The Flight 981 Disaster: Tragedy, Treachery, and the Pursuit of Truth

By Samme Chittum

On June 12, 1972, a powerful explosion rocked American Airlines Flight 96 a mere five minutes after its takeoff from Detroit. The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the bottom of the aircraft and jammed the hydraulic controls. Miraculously, despite the damage and ensuing chaos, the pilots were able to land the plane safely. Less than two years later, on March 3, 1974, a sudden, forceful blowout tore through Turk Hava Yollari (THY) Flight 981 from Paris to London. THY Flight 981 was not as lucky as Flight 96; it crashed in a forest in France, and none of the 346 people onboard survived. What caused the mysterious explosions? How were they linked? Could they have been prevented? The Flight 981 Disaster addresses these questions and many more, offering a fascinating insiders' look at two dramatic aviation disasters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books
• Release date: Oct 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781588346049

Samme Chittum

Samme Chittum is a narrative journalist and a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship recipient who explores the intersection of current events and history. Her work has been published by The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, and The Village Voice. She is the author of the first two books in the Smithsonian Air Disasters series.

Book preview

1

Blowout in Midair

The tropopause is not a moment but a place—a blue boundary between above and below, an intermediate zone in the earth’s atmosphere. Below it is the troposphere, where weather rules and humans live and breathe. Above it is the higher, ethereal stratosphere, the second major atmospheric layer above the earth, where jets cruise like celestial ocean liners. The height or ceiling of the troposphere and the bottom of the stratosphere vary with seasons and latitudes, ranging from 3.7 miles, or 20,000 feet, to 12 miles, or 65,000 feet.

For pilots, the tropopause is a perimeter to be crossed in order to escape wind, rain, and lightning. But for most of us, crossing this boundary is an experience made noteworthy by the moment on a flight when we realize that we have ceased to look up at clouds and instead are looking down on them. This view is circumscribed by the essential geometry of an airplane’s design, the framing oval window and the bisecting, slanted edge of a wing. But it retains its power to invoke our inner poet: the one who ponders the fragility of life and the mysterious physics of flight that enable a 215-ton aircraft to fly at altitudes higher than the peak of Mount Everest; the one who wonders how we would feel or behave if something were to go wrong, if one of the thousands of vital parts that make up an airplane were to cease to perform in harmony with all the other parts, and to do what machines sometimes do, which is to break, give way, and fail.

On June 12, 1972, American Airlines Flight 96 should have come very close to the tropopause at its assigned flight level of 21,000 feet, but it never made it that far. As a practical matter, aircraft seldom experience problems in midair. The vast majority of accidents occur during takeoff or landing, when pilots put themselves and their planes through their paces. The stratosphere is where jet engines function most efficiently, where autopilot systems are switched on and the crew in the cockpit can collectively relax. Thus, all seemed well at 11,750 feet when Flight 96, a DC-10-10, broke through a spotty cloud layer over the Canadian industrial city of Windsor, Ontario. Just five minutes had passed since the wide-body jet had lifted off the runway at Michigan’s Detroit Metropolitan Airport at 7:20 p.m. Captain Bryce McCormick took a moment to appreciate the 180-degree view through the expansive, curved window of the cockpit. The gray spires of half a dozen high-rise buildings and an unremarkable cluster of office buildings defined downtown Windsor, which lies on the southern bank of the wide and winding Detroit River. In the fading spring light, McCormick could still see motorboats plying the silvery surface of the choppy river. He had flown southeast out of Detroit many times before, but he never tired of the panoramic view of this corner of the magnificent Great Lakes system. The Detroit River is a natural boundary between the United States and Canada and a visual marker for pilots. And it links Lake Saint Clair, to the north, with Lake Erie, to the east, where the plane was headed. The immense and brooding lake, famous for its squalls, got its name from the Iroquoian word erie, for cat, because it is unpredictable.

The weather was unseasonably wet and mild for June, but the temperature inside the cockpit was neither too cool nor too warm. McCormick leaned back and took a sip of coffee from a cup cradled in the black vinyl console next to his seat. Flight 96 was on its way to LaGuardia Airport in New York City, with a stopover in Buffalo, New York. McCormick had flown the first leg of the flight, out of Los Angeles, that morning, so he let First Officer Peter Paige Whitney, 34, fly the takeoff from Detroit. All the gauges on the instrument panel registered as normal. And the plane’s three turbo-fan Pratt & Whitney engines, two under the wings and one mounted on the tail, were performing beautifully. The autopilot was on, but Whitney kept his hands on the yoke out of habit.

