image via LifeasaButterfly
On September 6th 2011, All Nippon Airways Flight 140 was making its usual jog from Naha to Tokyo, Japan. Absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary at all. Until the 62,000 pound Boeing 737 decided to inexplicably attempt a barrel roll, which is not traditionally something an airliner should attempt.
image via Avianor
“Minor turbulence my ass!”
Only after the plane landed did investigators discover the reason why the aircraft went belly-up.
And it's hilarious.
Nothing went wrong with the aircraft. The Boeing 737 did everything it was told to do perfectly. The problem was that it was ordered to do the air show-worthy maneuver accidentally by the co-pilot. How?
Midway through the flight, the Captain needed to use the restroom. As he left the cockpit, the door locked behind him. Thus the co-pilot would have to unlock the door when he returned. A task that most people wouldn't associate with possibly crashing a vehicle carrying hundreds of people.
Unfortunately for him and his soon-to-be-nauseated passengers, the geniuses who designed the Boeing 737 put the door lock control next to the rudder control. Which of course looked eerily similar.
image via Gizmodo
It's not true aircraft design unless your spitting in the face of chance.
So when the Captain knocked to be let back into the cockpit, the co-pilot twisted what he thought was the door knob only to find himself having a bad case of being upside down.
image via Virgin Atlantic
"And fighter pilots."
Well, not exactly fully upside down. The aircraft only rolled 131 degrees, which also coupled with a thirty-five degree dive at speeds nearing the sound barrier guaranteed that any consumed inflight meals would not remain that way much longer.
Luckily the crew managed to regain control of the aircraft before it completed a less than ideal landing, and nobody was seriously injured.
No word on if they've ever let the co-pilot live this incident down.
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