Need to ID a plane.

[Tog]

First off, this plane may not really exist, it was in a dream.

Anyone still with me, here are the things I recall. Three engines, two large, round ones under the wings and one in the tail. It was straight through the tail, not curved like in an L-1011. This third engine had a silver vane that ran vertically down the center of the exhaust. The total size of the plane was about the same as a 757.

The Airline colors were a white body with powder blue wings, and a powder blue stripe along the line where the windows ran. The engines under the wings, were either white or medium gray.

The situation was at a mall near my old house. The plane cam in very low from the east, pitching back and forth like it had lost the vertical stabilizer, or at leas the control. Wheels were up. I started to climb and when it was still close enough to make out the windows, I measured it as being 2 fists at arms length above the horizon. About then all the engine noise stopped and it rolled to the left (right wing in the air) and crashed, upside down. There was no explosion, and the plane was found intact, upside down in a horse pasture. There are several in the direction of flight from the location of the mall. The mall was vivid enough that I can find the spot I was standing in the dream to within about 50 feet on Google Earth.

Now, I live very near to an air force base, so the sounds of airplanes are quite common. I have also had sounds work their way into m dreams and take an active roll, so that's probably what happened here. The part that strikes me as odd about this, is that I don't recall ever having dreamed of a location that accurately.

The only other dream I've had that was as real as this one was one i had where the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas was being torn down. I watched it on CNN, and for 6 months, I thought it really happened. Then I wondered why they kept showing it on CSI.

I don't think this is a omen or anything like that. The Bellagio is still standing after all, but if the plane is real, I'd like to know what kind it is.

Thanks for any suggestions. I haven't come up with anything yet on my searches.

[Maksutov]

Straight through the tail intake and engine makes that a DC-10 or MD-11 or the KC-10 Air Force tanker equivalent. I'll have to think about the livery.

The dream is probably a recollection of video of an American Airlines DC-10 that lost its left wing engine on takeoff, rolled counterclockwise, and crashed. That was in 1979. Here's one of many reports on the disaster. Using the forklift/complete engine-pylon assembly removal/reassembly technique sure saved a lot of time, helping guarantee top airline executive bonuses, but it had its drawbacks.

Loss of the vertical stabilizer might be a remembrance of the AA Airbus A300B4-605R crash on 20011112 in NYC.

[Tog]

Wow, yeah, that was the engine configuration and even the way it crashed was the same. It seemed a lot smaller than that, the the fuselage is too big around, or the wings were bigger. I would have been 9 when that happened so I don't know if I ever saw anything about it or not. In the dream, the engine stayed on. But then, dreams arent video tape.

I can clearly recall about 1 dream a year, so I kind of like to get into them a bit.

[Nicolas]

On photos the DC-10 sometimes seems small, but seeing it in real life, it's a huge beast . The noise it makes at takeoff is very impressive.

Terrible accident.

[Maksutov]

On photos the DC-10 sometimes seems small, but seeing it in real life, it's a huge beast ....

I remember taking a flight on a NW DC-10 with a member of my staff, who had previously flown on DC-9s, commuters, etc. On seeing the thing pull into the gate, he remarked, "Wow, that's a big airplane!" Once in the cabin, he repeated the remark.

BTW, any video I was referring in my first post was in reference to recreations. TTBOMK there's no video of the actual event, just this chilling photo:

[Eta C]

I had just come back home from college when the crash occurred. My home at the time was about 10 miles south of O"Hare and the crash site. I was out running an errand and saw smoke rising to the north. I remember thinking "wow, that's a big fire" then getting home and seeing the reports all over the news, including the photo.

[Jeff Root]

Tog,

I'm astonished by the level of detail you can describe from that
dream, or at least by the degree that you expect it to match
reality. I see lots and lots of details in my dreams which very
much impress me at the time, but when I wake up I realize that
they were all wrong.

I have dreamed of airplanes crashing once or twice. The type
of plane was so vague and morphed so quickly that I couldn't
even say whether it was a fighter jet or jumbo jet. It may have
been a group of small fighters one moment, and the next it was
a 747.

Maksutov,

What was wrong with how the engine was attached?

