July 19, 1989. It was a Wednesday.
The sky over the Midwest was mostly clear, the kind of day that makes pilots feel like they’ve got the best job in the world. United Airlines Flight 232, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, was cruising at 37,000 feet. It was a routine hop from Denver to Chicago. People were finishing lunch. Kids were playing in the aisles.
Then, everything changed. A massive "bang" echoed through the cabin, followed by the kind of shudder that makes your stomach drop through the floor. The tail engine—the one stuck right in the middle of the vertical stabilizer—had basically exploded.
This wasn't just a simple engine failure. It was the start of the Sioux City United crash, an event that shouldn't have been survivable. Not even a little bit.
When that engine fan disk shattered, it sent titanium shrapnel flying at supersonic speeds. Those metal shards didn't just exit the engine; they sliced through all three of the plane's redundant hydraulic lines. In an instant, Captain Alfred Haynes, First Officer William Records, and Flight Engineer Dudley Dvorak weren't just flying a plane with one engine down. They were flying a 300,000-pound lawn dart.
They had no flaps. No slats. No rudder. No elevators. No brakes.
Basically, they had two throttles and a whole lot of prayer.
The impossibility of United 232
You have to understand how a plane works to realize how screwed they were. Most planes have backup systems. If one hydraulic line fails, another kicks in. If that fails, there's a third. The DC-10 was designed so that a total failure was practically impossible—estimated at a billion-to-one chance.
Well, those odds didn't matter that day.
When the lines were severed, the fluid leaked out in minutes. The control wheels in the cockpit became useless ornaments. You could turn the yoke all you wanted, and the plane wouldn't budge. It just started a slow, agonizing descent, banking dangerously to the right.
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Luckily, there was a fourth guy in the back. Dennis Fitch, a United flight instructor who happened to be deadheading (flying as a passenger), walked up to the cockpit and asked how he could help. He ended up on his knees between the seats, manning the throttles. By varying the power to the left and right wing engines, he found he could somewhat control the plane's direction and pitch.
It was crude. It was exhausting. It was the only reason they didn't spiral into a cornfield in five minutes.
The approach to Sioux Gateway Airport
The pilots spent about 45 minutes wrestling with the "beast," as Haynes later called it. They were trying to aim for Sioux City, Iowa, while the plane kept wanting to roll over. It’s hard to imagine the physical and mental toll of that. They weren't just "flying"; they were conducting a physics experiment in real-time with 296 lives on the line.
The air traffic controllers at Sioux City were amazing. They cleared everything. They got every emergency vehicle in the county onto the tarmac. But they knew. Everyone knew. No one had ever landed a jumbo jet using only throttles.
The plane was coming in way too fast. Normal landing speed is around 140 knots. United 232 was screaming toward the runway at 215 knots. It was also sinking at 1,800 feet per minute—six times the normal rate.
Just before touchdown, the right wing dipped. It hit the ground first. The plane cartwheeled, broke into several pieces, and erupted into a fireball. If you watch the footage today, it looks like a 0% survival scenario.
Why 184 people actually lived
This is the part that still messes with people's heads. Out of 296 people on board, 184 survived.
How?
First, the crew. Their coordination is now taught in every "Crew Resource Management" (CRM) course in the world. They didn't panic. They didn't argue. They worked together as a single unit. Haynes’s humility—allowing Fitch to help—saved everyone who lived.
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Second, the location. Sioux City was weirdly prepared. That very morning, the local hospital had finished a disaster drill. The emergency crews were literally still debriefing when the call came in. They were ready.
Third, the corn. Because the plane broke apart and tumbled into a field, the soft soil and the stalks themselves absorbed a massive amount of kinetic energy. People were literally stepping out of the wreckage into the middle of a cornfield, dazed but alive.
The dark side: What went wrong with the engine?
The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation into the Sioux City United crash was intense. They eventually found the culprit: a microscopic defect in the titanium alloy of the stage one fan disk.
It was a "hard alpha inclusion." Basically, a tiny impurity had been trapped in the metal when it was forged years earlier. Over thousands of flights, a tiny crack grew from that impurity.
Why didn't inspectors see it?
Because the inspection methods at the time weren't good enough. They were using "Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection," which relies on human eyes and a blacklight. The crack was there, but it was missed. This crash changed the entire metallurgy and inspection industry. We now use much more advanced ultrasonic and eddy-current testing because of United 232.
What most people get wrong about the crash
A lot of people think the DC-10 was a "death trap" because of this and other high-profile accidents (like the Paris crash or the Chicago O'Hare disaster).
Honestly? That’s not quite fair.
While the DC-10 had some early design flaws—specifically the cargo door—the Sioux City incident was more about a freak engine failure that would have crippled almost any aircraft of that era. In fact, the DC-10 went on to have a long, safe career as a freighter (the MD-11).
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The real takeaway isn't that the plane failed; it’s that the pilots did something that had been deemed mathematically impossible in simulators. After the crash, other pilots tried to replicate the conditions in a simulator. They crashed every single time.
Every. Single. Time.
The lasting legacy of Flight 232
You can’t talk about this crash without mentioning the kids.
Back then, children under two could fly for free as "lap children." When the crew realized they were going to crash, they told parents to put their babies on the floor and hold them down. It was a nightmare. One child died from smoke inhalation, and it sparked a decades-long debate about whether the FAA should mandate seats for all infants.
We still don’t have that mandate today, largely due to the cost-benefit analysis of families driving instead of flying, but United 232 remains the "Exhibit A" for why lap-carrying is dangerous.
Lessons for today
If you’re a nervous flier, the Sioux City United crash might sound terrifying. But it’s actually a testament to how far we’ve come.
Modern planes now have "fuses" in the hydraulic lines that automatically shut off the flow if a leak is detected, preventing a total loss of fluid. We have better engine casing that is designed to "contain" a failure so shrapnel doesn't fly out.
The survival of so many people in Iowa that day wasn't just luck. It was a mix of incredible airmanship, lucky timing for emergency services, and a whole lot of human grit.
Actionable Insights for the Future:
- Study CRM: If you work in any high-stakes environment (medicine, tech, engineering), read the transcripts of the United 232 cockpit. It is the gold standard for how to communicate under extreme pressure.
- Aviation Safety Progress: Understand that every time a crash like this happens, the "tombstone imperative" leads to massive changes. Flying is safer today because of the lessons learned from the shattered fan disk of United 232.
- Seat Selection: If you travel with infants, the safest way—by a long shot—is to buy them their own seat and use a certified car seat. The "lap child" exception is a convenience, not a safety feature.
- Emergency Prep: When the flight attendants give the safety briefing, actually look for the nearest exit. In Sioux City, the cabin filled with thick, black smoke in seconds. Knowing the row count to the exit saved lives.