McCormick glanced upward and spied a Boeing 747 in the skies far above them. The regal jumbo jet was climbing toward its eventual 30,000-foot cruising altitude in the lower stratosphere. Smaller jets, such as their DC-10-10, were built to cruise as high as 42,000 feet above sea level, but it did not need to go that high during shorter flights, such as this one from Detroit to Buffalo. Whatever the altitude, the plane’s internal environment was completely contained and regulated. If the passengers closed their eyes, they could easily imagine they were sitting in their own living rooms. McCormick turned to Whitney, pointed at the Boeing 747, and said, There goes a big one up there. His first officer leaned forward to get a better look at the jumbo jet and its impressive 200-foot wingspan.

Just two years earlier, First Lady Pat Nixon had christened the premier 747 at Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC, before its inaugural flight in January 1970. As a veteran pilot, McCormick, who was then 52 years old, must have questioned the wisdom of building a plane that could carry 500 passengers. How could an aircraft that big make an emergency landing? The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 was built to fly cross-country but could still take off and land at airports with limited taxiway or parking space. The DC-10 was smaller than the Boeing 747 but still impressive. That day, it was carrying another 30 tons of added weight in the form of cargo, fuel, and passengers. At 170 feet, its fuselage was slightly less than half the length of a football field, and it was 58 feet high, the equivalent of more than five stories tall, with a wingspan of 155 feet. Both pilots were well aware that their new DC-10 was only the fifth one manufactured by McDonnell Douglas. The first DC-10 had made its maiden flight in August 1970 and entered commercial service with American Airlines one year later, on August 5, 1971, on a round-trip flight between Los Angeles and Chicago.

Whitney had 75 flying hours in the DC-10, more than McCormick’s 56 hours at the yoke. McCormick was a veteran pilot who had accumulated 24,000 hours of flying time, while Whitney had almost 8,000 hours to his credit. Although it was not in his nature to be smug, McCormick was pretty sure he had invested more time than any other American Airlines pilot in studying the DC-10’s capabilities. And he was satisfied with how the plane felt as he monitored routine radio chatter coming from departure and center sectors. The wide-body plane could carry more than 300, but that evening it was lightly loaded with just 56 passengers and 11 crew members (or 67 souls on board), including eight flight attendants and the three-man cockpit crew. A corpse and casket bound for Buffalo were stored in the cargo hold, along with the passengers’ luggage.

Both McCormick and Whitney felt at home in the spacious cockpit with side-by-side padded seats, wide armrests, and identical yokes for steering. The throttles that controlled the plane’s three engines were within easy reach on the console between them. The DC-10 exemplified the prevailing credo that all commercial jets should be built to look and feel like comfort on wings. In 1972, air travel was still synonymous with glamour. And the DC-10 was a bona fide luxury jetliner, with a lounge for first-class passengers in the front and a cocktail bar for everyone in coach. McCormick checked the radar and confirmed that no bad weather lay in wait between Detroit and Buffalo. He was a conservative pilot who was most comfortable with the familiar. In general, he preferred to know how things worked, and how to fix them if they failed. He was proud of his modest house in Palos Verdes, California, which he had designed and built himself. He had a reputation among his coworkers as a stickler for procedure, which was fine with him. His presence in the cockpit inspired confidence. He was just the epitome of the perfect captain, said Cydya Smith, the chief flight attendant on Flight 96. He was very professional, yet he was warm and friendly and very respected, and respectful of the flight attendants. I would have loved to have flown with him all the time.

Both the Fasten Seat Belt and No Smoking signs had been turned off in the cabin. Passenger Alan Kaminsky and his friend Hyman Scheff unbuckled their seat belts and left their wives in the first-class section to go play gin rummy in the forward lounge. They wanted to get in a few quick hands before the plane touched down in Buffalo. Smith was out of her jump seat in the front of the plane before the Fasten Seat Belt sign blinked off. The uniform for American Airlines’ female flight attendants consisted of a dark blue dress, a white cap, and crisp white gloves, and Smith wore the uniform with pride. As chief flight attendant and first lady of Flight 96, she was eager to take charge and make a good impression. This was the first time she had flown as number one on a wide-body plane, which is what I always wanted to do. She had complete confidence in the new jetliner. My attitude was that the DC-10 was probably the safest airplane to fly on. As she headed toward the galley to brew coffee, she was making her way sort of downhill, because we were climbing.

