The airplane continued into the air, but the damage had fundamentally changed the situation. The pilots were faced with an aircraft that no longer responded as expected, at a moment when altitude and time were extremely limited.
What followed
would become the central focus of the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation.
The Seconds After Liftoff: Why the Aircraft Could Not Recover
The sequence that followed the engine separation was extraordinarily short. According to the investigation, Flight 191 climbed to approximately 325 feet above the ground before beginning a steep roll to the left. The aircraft continued rolling until its wings passed beyond the vertical position, and its nose dropped below the horizon.
For an aircraft only a short distance above the airport, that left almost no time to identify the problem, understand its effects, and respond.
The engine assembly did not simply fall away without affecting anything else. Its separation damaged systems in the left wing area, including hydraulic lines and electrical components. Those failures changed the behavior of the aircraft and removed important warning indications that the pilots would normally use to recognize an unsafe condition.
