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Travolta plane incident, 1992 |
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Bruce Bennett - Feb 16,2012
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I happened to find this article, accidently, and I thought I would pass it on. It's quite a long article, so make sure you have a cup of coffee when you read this, or make a copy and read it at your leisure. I never knew this happened way back in 1992, they kept it very quiet. This was a 3 page article, so I had to do a lot of copy and pasting, and deleting ads; but I hope you enjoy it!! I first wrote that this happened in 1995; but it actually happened in 1992 and was written in the Orlando Sentinel in 1995. Judy<br /><br /><br />Travolta Lucky To Live Through Incident<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The Actor Was Flying His Family From Fort Lauderdale To Maine In 1992 When His Jet's Controls Went Out Over Washington.<br /><br /><br />March 27, 1995|By Mike James, Special To The Sentinel<br />The Gulfstream II turbojet was cruising at 41,000 feet through one of the nation's busiest air corridors when the electrical system failed, the radios went dead and the lights went out.<br /><br />Actor John Travolta, an accomplished pilot who had purchased the $5 million-dollar jet just nine months earlier from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was at the controls.<br /><br />Asleep in the cabin were six passengers, including Travolta's wife and their 7-month-old son, Jett.<br /><br />Faced with the catastrophic failure of his aircraft's entire electrical system, Travolta pointed the nose of the jet at the glow of Washington, D.C., barely visible through a thick layer of clouds and, with the help of his co-pilot, began an emergency descent, navigating only by flashlight and a tiny magnetic compass.<br /><br />Air traffic controllers briefly suspended flight operations at four major airports Washington National, Dulles, Baltimore-Washington International and Andrews Air Force Base - until they could determine where the jet would attempt to land.<br /><br />Then, in a spectacularly risky maneuver, controllers diverted a USAir Boeing 727 with 182 aboard, hoping to link up with Travolta's crippled Gulfstream and lead it through the clouds to safety.<br /><br />What resulted was a near mid-air collision.<br /><br />The Gulfstream broke through the bottom of the clouds at 1,000 feet, the crew spotted the Washington monument and made a high speed emergency landing at Washington National, blowing four tires and closing the airport for nearly four hours on one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.<br /><br />The incident occurred just before Thanksgiving, on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 1992.<br /><br />The general public has never heard details of the episode, although the National Transportation Safety Board, which typically does not investigate near-collisions but was sufficiently alarmed by the Travolta incident to do so, concluded that 'the threat of a mid-air collision was very real.'<br /><br />Travolta, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar at tonight's Academy Awards ceremony for his performance in Pulp Fiction, declined to discuss the flight when contacted through friends. The Federal Aviation Administration can't confirm that it happened.<br /><br />This account is based on NTSB records obtained by The Orlando Sentinel; documents from the Gulfstream's manufacturer, which conducted its own investigation; and interviews with air-traffic control personnel and others privy to the events of that night.<br /><br />Travolta no rookie pilot<br /><br />John Joseph Travolta, then 38, was flying family and friends from Fort Lauderdale to Rockland, Maine, for a Thanksgiving celebration at his island vacation home on Penobscot Bay. Cruising at nearly 460 knots, the flight had departed Florida about 8:30 p.m. and was due in Maine at 11.<br /><br />Travolta was no novice pilot. He'd been flying since 1978, had more than 3,000 hours in his logbook, and boasted of holding seven different jet licenses. He owns a home in Central Florida, in the posh aviation community of Spruce Creek, just south of Port Orange.<br /><br />After the holidays, the actor was scheduled to begin work on Look Who's Talking 3, a movie about a talking dog. Fourteen months earlier, he'd married actress Kelly Preston in Paris, where they'd worked together on The Tender, another film.<br /><br />Below, a solid layer of clouds stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see.<br /><br />John Messina, a flying partner of Travolta's, occupied the right seat. According to three aviation sources, Messina regularly flew as co-pilot of the Gulfstream 'to watch over' Travolta and 'keep him out of trouble.'