Note: this accident was previously featured in episode 22 of the plane crash series on February 3rd, 2018, prior to the series’ arrival on Medium. This article is written without reference to and supersedes the original.
On the second of August 1985, a Delta Air Lines flight on final approach into Dallas, Texas flew into a thunderstorm, expecting to emerge out the other side in little more than a minute. Instead, an invisible force dragged it out of the sky and dashed it against the earth, sending the wide body Lockheed L-1011 skidding across a field and a highway before it slammed head-on into a water tank at tremendous speed. Of the 163 on board, only 27 would survive, walking away from the tangled wreckage that took the lives of so many.
For investigators, the crash of Delta flight 191 was the middle, rather than the beginning, of a battle against the deadly weather phenomenon known as the microburst. The terrifying “invisible force” which the pilots perceived in their final moments had a name, and its basic nature was understood, but effective countermeasures did not exist, nor did the data necessary to develop them. Faced with a mounting death toll and a danger which could not simply be engineered away, aviation experts and meteorologists teamed up to develop technologies that would de-mystify the microburst — a project which led to substantive changes that affect everyone who flies.
The second of August 1985 was a typical summer day on the plains of eastern Texas: swelteringly hot with crippling humidity and plenty of evening weather action. In the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, late afternoon thunderstorms are and were a daily occurrence, bringing just a hint of relief to a city laboring under scorching temperatures. By half past 17:00 that day, the temperature at Dallas-Fort…