{"id":2512,"date":"2011-08-11T20:18:42","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T02:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asylumeclectica.com\/grim\/?p=2512"},"modified":"2011-08-11T20:18:42","modified_gmt":"2011-08-12T02:18:42","slug":"morb081111","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=2512","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For August 11, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Incorrectly Adjusted Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

On March 3, 1974 a DC-10 of Turkish Airlines left Istanbul on a normal scheduled flight to London Heathrow, with an intermediate stop at Paris Orly. The first leg of the flight was trouble-free, and the aircraft took off from Orly at 11:30 a.m. for the short hop across the English Channel with 334 passengers and a crew of 10 on board. The aircraft’s passenger load was increased by over 150 in Paris because of a strike by BEA ground engineers in London which led to the cancellation of many BEA flights. Radar contact with the aircraft was maintained for only a few minutes before it disappeared off the screens. The DC-10 had crashed in the Forest of Ermenonville, in a rugged valley called Bosquet de Dammartin, about 22 miles northeast of Paris. The aircraft cut a broad swathe extending for half a mile through the forest, and broke into a large number of pieces. Rescue services were quickly on the scene, but there were no survivors.<\/p>\n

When the crash was investigated it was found that a rear cargo door had blown out. The same thing had happened to another DC-10, on a flight from Detroit to Buffalo in 1972. It made a successful emergency landing back at Detroit, but following that incident the plane’s makers, McDonnell Douglas, recalled all DC-10s in order that a special support plate with extended locking pins should be fitted to these doors. At the time, the Turkish Airlines plane had just been completed but had not gone into service. Its record file showed that this modification had been carried out in July 1972, but it was clear to the crash investigators that the support plate had never been fitted, and the locking pins were incorrectly adjusted.<\/p>\n

After conducting their own enquiries, and while admitting that the support plate had not been fitted, McDonnell Douglas disputed that this was the cause of the crash. They found that the ‘make-sure’ device on the cargo door, which ensures it is properly locked, was not operating correctly, blaming this on faulty maintenance by the plane’s operators, Turkish Airlines. The airline denied responsibility. In May 1975 McDonnell Douglas offered out-of-court settlements to those people – mainly bereaved families – who were seeking compensation.<\/p>\n

Culled from: Catastrophes and Disasters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Incorrectly Adjusted Yet Truly Morbid Fact! On March 3, 1974 a DC-10 of Turkish Airlines left Istanbul on a normal scheduled flight to London Heathrow, with an intermediate stop at Paris Orly. The first leg of the flight was trouble-free, and the aircraft took off from Orly at 11:30 a.m. for the short hop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}