Speaker 1: Imagine you are sitting in like a super comfortable upholstered seat,
Speaker 1: just cruising along at thirty thousand feet.
Speaker 2: That's pretty ideal, honestly, right.
Speaker 1: It is a beautiful sunny afternoon over the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: You're looking out the window, just watching these serene blue
Speaker 1: waters pass by way down below. But then in the
Speaker 1: stand of maybe just a few heartbeats, the sky outside
Speaker 1: your window turns pitch black.
Speaker 2: And we're not just talking about a heavy rain cloud
Speaker 2: passing by.
Speaker 1: No, exactly. We're talking about with the absolute blackest sky
Speaker 1: you have ever seen, right in the middle of the day.
Speaker 1: And suddenly the plane is just getting violently tumbled around.
Speaker 1: It basically feels like you've hit a solid brick wall
Speaker 1: in midair.
Speaker 2: Which is terrifying in a commercial jet.
Speaker 1: Completely and the noise becomes deafening. It's this relentless machine
Speaker 1: gun pounding against the hull of this brand new Boeing
Speaker 1: seven thirty seven. And then complete silence. Oh, the cabin
Speaker 1: lights just go out. The comforting constant hum of the
Speaker 1: jet engines stops. Everything goes black. Up in the cockpit.
Speaker 1: You can just imagine the sheer panic of alarms blaring,
Speaker 1: but outside it's just the sound of wind and extremely
Speaker 1: heavy hail. Both engines have totally died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that is the ultimate nightmare scenario in
Speaker 2: commercial aviation. You've lost all thrust, you've lost all electrical power,
Speaker 2: and you were literally trapped inside a massive metal tube
Speaker 2: that's just falling out of the sky.
Speaker 1: Welcome to this deep dive today. Our mission is to
Speaker 1: unpack one of the most terrifying, miraculous, and honestly perplexing
Speaker 1: aviation mysteries and history. We're talking about the story of
Speaker 1: tak A Flight one ten.
Speaker 2: Such an incredible case, it.
Speaker 1: Really is, and we're going to explore not just how
Speaker 1: this flight crew managed to pull off the actual impossible
Speaker 1: to save everyone on board, but the stunning investigation that.
Speaker 2: Followed right because investigators had to figure out why a
Speaker 2: state of the art airliner suddenly became a forty three
Speaker 2: ton glider exactly.
Speaker 1: So, really put yourself in that cabin for a second.
Speaker 1: Feel that visceral terror of floating in the dark, falling
Speaker 1: toward the ocean, relying in entirely on the people up
Speaker 1: front to save you.
Speaker 2: You know, the true mechanical irony of this catastrophe is
Speaker 2: what makes it so fascinating to study. This wasn't a
Speaker 2: case of some old, decrepit airplane falling apart because of
Speaker 2: poor maintenance, right.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a rust bucket, not at all.
Speaker 2: This incident was caused by a highly specific engineering oversight
Speaker 2: on one of the most reliable engines ever built, an
Speaker 2: oversight that literally nobody in the entire world saw coming
Speaker 2: despite decades of rigorous testing.
Speaker 1: Well, before we get to the absolute chaos of the descent,
Speaker 1: let's set the stage a bit so you know exactly
Speaker 1: who is involved and you know what's at stake.
Speaker 2: Here sounds good.
Speaker 1: So the date is May twenty fourth, nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about a Boeing seven thirty seven
Speaker 1: three hundred. This plane is incredibly new, like fresh off
Speaker 1: the factory floor new. It was delivered to Tacka Airlines,
Speaker 1: which is a smaller airline based in El Salvador, just
Speaker 1: two weeks prior to this.
Speaker 2: Flight, just two weeks. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The flight instructor on board, Captain Arturo Soli, was
Speaker 1: actually joking earlier in the flight about the weather. He
Speaker 1: was like worried the hail was going to scratch their
Speaker 1: brand new million dollar paint job.
Speaker 2: I mean, taking delivery of a jetliner worth tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars is a monumental event for a smaller airline.
Speaker 2: They were immensely proud of this machine. It represented the
Speaker 2: absolute cutting edge of aerospace technology at the time.
Speaker 1: Totally. Now back in the cabin, you have thirty eight passengers,
Speaker 1: and one of them is a woman named Lee Burmeister.
Speaker 1: Her situation makes this rough flight infinitely worse.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, her story's so intense.
Speaker 1: It really is. She is desperately eager to get back
Speaker 1: to the United States. She had been staying in a
Speaker 1: small village in Costa Rica for about a month and
Speaker 1: while she was there, her appendix rupture.
