Trouble over Hawaii! The Curious Story of Transair Flight 810 

Thanks for making these amazing videos

Nord VPN is not good at all.

Ummm I always skip through your Nordvpn ads (I am a happy Windscribe user), so… do you get paid the same amount if I skip through the ad? As in, is it commission only sponsorship? If you lose money when I skip through it I’ll watch it next time, but I’m never going to purchase their product.

and there is only 1 free month, not 4!!!

This is one I don't understand. Even if the engine is actively stalling, I'm still going to give it the beans. Both of them. Engine lives don't matter.

exactly why im here

Ooo this hits home!

Join the club

Yep! The world can wait.....

@@eskinpaso can my booked flight… 🫣

I always fly Cargo planes, ngl@@jcrosby4804

​@@jcrosby4804 Boy, did I ever read a non-classy response after two humans were survivors of grave danger.

@@jcrosby4804 Let me get this straight: Someone survives a deadly crash and you ATTACK them?

​@@jcrosby4804You really are a sad soul to be THIS desperate for attention. You seriously need to re-evaluate your life after saying something like this. :/

@@jcrosby4804 Sure I would, they even said the captain had a tendency to be overly safe so I would definitely fly with them. People make mistakes, it's inevitable. That doesn't mean what happened makes them terrible pilots or bad people. I'm sure they got some retraining since you know, they Survived. I'm just happy they got to go home to their families, I'm not here to condemn them.

Yes. Engine was reduced to idle power because it seemed to be having problems. But as the plane descends toward the stormy ocean, might it not be time to ask that engine to deliver just a little bit of thrust?

From the NTSB's interview with the captain (docket number: DCA21FA174 - you can find it on their website): "Q. Was there anytime during that flight, from that point when you took over until you guys were in the water, was there any point in that time where you thought, you know what, let me just push the number 1 up just to see if there's anything? Was there -- did that ever go through your mind at all? A. No. Uh-uh. At this point I was wrestling the -- what's it called -- the stall, the -- I've forgotten all these names. The stick shaker. The stick shaker. And I was trying to get the wings level. Q. Okay. A. So my hands were busy. The power has hit the stop and it was there, so I knew I didn't have any more power. That was the only power I had. I didn't -- I never thought about that. Tried to get the wings level. Q. Okay. All right. Sorry. I just wanted to make sure you guys -- you guys ditch in the water at night and you're here to talk to us about it, so I'm trying to learn everything I can from what you were thinking and doing, just -- so I appreciate that. A. Did we screw up? I mean, if we screwed up, you can tell me we screwed up, you know, and then I -- what did we do, you know? And maybe that can help me help you guys." At his point they couldn't tell him as the investigation was still ongoing, but you can tell that he knew what was coming.

​@@marcellkovacs5452 When they found out they meat have been embarrassing as heck.. I mean I see how it happened, and I can't say I'd have not missed that too under the circumstances

My guess it that their sentence started with a four letter word.

Given that they both survived.... I'm here laughing my azz off 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yea that is so true. The pilots while they made some mistakes but if it weren't for the reprimand from the company to the captain, the captain most certainly would have turn back as soon as he suspects engine failure. Being reprimanded for being justifiably worried is just bonkers.

This is just incompetent diagnosing

Exactly. If there's any question to the safety of the flight, then you abort. "It's probably gonna be fine" isn't good enough

I vommented under a few engine failure videos... and still nobody has explained one simple thing to me... If im about to crash... why not firewall ALL engines by default? Even the one which (you think) is damaged....? I mean, what is the worst that could happen? You destroy the engine.... but if you crash its broken too... so no difference... In 90% of all cases you gain at least a bit of thrust and possibly land... I find the SOP "pull it to idle and possibly even shut it down, even if the thrust of the remaining engine is not enough or fades" insanely stupid... Im not a pilot, only a logic thinker... And id love to have this explained to me from a professional...

How was this person too tall for the war propeller plane?

