I don't know if the Korean plane's Captain did it intentionally or not, but it seems his actions, as soon as he saw the Piper were incredible. He didn't just attempt to get lift to go over the Piper, but he contorted the DC10 to lessen the amount of impact.
This happens in a few of these, where the crew does something incredibly stupid to get in a bad situation, then do something incredibly brilliant to get out of it, or in this case, lessen the damage.
I think there's an element of luck at play in this incident, but the captain of the DC-10 sure as heck knew his plane and what it could do like it was an extention of himself. His instinctive response saved everyone's lives.
@@Balakrishnan_Sibin Yeah, he said "Flight 064." I have literally no idea what he was thinking, or what the correct flight number is. Is it 064 or 084? I hate to give MACI a hard time, 'cause I know he puts a lot of work into these, but seriously, if the first words out of his mouth is a flub, he needs to step up his game.
Tenerife, the good ending! On a similar note, could you please cover Air Canada 759? Late at night on 7 July 2017, a fully loaded A320 lined up with what they *thought* was the runway-but was actually a taxiway filled with four other planes, three of which were gearing up to cross the Pacific. Air Canada 759 went in to land, blithely unaware of the four planes below them. They only caught their mistake in the *nick* of time, clearing the tail of the first plane by a mere _14 feet._ If Air Canada 759 had landed, it would have easily surpassed the Tenerife disaster as the worst air crash in history-between the five planes, there were more than 1000 souls on board. Notably, Air Canada retired the flight number, even though no one was actually hurt!
I'm from Republic of Korea. As Korean, most of the koreans doesn't think about safety and just only do something fast until 1990s... Because of that Korean Air doesn't think about safety and only make the flight takeoff and arrive on schedule. Actually In 1970s one of the Korean Air B707 Freighter had a problem on the aircraft in Bangkok. Korean Air wants to repair it in Korea because of money and told pilots to bring that airplane to Korea. But American flight engineer said I can't fly this aircraft and Korean captain and first officer fly the plane to Korea without flight engineer. After that Korean Air award a prize to that Korean pilots. I think because of culture at that time in Korea, KAL 084 pilots just ignored everything, only think about make the flight on schedule caused to takeoff on the wrong runway.
a little bit confusing to read that comment, but as someone also in the ROK, I agree, it does appear that people here aren't really big on safety. I'm talking about things like electric scooters on highway, parking in the middle of the road kind of "not big".
Nice insight, especially the incident you related. As soon as they mentioned a lack of recurrent training on the relevant aspects of checking your on the correct runway it made sense. if you don't do somthing by rote reguarly your likely to forget it when you do need to do it. Recurrent training gets you doing it more which means your more likely to remember it.
@@quigglebert "... you guys need to get new politicians, great people, government is still corrupt as hell to this day" ALL governments in the world are run by psychopaths. That is why Satan is called "The God of this World." Satan does the most that he can to control the world, restrained from destruction of the world only by God's hand.
I love stories like this!! we've all heard about the bigger accidents over and over, but some don't really get heard about much. I also love to hear about runway incursions. those rarely make the list but are great learning tools and very interesting. I'm not a pilot but my dad is and I grew up flying with him before I could walk. it's all we talk about it seems. he's 83 now and grounded because of glaucoma but I like to have new information like this to share with him. I love your channel.
Also "the cockpit voice recorder was never recovered". Hm... Well unless they installed it under the wheels, it wasn't ripped out of the DC 10 during the crash. So... Totally not suspicious at all.
@@RK-252 The CVR is stored on the tail section. That type of crash, it shouldn't be a surprise it is missing. I wouldn't doubt that it was destroyed, ended up as a souvenir or, since it was a freighter, not installed even though required. Wouldn't be the first time. I recall a China Air flight where the AC was inspected & missing several of the required seatbelts. Turned out they were being used...... to strap the #4 engine from windmilling because it needed service.
@@rherman9085 good point. you know you actually prompted me to look up the actual ntsb report. turns out neither CVR nor FDR was required on that aircraft, and therefore were not installed. the report doesn't say why they weren't required but, as you suggested, it seems reasonable that it was combination of the era and the fact it was a cargo flight. fun times. cheers for encouraging me to look it up. 👍
Amazing video, it really was incredible that the lives on the DC-10 and Piper weren't lost! also awesome response from the DC-10 pilot. Keep 'em coming!!
Or some incredible luck. Either way, it was a huge win for the small plane's occupants. Had the DC-10's pilot not kicked it over, that center gear would have devastated the other plane and its occupants.
