This thing was fully loaded with fuel, maxed out to capacity, couldn't get altitude, and this guy managed to LAND it without exploding?! I mean sure, 'crash', but in my book, if you don't blow up, you landed. I just... These stories never end like that. That's so cool. What an incredible feat!
I remember when this happened the media were blaming Omega for lack of maintenance on all their aircraft, but in reality it was the previous owner that lied about replacing the part. The Omega Captain saved the crews lives by putting the plane back on the ground instead of trying to force it to fly.
Preach. Had the captain not put it back on the ground there’s a good chance that they would have ended up in the pacific. I don’t think they were capable of a right turn so that would mean a wide left turn over the ocean to line up with the runway again. And with engine one producing that much drag I don’t think they could have stayed aloft for much longer. The captain definitely saved the day there
@@walterrudich2175 yes and no. it all depends on what Boeing's maintenance requirements were for the part. as a commercial jet it might of been required to check every year but since it was no longer being used for commercial flights and the plane was probably doing 1/10th of the flight hours it otherwise would of been that time between checks may of been much longer.
@@sirmonkey1985 Corrosion has no direct relationship with "commercial" vs "nom-commercial use or flight hours. It can be even worse when parked outside in the rain or coastal breeze. Reducing inspections reduces expenses, not risk.
I'm a B707 flight engineer and A&P. The #2 thrust lever did not "automatically" go to idle. When the # engine separated the cables pulled the thrust lever to idle. That was a random movement due to the random effect of engine separation. There is no Automatic thrust lever on that aircraft. This is not the first time this type of separation occurred on the 707. There have been several inflight failures of this kind on older 707s. In most of these accidents the crew was able to land the aircraft with both engines separated from the wing. Testament to the durability of the 707 and the crews that operated those flights.
G'day, I never heard of any Private Aerial Refuellers since Sir Alan Cobham went out of Business in the 1950s... Live and learn... Such is life, Have a good one. Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !
It's what happens when you futz around forever with contracts for replacement tankers. Military runs short of tankers, and ambitious private sector guys (with a lot of bucks) step in and fill the gap (and earn back the bucks they spent and more.) Yeah, I bet the do keep a low profile since as Timothy Foley said "They show up on the ADS-B radar but their customers do not." Stealth doesn't work if you're hanging around with a big radar reflector.
Very true. Makes me wonder if AI and machine learning would ever make the same decision the captain did in a fully automated environment. V1 is not always a binary decision.
I would agree to disagree. Knowing when to choose a different option is the sign of a great experience later. He didn't quit just the same that Captain Scully didn't quit. They knew they had to choose a different option.
In the film Starman an alien copied to learn. The woman put her foot down on an amber light. Later in film when he's driving they nearly get wiped out as he accelerates on amber. When she asks why He says. "Green go, Red stop, amber go faster..
Fascinating incident, and it's always nice to hear of a pilot's snap decision based on years of training and experience being the factor that saves everyone. Also I love how you get into the technical causes and make a solid attempt to explain the tech to us.
The 707 was designed and built with all 4 engines mounted using "sheer" bolts. Remember the Pan Am 707 training flight out of Paris wherein 3 of the 4 engines sheared off but the acft landed on one engine ?
But just like with car or any other vehicle, if you have enough experience you would feel how wrong things were and those pilots were seasoned experts. I have no doubt in my mind they havent had engine fault in 4 engine plane in their career, well as trained that in simulator, hence they would know what it feels like to loose one engine and with that much pull on one side they would also know it was not just one engine and that plane would be impossible to fly in such configuration. This is why you train before hand. On cars some call it playing with cars and complain about it, but i see it as training for unexpected situations like curve road has clear ice surface that had snow fell on it, car started to understeer towards snow bankment and would been out of the road unless i had known how the fwd manual vehicle, with its characteristics like weight, balance points and axle space behaves in situation like that. Little bit handbrake to get rear end out so front gets more traction, down shift to increase torque from cruise to pull, increasing amount of throttle, steer to direction you want to go and pull depending on how steep curve it is towards inner corner, minding on the end not to over compensate and have returning intertia of the rear end throwing rear towards opposite side, unless there is steep curve into another direction and you have too much speed, also minding that there is no other road users since this should be only attempted on ether empty road or outer curve so you dont slam your rear into side on opposite lane putting them into danger. There was just one problem with this... i had learned to do this in manual car... one i was driving was automatic so no down sifting and despite this everything was going all ok, until in the middle point revs were in 4K and transmission decided hey lets chance bigger gear... torque dropped like a rock and slided on the bankment sideways. Thankfully that only required some shoveling and annoyance, but it was educational and saved collision decade later when mofo come towards me in a corner middle of the road and i had to move to road side to avoid collision.... but icy tracks kicked rear out violently, putting me into drift and since car is longer than its wide it meant pulling towards inner corner so my rear wont hit them. Got past the fucker and realized car is over 45 degrees angled to road and that point you cant really correct and straighten when bumper was already scraping the snow bankment, so just locked brakes to put the car intentionally into 4 wheel slide and rode those ice covered areas between wheel tracks towards end. It would been perfect move.. with out little area of snow that was not cleaned few days prior so front end hit that and broke fog lights and bumper in process... yeah i wasent happy, but with out those skills and experience i'm sure i would have crashed way worse.. normal German station vagon versus new SUV... so yeah i'm clearly looser in that. Same way its with planes and other equipment and that comes from muzzle memory automatically and your brain concentrates to unfamiliar stuff while your body moves already to deal "mundane" stuff.
Stumbled upon your channel while watching the flight channel videos on youtube. Have watched about six of your videos so far. Excellent, crisp explanations of the sequence of events and the investigation findings. Thank you so much!
"The crew was able to walk away." Nope. The crew was able to run away! At least, that's what I sure as heck would have been doing! 😄 It would have been interesting to know what kind of trouble the previous owner got into for falsifying documents.
@@f900ex5 A good criminal investigation should find the names of the people responsible for falsifying, and hunt them regardless of the previous company fate... Those bastards deserve jail, no less.
Used to work miltary-converted 707s (EC-18s and TC-18s) for a civilian contractor that maintained the airplanes for the US Air Force and US Navy. Yeah, the midspars are a relatively weak part of the 707 design; we did a LOT of work on not just the midspars but also the other pylon attach points. You mentioned SB 3183, but there were a lot more. Our airplanes were originally owned by major airlines and never ended up in the hands of 'bottom-feeder' operators, which helped from a standpoint of being able to trust the prior maintenance history on the airplanes. One other consideration is that those pylon attach points are also intended to act as a 'structural fuse' -- if the engine experiences some major failure that causes excessive vibration, the pylon attach fittings are designed to fail, to allow the damaged engine and pylon to drop away rather than lead to a structural failure of the wing. So they have to be strong, but not too strong. Another thing is that Boeing never 'reinvents the wheel'--if it worked on an earlier design, Boeing will reuse the design concept on future airplanes, too. So the pylons on the 747 and 757 (and presumably other, newer Boeings) are structurally very similar to the 707's design.
In Cape Town (South Africa) a Nationwide 737 had an engine abandon ship after rotation some years back...same way..up and over the wing. The crew flew the aircraft in IMC and returned to the airport via an ILS safely back onto terra firma. They earned their salary that day! The tower saw it happen and advised that they had left a bit of their aircraft on the ground.....
@@MiniAirCrashInvestigation the report does not seem to be available on the sacaa website www.caa.co.za/resource%20center/accidents%20&%20incid/reports/2007/8383.pdf But a summary is on avherald avherald.com/h?article=424af85f. This incident killed the airline.
An amazing bit of living history. It's truly a miracle that noone was killed. I hope they were able to track down the mechanic who falsified that maintenance report.
