Speaker 1: Picture this. You're sitting in the darkened cockpit of a
Speaker 1: Boeing seven thirty seven, right, it's New Year's Day, two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. Yeah, and outside the glass there's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing to see but pitch.
Speaker 2: Black because you're completely enveloped in this violent, severe storm exactly.
Speaker 1: And the noise is just deafening. You've got one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty seven kilometer per hour winds screaming past the hole.
Speaker 1: Hail is like physically pounding against the metal.
Speaker 2: It's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then cutting through all of that atmosphere chaos,
Speaker 1: this automated voice starts desertly calling out bank angle, bank Angle.
Speaker 2: Which is it's a sound that signals an immedia critical emergency.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a sound every pilot trains to respond to.
Speaker 2: But you just hope you never actually hear it in
Speaker 2: a real scenario.
Speaker 1: Like that, right, because it meant the situation was already
Speaker 1: spiraling completely out of control. Yeah, your plane is plummeting.
Speaker 1: You're dropping at a descent rate of twenty one thousand
Speaker 1: feet per.
Speaker 2: Minute, just hurtling toward the dark ocean below at.
Speaker 1: Nine hundred kilometers per hour. You're traveling nearly the speed
Speaker 1: of sound, entirely at the mercy of gravity right up
Speaker 1: until the exact moment your plane just goes completely silent
Speaker 1: on the radar.
Speaker 2: It is an absolute nightmare scenario. And tragically, we aren't
Speaker 2: talking about a hypothetical simulation today.
Speaker 1: No, we are not welcome to the deep dive. Today.
Speaker 1: Our emission is to step directly into the shoes of
Speaker 1: real life aviation accident investigators. We are opening up the
Speaker 1: chilling case file of atom airflight five seven four.
Speaker 2: A very complex case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a commercial flight that simply vanished without
Speaker 1: a trace, leaving behind a massive geographical mystery that took
Speaker 1: months to unravel. Right but with those investigators eventually found
Speaker 1: resting at the bottom of the ocean, it didn't just
Speaker 1: explain a tragic crash. It exposed a deadly truth about
Speaker 1: an exploding industry.
Speaker 2: We're going to look meticulously at how an entirely preventable
Speaker 2: disaster unfolded because to truly understand the fate of flight
Speaker 2: five seven four, you know, we have to examine a
Speaker 2: highly specific chain reaction.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, It's.
Speaker 2: A story where a mechanical failure meets stemic negligence, all
Speaker 2: compounded by the profound and really terrifying traps of human psychology.
Speaker 1: So to understand how a commercial jet carrying one hundred
Speaker 1: and two people just disappears, we need to dial the
Speaker 1: clock back a bit. Let's step out of that terrifying
Speaker 1: cockpit for a moment and look at the environment that
Speaker 1: put that plane in the sky. To begin with good idea,
Speaker 1: We're at the bustling Surabayah Airport in Indonesia. It's January first,
Speaker 1: the rainy season is just begun, so the weather is
Speaker 1: already notoriously unpredictable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very rough weather that time of year.
Speaker 1: But inside the terminal, the atmosphere is incredibly vibrant. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just packed with travelers.
Speaker 2: And that vibrancy was the direct result of a massive
Speaker 2: shift in the country's economy. You have to consider the
Speaker 2: geography of Indonesia. It's an archipelago made up of thousands
Speaker 2: of islands, right. Historically, getting between those islands meant taking ferries,
Speaker 2: which could take days. Air travel was simply out of
Speaker 2: reach for the average citizen.
Speaker 1: Too expensive exactly.
Speaker 2: But in the early two thousands, the country experienced this
Speaker 2: massive boom in budget airlines.
Speaker 1: Suddenly you had these low cost carriers popping up everywhere,
Speaker 1: just fundamentally changing how people lived and traveled. They were
Speaker 1: making air travel accessible to an entirely new demographic.
