The untold story of United flight 1175

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The 2,398 mile flight from San Francisco airport to Honolulu is one of the longest uninterrupted overwater routes in the world.

There are other routes that are longer, but they all have alternate airports on intermediate islands along the way....

....whereas the stretch from San Fran to Honolulu passes over nothing but water.

It's therefore not a good place to find yourself in an emergency situation when you're in charge of a Boeing 777 with 378 people on board.

But that's exactly what happened to Captain Christopher Behnam of United Airlines flight 1175 on 13 February 2018.

Until that point it had been a smooth and ordinary flight, with First Officer Paul Ayers as pilot flying and Captain Behnam as the pilot monitoring.

The only slightly out-of-the-ordinary thing was that they had a third pilot with them on the flight deck – an off-duty first officer, also from United Airlines, who was hitching a ride to Honolulu on the jump seat.

His name was Ed Gagarin.

But then, at 36,000 feet over the Pacific, after an uneventful flight and with only about 45 minutes to go until they reached their destination.....

....BANG!

A loud explosion.....

.... followed by vibrations so violent that the pilots could barely read their instruments.....

... and an aircraft that was now rolling to one side and becoming almost uncontrollable.

"My controls!" said the captain as he took over from his first officer and attempted to keep the plane straight and level.

When Ed Gagarin had taken his place on the jump seat at the start of the flight, Captain Behnam had joked that he could only sit there if he was willing to do some work.....

.... and now he really was going to have to pitch in and help out.

At this point, no-one was really sure what had happened. The plane was rolling and yawing further and further to the right and it was taking all of Christopher Behnam's strength on the controls to stop the huge jet ending up on its back.

Plus it was still shaking so violently that it felt like it was going to rip itself apart at any moment.

The obvious explanation was an engine failure or a mid-air collision, but all the engine instruments were showing normal readings and there was no other traffic anywhere nearby.

Behnam said that he would focus on flying the plane whilst Ed and fellow first officer, Paul, worked through the emergency checklists.

But as they began doing this, they heard a sickening sound of twisting metal, similar to what you would hear in a sinking submarine as the pressure starts crushing it.

And it was then that the engine instruments for the right-hand engine started blanking out one by one.

Behnam told the two first officers to start executing the procedure for severe engine damage.

This included shutting down the affected engine and pulling the fire handle to release fire suppressant into the body of the engine.

With the engine shut down, the vibrations eased a little. But now they had another problem....

Like all commercial airliners, the 777 is designed to be able to fly perfectly well with only one of its engines working.

But this plane was not flying well.

Even with the remaining engine on full power, it was losing height at a rate of about 1,200 feet per minute.

If this continued, there was a big question mark over whether they'd make it to Honolulu or whether they'd be forced to ditch in the ocean.

And to make matters worse, the stall warning kept going off for no obvious reason.

A stall in a plane is when the wings stop producing lift. Which means that if the stall warning is ignored, the plane will literally fall out of the sky.

And the only way to stop an impending stall is to point the nose down....

....which is far from ideal when you're already losing altitude and are a long way from the nearest bit of land.

Captain Behnam made it clear that he had very limited capacity to do anything other than try to fly the plane and slow the rate of descent enough for them to make it to Honolulu.

And so it was left to the two first officers to make the mayday call and try to figure out what was happening.

Ed now headed into the passenger cabin and looked out of the window to see what was going on with the right-hand engine.

And what he saw was truly shocking.

The engine was still there (just about) and it was no longer on fire, but because of a hairline crack inside a fan blade which had caused that blade to fly off and rip the engine to bits.....

... all of the cowlings around the engine were now missing.

And that was a BIG problem.

Because the cowlings don't just make the engine look prettier by hiding all the internal components – they also make the engine aerodynamic.

And without the cowlings, the engine was now creating huge amounts of drag and rendering the right-hand wing practically useless.

In other words, the plane wasn't just flying on one engine – it was flying with one engine and only one wing. No wonder it was heading steadily towards the ocean.

The captain now called the chief flight attendant into the cockpit and told her to prepare the cabin and the passengers for an emergency landing on water.

Meanwhile First Officer Ayers contacted the airline to let them know what was happening, while Ed provided regular updates to air traffic control.

I particularly like the fact that, in amongst all this, Ed even remembered to lean across and fasten the captain's seatbelt for him.

The plane might have been falling apart, but the cohesion and teamwork amongst the three pilots was second to none.

As they got closer to Honolulu airport, the two first officers started running through the briefing for what's known as a "missed approach". This is standard procedure on all flights so as everyone knows in advance what will happen if the landing starts to go wrong and the pilot has to execute a go-around.

