Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105

Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight that crashed into an open field in Oak Creek, Wisconsin shortly after taking off from General Mitchell International Airport on September 6, 1985. The airplane, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, was carrying 31 passengers and crew. None of them survived the crash.

Multiple eyewitnesses reported that the plane was on fire shortly after it took off from the airport. The fire was caused due to a failure on the right engine where one of its removable sleeve spacers detached. The removable sleeve spacer suffered metal fatigue that caused the engine to explode.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the investigation team who was responsible for the investigation of the crash, concluded that despite the plane suffering engine failure, it was still controllable, and instead the response of the crew to the failure was the main cause of the accident. The crew failed to properly control the plane during the emergency. Breakdown of the crew's coordination, and poor FAA oversight also contributed to the crash.

Flight

At 15:20, Flight 105, carrying 27 passengers and four crew members, departed from Mitchell's Runway 19R en route to its destination of Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia. The plane had previously been operated as Flight 206, with the same flight crew, on its previous leg from Madison.

At 15:21, with Flight 105 just 700 ft above the ground and climbing, the right engine exploded, causing Flight 105 to sway several times. Captain Martin immediately asked, "What the hell was that?", to which First Officer Weiss did not respond. Immediately after, ATC instructed Flight 105 to turn left towards heading 175. At this stage, the air traffic controller noticed smoke and flames were emanating from the right engine, with parts of the plane falling to the ground, but did not inform the crew about this. In the cockpit, Captain Martin then asked, "What do we got here Bill?", still with no response from Weiss. Instead, Weiss replied to ATC, advising them that Flight 105 was in an emergency. This would be the only communication from Flight 105 during the crisis.

As this was going on, the plane continued climbing with a high angle of attack, which caused the airspeed to decrease significantly. It began to roll to the right, and then stalled, and abruptly continued rolling to an angle of 90 degrees. The left engine suffered an unknown failure, possibly due to it ingesting parts of the right engine. In its final moments, the plane was reported to have barrel-rolled at least once (likely closer to 2 full rotations), while the CVR recorded the lead flight attendant ordering passengers to get their heads down. At 15.21 and 41 seconds, Flight 105 crashed into an open field in a wildlife preserve several hundred meters from runway 19R. The aircraft was completely destroyed by the impact and post-crash fire.