it’s a rough ride aboard a 737 on descent to New Orleans we are getting
tumbled around pretty good A violent thunderstorm has caught the pilots off guard mayday mayday T 110 we are in the
middle of a storm we’re talking about the equivalent of an atomic bomb going off everything went black all the alarms
start sounding in the carpet we lost an engine both engines
with no thrust the Lane won’t get far I don’t think I will make it I don’t have
any power on the engines 38 passengers suddenly face a terrifying Prospect they will crash in minutes look
that’s where we’re going to go in you got it my friend okay unless the crew of tacka flight 110 can perform one of the
greatest Feats in the history of commercial Aviation all right
made it made
[Music]
it a brand new Boeing 737 is making its way through heavy thunderstorms and hail
30,000 ft above the Gulf of Mexico
taka Airlines is a small family-owned operation based in El
Salvador taka flight 110 left Biz City less than 2 hours ago Bound for New
Orleans among the 38 pass passers gracias no one is more eager to arrive
in the US than Lee Burmeister I’ve been down to coer for
about a month and um my appendix ruptured and had surgery in a small
little village it was a scary time I was really ready to get
home the heavy weather the crew is now coping with is a big change from earlier
in the flight I remember that it was a very sunny day when we left Biz everything
was going well it was just like that it it was
pretty and then all of a sudden it was the blackest Sky I’ve ever seen in the afternoon they’re flying over the Gulf
of Mexico in May at this time of year the weather is unpredictable violent storms can form in
a matter of minutes thunderstorms have all types of Hazards in them from the The Heavy Rain hail
uh lightning micr burst wind shear severe icing we’re talking about the
equivalent of an atomic bomb going walk a tremendous amount of
energy to avoid dangerous storms the crew tracks the weather with onboard
radar but the technology has limitations Airborne weather radar
typically uh operates in an xand which is a a certain wavelength and
has limited power as a matter of fact hail is not picked up on Airborne radar so we will
sometimes get hail blowing off a storm and yet it’ll only show up as green or yellow in front of us on the weather
radar not as the heart of a red thunderstorm and and unfortunately this is one of the reasons we have to try to
stay as far away from thunderstorms as we can Captain Carlos dardo was born to fly
at just 29 he is the third generation in a family of Pilots anti ice

Captain Dardano’s Harrowing Past

on since I was a little child I remember that I was dreaming on being a pilot and
being around airplanes all the time Captain dardo has had to overcome
tremendous obstacles to earn his wings 6 years earlier in 1982 he was flying for
a small general aviation company I was doing a little air taxi business around the country
El Salvador was consumed by a Civil War and dardo found himself caught in the
crossfire had a little Grass wrongway Airport I was shot by gorillas in the
face badly wounded he managed to fly his passengers to safety we just take off and I stayed
really low between priest and I flew 20 minutes back to the main airport the
brush with death cost him his left eye I was shut over here the bullet went
through but dardo did not give up on his dream despite his impaired Vision he
went on to become a certified commercial pilot T 110 Runway 28 Final Approach
course continue inbound descended pilot supression maintain 4,000 thank you sir T 110
4,000 first officer dionio Lopez has more than 12,000 flight hours he and
dardo have know together many times Captain Arturo SLE is a flight
instructor with taker Airlines he’s on board today to observe the performance of this new
plane a 737 300 series The Jet was delivered to taker Airlines just 2 weeks
ago this hill is going to scratch the paint we were really worried about the
pain coming off the airplane because this is a brand new airplane in the company the 300 is the latest in the
world’s most successful line of twin engine passenger Jets it’s more aerodynamic than its
predecessor it also features a new state-of-the-art engine
design when you pick up a new jetliner worth millions and millions and fly at
home with a brand new paint job and everything is nice and new it is not just a thrill for the crew it’s a thrill for the airl L too especially a smaller