@Joshua Curtiss this is why I left the aviation repair business as a QA/QC inspector nearly 30 years ago. Sooner or later you're gonna get bit by someone who pencil-whipped something. Trust but verify is a well grounded cliché, except there are the occasions where you do have to trust someone's word and or reputation. And that's too much for me, my OCD won't let me. Having two engines blow up on test cells, nearly back to back was the final straw. I refused to sign off on 2 jt3d shafts that were really out of limits (oil cooling holes on the bearing journal). They got kicked around between shifts but no one wanted to sign off on it. I was the junior inspector on 2nd shift, and my manager was pressing me hard. He was also my mentor as I was being groomed for management, so he threatened that. I told him forget it and that air China would have to bite the bullet and get replacement shafts, which they didn't want to do. Finally my manager signed them off himself - - I guess he wanted to look good or whatevs to his uppers. So he used his stamp but logged it in the computer as being signed off by me, unbeknownst to me. Then the engines were reassembled and tested about a month later and sure enough blew up on test cell. Naturally, they came to me asking about it and instead of going to the computer, I pulled out my logbook. I developed my own shorthand system where every single part I inspected was logged by work order, date, etc, etc, status of inspection pass/fail and even the measurements. I showed that with one shaft, I inspected it 3 times and rejected it each time. That was my personal insurance. Then even with the computerized system, we still had to maintain the paper trail, so when they looked at it, they found his stamp, one that he should have turned in several years earlier when he moved up from QC. So they fired him. In the interim, I was already passed over for management, so it wasn't much longer before I quit and moved on to better things. About 4 years later the company went out of business and assets bought up by Boeing. Good riddance, I did not want that kind of stress and liability and my conscience remains clear. 😉
@@ajfvajf5 You've just described nearly everything that terrifies me about being responsible for maintaining an aircraft. Failing to notice issues. Noticing issues; being overruled by superiors who insist on cutting corners for cost or to look good. Parts failing and causing people to get killed. Being blamed for something I didn't do. Being responsible for something I did do. Being responsible for something I didn't do. I think I saw a video about a guy who stuffed the wrong size of screws into a part and people died. Absolutely no thank you. Thank you for being conscientious through your career. You surely saved lives, even if it cost you a promotion. Edit: That was British Airways Flight 5390. No deaths, but that poor crew...
@@NyanPoptartCat thanks. Unfortunately many inspectors don't really think about the ramifications of a momentary lapse of attention to details. Over the long haul, safety is very good. But I can guarantee that is one moment anyone would give anything for a do over if they got snagged by it. A few years before that experience, I remember reading about a JAL 747 that had a tail strike damage on takeoff IIRC. The plane was grounded and 14 Boeing technicians were sent to Tokyo to do repairs. After the plane was returned to service, the tail separated and it crashed into Mt Fuji, killing all on board. The technicians were all arrested and sent to jail Edit. Americans extradited, tried and convicted in Japan. Umm yeah, there was no way in hell I was going to do time in China in the 90s. That wasnt the motivating reason, rather the principle of the thing, but I tossed the JAL incident at my boss as we hotly argued the issue. Sorta surprised he didn't fire me for insubordination--it was that hot😉, but he was supposed to be my friend and mentor--but then again I'd have the union behind me if he tried.
@@ajfvajf5 Oh, that's the one with over 500 killed. God, no thank you. I couldn't handle the what-ifs of a job like that, always wondering if some problem I didn't even notice would cause someone to die, now, five months, ten years from now. They'd haunt me nonstop. Takes the right kind of person to do that work, and I am NOT that person.
I enjoy all of your works. You explain concepts so clearly that a person who knows nothing about airplanes can get engrossed and feel a part of it. Thank you for what you do. ✈️ ✈️ ✈️✈️✈️
As a pilot you can’t check everything done during maintenance, unless you want to spend your day off or evening after work watching the engineers remove all the cowlings and panels, unfortunately most times you have to trust the engineers did their jobs properly because I’m not spending my time off watch the engineers do their jobs
@@devinmckee5768 Yeah, even as a private pilot flying VERY small aircraft with relatively few parts, there's only so much of an aircraft I can reasonably inspect during pre-flight, and I certainly wouldn't be able to watch the engineers when they're doing maintenance. I might be able to do basic checks of the engines, cockpit controls and external condition... But for instance I wouldn't be able to check the flight control linkages, nor the actual condition of fuel tanks, pipes and so on. Checking the range of motion of the controls tells me they work on the ground, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be some hidden fault where it could fail in flight. To some extent you have to operate on a degree of trust. I mean, have you checked your brake lines and steering components the last time someone did work on your car? Fairly sure the one car crash I've been in during my life may have been caused by the steering mechanics failing... But how do you know such things unless you've checked everything yourself? And do you have the time and knowledge required to do such checks properly?
I assume you mean when purchasing verses preflight and walk arounds. Yes when purchasing used everything should be inspected. Sometimes an unintentional errors can occur from repair. A 747 that crashed had the rear pressure bulk head repaired and it was not done right but something on a walk around could inspect. I suppose though that were you have to trust your maintainers.
The video mentioned that metallurgical tests had to ne preformed to determine that the procedure was not actually done... that is NOT something a pilot or even a maintenece chief would do on a working aircraft.
Devin McKee I never wrote that the pilot should have found the lack of compliance or lack of doing the proper maintenance. This should have been done by the company when they purchased the aircraft. I have done many pre-buy inspections and I have found several liars or cheaters.
amazing job from the pilots and crew to make the best of a worst case scenario. their quick thinking to get back on the ground before they reached a populated area or someplace away from emergency equipment was an incredible at the moment strategy.
I have to be honest here. When I first watched a video on your channel I said nah I cant listen to this guy. I was use to watching investigations and actors playing out the tragedies BUT......there is something special about your channel and the way you explain every detail on most every reason why a plane goes down. I found it so interesting I started binge watching. You have become my favorite air crash investigation channel. Keep up the good work. ....SUBCRIBED🦋
I trained on KC-135s in tech school but ended up working the RC variant. A lot of the fleet has upgraded F-107 engines, but we still had 2 other variants the WC and OC 135s that still had those old TF-33 engine's. Without the cowlings those engines are worthless as the fan bypass is no longer being channeled. They're also prone to compressor stalls due to the lack of variable bleed valves that the F-108s have. If I remember correctly...
Hey I gotta ask...Is ur name really Patrick Bateman, or are u just using ur screen name to pay an homage to one of the greatest movie characters in cinematic history?? Just curious.
Thank you very much. Your explanations are very correct. Not too long and very to the point. Also I like your articularion and prononciation. I am dutch, and I can understand every word you say.
When I was in the RAAF we used the engine bolts as sinkers out on the Reef... they were only used once ..The Engine on the Neptune was mounted in a tube frame and about 4 bolts about 170mm x 35mm held the frame to the Plane..Look at Engines being run up on a stand and see.. We worked on the Wright 3350..
Glen I thought I was an old fart working on 707's. My father worked DC7's with 3350 compounds. Stationed at RAF Bovingdon then Alconbury in the 1960's.
Oh boy!... those big radials really shaked a lot during starting!. Much higher vibration and torsional loads than any turbine. Mounting should support much more! The piston engines were not only more shakin' but weighted a lot too!
Having worked on the 707 and been a part of several full-on engine / pylon removal, inspection, and repair / reinstallations, I can tell you that nobody undertakes that job lightly. It's a minimum 5-day evolution....longer if repairs are required. The midspar fitting that failed was not only corrosion-prone, but also had a design problem in that a radius in that area was produced that created a large stress concentration. If I remember correctly, the inspection for cracking in that area is, at a minimum, eddy-current inspection....but most likely radiographic inspection (X-rays). All in all, it's an enormous PITA to do that inspection, but necessary for safety of flight. Had the previous own'er/operator not lied their asses off on the maintenance records, the part would have been replaced with the redesigned part that had a much larger and smoother radius to it, and the accident would not have occurred.
This is the first time I have watched one of your videos, as a pilot of 44 years, would like to say , well done, great presentation, thank you for the upload j
@@frenchkiss8789 Probably Lockheed L-1011 TriStar as according to the comments all it's crashes were due to human errors. Actually they were wrong as Saudia Flight 162 was due to safety issues with the wheel design and Lockheed was partially blamed.
