Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're opening up a
Speaker 1: whole stack of official accident investigation reports, forensic metallurgy data,
Speaker 1: and salvaged cockpit recordings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are really getting into one of the most complex,
Speaker 2: just truly baffling aviation mysteries out there.
Speaker 1: Right, because our mission today is to piece together a
Speaker 1: terrifying puzzle like how does a massive commercial airliner end
Speaker 1: up totally obliterated in the desert raining debris over a
Speaker 1: twelve mile stretch just ten minutes after takeoff.
Speaker 2: It's hard to even wrap your head around that timeline
Speaker 2: ten minutes exactly.
Speaker 1: So to understand how a catastrophe of this magnitude unfolds,
Speaker 1: I want you to pixture this. You're standing on the
Speaker 1: tarmac in Jetta, Sudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: And it is hot.
Speaker 1: Oh, it is blistering. It's nineteen ninety one, and even
Speaker 1: though it is only eight point twenty six in the morning,
Speaker 1: the temperature has already crossed thirty degrees celsius.
Speaker 2: Right, So you've got heat waves literally shimmering off the concrete.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the atmosphere around you is just electric. You're
Speaker 1: the Hodge Turneral, which is this colossal facility built exclusively
Speaker 1: for the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.
Speaker 2: And we are talking about a massive crowd. Over a
Speaker 2: million and a half pilgrims have gathered in the Holy
Speaker 2: City this week.
Speaker 1: It's just a sea of people.
Speaker 2: Mm hm.
Speaker 1: And you look out across this sprawling airfield and you
Speaker 1: see Nigeria Airways Flight twenty one twenty getting ready for departure.
Speaker 2: It's a huge DC eight commercial airliner.
Speaker 1: Right chartered by this scrappy Canadian startup airline called Nation Air,
Speaker 1: and it's getting ready to take ten hundred and forty
Speaker 1: seven Nigerian pilgrims.
Speaker 2: Back home, which is, you know, an incredibly profound moment
Speaker 2: for those passengers. I mean, for most of them coming
Speaker 2: from small rural villages in Nigeria, this is their very
Speaker 2: first time ever stepping foot on an airplane.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're concluding this sacred, once in a lifetime journey.
Speaker 2: But as a historical record shows, none of those passengers
Speaker 2: and actually none of the fourteen crew members will ever
Speaker 2: make it home.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because we need to start right
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the flight. The crew to navigate
Speaker 1: the sheer scale of the Jetta Airport just to get
Speaker 1: into position.
Speaker 2: Right, Captain Allen and First Officer Davis are upfront of
Speaker 2: the controls, and they are facing a grueling five kilometer
Speaker 2: taxi from the terminal all the way to the runway threshold.
Speaker 1: Five kilometers is a long way for a plane to
Speaker 1: just drive.
Speaker 2: On the ground, exactly. You have this heavy, fully loaded
Speaker 2: aircraft rolling across scorching hot tarmac for an extended period
Speaker 2: of time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The physical stress on the landing gear during a taxi
Speaker 2: of that distance and that kind of extreme heat is
Speaker 2: just immense.
Speaker 1: So they finally line up. The first officer pushes the
Speaker 1: thrust to maximum, and the DC eight starts hurtling down
Speaker 1: the runway and gathering speed. But early in the takeoff roll,
Speaker 1: right around ninety knots, a really loud bang echoes through
Speaker 1: the cockpit just out of nowhere. Right. The flight engineer
Speaker 1: actually asks on the recording what's that? And the pilots
Speaker 1: feel this distinct shimmy, like.
Speaker 2: Driving your car over a patch of really deeply rutted
Speaker 2: asphalt exactly.
Speaker 1: But the instruments in the cockpit show absolutely no indication
Speaker 1: of trouble.
Speaker 2: Nothing at all. There are no warning lights no hydraulic
Speaker 2: pressure drops, no system failures popping up on the main panel.