Although the image is lousy quality, I like the subject of your
new avatar picture. It may be what got me interested in Space
when I saw it on TV at the age of four. My mom says there
was a series of programs about stars, and I was fascinated
by it. I think it was the Disney programs. A few years later
I got to see it in color (!) when it was shown as the weekly
film in elementary school.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Nicolas]

I see lots and lots of details in my dreams which very
much impress me at the time, but when I wake up I realize that
they were all wrong.

Related to this, you often see familiar persons in your dreams because a person needs a face, and apparently you can't make up a realistic non-existing person's face in a dream. I noticed that when I haven't seen a person's face in a dream, at the moment I do see his face my dream uses the face of a person I know, and hence suddenly the character becomes that person. Not that that person had anything related to the dream before that event; the dream just borrowed his face and the connotation to the person is made after that. Sometimes it's somebody you actually know, but it can also be Cleopatra for example. And sometimes your dream keeps making it unable to see the face, when the dream doesn't allow for the character to be a person you know but still has the problem of being unable to make up a face.

I noticed these things while being half asleep.

Of course these experiences can differ between persons. Maybe some people can perfectly make up unexisting but realistic faces (with detail!) in a dream.

[farmerjumperdon]

Interesting report on that crash. What is meant by rotation? Is it the transition from rolling to flying? And why would the engine go over the TOP of the wing? Amazing that it held level flight for so long.

As an aside, I was attending school in MN, and frequently travelled back and forth from Chicago to MN. (My mom lived in Schaumburg at the time). I drove right past the accident scene on I90 just a few minutes after the crash. Only the first couple emergency vehicles had even arrived. I was amazed that, even though the interstate was elevated above the level of the crash site giving a good view of it, there wasn't even a hint of an airplane. It was absolutely demolished.

[Nicolas]

Interesting report on that crash. What is meant by rotation? Is it the transition from rolling to flying? And why would the engine go over the TOP of the wing? Amazing that it held level flight for so long.

Rotation indeed is when pitching up from level attitude roll to a pitch attitude that will normally get you into the air very shortly after that, rather immediately in most cases.

The egine pulls the plane faster. As long as the plane accelerates (and is not diving) this implies that the engine wants to go faster than the plane is moving. The thrust vector of the engine could be seen as a virtual hand pushing on the engine. If the engine is only attached to the wing on the front side of the engine (the attachment point on the rear side of the engine is broken off in this accident), the hand pushing on the engine will simply make the engine hinge around the forward attachment point, and the engine will end up upside down on the upper side of the wing.

[farmerjumperdon]

DOH! Brain fart. I was visualizing the forces and somehow got it backward. Must have been thinking that anything that comes loose would fall down and back, forgetting that the engine is the thingy that is PUSHING the plane.

[Larry Jacks]

There's perhaps another factor. IIRC, the engine nacelles were designed to contribute lift, partially I'm sure to help offset the engine weight. I saw news reports at the time of the accident that stated the engines were designed go over the wing if they broke off. If true, perhaps it was done to ensure the engine couldn't drop onto the ground and then bounce back into the fuel-filled wings in a takeoff scenario. If those reports were accurate (and I recall them correctly), then the engine broke off properly in the Chicago accident. Unfortunately, it took out the plane's hydraulics, too.

The DC-10 wasn't a bad plane but it got a bad reputation. There was a crash in Turkey that was the result of bad design. The ground crew didn't properly close the baggage door. It failed in flight, causing depressurization. That in turn caused the floor to collapse, taking out the flight controls. About 300 people died in that accident.

It turns out the Chicago accident was caused by improper servicing. Instead of using the proper hoist to remount the engine after maintenance, the ground crew used a forklift. That cracked the engine mounts, leading to the engine failure. That was hardly the fault of the plane, although the loss of hydraulics was a design flaw.

There was another accident when a crew flew a DC-10 into a mountain in Antartica. Hard to plane the plane for that one. There was another accident where a crew landed on a closed runway (in Mexico City, IIRC). Again, hardly a fault of the design.

Off hand, the only other DC-10 major accident I can recall was the Sioux City, Iowa accident where a flaw in an engine blade took out the hydraulic system and caused other damage.

[DaveC426913]

I was amazed that, even though the interstate was elevated above the level of the crash site giving a good view of it, there wasn't even a hint of an airplane. It was absolutely demolished.