Speaker 2: That's awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she had to undergo emergency surgery in this
Speaker 1: tiny rural village clinic. It was a harrowing ordeal. And
Speaker 1: now she's sitting on this plane flying home with a
Speaker 1: line of fresh surgical stitches running right up the middle
Speaker 1: of her stomach.
Speaker 2: So the absolute last thing she wants is any turbulence.
Speaker 1: Exactly all she wants is a safe, smooth, gentle ride.
Speaker 2: Smooth ride that is about to become a fight for
Speaker 2: her life. And you know, The person guiding that fight
Speaker 2: from the cockpit is Captain Carlos Dardano. His presence in
Speaker 2: that seat is honestly a story all on its own.
Speaker 1: Oh totally. Carlos Stardano is only twenty nine years old,
Speaker 1: and being a captain of a major commercial jet at
Speaker 1: twenty nine is already super impressive. But his backstory sounds
Speaker 1: like it was ripped straight out of an action movie.
Speaker 2: It really does. He's a third generation pilot, practically born
Speaker 2: with a yoke in his hands. But six years before
Speaker 2: this flight, in nineteen eighty two, El Salvadora was in
Speaker 2: the grip of a brutal civil war. Dardana was running
Speaker 2: a small aero taxi business flying these light aircraft, and
Speaker 2: while he was on the ground at a small grass
Speaker 2: runway just repairing his plane, a firefight breaks.
Speaker 1: Out out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Out of nowhere, he gets caught in the crossfire and
Speaker 2: is shot directly in the face by guerrillas.
Speaker 1: The bullet went straight through his face, and yet somehow
Speaker 1: he didn't just collapse and give up.
Speaker 2: No, despite being terribly wounded and bleeding profusely, his immediate
Speaker 2: instinct was to protect passengers. He managed to get the
Speaker 2: plane into the air, staying incredibly low to the ground,
Speaker 2: weaving between the trees to avoid taking more anti aircraft fire.
Speaker 1: That is just insane.
Speaker 2: He flew like that for twenty minutes back to the
Speaker 2: main airport and successfully saved his passengers.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. So he survived the ordeal, but the gunshot wound
Speaker 1: cost him his left eye, and for almost anyone else,
Speaker 1: losing an eye means the end of a flying career,
Speaker 1: right because depth's perception is entirely dependent on having binocular vision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Most people would never step foot in the
Speaker 2: cockpit again litt alone try to fly professionally. But Dodano
Speaker 2: just completely refused to give up his career.
Speaker 1: So what did he do.
Speaker 2: He learned to compensate for his impaired vision and lack
Speaker 2: of depth perception using other visual cues. He passed all
Speaker 2: the rigorous, unforgiving medical and flight tests required by aviation
Speaker 2: authorities and literally earned his way back to becoming a
Speaker 2: certicide commercial pilot for a major airline.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have a twenty nine year old, one
Speaker 1: eyed civil war hero at the helm of the pristine
Speaker 1: brand new jet. They leave Belize, cruising smoothly. The weather
Speaker 1: is sunny, but then they hit the storm, and investigators
Speaker 1: later described the energy inside this particular weather system as
Speaker 1: being equivalent to an atomic bomb.
Speaker 2: Going on a massive, incredibly violent storm cell.
Speaker 1: Right, but wait, so, if this storm is packing the
Speaker 1: energy of a nuclear weapon, how on Earth does a
Speaker 1: state of the art radar system on a two week
Speaker 1: old jet completely miss it. I mean, they should have
Speaker 1: seen an angry red blob on their screens from fifty
Speaker 1: miles away.
Speaker 2: I'd think so. But the answer actually lies in the
Speaker 2: specific physics of how radar technology worked at the time.
Speaker 2: Airborne weather radar in the nineteen eighties typically operated in
Speaker 2: what is called the X band frequency.
Speaker 1: Okay, what does that mean in plain English?
Speaker 2: To understand this, think about shining a flashlight. If you
Speaker 2: shine a flashlight into a thick fog, the light hits
Speaker 2: the water droplets and bounces back at you, illuminating the fog.
Speaker 2: X band radar works basically the same way. Sends out
Speaker 2: a pulsive energy that is fantastic at bouncing off liquid
Speaker 2: water like heavy rain, and returning a strong signal to
Speaker 2: the top bit display.
Speaker 1: So the radar tells them exactly where the heaviest.
Speaker 2: Rain is, right it sees the rain perfectly. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it does not see solid ice very well. And hail
Speaker 2: is solid ice.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, radar waves don't reflect off solid dry ice the
Speaker 2: way they do off liquid water. The waves tend to
Speaker 2: just scatter or pass right through it differently. So imagine
Speaker 2: a storm violently churning with massive baseball size hailstones, but
Speaker 2: with very little liquid water in that specific.
