One sentence and 50 seconds of horror: the plane crash that filled the Chicago sky with fire

It was an afternoon like any other in the Chicago Airport. Like everyone May 25 it was celebrated on “Memorial Day”, a date on which fallen soldiers are remembered. Walter Lux he wanted to spend the day with his son Michael, but his wish would be delayed by the request of another pilot, who asked him at noon to replace him at the controls of American Airlines Flight 191, on the way to Los Angeles. The captain agreed.

Take off, with 258 passengers and 13 crew members on boardIt was scheduled for three in the afternoon. At the same time, the DC-10 started its course until it finally managed to take off, but something extremely striking and dangerous happened on the left wing: the engine has stopped.

In this way, the wing lost power and thrust, which caused the plane will start to tilt to the left, as seen in the frightening image of the seconds that led to its tragic end. The pilots could not notice this anomaly, because the angle did not allow them to observe this side of the ship and, moreover, once detached, the engine cut the hydraulic and electrical systems, so that the alarms of warning on the plane no longer worked. cabin.

The plane of American Airlines managed to rise to about 100 meters from the ground and had a trajectory of 1,500 meters from runway 32 northwest, but It only lasted 50 seconds in the air and ended up crashing into a hangar at the end of 0′Hare International Airport: all passengers and crew were killed, along with two people who were on the ground.

The accident of Flight 191 became the most serious not only in 1979, but in American civil aviation history. Chicago was speechless that day at the flames and the awe-inspiring column of black smoke seen 25 kilometers from where the city center is. In fact, one of the witnesses to the tragedy described the fire as “A gigantic ball of fire.”

While the left engine was 760 meters from the end of runway 32, the rest of the aircraft parts and the bodies of the victims were scattered within a radius of more than 100 meters around the crash site.

Following investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board, it was established that the failure of the aircraft built in 1972 was due to an error in the maintenance tasks. What has been learned is that those who were in charge of this role American Airlines They had changed the way they put the parts together and took them apart to check them out, possibly for lack of time or cost savings, which resulted in damage to the wing support.

This confirmed that it was not a pilot error, although if he had noticed the tilt of the ship, experts say, he likely would have avoided such an ending. The only things that could be retrieved from the black box were thunder noises and a cry of “Damn!”, which can be translated as “Damn!”.

Anyway, Lux was greeted by one of the researchers of the National Council, Ed McAvoy, who had seen the pilot 10 days before the accident and told the Chicago Tribune what she thought when she found out he was flying the plane: “I immediately realized who he was, his abilities and his professionalism.” He also said: “He was an impressive captain.”

What happened to him Flight 191 shook the whole world and set off alarms on the ship’s model, DC-10, who coincidentally it was not the first time that it failed. The company that made it was the North American McDonnell Douglas and it had already been examined two other times for errors in the design of the doors.

One of them was on another plane from American Airlines, which crashed 1972 in Ontario and 11 injured, and another happened in 1973, when a Turkish Airlines flight crashed at Orly airport in France, killing 346 people. The latter is among the top 10 most serious air tragedies in history.

At this moment, DC-10 operations have been banned, which were stationed for a month in hangars at airports around the world. Until then 280 copies of the model had been manufactured and flew in a large number of countries.

In Argentina, for example, McDonnell Douglas’ invention had allowed many people to embark on overseas flights, which was also encouraged by the ease of the exchange rate. Locally, airlines replaced the DC-10 with the Boeing 707 that even though it could carry fewer passengers, it managed to keep the airlines in business.

After a month and rigorous inspections of the bolts that held the engines to the fenders of North American models, they came back in the air. Likewise, a change and greater precision of maintenance tasks were then proposed, on which perhaps even the accident at the airport International 0′Hare its importance had not been taken into account.

The tragedy of May 25, 1979 not only silenced all of Chicago, but also shocked the whole world by the scale of the victims, from 43 different countries., with an Argentinian passenger on board. As of today, a memorial located on the side of the Chicago airport remember, with a mural and the names of each of the deceased, those 273 people who lost their lives in the blink of an eye.