Talk:United Airlines Flight 811

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on February 24, 2012.

Numbers

The numbers of fatalities, survivers, crew and passengers dont sum up right: 337 passengers +18 crew equals 355 in total. 347 survivors +9fatalities makes 356...

Indeed, the survivors numbers' was off by one: it should have read 346 & not 347! But next time you can fix it yourself! :) --Vlad 12:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image

I would remove the image of the EPR indications, because the B747-100 doesnt have EICAS displays. Dougsnow (talk) 14:58, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A Few Points...

Nice article, although I've had to clean it up here and there. However I am confused about the section reading: "As a result, Boeing instructed the airlines to conduct a simple test: Close the outer handle, then press the switch to open the door. Unexpectedly, it actually worked."

What does this mean? What was this test supposed to prove? (It's slightly out of context here, but makes no further sense in context) If someone understands, please rewrite this sentence.

Also, I am surprised that the article doesn't state any adverse effects on passengers due to decompression beyond the initial injuries. The article says the plane was without oxygen - surely there must be some documentation of resulting hypoxia? If the passengers did survive unscathed, then what were the factors that allowed them to do so? A speedy descent, perhaps?

GM Pink Elephant (talk) 21:38, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just watched the Air Crash Investigation/Air Emergency/Mayday/whatever episode somebody posted to YouTube here (legally or not) about the crash before reading the article and it said that closing the door handle was supposed to disable electricity to the locks. However, on aging planes the wires can become frayed, allowing a short circuit to give power to the locks. It may have also proved that the aluminum things that were supposed to keep the locks in the closed position did not work.

As for the oxygen, the show did mention a fast, emergency decent but did not mention any health effects. Jason McHuff (talk) 01:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Double or Single switched?

An electrical switch designed to cut electrical power to the cargo door when the outer handle was closed was faulty; the motors could still draw power.

In railway signalling, important circuits are double switched, so that two false feeds of the right polarity are needed to cause a false green. How about Flight 811?

Tabletop (talk) 12:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the case of all 747 cargo doors, at the time, only the powered cable (circuit) was open-circuited by the switch. Any short-circuit from a live source would cycle the door-lock motor. Lin (talk) 11:38, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is N1?

Could an expert clean up some of the jargon in this article? For example what is N1? Jschnur (talk) 02:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aircraft engines, just like car engines, are monitored for their rotational speed using a tachometer. However, unlike a piston engines, many turbine engines have multiple rotating assemblies called spools which can turn at different speeds, requiring multiple tachometers. These tachometers are referred to as N1 and N2; some engines such as the RB211 include an N3. So basically, when the article says that the pilot was getting low or no N1 reading, it means that a large part of the engine either wasn't turning or the tach was broken. Shreditor (talk) 00:03, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that Shreditor. I have used your helpful explanation in the article. I hope you don't mind. Jschnur (talk) 03:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the engine and gauge diagram shows the wrong kind of engine (tape) gauges. United did not have those kinds in the cockpits of their 747-100s. They all were equipped with the analogue (round) engine gauges. You can see what those kind actually looked like, here. EditorASC (talk) 11:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seat rows

The article currently states "two rows of seats (8G-12G and 8H-12H)". Could someone check that? That would seem to be 5 rows. If 8 and 12 were adjacent, then it should probably be a comma, not a dash and a note explaining that 8 and 12 were adjacent rows. --J Clear (talk) 14:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorted. It was five rows by two columns of seats that were lost. --66.92.238.5 (talk) 15:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disappointing picture

I'm greatly disappointed in the lack of quality photos in this article. I'm sure free use rules (or whatever they're called) are to blame, but damn--when this happened there were dozens of graphic photos showing the damage in broad daylight. And that was before the internet. I would have to think that one of these could be used. This was simply a shocking sight to those who were around back then. 98.71.252.15 (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I mean look at this; it tops anything this article has by far. 98.71.252.15 (talk) 02:56, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The picture that you link to was from a different aircraft and incident than this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.109.229.227 (talk) 01:44, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with "on this day" statement

the blurb for "on this day" says that nine passengers were killed "when their seats were sucked out of the plane." as a result of uncontrolled decompression. It is basically impossible that the decompression "sucked" the seats out of the plane. The seats may have been blown out of the plane by virtue of the fact that the plane was moving at ~Mach 0.9 when a piece of the hull failed, but they were almost certainly not "sucked out"