<br /><br />About 10:15 p.m., a small bearing in the turbojet's left electrical generator failed. The aircraft switched to a second generator on the right engine, but a resulting power surge tripped the circuit breaker, and the generator shut down.<br /><br />A series of warning lights, which should have alerted the crew, failed to illuminate.<br /><br />Like an automobile, an aircraft without a generator will continue to operate. However, without the generator to produce power for such things as radios and navigational gear, the airplane must rely on two nickel cadmium batteries which, even when fresh, won't sustain the Gulfstream's many operational systems for more than five minutes.<br /><br />By the time Travolta and Messina recognized the dual generator failure, several minutes had passed, and the aircraft's control panel was beginning to dim.<br /><br />The crew attempted to activate an instrument known as a transformer rectifier that could have provided an alternate source of emergency power.<br /><br />It also malfunctioned.<br /><br />Travolta notified controllers of his emergency, then the cockpit went totally dark.<br /><br />Gulfstream N728T was nearly eight miles high, and was approaching one of the nation's busiest air corridors with no communications, no functioning navigational equipment, and no exterior lights.<br /><br />The turbojet's transponder, which communicates with the FAA radar, also ceased operation.<br /><br />Travolta Lucky To Live Through IncideThe Actor Was Flying His Family From Fort Lauderdale To Maine In 1992 When His Jet's Controls Went Out Over Washington.<br /><br /><br />March 27, 1995|By Mike James, Special To The Sentinel<br /><br />So N728T was reduced to nothing more than an unidentified blip on the air traffic control radar screen. Controllers were able only to guess at what altitude the Gulfstream was flying.What happened next was perhaps the most worrisome element of the Travolta episode.An air traffic controller contacted the pilot of USAir flight 1729, out of Charlotte, headed for New York with 182 aboard, cruising at 400 miles an hour at 21,000 feet. The controller asked the pilot to help find the Gulfstream, flying at the same speed at an unknown altitude.'I know it will be hard to see him,' the controller radioed.'He has no electrical system, so he won't be lit up.'In fact, on the moonless night, Travolta's turbojet would have been practically invisible.The controller who handled the emergency was reprimanded and later reassigned. The FAA would not release his name.Record of incident purgedA computer search at the FAA's Department of Air Traffic Systems Effectiveness in Washington, D.C., failed to produce any documentation of the incident.'It would appear the records have been purged from the system,' said Bob Hoppers, an FAA spokesman in Oklahoma City. 'Somehow they got tossed.'A 'safety recommendation report' by the National Transportation Safety Board appears to be the only surviving record. The six-page report to FAA Administrator David R. Hinson, dated Feb. 14, 1994, spells out what happened, based on tape recordings of tower-to-pilot conversations.The tapes have since been erased.USAir pilot was big help'The controller again advised, 'He won't be lit up, so keep an eye out for him.' 'Someone in the USAir cockpit then said, 'Yeah, he's coming toward us. I'm going to turn the lights on so he can see me.'The controller replied: 'Yeah, light up for him. He's 12 o'clock and about 2 miles now.'Meaning, directly ahead, two miles away. At those speeds, separated by less than 8 seconds - clearly too close.For a heart-stopping moment the two aircraft converged on the radar screen, indicating a potential 'conflict.''We definitely held our breath,' said one controller, who refused to be identified for fear of losing his job.According to the NTSB report: 'A few seconds later the controller told the pilot that they had passed each other, then thanked the crew of USAir 1729 for helping.'The FAA's minimum allowable separation of aircraft is three miles horizontally or 1,000 feet vertically. Both safety standards appear to have been violated in what was nearly a head-on collision directly over Washington.'It is impossible to determine how close they actually came,' says Jim Danaher, the safety board official who wrote the report. But, his report points out: 'The aircraft could have been at the same altitude, and consequently, the threat of a midair collision was very real.'Oblivious to near-collisionCapt. Jeff Hightower, a 27-year veteran pilot from Charlotte, says he had misgivings about following the controller's directions that night, but kept his thoughts to himself.