At 5:36 Please note that a complete jet engine is not a turbine. The turbine (or often two turbines, each with several steps/discs) is the last part of a jet engine. In the front of the engine, we find the compressor (or compressors) and in the case of turbofan engines (like this aircraft had and all modern jets too), the thing we see first looking from the front is the fan.
An Omega 707 flew over my house a few days ago. They are based at March AFB (I know, not longer AFB). If you have flightradar24 you can follow them as they go off the coast near San Diego an into a racetrack pattern waiting for customers. Also, I was an engine mechanic in the Air Force on KC-135's. Those engines were held on to the pylon by just three bolts.
I think I saw the two 707s you mentioned on FL 24 : they took off from Riverside it seems. I didn't know about Omega Aviation, I discovered this company with those 1958 and 1959 jets…
@@julosx 707 airframe was manufactured until 1994 for special military aircraft! Plus commercial 707 airframes can be as new as 1979 I believe. So they aren't all 59 vintage.
The fact that SEVERAL engines have separated, points to a relative lack of structural redundancy in the design. Considering that the weight and cost of more bolts is infinitely low compared to the rest of the airplane, it seems to me that it is a MARGINAL DESIGN, at best.
@@alfredomarquez9777 I am not a structural engineer or an engineer of any kind but I did have a thought about this. While I was in the Air Force we had an Eastern Airlines DC-8 land at our base (Barksdale AFB) after one of the engines came off during a stall recovery. My feeling about this is that while they could put more bolts to hold the engines to the wings it seems reasonable to me that at some point you would want the engine to separate from the wing as opposed to having the wing fail. Seeing a DC-8 land with just three engines is a sight i will never forget.
I also had no idea that there was any such thing as a private air refueling service. Thanks for this most interesting video. Good thing that this captain really knew his stuff and realized that he had no chance by the ‘feel’ of the aircraft. Had only one engine been deficient it would have climbed.
Airframe and Powerplant student here; not licensed yet, and certainly no engineer, but I understand enough to give you a basic explanation of the problem with the engine pylon/mount failure. Among other reasons, engines are mounted this way to help locate center of thrust for optimal efficiency. Thrust comes from the exhaust nozzles and output of the fans (exhaust nozzle only if these were original old turbojets like the 707s originally had). Without going into too much detail, or trying to say more than I actually understand, if you have the center of thrust, center of lift, and center of gravity all coinciding as nearly as possible in terms of their arm from the datum (how far down the longitudinal axis of the fuselage they are), you get a more stable, efficient airplane. Since the area that actually produces the thrust on a jet engine is at the back, you want the engine to hang forward of the wing a bit to put that spot as near as possible to the point where the center of gravity's potential range (depending on how the plane is loaded) and the center of lift as generated by the wing's planform coincide. The problem is that this creates a cantilever mounting arrangement. Cantilevers are hell for engineers. Any vibration or oscillation or flex of the structure that occurs is exaggerated along the length of a cantilever, and the area near its base has to absorb all of those forces. They engineered the multiple load path arrangement shown in the second diagram at around 7:04 to distribute these forces as evenly as possible, but the forces exerted by an engine on its pylons and mounting system are not uniform. They change with thrust application, angle of attack, banking, etc. There will always be a point which, throughout normal flight cycles, tends to absorb the most of these forces, and hence becomes more prone to issues like metal fatigue, stress corrosion, fretting corrosion, etc. If that area isn't adequately strong to withstand those forces, it will eventually fail. The most insidious thing about it, though, is that it will look fine until very, very near the point where it fails, because once a crack begins, creating a stress riser in that component, it will grow very quickly as the structure is no longer transferring the forces in the way it was designed to. Every jolt, vibration, and oscillation that is supposed to travel through that structure into the wing spar will slam into that crack and be disbursed in such a way that it will only lengthen the crack, and eventually, the forces will overcome the remaining strength of the part.
Very well explained Thank you! It is fairly common for such underhand methods to occur, Indonesia and doubtlessly a number of other airlines suffer from such behaviour.Lies and short cuts are pronounced in certain Nations especially in the Far East. Singapore and Malaysia however, display excellent attitides toward their airlines whether commercial or pax.
The two brothers who founded this company are from Ireland. From a small town a few miles from where I grew up. There story is one that makes me think success is possible for anyone willing to work for it. 🇮🇪🙏
This right here is exactly why a human is better than an algorithm. The protocols may be correct 99.9% of the time but only a human being can tell when a situation falls in that 0.1% in which the protocol falls outside of the best course of action.
So as for "Air refueling", There is a couple companies up in Alaska that deliver fuel by air, but not into another plane. Some of the generators in villages run an aircraft engine as a powerplant, and they just syphon off some LL100 (Or whatever blend they use) straight from the plane into storage tanks. A couple of my buddies still do it in the off season.
In my experience the actual hardware on a pylon is less important than the installation procedure. The more rigorous the requirements to elevate the engine and secure it for installation, the more likely you are to have the techs take a short cut. This has caused more than one crash before when a tech uses a forklift or similar instead of a manufacturer's recommended cradle. Worse yet is when the manufacturer recommends using a forklift or similar device as they are not precise instruments and can easily cause scoring on the connections if lifted too rapidly.
Davey here with AEY In Air Refuelling. We have been refuelling since 2001 and garuntee to beat any other refuelling service by 5% and you get a free air freshener with every refuel!
Similar incident happened to a DC-8 in flight over Denver in the early 90's. Amazingly they were able to land the thing. When this started, I immediately started thinking of the AA DC-10 in Chicago in the early 70's that had this happen on takeoff and wiped out. This was due to the maintenance crew in Tulsa taking a shortcut and using a forklift on the engine, which overstressed the mounts.
It does rather suggest that if a manufacturer issues a bulletin on a structural fault like this, even if the item is reported to have been fixed on an aircraft, it would be sensible to continue monitoring it carefully. Just because an issue is believed fixed, it doesn't mean it cannot effect the new component...
When changing an engine you do not disconnect the pylon. The engine is attached to the pylon. The pylon is attached to the wing by the fittings you mention. If I remember (50 years ago) those fittings are looked at on a hard landing inspection. I remember a hard landing inspection where the forward engine mount support arm pin boss had a shear tare out. It was not found on the hard landing inspection. On servicing at the gate the turbo compressor cover could not be reinstalled. The pin had sprung out of the broken boss and the engine dropped. It was quite a job to replace that arm as it came un- drilled. Plaster casts of the damaged am were made with drill bushings to locate the holes. Clever I had not seen that before.
After watching just 3 minutes of this video I forgive every pilot I've ever had for a long taxi time, now I know what they're dealing with in the cockpit trying to get us in the air...
Not matter why, the Captain got himself and his crew onto the ground and they all made it our relatively safely. No one was injured. The rest is just paperwork, twisted scrap metal and finger pointing. Well done Captain. Hug your family and sleep well knowing the other crew members you saved can also enjoy the same privilege tonight.
I was surprised to learn how engines are designed to detach in a particular way, so many things are thought of that many would never even consider. Testament to these designers and workers.
I remember an exact same issue of an engine separating on climb out and flippint back over the wing. I think was an American Airlines flight years ago. The cause on that one was determined to be mechanic error. That engine was due for a routine PM that required it to be removed. The correct procedure at the time was to remove the engine, and then the pilon separately but they took a short cut and removed the engine and pilon together at one time.
I knew they existed, because of the fact that my local hometown McConnell AFB is home to both a USAF and ANG refueling wing, one of our former Representatives campaigned heavily on bringing the KC-135 replacement to Boeing, and contracting out tasks that could potentially result in further base closures was seen unfavorably.
I tried headphones to see if I could hear it too. Yes there is an echo like quality to it that I associate it with audio compression, it makes it sound like the mic was placed in the bottom of a tin can. A little. It wasn’t that bad, but could be improved also.
Yes, and please, if you are going to read from a script, please practice before you record. I really wanted to watch this video but had to turn it off after a couple minutes. Add some passion to it. Tell it like a story, not like you're reading it for the first time.
