Vollo Air Midwest 5481 – Wikipedia

The volo Air Midwest 5481 It was a regional line flight operated by the airline Air Midwest on behalf of the US Airways Express between the cities of Charlotte, North Carolina and Spartanburg, Carolina del Sud. On January 8, 2003, a 1900D Beechcraft that operated on the flight entered into An aerodynamic stall during the take -off phase and crashed close to a Hangar of the US Airways taking fire. The flight lasted just 37 seconds. All the 21 people on board died in the accident and a person on the ground suffered slight injuries. None of the people who operated in Hangar was involved. ^[first]

The crew was composed of the commander Katie Leslie, 25 years old, who was the youngest airline driver; And from the first officer Jonathan Gibbs, 27 years old. Commander Leslie had accumulated 1 865 hours of flight and the first officer 706.

Among the passengers there were Mark E. CIO CIO CIO DI FOODSERVICE, father of 4 children, two students from Clemson University from India and the student Christiana Grace Shepherd, 18 years old, resident of the Azores. ^[2]

On January 8, 2003, flight 5481 was preparing to take off. The aircraft, produced by the Beechcraft Division, was exploited by the company in an intense way, with 8 flights per day (Natgeo data), therefore a daily maintenance was carried out. ^[3]

The night before, during the maintenance provided for by the regulation, of the mechanics, young and inexperienced, had been commissioned to fix a cable that regulated the rear stabilizer; The maintenance, however, was not built according to the manual procedures, as the cables that connected the command bar to the stabilizer had not been properly tied. Although after a repair of this type, a test test was required on the ground, in this case the test was not carried out. The NTSB revealed that the FAA was aware of “serious deficiencies” in the education procedures of maintenance techniques at the plant, but had not carried out any intervention.

Another decisive factor was the calculation of the weight embarked on board. To make this calculation, the US Airways Express, considered an average weight of 80 kg per person and, based on this calculation, the weight on board was regulating according to the number of passengers. However, in 2003 the average weight weight in the United States was very different, about 91 kg per person, so the plane started with a weight of more than 264 kg above the maximum limit.

The plane took off regularly but, shortly afterwards, as soon as the landing trolley returned, she suffered a sudden cabin, followed by a stall, and then rushed to the Hangar of the US Airways, full of people and aircraft supplied with fuel . The commander desperately maneuvered the plane to avoid the direct impact, pointing a few degrees lower than the hangar; The aircraft, in fact, was missing for a few meters. For this maneuver Leslie was awarded posthumously of the gold medal to value.

The accident provided, as always happens after a plane crash of any nature, data to adopt new standards and make flights to come safer. After this air disaster, 21 new regulations were established to avoid other accidents. ^[4]

The episode provided a base to reason about a very important fact, not only for the aviation, but also for the health of the entire population of the United States, obesity. In fact, this pathology has undergone a progressive and relatively rapid worsening in the US population and certainly was a concate, at least in part, of this tragedy; From the data provided by the investigations following the accident, carried out by calling the family doctors of the victims, it was that the passengers had a weight that exceeded on average of 2 kg that calculated for each passenger. ^{[5] [6]}

Since that day, important measures were taken in the management of short -range flights (increasingly used by aerial companions) and the most evident was precisely against flight 5481, to which 2 passenger seats were removed after calculating an average weight no longer no longer 80 kg but 90 kg. ^[7]

The Air Midwest flight 5481 accident was analyzed in the episode Dead weight of the fifth season of the documentary High altitude investigations Transmitted by the National Geographic Channel. ^[8]