Following her usual routine, Smith inserted a filter of fresh coffee into the machine, pressed the switch, and watched the power indicator button turn bright red. That’s when it happened, she recalled. Exactly five minutes after takeoff, Smith was lifted off her feet by a powerful explosion. As the galley doors burst open, she could clearly see, as if in slow motion, entire sections of laminated ceiling panels falling into the passenger compartment, which was filling with a dense grayish-white fog. She could not hear the screams of the terrified passengers. Instead, she felt as if she were enveloped in a gauzy silence. I was in a void. First there was sound, then there was nothing.

In the plane’s cockpit, both pilots were jolted violently backward. Whitney, who had been leaning forward, felt his head slam against the back of his seat, momentarily stunning him. McCormick’s captain’s cap and headphones were torn off as his ears registered a loud bang. To Whitney, the noise sounded like a heavy book slammed down on a table. Flight engineer Clayton Burke felt and heard a powerful thud that reminded him of a human body hitting the ground. A noxious cloud of charcoal-gray dust particles filled the cockpit, blinding McCormick, who was nonetheless aware that the rudder pedals under his feet had taken on a life of their own. The left pedal slammed down to the floor, while the right pedal flew upward with such force that it rammed his knee into his chest. He had no idea how such a thing could be possible, but McCormick feared the plane had been damaged in a midair collision.

The actual cause of the unfolding calamity was something more insidious but just as devastating. A cargo door blowout in the hull had torn a gaping rectangular hole in the side of the aircraft that was large enough to disgorge the six-foot-long casket, which tumbled two miles to earth, along with dozens of suitcases stored in the hold. Far worse, the explosive release of pressurized air had ripped out a large section of flooring in the passenger cabin directly above the gash in the hull. Most of the cocktail bar in the center of the plane had vanished into a depthless cavity that exposed a patch of darkening sky and white clouds rushing by below. A hurricane-like wind was blasting through the length of the plane. Flight attendant Beatrice Copeland had been knocked unconscious and lay trapped in the debris of the collapsed floor. Another flight attendant, Sandi McConnell, had barely escaped being sucked out of the plane when the floor gave way beneath her. Alan Kaminsky remembers a huge crunch as his playing cards flew out of his hands and up into the air. Passengers shrieked as the DC-10 lurched to the right and fell several thousand feet. The cabin filled with mist and vapor, and there was a precipitous drop, said Kaminsky. The women were screaming and screaming. Like Captain McCormick, at first he thought they had been struck by another plane. One of the stewardesses came out screaming. I remember her saying, ‘There’s a big hole on the plane,’ and ‘We don’t know if we can land this plane.’

The two pilots knew nothing about the gaping hole in the back of the plane but were well aware that something had gone horribly wrong. The plane’s body was shaking and rattling all around them, and the roar of rushing air made communication nearly impossible. As his vision returned, McCormick shouted, Let me have it, and took over the controls from his first officer. He began wrestling with the yoke, but the plane refused to level out. The rudder, or vertical fin, was jammed and useless. And all three engine throttles had slipped into idle. The crippled jet was wallowing and losing altitude. If it got into a nose-down attitude, recovery would be impossible. McCormick had only seconds to regain control using a technique that had never been put to the test in an actual emergency. In fact, he was the only man on the American Airlines pilot roster who was qualified to fly a DC-10 without the use of the hydraulic lines and control cables that ran beneath the damaged cabin floor.

—

Earlier that year, McCormick had been chosen by American Airlines to fly one of the new McDonnell Douglas planes. He had not been fazed by the jet’s size and engine power. What concerned him was one particular feature of the DC-10 that made it radically different from other jets he had flown: its lack of a backup system to operate the plane’s flaps, elevators, and rudder by hand were the hydraulic system to fail. In this regard, the DC-10 was very different than the DC-7 and the Boeing 707—both planes that McCormick had flown for more than two decades. Both older planes were equipped with reversion systems that gave pilots manual command of control surfaces if the hydraulic systems were knocked out. What would happen, he wondered, if all of the plane’s systems were damaged?