Speaker 1: Which is wild. So the crew assesses the situation in
Speaker 1: a split second and they just continue to accelerate down
Speaker 1: the runway.
Speaker 2: Which makes sense to them in that exact moment.
Speaker 1: Well, I have to pause here because I know you
Speaker 1: listening to this are probably thinking the exact same thing
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: Oh about hitting the brakes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I'm driving down the highway at highway speeds
Speaker 1: and I hear a massive bang and feel my entire
Speaker 1: car violently shimmy, I hit the brakes.
Speaker 2: Right, you pull over immediately.
Speaker 1: Why on earth wouldn't a pilot just abort the takeoff,
Speaker 1: stop the plane and figure out what just happened.
Speaker 2: Well, the physics of a fully loaded commercial airliner dictate
Speaker 2: a completely different set of survival rules than a car. Okay,
Speaker 2: As they accelerate, the crew is constantly monitoring their speed,
Speaker 2: watching for this critical threshold called V one the one right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: V one is the takeoff decision speed. It's a highly
Speaker 2: specific mathematical calculation based on the way of the aircraft,
Speaker 2: the length of the runway, and the outside temperature.
Speaker 1: So it changes for every single flight.
Speaker 2: Exactly and once an aircraft hits V one, the kinetic
Speaker 2: energy involved is so massive that the brakes simply cannot
Speaker 2: absorb the heat required to stop the plane before the
Speaker 2: runway ends.
Speaker 1: So if they just slammed on the brakes after V one,
Speaker 1: what physically happens to the.
Speaker 2: Aircraft it would be a disaster. The break assemblies would
Speaker 2: instantly exceed their thermal limits and melt.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tires would likely explode just from the sheer
Speaker 2: heat of the friction, and the aircraft would end up
Speaker 2: skidding off the end of the runway at over one
Speaker 2: hundred miles per hour, plowing into whatever terrain is out
Speaker 2: there beyond the tarmac.
Speaker 1: That is terrifying.
Speaker 2: It is so it's physically safer to force the plane
Speaker 2: into the air than to attempt an impossible stock And furthermore,
Speaker 2: based on that shimmy, they felt the crew suspects they
Speaker 2: might have just blown a tire, which happens, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Blowing a tire is something commercial landing gear is absolutely
Speaker 2: designed to handle, got it. So the standard safest protocol
Speaker 2: is exactly what they did. You take off, get to
Speaker 2: a safe altitude, burn off heavy fuel if you need to,
Speaker 2: and circle back to land safely.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they rotate, they lift off, and just ninety
Speaker 1: seconds into the flight, the crew retracts the landing.
Speaker 2: Gear, right standard procedure, but.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, alarms just flood the cockpit.
Speaker 2: It's chaos.
Speaker 1: The flight engineer calls out four separate low pressure lights.
Speaker 1: Then a spoiler light illuminates, followed by a gear unsafe warning.
Speaker 2: So you have to put yourself in the mindset of
Speaker 2: the pilots trying to troubleshoot this in real time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they must be so confused.
Speaker 2: They're seeing a very specific, strange combination of warning lights,
Speaker 2: and based on their training and the instrument panel, they
Speaker 2: conclude they're experiencing a pressurization issue.
Speaker 1: Okay, why pressurization.
Speaker 2: Because they believe the cabin isn't sealing correctly, which can
Speaker 2: trigger all these various pneumatic system warnings. They have absolutely
Speaker 2: no idea what is actually unfolding right beneath their feet.
Speaker 1: Will the pilots are working through their pressurization checklists upfront,
Speaker 1: the reality back in the passenger cabin is rapidly deteriorating.
Speaker 2: It's turning into a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Less than three minutes after takeoff, thick choking smoke begins
Speaker 1: billowing up through the floorboards directly into the passenger seating area, and.
