one doesnt get closer to crashing than this, a true story!

britfrog · July 24, 2014

A few years ago, as many of my stories start, I used to have my aztec serviced at rushett farm, near Chessington zoo. The runway there was very short (400m) so one had to be on ones toes to land there and not run through the fence at the end. However I was able to carry out all the work on my a/c whilst being supervised and signed off, by the engineer there , so cutting costs. At the same time there were other a/c based there , one was a morava L200 or something like that, it was a weird twin with engines that looked like a zlins. However I sort of digress. The owner of one of these twins was a little special, he was known to be a commercial pilot that would fly anything as long as the money was right. There was a lot of bitching behind his back by other pilots because of this guys mannerisms and the way he was , and I have to say he was not my cup of tea but it takes all kinds to make a world. At any rate I met him just after this little escapade and he gave me a photo over the net of the wing of this a/c sadly I lost it some years ago with a p.c. Crash but it does exist somewhere.

Here is his story of an incredible event which they all luckily survived from.

IT WAS a few seconds after hearing two loud bangs that Martin Emery, the co-pilot, looked out of the cockpit window at the starboard wing of the Boeing 707. He saw first that the outer engine was missing and, peering round further, found that the inner engine had gone, too.

The 707 was 32,000ft (9,000m) above the Swiss Alps. But 25 minutes later, in a feat of extraordinary flying skill and a testimony to the strength of the 25-year-old Boeing, it was brought safely to earth.

Mr Emery has now given the first full account of the drama on 31 March last year. The 707, owned by Trans Air, a Nigerian company, was fully laden taking mining equipment for Esso from Luxembourg to Timbuktu via Lagos. An hour into the flight, just south of Geneva, the crew heard the two bangs.

Mr Emery, 44, a freelance pilot with more than 25 years' flying experience, recalled: 'The turbulence was so bad that we were all strapped into our harnesses. We could see the tops of the clouds. If we had got above them, we would have been out of the turbulence and been OK.'

They didn't get there. The two bangs were caused by the inner starboard engine breaking away and then hitting the outer one so hard that it, too, broke off at full power. The initial cause, according to US investigators, was metal fatigue in part of the fitting of the engine to the wing, which made it snap under the strain of the turbulence.

A similar accident occurred on the same engine on a Tampa Airlines 707 freighter during take-off at Miami airport three weeks later and resulted in an increase in the frequency of checks for metal fatigue on 707s.

The Boeing immediately rolled to the right. 'It would have turned right over but Ingemar (Bergelund, the Swedish captain) held it. He had disconnected the auto pilot, taken over the controls and managed to stop the roll by using the rudder and the ailerons. Even with that immediate corrective action, it still rolled 50 degrees.'

During the roll the aircraft fell so fast that it twice went through negative G forces, which could have destroyed it. The cockpit was a frenzy of flashing lights, horns and warning bells.

The crew went through the fire drill on both engines, unaware that they were missing. At the end of the drill Mr Emery, sitting in the starboard cockpit seat, looked round to see no fire - and no engines.

Incredibly, he had the sang-froid to pick up his camera and take a single photo of the maimed wing: 'The shock of what I saw was numbing. I thought it was the end and I wanted the investigators to see the pictures, as otherwise they would not have believed it. I thought they would find the camera on some mountain top.'

He emphasises that it was the combined efforts of the five experienced crew members - himself and the pilot, a British flight engineer, Terry Boone; a Nigerian ground engineer, 'Ike' Nwabudike; and an Icelandic loadmaster, Ingebar Einarssen - that enabled the aircraft to make a successful landing.

Mr Emery contacted ground control with a Mayday call and obtained permission to land at Marseilles. The aircraft was steady but losing height relentlessly. It emerged from the higher cloud layer at about 20,000ft (6,000m). The crew managed to get the undercarriage down, which slowed the aircraft, but Mr Bergelund did not dare reduce speed too much, maintaining it at 230 knots (280mph). Anxious to prepare himself for the landing, he handed the controls to Mr Emery: 'It was an incredible thing to do. I've never been shown that much respect in anything I've done. It was mutual trust.'

Mr Emery took the aircraft down to about 8,000ft (2,400m), handed the controls back, and then, during a turn to port, saw the military airport of Istres, which has a 14,400ft runway, much longer and wider than Marseilles. Istres instantly gave permission to land but as the 707 came out of cloud near the airport, the military controller said: 'I see you. You have a fire, a fire.'

As they made the final descent, they were travelling at nearly 210 knots plus the tailwind, a ground speed of 270mph - 100mph faster than normal landing speed - with fire raging on the starboard wing and most of the hydraulics out of action.

They were only able to use maximum reverse thrust on the inner engine, as applying it on the outer would have turned the aircraft. 'The feeling of landing on the runway was indescribably wonderful but it seemed we would not be able to stop,' Mr Emery said.

They were saved by the extra length of the runway. No tyres burst on landing but some did as the emergency brakes were applied. Right at the end of the runway the 707 veered off into the scrub, but it came to a halt safely. 'The noise was horrific and the wing was an inferno. I ordered immediate evacuation.' Mr Emery escaped down a rope through the window on his side, burning his hands on the rope but otherwise, like all the crew, he was unscathed.

He sat down on the ground, watching the fire crews successfully save the aircraft, and said: 'Thank God, thank Boeing and our beautiful 707.' He says the fact that the aircraft got down was testimony to its brilliant design.

The French gave the crew a medical - which showed their heart rates were four times normal - and a slap- up lunch.

The engines were found about 800m (2,600ft) apart in a remote forest in the Alps. Mr Emery is reluctant to suggest a cause of the incident, but puts forward two ideas. First, the 707, like the Tampa one, had been hush- kitted, to enable it to comply with US noise regulations, which also involve the aircrafts landing at higher speeds. This, he feels, may cause extra stresses on landing. More fundamentally, he is worried about the weight that freighters carry. He claims that overloading is endemic. 'You can often feel it. You reach take-off speed and the plane takes a while to go up. Just stand at the end of a runway where freighters are taking off and you can see how they struggle to get up,' he said.

Mr Emery, who used to work as a pilot for Freddie Laker, owns a light aircraft and is still flying. He recently completed a tour of Africa in a 707, but has only recently stopped having nightmares.

He said: 'It was just as much a shock getting down safely as seeing the reality of the initial damage.'

And here is the cockpit voice recorder evidence: