2022 A History of Boeing 720 Aircraft Accidents

 The Boeing 720 changed into involved in incidents a long way worse than hijackings, although only two of them in the 15-yr length from 1960 to 1974 entailed fatalities.

The earliest recorded 720 incident passed off on December four, 1960 on board a United Airlines 720-022 sporting seven group Contributors and eighty four passengers. The flight penetrated an area of severe turbulence over Wolbach, Nebraska, resulting in accidents in the cabin. It become later determined that the captain had didn't show good enough precaution before he entered the turbulent place.

Another non-fatal 720 incident befell the subsequent yr, on February 25, while a Braniff 720-027 with seven crew members and 24 passengers performed a difficult touchdown short of the runway in Houston. While there has been no lack of existence, the aircraft sustained major harm. The motive turned into determined to be pilot misjudgment.

Yet every other 720 touchdown incident came about later that year, on September 24, 1961, while the captain of an American Airlines 720-023B that carried 33 passengers and seven different crew individuals elected to execute a touchdown in Boston during varying weather conditions, but he was not recommended of unexpectedly reducing runway visual range (RVR). He also devoted the airliner to land earlier than receiving enough facts regarding the region of such conditions relative to the runway.

The first fatality-generating Boeing 720 coincidence befell on February 12, 1963 on board a Northwest Orient 720-051B, registered N724US, about to embark on a nonstop flight from Miami to Chicago-O'Hare. A fierce hurricane, growing dark skies, hovered over Southern Florida that day and all arriving flights had been diverted due to it. An Eastern 720-half delayed its takeoff till situations advanced.

Northwest Flight NW 705, scheduled to leave at 1:30 p.M., was piloted by means of Captain Roy W. Almquist, 47, First Officer Robert J. Feller, 38, and Second Officer Allen R. Friesen, 29, and 5 flight attendants have been to serve the 35 passengers within the cabin.

Aware of the raging weather system, Almquist believed he may want to execute a safe departure by way of commencing to the west and then banking southwest, circling around the region of best pastime. Intense typhoon cells have been now both west and northwest of the airport. As a result, departing flights were being given an Preliminary southwest or southeast course, observed by using the right westerly or northwesterly tune once they had won enough altitude to overfly the typhoon. Flight 705 meant to observe the equal route.

The gleaming, factory-fresh jetliner, running Northwest Orient's Regal Imperial Service, taxied from the gate beneath nearly-black skies, amid gale winds that socked the aircraft and shock it even at the floor.

After aligning with Runway 27-Left's centerline, it elevated and turned around right into a 25-knot wind, divorcing itself from Florida soil and organising a high-quality rate-of-climb over the Palmetto Expressway. Initially cleared to ascend and preserve three,000 toes, it banked and assumed a south-southwesterly heading. Miami Departure Control similarly granted it permission to ascend and maintain five,000 feet on a modified southwesterly heading, which took it over Homestead, Florida, wherein amazing, menacing cumulous clouds loomed off the starboard aspect.

Additional departure course clearances first located it on a south-southwesterly heading and subsequently on a natural-westerly one.

First Officer Feller audibly stated that he believed that they may quick pass over the typhoon place and consequently avoid most of its results, furnished that they received similarly climb clearance. But, in spite of a request to Departure Control, they did no longer. The ominous typhoon now lay without delay ahead. Avoidance may want to handiest be performed via a direct bank, however Feller's request to achieve this, both to a southwesterly or southeasterly heading, changed into no longer granted because of traffic saturation.

As Departure Control feverishly looked for an to be had hole in the sky at a better altitude, the silver and purple quad-jet continued to barrel in the direction of the typhoon's center. Although clearance to financial institution and climb changed into in the long run given, the 720B only averted a direct plunge through it, however changed into now not spared its outcomes, now gripped by using unrelenting turbulence. Left most effective with the choice of potential destruction if a banking maneuver have been not initiated, it rode it out.

Now passing through 10,000 feet, Flight 705 turned into surpassed off to the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center on a frequency of 118.9, however intercepting static made the transmission unintelligible. Forced to stay on the Departure Control frequency, it ascended via sixteen,000 feet and banked onto a north-northwesterly heading, at which factor it became given a brand new ATC frequency. This, inside the event, most effective proved briefly successful, because the climate at the 17,500-foot stage thru which it handed turned into so intense, that static-skewed verbal exchange turned into not possible. The air path visitors manipulate center simplest heard  phrases from the plane, which either seemed like "wide variety two" or "tank two." They ended up being the last. The plane became at 19,000 toes. The time changed into 1:19 p.M.

Now barely above this altitude, the two hundred,000-pound airplane was being tossed approximately like a scrap of paper through intense up-and downdrafts. The cockpit crew attempted to regain manipulate, however this was not anything greater than an workout in futility. Twelve seconds later it exploded, lights the potent black Mountain formations from which it simply emerged.

Like a fireball, it dove toward the Everglades, generating a volcanic eruption right down to the annals of the swamp because it impacted, taking forty three lives with it forty three miles southwest of Miami International Airport.

A Coast Guard helicopter in the end positioned the burning wreckage, which littered a ten-rectangular-mile region, ten miles north of the Everglades' Shark River.

The Boeing 720-051B become eventually reassembled on timber frames in an Opa Locka Florida hangar. The reconstruction, which encompassed ninety nine percent of the unique airframe, proved to be the maximum big and expensive undertaking of its type in Civil Aeronautics Board records and enabled investigators to determine that the plane's wings had been subjected to a downward-prompted bad force equivalent to three.1 G's, or one that changed into beyond design barriers.

According to the flight facts recorder, the 720 have been mountain climbing at an great eight,300- ft-in line with-minute on the time because of an updraft. The cockpit group, as consistent with technique, trimmed the quad-jet to counteract this profile, but did now not assume its severity. The downdraft that right now observed created a nose-down tendency, ultimately inducing a dive and, with increasing pace, it became impossible to recover from it, main to immoderate, design-exceeding forces and inflight breakup.

The CAB did no longer problem its very last report till June 4, 1965 due to the prolonged and large twist of fate investigation, which discovered crucial information about natural-jet airliner flying traits. It become decided that the group had indeed tried to counteract the aircraft's downward pitch at some point of its dive with a proper elevato