following faa protocol advises parents to place lap children on the floor. those are kids under 2 years old without paid seats. she s about to announce that passengers should brace for impact when captain haynes overrides her on the p.a. there was an announcement that this is going to be a seriously difficult landing. he said, i won t kid you, it s going to be rough. do the best you can. the plane is traveling at 247 miles per hour. 100 miles an hour too fast for a dc10 to land. without hydraulic fluid, the controls that would normally slow the plane down don t work, and because they can t be properly configured, the ground proximity warning system doesn t realize that the pilots are trying to land. it begins to sound, adding to the chaos in the cockpit.
visibility, smooth air, very fortunate weatherwise. as we re flying along and everything is as smooth as can be and service is humming and working well as a team, out of the blue here comes this explosion. i mean, it was a huge loud explosion. but passenger rod vetter, a seasoned traveler, isn t fazed. my first thought was a bomb went off. then i realized that it hadn t depressurized so it wasn t a bomb, and then i realized it was probably an engine blowing, and my first thought was, okay, we got off a little late maybe and we re going to get right on into chicago because a dc10 can certainly fly with two engines. the explosion happens at 3:16 p.m., an hour and seven minutes into the flight. the jumbo jet is at 33,000 feet over alta, iowa. after the explosion, the plane
thousands march to honor a sheriff gunned down while fueling up. shannon miles is accused of killing sheriff goforth. now back to our msnbc special. on july 19th, 1989, united airlines flight 232 is in deep crisis. after an explosion, the dc10 loses its tail-mounted number two engine along with all of its hydraulic fluid which operates the landing gear, glass, slats, steering and brakes. the only control pilots have is over the throttles which determine engine speed. by adjusting thrust on one side or the other, pilots are able to steer the plane. but even under this unimaginable pressure, captain al haynes manages to crack a joke with air
come to the cockpit. the minute the door opened the atmosphere just hit me full force. it was like oh, no, this isn t an emergency. it s a bleep, bleep crisis. the situation is grave. the plane has lost all of its hydraulic fluid. hydraulics in a modern large jet airplane is the lifeblood of the airplane. it is how you physically move the flight controls. it provides the muscle to move these very large surfaces against very fast moving air in a controlled manner. we were keeping an ear, i ll put it that way. control, no. we were just trying to keep it flying. it was doing what it wanted to do. in the midst of the chaos a flight attendant informs the crew there s a united captain who was a dc10 flight instructor sitting in first class. his name is denny finch, and he s offering to help.