<br /><br /><br />'I remember thinking. 'This is kinda stupid.' I remember getting this uncomfortable feeling that I shouldn't be here.''It's like driving into a head-on,' Hightower said. 'It didn't make sense, you know? What were we going to do? . . . Lead these guys down through the clouds?''After (air traffic control) came on and told us we passed 'em, I remember thinking, 'Whoa, I shouldn't have done that. Let's get the hell out of here.' We just went on to New York.'Hightower says he was never contacted by either the FAA or the NTSB regarding the incident.Travolta, meanwhile, was oblivious to the near-collision. Without electrical power, he found himself with only a tiny magnetic compass with which to navigate. Co-pilot John Messina pointed a small flashlight at the instrument so Travolta could see.About 12,000 feet, the turbojet plunged into a thick layer of clouds, and the crew lost all reference to the horizon. Somehow, they continued the descent and broke out of the overcast west-northwest of the city about 1,000 feet. The pilots, according to the NTSB report, sighted the Washington Monument, gained their bearings, and continued to the south of Washington National Airport. They lowered the landing gear by using the emergency extension system. Because the flaps could not be lowered, they used a greater than normal approach speed of 145 knots, or 170 miles per hour.After touching down and discovering that they had no brakes, the pilots used the emergency brake, which did not respond until it was 'full on.' As the aircraft came to a stop, the four main tires burst. There were no injuries.The Gulfstream slid to a halt at the convergence of two main runways. Washington National Airport, on Thanksgiving week, had to close for nearly four hours while FAA investigators examined the jet.Plane's identity changed<br /><br />Travolta Lucky To Live Through Incident<br /><br />The Actor Was Flying His Family From Fort Lauderdale To Maine In 1992 When His Jet's Controls Went Out Over Washington.<br /><br /><br />March 27, 1995|By Mike James, Special To The Sentinel<br /><br />At the time of the incident, Travolta was involved in a hotly contested battle with residents of the Spruce Creek Fly-In Community near Daytona Beach. Homeowners were trying to ban his Gulfstream II from landing at the small private airport, saying it was too loud and too large, nearly three times the size of a Lear jet, and that it 'presented a safety hazard.'<br /><br />Travolta was reportedly on the verge of settling the dispute amicably when the near-collision occurred. Spruce Creek residents say opposition to the Gulfstream II increased dramatically after word of the potential midair collision spread through the ultra-exclusive aviation enclave.<br /><br /><br />Weeks later, the property owners' association sued Travolta in U.S. District Court.<br /><br />The actor eventually won the legal battle, but he has recently moved his family to California where they are renting a $25,000-a-month home in Beverly Hills while he works on the movie Get Shorty.<br /><br />N728T has been repainted and, with the FAA's permission, outfitted with new tail numbers.<br /><br />It's now N492JT . . . in honor of Jett Travolta, his son, born in April 1992.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />A note from Judy: John Travolta has since moved back to Florida at the Greystone Airport, with all of his planes.<br /><br /><br />
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Eric Batterman - Feb 16,2012
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Looks like he gave away the gulfstream:<br /><br /><a href="http://pilotnewsmag.com/?p=16000">http://pilotnewsmag.com/?p=16000</a>
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Don Maxwell - Feb 16,2012
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That's quite a story, Judy. Thanks!<br /><br />It just goes to show that you shouldn't fly above 1,000 feet or faster than 100 mph.
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Kenneth Leonard - Feb 16,2012
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I did read about this years ago and it was a much different story. It was at the very beginning of flat panel screens in aircraft and was the reason that the flat panel aircraft were required to still have steam gauges for alt, airspeed and horizon for a very long time thereafter. The story said that he found a hole in the clouds and spiraled down through it to keep his eyes on the ground. No mention it was over DC. <br />Reminds me of the USAF taking guns out of fighters before Vietnam and then realizing they still needed them. If you put all your eggs in the TV screen...
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