@@koharumi1 reread the post more carefully. The pilot's father was too tall for the Corsair which was a WWII fighter aircraft. Their was limited room in early military fighter planes for seat/control adjustments, headroom, etc. I don't know that there were official height restrictions then, but generally taller pilots were directed to bombers and transports which were larger aircraft. One veteran I was fortunate to speak with many years ago said that, with some of these fighters, you didn't get into them so much as you put them on. The military has official height requirements for their pilots today, but they are pretty broad. Something like 5'4" to 6'3" unless it has changed. This is mostly for design/performance of the ejection seat.

@@lisanadinebaker5179 thanks for explaining why he was too tall for the war propeller plane.

@@lisanadinebaker5179 I think one of the restrictions is your height sitting down. I know a guy that went to a USAF base for his initial flight physical and failed due to his height sitting. Since this individual was Army National Guard going to fly helicopters he passed.

Given the push pull description, It might’ve been the Skymaster, which has both engines in line so there’s no yaw tendency in an engine failure so there’s no “dead foot dead engine”. To pull back a throttle during critical climb would’ve been risky.

An engine failure in a car means you have to call a tow truck and that you're going to have to spend some money to repair or replace the car. An engine failure in a plane (especially a single engine plane) often means you die.

@@russlehman2070 Hundred percent agree, I get the difference. But I got to tell you if my options were crash into the ocean or whack that other throttle wide open and see what happens, training be damned I think I would have given it a try.

@@johnnyjoseph1389 F%ck yeah , plant boot or sink down to the water ,,IN the dark v,,f%ck that,,

i dont get it either my boat has two engines and if one them is running even 100rpm off the other one i can tell immediately, besides having an entire dash of instruments telling you whats going one. apples to oranges i know but how the hell do you not know which engine failed ffs

@@brodeypecha9233 Jet engines are different from combustion engines because the jet engine is basically a open pipe with multiple fans rotating in it in a configuration where one axle is rotating inside an another one. And the fans closer to the fuel entry location are attached to the axle that's rotating around the another axle. And all the rotation is caused by moving air alone. A jet engine is rotating around 10000-20000 rpm during normal operation but the rotation speed is not directly causing the engine thrust which makes diagnosing the failing engine much harder than with combustion engine. Thrust is combination of fan movement and fuel burning. The dials in the cockpit do not show RPM but percentage of the operational range of that specific axle (labeled as N1 and N2, N2 being the axle that rotates around the N1). I think the biggest problem with old engines like in this aircraft is that they didn't have a dial to show engine vibrations. If you're missing parts of the engine, increasing RPM is not okay. Otherwise it should be okay to try to increase the thrust level if all N1, N2 and EGT are below redline like in this accident for the left engine, which was operating just fine. However, if the engine is missing a fan blade, pushing the power level up might cause the whole engine to explode which may seriously damage the wing if you're unlucky enough. Engines are designed to be strong enough to self-contain even in case of an engine explosion (which is not a guarantee, only a design objective) so I would have pushed left engine to higher power instead of ditching into the ocean even if it could potentially explode because that wouldn't be much worse than ditching into the ocean during the night anyway. That said, the pilots were obviously under much higher stress so making this kind of thinking during the incident might have been next to impossible.

Dude forreal. As a tactical aviator, I think the Coast Guard are complete badasses! They are always on point and ready and professional.

They ditched literally 2 miles from Oahu Coastguard airfield. If it was day time, Coast guard office could see their 737

Ok? What about the pilots you dope.

You're correct, they should have.

Or at least try splitting the throttles in favor of pushing up the engine that wasn't showing the super hot EGT

It probably didn't help that in their training simulated engine failures were total failures of the affected engine hence it would be silly to mess with the failed engine.

Once the speed had been lost the recovery of the good engine would have been fatal. If they had pushed both throttles to Max since they were below VMC they would have immediately lost control of the airplane as the airplane rolled right.

