jul-aug2012

Flight Safety Australia
Issue 87 July–August 2012
25
A Hands-on Approach
Two flights, more than sixty years apart, have much to
teach about the importance of pilots staying involved and
never giving up, as an airline pilot reveals
Long before it was given a name, crew resource management
and the flying skills of First Lieutenant Lawrence M. DeLancey
brought a B-17 bomber back to Nuthampstead air base, in
England. It was November 1944 and flak over Germany had
blown the B-17’s nose off and damaged its hydraulic system.
The bombardier was killed by the flak burst, but ‘Larry’
DeLancey and his co-pilot Phil Stahlman saved the rest of the
aircraft’s crew. Their reward was life. DeLancey lived until 1995
and Stahlman went on to a 40-year career as an airline pilot.
A report on the landing described how the pilots sat stunned
in the cockpit afterwards and how DeLancey was able to walk
only a few paces before ‘he sat down with knees drawn up,
arms crossed and head down.’
Decades later, in a peaceful European sky, Turkish Airlines flight
TK1951 began its approach to Schiphol airport, Amsterdam.
Within a minute of touchdown the approach became a
disaster—in still, clear air, the Boeing 737-800 stalled and
crashed. The links in this accident chain have been disclosed
in the Dutch Safety Board report, in exquisite detail. I have no
new revelations, but merely pose some questions to give pilots
something to think about.
With 20/20 hindsight, the proper actions are obvious—they
always are. Why did the captain, who was a senior instructor,
not take over manually and hand-fly the approach? He had
already identified that the aircraft had diminished functionality
with impaired and defective systems.