This has always astonished me too. I think that it has to do with our preconceptions about their robustness. Planes are a whole breed part form all other types of vehicles and indeed, all other man-made devices.

a] They are moving VERY fast, much faster than most large things we ever see crash - on the order of 500mph (cruising) or 200mph (landing).

b] Unlike every other form of vehicle, this one has no braking or friction slowing it down except the actual impact. Note also that very often, unlike everything else we see crash, this one's has a significant gravity-induced component (i.e. downward).

b] They are quite hollow - comparatively little internal structure.

c] They are made as light as possible. (Like birds.)

To sum: planes are way more fragile than they look, and at the same time, are in a much more ... tenuous situation.

[PhantomWolf]

TTBOMK there's no video of the actual event, just this chilling photo:

I drove right past the accident scene on I90 just a few minutes after the crash. Only the first couple emergency vehicles had even arrived. I was amazed that, even though the interstate was elevated above the level of the crash site giving a good view of it, there wasn't even a hint of an airplane.

That just goes to prove it was faked, I mean come on, no wreakage and what was a photographer doing there with a camera pointed in the right direction to capture it, it's not like everyone had cameras on their cell phones back then, its even in colour and that's impossible, they didn't have the technology for colour images to be processed and on TV that fast.

Opps, sorry lost myself for a moment there, wrong forum.

[Kelfazin]

Speaking of planes that need ID, this Google map image is to Learjet in Wichita, KS....the best I can come up with is that it is a Lear 890 (which in airline terms is the CRJ900. Do you guys agree? Is the shortness of the wings in the map image just an artifact of our angle and distance from the object or are we looking at a different plane?

[Donnie B.]

Wow, I'd forgotten that the Sioux City crash was a DC-10. I would have sworn it was a much smaller plane. Darn senior moments.

"Rotation", as Nicolas already answered, refers to that point in a takeoff roll where the pilot pulls back on the yoke and lifts the nosewheel off the ground, increasing the AOA and (almost immediately thereafter) becomes airborne. Naturally it can only be done when the airplane reaches the appropriate speed, and must be controlled so the tail of the plane does not impact the runway (as happened in the Tenerife disaster).

[Tog]

Tog,

I'm astonished by the level of detail you can describe from that
dream, or at least by the degree that you expect it to match
reality. I see lots and lots of details in my dreams which very
much impress me at the time, but when I wake up I realize that
they were all wrong.

That's the thing. The last dream I can recall clearly was about 4 years ago. It took place in Wendover, Nevada, but the entire town wasn't right. I realized that when I woke up. The freeway was wrong, the casinos were wrong. The huge three house estate with the manicured lawns were most definitely wrong. Still, when I woke up, I knew it was Wendover even though nothing matched.

This one about the plane everything was right. The parking lot where I was standing, the buildings nearby, the place the plane actually crashed were all places I could find pretty easily. I doubt all the junk cars around the farmhouse where the crash happened are as they were in the dream, but the canal was there. It was at that point that the it too a sharp left into dream land, and things were much different. It's the very fact that the first half was so accurate after I woke up that interests me. I've never had one that had so much really "line up" like this.

Nicholas--In the dreams I do recall, there are often strangers with fully rendered faces. There was guy in this one that I can't say was anyone I've ever met, and he had a French accent, or maybe Belgian. I doubt I could tell the difference. He didn't even have a big role in the dream, just someone that was going to the airport.

[Nicolas]

Drop the h and your PM's will end up at the right person's inbox

I believe you when you say that you can have non-existing persons with face details in a dream. I can't as far as I know, but I would have been amazed if anyone had the same specifics regarding dreams, so I think it's only natural there are these differences. And then there's of course the intermediate situation of a face in your dream being used that you don't recognize, but in fact is a face you saw on the bus recently or things like that.

[Tog]

Drop the h and your PM's will end up at the right person's inbox

Oops, sorry about that. Silly mistake.

[Nicolas]

Before coming to this board, I didn't know that in some other parts of the world "Nicholas" was the common way to write it. The only US Nicolas/Nicholas I knew was Nicolas Cage sans h. I decided to use Nicolas as nickname because I thought people would have no problems writing it correctly, compared to my other names, which are written differently in the US. Did I know... .

[farmerjumperdon]

Caught the show last night (history channel I think) on the 191 crash. What a pity, and shame on the airline for the attempted cover-up.

In the ground level footage you could definitely see plane parts, but in the aerial shots it just looked like a big burned skid mark.

