January 2020 Member Meeting

Our monthly Member Meetings typically include updates on important Museum news, a raffle, video presentations, a chance to visit with other Museum members, and a presentation by a featured speaker. Speakers may include military Veterans, historians, civic leaders, and other people with interesting stories to tell of their historical research or their aviation or military experiences.

Continuing our Aero Archaeology series and our local ties to the Boeing 747, Bob Butler will Present “Requiem for an Airliner -NOT”.  This is the story of the United Flight 811 Accident, the miracle landing that saved the majority of the passengers and how the San Francisco Maintenance Center team rebuilt the ship.  It’s a story of piloting skills, crew action, personal pluck and knowledge from the UAL A&P’s mechanics and Boeing technicians – with a twist to the end of the story.  The Hawaiian culture also figures into the remembrance of the victims and a prayer for the future of the repaired ship!

Bob Butler learned to change and overhaul a jet engine from his Air Force days servicing the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II. He used this experience to land a job at the United Airlines Maintenance Center in San Francisco where he changed engines – many, many engines  – while the wide-bodies jets were shaking out problems.  He became so much an expert at this that he was assigned to the Emergency Field Service team to travel day or night to where ever UAL needed an engine changed. For the 747, his team honed this down to a matter of hours.  He then got to call to go to Hawaii where UAL Fl 811 had just made an emergency landing after the forward cargo door ripped off at 24,000 feet.  So begins his story of B747, N4713.