Talk:United Airlines Flight 585

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
AVIATION This article is within the scope of the Aviation WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Aviation Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.

I have updated the information on the crash of UAL 585, to reflect the revised finding that a malfunction of the rudder PCU caused this crash, as well as the crash of USAir 427. Also, changed the notation that the female FO in the 585 crash, was the first female pilot to die in a US Airliner crash. She was the second one, having been defeated for that dubious honor, by Zilda Spadaro-Wolan, in the Hensen Airlines crash in 1985.

My sources for all the additions and changes are the relevant NTSB accident reports.

I have an FAQ on the history of the B-737 faulty PCU design and correcting AD, at:

http://airlinesafety.com/faq/B-737Rudder.htm

I think it would be a highly relevant external link for this article, but only if the editors approve. --EditorASC 08:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

This page requires significant revision with regards to the valves and therefore rudder problems behind two Boeing 737 crashes: the 1991 United flight and a 1994 US Air flight. Londo06 06:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] ======================================

I rewrote the Investigation and Probable Cause sections to clearly show that there were two separate investigations, with no conclusion in the first report, but a probable cause of rudder PCU malfunction, in the second, revised report. I eliminated the comments about how damaged the FDR was, since that is common in many accidents. Since the foil tape itself remained intact, they were able to extract the data, and that is what is truly relevant and germane.

I also put back in the fact that First Officer Eidson was the second female pilot to be killed in US Airline service, not the first one. I don't understand why anyone removed that fact and re-inserted the original, but erroneous claim that she was the first such fatality. The source given for that erroneous "first" claim, was PlaneCrashInfo.com, but it was simply wrong.

PlaneCrashInfor.com is often in error in many of the things it says about the details of accidents and investigations, so I would recommend using that source with caution, since they apparently rely a lot on newspaper articles, and we all know the general press media often gets it wrong, in the cases of airline crash news.

I have proved my claim, that Zilda Spadaro-Wolan, in the Hensen Airlines crash in 1985, was the first female airline pilot fatality, with the addition of the link to the official NTSB report, which gives her name. That is the "horse's mouth" source, so to speak, while PlaneCrashInfo is all too often a secondary and hearsay source. Again, I urge anyone to use them as proof of some fact, with great caution.

EditorASC 01:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Part 121

Here is a reference for the simplified terminology used to distinguish Part 121 "major airline", from Part 135 "commuter airline". The complete 14CFR119,121,135 rules are more complex, e.g. Part 135 includes on-demand air taxi. Crum375 (talk) 19:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ===========================

The problem though, is that FAA Part 135 Regs and Part 121 Regs are totally irrelevant to the issues in this crash investigation. Injecting them in a futile attempt to make it appear that the original reference to Eidson----as being the first female airline pilot to be killed----was accurate (which it wasn't), only serves to confuse the laymen readers of this article. We are supposed to be making these articles easier to read and understand, by the average person. We cannot do that if some insist upon injecting irrelevant statements and/or issues.

Someone originally inserted that side-bar fact (first female pilot killed) because www.planecrashinfo.com had this statement at their website:

"First female pilot to die on the flight deck of a U.S. airliner."

That was the reference given, for this statement: "Patricia Eidson was the first female pilot to die in an accident involving a United States commercial airliner.[1] Notes 1. ^ PlaneCrashInfo.Com - Entry on United 585."

Clearly, that statement was not accurate, since First Officer Zilda A. Spadaro-Wolan was the first female commercial airline pilot to be killed.

So, to please whomever it was that wanted something in the article about female pilots being killed on the job, I compromised (I could have deleted that reference entirely), with an adjustment, so that both dead female pilots could be mentioned, in a way that was historically accurate.

But, I found that my accurate statement had been removed and replaced with the original erroneous statement. That is totally inappropriate! Removing an accurate statement, and going back to the inaccurate one, just to satisfy someone's ego, is not how Wikipedia is going to keep advancing its own credibility standing in the world.

So, I reinserted my accurate statement again. Now, this time, you have injected an irrelevant issue (FAA Part 135 vs Part 121), again for an inappropriate reason. Today, all airlines, big or small, are regulated with Part 121. And, the fact that Henson airliness was under part 135, when its female pilot was killed on the job, is totally irrelevant to the issues in the crash of UAL 585. Both dead female pilots had to have the same commercial license, issued by the same FAA, regardless of the size of the airline. Passengers had to pay for their tickets on both airlines, for the privilege of riding on both planes. That is why they are called "commercial."

So please, don't keep mucking this article up, just to try and justify the erroneous information posted at www.planecrashinfo.com

I repeat my previous caution about the quality of information found at www.planecrashinfo.com They have lots of erroneous information at that site. That site is so incredibly careless with its writing, that it refers to the 737 PCU as the "PUC."

[edit] =========================

I removed the reference to an "explosion" when UAL 585 impacted the ground. Although there was the common postcrash fire, the NTSB report said nothing about an explosion and the debris pattern did not give any evidence of an explosion, either.

[edit] ========================

Once again, I had to remove the reference to an "explosion" when UAL 585 impacted the ground. It seems that Crum375 put it back in again. The question is "Why?" The word "explosion" is used only twice in the NTSB report: Once, in reference to a 1966 Braniff BAC-111 accident, that did explode in the air. The second reference was when the report said that US Air 427 did not explode. There is no mention of any explosion in the NTSB report on UAL 585. Nor did the debris pattern give any evidence of an explosion..... So why do you insist upon putting in information in Wiki that has no legitimate source of justification?

Same for once again injecting an issue into this Wiki summary, which was not an issue of the investigation at all: FAA Part 135 vs Part 121. It still appears that you are insisting it be there, because you originally relied on an erroneous statement from www.planecrashinfo.com. I think that kind of response to erroneous information (injecting issues that were not part of the official NTSB Accident Investigation, in an attempt to justify the original error), is why so many view this encyclopedia as being written only by a bunch of amateurs.

And again, I found it necessary to remove the short-hand probable cause statement, which contradicted and short-circuited the larger and complete NTSB Probable Cause statement, which is already under the Probable cause section. What is the point of leaving out much of the wording of the NTSB Prob Cause statement, in an earlier statement which lacks key words and phrases? Why do that? It only adds confusion. EditorASC (talk) 23:29, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] =========================

I removed all references to this link ( servo ) because the nomenclature was innacurate, in reference to the servo valve, which is part of the PCU for the 737 rudder. Nothing said on that page, had any relevance to the NTSB's discussion of how the PCU was designed or to how it malfunctioned. Adding such extraneous information like that, will serve only to confuse layperson readers. Our goal is to clarify, not confuse.

Thank you, EditorASC (talk) 07:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)