He found the answer himself on a DC-10 flight deck simulator at the American Airlines training school in Fort Worth, Texas. Using the computerized simulator, McCormick spent hours repeatedly testing his alarming hypothesis of total hydraulic system failure and learned how to exploit the DC-10’s exceptional ability to fly on its engines without assistance from the rudder or ailerons that allow pilots to turn and bank. He also learned how to manipulate the engines to push the nose of the DC-10 up or down. Most jets have this ability to some degree, but McCormick discovered that the DC-10 was especially responsive.

The day the plane’s cabin floor collapsed, damaging vital flight controls, McCormick knew exactly what to do. Without a moment to spare, he shoved two of the idle throttles fully forward, delivering a burst of enormous power to the plane’s wing engines, and felt them surge back to life. In response, the DC-10’s nose pitched up. McCormick’s brilliant maneuver reversed the DC-10’s fatal descent. The maneuver also bought him precious minutes to troubleshoot and figure out how to steer the big plane, which continued to yaw stubbornly to the right. The unruly foot pedals were frozen. And there were more problems with the tail. The indicator light connected to the stabilizers on the horizontal section of the tail was out. When he grabbed a handle designed to give him manual control of the stabilizers, it came away in his hand. He did not know it at the time, but the stabilizers were still working despite the fact that the light had gone out. It was the manual system that had been rendered useless by a broken cable. His split-second decision to use the wing engines to prevent a suicide-like dive brought a reprieve from a collective death sentence for everyone on board. If he had any hope of getting the plane down in one piece, he would have to turn it around and fly back to Detroit for an emergency landing.

McCormick immediately flipped a switch to cut power to the fuel pump that fed the idle tail engine, taking it out of play and lightening the load on the elevators adjacent to the tail, making them slightly more responsive. Two of the four cables to the tail elevators had snapped. The ailerons that allow the plane to bank and turn by breaking up airflow over the wings were responding but sluggish. The DC-10 could not be banked in either direction by more than a gentle 15 degrees. Anything more would put it into a spin. Drawing on the lessons he had learned at Fort Worth, McCormick decided that his best bet was to continue to rely on the differential engine technique to slowly turn the DC-10 around and return to Detroit. He was back in control. But he had no knowledge of the drama playing out in the rear of the passenger cabin, where flight attendants Copeland and McConnell were in serious trouble.

—

When Beatrice Copeland regained consciousness, she found herself flat on her back and weighed down by a section of collapsed ceiling tile. One of her feet was trapped in twisted metal. To her horror, she realized she was staring into the luggage compartment below the cabin floor, which in a plane also serves as the horizontal partition between the passenger cabin and the cargo hold. The floor in the DC-10 consisted of a series of metal plates supported by light-alloy beams running across the width of the plane. Under normal conditions, the pressure in the cargo hold below equaled the air pressure in the cabin. But the hole in the plane’s fuselage had destroyed the symmetry of that equation. And the force exerted by a nine-pounds-per-square-inch air pressure differential had punched a hole in the floor like an invisible fist. Copeland, closer to the danger zone than anyone else, had barely escaped an awful fate: being swept out of the plane and into the rushing air of the jet’s slipstream.

Copeland was unhurt and hyperaware of herself and her radically altered surroundings. She knew well that the wind whipping past her was caused by rapid decompression—something she had never experienced but which had been described to her in vivid detail during emergency procedures training. Frantic to escape, she struggled to free her foot and felt the floor below her giving way. Fighting back panic, she called for help—Get me out of here!—and looked around, hoping to catch sight of McConnell, the last person with whom she’d had contact before being flung to the floor and knocked unconscious. But McConnell was nowhere to be seen, and she feared the worst.

In fact, McConnell was very much alive, unhurt but shaken to her core. When the cargo door had blown out and taken the floor and two seats along with it, she had just finished unfastening the shoulder harness and seat belt on her jump seat in the back of the plane. She would later recall a violent jolt that threw her out of her seat into the divider partition behind the cocktail bar. Unlike Copeland, she did not lose consciousness, and she could feel herself slipping down into the gaping hole. Acting purely on instinct, she fought against the rushing air that threatened to pull her out of the plane, and she managed to regain her footing while scrambling backward away from the expanding opening in the floor. Without looking, she knew the lavatory was directly behind her. It was her best chance for survival. Once inside, she closed and locked the metal door. She was safe for the time being, but utterly alone and cut off from rescue.

As first lady of Flight 96, Cydya Smith was responsible for every passenger on board and the seven flight attendants working under her supervision. After recovering from the shock of the explosion, she realized that the moment of weightlessness she had felt had been caused by zero gravity inside the plane—the