Boeing 737-300 Faces Gulf Storm

one like taka this was a big big deal 50 km from the New Orleans airport the
plane begins its final descent it feel like you hit a wall
there was severe turbulence in the carpet with a lot of uh noise with ice
hitting the
airplane give us all awful lots of lots of lightning and the the plane was having a pretty rough trip we were we
were getting tumbled around pretty
good as ofly attendants to take their seats attendant please take your
seats suddenly less than 177,000 ft from the ground the flight becomes all the
more terrible terrifying it was very strange because it had never happened to me before the
lights had never gone off during turbulence everything went black all the
alarms start sounding in the CET all the instruments went
out so I hit throttles a couple of times trying to just go to Basics control the
airplane there lost power on the engines then I find out that we didn’t have any
power I’ve got nothing the plane has enough speed to Glide but not for long
it will rapidly lose altitude as it does no power also means no electricity for
all of the onboard systems in the New Orleans control tower flight 110 disappears from radar taka
110 approach say altitude T 110 this is New Orleans
approach control how do you hear without power communication with the plane is now
impossible it’s really quiet there aren’t any engine
sounds there aren’t any lights it feels like you’re in a dark
room without any power

Engines Flame Out Mid-Air

in less than a minute the 737 drops almost 1,000 ft it continues to
fall we are dropping at 1,500 ft per minute and without power there is no way
to restart the engines well we knew we didn’t have much time to try to find out where to land or
what kind of emergency landing we’re going to have or that we’re going to have the engine started again
the altimeter and attitude indicator have backup battery power nothing else
is working the a
started the Apu or auxiliary power unit is a backup generator that provides
emergency power to vital systems but starting it takes time
and with each passing second taker flight 110 Falls closer and closer to
the water
below it was very quiet you could hear the hail hitting the
plane I was thinking that this was this was it that it’s going down and and this
is this is my last day
buers watch the gauges without power to the engines the
state-ofthe-art jetliner has become a 43 ton glider we were wondering if we can
get the Apu going really fast you know you’re gliding down in middle of thunderstorm trying to to get the power
going
ifuse up and
running when the lights came back on I was relieved I thought it was something temporary no big
deal the Apu is now providing emergency power to the plane
systems but the engines are still not running to fire up the powerful turbo
fan engines the crew must follow the procedure for a complete engine restart pass to idle a few L
off the Apu can generate the power to restart the engines but it takes
time it takes like 30 seconds or so but it feels like your
life for on my day to New Orleans get us out of this storm and to our Runway may
they may they tuer 110 we uh we are in the middle of the storm sir we need vectors to the runway now sir we lost an

Desperate Glide Without Power

engine both engines both engines sir both engines understand both engines T 11
Roger the controller knows he needs to get the plane on the ground as soon as possible even if it means sending it to
another airport t a 110 Roger turn left heading
280 vectors to Navy calendar Runway 22 flight 110 is still 32 km from New
Orleans the stricken plane has a better chance of landing at a US Naval Base 27
km away but the plane will not make it to any airport unless the crew gets the
engine started 39 30
hit only 5,000 ft from the ground the left engine ignites
okay good job start working on the other
one the plane can fly with only one engine but both engines would be safer
especially in bad weather request a vector back to New Orleans okay we have one engine back on
request vectors to New Orleans problem uh t a 110 wico fly heading to ner0 Vector around the
thunderstorms to your right meanwhile Captain Cay is taking the steps to fire up the second
engine here comes the other one and here comes the other
one speed all right and you got both of them with both
engines back it appears the crisis is over okay sir we have both engines back
now we really appreciate what you’ve done for us we are going to go down to 3
1 0 for the engines to come back on it really didn’t make anybody feel that
much better we are still in a
mess look I don’t feel any power why don’t I feel any
power something’s wrong the engines appear to be running but they’re not providing any thrust
sucker is not stared then the gauges show that the engines are
overheating they’re burning up from the inside the risk of a catastrophic engine
fire now leaves dardo no choice he must do something no pilot
would ever want to do shut down both engines for
good once again the play plane is without power and falling