The crew sure were lucky on this one. Without proper visual clues as to their positioning above the water line, it would be extremely difficult to judge how to put her down. With a fair swell and chop they could easily have gone nose first into a rising wave and the outcome would not have been the same. Landing on water is always a very treacherous event, even at the best of circumstances. The Hudson river event was one of a few successful events. And that was a river in daylight.

@@rainscratch In the 50s there was an incident in the Pacific during a flight to the US from Hawaii. They had to ditch in the water. luckily there was a Navy ship nearby and everyone survived. It think it was a Pan-Am flight. I forget the name.

@@BiggaNigga69 No they didn't. Why would you make such a comment..

Your name makes me believe you're the troll, but just in case Petter clearly very states they suffered minor injuries but were rescued safely and got interviewd about this event for the investigation.

were the pilots trans people? since they worked for TransAir. glam makeup etc?

Thank you! We try

I’m honestly shocked that two experienced pilots couldn’t work out which had failed, 1 errr 2 err definitely 1, scary how you can build a lot of experience but little common sense

Yea. Just strange. Its nuts to me how often wrong diagnosed engine fails on twin engine planes have occurred considering how much effect a downed or languishing engine tends to have on the behavior of the aircraft. Its almost no different than getting a flat tire in a car....lots of information pointing to the side where the problem is originating. I feel like both pilots in this case put their senses in idle once go time hit, and all the sensible considerations as to the source of their predicament became a distant 2nd to expediting procedures for the return to airport

@@razorfett147 No... they were given IMMEDIATE clearance to the Honolulu runway that had an approach over open water.. No civilians or buildings to endanger. Instead they asked for a vector that took them out to sea "to run checklist".. Which they didn't do obviously. They flew out to sea on the injured engine.. with the good engine at idle and commenced expediting the crash. They were only flying cargo to another Hawaiian Island 30-45 minutes away so they couldn't have been grossly over on fuel/weight.

@@TenGreenRangers The problem was the Chief pilot. Who really sounds like a company many, and didn't really look out for his pilots. Because the Captain was reprimanded by the Chief Pilot, he didn't want to return right away, but instead wanted to "run" the checklist. If this engine failure had happened before the reprimand, he would've landed right away.

CRM fell apart. That was the break in the chain that negated the redundancy of twin engines.

I seriously laughed at pun you probably didn't even mean to make. I'm actually such a child.

same here...also the timing. wow lol.

My knowledge has been elevated too!

​@@countcock5694 same 😅

Glad you like them!

Im the same😅

Congrats! I love the way you explain everything. I'm almost 70, and I'm still fascinated by airplanes. I take my walks at night so I can watch the planes fly by, and try to figure out where they're going. It's awesome. Thank you for explaining everything in such a clear and exciting way. Stay safe . You're in my prayers.

Thank you! My team and I are working as hard as we can to keep improving our output. Glad that you like it! 💕

Thanks Rasta Fascinating information Do you work in aviation ?

@@wallybingbang4350 No just a general interest in thermodynamics. Gas turbines have stationary applications as well.

@@Rasta8889 indeed they do, people would be surprised where they are, hospitals, factories, universities and everywhere in power generation and oil and gas. I had 44 gas turbines at my last work site

@@anethers7545 Isn't huge 2 stoke diesel more common?

@@edmondhung6097 I didn’t say they were more common than other power generation units, simply that people would be surprised how many are used. Natural Gas engines seem to be the most common these days

Bro u gave money and he didnt heart or see man lol sorry😂❤

@@TheMentourPilot_On.Tele-Gram Sorry but as an old frenchy man with a quite poor english, I don't know exactly what "Hit me Up" means on social networks 🤓. Heeeelp! 😉

Don't ignore Blancolirio, he also does an excellent job.

@@yankeetango Of course, you're right, but for me it's not actually the same level. Thx for your interest.

Thank you so much my friend and sorry for my late reply. It makes me so happy to hear those words and im happy that my videos are seen in the light I intended!

