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747 Image: Ken Fielding/https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenfiel...
This is the story of northwest airlines flight 85. On the 9th of october 2002, A northwest airlines boeing 747 took off from detroit bound for tokyos narita airport. This was supposed to be another routine flight like any other that day but unfortunately for all involved that wouldnt be the case. As hours ticked by the plane made its way across the united states and then it started to make its way across the pacific ocean. 7 hours into the flight the senior pilots retired from the cockpit to get some rest and the relief crew took over. Senior captain jhon hansen and senior first officer dave smith retired to the rest area. The captain was in bed with the book when he fel the plane do something weird. As the captains interest was piqued the pilots in the cockpit recovered from whatever had happened. Sensing that something was wrong the captain started putting his uniform back on. Thats when the alert from the cockpit came through. In the rest area theres this little alarm and if it goes off you need to get to the cockpit as fast as possible because theres an all hands on deck situation unfolding. As captain hansen entered the cockpit he saw captain frank gibe doing something that he didnt expect to see. He was struggling to fly the plane, he could see that captain gibe was deflecting the rudder to the right with all his might. This is not what you expect to see when the plane is in cruise. For some reason At 35,000 feet the plane had jerked to the left and went into a 40 degree left bank. The pilots initially thought that and engine had failed but the indications into the cockpit told that their rudder was deflected to the left by 17 degrees. No one had commanded this but yet the rudder was in a left hardover. They were in a dire situation and they needed to declare an emergency. But unfortunately they were in a dead zone between north america and asia this meant that their transmissions were too weak to reach any of the control centers. In a bid to establish communication with the controllers on the ground the pilots contacted nearby northwest airlines flight 19 they were closer to Alaska and they relayed the fact that flight 85 was in trouble. They needed to get this plane on the ground as soon as possible and the decision was made to divert to anchorage in alaska. It was taking every bit of control authority that they had to keep the 747 from rolling over to the left. They were using the ailerons, the top half of the rudder, everything that they could to keep the plane in the air. Now they had another problem to get to anchorage you needed to turn to the right, but this plane in its current state could not make a right turn, so they gently eased up on the controls and sent the plane into a left bank as they tried their best to keep the situation from spiraling out of control.

As half of the pilots struggled with the plane the other pilots were hard at work in the cockpit in running through checklists to try and fix the problem but nothing worked. The lower portion of the rudder was still stuck. But the pilots did not really have a clear idea of what was happening, their instruments told them that the lower rudder was deflected to the left but other than that the information was scarce. For all they knew the tail could be breaking apart and if that happened it would be game over. Captain hansen wanted to take over from captain gibe, heres a quote from him “ If anyones going to scratch my airplane i want it to be me”. As captain gibe let go off the controls first officer mike fagan took over as the switch happened. Once in the captain's seat captain hansen was appalled at how poorly the plane was handling, he had never felt anything like that before. Just keeping the plane level was physically exhausting, you needed to basically stand on the rudder pedal to keep the plane in level flight, that taxed the pilots so much that they could only do it for 10 minutes at a time, so the captain and the first officer would take turns commanding full right rudder. With no fix in sight the pilots got on a conference call with technicians on the ground, they hoped that the techs on the ground would be able to fix the problem. The pilots had two questions for them, 1) do you know whats wrong with our rudder and two how do we get this jumbo jet on the ground. Unfortunately the ground techs didnt have answers for the pilots, they were on their own. It then dawned on the pilots that they would have to land the plane like this.