Search for Emergency Landing Spot

fast we knew that we don’t have any possibility to restart the engines and
then we have to start looking for some place to land the plane is quickly closing in on 3,000 ft at the rate it’s
dropping it won’t make it to New Orleans okay where do I put this thing down visibility begins to improve when the
plane breaks through the storm clouds but it’s still raining and dardo has
less than 3 to find a place to land I was seeing just swampy land land all
over the place New Orleans is surrounded by canals and lakes the city is protected
by a system of levies man-made barriers designed to prevent flooding it’s no
place to try to land a 737 we uh we don’t have power on the
engines tack 110 I’m going to Vector you to Lakefront Airport you’re only 11 M from Lakefront I don’t think I will make
it I don’t have any power in the engines I guess we’ll have to go down we’re
going to declare an emergency we’re going to have to decide where to put this thing Taco 110 do you have visual
reference to the ground at this time yes sir Tacko 110 there is an
interstate highway directly ahead of you at 12:00 and 7 miles let see what it is
landing on a highway may be Doo’s only option it was probably a possibility but
you always know that the free ways are full of cars said no way I going to try to land
in the highway because we’ll kill many more people so that was not our option
really 11 years earlier a southern Airways flight facing a similar emergency was forced to land on a
Highway in Georgia the crash landing killed nine
people on the ground and 63 people on board the plane
I don’t think we’re going to be able to make it there you’re 6 miles away from Lakefront Airport can you make it there no sir
we’re at 2,000 ft and losing altitude the crew only has one option left I
guess I’m going to have to make a ditching here sir they must take their chances and put the plane down on the water tack a 110 Roger whatever you need
to do sir and that was about the last communication with the tower then we
were like uh 1,500 ft when that was going
on this is New Orleans Tower we have an inbound 737 probable ditching 45 Souls
on board the Coast Guard is immediately
deployed dardo plans to put the plane down in the canal directly ahead of
him okay there put it down softly
it was kind of the the feeling of everyone on the plane that we weren’t going to get out of
this it was a doomsday kind of feeling and that’s this was
it excuse me what’s
going the steward’s body language I didn’t even have to understand what they were saying you could just see them in
distress the 737 can only stay in the air for another minute as dardo looks for a safe stretch
of canal to drop the plane in another option appears look look at that one
over there and then Lopez so the levy parallel to the canal that we were
making the approach on we put it that on the grass yes boss the levy is much
shorter and narrower than a Runway but it looks safer than the water
that’s where we’re going to go in you got it my friend they will have to act

Miracle Dead Stick Landing

fast to get there prer to
C you don’t even have time to think about being scared so I can’t say I was
scared we had to start preparing the
cabin I had to assume crash position and it was really difficult for me because
um I had just had surgery you kidding me and I had stitches going up the middle
of my stomach stitches operation passengers only have seconds
to prepare the passengers had to take off
their shoes their jewelry they had to put their shoes under the seat in front of them so we went through the whole
emergency
checklist air traffic control can no longer pick up the low flying 737 on
radar the controller asks other planes to look for it 6 tequilo Alpha if you
could check your East just slightly to the sou 3 to 4 miles we lost an aircraft down there 737 if you could let me know
what you see Roger Kil Al the six I’ll see what I can
[Music] do I felt scared when I got back to my
seat that’s the moment when I really got
scared okay with the gear
down all right but Captain dardo is still flying towards the water well the
levy was parallel to my right to have any hope of landing on the levy he needs to make a sudden and dramatic course
correction that requires a risky maneuver known as a s slip so we just
had to do a little bit side slip to get into position to to make a perfect Landing it’s a move meant for small
planes and gliders not a 43 ton Boe 737 but it’s a risk he has to
take I prayed I was in disbelief that this was happening
only 700 ft separate the plane from the ground without engines the pilots have
no thrust reverses to slow the plane when it touches down dardo has an additional challenge with only one eye
he’s unable to gauge depth as he speeds towards the narrow rain soaked strip of grass oh God oh God I was prepared for
the plane to blow up and explode I was prepared for a tragic event and mentally
had said goodbye to my family this is it there’s a high cement
wall in front of the levy and a steep embankment on the left there may not be
enough room to land out for doing on that side I see
it come on I’ll keep the thingle awayy keep the
thing
we T down with one wheel and the other one was it a hard laning yes if the seat
belt snapped we would have flown through the plane for sure on the Soggy grass the plane is in danger of skidding off
the levy into the water I was trying just to control the
airplane not to to hit the brakes and not to lose the airplane at the last minute you know the spoilers were out so
we were just just thinking okay we make it we make it we make
it very good very good very good Char very my it
was surprise it was a hard Landing but
um but it was a nice it was a nice landing um just to be
alive The Landing was spectacular the plane landed so smoothly there wasn’t
even a bit of turbulence A Perfect
Landing that was uh I think the most beautiful Landing that ever
made when I looked out my window there was no fire so I immediately opened the door and deployed the
[Music] slide they told us to get off the plane
that that the plane was going to blow [Music] up the New Orleans controller has no
idea what has become of Tacker flight 110 another aircraft relays the news to
the tower k alp to six everything looks okay looks like he did a pretty good job
I made it you’re not going to believe where they
[Music] are for the first time in history a 737
without any engines has landed safely outside of an airport now investigators must find out why the

