DC8 Image: Ken Fielding/www.flickr.com/photos/kenfiel...
Horizontal Stabilizer Image: Olivier Cleynen - Own work by Olivier Cleynen (Photo used to layout drawing is licensed as CC-by by Flickr user gravitat-OFF])
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This is the story of trans international airlines flight 863. On the 8th of September 1970 a few pilots arrived at the operations room at JFK international airport at 2 pm, On that day they would be flying a DC 8 From JFK in new york to washington dulles international airport. The DC 8 was to takeoff from runway 13R with the first officer flying the plane and by 4:04 pm flight 863 was cleared for an immediate takeoff. The DC 8 lined up and the engines ramped up to takeoff power, as the plane pickuped up speed, the plane started to nose up, the pilots tried to bring the nose down The plane was 1,500 feet down the runway and the tail struck the runway, the plane dargged its tail along for 1200 feet as it struggled to get airborne. When the flight 863 was 2800 feet down the runway the plane finally took off, but they weren't out of trouble just yet. Pilots watching the DC8 taking off noticed something strange, the aircraft was in an unusual nose up attitude. In the cockpit the crew were bombarded with stall warnings and stickshakers, they knew that a stall was imminent if they didn't act fast. Meanwhile the plane climbed to 300 feet, it was now passing 60 degrees of pitch some say it was 90 degrees, but with the nose up so high the plane couldnt keep itself in the air, Flight 863 rolled to the right a bit and then the left wing and the nose dropped , as the DC8 fell from the sky like a stone.
The resulting fire engulfed the airplane. None of the 11 people onboard survived.
The aircraft that had been in the accident, N4863T wasnt even two years old,in the grand scheme of things that's brand new. Because of that this plane was in great condition, the engines were all fine, the pitch trim compensator had been replaced in 1969 but other than that this plane was in perfect flying order, there was no reason that they could see for this perfectly functioning plane to literally drop out of the sky.
If you've been a long time viewer of the channel, the crash of flight 863 might remind you of another video that I did, pan am flight 799, link on screen right now. In that incident the pilots forgot to extend the flaps on takeoff for a few complex reasons, but when they examined the wreck of flight 863 the investigators found that the plane was perfectly configured for takeoff.the flaps and slats were out the plane was trimmed correctly, the weight of the plane seemed to be within bounds.
When they were examining the wreck they came across something strange, the spar web access door on the right hand stabilizer had been punctured by something. The spar web access door is this small access hatch on top of the horizontal stabilizer which gives technicians access to the innards of the stabilizer. The Horizontal stabilizer at the back of a plane looks like one contiguous piece of metal but its not, its divided up into the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator, They're two separate pieces joined together by attachments and linkages, with a small bit of space between them
On the face of the elevator that faced the hole they found gouges and scratches and a few tiny stones. In the tail assembly they found small tar covered stones 1-2 inches in diameter, those weren't supposed to be there. More interestingly, they found trace amounts of asphaltic material around the hole that had been made in the access door of the horizontal stabilizer.