Missile Strike

Mobility Forum, Sep/Oct 2004

REPRINT COURTESY AVIATE MAGAZINE, SPRING, 2004

The crew of a DML A300 heard a loud noise and the aircraft began to shake as it was hit by a hand-held missile.

The pilots were able to guide the aircraft to a safe landing using only engine power settings. The aircraft lost all three hydraulic systems and all flight controls.

It has been said that the incredible feat of airmanship is explained partly by a safety seminar the captain attended in Brussels earlier in the year. In a stroke of luck, one of the speakers was retired captain Al Haynes. In 1989, Haynes commanded a UA DC 10 in which all the hydraulics had been lost due to a catastrophic engine failure. Using engine thrust alone, the United crew was able to crash land the crippled aircraft at the Sioux City airfield and the majority of the passengers survived.

The DHL crew headed back to Baghdad International Airport after it was hit at 8,000 ft. When the missile exploded, the crew first thought an engine had suffered an uncontained failure, but all readings were normal. The hydraulic pressures started dropping and a radio call from the ground told them the wing was trailing smoke. The captain could see the wing was on fire. The crew had problems controlling the aircraft and at times did not think they would make it. The captain recalled the Haynes presentation and started using engine thrust for control, and was surprised to find it worked rather well. The aircraft circled twice while the crew manually lowered the undercarriage. They then lined up for a 20-mile straightin approach at around 225kts. On landing, the aircraft ran off the left side of the runway and went through barbed wire fences before coming to rest near the Fire Station.

In the past 25 years there have been 35 shoulder-fired missile attacks on civil aircraft, 24 resulting in crashes.