I clearly remember this aviation incident in 1994. That day 2 July 1994 was only five days after 27 June 1994.
I looked it up a short while ago because I was trying to remember other details about 1994 in my memory. I mentioned that incident in my private journal back in 2006 and I haven't looked up the exact day but I think that was pre-May 2006.
The way I remember it, I was sitting a bar in Charlotte North Carolina that I had started going to just about every evening after work. The bartender was also a fan of Atlanta Braves baseball, as was I. I told him one time he resembled in appearance a guy I went to United States Navy basic training with in 1984 but I don't think he ever actually told me whether he knew that guy and I wondered if they were related.
The way I remember it, I heard that thunderstorm roll through and I thought later, probably talking to other people in that bar, that we probably could have seen that aircraft flying nearby if we had walked to the frontdoor of that bar. That bar was not very far from where I lived at the time at Whitehall Estates in Charlotte North Carolina and that area is close to the airport. Commercial jet airplanes were always screaming over my apartment. I looked on the map to see if I could see the name of that bar in the images but I don't see it although I clearly remember where that bar was located. There is an Enterprise rental car building in that parking lot. I think that was back in there still in 1994. I don't think I was dating that woman named Caitlin at that time. I think she started coming into that bar later and we dated for a while. Sometime later, 1995 maybe, I moved to Dresden and that was across town and over on Independence blvd.
The typically lousy episode of "The Simpsons" that just finished makes me want to rush through and post my next report, which I largely finished a couple hours ago, but I am going to wait until tomorrow to finish it. As though it matters if I post it tonight or tomorrow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1016
US Airways Flight 1016
USAir Flight 1016 was a regularly scheduled flight between Columbia, South Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina. On Saturday, July 2, 1994, the plane, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 registered N954VJ, departed Columbia Metropolitan Airport at 18:15 EST for the 35-minute flight to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport. On board, there were 52 passengers (including two infants), three flight attendants, and two pilots. The flight was uneventful until the approach to Charlotte, where several heavy thunderstorms were in the vicinity of the airport. The flight was cleared by the tower to land on runway 18R. The plane, flown by the first officer, approached the runway in heavy rain conditions. The tower controller issued a windshear warning to all aircraft, but it was on a different radio frequency than Flight 1016.
About a minute later, as Flight 1016 was on final approach, the captain, realizing that they were in a serious predicament, instructed the first officer to 'Take it around, go to the right'. He then radioed the control tower and stated 'USAIR ten sixteen's on the go'. The plane struggled to climb due to the severe weather conditions, and immediately veered to the right and began to rapidly descend. The flight crew desperately tried to control the airplane as it plummeted toward the ground.
At 18:43 EST, the DC-9 touched down into a field within the airport boundary, about 0.5 miles (0.80 km) from the threshold of runway 18R. It then crashed through the airport fence and impacted several trees, breaking apart while skidding down a residential street that was on the airport boundary. The plane broke into four major sections, the front 40 feet (12 m) of the airplane, including the cockpit and the unoccupied first class passenger cabin, came to rest in the middle of Wallace Neel Road. The rear section of the fuselage, including the tail and the rear mounted engines, came to rest in the carport of a house.
Of the 52 passengers on board, 14 suffered serious injuries, 1 had minor injuries, and 37 were killed due to blunt force and/or fire. Of the 5 crew members, both pilots suffered minor injuries, 2 flight attendants were seriously injured, and the remaining flight attendant sustained minor injuries. There were no injuries to people on the ground.
After a lengthy investigation by the NTSB, the conclusion was that a microburst had been generated by the thunderstorm that was over the airport at the time of the crash. The conclusions were that the factors that led to the crash included:
1.The flight crew's decision to continue the approach in a severe thunderstorm
2.The failure of the flight crew to recognize wind shear quickly (exacerbated by an error in the wind shear alert software)
3.The failure of the flight crew to establish proper control and engine power that would have brought them out of the wind shear
4.The lack of timely weather information by air traffic control to the crew of flight 1016
