Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Explosion on American Airlines Flight 96" video.

  1. Another excellent video. After the Turkish crash, the cargo bay door was finally redesigned to make it nearly impossible for a cargo door failure of the type that occured on AA 96 and THI 981 and there was never another cargo door failure on a DC-10 to this day. Using a non-plug door and electrical rather than hydraulic latching were both cost savings measures. If ground crew followed instructions exactly, the door wouldn't fail. Any significant deviation and failure was certain. The famous Applegate memo, written by Convair engineer Dan Applegate in 1972, detailed failures that occured in ground testing and predicted an in-flight failure was going to happen. From what I've read, the design change to make the door less expensive saved MD about $90,000 on the initial production aircraft. The fixes cost about $4 million, lawsuit costs were at least $18 million that we know of, and it cost 346 people their lives.
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  2. It was a little of both. Not putting in hydraulics for the door was the big money saver. Once some people inside MD were asking for a door redesign, it was going to delay the introduction of the plane against the Lockheed L-1011. Adding the little window to the door helped those that could read and follow instructions, but it's the kind of fix you know will ultimately fail. The DC-10 was one of those airplanes rushed into production. By 1979, most of the initial problems had been fixed. There hasn't been a crash since attributable to problems with the airframe or systems, and it went on to a successful career with the Air Force as a tanker. If it had been properly engineered and built from the beginning it may have been one of the most successful airliners. Instead, it almost dragged McDonnell Douglas to bankruptcy and caused the deaths of hundreds of people.
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  3. Indeed, although this one was pretty major, and pointed out by the chief engineer of their subcontractor. Just penny wise and pound foolish.
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  4. Mike, the fixes put in after the Turkish crash was pretty much a complete redesign and replacement of the door, so it really wan't an issue after that. Another AD required placing a vent in the rear cabin floor to prevent a collapse after an explosive decompression. A further AD requiring more changes so the aircraft could sustain flight and hull integrity in the event of losing up to 20 square feet of fuselage was pretty much the end of the door fiasco.
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  5.  @P_RO_  You're right about us being self loading freight. I just returned for a flight from RVO to ATL via SLC. The first leg was on a Canadair Regional Jet. I used to like CRJs when they had 2+2 one class seating and those comfortable leather seats. Now Skywest has a CRJ700s with 2+3 seating with six "first" class" seats, which are just the old 2+2 layout. The aisle has to be the narrowest on any commercial jet and you have to make a big curve coming out of "first class". I'm 72 with some range of motion problems, and that plane was a challenge. It was nothing compared to the SLC to ATL leg though. I was stuck in a middle seat of an Airbus A321. Horrible. It was so tight you couldn't move your arms enough to turn the pages of a book. The distance between rows was so small that the woman next to me dropped a water bottle and it just disappeared into a black hole. I was never so glad to get off an airplane. I had ordered a wheelchair in ATL because I knew what that was going to be like. I had rented a car for my last leg home the SE Alabama. It took 45 minutes to finally get to the rental car place and then another five minutes to actually get to the cars. There's no way I could have made it walking, not to mention getting hopelessly lost. Once I finally got my car and negotiated two gates with big steel barriers and spikes, I was finally able to spend two hours driving back home through rain and fog. It was not my best trip ever.
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