"The system redundancy is so good and the navigational capabilities are so complete that there is no need to review systems as much as you would have flying a 727 or some of the older model 747s and DC-10s. "The airplane can lead you very easily into becoming a very cavalier aviator," said Humphreys. He was not lulled into a false sense of security by modern technology and practiced old-fashioned airmanship on the flight from Anchorage to Seattle, which paid off when all the high-tech gear failed and he had to fly by the seat of his pants. So how did Humphreys overcome almost insurmountable odds to save the lives of his passengers and crew? By thinking outside the box. "His cool was such that he was able to carry this off." "His performance was about as flawless as it could be," she said. Ketchikan is a particularly difficult airport with a tricky approach, especially in the dark for a pilot who has never landed there, said Novaes. "A pilot like Jim makes an emergency like that look easy." "I'm not sure everyone could have done that," Novaes said of the safe diversion to Ketchikan. Nancy Novaes, chairwoman of the Pilot Assistance Committee, seconded that praise and was especially complimentary of the job done by Humphreys, so much so that she presented him with a model of a Continental 757 with two batteries taped to it. "Everything was textbook, everything you would expect out of a professional crew. "You couldn't have asked for any better job than they did," said Hynes. Jim Humphreys and First Officer Susan Shaw. That's why Hynes has such high praise for the crew - Capt. "Statistically, this is never supposed to happen," Hynes said. The fact that there would have been no record of Flight 120's last moments shows that no one ever contemplated a scenario that included a complete power failure on a 757. Investigators could have recovered data recorded before the electrical generating systems failed but no data would have been available after the ship's battery took over. If Flight 120 had not made it, no one would have known what happened because the Flight Data Recorder stopped recording to save precious electrical power. Mike Hynes of the Continental Central Air Safety Committee. "This is about the worst you're ever going to face," said Capt. There was so little electricity available that even the transponder stopped transmitting so Continental Flight 120 disappeared from air traffic control screens in Anchorage.Įven if Humphreys could dead reckon his way to the tiny island in the dark and stay away from the nearby mountains, he had to guide the unlit jetliner with 150 passengers on board through a cloud deck of unknown depth with only the standby artificial horizon to save him from disorientation.Īnd he had to do it without any help from ATC or autopilots or on-board computers or global positioning satellites or any of the other technology modern pilots depend on but which don't work when there's no electricity. Humphreys had never landed at Ketchikan, an uncontrolled airfield on a small island surrounded by mountainous terrain, and he had only four standby flight instruments, one dim cockpit light and basic navigational equipment, including a directional gyro, a VOR receiver and one ILS receiver. "If the links in the chain hadn't been broken, we probably would have wound up with an accident."Īlthough the incident happened months ago, it's important to examine it because of the lessons it can teach. "It's one of the most serious events that we've had in recent history," said Toby Carroll, Continental Director of Safety Investigations. Humphreys knew he had 30 minutes to get it on the ground before the juice in the ship's battery was gone - and he was 37,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean about 100 nautical miles south-southwest of Ketchikan. and for the first time in the history of the 757, one was flying on battery power. That's right, all the layers of protection peeled away - the Integrated Drive Generators (IDGs), the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) and the Hydraulic Motor Generator (HMG). 12, 2000, and all of the redundant electrical generating systems failed one by one. He was flying a Continental B-757 red eye from Anchorage to Seattle on Aug. In this case, Humphreys had 30 minutes to save his passengers, his crew and himself. It was almost like a James Bond movie where the villain flips the switch on the time bomb and the intrepid secret agent has 30 minutes to free himself and save the world. Jim Humphreys was facing the unimaginable - a 30-minute countdown to almost certain catastrophe. Having done a similar scenario in the sim while upgrading to Captain on the B757, I can tell you this crew had their hands full.Nice job to the CAL crew!
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