I'm an aircraft mechanic with 15 years of experience, not on 707s though. All the engine changes I have done, we were super aware of not damaging the mounts, cones and bolts on installation. Typically the mounting requires a 3 level qaulity assurance check. Engines falling off wing is not that uncommon historically.
Omega Air bought the former Romanian Air Force one for 2.6 million $, in 2012. Former registered as YR-ABB is now a tanker with Omega Air registered as N707GF .
airtanker are contracted to provide air refueling to the U.K. military with nine dedicated aircraft plus i think ten more for surge operations. the extra are leased to airlines like the defunct thomas cook airlines with all the refueling equipment removed
Absolutely fantastic video, Sir. A suggestion, if I may; Please, if the youtube code permits, give the names of the crew who are to be appreciated. They and their family members would be delighted at the recognition that they richly deserve. The crew are custodians of lives and cargo who they so diligently caretake. Thank you again for the great video. VishG
Amazing decision by the captain. I think once you have the experiece, good pilots can feel the ability of the plane and can make such decisions right away. And while carrying a small bit of luck as well.
Good effort by the captain who put the plane back on the ground. Many other aircraft disasters have occurred when the pilot tries to in the take-off stage fly an aircraft that is un-flyable.
Why, when you are describing the KC-707 (a Boeing 707 converted to tanker configuration) do you show a whole string of KC-10 pictures? The KC-10 is an aircraft based on the DC-10 airliner.
No, he keeps showing "KDC-10s." Also operated by Omega. Also converted from old airliners. He did not show KC-10s just like he did not show KC-135s. And it doesn't bother me a bit that he showed the "other" aircraft type in Omega's fleet.
There is more than one private refueling company that owns tankers. Currently, Omega is very likely, in my opinion, to be competing with possible other bidders for a large U S Navy contract. One such bidder, who was awarded a Navy contract in 2019 (but it was withdrawn to be replaced by the one now in progress) is a company known as Tempus Applied Solutions. This company has the ticker symbol TMPS, and it would stand to profit if it wins a Navy contract later this summer or fall
There's a company called "air tanker" in the UK, they do refueling for the royal air force, as well as passenger flights to British armed forces overseas bases, and they wet lease some aircraft to jet2 in the summer
Love the way you present these incidents. Would love to see one of your episodes with the animations by "Bedtime stories " youtube channel. A colab between you guys may be?
So either Pan Am or Global International (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_International_Airways ). But considering how shady Global International was, then I guess it was that.
As a retired a and p mech, all aircraft engines are designed to fall off in extreme damage to prevent to wing from being damaged. The hoses, lines, cables and wiring are all designed to rip away clean. I'm sure most people rather see an engine fall off then a wing.
47,000 hours on that plane, that's equivalent to 5.3 years of continuous operation...Damn! I wonder how many take off/landing cycles it had. It definitely had really old, small diameter low bypass engines. Haven't seen those in a long time.
This is like the neglicted jackscrew on Alaska Airlines flight 261. But the Jackscrew was intentionally neglected. The neglict in the video was unintentional because of a falsified service record.
I for real thought that Omega had sponsored you, and you were promoting them at the start. I was like "who tf is gonna have a fighter jet just chilling?" Then it hit me lol
The owners are two brothers from Ireland . They have been in business for decades. Their first business venture was an Ice Rink in Dublin , Ireland. Very wealthy now.
100 million pounds of fuel isn’t a lot for a business to sustain off of through its entire existence. That’s only 14.7 million gallons. To put that in perspective, a single ground refueling member issues over a million a year. Makes you wonder how much they’re charging per gallon to cover the cost of maintenance, their own fuel, and staff.
The DC-10 (N974VV) that appears at the end of this video probably made it's last flight (Belleville to Victorville) the day after you posted this video.
Interesting. There was a case of a commercial aircraft crashing after an engine fell off due to improper maintenance orocedure. Seems this had been something that all the airlines were doing. They were using a forklift to lift the engine and pylon onto the wing instead of using a special cradle and detaching the engine before removing the pylon. There were metal fatigue cracks forming on the latches from the two pieces hitting each other by accident instead of sliding in.
I was on the first B-52 to land in and fly out of Point Mugu. They didn't exactly have the longest runways. I'm surprised they use that location for tankers.
Not sure of the company’s name but we had an RAF Airbus refueling aircraft accompanied by two RAF F-35s land at Memphis Airport. Crew said the plane was leased. I think it is an A 330 Matt.
This thing was fully loaded with fuel, maxed out to capacity, couldn't get altitude, and this guy managed to LAND it without exploding?! I mean sure, 'crash', but in my book, if you don't blow up, you landed. I just... These stories never end like that. That's so cool. What an incredible feat!
I remember when this happened the media were blaming Omega for lack of maintenance on all their aircraft, but in reality it was the previous owner that lied about replacing the part. The Omega Captain saved the crews lives by putting the plane back on the ground instead of trying to force it to fly.
Preach. Had the captain not put it back on the ground there’s a good chance that they would have ended up in the pacific. I don’t think they were capable of a right turn so that would mean a wide left turn over the ocean to line up with the runway again. And with engine one producing that much drag I don’t think they could have stayed aloft for much longer. The captain definitely saved the day there
I suppose that there was a lack of maintenance at Omega´s part, too. Had the spars been checked visually the corrosion should have been detected.
@@walterrudich2175 yes and no. it all depends on what Boeing's maintenance requirements were for the part. as a commercial jet it might of been required to check every year but since it was no longer being used for commercial flights and the plane was probably doing 1/10th of the flight hours it otherwise would of been that time between checks may of been much longer.
@@sirmonkey1985 Corrosion has no direct relationship with "commercial" vs "nom-commercial use or flight hours.
It can be even worse when parked outside in the rain or coastal breeze.
Reducing inspections reduces expenses, not risk.
Aviation Nut's post proves that cases SHOULD NOT be tried in the court of public opinion. Enough said.
I'm a B707 flight engineer and A&P. The #2 thrust lever did not "automatically" go to idle. When the # engine separated the cables pulled the thrust lever to idle. That was a random movement due to the random effect of engine separation. There is no Automatic thrust lever on that aircraft.
This is not the first time this type of separation occurred on the 707. There have been several inflight failures of this kind on older 707s. In most of these accidents the crew was able to land the aircraft with both engines separated from the wing.
Testament to the durability of the 707 and the crews that operated those flights.
Do you still fly the 707? If you do, what airline?
Omega tanker flies daily from march arb in perris, ca
@@ronoconnor8971 yeah I've seen it a few times around Florida.
FL_Flyer I fly the 737 now. Pilot.
@@bravomike09 Nice. It's a good plane.
I had no idea that there were private air refueling services.
Neither did I until I was parked next to one of their tankers in Singapore. They maintain a fairly low profile.
Likewise. The DC10 is based out of San Antonio
G'day,
I never heard of any Private Aerial Refuellers since Sir Alan Cobham went out of Business in the 1950s...
Live and learn...
Such is life,
Have a good one.
Stay safe.
;-p
Ciao !
Yeah man.. How do you think Saudi jets get their gas A2A when they bomb Yemen? These guys had that contract for quite some time.
It's what happens when you futz around forever with contracts for replacement tankers. Military runs short of tankers, and ambitious private sector guys (with a lot of bucks) step in and fill the gap (and earn back the bucks they spent and more.)
Yeah, I bet the do keep a low profile since as Timothy Foley said "They show up on the ADS-B radar but their customers do not." Stealth doesn't work if you're hanging around with a big radar reflector.
Sounds like the Capt knew what to do when things go sideways: fly the airplane.
Or at least crash it on your terms.
More like don't fly the airplane. Whatever gets the best result is the best procedure.
Reminds me of that old saying: "If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the plane as far into the crash as possible."
Sometimes knowing when to quit is a hallmark of a good leader.
Very true. Makes me wonder if AI and machine learning would ever make the same decision the captain did in a fully automated environment. V1 is not always a binary decision.
@@Z06ified Amen, brother. I am so tired of pilots acting as if V1 was a physical reality.
