the flight (the two flight crew members, three flight attendants and twenty passengers) received fatal injuries. The plane was destroyed by impact forces and post-crash fire.
More than sixty witnesses were interviewed during the initial field phase of the NTSB’s investigation and more than a hundred other witnesses came forward during a follow-up visit to the accident site about a year later. The majority of the witnesses indicated that, although the aeroplane was flying at an altitude that was lower than they were accustomed to seeing, it appeared to be operating normally until it suddenly rolled to the right and descended into the ground. Many witnesses reported that the aeroplane rolled wings level momentarily (as it lined up with the runway) and that it rolled to the right until it was inverted with the nose nearly straight down.
Some of the witnesses saw the nose rise during the initiation of the right roll. One elderly couple, reportedly walking through Widefield Park at the time of the accident, stated to another witness that a liquid substance from the aeroplane fell onto their clothing which ‘smelled very bad’. Repeated efforts to find and interview this couple have been unsuccessful. One witness, who was about six miles west of the accident site, reported seeing several rotor clouds (the rotor cloud is a form of lee eddy, often associated with extreme turbulence) in the area of the accident, ten to fifteen minutes before the crash. That witness said that the rotor clouds were accompanied by thin, wispy condensation. Another person, who passed west of the accident site between 8.30 and 9.00, reported seeing ‘torn wispy clouds’ in the area of the accident.
On 8 December 1992 the NTSB issued a final report on the accident. The Safety Board concluded that it ‘could not identify conclusive evidence to explain the loss of United Airlines flight 585’. In its statement as to the probable cause of the accident, the Board indicated that it considered the two most likely explanations for the sudden uncontrollable upset to be a malfunction of the aeroplane’s directional control system or an encounter with an unusually severe atmospheric disturbance.
MEMPHIS, Tennessee, USA 7 April 1994
FedEx Flight 705 was scheduled to depart the company’s home base of Memphis, Tennessee, for a routine flight to San Jose, California, at a little after 3.00 in the afternoon. The captain, first officer and flight engineer boarded the aircraft to find that another FedEx employee, who was not identified as someone who would fly with them that day, had already come on board. He was sitting at the flight engineer’s station initiating pre-flight procedures. A ‘jumpseat’ employee may not interfere with flight operations, according to the rules and regulations of the company, but the boarding flight crew members said nothing and the stranger gave up his seat to the flight engineer before strapping himself into a jump seat in the cockpit. He carried with him a guitar case, which contained two claw hammers, two sledgehammers, a knife and a scuba diver’s speargun.
The jump-seat employee, later identified as Auburn Calloway, came aboard Flight 705 that afternoon in a state of desperation. His career with FedEx, and, indeed, with any other freight company or airline, was in jeopardy. Federal Express had uncovered a series of irregularities and outright falsifications in both his original employment application and in hundreds of hours of flight records. The company had ordered him to appear at a disciplinary hearing in the upcoming week. The likely outcome of such a hearing was the termination of his employment and the loss of his FAA flight certification. He decided to kill himself and to make the suicide look like an accident, thus providing insurance money for his family. Moreover, by crashing one of their aeroplanes, he would punish FedEx for singling him out. Calloway’s plan was carefully devised. He did not want to use guns to disable the cockpit crew, knowing that any subsequent investigation would uncover bullet wounds. He wanted to make the deaths of the crew look as if they had been as the result of an air crash. He bought death and dismemberment insurance and planned to bludgeon to death the crew of Flight 705, then crash the DC-10 into the terminal of the Memphis base.
After takeoff the captain heard a struggle. He turned to see both his crew mates slumped in their seats, injured terribly, and a blood-soaked Calloway moving towards him. Calloway swung wildly at the captain and, although his blows landed, some were deflected. The plane lurched as the captain defended himself desperately. Then the first officer and flight engineer recovered sufficiently to fight back. Calloway swung a hammer, inflicting further injuries, but the cockpit crew did not give up and Calloway retreated to the rear of the cockpit. The crew did not have time to radio Memphis before Calloway brought out the speargun. He told the crew, ‘Sit down! Sit down! This is a real gun, and I’ll kill you.’
The flight engineer was bleeding from wounds to his face and head. He could not see Calloway clearly, but he could see the speargun, its barbed steel shaft inches from his face. He grabbed the weapon and threw himself at his assailant. The captain helped him subdue Calloway while the first officer struggled to regain control of the aircraft. The first officer could not use his right arm and the blows to his head had caused near paralysis to parts of his body. He pulled the control yoke back against his chest, and rolled the DC-10 to the left into a barrel roll at nearly 400 miles per hour. The captain and flight engineer shouted, ‘Get him! Get him’, as the three struggled with Calloway. They fell into the galley area with the movement of the aeroplane, at one moment weightless, at the next being pressed down upon by three times their weight in gravitational forces. The aircraft turned upside down at 19,700 feet.
The first officer threw the aircraft into a series of violent manoeuvres to keep Calloway off balance. He threw the yoke forward and sent the plane into a vertical dive. The throttle controls, located to his right, were pressed forward to their stops, and he could not reach them with his injured right hand. The DC-10 accelerated past 500 miles per hour, then past the instruments’ capacity to register the speeds. Flight 705 was experiencing velocity stresses that the airframe was not designed to sustain. The first officer pulled the aircraft out of the dive, and then reached across the yoke with his left hand to cut the speed. Then he called Memphis.
Flight 705 turned back for Memphis and was cleared for any runway. No one on the ground knew what had happened except for an ‘attack’ reported by the first officer when he had declared an emergency.
Once Flight 705 landed and came to a stop, a paramedic boarded the aeroplane. The captain and flight engineer were still struggling with Calloway on the floor, while the first officer sat trembling in the co-pilot’s seat. Calloway was handcuffed and hauled away.
CAPTAIN: I can’t believe it, what a goatrope [mess].
What aeroplane number is this?
FIRST OFFICER: It’s, uh, 306.
CAPTAIN: Okay.
FIRST OFFICER: We can use auto throttles. [Laughter]
FIRST OFFICER: Express 705 cleared for takeoff.
Lights if you want ‘em, I mean clocks if you want ‘em, lights are coming on, we’ll get the vertical speed wheel here in a minute.
CAPTAIN: How’s the checklist look?
FLIGHT ENGINEER: Once the flight guidance has been set, we’ll be complete.
FIRST OFFICER: All right, er, it’s set.
FLIGHT ENGINEER: All right, before takeoff is complete.
FIRST OFFICER: Okay.
CAPTAIN: Your aeroplane.
FIRST OFFICER: I have the aeroplane, set standard power, please, before they change their mind.
CAPTAIN: Power is set.