Speaker 2: Passengers are panicking. They're leaving their seats and rushing forward
Speaker 2: toward the front of the cabin, just desperate for breathable air.
Speaker 1: Now there happens to be a Nationaire lead mechanic on board, Jean.
Speaker 2: Paul Philippe right he was traveling with them.
Speaker 1: The cockpit crew asks him to go back and investigate
Speaker 1: because someone in the front mentions smelling smoke.
Speaker 2: So he goes to check it out.
Speaker 1: He steps out of the flight deck, walks back and
Speaker 1: immediately realizes the terrifying truth. This isn't a pressurization glitch.
Speaker 2: No, all.
Speaker 1: The plane is actively burning from the inside out.
Speaker 2: But the pilots up front they are completely unaware of
Speaker 2: the inferno raging behind them, so they radio the air
Speaker 2: traffic control tower in Jetta to clear an emergency. They
Speaker 2: inform the tower they're having a pressurization problem and requests
Speaker 2: clearance to level off at two thousand feet so they
Speaker 2: can stabilize and return to the airport.
Speaker 1: And this brings us to a fatal coincidence that just
Speaker 1: severely worsens the crisis.
Speaker 2: It really is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: The air traffic controller agrees to the altitude hold, but
Speaker 1: there is this catastrophic misunderstanding on the radar screen.
Speaker 2: The controller thinks he's talking to a completely different airplane.
Speaker 1: Yes, he believes he is talking to Saudi Arabian flight
Speaker 1: seven thirty eight, which you can't make this up, is
Speaker 1: experiencing an identical pressurization problem in the exact same airspace
Speaker 1: at the exact same moment.
Speaker 2: The odds of that are just staggering.
Speaker 1: So the controller gives flight twenty one to twenty instructions
Speaker 1: meant for the Saudi plane. He commands the burning dcaight
Speaker 1: to climb to three thousand feet and to turn to
Speaker 1: a heading of one sixty.
Speaker 2: And heading one sixty makes zero sense for a plane
Speaker 2: trying to land right.
Speaker 1: It is like calling nine one one from inside a
Speaker 1: burning house, But the dispatcher gets their lines crossed, assumes
Speaker 1: you or a different caller dealing with a flooded basement,
Speaker 1: and gives you instructions that pull you away from safety
Speaker 1: instead of sending a fire truck.
Speaker 2: That's the perfect way to put it. The tower and
Speaker 2: the pilots are inadvertently making a dire situation exponentially worse.
Speaker 2: Flight twenty one twenty is now thirteen kilometers away from
Speaker 2: the airport, flying in the wrong direction, all while this
Speaker 2: massive fire violently consumes the structural integrity of the aircraft.
Speaker 1: And the fire eats right through the hydraulic lines controlling the.
Speaker 2: Alerons right the flight controls, so.
Speaker 1: Without those flaps on the wings working to bank the plane,
Speaker 1: the pilots are completely unable to turn the aircraft back
Speaker 1: toward the runway.
Speaker 2: To understand the physical toll of that failure, imagine driving
Speaker 2: a massive semi truck down a steep mountain pass ok
Speaker 2: and suddenly your power steering fluid drains out completely. The
Speaker 2: steering wheel is physically connected to the tires, sure, but
Speaker 2: the sheer weight and force of the road make it
Speaker 2: almost impossible for human arms to turn it.
Speaker 1: You're essentially fighting the entire mass of the vehicle with
Speaker 1: your own shoulders exactly.
Speaker 2: Now, multiply that aerodynamic force by one hundred A DC
Speaker 2: eight is flying at two hundred and fifty knots. The
Speaker 2: air resistance pushing against those giant metal control surfaces on
Speaker 2: the wings is immense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: The hydraulic system exists to multiply human input by thousands
Speaker 2: of pounds of force. Without it, Captain Allen is essentially
Speaker 2: trying to push against hurricane force winds with his bare hands.
