Talk:United Air Lines Flight 859

The previous account of the cause of the accident, was not correct:

"The aircraft suffered a hydraulic failure whilst en-route, and was forced to make an emergency landing at Stapleton Airport. As it was landing two of the tires blew out, causing the aircraft to veer off the side of the runway. During these uncontrolled seconds it struck construction equipment, subsequently catching fire."

So, I removed it and inserted the actual cause (asymmetrical thrust, after landing), as stated in the Official CAB Accident report. The tires (all four on the right main gear) blew out only after the plane left the runway and then hit a raised concrete taxi-way, that was still under construction. EditorASC 14:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Good work! Is the official report availible on the web, and if so could you give me a link to it, as I was previously only able to find the link in the article that gives the erroneous cause (I'm happy to believe the new info, though, it sounds much more complete and plausible). Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart  -  Receive My EviLove  17:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Happy to help. You can find that particular accident report at:

http://dotlibrary1.specialcollection.net/scripts/ws.dll?websearch&site=dot_aircraftacc

Then, scroll thru the years and pick 1961 and then United Airlines in the list of accidents that comes up for that year.

I have almost 1,000 of the paper reports in my file cabinets and most of those too, on my computer HDs. Have been researching airline accidents for 37 years now. Feel free to e**** male**** me *** a t editor a t  airlinesafety  d o t  c o m  if you ever need any other info on airline accidents.

EditorASC 07:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Briliant, thanks. I will keep you in mind should I ever require more information of that nature, there is a high likelyhood I will at some point or another down the line. Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart  -  Receive My EviLove  17:17, 27 February 2007

(UTC)


 * Someone changed the nomenclature on the reverser buckets, saying that they failed to open. That is incorrect.  The buckets move to a CLOSED position, when they operate properly.  "The Board indicates that after touchdown, the reverser buckets on the left side did not rotate to the closed position....These buckets must be closed to deflect engine thrust in a forward direction." {CAB accident report] So, I changed the wording back to "closed,". EditorASC (talk) 12:55, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

New PDF link
I have changed the link to the offical CAB accident report, to one that is now available in PDF form, with only one click of the mouse being required to get there. The older, html report, required hunting thru DOT pages, and then years, and then thru airlines, to finally get to the desired report. Also, removed the reference to the NTSB report, since the NTSB did not exist then. The NTSB first opened its doors in April, 1967. This accident was investigated by the CAB, not the NTSB.

Also removed the reference to "critical engine." There is no critical engine in relation to an asymmetrical thrust situation, during jet engine reversing after landing. "Critical engine" is an aviation concept that related to piston/propeller planes while they were in flight, and the concept really doesn't apply to jet airliners at all, nor to any plane, during the landing rollout. EditorASC (talk) 09:45, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Image from German Wikipedia


Off to the right is the image from the German version of this article. Is there any reason why this shouldn't be on this article too? -- RobLa (talk) 22:36, 11 August 2021 (UTC)


 * If the DC-8 image were of the accident aircraft itself, it would absolutely belong in the article. As it stands, the German wikipedia article is larger (~7000 bytes vs. ~5000 for the en version) so it has a bit more room for a third image. If you want to add the image to the right, (keeping the two existing post-crash images of course) I personally won't revert it.  Here's the translated German article in case someone thinks some of it is worth adding to the English version: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/United-Air-Lines-Flug_859 −  Itsfullofstars (talk) 18:47, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I made a cropped version using CropTool that doesn't have the extraneous background, so now it has a smaller screen footprint and looks more centered. The orignal was left intact. − Itsfullofstars (talk) 23:31, 14 August 2021 (UTC) United Douglas DC-8 (cropped).jpg
 * I went ahead and added the image to the infobox, and moved the previous image to the article body. Itsfullofstars (talk) 23:41, 14 August 2021 (UTC)