AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2012 - 84

to 120, and the automated voice calls out a dire warning: “Wind shear! Wind shear! Wind shear!” Perdaris slams the thrust levers forward and pulls back hard on the yoke, commanding a dramatic 20-degree nose-up pitch attitude, but the airplane continues to settle as it approaches its 99-knot stall speed. The runway threshold passes beneath the jet as it claws for altitude. The rain has stopped and the Westwind climbs skyward, slowly at first, then more rapidly as it escapes the powerful downdrafts and moves into placid air. As Perdaris commands flaps to the normal climb setting and landing gear up, he feels relief at having successfully flown through a nightmare scenario—one that has special significance for him and his family. Perdaris, of Olathe, Kansas, was just 6 years old when his father, Peter Michael Perdaris, was killed aboard Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, when it encountered wind shear on the same approach to the same runway (then 17 Left) at Dallas/Fort Worth. The accident took 137 lives (26 passengers and three flight attendants survived the crash, although two later died from their injuries). Together with several other high-profile airline accidents in the

1970s and 1980s, the loss of Delta Flight 191 led to rapid advancement in groundand cockpit-based wind shear detection equipment. The accidents also focused airline and corporate pilot training on ways to identify, avoid, and escape such potentially lethal weather. Perdaris has read and reread the Delta Flight 191 accident reports, watched the documentaries, and done as much as he can to understand the technical aspects of what went wrong August 2, 1985. It wasn’t until he visited SimCom’s Orlando training center and flew the actual scenario in a full-motion, Level C simulator that he understood what the Delta crew saw and felt during the final minutes of a previously uneventful flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He also got a look at the safety tools pilots have today that the Delta crew didn’t—and a chance to measure his reactions as a professional pilot when confronted with the same potentially deadly set of circumstances. A little rainshower Delta Flight 191 had dodged a few isolated thunderstorm cells as it approached Dallas for landing, but the weather was VFR and the surface wind calm as the threeperson crew began the approach.

Capt. Edward N. “Ted” Connors, 57, was known as a veteran pilot who avoided thunderstorms, listened carefully to fellow crewmembers, and was a consummate professional. First Officer Rudolph P “Rudy” Price, 42, was well respected . among peers and had flown 1,200 hours in the L-1011. Flight Engineer Nick N. Nassick had been at Delta nine years and flown the L-1011 more than 4,500 hours. “DFW information Romeo: Sky conditions 6,000 scattered, 21,000 scattered, visibility 10, temperature 101. Wind calm, altimeter 29.92. Runway 18 Right, 17 Left, visual approaches in progress.” The L-1011 fell in line on the final approach course behind an American Airlines Boeing 727 and a Learjet 25. An isolated thunderstorm cell was forming just north of the airport, but the pilots of the previous airplanes reported no unusual hazards. The airport was equipped with a ground-based low-level wind shear advisory system, and it raised no alarms. Air traffic control then broadcast this seemingly innocuous message: “Attention all aircraft listening…there’s a little rainshower just north of the airport and they’re starting to make ILS approaches. Tune up 109.1 for 17 Left.”

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2012

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