Speaker 1: Core, because all the water is frozen into hail exactly.
Speaker 2: Because there is no liquid to bounce the signal back,
Speaker 2: the radar only registers a super weak return. On the
Speaker 2: pilot's screen, this atomic bomb of a storm just showed
Speaker 2: up as a mild green or yellow patch suggesting light rain.
Speaker 2: The storm essentially wore a mask completely disguising as violent core.
Speaker 1: So they fly right into the mouth of the beast,
Speaker 1: thinking they are just passing through a light summer shower,
Speaker 1: and they hit a wall of turbulence. The noise of
Speaker 1: the hail pounding the fuselage is so loud the pilots
Speaker 1: can't even hear each other shouting.
Speaker 2: Just absolute chaos in there.
Speaker 1: And then, at about sixteen five hundred feet, dropping at
Speaker 1: a terrifying rate of fifteen hundred feet per minute. All
Speaker 1: the power cuts out, the engines swallow the hail and
Speaker 1: just die.
Speaker 2: The lights die, the passengers are plunged into absolute darkness.
Speaker 1: Yes, entirely surrounded by the deafening roar of ice hitting metal.
Speaker 2: And you have to remember, without power, the aircraft loses
Speaker 2: all communication with New Orleans air traffic Control. Their transponder
Speaker 2: stops broadcasting, meaning they literally vanish from the radar screens on.
Speaker 1: The ground, so nobody knows where they are or what's happening.
Speaker 2: Nope, up in the air, this multimillion dollar airliner has
Speaker 2: just become a heavy forty three ton glider. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you're wondering why they don't just turn the key
Speaker 2: to restart the engines. Jet engines do not work like
Speaker 2: car engines. You can't just crank them with a small battery.
Speaker 1: Right, So to restart a jet engine in mid air,
Speaker 1: you need the auxiliary power unit. It's basically a small
Speaker 1: jet engine located in the tail of the plane that
Speaker 1: acts as a backup generator exactly.
Speaker 2: The APU provides the immense electrical and pneumatic power needed
Speaker 2: to physically spin the massive turbofan engines. Fast enough so
Speaker 2: you can actually inject fuel and attempt to restart. But
Speaker 2: booting up the APU is not instantaneous.
Speaker 1: It takes thirty seconds, which doesn't sound like a long
Speaker 1: time until you think about it from the perspective of
Speaker 1: the people in that cockpit. You're sitting in the dark,
Speaker 1: in silence, falling out of the sky toward the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico, just counting the seconds, ten thirty.
Speaker 2: Every second must have felt like an hour.
Speaker 1: Right. Finally the APU picks on. The cockpit instruments flicker
Speaker 1: back to life. They hit the ignition down at about
Speaker 1: five thousand feet. The left engine catches, then the right
Speaker 1: engine catches. You can hear the massive fans rubbing up.
Speaker 1: The passengers actually start cheering in the cabin.
Speaker 2: Oh, the relief must have been totally overwhelming. The pilot
Speaker 2: immediately get back on the radio and tel air draffic control.
Speaker 2: They have successfully restarted both engines.
Speaker 1: But then Captain Dardano looks closely at his instrument panels.
Speaker 1: He feels the yoke. He says, I don't feel any power.
Speaker 1: Why don't I feel any power?
Speaker 2: Because the engines are running, they're making noise, but they're
Speaker 2: producing zero.
Speaker 1: Thrust, and then the warning alarms starts screaming all over again.
Speaker 1: The exhaust gas temperature gauges are completely maxing out, just
Speaker 1: pinning the needles to the red line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when he looked at those maxed out heat gauges,
Speaker 2: he realized they were caught in what aviation engineers call
Speaker 2: a hot start.
Speaker 1: A hot start? What is that?
Speaker 2: Exactly understand how terrifying a hot start is. We need
Speaker 2: to take a quick look at the anatomy of a
Speaker 2: jet engine. A jet engine essentially operates on four basic principles. Suck, squeeze, bang,
Speaker 2: and blow.
Speaker 1: Okay, suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
Speaker 2: Got it. The giant fan at the front sucks in air.
Speaker 2: The compressor section squeeze that air until it's highly pressurized.
Speaker 2: Then fuel is added in the combustion chamber where it ignites.
Speaker 2: That's the bang, and finally, that expanding burning gas shoots
Speaker 2: out the back, spinning a turbine on its way out.
Speaker 2: The blow, which is what actually produces the thrust.
