Alfred Haynes, a pilot who led a United Airlines crew through an extraordinary display of improvised emergency flying that guided a crippled jet to a crash landing in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, saving more than 180 of the 296 people on board, died on Aug. 25 in Tacoma, Wash. He was 87.

His son Dan posted news of his death on Facebook.

Mr. Haynes was captain of United Flight 232 on July 19 when, a little more than an hour into its flight to Chicago from Denver, one of its three engines — the one mounted in the tail — exploded. What happened next has become part of aviation lore, an example of calm and quick thinking under the most extreme pressure.

“Most people know Chesley Sullenberger,” said Spencer Bailey, a Flight 232 survivor, referring to the pilot who successfully landed a US Airways jet on the Hudson River in 2009, “but the feat Captain Haynes pulled off 30 years ago was truly a miracle, too.”