The last terrifying exchanges between the flight crew and air traffic control of a passenger plane that rammed into homes before it in backyards have been revealed. The horrifying incident took place on December 28, 1978, when United Flight 173, travelling from , met with disaster in a forested suburb merely six miles away from its destination. Captain Malburn "Buddy" A. McBroom, 52, initiated several circular manoeuvres after their aircraft encountered a glitch in the landing gear. In concentrating on inspecting the landing gear problem, Captain McBroom ignored numerous warnings from his crewmates about the declining fuel levels. Only when the engines started to fail that McBroom belatedly realized his lapse. In the aftermath of the crash, ten passengers lost their lives, which included four members from one family, and another 23 suffered severe injuries. The recording from the cockpit meticulously captures the miscommunication within the aircraft's operators and their rising panic when the engines began to fail. When the first officer, Roderick "Rod" Beebe, warned of an imminent engine failure due to depleting fuel, the captain showed disbelief, failing to understand the gravity of the situation, as per the . The flight engineer, Forrest "Frosty" Mendenhall, also voiced his worries about the dwindling fuel levels, but a series of communication failures meant the crew couldn't deal with the problem effectively. In a desperate bid to save the situation, they opened crossfeeds and tried everything to keep the engines running. But it was all in vain as one by one, the engines failed, leaving the plane gliding powerlessly towards the earth. As they approached the airport, it became horribly clear they weren't going to make the runway. The captain's voice was filled with dread as he realised the gravity of the situation: "They're all going - we can't make Troutdale! " In those critical moments, the first officer sent out a Mayday call to air traffic control, signalling the dire state of their predicament: "Portland Tower, United 173, Mayday! We're... the engines are flaming out - we're going down! We're not going to be able to make the airport!" Tragically, among the crew, flight engineer Mendenhall and lead flight attendant Joan Wheeler were killed, while two others were left with 'serious' injuries according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and four sustained 'minor/none' injuries. Both Captain McBroom and First Officer Beebe survived the crash. Among the passengers, eight lost their lives, and 21 suffered serious injuries. Lynn Egli, a passenger on the ill-fated flight, recounted the harrowing experience as the plane clipped treetops and collided with a house before crashing in a Portland neighbourhood. Speaking to KTVL, he said: "We were hitting the ground. But what actually happened, back about six blocks, we started clipping off the tops of fir trees, tall Douglas fir trees. We went over the top of an apartment building by 15 feet without going through it. We hit into an empty house, where people had been evicted. We went across Burnside, slid across Burnside. When we first hit, both wings broke off, and row 6 forward of the fuselage went to pieces." Lynn, still amazed at his own survival, added: "The wheels broke off, and we just slid, like without wings, without the front, through another house, on the north side of Burnside and came to rest in the backyards of people and apartment buildings and houses that are there and the next thing was, it was all quiet, and we were in the backyards of people's houses, and they started coming out of the backyards; they came out of their back doors." The crash brought to light serious issues with flight deck resource management, prompting the NTSB to recommend changes in airline crew training. Consequently, Crew Resource Management (CRM) training was developed to enhance crew coordination, situational awareness, and decision-making skills. United Airlines was the trailblazer for CRM for pilots back in 1981, and now it's a worldwide standard. Aviation psychologist Alan Diehl, who worked as an Air Safety Investigator for the NTSB, pushed for CRM after spotting parallels with other catastrophic crashes. Captain McBroom, who was blamed for the mishap, had his pilot's license revoked and hung up his United cap soon after. He spent his last years grappling with health issues from injuries he got in the crash, on top of battling lung and prostate
cancer. Relatives and passengers who chatted with McBroom at a 1998 reunion for those who lived through the crash said he was "a broken man", tormented by remorse for his part in the tragedy. He passed away on October 9, 2004, aged 77.