This Week in History: Delta Flight 1080

At about this time in 1977, Delta flight 1080 nearly ends in tragedy. Fortunately, former Marine Captain Jack McMahan was at the controls: His quick thinking would save the plane—and earn him the FAA’s Distinguished Service Award.

In an interesting twist, the passengers didn’t seem to know how close they’d come to a fatal mid-air stall. One passenger even berated the captain: “All that screwing around . . . is going to make me late for a connection—what are you going to do about it?”

The flight had started off normally enough. Pre-flight checks had gone smoothly, and the crew worked to leave San Diego before fog set in. The Lockheed L-1011 was largely empty, with 41 passengers and 11 crew aboard.

The plane departed just before midnight on April 12.

McMahan noted “an abrupt nose-high excursion in pitch” upon liftoff. The crew could not determine what was causing it, and they could not stop the nose of the plane from rising higher and higher.

“I had the horrifying realization,” McMahan later recounted, “that the loss of the aircraft was imminent. . . . I had a very clear mental picture of exactly what the aircraft was going to do—stall, roll to the left and descend vertically disappearing into the clouds—at night—over water.”

No one would know what had happened. Would the world think that he’d become disoriented in the fog? Would the disaster be attributed to “pilot error”?

His engineer, Steve Heidt, had similar thoughts. “I wasn’t afraid that I was going to die,” Heidt later said. “I was really mad that I was going to die. I knew we would go in the ocean, kill all the people and [the investigation] would say: ‘They were a bad crew.’ I’d sooner not have that on my name.”

In the meantime, McMahan was feeling “intense compassion” for his passengers. There had to be a solution. “Thrust is affecting pitch,” he thought to himself. “Drag is affecting air speed. If I can reduce pitch, if I can regain air speed, we might have a chance to recover some degree of controllability.”

He reduced the thrust on all engines but then increased the thrust of the engine in the tail. The position of that particular engine should serve to pitch the nose of the plane slightly downward.

Amazingly, it worked. McMahan still didn’t have full control, but he had enough. The flight attendants were told to move the passengers to the front of the plane.

“It probably didn’t help much,” Heidt said, “but in that situation we figured every little bit would help.”

The weather in San Diego was worsening, so turning back was not an option. McMahan would have to make it to LAX.  That airport began to prepare, bringing fire trucks and dozens of ambulances to the runway where Flight 1080 would land.

Naturally, a normal landing wouldn’t be possible. McMahan decided to set his wing flaps at a reduced angle, allowing him to come in at a higher speed.  He would effectively “bang” the plane down.

Would you believe that worked, too? McMahan was even able to taxi the plane to the gate without further incident.  The passengers, he noted, “knew we had a problem, but they did not know the extent of the problem” that he had just overcome.

The culprit turned out to be an elevator on the horizontal stabilizer: It was jammed into the “up” position. Unbeknownst to anyone, rainwater had been leaking into a bearing, causing it to corrode over time. Within hours, airports all over the world were instructed to check the elevators on their Lockheed L-1011s.

Multiple planes were found with bearings starting to corrode.

McMahan’s quick thinking had not only saved his own passengers and crew. He’d also saved many around the world from tragedy.

Another everyday American turned hero.

Primary Sources:

• Captain Jack McMahan’s account of Flight 1080 (reprinted HERE)

• Felicia Lee, Passengers knew we had a problem (Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Jan. 4, 1979) (p. B1)

• This Plane Was About to Crash into San Diego—Here’s What Really Happened (Flight Channel)

• Robert Wilson, Midnight special (Flight Safety Mag., Feb 4, 2021)

• William M. Carley, The Saving Of Flight 1080: How an airliner’s crew battled a mystery that kept forcing the plane's nose upward (Wash. Post; Oct, 7, 1978)