I am on the road this week, but fortunately for us, my friend Elissa Bird agreed that I can share one of Her great articles With all of you. Looking at the feverish pace of flight news recently, I thought it may be a visit to yesterday’s accident with Elisa’s vision that will be welcome, specifically about the emergency landing of Captain Carlos Dardano in Louisiana in 1988. Thank you for the Posta Post!
Elisa Bird is a journalist and independent researcher. She lives in the Canary Islands and loves pigs, planes, volcanoes, logic and justice.
When I wrote Slip to safetyIn 2022, many people asked why the famous “Miracle of Hudson” was not included. The answer is that it is a great story but it is very known, and although I admire the wonderful Captain Solinberger Captain like anyone else, I am nothing new to add.
It is useful to write stories where a new perspective gives a better understanding, or those that deserve to be widely known than it is. Such one.
In some respects, it is a story similar to Hesonon; Loss of both engines. (For Soleil, this was because of the bird strike and his Airbus A320 was for Carlos, the cold was the Boeing 737-300.)
None of the aircraft had any opportunity to reach an airport, but both had great pilots who landed safely in a sudden place (Soleil in a river, and Carlos on a muddy fiber) and everyone survived.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that this event occurred 21 years ago from Hudson, when there was limited social media and not immediate propaganda all over the world that we have now, so people were less than that.
Captain Carlos Dardano
In 1988, he was only 29 years old, but with 13,410 hours a trip, approximately 11,000 of them driving. His father was a pilot in agriculture (crop nomination, workers and equipment transport).
When he was a child, Carlos loved to go with him and his father sat on his lap and taught him to fly. He never wanted anything but a pilot, so he was flying on the days of his vacation.
He obtained his 16 -year -old pilot license while he was still in high school, and his father helped work. It took only five months to obtain his commercial license, and he soon guided others.
He gained experience in dealing with adversity as well. One day in 1977, when he had only 100 hours of flying alone, landing equipment erupted. He calls this the only time that he was afraid, but he arrived at the airport safely.
Echo Al Salvador Map, by JRC, EC, November 27, 2014. Wikimedia Comong this file was licensed under the Creative CommonS Attribution 4.0 International.
In the eighties of the last century, a fare fare was flying, and a couple and their child were transported to a meeting. When they arrived, there was no one and the place was frighteningly calm.
This was during the civil war in El Salvador, a person began to shoot, hit Carlos in the face and hit the plane several times. Despite this serious injury, the passengers returned to the plane and set out, and they fly to avoid seeing it. They arrived at Elubango Airport, which was ready for the car.
Very quickly, the ambulance crashed on the road to the hospital. When he woke up after a six -hour operation, Carlos knew that the bullet destroyed his left eye. His greatest interest was that he might lose his American pilot license. The American Taka operations were based in New Orleans.
The rules are now different, but it was lucky. Three months after flying with doctors and inspectors, who all agreed that he was flying completely, he obtained a pilot with a medical concession, and returned to work as a first officer on BAC-111.
When he went to Aerolineas Argentinas to upgrade to Captain, they had doubts about him because they had no experience in one -eyed pilots, but they accepted the waiver of his American license.
Taca Flight 110, May 24, 1988
Taka (AEREOS Centro Americanos) was the National Airlines for El Salvador. It had a complex history, starting in the 1930s Tegucalpa, Honduras, as a shipping airline. In 1940, they added a passenger service, based in San Salvador.
The Boeing 737-300, the aircraft N7536, was the Boeing 737-300, with Turbofan CFM-56 engines. Almost new, it flew for the first time on January 26, 1988. Taca bought it just two weeks before this incident.
On board the plane was seven crew and 38 passengers. The first officer, Dionysio Lopez, was experienced like Carlos with 12,000 hours. The two were often flying together and they were friends. The ARTURO SOLEY pilot, on the surface of the flight, was to monitor the performance of this new aircraft aircraft.
They left on May 23, they were flying from San Salvador to New Orleans, with a stop in Blaise. They had to stay tonight in Blaze because the battery was waiting for delivery and the engines would not start. The maintenance installed a new battery and left the next day.