Speaker 1: It's impossible, but they finally manage to communicate their true
Speaker 1: identity to the tower.
Speaker 2: Right the confusion clears up.
Speaker 1: The controller realizes his mistake and immediately clears them to
Speaker 1: land on any runway. But as they limp back over
Speaker 1: the city of Jetta, which by the way, is a
Speaker 1: city of two million people.
Speaker 2: It's a huge, densely populated area.
Speaker 1: The heat inside the cabin becomes so intense that the
Speaker 1: floorboards literally warp and melt away. Eleven miles out from
Speaker 1: the airport, bodies literally begin falling from the fuselage.
Speaker 2: It's just horrific, and two miles from the runway. Desperate
Speaker 2: to make the threshold, the captain lowers the landing.
Speaker 1: Gear, which seems like the right move, but the fire.
Speaker 2: Has so severely compromised the airframe at this point, the
Speaker 2: physical force of that heavy landing gear deploying into the
Speaker 2: airstream acts as the final blow to the plane's structural integrity.
Speaker 1: The airframe just shatters.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: The plane loses all forward flight capability and crashes into
Speaker 1: the desert, instantly, killing all two hundred and forty seven
Speaker 1: passengers and the fourteen crew members.
Speaker 2: Yeah. To this day, it remains the deadliest DC eight
Speaker 2: crash in aviation history and the deadliest accident ever for
Speaker 2: a Canadian airline.
Speaker 1: So a team of Canadian investigators, including technical expert Bill
Speaker 1: Taylor and lead investigator ron Coleman, arrive in Jetta a
Speaker 1: day later to assist the Saudi authorities.
Speaker 2: And they are met with just total devastation.
Speaker 1: The main wreckage sprawls across four hundred meters of desert,
Speaker 1: completely charred.
Speaker 2: But because the plane broke apart mid air, the debris
Speaker 2: field isn't limited to that one crash site.
Speaker 1: Right It stretches for twelve miles. So an investigator stand
Speaker 1: in the middle of this un recognizable blackened metal. Their
Speaker 1: primary mandate is to answer one fundamental question, where did
Speaker 1: the fire start.
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that the forensics of metallurgy can
Speaker 2: tell a story even when everything is reduced to ash.
Speaker 2: Really how well the investigators have to distinguish between parts
Speaker 2: of the plane that burn while it was falling through
Speaker 2: the air and parts that burned on the ground after
Speaker 2: the crash.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me how investigators differentiate those two types of
Speaker 1: fire damage.
Speaker 2: They look for a phenomenon known as the blow torch effect.
Speaker 2: A fire that happens on the ground leaves a relatively
Speaker 2: even coating of soot and melted material, and that molten
Speaker 2: metal drips straight down due to gravity. Makes sense, But
Speaker 2: an in flight fire behaves vastly differently. It's constantly fed
Speaker 2: and shaped by two hundred and forty nine winds. The
Speaker 2: slipstream forces the flame to act exactly like a forced
Speaker 2: induction furnace, so.
Speaker 1: The wind is pushing the flames backward at speeds far
Speaker 1: exceeding a Category five hurricane.
Speaker 2: Exactly that extreme friction and focus heat melt the aluminum
Speaker 2: structure of the plane, which has a melting point of
Speaker 2: around eleven hundred degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The wind catches that molten aluminum and sprays it backward.
Speaker 2: The investigators discovered that the tail section of the airplane
Speaker 2: was completely coated in this blown molten aluminum.
Speaker 1: Painting a clear picture of the airflow right.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, when they analyzed the center fuel cell, they found
Speaker 2: a clear distinct burned through pattern on the forward.
Speaker 1: Wall, meaning the fire definitively started mid air, right in
Speaker 1: the center belly of the plane, inside the wheelwell exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: nation are publicly claims the plane must have hit a
Speaker 1: foreign object like a piece of metal debris on the runway,
Speaker 1: which punctured the tires and caused the catastrophe.
