Flight AQ 243 from Hilo to Honolulu. Open air

Air bus

On a sunny day on April 28, 1988, the crew of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-297 was preparing for its next flight. It was a routine flight from Hilo Airport to Honolulu. Flight time is only 35 minutes: take off and land, business! Essentially, the Boeing operated as a bus traveling between the islands of Hawaii. Every day he made 8-10 flights on route AQ 243. The weather was beautiful, calm, no storms or other troubles were expected. On pre-flight inspection nothing unusual was noticed. True, the plane was far from new, it was released in 1969, made 89,680 takeoff-landing cycles and flew 35,496 hours. It was one of the oldest in the airline; it had long since exhausted its service life, and therefore was used only on short domestic flights.
But this old man was driven by a very experienced crew. The commander, 44-year-old Robert A. Schornsteimer, had worked for Aloha Airlines for 11 years. Robert served as commander since June 1, 1987. He flew over 8,500 hours, more than 6,700 of them on a Boeing 737. Co-pilot Madeline Tompkins, 36, has worked for the airline for nine years, serving as co-pilot since June 30, 1979. She has flown over 8,000 hours, more than 3,500 of them on a Boeing 737.
Three flight attendants served passengers in the aircraft cabin: senior flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing (58 years old, with the airline since August 1, 1951), as well as Michelle Honda (35 years old, with the airline since July 1, 1974) and Jane Sato-Tomita (43 years old, with the airline since December 1, 1969).

The destroyed interior of the Boeing 737-297 aircraft

Open air

At 1:25 p.m. local time, flight AQ 243 took off from Hilo Airport. During the takeoff and ascent, everything went as usual. The plane headed for Honolulu. At approximately 13:48, he reached an operating altitude of 7300 meters - and then suddenly 35 square meters of skin above the first six rows of the first class cabin and the cockpit door were torn off. Passengers found themselves in the open air with an oncoming flow speed of about 500 kilometers per hour and temperatures up to - 45 °C.
Panic began in the cabin. The passengers were gasping for breath. Oxygen masks they could not put them on for the reason that they simply did not exist. The crew immediately began descending to the minimum altitude to allow people to breathe.
Flight attendant Michelle Honda could not communicate with the pilots because the communication cables between the cabin and the cabin were damaged. She couldn't even understand whether the pilots were alive. Nevertheless, the woman did not lose her presence of mind. She tried to calm the passengers, helped them group and prevented panic in the cabin. She had to act alone in this extreme situation: Jane was wounded and unconscious, and Clarabelle did not respond.
The pilots understood that with such damage the plane could not continue to fly - it was a miracle that it had not yet fallen apart and crashed. It needs to be planted immediately, and the sooner the better. The closest airport capable of handling a Boeing-class aircraft was Kahului Airport on the island of Maui. Madeline Tompkins, despite communication problems, still managed to contact his dispatch service.

“On my word of honor and on one wing”

Emergency services on the ground were put on high alert. The commander led the Boeing for an emergency landing. And then he discovered a deterioration in handling at speeds below 315 kilometers per hour (recommended - 290 and 250 kilometers per hour). I had to make the decision to land at increased speed.
But that was not the worst thing. The liner was a very pitiful sight. Due to the rupture of the fuselage, the nose of the plane dropped by a meter and was actually hanging on several beams. It was impossible to extend the flaps to a sufficient angle; this would have completely torn the Boeing apart. Therefore, Shornsteimer decided to brake with the extended landing gear.
However, the indicator light for fixing the front landing gear in the working position on the dashboard did not light up, and it was not clear whether the indication was faulty or the landing gear did not come out. In the second case, there was a high probability that during landing the nose would be completely torn away from the main part of the fuselage, which would also begin to fall apart, which would lead to damage and fire of the fuel tanks.

The plane is tired

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the cause of the crash of Flight AQ 243. On April 14, 1989, he published a report according to which the causes of the accident were recognized as: metal corrosion; poor epoxy bond of fuselage parts; rivet fatigue; damage to the fuselage metal.
One of the participants in the investigation put forward the Liquid Hammer theory (literally translated from English as “liquid hammer”, which corresponds to the Russian technical term “hydraulic hammer”). In his opinion, the hatch at the top opened first, the flow of air picked up the flight attendant standing below it, and her body plugged the hatch. And only after that, due to a pressure surge, the fuselage roof came off. But this term itself in this case is fundamentally incorrect, because “water hammer” occurs exclusively in systems filled with liquid. And what happened in the Boeing cabin should be called a pneumatic shock. And a pneumatic shock (that is, a shock jump in air pressure), which could have occurred due to the instantaneous blocking of a hatch (or a collapsed window) that opened at an altitude of over seven kilometers by the body of a flight attendant, could indeed lead to the destruction of a large part of the fuselage, especially the hull, the strength of which was weakened by aging or material defects.

"On the brink of death"

This incredible landing caused a great stir in the American media. In 1990, a feature television film based on this incident, “Hard Landing,” was shot in the United States. Note that the authors tried to strictly adhere to the facts, without giving much leeway to the impulses of their artistic imagination. Only the aircraft's livery (blue and white instead of white and orange) and the name of the airline (Paradise Airlines) were changed in the film.
Also, the incident with Aloha Airlines Flight AQ 243 is shown in the third season of the Canadian documentary television series Air Crash Investigations in the episode “Breath of Death.”
This case was described in the American television series 1000 Ways to Die. Although he would be more suitable for the program “The Only Way to Survive”, if it existed.