Friends: Vivica Wilde; Open

Likes: Flying, Elizabeth, reading, Tadeu Cerrado movies

Dislikes: Modern pop music, being stereotyped

Personality: Conscientious, competent, neat and organized and she works hard to achieve goals, highly self-disciplined; honest and straightforward, arrogant and hard-headed; modest, tender-minded, usually agreeable; assertive, gregarious, and excitement-seeking; has command and authority; knows how to self-evaluate; values humility; precise and determined. She also has a good sense of humor.

History: Sam was born in the Meadowlands, and grew up in a house a few miles from an air force base. She loved watching planes take off and land, as well as the fighter jets practicing dogfights and other maneuvers in the skies above their house. On weekends and after school, her father would sometimes take her up in his biplane. That began her interest in aviation and her love of flying.

     In preschool she befriended a fox named Viv who was constantly bullied by her prey classmates. Sam was picked on as a result. The two went to the same schools for the rest of their school years.

     At age 19, Sam finished high school. She didn't have the desire to go to college and continue studying for years. Instead, she wanted to get into a job as quick as possible and earn money to be independent. With the financial backing of her parents, she followed her passion of flying. After a few years of flight school and many hours of flight experience, she got her commercial pilot's license. She sent applications in to several airlines, and was quickly hired by the forward-thinking Alpha Airlines, an all-wolf company. She was the only deer at Alpha, and was often doubted and underestimated by some of her new colleagues, since deer had a reputation for being skittish, high-strung, and timid. This stopped after a while, after she earned their respect. Sam started out flying small regional airliners (up to 100 passengers), eventually working her way up to bigger jets like the W-10 (similar to a DC-10; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10) and rising to the rank of captain. With the rank of captain, she had command in the cockpit, and was now ultimately responsible for the safety and operation of the plane during flight. Her flying career was uneventful for many years, until 2013.

     On July 19, 2013, Alpha Airlines Flight 792 took off at 2:09 PM from Antlerton International Airport, bound for Chicagoat with continuing service to Philadeerphia. About an hour into the flight, while the W-10 was in a shallow right turn at 37,000 feet, the fan disk on the tail-mounted engine explosively disintegrated, sending metal debris through the horizontal stabilizers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailplane), severing the lines of all 3 hydraulic systems. The jolt was felt throughout the plane.

     In the cockpit, the autopilot disengaged. First Officer William Howlett took hold of his control column (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoke_(aeronautics)), while Samantha focused on the tail engine, whose instruments showed it was malfunctioning; she found its throttle and fuel supply controls jammed. At Second Officer Ralph Moon's suggestion, a valve cutting fuel to the tail engine was shut off. Meanwhile, Howlett found that the plane didn't respond to his control column. Even with the control column turned all the way to the left, commanding maximum left aileron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileron), and pulled all the way back, commanding maximum up elevator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_(aeronautics)) - inputs that would never be used together in normal flight, commanding a roll to the left and the plane's nose to rise - the plane was instead banking to the right with the nose dropping. Samantha tried to level the plane with her own control column, then both she and Howlett tried using their control columns together, but the plane still didn't respond. Afraid the plane would roll into a completely inverted position (an unrecoverable situation), Sam reduced the left wing-mounted engine to idle and applied maximum power to the right engine. This caused the plane to slowly level out.

     The various gauges for all three hydraulic systems were registering zero. The three hydraulic systems were separate, so that failure of any one of them would leave the crew with full control, but lines for all three systems shared the same narrow passage through the tail where the engine debris had penetrated, and thus control surfaces were inoperative. The crew contacted Alpha maintenance personnel via radio, but were told that, as a total loss of hydraulics on the W-10 was considered virtually impossible, there were no established procedures for such an event.

     The plane continued to turn to the right due to drag from the shredded right side of the tail-mounted engine, and started pitching up and down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phugoid) like a roller coaster, losing 1,500 feet of altitude each time. Connor Lupin, an off-duty Alpha Airlines flight instructor, was among the passengers and offered his assistance. Samantha asked Connor to watch the ailerons through the passenger cabin windows to see if control inputs were having any effect. Lupin reported back that the ailerons weren't moving at all. Nonetheless, the crew continued to work their control columns for the remainder of the flight, hoping for at least some effect. Samantha then asked Lupin to take over control of the throttles so that she could concentrate on her control column. With one throttle in each hand, Connor was able to stop the pitching and make rough steering adjustments by adjusting the amount of power to each of the wing-mounted engines.

     Samantha contacted air traffic control and organized an emergency landing at Deerbrooke Gateway Airport. She then addressed the passengers that they would attempt an emergency landing in Deerbrooke, and that the signal before touchdown would be "Brace! Brace! Brace!". Brooks kept her sense of humor during the emergency, as recorded on the plane's CVR (cockpit voice recorder):

     Deerbrooke ATC: "Alpha seven nine two heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway."

     Brooks: "[laughter] Roger. You wanna be particular and make it a runway, huh?"

     A more serious remark often quoted from Brooks was made when ATC asked the crew to make a left turn to keep them clear of the city:

     Brooks: "Whatever you do, keep us away from the city."

