restoration of thrust was responsible for the accident proved to be both a blessing and a curse for Captain Rasmussen. he eliminated any notion that he had made a mistake when I received that message.

I felt really liberated, it was like winning the lottery, it was, you know, because I was very happy because then I could explain whywhat was in that total Kona confusion, but the consequences would ultimately destroy a love On October 20, 1993, the Swedish accident investigation board publishes its report on the flight accident. 751 determines that the actions of Captain Rasmussen and First Officer Sedermark contributed to the safe outcome of this incident and although investigators question Captain Per Homburg's decision to enter the cockpit in the first place, they praise his contribution, this group flew to a standstill. . the ground they never gave up they never gave up they didn't give an inch investigators largely blamed the accident on Scandinavian Airlines because their procedures for checking for clear ice were inadequate I think it's a compressor warehouse the report also condemns the fact that the pilots did not know about automatic thrust restoration and how it would act in a surge situation if the ATR system had not been there if the trolls had not moved forward there would not have been an accident, it was not available for us, so we knew what to expect if something like this happened after the accident.

Scandinavian Airlines began training its pilots on how to use the ATR system. They also implemented measures to ensure that planes do not take off clearly. ice on the wings we changed all procedures we provided ladders for the mechanic and he made it a requirement to climb to the top of the ring and touch it with his hand to check after the ice recovered from his injuries the first officer ulf returned sedermark to the cabin I didn't feel the responsibility of not being able to do my job again no matter what, I know that I can still see things as they are and I still love doing my job and if something bad happens then I can deal with it, but Stefan Rasmussen's return proved much more difficult.

He said that after I went to a highly qualified psychologist, we talked about flying again. He knew it would be a tough decision to prepare for after some time in the simulator. rasmussen could not regain confidence in his plane sorry guys in a disaster this situation in a crisis is that they have optimized the year of teamwork between man and machine I really felt that he did not trust the plane that pilots tend to take responsibility for everything that went wrong too much glory and also too much responsibility with the right advice about 90 percent of pilots involved in an accident can continue flying even though captain rasmussen received treatment during his career ended with the flight accident 751 making that decision to leave aviation as a pilot was like having your greatest love and reaching that conclusion conclusion that I had many hours many missions of happiness on a plane and I loved my passengers very much my plane so I said a lot that's all, never I regret it, never