Waiting 4 Seconds Could Have Saved Their Lives | Evergreen International Flight 17

This is the story of Evergreen International Airlines Flight 17, on the 18th of march 1989 an evergreen international airlines dc was on the ground at Fort Worth-Carswell AFB waiting to be loaded up for a flight to tinker airforce base with. This was a flight that was chartered under the USAF air lift contract. The mission for the day was simple get down to abilene drop off the cargo and then make the trip back to Tinker air force base. As the pilots waitied the plane was emptied and then reloaded with cargo and in a couple of hours the plane was ready to go again. The pilots breezed through their before start checklists. With everything looking alright the pilots brought the plane to life, the engines roared to life and the the plane was cleared to taxi to runway 17. The DC 9 was a tiny plane compared to the other planes that used the airport and so it was enough for the dc 9 to do an intersection departure. I mean if you dont need all the runway why use it right? But the crew didnt feel right about this and asked for a full length takeoff. As the plane taxied the first officer computed some important speeds for this takeoff like the V1, rotate and v2 speeds. With that the plane lined up with the runway and then pushed the engines to takeoff power. The plane went faster and faster till the gear lifed off the runway. But the thing is the moment the gear left the ground issues started. A rumble filled the cockpit as the plane failed to climb, a terrain terrain warning was issues by the plane as flight 17 lost the little altitude that it had. The first officer exclaimed main cargo door. Somehow the door was opening. The captain told the first officer to declare a mayday and told him to tell the controllers that they were headed right back for the airport. The first officer fished out the missed approach / quick return checklist and started working through it. The plane slowly flew around the airport to set it up to come back down to the runway they had just taken off from, the controllers cleared the plane in and told the pilots to let them know when they were on the base leg for runway 17. The first officer was trying to figure out the landing speed when the ground proximity warning went off again. The captain wanted to extended the final leg of this approach so that he could get this plane stablized on the final approach and so they sped away from the airport. They turned onto the base leg for runway 17, at this point they were flying perpendicular to runway 17 and one more left turn is all they would need to line this plane up with the runway. The pilots cautiously dropped the gear and the pilots sighted the runway, the first officer encourgaed the capatian to make a left turn to get onto final. The turn was hard the plane was flying in a way that they werent used to, the captain makes a slight left hand turn and the first officer goes “Uhh i think you want to go the other way” the captain just replies with i think youre right and the plane begins a right bank to line up with the runway. But the plane isnt turning as fast as they had hoped, then they start losing control of the jet itself. The plane nosed over and then began a very fast dive but unfortunately they did not have the altitude to recover and crashed noth of the airport. Neither pilot unfortunately survived. Right from the get go it was clear that this plane had huge controllability issues. The interviews with the witnesses painted a picture of a plane that was on the cusp of controllability until it wasnt. When the investigators got the CVR and the FDR in all of it made a whole lot of sense. They could hear the sound of the airflow coursing into the cockpit from the cvr they could hear the altitude warnings go off because the drag from the cargo door opening was pulling this plane down. The door was now the one and only focus of this investigation. How could the door on a DC 9 just open? To understand this we need to first look at the door latching mechanisms of the dc9. I apologize for the bad images, the final report,i think was scanned atleast 100 times. But that being said