United Airlines Flight 232 | Facts & History (2024)

United Airlines Flight 232, flight scheduled to fly from Stapleton International Airport in Denver to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on July 19, 1989, that crash-landed at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa, after the failure of its tail engine caused the loss of all hydraulic control of the plane; more than half of those aboard survived.

The United Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-10, carrying 285 passengers and 11 crew members, took off from Denver at 2:09 pm. For the first hour, the flight was uneventful. However, at 3:16 pm, a cracked fan blade in the rear engine disintegrated, causing the engine to fail, while flying debris severed all three hydraulic lines and pierced the horizontal stabilizer. People on the aircraft heard a loud bang, and the plane shuddered violently and began ascending and rolling to the right. The pilots, Captain Alfred Haynes and First Officer William Records, quickly discovered that neither the autopilot nor the manual controls had any effect. In desperation, Haynes closed the throttle to the left engine and pushed all the power to the right, and the aircraft righted itself. The crew notified Minneapolis Air Traffic Control of the emergency, and it was determined that the plane should attempt to land at the airport at Sioux City. Dennis Fitch, a United Airlines DC-10 training instructor, was a passenger in the first-class section, and he volunteered to help. Haynes instructed Fitch to operate the thrusters that powered the two remaining engines, which gave very minimal control over the aircraft’s direction and orientation, while he and Records sought to get the normal flight controls working. Fitch found that the aircraft had a pronounced tendency to turn to the right.

Flight 232 proceeded in a series of barely controlled right spirals toward Sioux City. At 3:46 Fitch succeeded in using the thrusters to pull the plane enough to the left to approach the airport, and the crew then managed to get the plane lined up with a closed runway. The aircraft descended far too steeply and much too fast, and it tilted as it landed. The right wing struck the ground first and broke off. The tail section and the co*ckpit also broke off as the plane bounced several times. The main portion of the fuselage skidded sideways and rolled onto its back before coming to a stop in a cornfield. Fuel had ignited immediately when the plane hit the ground. Emergency personnel and vehicles were already in place and rushed to the rescue. Of the 296 people on the flight, 110 passengers and 1 flight attendant perished, most because of injuries from the crash, though some succumbed to smoke inhalation. One passenger died a month later from his injuries. Most of the 184 survivors were seated in the area behind first class and in front of the wings. All those in the co*ckpit survived in spite of being seriously injured.

In the wake of the crash, new rules were put in place regarding the manufacture and inspection of turbines, and changes were made to the design of future aircraft to decrease the chances that all control systems could be destroyed at the same time. The incident was the subject of the 1992 TV movie Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 (also known as A Thousand Heroes), starring Charlton Heston and James Coburn, and it was described in the book Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival (2014) by Laurence Gonzales.