Boeing 757 cargo door opens after takeoff | Hacker News Reader

Boeing 757 cargo door opens after takeoff

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82 pointsEwanToo31 comments

"several parts separated & were distributed over the ground"

That seems like a comically understated way to say that pieces of a plane broke off while traveling a few hundred miles an hours & fell 5,000 feet to the ground below.

This industry is chock full of dryly technical jargon for describing absolute horrors. My go-to is CFIT, or “controlled flight into terrain.” Yikes.

RUD-Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly - “It blew up” (more aerospace than straight aviation)

Controlled Flight Into Terrain: pilot thought he knew how to miss the ground. Pilot was wrong.

Engine-rich exhaust: shit’s on fire, yo.

Link to the screenshotted article

http://avherald.com/h?article=4e2fd449

Thanks, I tried to find it but couldn't

I thought all modern aircraft had plug doors [1] that means it cannot be opened in flight? Unless the pressure difference was so low it didn't matter in this case?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_door

indeed they do, i don’t have a lot of details in this case, but it seems like it happened at very low altitude. the plug door design works when there’s an actual pressure differential (ie. at higher altitude)

From that very article: “However, since plug doors must open inward, the design is disadvantageous for cargo doors. Due to its large area, the cargo door on an airliner cannot be swung inside the fuselage without taking up a considerable amount of valuable cargo space. For this reason, these doors often open outward and use a locking mechanism with multiple pins or hatch dogs to prevent opening while in flight.”

That’s true of most airplanes’ doors for humans, but the cargo door on a 75 opens outward. It’s too big to be a plug.

https://kawakaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Kawak-A...

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/g-dhkz#26d05e8c

How rare is this kind of an accident?

Not frequent, but happened in the past. Example United 811 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_811

This is what my mind immediately went to. Can't believe that plane flew for another decade and a half.

Caused the near loss of one DC-10 and the total loss of another one, a few decades back.

That was pretty specific to the DC-10: A money-driven design decision had the cargo door open outwards to allow more cargo to fit inside. A design flaw meant that it was possible to close the door without fully locking it.

Do most airplane doors have a mechanism where “closing” is the same act as “locking”? That is, it’s impossible for the door to be closed but not locked?

modern aircraft doors open inwards first, this is a really important design feature.

so therefore locking becomes irrelevant. even if some crazy person goes up to the doors mid flight and tries to disarm, unlock, and open them, they simply won’t open when you’re at altitude, even though the aircraft is pressurized.

long story short the difference between closed and “locked” is actually almost irrelevant in modern airliners when the aircraft is at altitude.

Most commercial airplane doors cannot open directly outward. They unseal inward and then twist to clear outward. At altitude the internal pressure will push them directly outward and render them unable to open, even if the locks fail. In this regard they are fail-safe.

The DC-10 eschewed this standard in favour of doors that opened directly outward with catastrophic results if the locks failed.

Original article in the screenshot: http://avherald.com/h?article=4e2fd449&opt=0

The report saying pieces fell on a coal plant, but also saying no cargo was dropped suggests pieces of the aircraft fell... Suggesting perhaps some panels were ripped off by the airflow.

The very sentence that mentions the coal plant also states that it was parts of the air frame???

I thought the 757 wasn't a popular freighter because it doesn't really well fit the standard air freight container? Or am I thinking the passenger configuration?

The loadmaster is probably sweating bullets right now, as well they should...

Modern planes have comprehensive sensor systems for all door operations. If a door is not fully closed it's presented very obnoxiously on the flight deck, so I'd bet something either broke in flight or a sensor system was very out-of-tolerance.

Going beyond that, I thought modern planes were designed with plug doors and latches that physically can't get partially engaged.

If you're depending on a sensor alarming on the flight deck, you're already several failures in I would think.

Thats for passenger planes. Cargo aircraft don't want to sacrifice the swing in area.

...and I had just built up the courage to take my dogs on a plane trip.

This is reality-shaping in action. Every manufacturer has crashes, failures, problems. They always have, and always will. Yet all of the sudden a certain portion of society has decided to weaponize the internet / mass media against Boeing and showcase every Boeing failure, while ignoring all the problems that everyone else also has. Ask yourself when was the last time you read a negative story / post about Airbus? Do you really think there weren't any negative events?

Of course this is a US-centric forum so it makes sense to focus more on Boeing than others, and of course I want any problems that exist to be fixed, aircraft to be safe, transparency, etc., but I'm just trying to point out that the picture of reality that's being given to you is not a comprehensive picture of reality. You're being sold a narrative about Boeing aircraft compared to other aircraft that is not necessarily true.

It's a fallacy if you're deciding that Boeing aircraft are unsafe compared to others, because mass media has decided to shove every Boeing failure in your face. This is a political tactic that goes far beyond the Boeing discussion, but if you wanted an informed opinion about Boeing aircraft compared to other aircraft, you would need an unbiased source that equally reported all problems with all manufacturers/aircraft, or you would need to compile that data yourself, and look at the overall statistics.

Always try to think about what you're NOT being told. For all you know, Airbus could have an order of magnitude more problems and crashes (I'm not saying that's true). But if the news you consume only ever shows you Boeing problems, and you make that your worldview, your worldview has become disconnected from reality.

Who said anything about this type of aircraft being unsafe? This particular airplane is nearly 29 years old and all in all has been incident-free until this point.

https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-757-200-g-dhkz...

The problem is that Boeing tries to cover it up and is purportedly full of managers that you don’t want in charge of a company where human flight safety is at stake. They deserve the bad press they get.

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