Speaker 2: People who could never afford to fly were suddenly buying
Speaker 2: tickets to visit family or do business, right.
Speaker 1: Reducing these multi day boat trips into just two hour hops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the flashiest newcomer capitalizing on this booming market was
Speaker 1: an airline called adam Air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Adam Air presented this very fresh, modern image to
Speaker 2: the industry. They really wanted to stand out, and they.
Speaker 1: Did with bright colors right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Their planes were painted this fantastic bright orange.
Speaker 2: The crew wore these flashy, colorful uniforms. To the public eye,
Speaker 2: they looked like the exciting future of affordable modern travel.
Speaker 1: So you have this booming, flashy new airline rapidly putting
Speaker 1: planes in the sky. Who were the people actually tasked
Speaker 1: with flying them. Let's look at the specific crew of
Speaker 1: flight five seventy four.
Speaker 2: Well, in the cockpit you had Captain Refree with Dodo.
Speaker 2: He was an experienced pilot but had actually only been
Speaker 2: with Adammere for about six months. And next to him
Speaker 2: was his co pilot, Yoga Suzanto who had been flying
Speaker 2: for Adamra for almost a year and a half.
Speaker 1: So they're paired up for this flight.
Speaker 2: Right, and they were tasked with a completely routine domestic
Speaker 2: route just a two hour hop from Surabayah on the
Speaker 2: island of Java, heading northeast to Monado on the island
Speaker 2: of Sulawesi.
Speaker 1: Roughly a seventeen hundred kilometer te Yeah, exactly, and the
Speaker 1: passenger cabin is nearly full. They have ninety six passengers
Speaker 1: and six crew members on board. For the first part
Speaker 1: of the flight, everything appears completely standard. They take off,
Speaker 1: they climb through the weather to their cruising altitude of
Speaker 1: thirty three thousand feet, and the crew turns on the.
Speaker 2: Autopilot like they always do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the flight computer's supposed to take over and handle
Speaker 1: the navigation along their pre planned route.
Speaker 2: But less than thirty minutes in the air, traffic controllers
Speaker 2: on the ground start noticing something highly unusual on their
Speaker 2: radar screens.
Speaker 1: What are they seeing?
Speaker 2: Well, Flight five seventy four is veering wildly off its
Speaker 2: assigned airway. Instead of heading east northeast toward their destination
Speaker 2: in Manado, the plane is drifting directly north. And what's more,
Speaker 2: concerning is that it's flying straight into a severe, violent
Speaker 2: storm cell that the controllers can clearly see building on
Speaker 2: their weather radar.
Speaker 1: And the controllers try to reach out right in start
Speaker 1: radiating the plane, trying to give them directions to correct
Speaker 1: their heading and get them to their next assigned way point.
Speaker 2: Yes, but the plane just keeps drifting further and further
Speaker 2: off course.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Yeah, how does a modern commercial
Speaker 1: jet just wander off course while on autopilot? Doesn't the
Speaker 1: flight computer know exactly where the plane is supposed to go?
Speaker 2: Well, the flight computer only knows what its sensors tell it.
Speaker 2: The autopilot is essentially blind without data. Right in this
Speaker 2: specific aircraft, that vital positional data is being fed by
Speaker 2: a piece of technology called the inertial Reference System or
Speaker 2: the IRS.
Speaker 1: The IRS. How exactly does that work?
Speaker 2: Think of the IRS as the plane's highly sophisticated internal compass.
Speaker 2: It calculates the exact position of the aircraft in three
Speaker 2: dimensional space by tracking every single movement, like every turn,
Speaker 2: every adjustment and heading, every change in speed, every shift
Speaker 2: in altitude. It takes all of that continuous movement and
Speaker 2: feeds highly specific coordinates directly to the autopilots, so the
Speaker 2: computer knows how to steer.