Investigation Begins at NASA

sophisticated engines on a brand new jetliner failed in
mid-flight Pilots call this a dead stick Landing a landing with no engines as it
turns out taka 110 has landed on NASA property this is the Mishu facility
where they manufacture parts for the space shuttle
the evacuation was quick we got out of the plane quickly we slid down those
shoots I got to the top of the levy and there were some nurses that were on the plane and they looked at my stitches and
everything no major injuries just one person that has had an operation but she’s okay you headed New Orleans and
soon after an ambulance came put me a stretcher and and took me to the
hospital we have to thank gu that’s right that’s right yes and our captain
because he kept the
C now that’s not something you see every day within hours of the emergency in
investigators arrive and begin examining the damaged plane to end up with a jetliner sitting
on a levy having landed there being perfectly intact uh is almost an unbelievable site it’s beyond
incredible there a couple of questions for you but first thing I’d like to say is nice
landing so tell me when did the engine trouble start investigators meet with the crew right away they want to know
exactly what was happening happening when the engines flamed out we were descending through 165 when both our
engines flam out at the same time that both of them coming apart at the same time is an infinitesimal possibility
this plane was powered by one of the most advanced and widely used jet engines on Earth the
cfm56 it Powers not only the Boeing 737 but airb and military planes as well the
cfm56 is just a Marvel of current engineering aeronautic there thousands and thousands of them out there and they
almost never ever fail but two CFM 56s had failed on this one plane
alone investigators desperately need to know why I haven’t flown through too
many storms that intense they turn their attention to the weather conditions it’s considered a
very rare occurrence for engines to have flamed out in
flight and uh therefore the con concentration was on what possibility
would cause this is there an environmental effect since they were flying through rain and
hail tell me about the storm the winds were Fierce there was so much rain and
hail we could barely see Al window dense in the fuselage revealed
that the plane was struck by hail almost an inch in diameter if the hail was strong enough
to damage the exterior of the plane investigators wonder if it crippled the engines as
well a turbo fan engine is made up of a system of fans and Blades a large fan
brings air into the engine a series of blades compresses the incoming air which
mixes with fuel to ignite spinning the turbines deep inside the engine the first thing you look for is
to find the parts and then look in the front and the back of the engine to determine if there’s
damage that might explain something has gone in the engine or something has broken inside the
engine to appearer inside the engine they use a boroscope this is where you put the
little TV camera on the end of that scope of some sort you can look in the internal hot section of the engine and
see what they could see no hell damage to the compressor that I can see
keep going deeper let’s see what’s at the center but the turbines deep inside the
engine are charred this turbines are almost completely
melted when the engine uh overheats uh if the overheat is allowed
to occur long enough then it will cause melting of the
turbine blades so when did you get the temperature warning the engines started
to overheat right after we started them and the damage to the turbine which
is the melting of the blades means that you can no longer produce Thrust out of
that engine the charred turbines do not explain why the engine stopped working
in the first place for some reason flight 110s
engines had quit started and only then burned
up but before the search for answers can continue investigators are confronted
with another problem the plane is starting to
sink it can’t stay here much longer maybe NASA has some ideas the levy was never meant to
support 43,000 kg a jetliner has an awful lot of weight on
a very small footprint you leave a plane there for 2 or 3 days you may have it mired up to its subc
caps there was barely enough room to land the plane on the levy getting the plane off of it could be even more
challenging you’ve got really three ways to get this airplane out of there one is to fly it out secondly to disassemble it
or third put it on a barge but it’s not as easy as it sounds
disassembling the plane could cause more damage do you think we can fly it
off the decision is made they’ll attempt to take off and fly the plane to New
Orleans the very first problem of getting the airplane ready to fly was getting the engines to the point of reliability which meant they had to
replace the right engine it was just cooked it was it was too far gone left engine was probably going to need to be
overhauled but they could fly it out with that after replacing the right engine
they bring in test pilots to get the plane off the ground and to the airport 24 km away in New
Orleans it’s a it’s a good safe operation that we’re that we’re doing here today but we can accelerate up
to virtually to takeoff speed and then if we decided to stop why we could stop
the airplane with no passengers and very
little fuel to weigh the plane down it reaches takeoff speed in just 365 M the
investigation at the emergency landing site comes to a dramatic end in most scenarios in which an
airplane comes down in the wrong place but is still intact you probably never get it out that way this just happened
to be amazing luck hey guys investigators must now try to
figure out why the engines failed in mid-flight if rain caused them to shut
down thousands of other planes are at risk this was an incredible situation

