Federal Express Flight 14 and 80

Federal Express Flight 14 And 80 Were MD-11F Flights That Crashed On Landing Due To a High Speed Approach

Federal Express Flight 14
FedEx Express Flight 14 was a scheduled cargo flight from Singapore to Newark, New Jersey, via Malaysia, Taiwan, and Alaska. On July 31, 1997, the aircraft flying this route crashed during landing on its final segment at Newark International Airport (EWR), catching fire as it flipped upside down, injuring all five people on board.

Aircraft And Crew
The aircraft, named Joshua by FedEx, construction number 48603 and line number 553, was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11F freight model, powered by three General Electric CF6-80C2D1Fengines. Registered in the United States as N611FE, the aircraft was delivered new to FedEx in September 1993. Prior to the crash, the aircraft had a total of 13,034 flight hours and 2,950 flight cycles (a flight cycle is defined as a takeoff and landing), and had been involved in two prior incidents. In January 1994, when it sustained underbelly damage during a bounced landing at Memphis International Airport. Then in November 1994, the aircraft was involved in a tailstrike at Anchorage International Airport. Permanent repairs were made from the Anchorage incident within days of the tailstrike, and permanent repairs to the Memphis incident were made at the next C check in August 1995.

The captain was 46-year-old Robert M. Freeman who joined FedEx in 1988 when it bought Flying Tiger Line, which he had previously worked for. Freeman had logged a total of 11,000 flight hours, including 1,253 hours on the MD-11. The first officer was 39-year-old Donald E. Goodin, who had been with FedEx since 1994, having served as a former U.S. Air Force pilot and had 3,703 flight hours, though only 592 of them were with FedEx. Goodin only had 92 hours on the MD-11.

Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted a full investigation of the accident and concluded that the probable cause was the captain's over-control of the aircraft during the landing and his failure to go around after a destabilized flare. Beginning about 17 feet above the runway, the captain had let the nose lower, probably to achieve an earlier touchdown, then raised it and increased thrust to slow the plane's descent, then pushed the nose down again (around the time of the first touchdown) to try to keep the plane on the runway. These last control inputs were "too late and too large" to stabilize the landing, and the plane's high sink rate and rightward roll compressed the right landing gear strut at the second touchdown, which broke the right wing rear spar and ruptured the right fuel tank.

Federal Express Flight 80
FedEx Express Flight 80 was a scheduled cargo flight from Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in the PROF, to Narita International Airport in Narita, Chiba Prefecture (near Tokyo), Japan. On March 23, 2009, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11F(N526FE) operating the flight crashed at 6:48 am JST (21:48 UTC, March 22), while attempting a landing on Runway 34L in gusty wind conditions. The aircraft became destabilized at flare and touchdown resulting in an unrecovered "bounced" landing with structural failure of the landing gear and airframe, and came to rest off the runway, inverted, and burning the fusalage fiercely, after it was then upside down. The captain and first officer, the jet's only occupants, were both killed in the accident.

Investigation
The Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB) dispatched six investigators to the airport. The United States's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sent a team to Japan to assist with the investigation. The crash was FedEx's second fatal accident involving a jet aircraft, following the loss of a FedEx owned B747-249F that crashed February 18, 1989, near Kuala Lumpur, while still painted in the Flying Tigers livery after the acquisition of the Flying Tigers Line by FedEx in December 1988. This was the first fatal accident at Narita Airport.

The accident was attributed by the JTSB to a series of "porpoising oscillations" that developed during touchdown, following a high sink rate during the final approach. The first officer executed a late flare, in which sink rate was not suppressed until the plane was nearly on the runway, but which also would minimize "float" that might carry the plane further down the runway and reduce its safe stopping distance, or carry it off the centerline in the existing crosswinds. This high touchdown sink rate, coupled with large nose-up inputs, caused the first bounce. A large nose-down input was applied, causing a touchdown on the nose gear. This deviates from approved procedures for the MD-11 during a bounce, which specifies the pilot is to hold a pitch angle of 7.5 deg and use thrust to adjust the descent rate. The plane bounced off this second touchdown, pitching upward. The large control inputs by the first officer resulted in a hard touchdown on the main landing gear. This final touchdown was hard enough (1200 fpm) to cause the left wing to fail as the left main landing gear transferred force up into the wing, exceeding its design limit. The JTSB report suggested the fire might have been averted if the landing gear fuse pin had failed as designed, but that much of the touchdown force was horizontal to the pin rather than vertical, keeping it intact. The report also cited the crew's use of autothrottle during landing despite gusty wind conditions.

As a result of this accident the Japan Transport Safety Board published its final report on April 26, 2013, in which it made a number of new safety recommendations including that "in order to reduce the occurrence of MD-11 series airplanes' severe hard landing and bounce in which an overload is transferred to the MLGs and their supporting structure, the Boeing Company should improve the controllability and maneuver characteristics by improving the LSAS (Longitudinal Stability Augmentation System) functions, reducing the AGS (Auto Ground Spoilers) deployment delay time and other possible means. Possible improvement on LSAS functions may include: a function to limit large nose-down elevator input during touchdown phase, which is a common phenomenon in severe hard landing cases accompanied by structural destruction for MD-11; and a function to assist bounce recovery and go-around in case of bounce. In order to help pilots to conduct recovery operation from large bounces and judge the necessity of go-around, studies should be made to install a visual display and an aural warning system which show gear touchdown status on MD-11 series airplanes."

FedEx Flight 14 Accident
On July 31, 1997, another FedEx MD-11F (N611FE), operating as FedEx Express Flight 14, was written off after a similar destabilized landing accident at Newark Liberty International Airport. After a flight from Anchorage, Alaska, that aircraft crashed at the airport just before midnight when it bounced twice after a hard touchdown on Runway 22R, resulting in the failure of the right main landing gear. As in the Narita accident, the plane also caught fire as the airframe broke up, flipped over, and came to rest inverted off the runway. The captain, first officer, and three passengers on board all survived the 1997 Newark crash and were able to escape from the burning aircraft with only minor injuries.

May All Died Aboard, Rest In Peace