Qualla: Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17

Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. At 7:51 on the evening of February 16, 2000, witnesses in Rancho Cordova, California, watched a Douglas DC-8 cargo jet descend at an impossible angle toward an automobile salvage yard east of Sacramento. The aircraft's left wing struck a concrete and steel support column on a two-story building, and the plane tore through rows of junked cars, igniting what one observer described as "a hellish scene of smoke, flames and exploding cars" visible for miles. All three crew members aboard Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17 were killed. The flight had been airborne for less than two minutes.

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Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17: An Airplane with Many Lives

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The DC-8 that crashed in Rancho Cordova had already lived several careers by the time it reached Emery Worldwide's fleet. Built in 1968 as a Douglas DC-8-71, registration N8079U, the aircraft first flew passengers for United Airlines for more than two decades. In 1990, it transfe...

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Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17: Three Men on a Cargo Run

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Flight 17 was a routine cargo run, the kind that fills the night skies over America: Reno to Dayton, Ohio, with an intermediate stop at Sacramento Mather Airport. The crew that evening consisted of Captain Kevin Stables, 43, a veteran with 13,329 flight hours and more than 2,100 ...

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Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17: A Problem No Skill Could Solve

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Shortly after takeoff from Mather Airport, the crew reported control problems. The aircraft, loaded with cargo and climbing into the darkening Sacramento sky, was not responding normally to pitch inputs. Something was wrong with the elevator, the control surface on the tail that ...

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Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17: What the Investigators Found

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation, which concluded in August 2003, traced the accident to the aircraft's right elevator control tab. The NTSB's findings pointed to failures in maintenance procedures and design vulnerabilities that had gone unaddressed for d...

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Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17: The Ground Below

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The crash site in Rancho Cordova, an unincorporated community east of Sacramento that would not incorporate as a city until 2003, was an automobile salvage yard, a landscape of stacked and crushed cars that erupted into a secondary inferno when the DC-8's fuel ignited among them....

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