Hailstorm Causes Engine Failure

because these engines are just too reliable that they go through a thunderstorm well that’s not supposed to do it so what
happened the cfm56 engines are designed to withstand a heavy
rainstorm most water is diverted away from the core while in Flight whatever
makes it inside should evaporate or drain from the engine the engines were sent back to the
GE test facil faity in Ohio where they have the Test Facilities that can
recreate water ingestion testing if some hidden design floor
caused the engines to fail investigators need to find it they hope water
ingestion testing can provide some answers once they got these engines in the shop and started testing them the
very first thing was to go to the FAA standard the way FAA had tested them in the past and what have been approved
okay let’s see what they can handle you basically uh spray water from
nozzles into the inlet of the engine and the amount of water you adjust in
percentage to the amount of air to simulate flight conditions despite
rigorous water testing the engine does not flame out like we thought wasn’t the
rain nothing went wrong the engine continued to run so obviously something else should happen so they needed to
examine this in much more detail was there something more severe about the
weather we lost an engine both engines both engines [Music]
sir investigators study all available data on the storm that somehow brought
down tflight 110 that was more than a thunderstorm it
was a hail storm in the case of the uh t uh we had uh basically a a frontal
system to the north some very strong winds in a vertical producing several
hail events and in the southern latitudes you don’t typically see too many hail storms so it was
abnormal the engines are designed to ingest water but investigators are
unsure if hail acts differently from water inside the engine
they never thought about hail getting into the core hail is only created in a thunderstorm it basically starts as a
raindrop it goes up above the freezing level freezes becomes a piece of ice
then as it gets heavier drops back down below the freezing level coats another
layer of water around it and gets back into the updraft again brought the higher altitudes and refreezes so hail
is multiple layers of ice that forms on a particle
investigators learned that the engines were designed to withstand the impact from hailstones of a certain size the
FAA standards called for a mixture of hail sizes of 1 in and 2in diameter
balls some of the hail Tacker 110 encountered was smaller than
that those smaller pieces of hail could make their way through the fan and compressor blades accumulating deep
inside the engine where they would melt hail was considered to not be a
factor in the center core but if it had been what would it look like investigators calculate the amount
of hail that could have entered the engine core they then estimate the volume of water the melting ice would
have produced that’s substantially more water investigators want to know if this
excess water overwhelmed the engines and caused the failure okay let’s try more water and
see what happens they perform another water ingestion test this time adding even
more water to account for the hail inside the engines so if they used enough water to emulate that maybe they
could make it fail well they tried using a high speed on the
engine and still it wouldn’t fail
okay what are we missing or were there’s something unique about the engine operation itself that that might have
contributed to the engine losing power engine performance figures from
the flight data recorder give investigators a new [Music]
lead just before the flame out H power is down to 35%
tack 110 Runway 28 Final Approach course continue inbound descended pilot supression maintain
4,000 thank you sir T 41
4,000 they just started their descent thank you sir T 110
4,000 as the plane began its Final Approach to New Orleans the engines automatically reduced power to slow down
for their descent at a lower pass power setting the engines may not have been able to handle as much
water we’ve been testing everything in accordance with the normal FAA methodologies at high speed on the
engines but these guys were indecent to new orlans they repeat the test this time
with less power to the engines so we want to see what happens when we add the same amount of water but with the
engines powered down to 35% okay
the big aha moment was when they realized that it was the speed of the engine that was managing to get the
engine through the ingestion of as much water as they could throw at it and presumably as much hail but when the
engine went down to idle that’s when they managed to find the key that’s when the engine couldn’t handle
it well now we know what happened bad timing and that test gave a
completely different result investigators have discovered why the engines flamed out it showed something
that no one understood at the time because in all the testing and all the logic that had gone into it they hadn’t
taken into account the slow speeds on the engine on descent at the lower
speeds uh the hail having a significant velocity in momentum can actually see an
opening between the fan blades and it’s able to get through the fan blades and
directly into the core the engines filled with hail and water and flamed
out for investigators only one mystery remains look don’t feel any power what
went wrong after the Tacker crew restarted their engines the sucker is not started why did they overheat and
fail when the engines on the 737 flamed out the crew knew they had to act fast
we’ve lost power on the engines to have any hope of restoring engine power they first needed to get the Apu running get
the Apu started since the engines were no longer spinning they had stopped ingesting air and water but a success
restart was far from guaranteed if you do not have all the proper conditions
you can get what’s called a hot start which means that you have too much fuel for the amount of air going into it and
the flame will now migrate into the turbine where it could overheat
it after studying the engine data from the flight recorder investigators
conclude that the overheating and ultimate failure of the engines was in fact due to a hot start
may they may they T 110 we lost an engine both engines both engines sir both engines with his engines flooded
with fuel and no time to properly drain them dardo hit the ignition
switch if it didn’t get all the timing correctly then this is what’s going to
happen you’re going to get a hot start I can’t be critical of a pilot in that condition that aircraft is coming down
rain and hail from an intense storm crippled a modern passenger jet and