But Behnam quickly stopped them.

"There will be no missed approach," he said.

This wasn't Behnam being over confident in his own abilities.

These were the words of a man who knew that, with a plane that was incapable of gaining altitude, he only had one chance to get this landing right.

At 12:34 pm the plane emerged from the clouds with the runway in sight and First Officer Paul Ayers came on the tannoy:

Brace, brace, brace!

They were seconds away from landing and it looked like....

... they might just make it.

And, sure enough, moments later, the huge crippled plane touched down on the runway.

Amazingly, the landing was so gentle that some of the passengers said afterwards that they hadn't even noticed it.

Behnam later said it was one of the best landings he'd done in his entire career.

As the plane finally rolled to a stop, Paul Ayers looked across at his captain who was still squeezing the thrust levers and gripping the controls as tightly as he had been for the past 40 minutes.

"You can let go now, Captain," he said softly.

As the passengers prepared to disembark, the pilots came through to the cabin to rapturous applause.

Thanks to them – and to the impeccable way they had worked together as a team – the lives of 378 people had been saved.

This is a truly remarkable story – and one that doesn't seem to be widely known (perhaps because the media is more interested in covering stories that don't have a happy ending).

And it's certainly a story that those passengers will be able to tell for the rest of their lives.

But, because you're on my email list to learn about how to grow your business, you could be excused for wondering what this story has to do with any of that and how it's relevant to you.

Well, I'll tell you.

Even though surviving a mid-air trans-oceanic made-for-TV drama might not SEEM like it has much to do with growing your business, there is a very good reason WHY I chose to tell you this story today....

It's because it includes an important lesson for anyone who wants to build a sustainable and resilient business.

You see, prior to this United flight, there had been a number of air crashes and near misses over the years where things went wrong because one person – usually the captain – thought he knew best and tried to act alone.

Captain Behnam did the complete opposite.

He made sure everyone (including the guy who was meant to be on a day off) worked together in harmony. And this is what ultimately meant all the passengers and crew survived the emergency.

And YOU need to follow this same approach if you want to market your business effectively.

What I mean by that is that, all too often, I see business owners putting all their marketing eggs in a single basket.

They might, for example, rely entirely on word-of-mouth referrals and do no other marketing.

Or they'll focus exclusively on social media and ignore email marketing completely.

Or they'll put all their effort into SEO and ignore paid advertising altogether.

Whereas what you need to do instead is to use multiple marketing channels and have them all working together to get you the best outcome – just like the crew of that Boeing 777 did.

This is why successful businesses don't just have one way of attracting customers. They have several different marketing channels all working in harmony:

• A website that converts visitors into leads

• Email marketing that nurtures prospects over time

• Social media that builds brand awareness

• Perhaps some paid advertising to accelerate growth

• Content marketing that positions them as experts

• And networking or partnerships that create referral opportunities

Each channel has its own strengths and weaknesses. But when they work together, they create a robust system that can keep generating leads and customers even when one channel temporarily underperforms.

Just like those three pilots each had their specific role to play in saving that flight, each marketing channel plays a specific role in growing your business.

And having this kind of diversified approach means that if one channel stops working (maybe the social media algorithm changes, or Google updates its search rankings), your business doesn't crash and burn.

Instead, your other marketing channels can pick up the slack while you fix whatever's gone wrong.

So if you're currently relying on just one or two ways to attract customers, it might be time to think about expanding your marketing mix.

Because remember: in both aviation and business, redundancy isn't just helpful – it can be the difference between success and disaster.

Want to learn how to build this kind of robust, multi-channel marketing system for your business? Then you should check out my book, "Building an Automated Lead Machine."

It shows you exactly how to create multiple lead generation systems that work together to bring you a steady stream of customers, automatically and predictably.

Click here to find out more about the book

All the best,
David.

PS – here's my favourite part of that whole story....

As the passengers were getting off the plane, one little girl came bouncing up to the captain and said, "That was so cool, the best rollercoaster ride ever," before exiting with her (presumably less excited) mother.

Which I guess goes to show that however clear cut something seems, there'll always be someone who has a different perspective on it.

Anyway.... something else that can make you feel like you're on a rollercoaster is when you're running a business that has feast and famine cycles – where one month you're really busy and then the next it all goes quiet.

The simple way to avoid these ups and downs is to have a multi-channel marketing strategy in place. And if you want to learn how to build one, my book "Building an Automated Lead Machine" will show you exactly how to do that.

Click here to find out more

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