United Airlines flight 232 left Denver a little after 2 PM bound for Chicago. By three o'clock passengers and crew had already settled into the routine. Seats reclined while beverage carts and conversations filled the space at 37,000 feet where time stands still and the mind wanders. At 3:16 while in a shallow starboard turn, the DC 10 was jolted with a muffled bang, followed by dramatic side-to-side motion.  Up in the cockpit, the flight crew knew something had gone terribly wrong.
 
McDonnell Douglas' DC 10, one of the original "jumbos," was marked by a checkered past. In its race to beat Lockheed's Tri Star to the finish line in quest of billions of dollars of orders from worldwide airlines, the company had been warned that some of its systems were in question. On this day, the GE CF-6 engine mounted in the tail assembly failed; fan blade debris penetrated the tail section cutting the plane's vertical and horizontal stabilizers severing all three hydraulic lines. Unlike rival Boeing's 747 and Lockheed's Tri Star built with four hydraulic systems, the DC 10 had but three running through one conduit. Each was severed; the plane's arteries cut, with massive escape of hydraulic fluid and catastrophic loss of all control.
 
Up on the flight deck Captain Al Haynes and his staff felt the jolt and saw warning lights firing, messaging the crew the massive tail engine had malfunctioned and the autopilot had disengaged. Co-pilot Bill Records was flying the plane and found it suddenly unresponsive and off course. Hydraulic gauges measured zero; the equivalent of a courtroom death sentence. Now the massive DC 10 was turning right, embarked on a slow vertical oscillation known in flight syntax as a "phugoid cycle," characteristic of airplanes in which all control surfaces are lost.  With every spiral, United 232 was losing 1500 feet...it was simple math.
 
Haynes' mind began to race. He remembered that his passenger manifest included Dennis Fitch, an off-duty DC10 flight instructor. Within minutes Fitch took his place on the frenetic flight deck. Now, Haynes was controlling the plane with the only tools left to his crew: right and left throttles controlling the thrust of the remaining two wing-mounted engines. By increasing one while decreasing the other, Haynes' crew could crudely "steer" the plane. Haynes called ATC with news that shattered the air: 232 had little time and no options. It would have to be Sioux City Iowa's Gateway Airport or nothing. Midst some light-hearted banter, Haynes grew serious. "Whatever you do keep us away from the city." Haynes remembered his discipline in a simulator: remain composed, or you will die. Outwardly, cockpit crew and flight attendants remained calm. 
 
Without control surfaces or yaw-damper, United 232 and the lives of 296 souls now depended on the impossible: steering a giant airplane toward a field in Iowa using only right and left engine thrust to manage direction and altitude. Meanwhile on the ground, unbeknown to Haynes, only recently had the entire community of Sioux City, from medical responders to firefighters and disaster management officials, staged a community-wide drill on just such an emergency. On that day, at that moment, arguably no airport in America was better prepared.
 
On final approach the DC 10 sank more and traveled faster than any prudent touchdown would allow. Haynes' crew made an incredible landing and had the right wingtip not caught the ground, United 232 might have landed in one piece. Instead the fuselage broke into three sections while aviation fuel ignited. Of the 296 people on board, 111 died, but many other passengers walked away. In retrospect aviation experts consider Haynes' leadership miraculous and 185 people owe their survival to the flight crew's inventive courage.
 
A few years ago I was honored to be on a speakers' program with Captain Haynes. He was as humble as he was gifted, while I, even more humbled by his presence, managed one question: "Captain, with everything happening, what was your sense of time?" I asked. "It stood still," he replied. Today, whenever I hear someone speak of a "management crisis," I picture Al Haynes or Sully Sullenberger cheating tragedy while making miracles. There are crises and there are crises.