What STOPPED this Airplane from flying? | Air Crash Investigation

On the 8th of March, 2017 the University of Michigan men´s Basketball team had chartered an MD83 from Ameristar Cargo to fly them to a tournament in Washington DC.
The aircraft never made it to Washington instead, a very curious incident occurred and this video will tell you all you need to know about what happened on Ameristar Air Cargo flight 9363

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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode. Enjoy checking them out!

Wolverines Basketball @Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images

Crash 1 @NTSB

Crash 2 @NTSB

Crash 3 @NTSB

Crash 4 @NTSB

MD83: @Curimedia



Pilot on Mobile Device: @Alamy

Check Airman: @AP / LM Otero

MD-83 Cockpit: @Mohammadreza Farhadi Aref

Control Tower: @Jaromír Chalabala



Training 2: @British Airways

Cockpit Pilots2: @Photodisc Getty Images

Brace: @Eleanor Piercy

Chapters:
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00:00: Intro
00:54 - Chapter 1: Flight Overview
01:40 - Chapter 2: Weather Conditions
02:50 - Chapter 3: Flight Crew
05:01 - Chapter 4: Takeoff Performance
06:54 - Chapter 5: Walk Around
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10:38 – EXCLUSIVE Nord VPN Offer
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11:45 - Chapter 6: Boarding & Taxi
12:28 - Chapter 7: Takeoff Roll
15:53 - Chapter 8: Evacuation Orders
16:57 - Chapter 9: Explanations
18:41 - Chapter 10: Investigations
20:49 - Chapter 11: Send in the Drones
22:37 - Chapter 12: Pilot Performance
24:46 - Chapter 13: Final Report

#Ameristaraircargo9363 #aircrash #pilothero

[peterterrell]

The pilot was sooo quick to react and saved everyone including himself. He's a hero!

[flapjackson]

I love it when a flight crew makes all the right decisions; especially when it saves lives. The CRM on this flight was stellar!

[cathalbrugha]

There are two thing I really appreciate about this channel, which sets it apart from other similar channels. 1) The videos are extremely well strructured. 2) They concentrate on technical facts rather than human suffering. Thanks for that! I'm looking forward to more videos.

[MonsterSound.Bradley]

Pilots getting split second decisions right is wonderful. Bravo.

[christianjansson]

I really like how the focus, in these types of scenarios, seems to be how to mitigate similar issues in the future - rather than pointing blame. More businesses should adopt this way of thinking.

[bobthebomb]

Never ceases to amaze me how many times pilots actually get these split second decisions right.

[davidhughes]

I didnt realise how complicated the T-tail was on this aircraft, brilliant vid, cheers.

[PanduPoluan]

It's always heartwarming to learn of incidents without loss of life, especially the ones where the pilots made split-second critical decisions that ultimately saves lives.

Keep up the great videos, Peter!

[JakeRussell]

It's absolutely crazy that this team boarded a flight the next day and still went to the tournament, then won the tournament. As a Michigan fan, I cannot put into words how loved this team was and how much support they had following this event. It's truly one of the greatest stories in sports that doesn't get talked about enough

[Akula]

So many times we see an accident report citing "pilot error" for an incident. This was so refreshing to hear of two pilots actually being commended for their being able to "think outside the box" and save the day. Fabulous job! Also a fabulous job on your telling of this story. Everything you put together in this nearly half hour video made it so entertaining (and educational!) it was over before I knew it. Really exceptionally good work on this video and a format for story-telling I hope will be often repeated!

Thank you so much!

[davidlarocque]

