Talk:United Air Lines Flight 823

Original article was mostly wrong.

There was much more wrong with the original article than not being documented. Most of it could not have possibly been documented.

The poor quality of the article had been noted: "One Internet website, Wikipedia, makes the statement that the flight crew was overcome by CO2 and lost control of the plane after losing consciousness. While this is a possibility, it can not be stated as fact. In my opinion, much of the information posted in the brief Wikipedia article is inaccurate." http://unitedflight823.com/doku.php?id=the_flight_crew_and_loss_of_control

The author of the above was correct.

Take for example "According to NTSB investigators, . . . " The accident was investigated by the Civil Aeronautics Board, not the NTSB. The editor responsible had clearly not read the accident report. The report was clearly titled:

"SA-380 File No. 1-0033

CIVIL AERONAUTICS BOARD

AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT REPORT

ADOPTED June 2, 1966 RELEASED: June 9, 1966

UNITED AIR LINES, INC.

VICKERS VISCOUNT 745D, N7405

NEAR PARROTTSVILLE, TENNESSEE

JULY 9, 1964

Then there was: "According to NTSB investigators, lethal amounts of CO₂ were present in the cockpit, explaining witnesses' reports of the aircraft seen flying erratically. The fire eventually burned through the cockpit and it is likely the crew was unconscious by that time."

Pure waddle! There was NO "evidence of high concentrations of carbon dioxide anywhere. The ONLY mention in the CAB Accident Report of carbon dioxide was of it's use in fire extinguishers. The assertion made is not present in the Accident Report. There was discussion at the time that with a particular maintenance error, discharging the baggage compartment fire extinguisher could cause the leakage of CO₂ into the cockpit and passenger cabin. There was no evidence such actually happened. Changes in the mechanism, maintenance procedures and appropriate manuals were made. The possible problem was already addressed in the pilots manual: “When CO2 is discharged into the cargo compartment, its expansion can force a considerable amount of CO2 into the cockpit and cabin. CO2 is toxic to human beings, producing acidosis of the blood, irritation of the eyes and respiratory passages, muscular weakness and lack of coordination. High concentrations may produce fatal results within a few minutes. The full face smoke mask at each cockpit crew station and on the emergency walk around bottle provides protection against CO2 and other noxious gases generally present in smoke. These masks are served by 100% oxygen. Cockpit crew members must put on smoke masks before discharging CO2 into the cargo compartment to guard against the hose rupturing above the floor or the quick disconnect fitting being loose.”

There was absolutely no indication of CO₂ or CO poisoning. Consider: "The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) performed a number of tests of specimens from both crewmembers and passengers for the Board. Tests for carbon monoxide were not done on the flight crew due to a lack of suitable specimens. Passenger toxicological examination results were negative; no elevated carbon monoxide levels were found; no significant amount of alcohol was found; and tests for methylbromide yielded negative results. Histological examination of the seven recovered respiratory tract specimens revealed only a small number of carbon particles in each."

And of the free-fall passenger: "He had received burns on the hands, face and neck before death but had only a few carbon particles in his trachea and a carbon monoxide level of five percent in his blood."

The article also asserted "The fire eventually burned through the cockpit" How might that assertion be reconciled with the statement in the CAB report? "There was no evidence of an inflight fire originating in the cockpit portion of the fuselage."

The assertion was made that the fire originated in the electronics bay possibly with a battery fire. The CAB concluded "There was no consistent pattern of inflight fire discernible in this area," and "An electrical source smoke or fire emergency is combated by turning the emergency power switch on and placing the battery master switch and generators off. Equipment that was operating at impact and DME operation to five miles before impact shows this particular emergency procedure had not been executed." The CAB report makes it very clear that the electronics bay was suspected and was intensely investigated before being eliminated. The crew clearly did not suspect the electronics bay as the source of their trouble. The crew did take actions to fight a fire in the passenger cabin. "Evidence of use of the portable cabin CO2 extinguisher and the attempt to use the portable water extinguisher, together with the open valve of a flight crew walk-around oxygen bottle are suggestive of the first officer having gone back to the cabin to fight the fire a few minutes before the crash."

CO₂ was not considered amongst the possible causes for loss of control, "There are a number of hypotheses that can be advanced to explain this loss of control including: distraction of the pilot; failure of the flight control rods due to fire damage; incapacitation of the pilot by heat and/or smoke, a shift of loading caused by the passengers moving to the aft end of the cabin, an overt act by some person aboard the aircraft, or any combination of these."

The article needed a big dose of reality as it was apparently based upon a NTSB report imagined by the original editor(s).

FYI My father was a Viscount pilot for Capital Airlines and subsequently United Air Lines. Needless to say the Parrottsville investigation was closely followed by both of us. I read the CAB report as soon as it was published. I have it in my archives and had to look up the online reference to use in citing the edit. My copy has the pages numbered which the DOTs online version does not, so you will have to use the page citations as a relative guide.

Mark Lincoln (talk) 21:45, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

References

External links modified (January 2018)

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