Lessons Learned, Legacy Secured

nearly led to disaster investigators must find a way to make sure it never happens
again one of the beauties of Aviation and Aviation safety is when we find there’s a problem everybody works
together to solve it and in this case the problem indicated a need for an engine change not not a complete design
overhaul but just a few tweaks but that was done almost immediately much to the credit of everybody involved
[Music] the shape of the engine nose cone and the spacing of the fan blades are
modified in order to better deflect hail away from the core also additional bleed
doors are added to drain more water from the engine that sort of thing hasn’t
happened again and there are thousands and thousands of these engines flying every day for hours and hours and hours
within a year of the incident 737 300s around the world are retrofitted with
the upgrades the plane involved in the daring Landing is back in service within a
month look look at that one over there that’s where we’re going to go in you
got it my friend the crew’s actions on flight 110 are legendary in the aviation
world the decision making at the very end when they were going to put it in the canal and saw an opportunity to put
it on dry ground and did so that was superlative it was the decision Mak investigators credit the calm nerves and
determination of Captain dardo watch out for doing on that side I see it for avoiding what could have been a fatal
disaster Captain Carlos dardo is dubbed a hero in the media passengers that day
were overjoyed dardo and his crew kept the
calm and because of that 45 people who rode that plane are alive
today today the dardo family tradition continues Carlos’s son and daughter have
followed in their Father’s Footsteps both becoming [Music]
Pilots at the beginning I was met when I was chot I lost part of my vision and then I
had this accident that everything went
well and 20 years later I have a career and have a good life and life is for a
reason a reason is for life [Music]