I would agree to disagree. Knowing when to choose a different option is the sign of a great experience later. He didn't quit just the same that Captain Scully didn't quit. They knew they had to choose a different option.
In the film Starman an alien copied to learn. The woman put her foot down on an amber light.
Later in film when he's driving they nearly get wiped out as he accelerates on amber.
When she asks why He says. "Green go, Red stop, amber go faster..
@@KyleD237 I don't think he meant quit in that way. He decided not to continue with take-off.
I always thought Omega was the name and symbol of the oil tanker unit within the military. Didn’t know it was the name of a private company.
Fascinating incident, and it's always nice to hear of a pilot's snap decision based on years of training and experience being the factor that saves everyone. Also I love how you get into the technical causes and make a solid attempt to explain the tech to us.
We’re stretched so thin on refueling units, Omega has found a niche industry. Nothing wrong w/making a little $$$$
that's what the guy who falsified the replacing of the mounts said.. just making a little $$$
Actually really smart thing to do if you have any old aircraft that make no sense to fly commercial. There is almost no competition!
My buddy was on a 707 in 1966 when one of the engines fell off. It was American Airlines.
"Well the engine fell off... Most are designed so that the engine does not fall off"
I would like to make the Point that that is not normal.
@@Freakschwimmer built to very rigorous airworthiness engineering standards
The 707 was designed and built with all 4 engines mounted using "sheer" bolts. Remember the Pan Am 707 training flight out of Paris wherein 3 of the 4 engines sheared off but the acft landed on one engine ?
@@davidkamen oh? I cant seem to find anything regarding this flight... can you post a link or some more information on this, please? :)
We can tow the engine out of the environment
I would have crashed. The bang, the number 2 engine lost, I'd have thought I had 3 good engines and tried to continue. So well done.
But just like with car or any other vehicle, if you have enough experience you would feel how wrong things were and those pilots were seasoned experts. I have no doubt in my mind they havent had engine fault in 4 engine plane in their career, well as trained that in simulator, hence they would know what it feels like to loose one engine and with that much pull on one side they would also know it was not just one engine and that plane would be impossible to fly in such configuration. This is why you train before hand.
On cars some call it playing with cars and complain about it, but i see it as training for unexpected situations like curve road has clear ice surface that had snow fell on it, car started to understeer towards snow bankment and would been out of the road unless i had known how the fwd manual vehicle, with its characteristics like weight, balance points and axle space behaves in situation like that. Little bit handbrake to get rear end out so front gets more traction, down shift to increase torque from cruise to pull, increasing amount of throttle, steer to direction you want to go and pull depending on how steep curve it is towards inner corner, minding on the end not to over compensate and have returning intertia of the rear end throwing rear towards opposite side, unless there is steep curve into another direction and you have too much speed, also minding that there is no other road users since this should be only attempted on ether empty road or outer curve so you dont slam your rear into side on opposite lane putting them into danger. There was just one problem with this... i had learned to do this in manual car... one i was driving was automatic so no down sifting and despite this everything was going all ok, until in the middle point revs were in 4K and transmission decided hey lets chance bigger gear... torque dropped like a rock and slided on the bankment sideways.
Thankfully that only required some shoveling and annoyance, but it was educational and saved collision decade later when mofo come towards me in a corner middle of the road and i had to move to road side to avoid collision.... but icy tracks kicked rear out violently, putting me into drift and since car is longer than its wide it meant pulling towards inner corner so my rear wont hit them. Got past the fucker and realized car is over 45 degrees angled to road and that point you cant really correct and straighten when bumper was already scraping the snow bankment, so just locked brakes to put the car intentionally into 4 wheel slide and rode those ice covered areas between wheel tracks towards end. It would been perfect move.. with out little area of snow that was not cleaned few days prior so front end hit that and broke fog lights and bumper in process... yeah i wasent happy, but with out those skills and experience i'm sure i would have crashed way worse.. normal German station vagon versus new SUV... so yeah i'm clearly looser in that.
Same way its with planes and other equipment and that comes from muzzle memory automatically and your brain concentrates to unfamiliar stuff while your body moves already to deal "mundane" stuff.
@@Hellsong89 very good points.
3:27 when you got 400 ping
epic gamer moment
i legit wanna know whats going on on the video right there
@@haris9858
Possibly something to do with interlacing/deinterlacing.
@@alphamone I've noticed that when slowing down footage that didn't have enough frames
He just has a good gaming chair
"We have fuel. You don't. Any questions?"
fuel rats for life
“Just one, is an engine going to fall off and smack into my canopy while refueling?”
o7 cmdr
I need to start up Elite again, miss my days flying with the rats
Fuel Rats to the rescue!
Stumbled upon your channel while watching the flight channel videos on youtube. Have watched about six of your videos so far. Excellent, crisp explanations of the sequence of events and the investigation findings. Thank you so much!
"The crew was able to walk away." Nope. The crew was able to run away! At least, that's what I sure as heck would have been doing! 😄
It would have been interesting to know what kind of trouble the previous owner got into for falsifying documents.
Whoever falsified the records goes all the way back to 1983, back then owned by Global International Airways... Good luck going after them lol
@@f900ex5 A good criminal investigation should find the names of the people responsible for falsifying, and hunt them regardless of the previous company fate... Those bastards deserve jail, no less.
Alfredo Márquez The principals were probably deceased.
It would be pretty bad ass if they walked away from the crash 🤣
@@f900ex5 GIA? Why do I feel like their aircraft have shown up in other mechanical failure crashes before.
Props to the pilots for landing and being able to survive! There are many other in similar situations that roll over and are completely obliterated.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "jets to the pilots?" Sorry, couldnt resist the terrible yoke. Eh, eh?
Used to work miltary-converted 707s (EC-18s and TC-18s) for a civilian contractor that maintained the airplanes for the US Air Force and US Navy. Yeah, the midspars are a relatively weak part of the 707 design; we did a LOT of work on not just the midspars but also the other pylon attach points. You mentioned SB 3183, but there were a lot more. Our airplanes were originally owned by major airlines and never ended up in the hands of 'bottom-feeder' operators, which helped from a standpoint of being able to trust the prior maintenance history on the airplanes. One other consideration is that those pylon attach points are also intended to act as a 'structural fuse' -- if the engine experiences some major failure that causes excessive vibration, the pylon attach fittings are designed to fail, to allow the damaged engine and pylon to drop away rather than lead to a structural failure of the wing. So they have to be strong, but not too strong. Another thing is that Boeing never 'reinvents the wheel'--if it worked on an earlier design, Boeing will reuse the design concept on future airplanes, too. So the pylons on the 747 and 757 (and presumably other, newer Boeings) are structurally very similar to the 707's design.
In Cape Town (South Africa) a Nationwide 737 had an engine abandon ship after rotation some years back...same way..up and over the wing. The crew flew the aircraft in IMC and returned to the airport via an ILS safely back onto terra firma. They earned their salary that day! The tower saw it happen and advised that they had left a bit of their aircraft on the ground.....
I might make a video on this if I can find the final report
Very prolific incident. Crew got good airmanship awards. Would make a good video!
@@MiniAirCrashInvestigation the report does not seem to be available on the sacaa website www.caa.co.za/resource%20center/accidents%20&%20incid/reports/2007/8383.pdf
But a summary is on avherald avherald.com/h?article=424af85f.
This incident killed the airline.
The Captain on this Omega flight is now a United Airlines Pilot. Great guy and good pilot too.
Reminds me of the 747 engine separation crash into apartments in Europe. Schipol.
Yes, that was really tragic.
Sounds like the DC-10 in Chicago.
same here
:-(
EL AL 1864
An amazing bit of living history. It's truly a miracle that noone was killed. I hope they were able to track down the mechanic who falsified that maintenance report.
There should have been purchase orders and invoices from Boeing for the new part. Obviously management was behind the falsification.
@Joshua Curtiss this is why I left the aviation repair business as a QA/QC inspector nearly 30 years ago. Sooner or later you're gonna get bit by someone who pencil-whipped something. Trust but verify is a well grounded cliché, except there are the occasions where you do have to trust someone's word and or reputation. And that's too much for me, my OCD won't let me.