Speaker 1: So it's basically like trying to walk through a complex
Speaker 1: maze blindfolded.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1: Like, if I know my exact starting position at the
Speaker 1: entrance of the maze, and I keep perfect track of
Speaker 1: every step I take, say two steps forward, one step left,
Speaker 1: three steps right, I can navigate the maze without seeing
Speaker 1: the walls precisely. But if someone spins me around before
Speaker 1: I take my very first step, every subsequent step I take,
Speaker 1: even if I count my pacing perfectly, is just going
Speaker 1: to take me further and further away from where I
Speaker 1: actually am taking.
Speaker 2: That may'e analogy a step further. The IRS is essentially
Speaker 2: calibrated at the gate before the pilot's ever take their
Speaker 2: first step. Oh really yeah, Before takeoff, the pilots manually
Speaker 2: entered the exact GPS coordinates of their parking spot at
Speaker 2: the airport. From that moment on, the IRS assumes those
Speaker 2: initial coordinates are the absolute truth and builds the entire
Speaker 2: flight path off them.
Speaker 1: Did the pilots of flight five seventy four make a
Speaker 1: mistake on the ground, Did they type in the wrong
Speaker 1: starting coordinates.
Speaker 2: Investigators initially suspected a data entry air but when they
Speaker 2: eventually recovered the flight data, they saw that the coordinates
Speaker 2: entered at the gate in Sera Biah were perfectly accurate.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, the IRS was calibrated correctly on the ground.
Speaker 2: The problem occurred after they were airborne. Almost the second
Speaker 2: the plane lifted into the sky, the right side IRS
Speaker 2: unit suffered an internal mechanical malfunction, so it broke mid
Speaker 2: air exactly. It started generating false data, essentially lying to
Speaker 2: the autopilot about the plane's position and heading.
Speaker 1: But the pilots had to realize this was happening, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they have instruments right in front of them
Speaker 1: showing their head.
Speaker 2: They absolutely realized it. The cockpit voice recorder captured them
Speaker 2: noticing the navigational discrepancy. But their reaction to that broken
Speaker 2: instrument is where the situation transforms from a mechanical annoyance
Speaker 2: into a fatal.
Speaker 1: Crisis because of what else is going on.
Speaker 2: Right. Consider the environment they're in at this exact moment.
Speaker 2: They are lost over the open ocean. The weather outside
Speaker 2: is deteriorating rapidly. They're getting pounded by hail, and heavy rain.
Speaker 1: And there is absolutely zero visibility out the cockpit windows.
Speaker 1: It's just a wall of impenetrable gray clouds. They can't
Speaker 1: just look out the window to see where they are.
Speaker 2: And in that high stress environment, instead of focusing on
Speaker 2: the primary fundamental task of aviation, which is to physically
Speaker 2: fly the airplane, maintain a safe altitude, and sure the
Speaker 2: wings are level, Yeah, both the captain and the co
Speaker 2: pilot suffer a phenomenon called task saturation.
Speaker 1: Task saturation.
Speaker 2: Yes, they become entirely consumed with troubleshooting this malfunctioning IRS system.
Speaker 2: They are heads down in the cockpit, pulling out manual
Speaker 2: flipping switches, trying to force the computer to reset.
Speaker 1: Just completely ignoring the actual flying of the plane, basically,
Speaker 1: and that fixation on the broken compass directly triggers the
Speaker 1: next critical event. Yeah. Because they are so focused on
Speaker 1: getting the navigation system working again, they decide they need
Speaker 1: to temporarily bypass the computer's directional control. The captain instructs
Speaker 1: the copilot to switch the navigation system from nav mode
Speaker 1: to attitude mode, and.
Speaker 2: The intent behind that switch makes sense in theory. They
Speaker 2: are basically telling the computer stop trying to steer us
Speaker 2: along the route. Just hold the plane straight and level
Speaker 2: while we manually figure out our coordinates.
Speaker 1: Makes sense, But in.
Speaker 2: Making that switch, the captain missed a highly critical, non
Speaker 2: negotiable rule straight out of the Boeing seven thirty seven
Speaker 2: flight manual.