Speaker 2: But the Saudi aviation authorities strongly deny that claim. They
Speaker 2: insist the runway was completely clear of debris.
Speaker 1: Which creates this really tense standoff over liability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a massive corporate and international dispute.
Speaker 1: But the breakthrough comes from the most fragile piece of
Speaker 1: evidence imaginable. Investigator Bill Taylor is walking the crash site
Speaker 1: in the desert and he spots a single piece of
Speaker 1: paper blowing across the sand.
Speaker 2: It is incredible that a piece of paper survived an
Speaker 2: inferno that melted aluminum.
Speaker 1: I know, it's basically a miracle. He picks it up
Speaker 1: and it turns out to be part of the aircraft's
Speaker 1: a flight inspection checklist, a crucial documents. Specifically, it's the
Speaker 1: exact page where the mechanics record the tire pressures, and
Speaker 1: Taylor notices that there are two different colors of ink
Speaker 1: on the tire pressure entries. Someone had clearly written over
Speaker 1: the original numbers, So they send this single salvaged piece
Speaker 1: of paper back to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police forensics lab.
Speaker 1: But how does a lab pull original numbers from a
Speaker 1: piece of paper that's been scribbled over and left in
Speaker 1: a desert.
Speaker 2: The RCMPD document examiners use a technique involving infrared imaging.
Speaker 1: Oh like special cameras.
Speaker 2: Exactly different inks are manufactured with different chemical compositions, even
Speaker 2: if they look like the exact same shade of blue
Speaker 2: or black to the naked eye. Okay, so under specific
Speaker 2: wavelengths of infrared light, one ink might become completely transparent
Speaker 2: while the other absorbs the light and appears pitch black.
Speaker 1: That's brilliant. So when the forensic team put this checklist
Speaker 1: under the camera, the top layer of scribbled ink just vanished,
Speaker 1: revealing the original numbers written underneath perfectly clearly.
Speaker 2: And those original tire pressure readings were dangerously low.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty to thirty psi below the minimum safe level.
Speaker 1: Someone had literally falsified the maintenance logs to make the
Speaker 1: plane's tires look fit to fly.
Speaker 2: And because the plane was utterly destroyed on impact, the
Speaker 2: investigators couldn't rely on the physical wreckage to explain the
Speaker 2: initial failure. They had to work backward based on this
Speaker 2: altered document.
Speaker 1: So they track the plane's movements to a layover four
Speaker 1: days prior in Ghana. In Ghana, the mechanics on the
Speaker 1: ground see that the tires are wearing down and the
Speaker 1: pressure is low. They prepared to change the wheels, which
Speaker 1: is the correct safe protocol, But before.
Speaker 2: They can even initiate the maintenance, a fax comes in
Speaker 2: from the Nationaire project manager stationed in Jetta.
Speaker 1: And the facts orders them to stop the tire change immediately.
Speaker 1: The manager states they are behind schedule, risking their charter
Speaker 1: contract and orders the crew to just load the plane
Speaker 1: and fly it as is.
Speaker 2: See, nation Air was operating under this really intense culture
Speaker 2: that prioritize speed and cost saving above all else.
Speaker 1: Right, a tire change meant to delay, and a delay
Speaker 1: meant lost.
Speaker 2: Profits exactly, and the decision to skip the tire change
Speaker 2: in Ghana directly creates the crisis on the morning of
Speaker 2: the fatal flight in Jeta.
Speaker 1: Because lead mechanic Jean Paul Fleiep is doing his pre
Speaker 1: flight checks in Jetta, he knows the tires desperately need
Speaker 1: to be topped up.
Speaker 2: But airplane tires are not filled with regular air. They
Speaker 2: require nitrogen. Right, regular compressed air contains oxygen, and oxygen
Speaker 2: is a powerful oxidizer, meaning it actively feeds and accelerates
Speaker 2: fire when it's introduced to high heat.