@@patrickflohe7427 those nine souls have (whatever it was) to thank. In the battle of tiny vs gigantic, this is the outcome you’d never consider possible. And Yet.
@@kcindc5539 Of course, and it’s awesome that they all survived that. I’m just saying, you could never maneuver something like that DC-10 to ensure the MLG wouldn’t hit the fuselage. The DC-10 crew were simply try to avoid a collision, not get the small fuselage between the gear. They were all so very lucky.
The DC-10 pilots are so damn awesome the way they straddled the Piper! That's some bad ass flying!! I love it when your videos end with everyone surviving! Great job on the video, love it!!!
Cruising Altitude makes a good cultural comment below. They mention the lack of caution culture and the popularity of hero culture at that time The pilots were under ground control. They had (they thought) followed their instructions correctly so why check ? Off they went. Stick to the schedule. They had been given no special training for foggy airports. BUT what airmanship ! That Piper was straddled on purpose. That was good seat of the pants reflexive skill. Good for them I say.
DC-10 shouldn't have even tried taxiing if he couldn't hardly even see they yellow lines, maybe that was the "something felt wrong" that was nagging him, yet he continued. At least he made a great last second maneuver in order to save the lives of those in the Piper! Great thinking at the last second! Not so much on entering that runway though.
They knew that they would be starting from the very beginning of the correct runway, w/ all the vertical lines, etc. So as they turned onto the wrong one you would think they might be concerned when they look to the left and there is runway as far as they can see!
One factor in the difference between the aircraft, the piper pilot was probably slighty below the worst of the fog, he knew what he was looking for and knew where he wanted to be. The DC10 pilot was probably deep up in the fog, he might have seen one of the taxiway signs but not the other. When he saw the one sign confirmation bias sets in and wisdom flies out the window.
Again and again, your channel surpasses bland and infinitely re-hashed commercial TV air crash programming by miles and miles. All I can offer in return is my humble thanks and a subscription... but, you know... thanks!
Back in the last century my primary flight school had us set the Directional Gyro with the runway heading as we were lined up for takeoff. If we were on runway 09 then the DG and Compass should agree with 090. That habit lasted a career.
Was searching for this comment. This was not a misstake like RW32 vs 310. Instead they turned to 250. Even a glance on any Headingindicator whould give away that something is far out of place.
I remember this from reading about it in the Anchorage Daily Times. According to the article, the fog was so thick that the responders were having trouble finding the crash site. They came across the survivors walking on the runway, who directed them to the crash site.
Oh wow, that was very incompetent of the Korean air crew not to realize that they were facing in the wrong direction as per heading indicator or compass, therefore they were on the wrong runway. This is flying 101, to know which compass direction your aircraft is facing....and the runway markings too. Firing time, all of them.
Nowadays everything is miles better. It's already well lit up and navigation is miles better, moreover about CRM stuff Yep, the fix is just make everything exist better, no need to adding more stuff
I've never heard of pilots being given a choice of which runways they wished to take off. And one big lesson is never to clear takeoffs and landings on such thick fog to prevent another Tenerife happening all over again, with massive deaths on both planes.
hey. in the intro, you say "this is the story of Korean airlines flight 064". the video shows flight 084. might want to consider reuploading. other than that, great content! thank you!
5:12 the captain of the DC10 "was looking out for the Piper passengers and crew that day" when he somehow got his plane over AND around the piper just enough to avert ANY physical injuries being suffered.....which . of course, he would not have had any call to do if he had started his take off on the correct runway ! consequently, the 'outstanding airmanship' type commendations pilots might confidently expect to follow such life saving, evasive actions, quick thinking and piloting skills, never quite made it to the printer.
FYI when he said "someone" I'm pretty sure he was implying that [insert god/deity/deities/supernatural being] "was looking out for them", not the captain. That being said I do agree with your comment.
Anchorage has long been a crucial stop-over between Asia and North America and especially during the cold war period so I am amazed there was no ground radar there, unless I missed that point.
Omg I can't imagine how lucky they all felt and just how much thanks to the guy up there... Wonder what disciplinary action were taken to those pilots! Good video. Thanks.
Atm im in financial crisis, so short of simple thumbs up, im afraid i cant support you in any other way. But , if you can, keep up with digging this rare cases.. nobody does them and , yet, they are both tragical for all included and very important for aviation industry - every one of this events held important lesson for aviation industry. Thank you!
Is this Korean Airlines flight 084 as per the annotations, or 064 as per the voiceover? Otherwise good video, but that few seconds at the beginning is a bit jarring because of that.