Speaker 1: Right, because when you make that specific switch from nav
Speaker 1: to attitude mode, the system has to perform a brief reset.
Speaker 1: Exactly during that reset, some of the computerized gauges in
Speaker 1: front of the pilot's temporarily go blank. Most importantly, the
Speaker 1: artificial horizon, the instrument that visually tells you if your
Speaker 1: wings are flat, disappears for a moment.
Speaker 2: It does so.
Speaker 1: The manual explicitly states that the pilot must manually hold
Speaker 1: the plane's control column, keeping the aircraft perfectly straight and
Speaker 1: level for thirty seconds while the computer.
Speaker 2: Reboots, and neither the captain nor the copilot did that.
Speaker 2: They were too distracted by the irs manuals and the
Speaker 2: heavy weather, and because they failed to maintain that straight
Speaker 2: and level flight during the transition. The aircraft's automated systems
Speaker 2: acted exactly as programmed, sensing instability during a mode switch,
Speaker 2: the autopilot disengaged completely, but a.
Speaker 1: Warning bell would sound in the cockpit when the autopilot.
Speaker 2: Shuts off, right, a brief chime does sound, but the
Speaker 2: pilots are dealing with the deafening noise of the hail,
Speaker 2: the stress of being lost, and the frustration of the.
Speaker 1: Broken irs, so they just didn't hear it right.
Speaker 2: In the cognitive overload, they miss the chime entirely. They
Speaker 2: do not realize that the computer has handed control of
Speaker 2: the plane back to them no, and that nobody is
Speaker 2: actually flying the aircraft, which.
Speaker 1: Is terrifying when you consider the physicist of this specific plane.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of aircraft that have seen years of service,
Speaker 1: this seven thirty seven wasn't perfectly aerodynamically balanced. Very true,
Speaker 1: it had a natural mechanical tendency to roll slightly to
Speaker 1: the right. When the autopilot was turned on, it was
Speaker 1: constantly automatically making these tiny microscopic adjustments to the left
Speaker 1: wing flaps to keep the plane perfectly level against that drift.
Speaker 2: But the second the autopilot shut off.
Speaker 1: Those tiny corrections.
Speaker 2: Stopped exactly this tiny automated correction stopped the ailerons. The
Speaker 2: control surfaces on the wings that dictate role relaxed into
Speaker 2: a neutral position. Unchecked, the plane began an almost imperceptible.
Speaker 1: Role to the right, just drifting on its own.
Speaker 2: We are talking about a roll of just one single
Speaker 2: degree per second. What's fascinating here is how the human
Speaker 2: body reacts, or more accurately, fails to react to that
Speaker 2: kind of slow movement. We have to dive into the
Speaker 2: psychology and physioggy of spatial disorientation.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting but also confusing
Speaker 1: to me. How so, because if you are sitting in
Speaker 1: a chair and that chair is slowly rolling you upside down,
Speaker 1: gravity is going to pull you sideways. You are going
Speaker 1: to slump against the arm rest. Your body is going
Speaker 1: to physically feel it.
Speaker 2: That's what you would assume.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how on earth do two highly trained professional pilots
Speaker 1: sit in a cockpit and not realize their entire airplane
Speaker 1: is tipping over onto its side.
Speaker 2: It is entirely counterintuitive until you understand how our inner
Speaker 2: ear works. On the ground. We rely on a combination
Speaker 2: of visual cues like seeing the horizon or the floor
Speaker 2: and the fluid moving in our inner ear to tell
Speaker 2: our brain which way is.
Speaker 1: Up right, visual and physical.
Speaker 2: But when you remove those visual cues, entirely, like when
Speaker 2: you are flying at night through a featureless void of
Speaker 2: thicked storm clouds. Your brain has to rely solely on
Speaker 2: the inner ear.
Speaker 1: And the inner ear isn't built for aviation, it's.
