Emery 17 and TransAsia 222: A Jammed Elevator and a Low Approach

This video combines two Mayday episodes about accidents caused not by a sudden failure but by lapses in routine work. In the first, a cargo DC-8 took off with a disconnected elevator control. In the second, a regional crew in Taiwan descended below their minimum altitude in a storm.

Emery Worldwide Flight 17: a takeoff that would not stop pitching up

On the evening of 16 February 2000, Captain Kevin Stables, First Officer George Land and Flight Engineer Russell Hicks prepared a 30-year-old DC-8 freighter at Sacramento Mather Airport for a flight to Dayton, Ohio, carrying mostly clothing. The earlier legs from Dayton to Reno and Reno to Sacramento had been routine.

As the jet reached rotation speed, the nose rose on its own and kept rising after liftoff, even with the control column pushed fully forward. The aircraft rolled into a steep left bank. The captain called an emergency and told controllers they had an "extreme c.g. problem", believing the cargo had shifted. For about two minutes the crew climbed and sank, with the ground proximity warning sounding, as they tried to bring the aircraft around to the runway. The first officer used bank angle to control the nose, a technique investigators later called very advanced. The DC-8 crashed into an automobile salvage yard about a mile east of the airport, and all three crew were killed.

Ruling out the cargo

NTSB investigators, led on site by the NTSB's John Goglia, had to separate aircraft wreckage from hundreds of burned cars. The load sheets showed the cargo was within limits, the bear-claw restraints showed no impact damage consistent with a load shift, and the flight data did not match the pattern of the 1997 Fine Air Flight 101 cargo-shift crash in Miami.

On the cockpit voice recording, Emery captain John Albright identified his colleagues' voices and heard the first officer say he was trying to make the aircraft's pitch match the elevator. The flight data confirmed it: the right elevator stayed nose-up while the pilots pushed nose-down.

A missing bolt, nut and cotter pin

The DC-8's elevators are moved by control tabs, linked by pushrods. The left pushrod had broken in the crash, but the right one showed no overload damage, only rubbing marks: it had not been attached. In ground tests on another DC-8, removing the bolt let the elevator move freely, but when vibration simulated takeoff loads, the pushrod jammed against its crank fitting and locked the elevator nose-up.

The flight data showed a small change in the elevator's behaviour beginning about 8 minutes before the earlier landing at Sacramento, consistent with the bolt coming out on that flight. Because the pushrod did not jam during that landing, the crew could not have known.

Where the error came from

Three months earlier, Tennessee Technical Services had removed and refitted the elevators during a heavy D inspection. Eight days after it was completed, Emery mechanics in Dayton found the elevator dampers installed the wrong way round and swapped them. The NTSB could not determine at which stage the bolt was left unsecured. The video dramatises the damper swap and describes thin staffing and supervision at Emery's maintenance base, as well as earlier pilot complaints about maintenance. The NTSB found the bolt had not been properly secured and inspected and recommended clearer marking of required inspection items on work cards. Emery was grounded by the FAA before the final report appeared.

TransAsia Airways Flight 222: below minimums in a storm

On 23 July 2014, TransAsia Airways Flight 222, an ATR 72 turboprop from Kaohsiung with 54 passengers and 4 crew, was holding over the Taiwan Strait while Typhoon Matmo moved away from the Penghu Islands. The captain was a former military pilot with 22 years of airline experience.

Magong reported 1,600 m visibility, the minimum for the VOR approach to runway 20, and the crew began the approach. They set the autopilot to 300 ft, then 200 ft, well below the 330 ft minimum descent altitude, and held there for about 14 seconds without seeing the runway. Asked "Have you seen the runway?", the first officer answered "No, sir." They called a go-around too late. The aircraft hit trees and crashed into the village of Xixi, killing 48 of the 58 people on board and injuring five villagers.

Weather and fatigue

Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council, led in the video by Thomas Wang, found the typhoon itself was 142 nautical miles away and the winds within limits. But a heavy rain shower cut visibility to about 500 m just after 19:00, and the updated report reached the tower only after the crash. Investigators found no mechanical fault.

The cockpit recording showed checklists rushed without proper call and response and the captain yawning and saying he was tired. He was on his ninth flight in 29 hours; in the previous 90 days he had flown 278 hours and the first officer 264. TransAsia had expanded its ATR routes without hiring enough pilots. In simulator observations, many of its pilots departed from standard procedures.

Seven months later, TransAsia Flight 235, another ATR 72, crashed into a river in Taipei. The ASC's January 2016 report called for a full review of TransAsia's safety management and training, stronger oversight by Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration and better weather reporting at the military-run airport. TransAsia ceased operations later in 2016.