Speaker 1: So you definitely don't want that inside a high friction dot.
Speaker 2: Now you want nitrogen. Nitrogen is an inert gas. It
Speaker 2: smothers combustion and does not expand unpredictably under extreme temperature changes.
Speaker 1: The Philip desperately tries to find nitrogen to fill the
Speaker 1: tires before takeoff. He asks other airlines for help, but
Speaker 1: the local supply tanks and jetta are entirely empty.
Speaker 2: And this is where the project manager steps in again.
Speaker 1: Right, the guy who isn't a pilot, nor is he
Speaker 1: a trained mechanic.
Speaker 2: He focuses solely on the departure schedule, and he orders
Speaker 2: Philipe to forget the nitrogen and just fly the plane
Speaker 2: exactly as it sits.
Speaker 1: And the deadly physics of that management decision completely sealed
Speaker 1: the fate of the aircraft.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's look at a DC eight's main landing gear.
Speaker 2: It has a left and right bogie, and each one
Speaker 2: contains four wheels. Okay, Uniform tire pressure across those wheels
Speaker 2: is absolutely critical to ensure the massive weight of a
Speaker 2: fully loaded airliner is distributed evenly.
Speaker 1: Because of the falsified log in Ghana and the skip
Speaker 1: nitrogen top up in Jeta, one tire is severely underinflated.
Speaker 1: The investigation calculated it was sitting at one fifty five
Speaker 1: psi instead of the mandatory one eight three ps Right.
Speaker 2: And an underinflated tire cannot physically carry its designated share
Speaker 2: of the burden.
Speaker 1: It just squishes under the weight exactly.
Speaker 2: So the extreme weight of the aircraft is immediately transferred
Speaker 2: to the adjacent tire on the exact same axle. Oh,
Speaker 2: I see that single good tire is now bearing double
Speaker 2: the weight it was engineered to handle.
Speaker 1: Wow. So combine that overloaded tire with the five kilometer
Speaker 1: taxi across a scorching desert tarmac. They're rolling for over
Speaker 1: ten minutes with double the weight pressing down on one
Speaker 1: side of the axle.
Speaker 2: The heat of the tarmac and the excessive weight caused
Speaker 2: the nylon cords inside that overloaded tire to.
Speaker 1: Over deflect, meaning it bends too much.
Speaker 2: Yes, the tire bends and flexes excessively with every single rotation.
Speaker 2: This internal friction generates massive heat inside the rubber, eventually
Speaker 2: causing the nylon structure to melt, so.
Speaker 1: That good tire simply gives up and detonates under the
Speaker 1: pressure it does. But if the one good tire explodes,
Speaker 1: what happens to the underinflated one. They couldn't handle the
Speaker 1: weight to begin with.
Speaker 2: It is instantly crushed by the entire weight of that
Speaker 2: side of the aircraft. It blows a fraction of a
Speaker 2: second later.
Speaker 1: Which leads the bare metal wheel rim scraping directly against
Speaker 1: the runway at high takeoff speeds.
Speaker 2: Right, and the friction of metal grinding on tarmac at
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty miles per hour generates a continuous
Speaker 2: shower of superheated sparks.
Speaker 1: And that heat is more than enough to ignite the shredded,
Speaker 1: oxygen riish rubber of the destroyed tires.
Speaker 2: Remember they didn't have nitrogen in there to smother it.
Speaker 1: The crew up front, here's the bang, but they have
Speaker 1: no idea they are dragging a flaming wheel.
Speaker 2: They just think it's a blowout, so they.
Speaker 1: Lift off, follow their training for a suspected blowout, and
Speaker 1: retract the landing gear. They pull a massive, burning hunk
Speaker 1: of rubber directly up into the belly of the aircraft, and.