I flew MD-83s as a captain for TWA. I never had an aborted take-off, but I had an aborted departure. I am a former naval aviator and I had extensive experience in various models of the DC-9 and MD-80. Our version of the MD-83 had a dual laser gyro system which provided gyro inputs to the captain and first officer artificial horizon instruments. I was departing PHX on a very hot day with a full load of passengers and fuel for a long flight to JFK airport in New York. This meant an unusually high Vr speed. At rotation a very loud noise on the fuselage below the cockpit accompanied by a severe jolt to the airframe told me that one or both of our nose wheel tires had failed. I quickly realized that both artificial horizons had also failed, which disabled the autopilot. Fortunately the weather was clear VFR, but a return to PHX was necessary and we were well above max landing weight for the airplane. We circled for several hours at a nearby location while we attempted to restore gyro operation and prepared the cabin for a likely emergency landing. Direct contact with company engineering support did not help, so we elected to land overweight after burning off a substantial amount of fuel, and made a low pass by the tower for them to get a look at the condition of our nose gear. We were told that it appeared that both nose tires were "shredded". We called for emergency equipment to be standing by for the possibility of a nose gear collapse and a runway excursion. We made a soft touchdown and once the nose gear made contact with the runway the nose attitude and roll-out seemed normal. We stopped on the runway for a nose gear inspection by the crash crew. They plugged in and told us that only one nose tire was damaged. So we were able to taxi into the gate, get both nose tires replaced, complete an overweight landing inspection, clear the dent in the lower fuselage from the tire tread impact for flight, and get the laser gyros reset. It turned out that the laser gyro system had an automatic shut-down feature based on a 6g sensor that nobody knew about (not resettable in flight), and which apparently tripped with the impact of the nose tire tread on the fuselage. Our flight to JFK was normal, but we sure needed the flight instruments for the weather in New York.

[tomcorwine]

An ATP friend of mine has always said V1 is not the “committed takeoff” point, but rather the “able to stop before running off the runway” point. There are times when running off the runway is more desirable than taking her into the air.

[thetowndrunk]

This is a perfect example of how 99% of the time, rules and procedures are very effective safety measures, but 1% of the time, nothing trumps experience

[amyg]

This has gone down as one of my favorite aviation stories, and you told it beautifully. I feel like all these good-ending stories tend to feature a safety-minded crew that reacts quickly in the right ways, puts ego aside, and works together. This absolutely includes cabin crew.

[established_on_the_run]

Two neat follow-ups to this story (and I apologize if the second one was already mentioned in the comments) :

1) The captain, Mark Radloff, was my school bus driver back in the early ‘90’s. Just a few weeks ago, I stumbled across some old letters. When I was a young avgeek (age 9 or so) I remember asking the bus driver if I could be his pen pal because he told us kids that he was working his way through flight school. He obliged and, after quitting his job as a bus driver, wrote to me. First, he apologized that he had to quit his bus driving job. He explained that he was so busy with his other job—a flight instructor at the Waukesha airport in Wisconsin, USA—and that he had just been hired on as a first officer at Mesaba Airlines, a regional company associated with Northwest Airlines. I didn’t keep in touch much more beyond that, but when I found those letters the other day I decided to do the adult thing and Google search him.

At a quick first glance, I saw his name associated with the words “air incident” and feared the worst. But I read on and found that he had been the captain of this flight! He was 54 at the time, which means he was probably only in his early 20’s when I met him. Clearly he was dedicated and passionate about aviation, already being a flight instructor and becoming a first officer that soon.

I will keep his letters forever. You were the coolest school bus driver and became a hero… AND made your way into a Mentour Pilot video! Way to go, Captain Radloff!

2) The Michigan Wolverines went on to win the Big 10 Championship that year.

[doughntworry]

I have to say: your explanations and analysis make even these seemingly mundane and technical events interesting and entertaining. Thank you for your videos.

[Werrf]

Love hearing stories like this one, where professionals rescue a potentially dangerous situation. Thanks for the detailed breakdown!

[JuiceBoxScott]

I had an awesome experience watching a plane land after a front landing gear IFE today. I happen to work on a small airstrip and we were told a plane would be landing soon with landing gear problems. Watching this channel, and others, made it so much more interesting to watch. They did a low fly by so the ground crew could see what was wrong (something with the front tire). They circled for a while to burn fuel I assume. Then, when landing they came in real slow and then kept the front tire up as long as possible. Once the front touched nothing crazy happened and they slowly came to a stop at the end of the runway. All of us watching were super excited and happy for the pilot to execute a great landing in an emergency situation.

[NoScalpel]

As a medical professional these aviation incidents related videos are a great help to learn how to quickly manage emergencies especially that unlike many other professions most of the actions & reactions are well documented. ex even in medicine sometimes you have to deviate from SOP & guidelines although then is even harder to defend in case of unfavourable outcomes .
Thank you

[autumnleaves]

What a great outcome thanks to two excellent pilots. Had never really thought about how strong wind might affect a plane whilst it is parked up. Another example of a potential catastrophe averted by two top pilots.