They must have it there. Anchorage is like the Wild West. In 2004, I was riding in a rental car and we saw a sign, “aircraft have right of way”. “Aircraft???!” We, in a passenger car, with no radio, realized we were crossing a taxiway. Yeah. We looked both ways.
Question...was this airport too small to have ILS? I was thinking of another wrong-runway accident in Taiwan where they could have spotted their error by noticing they were not properly lined up on the localizer prior to takeoff.
Anchorage was an incredibly busy airport in the early 1980s, being used as a refueling stopover for flights between Europe and eastern Asia (Japan, etc.) since they couldn't overfly the USSR. The airport definitely would have had ILS.
Steven is correct, and Anchorage didn't get any less busy in the 2000s. The place was always a mob scene of cargo planes (especially from Asia) refueling.
Arrogance! Does that answer your question? Pilots that are too big for their britches don't like humble checks and lists. Thank you for your excellent videos.
If the captain wasn’t sure about their position on the airfield, why didn’t he at least check if their heading aligned with the designated runway? As far as I know that is even standard procedure at some airlines. I know it’s easy to say this as a bystander, but sometimes I do wonder how something like this could go unnoticed when there was such an obvious way to spot the mistake. On the other hand it also shows how many little things have to go wrong in order for an accident like this to happen.
I think much of it comes down to training and checklists. There is much more involved in a takeoff than just lining the plane up and mashing the throttles. So likely they were busy with the "normal routine" and didn't break to do the "extra thing" that wasn't in their training or checklists.
Given the weather the workload severely would have been increased. When you finaly find the runway you are glad you have arived. I have never had any runway identification training and never heard someone else mentioning it. (i do however know the difference in runway markings in US and EU where runway nine would be indicated 9 in EU it would be indicated and named 09. Finaly i once at the last moment got a opposite runway assigned. Nothing fuzzy about it went well. Only after takeof i realized the departure would have been changed as well. Being a novice single pilot thats an unpleasant experience !
The part I can't get over is that the tiny plane had 9 passengers while the massive DC10 had 3. Just seems kind of funny. Edit: I missed the part that it was a cargo flight and only had a flight crew. Sorry. No idea why they got onto the wrong runway without noticing something was off.
In most airports, areas outside of runways, aprons and taxiways are grassy, and therefore constrast with the tarmac or concrete covering the paths of aircraft movement. In the photos you have shown, many parts like this are paved over, and the only thing differentiating them from taxiways are the markings. I don't know if it was the same when the accident happened, but if the crew were unfamiliar with the airport, or this type of airport layout in general this might have been a factor, especially in those weather conditions.
What I'm confused about: When you get your taxi instructions, don't you realize how many turns you'll make? Even if you can't identify how long you've been on a taxiway, or how sharp your turn was, in order for them to get onto runway 32, they'd have had to make an ADDITIONAL right turn.
@@michaelscott356 I must admit I thought I'd heard before (possibly even from this channel) that pilots typically have at least a paper map of airport layouts they'll be visiting and using? Maybe that's not as ubiquitous as I'd imagined it to be, or wasn't at this time of this incident, although I kinda struggle to imagine why that might be. Tbh given the state of tech and various instrument positioning already at airports, it seems like it should be a pretty trivial engineering challenge to install instrument positioning systems which give pilots and controllers a backup indication of where each plane is on the ground, just as another (ideally almost entirely redundant) layer of safety adding a chance to break the chain of events leading up to an accident.
I think pilots should be required to see the runway threshold markings (they kind of look like a giant comb) before they begin their takeoff roll. The fact that this crew just decided to gun it, being so far down the runway already, is just astounding to me.
I agree. These guys weren't "heroes" in any sense for ANY of their actions. They were irresponsible morons who should have subsequently been banned from the North American airspace.
Can you please do a story about Air New Zealand flight 901 that crashed in Antarctica in November 1979? There is a clip of the people in the cabin of this plane seconds before it crashed! It is all over RU-vid!
My airlines takeoff profile prevents this. "Runway 34,Set Thust"... Pilot monitoring responds "Thrust set, Heading Checks". That means hes crosschecked ac heading and runway heading
I don't think there is any clever theory why this happened. This is similar to the Tenerife disaster, in that the fog was too soupy for any kind of situational awareness. At the same rate, the DC-10 crew appeared to be completely reckless that day. They were so sloppy with this departure that only extreme carelessness seems likely. The people in both planes survived, which is nothing short of a miracle.