American Airlines Flight 191

Aircraft The aircraft involved was a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 registered as N110AA. At the time of the crash, it had logged just under 20,000 hours of flying time over seven years since it was delivered in 1972. The aircraft was powered by three General Electric CF6-6D engines. A review of the aircraft's flight logs and maintenance records showed that no mechanical discrepancies were noted for the day before the accident. The logs for the previous flights that had occurred on the day of the accident had not been removed from the logbook, in violation of standard procedure, and were destroyed in the accident. ==Accident==

On the accident flight, during the takeoff rotation, the number-one engine and its pylon assembly separated from the left wing, ripping away a section of the leading edge with it. The combined unit flipped over the top of the wing and landed on the runway. Whether the camera's view was interrupted by the power loss from the number-one electrical bus is not known. The aircraft eventually slammed into a field around from the end of the runway. The crash site is a field located northwest of the intersection of Touhy Avenue (Illinois Route 72) and Mount Prospect Road on the border of the suburbs of Des Plaines and Mount Prospect, Illinois. ==Victims==

In addition to the 271 people on board the aircraft, two employees at a repair garage near the impact site were killed, and two more were severely burned. • Leonard Stogel, music business producer/manager/promoter/executive for California Jam, California Jam II, Sweathog, The Cowsills, Sam the Sham, Tommy James and the Shondells, Redbone, Gentle Giant, and other musical groups. Stogel's parents had died in an accident in 1962 on American Airlines Flight 1 in New York City. • Judith Wax, author and essayist, and her husband Sheldon, managing editor of Playboy Memorial For 32 years, the victims had no permanent memorial. Funding was obtained for a memorial in 2009 through a two-year effort by the sixth-grade class of Decatur Classical School in Chicago. The memorial, a concave wall with interlocking bricks displaying the names of the crash victims, was formally dedicated in a ceremony on October 15, 2011. The memorial is located on the south shore of Lake Opeka, at Lake Park at the northwest corner of Lee and Touhy Avenues, two miles east of the crash site. A remembrance ceremony was held at the memorial on May 25, 2019, the 40th anniversary of the accident. Thirty victims whose remains were never identified are buried at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The site of the crash was redeveloped around March 2021, and has been named the future site of an interchange for Interstate 90/Interstate 490. ==Investigation==

The disaster and investigation received widespread media coverage. The impact on the public was increased by the dramatic effect of an amateur photo taken of the aircraft rolling that was published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on the Sunday two days after the crash. Engine separation diagram of the DC-10 engine and pylon assembly indicating the failed aft pylon attach fitting During the investigation, an examination of the pylon attachment points revealed some damage done to the wing's pylon mounting bracket that matched the bent shape of the pylon's rear attachment fitting. This meant that the pylon attachment fitting had struck the mounting bracket at some point. This was important evidence, as the only way the pylon fitting could strike the wing's mounting bracket in the observed manner was if the bolts that held the pylon to the wing had been removed, and the engine/pylon assembly was supported by something other than the aircraft itself. Therefore, investigators could now conclude that the observed damage to the rear pylon mount had been present before the crash occurred rather than being caused by it. Wind-tunnel and flight-simulator tests were conducted to help understand the aircraft's trajectory after the engine detached and the left wing slats retracted. Those tests established that the damage to the wing's leading edge and retraction of the slats increased the stall speed of the left wing from to . As the aircraft had reached V1, the crew was committed to takeoff, so they followed standard procedures for an engine-out situation. This procedure is to climb at the takeoff safety airspeed (V2) and attitude (angle), as directed by the flight director. The partial electrical power failure, produced by the separation of the left engine, meant that neither the stall warning nor the slat retraction indicator was operative. Therefore, the crew did not know that the slats on the left wing were retracting. This retraction significantly raised the stall speed of the left wing. Thus, flying at the takeoff safety airspeed caused the left wing to stall while the right wing was still producing lift, so the aircraft banked sharply and uncontrollably to the left. Simulator recreations after the accident determined that "had the pilot maintained excess airspeed the accident may not have occurred." Probable cause The findings of the investigation by the NTSB were released on December 21, 1979: ==Legacy of the DC-10==

The crash of Flight 191 brought strong criticism from the media regarding the DC-10's safety and design. The DC-10 had been involved in two accidents related to the design of its cargo doors, American Airlines Flight 96 (1972) and Turkish Airlines Flight 981 (1974). The separation of engine one from its mount, the publication of the dramatic images of the airplane missing its engine seconds before the crash, and a second photo of the fireball resulting from the impact, raised widespread concerns about the safety of the DC-10. The investigation also revealed other DC-10s with damage caused by the same faulty maintenance procedure. The faulty procedure was banned, and the aircraft type went on to have a long career as a passenger and cargo aircraft. In response to this accident, American Airlines was fined $500,000 (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US-GDP|.5|1980 at Zurich Airport, 1979 On June 6, 1979, two weeks after the accident, the FAA suspended the type certificate for the DC-10, thereby grounding all DC-10s under its jurisdiction. It also enacted a special air regulation banning the DC-10 from US airspace, which prevented foreign DC-10s not under the jurisdiction of the FAA from flying within the country. The type certificate was amended, however, stating, "removal of the engine and pylon as a unit will immediately render the aircraft unairworthy." On October 31, 1979, a DC-10 flying as Western Airlines Flight 2605 crashed in Mexico City after a red-eye flight from Los Angeles. The Western crash, however, was due to low visibility and an attempt to land on a closed runway, through, reportedly, confusion of its crew. The loss of Air New Zealand Flight 901 on November 28, 1979, which killed 257 people, added to the DC-10's negative reputation. though this was caused by several human and environmental factors not related to the airworthiness of the DC-10, and the aircraft was later completely exonerated. Another DC-10 crash 10 years later, United Airlines Flight 232, restored some of the aircraft's reputation. Despite the aircraft losing an engine and all flight controls and crash-landing in a huge fireball (which was caught on video by a local news crew) that killed 112 people, 184 people survived the accident. Experts praised the DC-10's sturdy construction as partly responsible for the high number of survivors. DC-10 production ended in 1988, American Airlines retired its last DC-10s in 2000 after 29 years of service. In February 2014, Biman Bangladesh Airlines operated the final DC-10 passenger flights. ==Depictions in media==

The National Geographic channel produced a documentary on the crash, and an episode from Seconds From Disaster titled "Chicago Plane Crash" detailed the crash and included film of the investigation press conferences. The Canadian television series Mayday profiled the crash in the episode "Catastrophe at O'Hare", which subsequently aired in the US on the Smithsonian Channel and National Geographic Channel's television series Air Disasters. The accident was also discussed in "Breaking Point", the second episode of the first season of TV show Why Planes Crash on MSNBC. Chicago folk singer Steve Goodman wrote the song "Ballad of Flight 191 (They Know Everything About It)" in response to the crash and the subsequent investigation as the inaugural song for a series of topical songs that aired on National Public Radio in 1979. The 1996 novel Airframe by Michael Crichton references the crash and its subsequent effect on the reputation of the DC-10. ==See also==