Having two engines blow up on test cells, nearly back to back was the final straw. I refused to sign off on 2 jt3d shafts that were really out of limits (oil cooling holes on the bearing journal). They got kicked around between shifts but no one wanted to sign off on it. I was the junior inspector on 2nd shift, and my manager was pressing me hard. He was also my mentor as I was being groomed for management, so he threatened that. I told him forget it and that air China would have to bite the bullet and get replacement shafts, which they didn't want to do. Finally my manager signed them off himself - - I guess he wanted to look good or whatevs to his uppers. So he used his stamp but logged it in the computer as being signed off by me, unbeknownst to me.
Then the engines were reassembled and tested about a month later and sure enough blew up on test cell. Naturally, they came to me asking about it and instead of going to the computer, I pulled out my logbook. I developed my own shorthand system where every single part I inspected was logged by work order, date, etc, etc, status of inspection pass/fail and even the measurements. I showed that with one shaft, I inspected it 3 times and rejected it each time. That was my personal insurance. Then even with the computerized system, we still had to maintain the paper trail, so when they looked at it, they found his stamp, one that he should have turned in several years earlier when he moved up from QC. So they fired him. In the interim, I was already passed over for management, so it wasn't much longer before I quit and moved on to better things. About 4 years later the company went out of business and assets bought up by Boeing.
Good riddance, I did not want that kind of stress and liability and my conscience remains clear. 😉
@@ajfvajf5 You've just described nearly everything that terrifies me about being responsible for maintaining an aircraft. Failing to notice issues. Noticing issues; being overruled by superiors who insist on cutting corners for cost or to look good. Parts failing and causing people to get killed. Being blamed for something I didn't do. Being responsible for something I did do. Being responsible for something I didn't do. I think I saw a video about a guy who stuffed the wrong size of screws into a part and people died. Absolutely no thank you. Thank you for being conscientious through your career. You surely saved lives, even if it cost you a promotion.
Edit: That was British Airways Flight 5390. No deaths, but that poor crew...
@@NyanPoptartCat thanks. Unfortunately many inspectors don't really think about the ramifications of a momentary lapse of attention to details. Over the long haul, safety is very good. But I can guarantee that is one moment anyone would give anything for a do over if they got snagged by it. A few years before that experience, I remember reading about a JAL 747 that had a tail strike damage on takeoff IIRC. The plane was grounded and 14 Boeing technicians were sent to Tokyo to do repairs. After the plane was returned to service, the tail separated and it crashed into Mt Fuji, killing all on board. The technicians were all arrested and sent to jail
Edit. Americans extradited, tried and convicted in Japan. Umm yeah, there was no way in hell I was going to do time in China in the 90s.
That wasnt the motivating reason, rather the principle of the thing, but I tossed the JAL incident at my boss as we hotly argued the issue. Sorta surprised he didn't fire me for insubordination--it was that hot😉, but he was supposed to be my friend and mentor--but then again I'd have the union behind me if he tried.
@@ajfvajf5 Oh, that's the one with over 500 killed. God, no thank you. I couldn't handle the what-ifs of a job like that, always wondering if some problem I didn't even notice would cause someone to die, now, five months, ten years from now. They'd haunt me nonstop. Takes the right kind of person to do that work, and I am NOT that person.
I enjoy all of your works. You explain concepts so clearly that a person who knows nothing about airplanes can get engrossed and feel a part of it. Thank you for what you do. ✈️ ✈️ ✈️✈️✈️
I like these mini reports. Straight forward. And accurate. No hyperbole. . Thanks.
NO, stupid, straightforward, one word. Idiot. Yet another moron.
Brilliant piloting. A split second counter intuitive response that saved lives. Give that man a medal.
Never trust all of the logbook and maintenance records. Inspect the areas to see if they have really been done IAW the manufacturer’s instructions.
As a pilot you can’t check everything done during maintenance, unless you want to spend your day off or evening after work watching the engineers remove all the cowlings and panels, unfortunately most times you have to trust the engineers did their jobs properly because I’m not spending my time off watch the engineers do their jobs
@@devinmckee5768 Yeah, even as a private pilot flying VERY small aircraft with relatively few parts, there's only so much of an aircraft I can reasonably inspect during pre-flight, and I certainly wouldn't be able to watch the engineers when they're doing maintenance.
I might be able to do basic checks of the engines, cockpit controls and external condition...
But for instance I wouldn't be able to check the flight control linkages, nor the actual condition of fuel tanks, pipes and so on.
Checking the range of motion of the controls tells me they work on the ground, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be some hidden fault where it could fail in flight.
To some extent you have to operate on a degree of trust.
I mean, have you checked your brake lines and steering components the last time someone did work on your car? Fairly sure the one car crash I've been in during my life may have been caused by the steering mechanics failing...
But how do you know such things unless you've checked everything yourself?
And do you have the time and knowledge required to do such checks properly?
I assume you mean when purchasing verses preflight and walk arounds. Yes when purchasing used everything should be inspected. Sometimes an unintentional errors can occur from repair. A 747 that crashed had the rear pressure bulk head repaired and it was not done right but something on a walk around could inspect. I suppose though that were you have to trust your maintainers.
The video mentioned that metallurgical tests had to ne preformed to determine that the procedure was not actually done... that is NOT something a pilot or even a maintenece chief would do on a working aircraft.
Devin McKee I never wrote that the pilot should have found the lack of compliance or lack of doing the proper maintenance. This should have been done by the company when they purchased the aircraft. I have done many pre-buy inspections and I have found several liars or cheaters.
amazing job from the pilots and crew to make the best of a worst case scenario. their quick thinking to get back on the ground before they reached a populated area or someplace away from emergency equipment was an incredible at the moment strategy.
I have to be honest here. When I first watched a video on your channel I said nah I cant listen to this guy. I was use to watching investigations and actors playing out the tragedies BUT......there is something special about your channel and the way you explain every detail on most every reason why a plane goes down. I found it so interesting I started binge watching. You have become my favorite air crash investigation channel. Keep up the good work. ....SUBCRIBED🦋
I trained on KC-135s in tech school but ended up working the RC variant. A lot of the fleet has upgraded F-107 engines, but we still had 2 other variants the WC and OC 135s that still had those old TF-33 engine's. Without the cowlings those engines are worthless as the fan bypass is no longer being channeled. They're also prone to compressor stalls due to the lack of variable bleed valves that the F-108s have. If I remember correctly...
Compressor stalls were common when landing in crosswinds at Shemya with reversers engaged....
Hey thanks for this , very concise and to the point, I like it!
Thanks for your feedback! Glad to know you learnt something new :)
Agreed, me too. 😉👍👍
Hey I gotta ask...Is ur name really Patrick Bateman, or are u just using ur screen name to pay an homage to one of the greatest movie characters in cinematic history?? Just curious.
Thank you very much.
Your explanations are very correct. Not too long and very to the point.
Also I like your articularion and prononciation. I am dutch, and I can understand every word you say.
When I was in the RAAF we used the engine bolts as sinkers out on the Reef... they were only used once ..The Engine on the Neptune was mounted in a tube frame and about 4 bolts about 170mm x 35mm held the frame to the Plane..Look at Engines being run up on a stand and see.. We worked on the Wright 3350..
Glen I thought I was an old fart working on 707's. My father worked DC7's with 3350 compounds. Stationed at RAF Bovingdon then Alconbury in the 1960's.
@@jayreiter268 The 3350 goes back to WW2 not sure when they were first used
Oh boy!... those big radials really shaked a lot during starting!. Much higher vibration and torsional loads than any turbine. Mounting should support much more! The piston engines were not only more shakin' but weighted a lot too!
