Airworthiness analysis of the United Airlines Flight 811 accident

Abstract

All sources of power which can initiate unlocking or unlatching of any cabin doors must be isolated from the latching and locking systems prior to flight, and the key structural parts of flight safety must be able to bear the structural limit loads and ultimate loads, and the method of continuous airworthiness event monitoring based on risk management must depend on the adequate of monitoring data.The airworthiness requirements are interpreted in combination with actual cases, which has a certain referent to aircraft cabin door researchers and aircraft continuous airworthiness researchers.Based on this, taking the accident investigation report of United Airlines Flight 811 as the blueprint, and according to the current domestic airworthiness regulations and normative documents, the method of analytical interpretation is used to study the exposed problems.The results show that the design of the driving system of the front cargo compartment latch of Flight 811 did not meet the airworthiness requirements that it was necessary to disconnect the latch before flight and could not restore power to the cabin door during flight.The design of L-shaped anchor for the front cargo hold door of Flight 811 did not meet the requirements of load design and verification in airworthiness regulations.FAA made mistakes in its assessment of the safety impact and airworthiness risk level of the opening of the front cargo hold door of the aircraft in flight.

Keywords

• airworthiness
• united airlines flight 811 accident
• cabin door
• continuous airworthiness event monitoring