Virtual Voyages

TACA 110 was, similar to the Gimli Glider, a brand new boeing 737. this isn't to suggest 737s are uniquely prone to crashing -- if anything, the fact that these are two worst case scenarios with (spoilers!) no deaths/injuries prove they're pretty good planes -- but i think the newness probably still was a factor, in that they were modern (to the time) airplanes with features the pilots maybe weren't quite used to yet. in fact, TACA had only owned their 737 for about a week, and there was actually a third pilot on the flight just to observe their shiny new airplane, which was planned to fly from San Salvador to New Orleans.

let's talk, for a second, about engines.

airplane engines work in large part by sucking in air and using that air to create power. since there's more things in the sky than just air, plane engines are designed to be pretty sturdy: they can handle a lot of water with no problem, and even (smallish) birds -- most famous bird strike accidents involve either a lot of birds or Canada Geese. pilots try to avoid flocks of birds or Massive Amounts Of Water, but an airplane is perfectly capable of flying through bad rain. that said, airplanes have weather radar for just this purpose... but also, it was 1988.

as TACA 110 started to descend towards new orleans, it ran into several large thunderstorms. there was no way around them; it was raining hard. the only thing to do is try to navigate safely through. and again! airplanes can do this! it's fine!

since it was 1988, i'm assuming this radar was even smaller and had fewer colors than this Artist's Interpretation, but this is close enough for our purposes. in thunderstorm airplane radar standards, red = Very Bad, so TACA decided to try and fly between the red spots. simple! easy!

i bet you can tell exactly where this story is going!

because TACA was descending for landing, this means that their engines were already at a lower speed. think of a window fan, right? at high speed, the propellers are kind of just a blur: at lower speed, there's little gaps. and here's a fun fact for you: it turns out that weather radar isn't very good at predicting hail.

captain dándaro aimed his plane for a spot on the radar that was still rainy, but not red. however, it turns out that the blue zone was hiding a third, even bigger red zone, and almost as soon as TACA 110 flew into that section they realized their mistake. this is where things get dangerous: in a storm, forget rain, forget lightning (a plane can, believe it or not, handle a lightning strike -- it's not ideal, but it's not instant game over): wind is going in every direction at once, visibility is zero, and just keeping the plane at a steady angle becomes incredibly difficult. don't forget: planes rely on Aerodynamics. they can turn, gain speed, loose speed, do all sorts of things: but ultimately, you need to maintain a certain safe range to stay in the air. because they were also flying at a lower speed with less engine power, this was even more difficult: power is what lets you maneuver quickly.

(in fact, after this accident, the FAA and regulators began advising that the first thing you should do in these conditions is increase engine power.)

we're now in a pretty dangerous situation, and standard procedure is to Get The Hell Out Of There, which is what TACA 110 proceeded to do.

and that's when the engines shut off.

see: airplanes are tested and certified to handle water. to handle buckets of water. they will spray firehoses into those things to certify that even with water park levels of water, the engines will keep working. but in 1988? they hadn't really tested for hail. a little bit of hail isn't a huge problem, after all. engines can handle water! engines can handle a bit of ice or snow! and the engineers had assumed that a lot of hail would basically behave the same way as a lot of water.

here's a pro tip: it doesn't. hail is solid. it has mass that water droplets do not. and these engines, again, going more slowly than normal, had just enough "gaps" that the hail could sneak through. go spray water at a window fan at high speed. it'll deflect a lot of the water, but not all. a lot is fine, by airplane engine standards.

now do it at low speed. with ice.

you see the difference.

the 737's engines went out. they're in the middle of a thunderstorm with no power. this particular airplane had an APU, a battery-powered backup generator, which kicked in and restored some systems -- but not the engines. TACA 110 was officially a glider.

but obviously, this was no problem for captain dándaro!

first things first, he had to get them out of the storm, which he managed relatively quickly: that was the easy part. he and the first officer then tried to get the engines back online, but they were fried: they actually were able to start both up, but they were producing only idle power, and started to overheat, so dándaro decided to turn them off again: fuck it, we're doing it live. he called a Mayday, and ATC jumped in to get them any airport or any runway their hearts desired, but...

they were already descending.

the Gimli Glider lost engines at the top of their flight altitude, and had a luxurious 17 minutes to plan, find a runway, and land. TACA was at 10,000 feet when they lost their engines -- a third as high. they simply weren't going to make it to any airport, and so decided to ditch the airplane -- land it on anything that looked remotely safe enough.

they were outside of new orleans, which, if you didn't know, is a city surrounded by canals and rivers. as far as crash landings go, this is ideal: you want a long, straight Surface, and a canal is just that. water landings are rough, and dangerous, but they began to prepare for just that: telling the cabin crew, setting up the airplane, trying to get nice and low and slow to nail this landing. at the last minute, however, the first officer noticed a levee off to the side, which is even better: long and straight and flat, but land.

dándaro immediately realized this was definitely the better option, and they should definitely land there instead. the problem? TACA had been aiming for some water farther away. they were too high and fast to land on this leevee, and did not have the time or altitude to turn around and give it a second shot. so what do you do?

that's right!

you drift that sucker.

captain dándaro immediately threw TACA 110 into a perfect side slip, drifting the plane to lose speed and height and line up with that levee. and when i say it was a perfect landing, i am not kidding you: the plane had absolutely no damage. it was flawless. it landed smooth as butter, came to a gentle stop, and everyone was perfectly fine.

for a minute, no one was quite sure what to do. they were safe! they made it! do they evacuate? as a note, this is actually a real consideration: emergency evacuations will always cause minor injuries to passengers (they're not designed for comfort, they're designed to save lives: flight crews WILL throw you out the door if they need to), so if everyone is uninjured, do we really want to sprain some ankles and cause some friction burns after the accident is over? but, on the other hand, those engines were acting screwy; better safe than sorry.

note: in this picture, you can see a white spot on the plane's nose from the hail damage.

the crew and passengers evacuated safely... only for the thunderstorm they had just flown out of to hit them, leaving them all drenched and in the rain.

except, of course, for captain dándaro. i mean, it was raining. he didn't wanna go out in that! so while his cabin crew and passengers got soaked, he waited out the storm in the cockpit. and you know what? good for him.

emergency services and the NTSB were quickly on scene, and everyone was fine. TACA 110 was so undamaged that, after some repair work to the engines, it was towed to a nearby runway, fuelled, and flown (by test pilots, not dándaro -- although i'm positive he was capable) to new orleans's airport. i'm not sure what happened to it after that -- probably it flew on for another few decades -- but captain dándaro was naturally celebrated for his incredible airmanship and continued to fly for another several decades, retiring fairly recently after 49 years as a pilot.