Podcast Episode Details

On Wednesday, July 19, 1989, at approximately 1:09 PM Mountain Time, United Flight 232 took off from Denver’s Stapleton International Airport.  The flight was headed to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and was destined to continue to Philadelphia.  The crew of the plane was led by 57-year-old Captain Alfred “Al” Haynes, assisted by William (Bill) Records, 48, with flight engineer Dudley Dvorak, 51.  The three men had accrued close to seventy-thousand hours of flight time in their careers and Haynes especially was highly experienced at the controls of a McDonnell-Douglas DC-10, the aircraft making the flight.  The additional crew was made up of eight flight attendants, serving the 285 passengers on board, the plane near capacity.

When Flight 232 crashed, many people were killed but miraculously many more actually survived.  Only fifteen minutes from Sioux City, Jerry Schemmel, noticed a woman and her small child slipping into an empty seat directly in front of him.  A flight attendant was with them, perhaps she believed the mother and child might be safer in this location.  The flight attendant handed the woman several pillows to wrap around the infant, who looked to be about two years old.  Jerry watched as the child struggled to avoid his mother’s grip, eventually crawling to the top of his mother’s seat and smiling at Jerry, oblivious to the approaching danger.  Jerry noted the location of the emergency exit, literally just a few feet away and vowed to himself that he would help get the mother and her son to safety as quickly as possible.