Everything was normal until they approached New Orleans at FL350 (35,000 feet). They were enjoying, and they showed the new and modern passenger travelers, which were allowed at that time.
The weather map of the radar showed heavy rainy storms, and the crew chose a path around the worst areas, which were marked in red on the map. But the map showed only the closest weather, and they faced heavy rains, cold and disturbance.
Before entering the clouds into FL300, Captain chose to ignite the continuous engine and activated registration control systems. Seeing the size of the storm they were entering, was concerned about the destruction of the plane. He was right.
This is a picture of the damage of the plane’s nose:
This is some of the damage to one of the engines:
Industry did not train pilots for the loss of engines, because manufacturers did not think that.
In FL165, with continued descent, hinting the engines. The failure of electricity and tools. Loss of trend and electric energy means that they are now planting. They tried to no avail to reinstall the engines, which lit up but were unable to accelerate to lethargy.
They allowed them to stand up to the plane’s leveling mode, but the clouds were very thick so that the crew could not see it outside. Then they got the additional power unit (APU) to operate its batteries, which was fortunately new. This is the restoration of electricity and hydraulics to land.
Now they can communicate again. Air traffic controllers in New Orleans, whom they saw their disappearance from Radar, thought they had crashed, and they were very comfortable when APU started and the first officer Lopez called them with a Mayday call.
ATC sent them vectors, but they were unable to reach the airport. ATC then offered them a potential decline in New Orleans Liellands, but they were losing a lot of speed and height to reach this airport as well.
Their only option was the water drop in the Louisiana swamp. Captain Dardano lined up with the East New Orleans City channel, where he was traveling as much as possible.
The first officer LUPez went through the verification menu of mitigating the formation of the plane; About 1000 feet, Levi note, near the waterway corridor and Mossisby of the Gulf River. He referred to the captain, who agreed that it would be the best place to land.
To shoot and slow down, the captain prepared a Manofry called “side slide”. This is commonly used with small and private aircraft, but he worked with Boeing:
They fell completely on the grass bar, 6,060 feet (1818 meters) and 120 feet (36 meters), like this:
The passengers, who are keen to go out, but then began to rain until the pilots remained on the plane until it stopped.
The causes of the accident were:
- Taca Flight 110 had unintentionally transferred to a 4 -level thunderstorm.
- Although the CFM-56 power stores were adopted to meet the FAA standards, the engines were thrown due to the swallowing of water from heavy rains and cold.
- Referring to the “insufficient design of engines”, they pointed out that the FAA standards did not explain the amount of water faced by this trip.
- Since then the engine design has been modified, and the pilots now have a reference menu for this rare type of event.
In conclusion, let’s connect the loose ends
Boeing engineers and pilots took the LEVée N75356 test to a facility near NASA, and they installed new engines.
I took off from Saturn Street, which was built over the runway of the Second World War, for the Mi’mana field. She returned to the TACA service until March 1989. She had many changes in ownership, and she was retired in December 2016.
Taca Airlines stopped its operations in 2013, after integrating with Avianca, and is now working with AVIANCA Salvador.
Captain Carlos Dardano announced his retirement from commercial aviation in September 2023, after 49 years of service. Before that, he helped train his son, who flew as his first officer. He still does aerobic, and other airlines.
The pilots recommend learning the air, because it helps them to understand and work with it. He also believes that even these days of computing, the ability to manually fly is still useful.
It takes an exceptional skill and some luck in getting out of difficulties in a fictional way. But it also requires the opportunity, even rare. There must be other professional pilots who are able to do what Carlos and Soul did, but they may be very happy that they never need it.
sources:
https://www.elsalvador.com/noticias/nacional/capitan-carlos-dardano-jubilado/1087314/2023/
An interview with Captain Carlos Dardano, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.alternativeAirlines.com/taca-iarlines
https://aviation-saffy.net/asndb/326548
https://simpleflying.com/34 years
One of the most amazing flying stories ever, Mentour, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Thank you very much Elisa for sharing your article with us! We hope that someone will end up reading to land on a mugs, but it is always reassured that we know that someone else has worse!
If you enjoy the Elisa article and want to read more, you can follow it On the averageWhere you write about history and disasters of all kinds.