Hey ! I'm a university student in CS trying to become a software dev and I've become addicted to aviation stories and I'm really interesting in it. You're some sort of a future me

I just wanted to stop by and say absolutely good on you, it takes courage to follow your dreams :)

To fly also prompts and feeds the seeking and curiosity gene for continued sanity and faith in the advances in science that make air travel the safest mode of transportation....unless you're a pedestrian in Sweden which is the safest there. You have to keep current which ends complacency and always feeds a consideration of a sceptical POV if anomalies are noticed and proven to be a problem. Petter's narrations are indeed inspiring. I was cabin crew for 3 different carriers and retired.

These Pilots were horrible... Given an option of immediately returning to land, they opted to fly out to sea to "run checklist" .. and then didn't run them. They set the good engine to idle.. and tried to use the failed engine to stay aloft. Equally as tragic is the way Pilots everywhere never lifted a voice of criticism ... Only gave them "attaboys" for surviving the crash they helped initiate.

@@TenGreenRangers Immediate returning to land with a single engine failure is almost never the right approach. It can lead to a rushed approach and no time to properly configure the plane for landing, which can lead to a crash. Dual engine failures are in fact exceedingly rare.

@@TenGreenRangers I'm going to assume that you aren't very familiar with standard operating procedures. Even swiss 111 went back out to sea to run checklists. You don't just land the plane immediately once an engine failure occurs. Please refrain from judgement and calling pilots 'horrible', when your commentary indicates you aren't familiar with safe aircraft operation

@@TenGreenRangers no, they were not horrible. first of all they somehow got the plane down in a survivable state on an ocean with 13' swells. that's nearly a miracle in and of itself. secondly, flying out to sea in an emergency is SOP, you don't want a plane to fall down to earth on an apartment complex. this is why sully initially headed for the hudson when he realized he couldn't make it back to the airport. it wasn't because he wanted to land in the hudson, it was because he had a twin engine failure, and until the ATC could give him a place to land, the safest place for the plane to be was over a body of water, not over the densely populated city below. as for the problems, it seems to be a combination of too many years of experience plus too much trust in the copilot, and too little altitude, leading to stress causing a bit of tunnel vision. We should be happy that both pilots lived not calling them bad pilots.

And at night too, incredible!

Thanks a ton! That’s what I’m trying to do!

exactly ,hence good pilots are rare.

@@ericscaillet2232 I don't think good pilots are rare. We haven't heard of all the non-accidents by good pilots, and here we see 2 morons not identifying which engine was not working :D Bad pilots are rare, but we see them on youtube.

⁠@@flashgordon5488I think you’d be just as much of a moron, maybe slightly even more useless, were you in the cockpit with them. 😄👍🏻

For me the most scary is the idea about seeing water level raising through the window.

If they're anything like my friends are with me... It's just fodder for the next batch of "ribbing". "Well, then, what's wrong with my flying? I have an impeccable record." "Yeah, sure, buddy... Except for that time you ditched us off Hawaii." "You gave me the controls at 20 feet off the g** d*** deck!" "YOU were still the one with the yoke in his hands. YOU crashed the plane!" {probably trading winks with everyone else present} "I want y'all to listen at THIS SH*T! That's how he does people he flies with!" {probably gesturing broadly and then pointing at the other, or flipping him off} "I still haven't crashed us or sank a plane to the bottom of the sea... not once!" "ONLY because you gave me controls at 20 g** d*** feet off the deck! What the f*** am I supposed to do at 20 f***in' FEET?!" "You remember what you kept begging ME... 'Please fly the plane'... Maybe take your own advice there, Tiger!" "F*** YOU! "Nah... that would be f*** you." {still trading winks with everyone who isn't in tears on the floor already} AND the rest of the room crows delightedly at both of them... hahahahaha... The "can't tell his right from his left" jokes would write themselves... practically... Intense situations happen... AND it takes a little while, but most of us bounce back and some time later, we can laugh. Once that happens, we can even make jokes at each other's expense... ;o)

I wonder if they kept thier jobs.

