This Day in Aviation History: Eastern Flight 855

[PhilDernerJr]

While researching today’s “On This Day in Aviation History”, I came across the averted disaster of Eastern Airlines Flight 885, which almost ditched into the ocean after some mechanics had failed to properly seal up the engines and leaked oil all over the Atlantic. I don’t recall having heard about this before, but I thought it was of worthy mention.

Anyone have any personal recollection of this?

(read "1983") http://nycaviation.com/2010/05/05/on-th ... y-may-5th/ (http://nycaviation.com/2010/05/05/on-this-day-in-aviation-history-may-5th/)

[LGA777]

I think their where some industry wide changes as a result of this incident in regards to O-rings, and inspection, installation of same. And by the way Eastern ran the L-1011 and later the A-300 for quite a few years on one mid-day MIA-NAS turn, in case any of you where surprised by the 1011 being on the route.

Regards

LGA777

[dmurphy]

Hi Phil -

It's funny that I read this... my mother-in-law was on that flight, and we were just talking about it this morning!

The good news is that everyone was safe and uninjured, at least physically. The plane was loaded with a bunch of police officers heading to a convention in Nassau ...

Just think - a few little o-rings could've killed a plane full of police, if not for the heroic actions of the flight crew!

Very interesting story worth repeating - minor things like o-rings really matter!! (Someone should've told that to NASA management that let Challenger fly when the engineers *knew* that the SRB o-rings would be a problem! ... and, unlike EAL 855 - that one killed 7 people.)

The NTSB report is here: http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publica ... b8404.html (http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/ComAndRep/Eastern/Ntsb8404.html)
... and a personal account from the pilot is here:
http://flytristar.tripod.com/article/art10.html

So I'm personally very, very thankful for the actions of the flight crew that saved EAL 855 - without them, my wife would've grown up without her parents!

[LGA777]

dmurphy, the check airman's account of that morning was amazing, a great read that I hope many on this site will read, thanks for posting.

LGA777