Having worked on the 707 and been a part of several full-on engine / pylon removal, inspection, and repair / reinstallations, I can tell you that nobody undertakes that job lightly. It's a minimum 5-day evolution....longer if repairs are required. The midspar fitting that failed was not only corrosion-prone, but also had a design problem in that a radius in that area was produced that created a large stress concentration. If I remember correctly, the inspection for cracking in that area is, at a minimum, eddy-current inspection....but most likely radiographic inspection (X-rays). All in all, it's an enormous PITA to do that inspection, but necessary for safety of flight. Had the previous own'er/operator not lied their asses off on the maintenance records, the part would have been replaced with the redesigned part that had a much larger and smoother radius to it, and the accident would not have occurred.
This is the first time I have watched one of your videos, as a pilot of 44 years, would like to say , well done, great presentation, thank you for the upload j
What’s the safest passenger plane?
@@frenchkiss8789 Probably Lockheed L-1011 TriStar as according to the comments all it's crashes were due to human errors. Actually they were wrong as Saudia Flight 162 was due to safety issues with the wheel design and Lockheed was partially blamed.
@@LucaTurilli89 Thanks for info🙏
At 5:36 Please note that a complete jet engine is not a turbine. The turbine (or often two turbines, each with several steps/discs) is the last part of a jet engine. In the front of the engine, we find the compressor (or compressors) and in the case of turbofan engines (like this aircraft had and all modern jets too), the thing we see first looking from the front is the fan.
Correct. However, the engines are colloquially known as turbines.
An Omega 707 flew over my house a few days ago. They are based at March AFB (I know, not longer AFB). If you have flightradar24 you can follow them as they go off the coast near San Diego an into a racetrack pattern waiting for customers. Also, I was an engine mechanic in the Air Force on KC-135's. Those engines were held on to the pylon by just three bolts.
I think I saw the two 707s you mentioned on FL 24 : they took off from Riverside it seems. I didn't know about Omega Aviation, I discovered this company with those 1958 and 1959 jets…
@@julosx 707 airframe was manufactured until 1994 for special military aircraft! Plus commercial 707 airframes can be as new as 1979 I believe. So they aren't all 59 vintage.
The fact that SEVERAL engines have separated, points to a relative lack of structural redundancy in the design.
Considering that the weight and cost of more bolts is infinitely low compared to the rest of the airplane, it seems to me that it is a MARGINAL DESIGN, at best.
@@alfredomarquez9777 Only 1 engine separated.
@@alfredomarquez9777 I am not a structural engineer or an engineer of any kind but I did have a thought about this. While I was in the Air Force we had an Eastern Airlines DC-8 land at our base (Barksdale AFB) after one of the engines came off during a stall recovery. My feeling about this is that while they could put more bolts to hold the engines to the wings it seems reasonable to me that at some point you would want the engine to separate from the wing as opposed to having the wing fail. Seeing a DC-8 land with just three engines is a sight i will never forget.
I also had no idea that there was any such thing as a private air refueling service. Thanks for this most interesting video. Good thing that this captain really knew his stuff and realized that he had no chance by the ‘feel’ of the aircraft. Had only one engine been deficient it would have climbed.
Airframe and Powerplant student here; not licensed yet, and certainly no engineer, but I understand enough to give you a basic explanation of the problem with the engine pylon/mount failure.
Among other reasons, engines are mounted this way to help locate center of thrust for optimal efficiency. Thrust comes from the exhaust nozzles and output of the fans (exhaust nozzle only if these were original old turbojets like the 707s originally had). Without going into too much detail, or trying to say more than I actually understand, if you have the center of thrust, center of lift, and center of gravity all coinciding as nearly as possible in terms of their arm from the datum (how far down the longitudinal axis of the fuselage they are), you get a more stable, efficient airplane. Since the area that actually produces the thrust on a jet engine is at the back, you want the engine to hang forward of the wing a bit to put that spot as near as possible to the point where the center of gravity's potential range (depending on how the plane is loaded) and the center of lift as generated by the wing's planform coincide.
The problem is that this creates a cantilever mounting arrangement. Cantilevers are hell for engineers. Any vibration or oscillation or flex of the structure that occurs is exaggerated along the length of a cantilever, and the area near its base has to absorb all of those forces. They engineered the multiple load path arrangement shown in the second diagram at around 7:04 to distribute these forces as evenly as possible, but the forces exerted by an engine on its pylons and mounting system are not uniform. They change with thrust application, angle of attack, banking, etc. There will always be a point which, throughout normal flight cycles, tends to absorb the most of these forces, and hence becomes more prone to issues like metal fatigue, stress corrosion, fretting corrosion, etc. If that area isn't adequately strong to withstand those forces, it will eventually fail.
The most insidious thing about it, though, is that it will look fine until very, very near the point where it fails, because once a crack begins, creating a stress riser in that component, it will grow very quickly as the structure is no longer transferring the forces in the way it was designed to. Every jolt, vibration, and oscillation that is supposed to travel through that structure into the wing spar will slam into that crack and be disbursed in such a way that it will only lengthen the crack, and eventually, the forces will overcome the remaining strength of the part.
Very good video. I'm amazed a 707 built in 1969 was still in operation. Its been stressed out for around 40 years.
Very well explained Thank you! It is fairly common for such underhand methods to occur, Indonesia and doubtlessly a number of other airlines suffer from such behaviour.Lies and short cuts are pronounced in certain Nations especially in the Far East. Singapore and Malaysia however, display excellent attitides toward their airlines whether commercial or pax.
Here in the UK there's a private company (actually a consortium) called Air Tanker that does similar stuff to Omega.
The two brothers who founded this company are from Ireland. From a small town a few miles from where I grew up. There story is one that makes me think success is possible for anyone willing to work for it. 🇮🇪🙏
This right here is exactly why a human is better than an algorithm. The protocols may be correct 99.9% of the time but only a human being can tell when a situation falls in that 0.1% in which the protocol falls outside of the best course of action.
So as for "Air refueling", There is a couple companies up in Alaska that deliver fuel by air, but not into another plane. Some of the generators in villages run an aircraft engine as a powerplant, and they just syphon off some LL100 (Or whatever blend they use) straight from the plane into storage tanks. A couple of my buddies still do it in the off season.
In my experience the actual hardware on a pylon is less important than the installation procedure. The more rigorous the requirements to elevate the engine and secure it for installation, the more likely you are to have the techs take a short cut. This has caused more than one crash before when a tech uses a forklift or similar instead of a manufacturer's recommended cradle. Worse yet is when the manufacturer recommends using a forklift or similar device as they are not precise instruments and can easily cause scoring on the connections if lifted too rapidly.
Davey here with AEY In Air Refuelling. We have been refuelling since 2001 and garuntee to beat any other refuelling service by 5% and you get a free air freshener with every refuel!
I appreciate the koto's you give to your Co-Creators ,Peace!
Similar incident happened to a DC-8 in flight over Denver in the early 90's. Amazingly they were able to land the thing. When this started, I immediately started thinking of the AA DC-10 in Chicago in the early 70's that had this happen on takeoff and wiped out. This was due to the maintenance crew in Tulsa taking a shortcut and using a forklift on the engine, which overstressed the mounts.
It does rather suggest that if a manufacturer issues a bulletin on a structural fault like this, even if the item is reported to have been fixed on an aircraft, it would be sensible to continue monitoring it carefully. Just because an issue is believed fixed, it doesn't mean it cannot effect the new component...
When changing an engine you do not disconnect the pylon. The engine is attached to the pylon. The pylon is attached to the wing by the fittings you mention.
If I remember (50 years ago) those fittings are looked at on a hard landing inspection. I remember a hard landing inspection where the forward engine mount support arm pin boss had a shear tare out. It was not found on the hard landing inspection. On servicing at the gate the turbo compressor cover could not be reinstalled. The pin had sprung out of the broken boss and the engine dropped. It was quite a job to replace that arm as it came un- drilled. Plaster casts of the damaged am were made with drill bushings to locate the holes. Clever I had not seen that before.
There was a documentary on quest (UK) not that long ago about these guys in the US. May be available on the Internet somewhere. Was worth watching.
@John Camilleri I think it is the one I posted the link to after this post.
Just an FYI, "ditching" an aircraft refers to putting it down on water, specifically.
After watching just 3 minutes of this video I forgive every pilot I've ever had for a long taxi time, now I know what they're dealing with in the cockpit trying to get us in the air...