     As the crew began to prepare for arrival at Deerbrooke, they questioned whether they should lower the landing gear or belly-land with the gear up. They decided that having the landing gear down would provide some shock absorption on impact. The complete hydraulic failure left the landing gear lowering mechanism inoperative. Two options were available to the flight crew. The W-10 was designed such that if hydraulic pressure to the landing gear was lost, the gear would fall down slightly and rest on the landing gear doors. Placing the regular landing gear handle in the down position would unlock the doors mechanically, and the doors and landing gear would then fall down into place and lock due to gravity. An alternative system was also available using a lever in the cockpit floor to cause the landing gear to fall into position. This lever had the added benefit of unlocking the outboard ailerons, which aren't used in high-speed flight and are locked in a neutral position. The crew hoped that there might be some trapped hydraulic fluid in the outboard ailerons and that they might regain some use of flight controls by unlocking them. They chose to lower the gear with the alternative system. Although the gear lowered successfully, there was no change in the controllability of the aircraft.

     Landing was originally planned on the 9,000-foot runway 31. Difficulties in controlling the aircraft made lining up almost impossible. While dumping some of the excess fuel, the plane made a series of mostly right-hand turns (it was easier to turn the plane in this direction) with the intention of lining up with runway 31. When they came out they were instead lined up with the shorter (6,888 ft) and closed runway 22, and had little room to maneuver. Fire trucks had been placed on runway 22, anticipating a landing on nearby runway 31, so all the trucks were quickly moved out of the way before the plane touched down.

     ATC also advised that highway 29 ran north and south just east of the airport they could land on if they didn't think they could make the runway. Samantha opted to try for the runway instead.

     Lupin continued to control the aircraft's descent by adjusting engine thrust. With the loss of all hydraulics, the crew were unable to control airspeed independent from sink rate. On final descent, the aircraft was going 220 knots and sinking at 1,850 feet per minute (approximately 407 km/h forward and 34 km/h downward speed), while a safe landing would require 140 knots and 300 feet per minute (approximately 260 km/h and 5 km/h respectively). In other words, they were coming in too fast and too steep. Samantha gave the passengers a 10-minute warning.

     Lupin needed a seat for landing; Moon offered up his own, as it could be moved to a position behind the throttles. Moon sat in the cockpit's jump seat for landing. Sam announced to the passengers, "We have 4 minutes to touchdown, 4 minutes to touchdown. Brace! Brace! Brace!"

     Lupin noticed the high sink rate and that the plane started to yaw right again, and pushed the throttles to full power in an attempt to reduce the sink rate and level the plane. It was now 4 pm. There wasn't enough time for the flight crew to react before the plane hit the ground. The tip of the right wing hit the runway first, spilling fuel from the ruptured fuel tank, which ignited immediately. The tail section broke off from the force of the impact, and the rest of the aircraft bounced several times, tearing off the landing gear and engines and breaking the fuselage into several main pieces. The cockpit section was torn off and ended up nose down and partially buried in a field to the right of the runway; Brooks was knocked out. On the final impact, the right wing was torn off and the main part of the aircraft skidded sideways, rolled over onto its back, and slid to a stop upside-down in the field, beyond the cockpit. Witnesses reported that the aircraft cartwheeled end-over-end, but the investigation didn't confirm this. The reports were due to misinterpretation of video of the crash that showed the flaming right wing tumbling end-over-end and the intact left wing, still attached to the fuselage, rolling up and over as the fuselage flipped over.

     Of the 296 on board, 111 died in the crash. Most were killed by injuries sustained in the multiple impacts, but 35 in the middle fuselage section directly above the fuel tanks died from smoke inhalation in the post-crash fire. The majority of the 185 survivors were behind first class and ahead of the wings. Many were able to walk out through breaks in the damaged fuselage section.

     Brooks came to several minutes later. 35 minutes after the crash, rescuers identified the remains of the cockpit section, with Sam and the other three still alive inside; it took half an hour to free them. Before Sam was put in the ambulance on a stretcher, she asked Moon if everyone had made it, and he said no. Both at the hospital and afterward, Sam had a lot of psychiatric help. One psychiatrist told her, “You’re not going to find an answer. You just have to accept that it happened.” Sam later recovered and returned to her job at Alpha Airlines.

     An investigation found the cause of the crash to be a failure by Alpha Airlines maintenance processes and personnel to detect an existing fatigue crack in the tail engine's fan disk.

     A few weeks after the crash, during one of her off days (she gets at least one per week), Sam was leaving another psychiatrist session when she ran into her old friend Viv. Sam didn't recognize her at first, but she recognized Sam from the news. After talking for a bit, they went to a restaurant to catch up on things. While they were talking, a corsac fox at another table caught Sam's eye. She had caught the fox's eye as well. Sam excused herself from the table briefly, went to the corsac fox's table, gave them her number, and walked back to her and Viv's table to finish lunch. Soon after that day, Beth (the corsac fox) called, and she and Sam started dating.

Relation to Zootopia: She and her fiancée are friends with Nick's mother; her fiancée knows Whistler, who was shot by Doug, lives in the same building as Judy, and is friends with her and Nick, who is married to Whistler's sister Rachel.
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Other info:

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Fun fact:

*Alpha 792 is based on the United Airlines Flight 232 crash-landing in Sioux City, Iowa on July 19, 1989. The events and date have been kept the same; I only changed the year in which it happened. One quote has been slightly changed.