Alaska flight 261

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Yeah. Quite a story. Absolutely a lubrication failure, that led to the jack screw failure.

I think the biggest lesson for a pilot is this: don’t troubleshoot airborne.

If there is a problem with the flight controls, and you can get the airplane back under control, stop right there. Land in an abnormal configuration if that’s what you end up with, but stop trying to make a broken flight control work better.
 
Taking off from Fairbanks and heading to Anchorage, I flew on an Alaska Airlines' MD-80 a week after that crash.

The pilot reassured us the plane had been thoroughly inspected. I was still nervous.

I'm still here...


Alaska Air faithfully remains my absolute favorite airline. Their hospitable crews make the difference. I've flown over a quarter million miles with them.
 
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SteveG4 said:
Taking off from Fairbanks and heading to Anchorage, I flew on an Alaska Airlines' MD-80 a week after that crash.

The pilot reassured us the plane had been thoroughly inspected. I was still nervous.

I'm still here...


Alaska Air faithfully remains my absolute favorite airline. Their hospitable crews make the difference. I've flown over a quarter million miles with them.
Click to expand...
Flying on them next month to Honolulu for our honeymoon. :cool:
 
Alaska Air petitioned the FAA to create a time-between-inspection of said jack screw, a time interval that was well beyond any other operator's maintenance checks. The jack screw was red-tagged at inspection, by an Alaska Air mechanic, then lubed up & checked again, deemed reusable,
put back in place and failed months later. It wasn't a lubrication failure. Alaska Air lawyers TRIED to implicate Shell in their defense during the lawsuit, and they failed. Alaska Airlines killed all on board. They should of heeded J. L. , their own A & P mechanic who red tagged the jack screw & won a lawsuit against them (Alaska Air) as well. They did it to save seventy thousand dollars on a critical part.
 
Most of all it is and was a huge engineering failure. The keyword in years past in the aviation world was "redundancy".
Also for anyone that knows engineering of CNC machine tools knows how overly tough ball screws are, that is what that jack screw should have been. CNC machines bang tons of weight back and forth with those screws at crazy velocities, for many trouble free years with no failures.
There should have been two that have pressure feed lube pumps, with lube oil quantity indicators that flash a warning if the oil is low.
And a disconnect system so if one goes bad it can be removed from the system, also a hand crank manual over ride for both if the motors burn out.
A ball screw would go for likely many hundreds of hours if the lube was stopped. A square thread in a brass nut will strip the nut, isn't that what happened?
 
Thanks for posting this. I like learning about these things but get a stomach ache knowing the fate of all on board and knowing that we all have flown and it's really just the luck of the draw.

My overall complaint about airlines, car companies, etc. is they pinch pennies foolishly, make unnecessary re-designs of proven technology with unknown technology, etc. And these often, very often, result in tragic crashes or expensive recalls, etc.

In this case, saving even a few tens of thousands of dollars on cutting corners on parts and labor, cost 88 lives, an airplane, impacted 88 families who suffered, and probably cost the company truckloads of money in lawsuits. Is that worth saving a few hours of maintenance or a expensive part? Of course not...

Human folly is to pinch pennies, being penny wise, but pound foolish.
 
Astro14 said:
Yeah. Quite a story. Absolutely a lubrication failure, that led to the jack screw failure.

I think the biggest lesson for a pilot is this: don’t troubleshoot airborne.

If there is a problem with the flight controls, and you can get the airplane back under control, stop right there. Land in an abnormal configuration if that’s what you end up with, but stop trying to make a broken flight control work better.
Click to expand...

I agree, not to troubleshoot while airborne. I was thinking this exact thing. The pilots had "fixed" it and then they kept fussing with it. Correct it so you can land, and then land immediately at the first opportunity.
 
MrLemonade said:
My overall complaint about airlines, car companies, etc. is they pinch pennies foolishly, make unnecessary re-designs of proven technology with unknown technology, etc. And these often, very often, result in tragic crashes or expensive recalls, etc.
Click to expand...

Should we go back to cables and pulleys for controls?

Air travel is still the safest way to get anywhere and cars are so much safer than they ever have been.
 
Some of the responses in this thread make me wonder if anyone has even read the NTSB report. The root failure was the lack of lubrication but due to maintenance error. The lubrication fitting on the nut was plugged and despite the manufacturer stating to "force grease into fittings until all old grease is extruded" Alaska Airlines failed to do that:

The Alaska Airlines mechanic who was responsible for performing the accident
Airplane’s last elevator and horizontal stabilizer components lubrication at SFO in
September 1999 told Safety Board investigators that he would know if the grease fitting
for the acme nut was clogged “because you’d feel it in the [grease] gun as you try to put it
in. If it wasn’t going in, you could feel it.” When asked how he determined whether the
lubrication was being accomplished properly and when to stop pumping the grease gun,
the mechanic responded, “I don’t.” When asked whether he would be able to see grease
coming out of the top of the acme nut during lubrication, the mechanic responded, “You
know, I can’t remember looking to see if there was.”

Contributing to the failure was that the existing procedure for detecting a worn nut or screw was complicated and difficult to perform, but that still was not the root cause.

Jackscrews and Acme nuts are used on many airplanes in many systems not just MD-80 flight controls.
 
MrLemonade said:
In this case, saving even a few tens of thousands of dollars on cutting corners on parts and labor, cost 88 lives, an airplane, impacted 88 families who suffered, and probably cost the company truckloads of money in lawsuits. Is that worth saving a few hours of maintenance or a expensive part? Of course not...

Human folly is to pinch pennies, being penny wise, but pound foolish.
Click to expand...
Please relate how that applies in this instance.
 
I occasionally use a low cost carrier(Allegiant) 5 mins from my home that used these flying junk MD-80' with direct flights to FL. Thankfully they upgraded their fleet.
 
madRiver said:
I occasionally use a low cost carrier(Allegiant) 5 mins from my home that used these flying junk MD-80' with direct flights to FL. Thankfully they upgraded their fleet.
Click to expand...
If they were "junk" it wasn't due to the design of the airframe. What caused them to be "junk" could very well cause the same thing to happen to newer airplanes.
 
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