[Maksutov]

[quote=Donnie B.;857941]Wow, I'd forgotten that the Sioux City crash was a DC-10. I would have sworn it was a much smaller plane. Darn senior moments.['quote]What a heroic effort by the pilot, copilot, and the DC-10 engineer who came up from the passnger cabin to help. I wonder if that would allowed today?

"Rotation", as Nicolas already answered, refers to that point in a takeoff roll where the pilot pulls back on the yoke and lifts the nosewheel off the ground, increasing the AOA and (almost immediately thereafter) becomes airborne. Naturally it can only be done when the airplane reaches the appropriate speed, and must be controlled so the tail of the plane does not impact the runway (as happened in the Tenerife disaster).

Tenerife was the result of a hot-shot KLM pilot too anxious to get in the air plus communication problems that were probably multi-language-related. You are probably thinking of JAL 123 where the 747 had hit its tail previously, damaged its rear bulkhead, and was repaired per a poorly-designed, cut-the-corners procedure.
This accident resulted in 520 deaths, the worst single plane loss so far. In addition there were later a number of suicides by JAL employees and a Boeing employee.

[Maksutov]

[edit]Maksutov,

What was wrong with how the engine was attached?

Improper maintenance procedure, completely unauthorized, but a time-saver. Ever run into any of those at a company? I have. I've seen people killed and maimed on account of them, although not as many as Flight 191. So as not to be redundant, check the detailed descriptions that follow your post, especially Larry Jacks and Nicolas (the "h" is invisible). Plus various air safety watchdogs have detailed descriptions online.

Although the image is lousy quality, I like the subject of your
new avatar picture. It may be what got me interested in Space
when I saw it on TV at the age of four. My mom says there
was a series of programs about stars, and I was fascinated
by it. I think it was the Disney programs. A few years later
I got to see it in color (!) when it was shown as the weekly
film in elementary school.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Yes, that's the von Braun proto-Saturn booster lifting off from a Pacific island with the first men in space in the return shuttle. Here's what the original looks like. One can only maintain a certain level of detail when reducing such a shot down from 720 X 480 to 80 X 80 pixels.

It's a screen capture of a still from the Walt Disney Treasures Tomorrowland DVD set. It was a limited edition; I got #59412 out 105000 manufactured.

The show was "Man in Space" and was first broadcast in 1955. It made quite an impression on me too. One thing I noticed in retrospect was all the embryonic ideas presented that later became reality. The avatar photo is a case in point. The first stage ignites, but is held down until full thrust is developed. Only then do the hold-downs release and off we go. Sounds familiar?

[Nicolas]

What a heroic effort by the pilot, copilot, and the DC-10 engineer who came up from the passnger cabin to help. I wonder if that would allowed today?

I think it is. I think a (professional) pilot also still needs to let the aircraft personell take notice of his profession when taking a flight. That doesn't count for aerospace engineers though. If they'd need somebody like me in a cockpit to save the day, the aircraft is in really deep trouble.

[Eta C]

The third person who came into the cockpit and helped control UA 232 was not an engineer. He was a DC-10 check pilot and flight instructor for United named Dennis Fitch. He was deadheading on the flight (that is, an airline employee travelling for free in an otherwise unused seat). As a DC-10 flight instructor, Fitch was intimately familiar with the aircraft and was an immense help in maintaining control almost to the point of touchdown. He survived the crash and is currently a safety consultant to NASA and a member of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

[Larry Jacks]

The entire crew of UA 232 did an incredible job and Dennis Fitch, though not a member of the crew that day, provided invaluable assistance. IIRC, he operated the throttles (the only means of control that day). I read accounts that the plane's rudder was about 10 degrees off center due to the explosion and all hydraulics were out (meaning no flaps, probably no brakes, no aileron control to speak of, and the landing gear had to be lowered manually).

After the crash, they programmed the conditions into flight simulators. None of the crews or test pilots could get the plane anywhere near an airport before crashing, much less almost make a successful landing like UA 232 did. They lost control at the last moment before landing. A lot of people died in that fiery crash but over 100 people survived. None of them would've lived had it not been for the heroic actions of that flight crew and Capt. Fitch. That was a tremendous piece of airmanship.

[Nicolas]

And no evelons.

