I was at Bryce Canyon a couple weeks ago and saw a picture of an American MD-80 which had dead sticked into Bryce Canyon airport full of pax’s. One picture showed an auto tow truck pulling the MD-80 off the runway. Looked on line and I can find no reports or pictures of this. Anyone?
I did find this on wikipedia.
On October 6, 2000 American Airlines flight 2821 departed Denver International Airport bound for Los Angeles International Airport. As the MD-82 aircraft was cruising at 33,000 ft (10,000 m), there was a report of smoke in the cockpit area and loss of cabin pressure. The airliner was immediately redirected to the Bryce Canyon airport in southwestern, Utah. The single runway airport only handles small prop planes daily, but was actually built to handle larger aircraft in case of emergency for the long stretch flights between Denver and Las Vegas. The American Airlines flight 2821 arrived safely at 8:45 A.M. All 75 on board survived.
Frank Holbert
160knots.com
Where do you get “dead stick landing” from? The info I find says simply that there was smoke and fumes in the cabin and the crew conducted an emergency landing.
tinyurl.com/o6gdrz
The story the airport manager told was one quit, smoke in cabin. 2nd one quit one mile final.
Seeing how the plane was on the runway and had to be removed with an auto tow truck shows it could not proceed under it’s own power.
Frank Holbert
160knots.com
Sounds fishy. Next time you see the airport manager he’ll probably tell you it was a 747. http://www.websmileys.com/sm/animal/5.gif
I would hazard to guess that this is a melding of two airline “crashes” at Bryce- one in the 40’s and one in the 00’s under similar circumstances. One was a tragedy and the other was a non-event.
Bryce Canyon is one of the best GA fields on the planet. I’ve had the opportunity to land there twice professionally and once recreationaly. Absolutely stunning environment.
And if you read the first article I linked, from the Las Vegas paper, you’ll see that the airport manager at the time was quoted as saying “the plane had room to maneuver but it was uncertain whether it would be towed or taxi under its own power”. I’m thinking the story has gotten better and better as the years rolled on. All the tow truck shows is that the crew, in light of having smoke and fumes in the cabin, though better of firing up the engines again until maintenance could find the source of the problem. It would suck to land an aircraft safely and then burn it to the ground because you started the engines again just to taxi off the runway.
I think his sched sucked and he just wanted to go to Bryce NP. …in style. 