Not matter why, the Captain got himself and his crew onto the ground and they all made it our relatively safely. No one was injured. The rest is just paperwork, twisted scrap metal and finger pointing. Well done Captain. Hug your family and sleep well knowing the other crew members you saved can also enjoy the same privilege tonight.
I was surprised to learn how engines are designed to detach in a particular way, so many things are thought of that many would never even consider. Testament to these designers and workers.
I remember an exact same issue of an engine separating on climb out and flippint back over the wing. I think was an American Airlines flight years ago. The cause on that one was determined to be mechanic error. That engine was due for a routine PM that required it to be removed. The correct procedure at the time was to remove the engine, and then the pilon separately but they took a short cut and removed the engine and pilon together at one time.
Love your channel, I would really like more video and pictures of the incidents
Quick and competent decision making by that captain!
Great job by the pilot. Glad he lived to talk about it.
I knew they existed, because of the fact that my local hometown McConnell AFB is home to both a USAF and ANG refueling wing, one of our former Representatives campaigned heavily on bringing the KC-135 replacement to Boeing, and contracting out tasks that could potentially result in further base closures was seen unfavorably.
Glad to hear the crew survived - very interesting video
You've got to get a better mic or something, man. There's a constant white noise, feels like I'm listening to this video while in an aircraft.
...adds to the immersion, don't it?
I tried headphones to see if I could hear it too. Yes there is an echo like quality to it that I associate it with audio compression, it makes it sound like the mic was placed in the bottom of a tin can. A little. It wasn’t that bad, but could be improved also.
ClayZ Sounds like he’s standing in a field at night and there’s crickets chirping.
Yes, and please, if you are going to read from a script, please practice before you record. I really wanted to watch this video but had to turn it off after a couple minutes. Add some passion to it. Tell it like a story, not like you're reading it for the first time.
I'm an aircraft mechanic with 15 years of experience, not on 707s though. All the engine changes I have done, we were super aware of not damaging the mounts, cones and bolts on installation. Typically the mounting requires a 3 level qaulity assurance check. Engines falling off wing is not that uncommon historically.
MAAAAAANNNnnn! You tell a great story.You are 1 of the best.
Omega Air bought the former Romanian Air Force one for 2.6 million $, in 2012. Former registered as YR-ABB is now a tanker with Omega Air registered as N707GF
.
Thank you so much, i always enjoy your channel and you visiting with us.
I believe AirTanker do aerial refuelling. They lease aircraft for military and commercial use
airtanker are contracted to provide air refueling to the U.K. military with nine dedicated aircraft plus i think ten more for surge operations. the extra are leased to airlines like the defunct thomas cook airlines with all the refueling equipment removed
Absolutely fantastic video, Sir. A suggestion, if I may; Please, if the youtube code permits, give the names of the crew who are to be appreciated. They and their family members would be delighted at the recognition that they richly deserve. The crew are custodians of lives and cargo who they so diligently caretake. Thank you again for the great video. VishG
Amazing decision by the captain. I think once you have the experiece, good pilots can feel the ability of the plane and can make such decisions right away. And while carrying a small bit of luck as well.
Good effort by the captain who put the plane back on the ground.
Many other aircraft disasters have occurred when the pilot tries to in the take-off stage fly an aircraft that is un-flyable.
New one for me - great video again thank you 🙏 a miracle they survived.
Why, when you are describing the KC-707 (a Boeing 707 converted to tanker configuration) do you show a whole string of KC-10 pictures? The KC-10 is an aircraft based on the DC-10 airliner.
No, he keeps showing "KDC-10s." Also operated by Omega. Also converted from old airliners. He did not show KC-10s just like he did not show KC-135s. And it doesn't bother me a bit that he showed the "other" aircraft type in Omega's fleet.
Did 707s have a top engine? Im not for sure. It does look DC type.
@@bombasticbuster9340 707s had/have four engines, two under each wing.
Great job Captain and crew.
There is more than one private refueling company that owns tankers. Currently, Omega is very likely, in my opinion, to be competing with possible other bidders for a large U S Navy contract. One such bidder, who was awarded a Navy contract in 2019 (but it was withdrawn to be replaced by the one now in progress) is a company known as Tempus Applied Solutions. This company has the ticker symbol TMPS, and it would stand to profit if it wins a Navy contract later this summer or fall
The omega DC10 and kc707 tankers show up a lot here in Myrtle beach at Myrtle beach international airport. Watched the kc707 take off today.
All of your videos have been bombarding my recommendations all at once lol. I enjoy them though.
There's a company called "air tanker" in the UK, they do refueling for the royal air force, as well as passenger flights to British armed forces overseas bases, and they wet lease some aircraft to jet2 in the summer
Love the way you present these incidents.
Would love to see one of your episodes with the animations by "Bedtime stories " youtube channel. A colab between you guys may be?
Thanks for your humbleness !! 👍
Adults lie due to insecurity because several (personal) factors; disastrous consequences ! 👎
Would be of interest who this previous owner was!
www.jetphotos.com/census/aircraft2.php?msnid=707-20029
So either Pan Am or Global International (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_International_Airways ). But considering how shady Global International was, then I guess it was that.
@@estoniaman Thank you!
As a retired a and p mech, all aircraft engines are designed to fall off in extreme damage to prevent to wing from being damaged. The hoses, lines, cables and wiring are all designed to rip away clean. I'm sure most people rather see an engine fall off then a wing.
So he did like a 50 feet Rejected Take Off. I was taught that maneuver in 1995 by the only CFI teaching it in the Usa they told me. Thanks CV..
Engine: ight imma head out
great info. Like to learn something everyday and you certainly do provide
47,000 hours on that plane, that's equivalent to 5.3 years of continuous operation...Damn! I wonder how many take off/landing cycles it had. It definitely had really old, small diameter low bypass engines. Haven't seen those in a long time.
This is like the neglicted jackscrew on Alaska Airlines flight 261. But the Jackscrew was intentionally neglected. The neglict in the video was unintentional because of a falsified service record.
I for real thought that Omega had sponsored you, and you were promoting them at the start. I was like "who tf is gonna have a fighter jet just chilling?" Then it hit me lol
They have one that I flew in my company, Olympic Airways, B707-384B, SX-DBF, now N7158T...
I’ve heard these guys on ATC flying over Southern California. Always assumed they were military, not private! The more you know
The owners are two brothers from Ireland . They have been in business for decades.
Their first business venture was an Ice Rink in Dublin , Ireland.
Very wealthy now.
100 million pounds of fuel isn’t a lot for a business to sustain off of through its entire existence. That’s only 14.7 million gallons. To put that in perspective, a single ground refueling member issues over a million a year. Makes you wonder how much they’re charging per gallon to cover the cost of maintenance, their own fuel, and staff.
Hi I just wanted to say thank you for these true stories because to much fiction is not good for mental health!!!So thank you.
The DC-10 (N974VV) that appears at the end of this video probably made it's last flight (Belleville to Victorville) the day after you posted this video.
Interesting and illuminating. That's the quality of crew I would like to pilot any airplane.
Great video, and some interesting comments. Thank you.
Interesting. There was a case of a commercial aircraft crashing after an engine fell off due to improper maintenance orocedure. Seems this had been something that all the airlines were doing. They were using a forklift to lift the engine and pylon onto the wing instead of using a special cradle and detaching the engine before removing the pylon. There were metal fatigue cracks forming on the latches from the two pieces hitting each other by accident instead of sliding in.
I was on the first B-52 to land in and fly out of Point Mugu. They didn't exactly have the longest runways. I'm surprised they use that location for tankers.
Fun Fact for any one who doesn't know an engine coming off and going over the top of the wing is how it meant to happen its a fairly clever design.
Not sure of the company’s name but we had an RAF Airbus refueling aircraft accompanied by two RAF F-35s land at Memphis Airport. Crew said the plane was leased. I think it is an A 330 Matt.
Before buying any used plane, have a mechanic check it, especially parts the previous owner swore has been repaired.