Dennis Fitch had practiced this kind of throttle flying in simulators, because he -unlike many people who believed no human could ever control a plane to more or less safe landing using only throttles, supported by crashes happening that way- thought it was possible to steer a plane that way and hence it could be handy one day, as it was the only redundancy for the control surfaces. Pretty bad redundant system, but better than nothing. After some practice, he could do it in simulators. After some more adaptation to the particular airframe and damage, and thanks to the excellent data flow from the other pilots (he couldn't look at everything he wanted while controlling the throttles, indeed he saw little but the throttles), he could also do it with the DC-10. Due to the damage the plane was quite uncontrollable, and became worse at low speeds. They approached using only right hand turns (or was it left hand) due to the rudder issue, and landed on another runway than the one assigned (apart from that runway being smaller, the fact that they made it to a runway was far more important than its number ). During approach, the pilots asked ATC to give them a flight path (with right handed turns ) towards a nice runway, and clearly stated that they should keep them away from the city at all costs.

They only did their job, and they worked on saving themselves as well, but I believe that they truly deserved their medals. They should be seen as an award for their amazing skills, not as a blame to other pilots who crashed a plane losing hydraulics. First, no 2 mishaps are comparable, second this situation is so hard to control that you can't expect any pilot managing to do that, third normally pilots aren't trained for it, fourth the mistake is not with the pilot but with the failing plane.

Let's not forget this accident still cost many lives, but the pilot crew skills also saved many lives. And ruined an innocent runway . The landing gear made huge craters, because the vertical speed was a lot higher than during normal landings. Again not to worry, the pilots couldn't believe they got an airport in sight, and next more or less alligned with a runway. On a normal day you end up in the ocean when this happens to your plane!


(all this from memory, so correct me when I'm wrong).

I wonder when we will see neural network software that can learn to control a damaged airframe on the fly (within limits of physics of course) so this kind of terrible mishaps becomes far more survivable. Imagine that software as the best Dennis Fitch in the world at the throttle controls, and the real pilots commanding the maneuvres the way they're used to do it: through stick control. Tests we've done here are very promising, though it requires heavy computing power to do the learning process fast enough to be useful during flight. You can't do this beforehand, as this software is aimed at unforreseen performance due to damage. IIRC they used this technique to let the B2 fly with its strange control surfaces. In that case, you can do the learning process over a long time during simulations, as it is the nominal, foreseen flight performance that needs to be taught. So in fact, without looking at the gains of the neural network steering program, nobody fully knows which control surface of the B2 is used for what. The right answer is that almost any surface is used for all maneuvres. Not very surprising, giving their orientation.

[Larry Jacks]

Back in the 1980s, there was a mid-air collision between an Israeli F-15 and another plane during dog-fight practice. The young F-15 pilot managed to land his plane despite the severe damage (and the pleading of the instructor pilot in back to eject!). Only when he was on the ground did he find that virtually all of his right wing was gone. It is an amazing story, as recounted here.

After that accident, the Air Force began a project to see if it would be possible to develop a fast learning flight control system that could adapt to combat damage or control malfunctions. The goal was to have the system examine the damage, determine which control surfaces were still functional, and have those controls automatically mapped to the pilot controls. The pilot would continue to use the controls normally and the flight control system would make the necessary adaptations.

I don't know how far the Air Force got with the program. It was published for several years as an ongoing research project in "Air Force" magazine. It's possible the project was canned. It's also possible that the technology was incorporated into newer production planes like the F-22. I honestly don't know. It would be very useful for airliners with fly-by-wire (or light) systems as well. However, the enormous difficulty at achieving such a rapidly learning system (and the legal liability) might keep it out of service.

[PhantomWolf]

They lost control at the last moment before landing.

You have to feel for them really. After all that hard work, with only a few metres to go, it all went to pack and they lost the plane. Had the wing not dipped and they wheels touched first they would have saved the plane and the lives of those that died. An incredible job by them to deal with it as they did, just heartbreaking for them to have lost it right at the end. The entire Crew survived the crash, though the cockpit separated from the plane and it took a while to get to them.

[Donnie B.]

Tenerife was the result of a hot-shot KLM pilot too anxious to get in the air plus communication problems that were probably multi-language-related.

Yes. But when he saw the other 747 on the runway he tried to rotate early, attempting to get the plane in the air before the collision. He did it so frantically that the tail struck the runway and scraped along (they found the marks). This demonstartes that it's possible to overrotate, which was the point I was trying to make.