Speaker 1: Okay, so think of it kind of like flooding a
Speaker 1: car engine when you pump the gas too much and
Speaker 1: it stalls out. But doing that in the sky has
Speaker 1: catastrophic consequences.
Speaker 2: Exactly when the engines flamed out in the storm, those
Speaker 2: massive fans at the front stop spinning properly. They were
Speaker 2: barely rotating, meaning they were no longer sucking in and
Speaker 2: squeezing enough air. So when the crew desperately hit the
Speaker 2: ignition to restart them, fuel flooded into the combustion chamber
Speaker 2: and ignited. But because there wasn't enough compressed air flowing
Speaker 2: through to push that massive fireball out the back, the
Speaker 2: intense fire just had nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: Oh man, so it just stays in there.
Speaker 2: It just sits there, migrating backward into the extremely delicate
Speaker 2: turbine section and literally begins melting the turbine blades from
Speaker 2: the inside out.
Speaker 1: So the engines are literally consuming themselves. They're melting their
Speaker 1: own vital components, and Captain Dardana realizes that if he
Speaker 1: lets this continue, the engines could catch fire, potentially burning
Speaker 1: right through the wing supports and destroying the entire aircraft, which.
Speaker 2: Leads him with an incredibly tough choice.
Speaker 1: Right so he is forced to make a gut wrenching decision.
Speaker 1: He reaches up and manually shuts down both engines for good.
Speaker 1: He purposely kills their only source of power.
Speaker 2: He turns his aircraft back into a dead stick glider,
Speaker 2: knowing full well they are now totally out of options
Speaker 2: for power. I mean it requires immense discipline to shut
Speaker 2: down an engine when you are already falling toward the ground.
Speaker 1: It really does. So we are now entering the final
Speaker 1: desperate phase of this flight. They are at three thousand feet,
Speaker 1: they are falling fast. New Orleans Lakefront Airport is eleven
Speaker 1: miles away. They just do not have the altitude to
Speaker 1: glide that far.
Speaker 2: No, not even close.
Speaker 1: Dardana gets back on the radio and tells the tower,
Speaker 1: I don't have any power in the engines. I guess
Speaker 1: we'll have to go down.
Speaker 2: And air traffic control is in an absolute panic, desperately
Speaker 2: scanning their maps for any stretch of concrete long enough
Speaker 2: to accommodate a Boeing seven thirty seven. They radio Dardano
Speaker 2: and tell him there's a straight stretch of Interstate Highway
Speaker 2: directly ahead of him at twelve o'clock, about seven miles out.
Speaker 1: But Dardana looks down through the weather and he knows
Speaker 1: that landing a commercial airliner on a freeway packed with
Speaker 1: cars is a recipe for absolute.
Speaker 2: Tragical it his aviation history.
Speaker 1: Eleven years prior, in nineteen seventy seven, a Southern Airways
Speaker 1: flight lost both of its engines in a massive thunderstorm
Speaker 1: and attempted to land on a rural highway in Georgia.
Speaker 1: It was a complete disaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that crash was horrific.
Speaker 1: The plane hit a gas station and a convenience store.
Speaker 1: Sixty three people died on the plane and nine people
Speaker 1: in cars on the ground were killed. Dardana refuses to
Speaker 1: repeat that history. He tells the tower no way.
Speaker 2: He makes the calculated, incredibly brave choice to aim away
Speaker 2: from populated areas. He informs a tower he's going to
Speaker 2: ditch the aircraft in a large canal.
Speaker 1: Back in the cabin, Liebermeister is watching the flight attendants.
Speaker 1: She sees their body language completely Lee change. She later
Speaker 1: described it as an unmistakable doomsday feeling.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: The crew yells for everyone to assume the crash position.
Speaker 1: Lee has to bend forward, pressing her chest toward her knees.
Speaker 1: She is absolutely terrified that the sheer force of a
Speaker 1: water landing is going to violently burst her fresh surgical
Speaker 1: stitches wide.
Speaker 2: Open and Meanwhile, the coastguard is immediately deployed. The control
Speaker 2: tower assumes the plane is going into the water, which
Speaker 2: is notoriously dangerous for airliners. I mean, water does not compress,
Speaker 2: and hitting it at one hundred and fifty miles per
Speaker 2: hour often tears airplanes to pieces.
Speaker 1: But then, at the very last second, First Officer Dionysio
Speaker 1: Lopez looks out the right window and spots something running
Speaker 1: parallel to the canal they are aiming for is a
Speaker 1: narrow grass levee. Lopez points it out and Dardana makes
Speaker 1: a split second decision. He says, that's where we're going
Speaker 1: to go in.
