Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: news From: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM (Karl Swartz) Subject: Re: 737 Crash In Colorado Springs X-Submission-Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 01:59:27 GMT References: Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Organization: Chicago Software Works Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM X-Submission-Message-ID: <1992Dec11.015927.5148@ohare.Chicago.COM> Date: 10 Dec 92 18:07:52 PST In article rbarnick@mitre.org (Barnick, R.) writes: >In March 1991 a UAL 737 went down on final approach into COS. The >final accident investigation report was released a couple of days ago >and carried no cause. Just to complete the record, it was UA 585 (DEN-COS) on March 3, 1991; 5 crew and 20 passengers were killed. The aircraft was N999UA, msn 22742, ln 875, a 737-291 (Advanced). It was acquired from Frontier in May, 1986, the last of 25 such aircraft. (Two were 737-2A1(A) models.) >The following was relayed to me via one of the flight crew members. Fascinating. Most of the speculation has been that the aircraft flew into the eye of a rotor (much has been said about this on rec.aviation by folks from the area) which proceeded to flip it. Another story I heard, from some United folks, was that there was some difference in the rudder controls betwee these planes and United's 737-222s, and that this in some way contributed to the crash. I can't recall the details, including whether it was a difference between the Advanced and non-Advanced 737-200s, or an airline-related change that United had not yet applied to the ex-Frontier aircraft. >The investigator went on to say that even if this sort of story could be >proven, it would never be made public. To do would discredit UAL's gender >action, UAL's training, FAA's certification, and maybe further hurt an >already hurting industry. This seems reasonable, and I've heard the same logic applied to snuffing a report that allegedly recommended the immediate grounding of Continental (c. 1989) on grounds of inadequate maintenance. But the CVR from the Air Florida 737 crash into the Potomac in Washington certainly made those pilots look incompetent, and the United DC-8 that went down in Portland in 1978 didn't seem much better. Indeed, the latter, as I understand it, motivated a *major* revision of United's training program. Perhaps gender-discrimination is a more sensitive issue, though. >It seems odd that the final accident report that came out indeed did say >nothing. I believe this is unique insofar as the NTSB is concerned. Robert, is this indeed true? >Please remember, this is a story told me second hand. You're getting it >third hand. But, if any truth about this crash is known, a sharing thought >would be interesting. Thanks for sharing it. If anybody else has anything substantial to contribute on the matter, please send it in. -- Karl Swartz |INet kls@ditka.chicago.com 1-415/854-3409 |UUCP uunet!decwrl!ditka!kls |Snail 2144 Sand Hill Rd., Menlo Park CA 94025, USA Send sci.aeronautics.airliners submissions to airliners@chicago.com