Speaker 2: Built for walking on the ground. If a movement is
Speaker 2: slow and smooth enough, like a roll of just one
Speaker 2: degree per second, the fluid inside the canals of your
Speaker 2: ear doesn't slosh enough to trigger the sensory hairs.
Speaker 1: That is wild.
Speaker 2: Your brain literally does not register the motion. Furthermore, as
Speaker 2: an airplane banks, it's not like tilting a chair. The
Speaker 2: aircraft is moving through space. The aerodynamic forces pushed the
Speaker 2: occupants straight down into their seats. Oh see to the
Speaker 2: pilots sitting in that dark cockpit, feeling the normal pressure
Speaker 2: against their seat bottoms, their bodies were screaming at them
Speaker 2: that they were flying perfectly straight and level.
Speaker 1: Even as the plane is slowly turning on its side.
Speaker 1: It's chilling, and this slow, silent roll continues completely unnoticed
Speaker 1: while they argue over the.
Speaker 2: Irs, unnoticed until it's almost too late.
Speaker 1: Right, It continues until the plane hits a critical safety threshold.
Speaker 1: It banks past thirty five degrees, and that is when
Speaker 1: the plane's automated defense systems finally realize the pilots aren't
Speaker 1: paying attention and screen for intervention.
Speaker 2: The cockpit is suddenly filled with that blaring automated warning
Speaker 2: bank angle, bank angle.
Speaker 1: It instantly shatters their tunnel vision. The captain finally looks
Speaker 1: up at his instruments, realizes the plane is severely banked
Speaker 1: to the right, and he acts. He does, but his
Speaker 1: startled reaction seals their fate.
Speaker 2: Yes, when an aircraft is banked at a steep angle,
Speaker 2: the lift generated by the wings, which normally keeps the
Speaker 2: plane up in the air, is now pulling the plane
Speaker 2: sideways right.
Speaker 1: The lift is sideways now, so to.
Speaker 2: Recover from a steep bank, the absolute first step is
Speaker 2: to level the wings, getting the plane flat with the
Speaker 2: horizon again. Only then do you gently pull back on
Speaker 2: the control column to bring the nose up and arrest
Speaker 2: the descent.
Speaker 1: But the captain acts purely on panic instead of leveling
Speaker 1: the wings first. His startled reflex takes over. He immediately
Speaker 1: grabs the control column and pulls straight back, instinctively trying
Speaker 1: to pull the plane away from the ground.
Speaker 2: It's a disastrous aero dynamic error because the plane is
Speaker 2: still banked heavily on its side. Pulling back on the
Speaker 2: controls doesn't bring the nose up into the sky. It
Speaker 2: forces the nose tightly into the turn. Oh Man, he
Speaker 2: essentially commanded the airplane into a terrifyingly tight downward spiral dive.
Speaker 1: The forces at this point become incomprehensible once he forces
Speaker 1: the plane into that dive. What kind of speeds are
Speaker 1: we talking about?
Speaker 2: The telemetry data is staggering. The plane hits a descent
Speaker 2: rate of twenty one thousand feet per minute. They are
Speaker 2: hurtling downward at nine hundred kilometers per hour.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: To put that in perspective. That is actually one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty kilometers per hour faster than the physical structural
Speaker 2: limits a Boeing seven thirty seven was designed to withstand.
Speaker 1: So it's basically flying faster than it was ever built
Speaker 1: to go. The investigators later listened to the horrific sounds
Speaker 1: captured on the cockpit voice recorder before the plane even
Speaker 1: reached the water. The aerodynamic forces were simply two immense.
Speaker 2: The plane physically began tearing itself apart mid air.
Speaker 1: The sheer velocity ripped the metal to shreds and then
Speaker 1: sudden silence. The wreckage plummets into the Mecassar Strait, and
Speaker 1: immediately investigators on the ground handed a geographical mystery of
Speaker 1: massive proportions.
