evanbu From United States of America, joined Mar 2009, 376 posts, RR: 0 Posted (2 years 2 months 5 days 22 hours ago) and read 1798 times:
Recently I was reading about UA 232 on wikipedia. There is a map on the website (shown below) that indicates where the flight was located when the fan disc separated in the #2 engine. The flight was heading from DEN-ORD and the weather over Iowa that day was perfect, so it wasn't like it was deviating around any weather. My question is this; Why was the flight headed NNE (5 degrees) prior to the failure of the #2 engine? (Just northeast of Mapleton, Iowa according to the map)
B6JFKH81 From United States of America, joined Mar 2006, 2767 posts, RR: 7 Reply 1, posted (2 years 2 months 5 days 22 hours ago) and read 1740 times:
It was probably following a jetway. If you look at the area of the engine failure, it says that the intended rollout was supposed to be at 095 degrees, which makes me think that the flight got to an "intersection" for jetways. You have to remember, this was 1989...airspace was different back then and you weren't navigating your aircraft with GPS like today.
"If you do not learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it"
PGNCS From United States of America, joined Apr 2007, 2516 posts, RR: 45 Reply 2, posted (2 years 2 months 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 1598 times:
Quoting evanbu (Thread starter): My question is this; Why was the flight headed NNE (5 degrees) prior to the failure of the #2 engine?
Because we normally are on airways and routings other than a direct line between our origin and destination, and the routes have numerous turns in them to deconflict traffic from other traffic and various kinds of airspace.
Quoting B6JFKH81 (Reply 1): You have to remember, this was 1989...airspace was different back then and you weren't navigating your aircraft with GPS like today.
We had inertial navigation long before 1989, and for enroute purposes an INS or IRS is fully capable of doing fix to fix, direct, and off-airway navigation. The UAL DC-10 fleet had INS installed at the time of the accident, but it's irrelevant to the accident how they were complying with their route clearance, just that they were. Despite the proliferation of GPS we are still generally on airway routings in the continental US, just like we were in 1989.
B6JFKH81 From United States of America, joined Mar 2006, 2767 posts, RR: 7 Reply 3, posted (2 years 2 months 5 days 19 hours ago) and read 1506 times:
Quoting PGNCS (Reply 2): We had inertial navigation long before 1989, and for enroute purposes an INS or IRS is fully capable of doing fix to fix, direct, and off-airway navigation.
Very true and understood. I didn't want to start going into the various forms of navigation and their capabilities in the general CivAv forum as things can get quite technical.
"If you do not learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it"
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From United States of America, joined Mar 2009, 376 posts, 
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