@@dannydaw59 They probably did. I assume that, after the final report was released, they went through additional training and had to be recertified. And they never flew together again because of the lack of good CRM.

@@dannydaw59 The FAA shutted Transair down after this Crash - so at least not at this Airline.

@High-Alpha - adrenaline has a very powerful effect on the mind, and its two preprogramed responses are RUN or KILL SOMETHING. If neither of those options present themselves, it can be paralyzing. And training can only go so far to mimic a real world occurrence. If you haven't read it, I recommend Kevin Sullivan's "No Man's Land" - his story of how he handled Quantus 72 and its aftermath.

This is the 4th example I can think of on 737 shutting down the wrong engine. That’s amazing After the English wrong engine shut down I’d be awfully sure if I was flying

I'm surprised the NTSB didn't advise pilots to not trust what they "feel" is the failed engine and to always confirm, unless they have a visual on it. The checklist accounts for this but they didn't have time. Or thought they didn't. Multiple factors ate up their time and increased their stress levels. Tough situation.

I'm surprised simulators don't have a partial failure option.

In the time frame of the incident, I just cannot imagine how the pilot monitoring did not notice that the engine they had assumed was faulty was still running within all the correct parameters on the instruments, while the engine they were using was breaking up as a result of high exhaust gas temperature. Check lists are a useful tool, they are not a bible, so putting them above common sense is a huge mistake. Sadly, many pilots have little knowledge of how an aircraft works and no technical training. The training pilot who suggested not returning to the airport following an early fault was a fool. Finally, when they knew that they were not going to make it to the airport, even if the idling engine was faulty, it would have given them the extra few miles.

... or swim away from 😎

@@donnamauer3215 Yes. Eventually they crashed not only their Aircraft but also their Airline - Transair went out of business after this event.

Thank you for the nice words!

That is awesome! Tell him I said hi and that I’m really happy he likes my videos. 💕

Strong agreement from me!

@@officialMentourPilot_ scam!!

Thank you! I hope this video makes what happened a bit clearer.

They are like grandpa's age already,so their brain is not that sharp anymore.not unless if they are asians,that 50+ years old seems still young due to lifestyle and quality of foods they eat in asia,especially on a poor country part of asia.

i was just about to add a similar comment.

In those types of accidents I keep wondering why, when they get to the point where they know they are going to crash, they don't gun all the engines regardless of any damage they might have and hope for the best, how much worse than a crash could it get?

@@fuzzy1dk That would require an awareness that you might possibly have a wrong idea in your head regarding which engine is damaged and which is working. If you are absolutely sure that the left engine is completely dead, as these pilots were, the idea to request thrust from the left engine would indeed not cross your mind: it could not only obviously not possibly help in any way, but it might actually make matters even worse, for example by causing that engine to catch fire or explode. If you mean "in general, before crashing, you should always try to spin all engines up" - then i'm not sure that is really such a good idea. Should you really try to spin up an engine that is actually broken, and that you know to be broken, shortly before crashing? Apart from the possible detrimental effect, aren't there more relevant tasks to focus on shortly before crashing, like managing the attitude and the horizontal and vertical speeds as well as possible? Besides, aren't the rules how to deal with *specific* emergencies distilled into *specific* checklists, precisely to resolve such ambiguities what to check & do in which order and under which conditions? In this case, if i understand MentourPilot correctly, the checklist would indeed have resolved the problem (by containing instructions to check both engines in specific ways to avoid misidentification of the problem), but unfortunately, there was too much distraction to ever properly complete that checklist...

