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United Airlines Flight 811 was an airline flight that experienced a cargo door failure in flight on February 24, 1989, after its stopover at Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii. The resulting decompression blew out several rows of seats, resulting in the deaths of nine passengers. The aircraft involved was a Boeing 747-122 (c/n 19875/89, reg N4713U), delivered to United Airlines on October 20, 1970. ==Incident== Flight 811 took off from Honolulu International Airport bound for Auckland, New Zealand, with three flight crew, 15 flight attendants, and 337 passengers at approximately 01:52 HST. Its flight crew was highly experienced and consisted of Captain David Cronin, 59, First Officer Al Slader, 48, and Flight Engineer Randal Thomas, 46. Captain Cronin had logged more than 28,000 flight hours, of which approximately 1,650 were in Boeing 747 aircraft. Flight 811 was his second-to-last scheduled flight before his mandatory retirement. The first officer and flight engineer had logged 14,500 flight hours and 20,000 flight hours, respectively.〔 During the climb, the crew made preparations to detour around thunderstorms along the aircraft's track; anticipating turbulence, the captain kept the seatbelt sign lit. After the plane had been flying for approximately 16 minutes, and was passing between 22,000 and 23,000 feet (6,700–7,000 m), a grinding noise was heard in the business-class section, followed by a loud thud that rattled the whole aircraft. One and a half seconds later, the forward cargo door blew out. The door swung out with such force that it passed its normal stop and slammed into the side of the fuselage, bursting the fuselage open. Pressure differentials and aerodynamic forces caused the cabin floor to cave in, and ten seats (G and H of rows 8 through 12) were ejected from the cabin. All eight passengers seated in these locations were killed (seats 8G and 12G were unoccupied), as was Anthony Fallon in seat 9F, whose seatbelt failed.〔 A gaping hole was left in the aircraft, through which a flight attendant in the business-class cabin was almost sucked out of the aircraft. Passengers and crew members saw her clinging to a seat leg and were able to pull her to back inside the cabin, although she was severely injured. Laura Brentlinger, the senior flight attendant, hung on to the steps leading to the upper deck, and was dangling from them when the decompression occurred.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Mayday: "Unlocking Disaster" )〕 The pilots initially believed a bomb went off inside the airplane, as this accident happened just 10 weeks after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. To reach an altitude where the air was breathable, they began an emergency descent, while also performing a 180-degree left turn to fly back to Honolulu. The explosion damaged components of the on-board emergency oxygen supply system, as it was primarily located in the forward cargo sidewall area, just aft of the cargo door.〔 The debris ejected from the airplane during the explosive decompression caused severe damage to the Number 3 and 4 engines, causing visible fires in both. The crew did not get fire warnings from either of them. Engine 3 was experiencing heavy vibration, no N1 reading, and a low EGT and EPR, so the crew shut down Engine 3. At 02:10, an emergency was declared and the crew began dumping fuel to reduce the aircraft's landing weight. Initially, they pushed the Number 4 engine slightly but once they noticed that its N1 reading was almost zero, its EGT reading was high, and it was emitting flames, they shut it down as well. Some of the explosively ejected debris damaged the right wing's Leading Edge Devices, dented the horizontal stabilizer on that side, and even struck the tailfin.〔 During the descent, Captain Cronin ordered Flight Engineer Thomas to tell the flight attendants to prepare for an emergency landing, but Thomas was unable to contact them through the intercom. He asked the captain for permission to go down to find out what was happening; Cronin agreed. Thomas saw severe damage immediately upon leaving the cockpit; the aircraft's skin was peeled off in some areas on the upper deck, revealing the frames and stringers. As he went down to the lower deck, the magnitude of the damage became apparent as he saw the large hole in the side of the cabin. Thomas returned to the cockpit, visibly pale, and reported that a large section of fuselage aft of the Number 1 exit door was open. He concluded that it was probably a bomb and that, considering the damage, it would be unwise to exceed the airplane's stall speed by more than a small margin.〔 As the airplane neared the airport, the landing gear was extended. The flaps could only be partially deployed as a result of damage sustained following the decompression. This resulted in a high landing speed of around . Cronin was able to bring the airplane to a halt without overrunning the runway. Fourteen minutes had elapsed since the emergency was declared.〔 Evacuation was carried out and all remaining passengers and flight attendants exited the plane in less than 45 seconds. Every flight attendant suffered some injury during the evacuation, ranging from scratches to a dislocated shoulder. Despite extensive air and sea searches, no remains were found at sea of the nine victims lost in flight.〔 Multiple small body fragments and pieces of clothing were found in the Number 3 engine, indicating at least one victim was ejected from the fuselage into the front of the engine, but it was not known whether the fragments were from one or more victims. Because Anthony Fallon was seated farthest from the hole in the plane, he was likely the last victim ejected and with the least velocity; he was also the only victim not ejected with his seat (a seat entering the engine would have caused immediate destruction of the engine); therefore, it is likely that the remains found inside the Number 3 engine were his. Given the aircraft's altitude and speed, the force of the ejection and the fact that debris impacted much of the aircraft's external structure, it was deemed highly unlikely that any victims were alive during their four-minute descent to the ocean's surface. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United Airlines Flight 811」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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