Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529

On August 21, 1995, Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia flying from Atlanta, Georgia, to Gulfport, Mississippi, crashed in the community of Burwell between the cities of Bowdon, Georgia, and Carrollton, Georgia. Out of the 29 people on board, 9 were killed. The accident bore similarities to Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311, which had occurred four years earlier, and resulted in the deaths of all 23 people on board. The inquiries of both crashes concluded that design flaws in the aircraft's propellers were to blame.

Accident

Flight 529 left the ramp area at Atlanta at 12:10 Eastern Daylight Time, and took off at 12:23. At 12:43:25, while climbing through 18,100 ft, the occupants of the aircraft heard a thud, which First Officer Warmerdam later described as sounding like "someone had hit a trash can with a baseball bat." The outboard section of one of the blades of the Hamilton Standard propeller on the left engine separated. The separation imbalanced the propeller causing the entire assembly to become dislodged from the resulting violent wobbling, deforming the engine nacelle and distorting the wing's profile. The separated section of the propeller blade landed about 35 miles west of the eventual crash site and was obscured by tall grass for three weeks until it was recovered by a farmer. Although the EMB 120, like all transport-category multi-engine airplanes, is designed to fly with one engine inoperative, the distortion of the engine resulted in excessive drag and loss of lift on the left side of the aircraft, causing it to rapidly lose altitude.

The flight crew initially tried to return to Atlanta for an emergency landing, but the rapid descent resulted in them being diverted to West Georgia Regional Airport. The airplane was unable to stay in the air long enough and the pilots began searching for an open space to make an emergency landing, eventually settling on a field in Carroll County, Georgia, near the farming community of Burwell and the city of Carrollton. At 12:52:45, before the emergency landing could commence, the aircraft pitched over and began an uncommanded dive, striking the tops of the trees before it hit the ground nose first with a slight left bank, the force of which ripped off the weakened left wing. The aircraft skidded along the ground for some distance until it hit an incline in the field and briefly became airborne again, then fell back to the ground while yawing uncontrollably, before finally coming to a stop. The force of the final impact split the fuselage in half around the wingbox, rupturing the fuel tanks, which proved to be fatal during the evacuation of the plane.