[1]: 1–2  During the climb, the crew made preparations to detour around thunderstorms along the plane's track; the captain anticipated turbulence and kept the passenger seatbelt sign lit.

[1]: 109 [9] A gaping hole was left in the aircraft, through which a flight attendant, Mae Sapolu in the business-class cabin, was almost blown out.

Purser Laura Brentlinger hung on to the steps leading to the upper deck, and was dangling from them when the decompression occurred.

Passengers and crew members saw her clinging to a seat leg and were able to pull her back inside the cabin, although she was severely injured.

[9] The pilots initially believed that a bomb had gone off inside the airliner, as this accident happened just two months after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland.

They began an emergency descent to reach an altitude where the air was breathable, while also performing a 180° left turn to fly back to Honolulu.

[1]: 4–8  Engine 3 was experiencing heavy vibration, no N1 tachometer reading, and a low exhaust-gas temperature (EGT) and engine-pressure ratio, so the crew shut it down.

Thomas saw severe damage immediately upon leaving the cockpit; the aircraft skin was peeled off in some areas on the upper deck, revealing the frames and stringers.

He returned to the cockpit and reported that a large section of the fuselage was open aft of the Number 1 exit door.

He concluded that it was probably a bomb, and that considering the damage, slowing below the plane's stall speed by more than a small margin would be unwise.

[9] As the airliner neared the airport, the landing gear was extended, but the flaps could only be partially deployed as a result of damage sustained following the decompression.

The NTSB learned that in N4713U's case, the aircraft had experienced intermittent malfunctions of its forward cargo door in the months prior to the accident.

After his death, his parents Kevin and Susan Campbell (the former an engineer by profession) investigated the case using documents obtained from the NTSB.

[13] The Campbells' investigation led them to conclude that the cause of the accident was not human error, but rather the combination of an electrical problem and an inadequate design of the aircraft's cargo door-latching mechanism.

[15][16] These problems were not fully addressed by the aircraft industry or the FAA, despite the warnings and deaths from the DC-10's cargo door-related accidents.

A series of L-shaped arms (called locking sectors) were actuated by the final manual movement of a lever to close the door; these were designed to reinforce the unpowered latch cams and prevent them from rotating into an unlocked position.

The locking sectors were made out of aluminum, however, and they were too thin to be able to keep the latch cams from moving into the unlocked position against the power of the door motors.

[11]: 22–23  In the United States, the FAA mandated this service by means of an airworthiness directive in July 1988 and gave U.S. airlines 18 to 24 months to comply with it.

[1]: vi Additionally, in 1991, an incident occurred at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport involving the malfunction of another United Airlines Boeing 747 cargo door.

It appeared in this case that a short circuit caused an unordered rotation of the latch cams, which forced the weak aluminum locking sectors to distort and allow the rotation, thus enabling the air pressure differential and aerodynamic forces to blow the door off the fuselage; ripping away the hinge fixing structure, the cabin floor, and the side fuselage skin; and causing the explosive decompression.

[9] The NTSB issued a recommendation for all 747-100s in service at the time to replace their cargo door latching mechanisms with new, redesigned locks.

In 1997, the aircraft was registered with Air Dabia as C5-FBS,[21] and after that airline's collapse, abandoned in 2001 during overhaul maintenance at Plattsburgh International Airport[5] and scrapped in 2003.