Speaker 2: They had a plane that vanished off radar at a
Speaker 2: very high altitude, and because it was moving so fast
Speaker 2: and drifting off course, they didn't know exactly when or
Speaker 2: where it went down. Right, Calculating the search grid based
Speaker 2: on the plane's remaining fuel yielded a staggering area.
Speaker 1: They were looking at a search area roughly the size
Speaker 1: of the entire country of Ireland. You have over three
Speaker 1: thousand searchers, the Indonesian government, the military, international ad all
Speaker 1: scrambling across this massive expanse of ocean in jungle.
Speaker 2: It was a massive undertaking.
Speaker 1: And in the middle of this frantic, desperate hunt, there
Speaker 1: is this utterly devastating moment of false hope. News actually
Speaker 1: breaks across the media that twelve survivors have been found.
Speaker 2: The immediate relief among the families gathered at the airport
Speaker 2: must have been overwhelming, but it was entirely incorrect. When
Speaker 2: rescue officials actually reached the location of those survivors, they
Speaker 2: realized these people weren't from the airplane at all. Oh No,
Speaker 2: they were survivors from a completely unrelated passenger ferry that
Speaker 2: had tragically capsized and sunk in the exact same violent storm.
Speaker 1: The emotional whiplash for the families waiting for news is
Speaker 1: just horrific to think about. The search goes back to
Speaker 1: square one. It takes nine agonizing days before a local
Speaker 1: fisherman spots a piece of metal floating three hundred meters
Speaker 1: off the coast of Sulawesi, and.
Speaker 2: That was a crucial find.
Speaker 1: It's quickly identified as the right elevator, a crucial movable
Speaker 1: flap on the tail section of the aircraft that controls
Speaker 1: the plane's pitch. Finding that specific heavy piece of the
Speaker 1: tail confirmed without a doubt that the plane had violently
Speaker 1: broken apart at sea.
Speaker 2: But the nightmare is an over because the main wreckage
Speaker 2: is sitting at the bottom of the ocean sixty five
Speaker 2: hundred feet deep.
Speaker 1: That is so deep that.
Speaker 2: Depth introduces extreme logistical hurdles. You cannot send human divers
Speaker 2: down sixty five hundred feet. You need highly specialized, incredibly
Speaker 2: expensive deep sea salvage equipment, typically military grade remote submarines.
Speaker 1: And getting that equipment isn't easy.
Speaker 2: Securing that equipment sparked a bitter seven month standoff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the standoff was entirely over money. The Indonesian government
Speaker 1: demanded that Adamair foot the bill for the salvage operation,
Speaker 1: arguing it was their aircraft and their responsibility to retrieve
Speaker 1: the black boxes.
Speaker 2: And Adamair flat out refused right.
Speaker 1: They claimed their financial responsibility had limits and the government
Speaker 1: should pay.
Speaker 2: For seven months, the families get no answers while lawyers
Speaker 2: and airline executives argue over the invoice. Finally, the public
Speaker 2: and international pressure becomes too much and a compromises reached.
Speaker 1: Right An American salvage company, Phoenix International, is contracted, but
Speaker 1: because Adamair is so resistant to the cost, they only
Speaker 1: provide enough funding for exactly one week of searching.
Speaker 2: Talk about a ticking cost seven days.
Speaker 1: If they don't find it in seven days, the funding
Speaker 1: is pulled and the mystery stays at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean forever.
Speaker 2: And to make the task even harder, because seven months
Speaker 2: have passed during this legal bickering, the battery powered locator
Speaker 2: beacons attached to the black boxes have completely died.
Speaker 1: Wow, so no signal at all, they.
Speaker 2: Are searching for two tiny metal boxes in a debris
Speaker 2: field six five hundred feet underwater, entirely by sight using
Speaker 2: cameras on a remote controlled submarine.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: They methodically scanned the ocean floor. Days slipped by with
Speaker 2: nothing to show for it. Then they started finding small,
Speaker 2: heartbreaking pieces of debris, life vests.
