A veteran C-5 Galaxy
pilot said all 17 people survived the April 3 plane crash at Dover
Air Force Base, Del., mainly because the pilot did his job.
Col. Udo McGregor said the “100 percent reason”
everyone aboard survived the crash was because the pilot did a
wings-level landing.
“The survivors are survivors because he put it on the
ground wings level,” said the colonel, commander of the 439th
Operations Group at Westover Air Reserve Base, Mass.
The transport took off from Dover at about 6:20 a.m. bound for
Spain and Southwest Asia. On board were Airmen and several
passengers. Base officials said the aircrew noticed a problem with
the aircraft soon after takeoff and the pilot turned the aircraft
around to land back at the base.
But at 6:42 a.m. the aircraft crashed into a grassy field and
broke up into several pieces. Base officials think the aircraft
might have struck a utility pole, which cut off the
aircraft’s six-story tail section. It had a quarter million
pounds of fuel, but miraculously did not catch fire.
Colonel McGregor, a command pilot with more than 10,600 flying
hours -- more than 7,000 of those in the Galaxy -- said there are
others reasons why the accident cost the Air Force only a transport
aircraft.
One is that the aircraft -- almost as long as a football field
-- has many crumple zones.
“If you watch car commercials on TV and watch them do the
crash testing -- the more metal you have -- the larger the piece of
equipment -- the more the chance you have of survival,” he
said.
And the cargo plane has so much cargo space below its wings that
a wings-level landing gives those on board “a pretty good
chance of surviving,” he said.
“It’s an incredibly safe airplane,” said the
colonel from Savannah, Ga. “Very, very few accidents for the
millions and millions of flying hours that it’s
accomplished.”
The colonel has flown all over the world in the C-5. He knows
the transport inside and out. The emergency that the Dover crew
faced -- a heavy weight, three-engine emergency return -- is a
“pretty standard” procedure for which Galaxy pilots are
well prepared, he said.
“In this particular case, the experience level of the crew
would suggest they’ve done it hundreds of times -- practiced
it hundreds of times in a simulator,” he said.
Colonel McGregor has had to deal with similar in-flight
emergencies during his 15 years at the helm of the heavy jet. More
than once he has had to land a heavily-loaded Galaxy with only
three engines. But with about a million parts, many mechanical
things can go wrong with the aging aircraft, which entered the Air
Force inventory in the June 1970. After so many hours in the air,
the aircraft is bound to experience one or two emergencies, he
said.
“That’s just part of flying something for an
extensive amount of time that has this many moving parts,”
the colonel said. “It’s a very complicated
airplane.”
The colonel remembers a flight into Osan Air Base, South Korea,
when the air conditioning turbine on his C-5 malfunctioned and
filled the entire aircraft with smoke. The aircrew made an
emergency landing and did an emergency evacuation of 73 passengers
-- who exited down the slide from the passenger compartment on the
back of the aircraft.
At Dover, the aircrew also used the inflatable slide to evacuate
the aircraft.
Colonel McGregor said the aircraft has a great safety record.
And the upgrades through which it is going -- like getting new
avionics and engines -- will extend its life “a significant
number of years.”
“I would say more than 20 years is probably a reasonable
guess,” he said. And with the upgrades, “it’s
probably even more than that.”
The colonel said two boards will now convene to find out the
cause of the accident. The first, a safety investigation board,
will try to determine what the issues or problems were. They have
30 to 45 days to come up with answers.
Then, an accident investigation board will convene to
“find the magic BB, the causal effect -- the things or things
that caused or created the accident,” the colonel said.
The accident investigation board will probably have to have some
kind of resolution to the commander of Air Mobility Command by the
end of May.
“So it’s a fairly rapid process,” he said.
[ANN Salutes Louis A. Arana-Barradas, AFPN]