Speaker 2: The wheel well is arguably the worst possible place for
Speaker 2: a fire to enter. Why is that the wheel well
Speaker 2: of a DC eight is not an empty cavern. It
Speaker 2: is densely packed with highly flammable hydraulic fluid lines and
Speaker 2: bundles of critical electrical wiring. The moment that burning tire
Speaker 2: enters the bay, those two hundred and forty nine winds
Speaker 2: fan the flames like a furnace.
Speaker 1: The fire immediately eats through the emergency brake system. It
Speaker 1: shorts out the wiring for the spoiler and flaplights, which
Speaker 1: creates that confusing barrage of alarms for the pilots right
Speaker 1: the pressurization alarm, Yeah, and then it burns right through
Speaker 1: the flight control cable, stripping the pilots of their ability
Speaker 1: to steer. And finally, the extreme heat reaches the center
Speaker 1: fuel cell, making survival a total impossibility.
Speaker 2: It is a devastating sequence of cascading failures, all unfolding
Speaker 2: in just a matter of minutes.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean when you look at
Speaker 1: the entirety of Flight twenty one to twenty, you see
Speaker 1: a flight crew that did everything by the book based
Speaker 1: on the information they had. Absolutely they followed protocol for
Speaker 1: a suspective blown tire. They tried to manage a barrage
Speaker 1: of confusing alarms. They fought for manual control of a
Speaker 1: dying aircraft until the very last second.
Speaker 2: They really did.
Speaker 1: They were completely doomed before they even pushed the throttle
Speaker 1: undone by a paperwork lie made four days prior in
Speaker 1: a different country, by someone bowing to corporate pressure.
Speaker 2: And the investigation into this tragedy fundamentally changed aviation safety
Speaker 2: also well, the disaster highlighted a glaring vulnerability. Dcights didn't
Speaker 2: have heat or fire sensors in their wheel wells right
Speaker 2: at all. None. If they had, the crew would have
Speaker 2: known instantly that they had retracted a fire into the
Speaker 2: belly of the plane, rather than misdiagnosing a pressurization.
Speaker 1: Glitch ow man.
Speaker 2: Today, those fire and temperature sensors are strictly mandatory on
Speaker 2: all modern commercial aircraft.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, flight crews and maintenance teams now receive extensive mandatory training,
Speaker 2: specifically on the catastrophic dangers of underinflated tires. The mechanics
Speaker 2: of weight distribution and heat generation are pounded into every
Speaker 2: aviation professional today, and.
Speaker 1: As for Nationair, the culture that prioritized the flight schedule
Speaker 1: and profit margins over basic safety protocols was entirely.
Speaker 2: Exposed, very publicly.
Speaker 1: The fallout from the crash, the loss of public trust,
Speaker 1: and the sheer negligence uncovered by the Canadian and Saudi
Speaker 1: investigators led directly to the total collapse and bankruptcy of
Speaker 1: the airline in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: It really serves as a permanent case study in how
Speaker 2: disaster is rarely the result of one massive, unpredictable failure,
Speaker 2: but rather a chain of small, systemic compromises.
Speaker 1: It leaves you with something really profound to think about.
Speaker 1: We often viewed disasters as sudden, unpredictable lightning strikes, like
Speaker 1: an act of God or a freak accident out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: The flight twenty one to twenty reveals a much more
Speaker 1: unsettling truth. Disaster is often just a slow, quiet accumulation
Speaker 1: of tiny compromises.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a skip check here, a change number there.
Speaker 1: Exactly It makes you wonder as you move through your
Speaker 1: own daily life today. You know, driving your car over
Speaker 1: suspension bridges, riding up thirty floors in a high rise elevator,
Speaker 1: or buckling your seat belt on a commercial flight.
Speaker 2: You're putting a lot of trust in the system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how much of your safety right now relies on
Speaker 1: the silent hote that some anonymous person, maybe days or
Speaker 1: even you years ago, didn't decide to just cut a
Speaker 1: corner with a bullpoint pen to stay on schedule.