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Causes And Consequences Of The United Flight 811 : Timeline

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United Flight 811
On February 24, 1989, a United airlines Boeing 747-122 suffered an explosive decompression which tore off its cargo door and killed 9 people as it climbed to 23,000 feet after taking off from Honolulu Hawaii. At first, it was thought a bomb went off in the plane, though it was later revealed the aircraft that was used for the flight had recently had work done on the forward cargo door. This led the National Transportation Safety bureau (NTSB) to believe the ground crew was at fault for mishandling and not maintaining the locking mechanisms on the cargo door, causing damage to the door and resulting in the explosive decompression in flight. This accident stands out as one of the few where the crew did everything right through careful use of Crew Resource Management skills, succeeding in landing the plane without further loss of life. Despite the NTSB’s initial results from their investigation, Parents of one of the fatalities of the accident went through with their own investigation which revealed that the decompression was because of flaws in the electrical and cargo door latching systems resulting in an Airworthiness directive being issued for all planes of that type to prevent further similar accidents.
Timeline up to the accident
United Flight 811 was a regularly scheduled flight from Los Angeles, California to Mascot, Australia with two stops in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Auckland, New Zealand. The plane scheduled for the flight was a Boeing 747-122, with

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