@@IngoSchwarze my point was to ignore that the engine is damaged (afaiu it was still at idle, not shut down) once a crash becomes unavoidable, the engine is either going to do nothing and you still crash or something and you might not crash

@@fuzzy1dk might not wanna increase your impact velocity if the engine does work somewhat

Keep in mind that the entire flight was only 11minutes and what you're calling "the end" lasted only few seconds

@@Potato-dx5mc I suppose its something they must get specifically trained against, because both engines were still *running* all the way into the water - just neither thought to see if they could get just a little more thrust

Except we already have several examples of the same kind of incident and those apparently didn't help these guys.

One of their mistakes was most likely talking to ATC for several minutes, when they should have said nothing, and just Squawked 7700.

@@hiscifi2986 Indeed, exactly.

Same here. I’m a retired nurse addicted to disasters and solving the puzzle that caused them. I find Petter‘s voice very calming. It’s like the world that’s off the hinges suddenly stops spinning so wildly! Hang in there!

True

Thank you!

@@MentourPilot 100 more, please!!

Indeed.

Maybe the right Engine was simply at the end of its lifetime - more than 100000 Cycles are tremendous!

You're right

While that reasoning is valid and rational, the problem with high stress is that it interferes with rational thinking

Your enthusiasm makes for encouragement for new pilots and non pilots in the workforce 😅. Thanks. Keep it up .

Hope you enjoyed it! 💕

@@MentourPilot You bet! Absolute legend :)

Excellent comment 💯

As soon as we get the final report.

That's very interesting, thank you!

@@MentourPilot We learned CRM from aviation, which we call Crisis Resource Management (as we work in a team with more than 2 people). It has 4 components: Situational Awareness, Task Prioritisation & Allocation, Team Work, and Decision Making. We also use Checklists to enhance patient care and safety. For example, to prevent surgeon operating on the wrong side of the body. Like flying, anaesthesia also has 3 phases: the Take Off phase (induction of anaesthesia and insertion of breathing device), Cruise phase (we monitor the patient and set the ventilator on “auto pilot”, the Landing phase (emergence from anaesthesia and extubation). The Take Off phase is also most dangerous for us. Edit: we also encounter equipment problems and failures, but we are trained to use other clinical cues (which unfortunately was not available to the pilots in this episode as they flew away from the lights).

Mad respect for you and your colleagues, unsung heroes

​@@drandrewtanhello from the anesthesiologist to the anesthesiologist!🎉

Thank you! Stand by for more!

This confused me too. The narration is also unclear - Petter correctly states that the HP turbine stage drives the HP compressor stages and the LP turbine stages power the LP compressor stages, but then when the animation begins he states that the single HP turbine stage drives the compressors (plural). I thought I had missed something!

He explains so clearly why things matter!

This happens in almost all jobs. There is a boss or management above that cares about their bottom line more than safety. Not always, but often enough that we hear about mistakes being made and corners cut all the time.

I agree, starting to second-guess your decision-making at a critical moment can be disastrous. The captain's first instinct to just return to the airport immediately after an engine failure might not have been procedure, but it wasn't the wrong call by any means, just slightly reactive/cautious. It would certainly have been better than this second-guessing and trying to do the procedure, but failing

Especially the Captain is probably a beaten man today - in his age and with this Story in his Biography. The First Officer has at least still his Lawyer Business.

The issue there was made much worse by the altered gauges of that model. They where small, hard to read, and very different to what they'd trained ion and sued previously. Particularly during severe vibration. There were also some other design changes that happened they were unaware of that factored in. In a way it's the grandfather to the 737 MAX mess as that crash, (kegworth), was the one that brought in the need for additional training on any aircraft modification above a certain level. So with the MAX boeing did everything they could to dodge that requirement which came back and bit them on the bum. Though the airlines deserve some blame too as Boeing did highlight the new system as somthing the pilots needed a basic briefing on and not all airlines did it so some of the poor crews caught up in it had no idea how to turn it off.

Indeed - there was at no point a structured way of problem-solving, what resulted in confirmation bias. They had simply good luck to survive. Fortunately it was in opposite to the Kegworth Disaster a Cargo Aircraft, so only the two Pilots on board.

Thank you so much 😊