Speaker 1: Seat trays, getting closer.
Speaker 2: Finally, with just two days of funding left on the contract,
Speaker 2: the camera on the submarine spotted a glimpse of bright
Speaker 2: orange in the mud. Oh wow, it was the flight
Speaker 2: DITA recorder. Shortly after they found the pockpit voice recorder nearby.
Speaker 2: It was a monumental achievement of deep sea navigation.
Speaker 1: Getting the boxes out of the water is only half
Speaker 1: the battle, though. They fly these battered, crushed black boxes
Speaker 1: halfway across the world to the National Transportation Safety Board
Speaker 1: labs in Washington, DC, and the extraction process itself is
Speaker 1: a fascinating piece of forensic science. They have to keep
Speaker 1: the black boxes completely submerged in buckets of fresh water
Speaker 1: the entire time they are transporting them.
Speaker 2: It's a crucial preservation technique for electronics recovered from the
Speaker 2: ocean because of the salt exactly. If you pull complex
Speaker 2: circuitry out of salt water and expose it to the
Speaker 2: oxygen in the air, a chemical reaction immediately starts, creating
Speaker 2: rust and corrosion, which will rapidly destroy the memory chips
Speaker 2: and the data completely.
Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: By keeping them submerged in fresh water, they dilute the
Speaker 2: salt and delay that oxidation process until the technicians can
Speaker 2: carefully dry and extract the chips in a highly controlled
Speaker 2: laboratory environment.
Speaker 1: And the preservation worked perfectly because they managed to recover
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the data. And this data is
Speaker 1: the ultimate turning point in the investigation.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: Up until now, we were looking closely at the pilots,
Speaker 1: their fixation, their spatial disorientation, their panicked response. But when
Speaker 1: the investigators cross reference the newly extracted black box data
Speaker 1: with the airline's own maintenance records, the focus of the
Speaker 1: entire investigation shifts sharply.
Speaker 2: Yes, if we connect this to the bigger picture, the
Speaker 2: story of flight five seventy four is not just a
Speaker 2: story of pilot error. It is a story of profound,
Speaker 2: deeply rooted systemic negligence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really the core of it.
Speaker 2: When investigators looked at the maintenance history for that specific
Speaker 2: IRS unit, the right side compass that failed and initially
Speaker 2: sent them off course, they found it had over one
Speaker 2: hundred write ups from various pilots in the previous three
Speaker 2: months alone, one.
Speaker 1: Hundred complaints in three months. That vital piece of navigational
Speaker 1: equipment was constantly breaking, constantly failing on different flights.
Speaker 2: Standard aviation Safety protocol is very clear on this. A
Speaker 2: faulty IRS unit must be completely removed from the aircraft,
Speaker 2: sent to a specialized avionics lab, and ampticulously repaired and recalibrated.
Speaker 1: Right. It's essential.
Speaker 2: It is the compass of the airplane. It feeds the autopilot.
Speaker 2: You do not take chances with it.
Speaker 1: But the Atom air mechanics weren't doing that, were they.
Speaker 1: They were facing intense pressure for fast turnarounds to keep
Speaker 1: these budget flights in the air. Time is money, so
Speaker 1: rather than fixing the compass, they were essentially just swabbing
Speaker 1: the broken compass from plane to plane, or worse, they
Speaker 1: were literally just unplugging the faulty unit, spraying the electronic
Speaker 1: connectors with lubricant, plugging it back in and signing off
Speaker 1: the maintenance log as fixed.
Speaker 2: They were putting a superficial band aid on a vital
Speaker 2: system to keep the planes flying and the profits rolling in.
Speaker 2: And the negligence didn't stop in the maintenance bay, it
Speaker 2: extended into the training rooms.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When investigators interviewed other Atom Air pilots, they asked them
Speaker 2: what specific training the airline provided on how to recover
Speaker 2: an aircraft if the IRS fails midflight or if the
Speaker 2: autopilot suddenly disengages in heavy weather.
