Burning Up A Passenger Plane From The Inside | Horizon Air 2658

This is the story of Horizon air 2658 on the 15th of april 1988 37 people were on a relatively brand new dash 8 100 on the ground at seattle international airport looking to make the quick trip to spokane washington, the flight crew had about an hour and a half to get the plane ready to go out, the first officer performed a walk around and within no time they were firing the engines up for the short hop over to spokane washington. They would be taking off of runway 16L today and they were asked to be ready to go as soon as the departing traffic was clear of the runwa. The pilots had to maintain a heading of 130 degrees after they were in the air and then they could start the climb up to their cruising altitude. Nothing fancy just like the hundreds of takeoffs that these pilots had done. With that the plane took off at 6:25 pm and the captain took the dash 8 into the sky the first officer retracted the gear and the plane felt perfectly normal. As the plane climbed they retracted the flaps from 5 to 0 and then pulled power back on the engines. As they hit a 1000 feet and then began a left bank to a heading of 130 Degrees, the first sign of trouble, not in the cockpit but in the cabin. A passenger sitting in seat 9E saw liquid leajking out of the right engine nacelle, the rate at which the liquid was leaking lessened as the captain leveled the plane off but it was still there, but he said nothing, probably thinking that this was normal. As the piots finished up the left hand turn the pilots noticed that engine number two was producing less power than they expected. As the captrain watched engine two went from 88 percent of engine torque to about 40 to 60 percent of engine torque. He pushed both engines to max power in an attempt to rectify the situation, engine one responded in kind but engine two kept falling. He knew that engine two was still producing thrust so he kept the engine running, but he had made up his mind he was returning to the airport. He asked the first officer to let the controllers know that they would be heading back to the airport and to have the checklist available on hand. As the captain put the plane into a somewhat wide than usual downwind leg the pilots carried out the emergency checklists. As the plane turned onto the base leg the plane was still going too fast and the captain did not lower the gear. One mile from the runway the crew lined up with the runway and then lowered the gear. As the first officer scanned the right side of the airplane for any conflicting traffic a bright flash caught his attention. The right hand engine had exploded, right center access panel on the left side of the right hand engine was gone and there he was able to see flames jumping out of the engine. “ we got a fire” said the first office. The captain commanded max power from his one remaining engine and max flaps to keep his now stricken and burning plane on glide. The first officer pulled power on the right hand engine and then discharged the fire extinguishers in the engine. But the engine continued to burn. The first officer also noticed that they no longer ahd the three green gear down lights. They needed to put this bird on the ground now as they were starting to lose systems. In the cabin the flight attendants prepared the cabin for a crash landing. Flight 2658 was now a quarter of a mile away from the safety of seattles runway but the pilots knew that they were on borrowed time, the plane was becoming less and less responsive they were losing control of the plane the first officer stated “a ‘I. . . significant change in
controllability” of the airplane.. . . the airplane felt like it was in slow flight, sort of wallowing around.” the pilots fought for control hoping that their systems would hold out till they got to the runway and it did the plane landed back on runway 16L at 6:31 pm and the captain immediately pulled power on engine number two, and the plane began to veer to the left of the runway the captain tried to use nosewheel steering, differential braking and the rudder to control the plane nothing worked the pilots were now a passenger just as much as everyone else on the plane. The plane left the paved runway surface and the first officer let the controllers know that they had no control over the plane. Eventually the plane crossed the grass areas ,the ramp and grazed jetway b7 with the left wing the left wing then hit jetway b9 causing the left wing to fall off the airplane and then went through some baggage carts and then finally came to a rest in jetways b11. The plane had stopped moving and everyone was alive but the fight was far from over they still had a plane that was presumably on fire, within 15 seconds the fire crewes were dousing the dahs 8 with fire retardant foam. Even though 4 passengers had received serious injuries all of the 40 people onboard survived this near brush with death.