What happened to the MD-82?

One problem in SAS was moving from the Caravelle with broad wing and boogie undercarriage. Fine ground effect and more or less landed itself smoothly. I understand the DC-9 family does not!

As far as I remember the “bar” on the wheels are for deflecting slush, ice, rocks etc away from the underside of the wing or flaps and prevent damage.

There has been other hard landings in airline service. One DC-9 broke off both engines. They hung on by wires, hyd. lines etc. though.

What actually happened, according to the NTSB.

During a test flight in 1980, a Mc Donnell-Douglas DC-9-80 (a precursor to the MD-80) blew its nose wheel tires and broke its tail off. The intended test called for a rate of descent at touchdown close to 700 fpm coupled with strong back pressure 0.5 seconds after landing, plus full braking. The fuselage flexed and failed. The purpose of the test was to determine the horizontal distance required to land and bring the aircraft to a full stop, according to the NTSB report on the incident. On approach, the pilot failed to stabilize the descent and touched down at a rate that exceeded the structural limits of the aircraft, the NTSB said. The pilot of the tail-less, nosewheel-less aircraft used main wheel braking and (because the engines survived) used reverse thrust to stop the aircraft. The report details that the extremely narrow performance range that would allow the pilots to fly the profile safely left an inadequate margin of safety, and suggested that the test procedure should be reviewed. The aircraft was on a certification flight at Edwards AFB in California. One engineer on board suffered a broken ankle in the accident, but the other six crew members were unhurt.

-Dazza

I see now. It’s because of the high Gforces that the tail brakes off.

MD 80’s have a strange iron bar or so before their wheels. Is this a brake like you have on the go cars, or is it that thing they putted on the concorde after the crash?
YOu should look slowmo, then you can see that the forwward fuselages bends a bit! i don’t understand how the tail brakes off because it doesn’t hit the ground?

The NASA crash was much worse than planned. As seen by the last minute (second) dip of a wing. It should just have proceeded straight and level into those iron rods.

I remember when this happened – although I’d never seen that amazing piece of footage before. It was definitely an accident and I remember wondering at the time whether the MD-80 was a “stretch too far”. At the time of this accident the aeroplane was still referred to as the Douglas DC-9 Series 80/81/82.

As for the deliberate crash of a “707” – this was actually a time expired Boeing 720. The plane had been in use by the FAA and was in full FAA livery. It was fitted with remote control gear and the main purpose of the crash was to test a new anti-misting fuel. Although there was a massive initial fire at the moment of impact, the fire almost extingusihed itself which seemed to vindicate the effectiveness of the fuel additive. Unfortunately, the idea was never taken beyond this test. The test was conducted in 1983.

This footage is from May 1980 during the time when the the MD-81 was being certified by the FAA. The aircraft shown was in fact the first MD-80 that flew in Oct 1979. It suffered a hard landing at Edwards AFB, CA while trying to ascertain the minimum distance required to touchdown from 50 ft AGL. There were no casualties and the aircraft was repairable, but was instead placed into long-term storage in Sherman, TX. I don’t think it was ever repaired.

Was not on purpose it was just a test with the FOKKER 100
PROTO

Originally posted by GZYL
Airline manufacturers don’t need to crash aeroplanes to see what will break them, they can use computer modelling programs to determine what will happen when forces are applied to airframes.

I don’t remember if it was on purpose , but don’t you remember this A346 landing test , where the landing weight was to high and they broke the undercarriage?

FOKKER AIRCRAFT BV did heavy landing test’s with the F100,
This did cause the right hand landing gear to snap causing damage to the right hand wing,engine ,and horizontal stabilizer.

rekkof2004

Airline manufacturers don’t need to crash aeroplanes to see what will break them, they can use computer modelling programs to determine what will happen when forces are applied to airframes.

A very big mess

A big mess!

Being serious though. Its just not viable to go crash testing airliners when developing them.
You can’t build a multi Million dollar vehicle just to smash it up. That would make development costs so prohibitibly expensive the manufacturer would go bust.

The Crashing of the 707 was a one off, and that aircraft had previously been damaged beyond economical repair anyway, or so I read somewhere.

Originally posted by Airline owner
Well would Airbus do it to thier A 380

Would’nt that make a mess

Well would Airbus do it to thier A 380

Well the FAA deliberatly crashed a B707 to find out the effects of the crahson dummies they had inside. Various other measurements were done too.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the video of that.

Would Companies such as Airbus,Boeing,McDD do that to prototypes on purpose

Originally posted by steve rowell
“Wow” that’s amazing footage, shows just how vulnerable some of these aircraft are

Er not realy.
They came down hard, on purpose. To see what exactly it would take to do that.

I’ve seen this vid before, about a year ago, along with a report about that test flight. After completing a few tests in flight, they did this.
The Object of this was to see how hard it could land before breaking. I guess this video shows you the answer they got. They had to come down pretty hard.

“Wow” that’s amazing footage, shows just how vulnerable some of these aircraft are