Speaker 1: And the answer was zero, Absolutely no training on IRS failure. No,
Speaker 1: they were putting pilots into the sky without the procedural
Speaker 1: knowledge they needed to survive the very emergencies the airline's
Speaker 1: own faulty maintenance was routinely creating.
Speaker 2: The most damning part of the investigation revealed that this
Speaker 2: was and even the first time this exact scenario had
Speaker 2: played out. Wait, really, just eleven months prior to Flight
Speaker 2: five seventy four, another Atom Air flight, Flight seven eighty two,
Speaker 2: experienced the exact same dual IRS failure.
Speaker 1: You're kidding.
Speaker 2: Their navigation went completely blind. They were lost over the
Speaker 2: water for three hours. The only reason they survived was
Speaker 2: pure luck. They flew blindly until they broke through the clouds,
Speaker 2: spotted an island with an airport, and managed to land
Speaker 2: almost five hundred kilometers away from their intended destination.
Speaker 1: It was a glaring neon warning sign that the company
Speaker 1: completely ignored, and the fallout from the Flight five seventy
Speaker 1: four investigation was massive and swift. The European Union was
Speaker 1: so horrified by the findings of the final report that
Speaker 1: they issued a blanket ban on all Indonesian airlines, prohibiting
Speaker 1: any of them from flying into European airspace until the
Speaker 1: country overhauled its oversight.
Speaker 2: It forced a massive reckoning within the entire Indonesian aviation industry.
Speaker 2: For adam air it was the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and eight, another one of their planes
Speaker 2: skid it off a runway due to poor pilot training
Speaker 2: and maintenance.
Speaker 1: That was the final straw it had to end.
Speaker 2: The Indonesian government stepped in, suspended, and permanently revoked Adamare's
Speaker 2: license to operate. They were shut down for good, serving
Speaker 2: as the catalyst for industry wide safety reforms to properly
Speaker 2: regulate the rapid boom of budget airlines.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? Flight five seventy four
Speaker 1: didn't crash because of a single severe storm, or a
Speaker 1: single broken computer, or even a single pilot's startle response.
Speaker 2: No, it didn't.
Speaker 1: It crashed because of a deadly chain reaction. You had
Speaker 1: a corporate culture that prioritized cheap profits and fast turnarounds
Speaker 1: over basic mechanical safety. You had vital navigational equipment that
Speaker 1: was left to rot. And you had the fatal human
Speaker 1: flaw of tunnel vision pilots who became so entirely consumed
Speaker 1: by fixing a machine that they forgot they were flying
Speaker 1: a plane.
Speaker 2: This raises an important question, one that extends far beyond
Speaker 2: the cockpit of a seven thirty seven. We live in
Speaker 2: an era of unprecedented automation. We do the system we
Speaker 2: build are incredible, but they create a highly dangerous complacency.
Speaker 2: When humans are tasked with simply monitoring computers rather than
Speaker 2: actively engaging in a process, foundational skills.
Speaker 1: Degrade, oh absolutely.
Speaker 2: When the automation inevitably fails, whether due to a broken
Speaker 2: sensor or a software glitch, the humans are suddenly thrust
Speaker 2: back into control. Often they lack the immediate situational awareness
Speaker 2: or the proper training to save themselves.
Speaker 1: It's a haunting reality, and it leaves you with a
Speaker 1: thought that's hard to shake. As we surround ourselves with
Speaker 1: smarter technology and automated systems in our daily lives, from
Speaker 1: the cars that automatically break for us to the navigation
Speaker 1: apps that tell us exactly when and where to turn,
Speaker 1: how completely have we surrendered our own senses to the machine?
Speaker 1: Scary thought because the truth is that technology isn't infallible.
Speaker 1: And if all those glowing screens suddenly went black right now,
Speaker 1: surrounded by the noise in the dark, would you actually
Speaker 1: know how to find your way out of the storm.