American Airlines Flight 96

American Airlines Flight 96 was a regular domestic flight operated by American Airlines from Los Angeles to New York via Detroit and Buffalo. On June 12, 1972, after takeoff from Detroit, Michigan, the left rear cargo door of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 operating the flight blew open and broke off above Windsor, Ontario. The accident is thus sometimes referred to as the Windsor incident, although according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) it was technically an accident, not an incident.

The rapid decompression in the cargo hold caused a partial collapse of the passenger compartment floor, which in turn jammed or restricted some of the control cables which were connected to various flight control hydraulic actuators. The jamming of the rudder control cable caused the rudder to deflect to its maximum right position. The control cables to the number two engine in the tail were severed, causing that engine to shut down.

The cause was traced to the cargo door latching system, which had failed to close and latch the door completely without any indication to the crew that it was not safely closed. A separate locking system was supposed to ensure this could not happen but proved to be inadequate. McDonnell Douglas instituted a number of minor changes to the system in an attempt to avoid a repeat. These were unsuccessful. On March 3, 1974, the rear cargo door of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 experienced the same failure and blew open, causing the aircraft to lose all control and crash in a forest near Paris, France. This crash killed all 346 people on board.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved in the accident was a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10, registered as N103AA. It was equipped with three General Electric CF6-6D engines.

Accident details

Flight 96 was a regularly scheduled flight from Los Angeles International Airport to LaGuardia Airport with intermediate stops at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and Buffalo Niagara International Airport. On June 12, it was being flown by a DC-10-10, registration N103AA, with a flight crew consisting of Captain Bryce McCormick (age 52), First Officer Peter "Page" Whitney (34), and Flight Engineer Clayton Burke (50). McCormick was a highly experienced pilot, having amassed more than 24,000 flight hours throughout his flying career. Whitney and Burke were also seasoned airmen with approximately 7,900 flight hours and 13,900 flight hours, respectively. Among them, the crew had accumulated 176 hours of flight time in the DC-10.

During the decompression, a sizeable quantity of the cargo stored in the hold was sucked through the now open cargo door and ejected from the DC-10; this included a long casket with a body inside, which was being transported to Buffalo.

In the cabin, the flight attendants saw a "fog" form within the cabin and immediately recognized it as a depressurization. Two crews were in the rear lounge area, and the floor under their feet partially collapsed into the cargo hold, giving them both minor injuries. In spite of this, the cabin crew immediately attempted to ensure the oxygen masks had deployed properly, but having occurred below the limit, the masks had not deployed. One of the attendants obtained a walk-around oxygen bottle and called the cockpit on the intercom to inform them that the damage was in the rear of the aircraft. On instructions from the cockpit, the attendants instructed the passengers on emergency landing procedures. A number of passengers later reported that the aircraft safety cards proved useful in locating the nearest exit.

The aircraft returned to Detroit, but, when the crew set the flaps to 35degrees for landing, the aircraft stabilized in a descent rate that was far too fast for landing. By applying power to the No.1 and No.3 engines, McCormick managed to level off the nose and reduce the descent rate to 700ft/min. At 7:44pm, the aircraft touched down down runway 03R, immediately veering to the right and eventually leaving the runway surface. First Officer Whitney applied full reverse thrust to the left engine and idled the right one, straightening the aircraft's path, and eventually starting to bring the aircraft back to the runway. The aircraft stopped from the end of the runway, with the nose and left gear on the runway and the right on the grass beside it. It happened that while training to convert his expertise to flying the DC-10, McCormick had practiced, in a simulator, controlling the plane with the throttles in this fashion, in the worst-case scenario of a hydraulic failure.

Investigation

The problem that caused the accident was immediately obvious, as the rear cargo door was missing and had caused severe damage to the left horizontal stabilizer as it blew off. Investigators immediately studied the maintenance history and found that on March 3, 1972, three months before the accident, the handlers reported that the door had not latched electrically and had to be closed manually. On May 30, McDonnell Douglas issued Service Bulletin 52–27, DC-10 SC 612, which called for the upgrading of the electrical wiring that drove the latches because "Three operators have reported failure of the electrical latch actuators to latch/unlatch the cargo doors. Latch actuator failure is attributed to an excessive voltage drop reducing the output torque to the actuator. This condition may prevent electrical latching/unlatching of the hooks."

In spite of these recommendations, on March 3, 1974, less than two years after the near-loss of Flight 96, Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crashed outside Paris, killing all 346 passengers and crew on board after an identical rear cargo door failure. Unlike Flight 96, where the crew still managed to keep enough flight controls to safely return to Detroit, the pilots of Flight 981 completely lost control of the tail surfaces and all hydraulics. Investigators discovered that the upgrades had never been carried out on this airframe, although the construction logs claimed they had been. One modification had been carried out, the installation of the inspection window, along with a placard beside the door controls printed in English and Turkish that informed the operators how to inspect the latches. The operator in Paris was Algerian and could not read either language and had been instructed that as long as the locking handle closed, the door was safe. He also noted that he did not have to force the handle, and investigators concluded that it had already been bent on a prior flight.

In the aftermath of Flight 981, the Applegate memorandum was discovered and introduced into evidence during the massive civil lawsuit that followed. Many commentators subsequently blamed the aircraft manufacturer, McDonnell Douglas, and other aviation authorities, for failing to learn lessons from the Flight 96 accident. Although there had been some redesign of the DC-10 cargo door system, it had only been implemented voluntarily and haphazardly by various airlines. If the warning signs of Flight 96 had been heeded, it is likely that the crash of Flight 981 would have been prevented. A complete redesign of the entire door system followed, and no DC-10 or MD-11 suffered a similar accident again as of 2026.

Dramatization

The crash was featured in the third episode of Season 5 of the Canadian Cineflix documentary series Mayday, on the episode "Behind Closed Doors", which also covers the similar crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981, which was broadcast on the Discovery Channel Canada and distributed internationally.

The episode "Crash Detectives" of Survival in the Sky featured the accident, as well as the crash of Turkish Flight 981.

Awards

The entire flight crew was awarded American Airlines' highest honor, The Distinguished Service Award for Merit.

References

External links

NTSB Report NTSB/AAR-73-02 (Alternate)