The Oregonian

Mount Hood rose into view as the DC-8 approached Portland, prompting Capt. Malburn McBroom to snatch up the intercom.

"For you folks on the right side of the aircraft," he said, "there's a great view of the night skiing on the mountain out the window."

Clicking the intercom off, McBroom turned in his seat and prepared to release the landing gear. Another routine flight was about to come to a close. It was Dec. 28, 1978.

A little over an hour later, United Airlines Flight 173 crashed into a residential Portland neighborhood near the intersection of East Burnside and 157th Avenue. The plane had run out of fuel.

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A survivor being treated at the scene (The Oregonian)

Ten people died when the DC-8 fell from the sky, flattening two unoccupied houses and a clutch of trees before coming to a rest. The dead, The Oregonian reported, "included four children, two crew members and four [other] passengers."

For hours it had been a very ordinary New York-to-Denver-to-Portland flight, but it turned terrifying all at once. Panic swept through the cabin as the flight attendants issued instructions for a crash-landing.

"Everyone was screaming just like in 'Airport '77,'" a passenger said later, referring to one of the sequels in the popular "Airport" disaster-movie franchise.

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Capt. McBroom and his wife at a local hospital (The Oregonian)

Flight attendant Sandy Bass, choking back tears, told The Oregonian that passengers actually responded well to the crew's directions. "We ordered them to put their heads down. They were prepared. They listened. I love every one of them. They were amazing."

When the plane hit the ground, causing buildings blocks away to shake, nearby residents rushed from their homes to offer help, arriving at the scene before first-responders. Some passengers somehow managed to walk out of the debris. Portlander Teresa Salisbury was stunned when five survivors showed up on the doorstop of her East Burnside house.

Among the passengers who wandered off: an Oregon State Penitentiary escapee who was being returned to Oregon on the flight. Corrections officials acknowledged that Kim Edward Campbell had selflessly helped fellow survivors out of the wrecked plane, but they "wish he hadn't then split like he did."

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The Oregonian

On the run, Campbell became a D.B. Cooper-like folk hero. When he was captured seven months later he said he planned on turning his life around when he got out again, maybe study philosophy. Instead, he robbed a bank in Colorado and ended up back in prison.

Needless to say, commercial airlines aren't supposed to run out of fuel and smash into houses. So why didn't Flight 173 make it to Portland International Airport on that frigid but clear night?

The short answer: Capt. McBroom, a World War II Navy veteran and a longtime United pilot, became preoccupied with a landing-gear problem. When he deployed the wheels, a strange thump was heard and the plane violently bucked. It turned out the right front landing gear had swung wildly when released, and the cockpit crew didn't know whether it had locked into place. As McBroom, his co-pilot and the flight engineer tried to figure out what was going on, they lost track of the plane's fuel, which, for a number of reasons, was burning at an accelerated rate.

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The Oregonian

Thanks to McBroom's flying skill, the crew's training and some luck, the crash wasn't nearly as deadly as it might have been. When Multnomah County medical examiner William Brady received an initial report about the air disaster, The Oregonian wrote, he "began making plans to rent three large refrigerated vans for storage of the expected large number of bodies."

The Oregonian's headline the next morning: "United DC-8 crashes at E. Burnside, 157th; 10 killed, 175 survive."

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The Oregonian

Six months later the National Transportation Safety Board blamed pilot error for the crash, stating in its investigative report that "the probable cause of the accident was the failure of the captain to monitor properly the aircraft's fuel state and to properly respond to the low fuel and the crew-members' advisories regarding fuel state."

But it wasn't that simple. In "Crash Course," her 2018 book about the tragedy, journalist Julie Whipple identified what was arguably poor airline maintenance practices at the time. The NTSB report, Whipple points out, did not address "fuel gauge inaccuracies or [landing-gear] eye-bolt failures -- the very problems [Capt. McBroom] felt were largely responsible for everything that went wrong that fateful December night."

The investigation of the crash -- and its conclusions about communication problems among the cockpit crew-members as they worked to identify and solve the landing-gear issue -- led to commercial airlines adopting a NASA-developed program known as Cockpit Resource Management, which helps ensure an orderly and complete flow of information.

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The Oregonian

"If Capt. McBroom had known the history of the rod failure" in the landing gear, retired FAA inspector Frank Harrell said during a trial related to the crash, "and maintenance had reassured him that the gear was safely locked down, and if dispatch had questioned his fuel state, the combined help just might have moved him out of the mental block he was so obviously in."

A jury ultimately found that McBroom wasn't responsible for any deliberate wrongdoing but that United was, hitting the airline for "wanton misconduct" over its maintenance practices.

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The Oregonian

On Dec. 28, 1998, many survivors of Flight 173 and their family members gathered in Portland for a 20th-anniversary reunion of the crash that had changed their lives. Even though he had never emotionally recovered from the accident and believed he was widely blamed for it, McBroom, now 72, decided it was only right that he attend. "The fact that I lost some people and destroyed the airplane -- it's painful," he said shortly before the reunion. He admitted he had considered suicide at one time.

The reunion ended up surprising him. When he was introduced to the assembled attendees, Whipple writes in "Crash Course," "the room erupted in applause. McBroom was stunned as people rose from their chairs clapping -- for him." Whipple continues:

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The Oregonian

Why? McBroom struggled to find words to express the swirl of grief and astonishment inside him. The last time he'd addressed these people was from the cockpit of the jet he was about to crash-land. Ten people had died, dozens more were injured. And yet here were so many of his passengers and their families standing with a message of forgiveness and gratitude for their survival. McBroom couldn't speak through his tears. He had come from a sense of duty and responsibility to these people in the hope that his presence might give them some closure, some peace -- but he suddenly realized that it went both ways.

McBroom died six years later, at 77. "I hope he's at peace now, truly at peace," Flight 173 survivor Mary Clare Deveny said when she learned of McBroom's death. "We never, ever, ever blamed him. We always knew he had done the best he could."

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The Oregonian

Forty years have now passed since that DC-8's engines flamed out and the plane glided toward the ground. The crash killed 10 people, a terrible toll.

By prompting airlines to retrain their crews with Cockpit Resource Management, it also may have saved many more in the years since.

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-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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