Jet Carrying 289 Crashes in Iowa; About 100 Survive

A crippled United Airlines DC-10 crashed a half-mile short of a runway while trying to make an emergency landing Wednesday afternoon, bursting into a cartwheeling fireball that broke into what one eyewitness described as “15,000 pieces” and killing between 185 and 195 of the reported 289 passengers and crew members on board.

Authorities and eyewitnesses found it remarkable that approximately 100 persons survived so violent a crash. Conflicting estimates by local fire and hospital officials raised the possibility that as many as 125 persons may have survived.

Seen as Second Worst

Even so, the death toll apparently was the second worst in U.S. history, after a 1979 Chicago crash of an American Airlines DC-10 that killed 271 on the plane and two on the ground.

The survivors of Wednesday’s United Flight 232 from Denver to Chicago included a number of passengers who were thrown from the plane during the crash, yet managed to walk into the Sioux City Municipal Airport terminal.

“It’s the goddamndest thing I ever saw in my life,” said one of the survivors, Charles Mertz.

The search for bodies was difficult because they were scattered in a field of corn 4 feet tall. Within three hours of the crash, hospital authorities said they had counted 121 bodies. Approximately 90 passengers and crew members--many in critical condition from burns--were being treated at two hospitals Wednesday night. Another 50 people were listed as missing. United Airlines declined to comment on the number of survivors or to release the names of the 278 passengers and 11 crew members.

Eyewitnesses said pieces of the 15-year-old airplane--one of the oldest airliners in United’s fleet--were falling off as far as 75 miles from the site of the crash.

Some aviation experts suggested that one of the plane’s three engines had blown up, flinging pieces of debris that cut the lines in the plane’s hydraulic control system.

There were reports from passengers and observers that two of the plane’s three engines--located on the tail and right wing--failed before the crash. Some passengers said the plane’s pilot told them that one of the plane’s engines had “blown.” Others described a loud popping sound.

Cites ‘Hydraulic Failure’

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said Flight 232 experienced “complete hydraulic failure” after completing less than half of its scheduled 930-mile trip.

In what survivors described as a heroic effort that nearly succeeded, the plane’s pilot struggled for as long as 20 minutes to maintain control of the plane after the tail engine began to fail. Radio transmission indicated the plane’s maneuverability was limited to right-hand turns.

“The pilot came on and said, ‘This may be more than a rough landing,’ ” passenger Martz said.

At one point, the pilot reportedly prepared to land the jet on a highway, but continued to circle above Sioux City.

“Then they said we were preparing for a crash landing. They said it would be about 30 seconds, but it was about five minutes,” another passenger said.

The pilot brought the plane into the airport’s 9,000-foot-long southwest runway, surrounded by corn, soybeans and pasture with some trees seven miles outside downtown Sioux City.

At 3:51 p.m., the plane made its final approach. Onlookers watched hopefully.

“We thought it was going to make it,” said Glen Olson, city editor of the Sioux City Journal.

It didn’t.

Shortly before touchdown the plane’s right wing began to dip and the nose began to fall.

The wing hit the ground a half-mile before the runway. The impact caused the aircraft to turn over several times as it slid down the runway, “breaking up very badly,” catching on fire and then exploding, according to Bob Raynesford, an FAA spokesman.

“I think it turned over a couple of times. I think it landed upside down,” said passenger Melanie Cincala of Toledo, Ohio. “I can remember picking up a little baby . . . and carrying the baby out of the plane.”

Mentions Fireball

She said there was a fire on the plane, and a fireball “flashed past us.” The plane burst into flames after she got off, she said.

“I was a little dazed. I walked out (through the back of the plane) and found myself in the cornfield,” said David Landsberger, who added that he was among about 60 passengers seated in Rows 20 through 25 who walked out of the upside-down plane after it had come to rest. “ . . . We were all walking around in shock. I just walked through it like it was a dream.”

Hewitt Graham, manager of Graham Flying Service, a charter service and corporate aircraft maintenance firm that operates out of the building closest to the crash site, said he was in his office, answering phones, when five crash victims--a man, his wife and young son and two other men--walked in.

“It was amazing. They were in remarkably good shape. From looking at one or two of them you wouldn’t know they were in the accident,” Graham said. Their clothes were clean, not mussed, their hair was in place and they had no scratches he could see, he said.

Survival Rate Remarkable

C. O. Miller, former chief investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the crash’s survival rate was remarkable and was probably the result of the pilot’s ability to maneuver the plane close to the ground before losing complete control.

“If an airplane cartwheels, it is very fortuitous that anybody got out,” said Miller, now a private aviation safety consultant in Sidona, Ariz.

He said the huge mass of the DC-10 must have helped the pilot slow the plane as it approached the ground and helped keep portions of it intact. He said a smaller plane, such as a DC-9, would have been far more likely to break up more severely.

Lavonne Quirin of Alta, in Buena Vista County, 75 miles from the airport, said she and her husband found the plane’s nose cone in a cornfield at their seed corn business.

“It’s the nose cone, or the front of the plane. It’s about the size of a car,” she said. She said no one at the farm saw or heard the object fall.

McDonnell Douglas Corp., which builds the DC-10, said the plane was delivered to United in 1974.

United has one of the oldest fleets in the industry. The average age of its aircraft is 13.5 years. The average for the entire industry is 11.7 years.

The hydraulic system that failed Wednesday works the same way a power steering system operates in a car. By forcing liquid through a tube, the system provides enough power for a pilot to move an airliner’s huge tail rudder and elevators, and wing panels known as flaps and ailerons--all needed to steer an aircraft.

If the hydraulic system fails, a pilot can lose his ability to control the aircraft. However, McDonnell Douglas spokeswoman Elayne P. Bendel said that if a hydraulic system fails, “there are several backup systems on an airplane used to assist operation of the controls.”

No unusual weather was reported. Wind speeds were clocked up to 30 m.p.h.

Worst Crash in ’79

The nation’s worst air crash happened 10 years ago and involved a DC-10.

On May 25, 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 lost an engine on takeoff, banked sideways out of control, slammed into a field and exploded. All 258 passengers and 13 crew members died, as well as two people on the ground.

The National Transportation Safety Board laid primary blame for the crash on the airline, citing “maintenance-induced damage”--a 10-inch crack in the engine mount--that caused the left engine to tear loose. The NTSB also criticized McDonnell Douglas’ design as vulnerable to maintenance damage.

Wednesday’s tragedy was the worst in a recent series of accidents and mishaps involving United.

Nine persons were hurled to their deaths last Feb. 24 when a cargo door popped open in flight, tearing a gaping hole in a United Boeing 747 jetliner. The cause of that accident, which took place over the Pacific near Hawaii, is under investigation.

The accident probe has turned up deficiencies in United’s procedures regarding the cargo doors.