Speaker 2: But here's the massive problem with that plan. They're only
Speaker 2: at seven hundred feet. The ground is literally rushing up
Speaker 2: at them, the levee is off to their right, and
Speaker 2: they are moving way too fast.
Speaker 1: So how do they get there?
Speaker 2: To make this landing? Dardano has to execute a violent,
Speaker 2: dramatic maneuver known as a side slip.
Speaker 1: Okay, hang on a side slip. If you know anything
Speaker 1: about commercial aviation, A side slip and a forty three
Speaker 1: ton airliner so completely impossible. Isn't that a trick reserved
Speaker 1: for tiny stunt planes? Or small gliders.
Speaker 2: Yes, attempting a side slip in a commercial airliner borders
Speaker 2: on aerodynamic madness. To perform a side slip, the pilot
Speaker 2: deliberately crosses the flight controls. They press the rudder pedal
Speaker 2: hard in one direction to yaw the nose away from
Speaker 2: the flight path, while simultaneously turning the yoke in the
Speaker 2: opposite direction to roll the wings, so.
Speaker 1: He's basically sliding the massive plane sideways through the air exactly.
Speaker 2: This points the side of the airplane's fuselage directly into
Speaker 2: the oncoming wind. The massive side profile of a Boeing
Speaker 2: seven thirty seven acts like a giant air brake. It
Speaker 2: creates tremendous aerodynamic drag, allowing the plane to bleed off
Speaker 2: altitude extremely rapidly without picking up forward air speed.
Speaker 1: So to muscle a f forty three ton jet into
Speaker 1: a side slip, drop it precisely onto a narrow strip
Speaker 1: of grass, all while missing an eye, dodging a high
Speaker 1: concrete wall at the front of the levee, and knowing
Speaker 1: you have absolutely no engine thrust a throw into reverse
Speaker 1: to slow you down on the wet grass. I mean,
Speaker 1: it demands an almost superhuman level of piloting skill.
Speaker 2: It really does. It's legendary.
Speaker 1: He holds the slip until the last possible second, kicks
Speaker 1: the nose straight, and touches down. One wheel hits the grass,
Speaker 1: then the other. The automatic spoilers pop up on the
Speaker 1: wings to kill the remaining lift. The passengers brace for
Speaker 1: a horrific impact, but Lee Burmeister later described the touchdown
Speaker 1: as unbelievably smooth.
Speaker 2: That's incredible path.
Speaker 1: There wasn't even a heavy bump. The plane skids along
Speaker 1: the wet grass. The pilot's just standing on the wheel
Speaker 1: brakes and comes to a complete safe halt just before
Speaker 1: the end of the levee. Everyone is alive. Lee's surgical
Speaker 1: stitches are perfectly intact. It is nothing short of a miracle.
Speaker 2: It really is. Once the adrenaline wears off and the
Speaker 2: passengers evacuate down the emergency slides, the immediate crisis concludes.
Speaker 2: But you know, the arrival of the federal investigators signals
Speaker 2: the beginning of a massive, industry wide mystery.
Speaker 1: Totally, and the actual location of their landing adds a
Speaker 1: bizarre twist to the story. They managed to land on
Speaker 1: a grass levee that just happened to be located on
Speaker 1: the grounds of the NASA Micheaux Assembly Facility, which is
Speaker 1: the exact location where they manufacture the massive external fuel
Speaker 1: tanks for the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talk about a coincidence.
Speaker 1: So you have this pristine, multimillion dollar Boeing seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven sitting on NASA's front lawn like a parked car.
Speaker 1: But the problem is it's incredibly heavy and it's slowly
Speaker 1: starting to sink into the soft, muddy earth of the levee.
Speaker 2: Right, So the airline and the investigators had to figure
Speaker 2: out how to retrieve the aircraft. Disassembling a brand new
Speaker 2: jet would cause millions of dollars in damage. Putting it
Speaker 2: on a barge to float it away proved logistically impossible, So.
Speaker 1: They decign on the most outrageous solution imaginable. They are
Speaker 1: going to fly it off the grass.
Speaker 2: I love this part.
Speaker 1: Mechanics actually replaced the cooked right engine right there in
Speaker 1: the mud. They strip the plane of every single outs
Speaker 1: of excess weight, removing passenger seats, galley equipment, and dreading
Speaker 1: all but the absolute minimum amount of fuel needed.
Speaker 2: Just getting it as light as physically possible exactly.
Speaker 1: They bring in specialized Boeing test pilots and incredibly they
Speaker 1: spool up the engines, tear down this short three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty five meter grass strip, and successfully take off,
Speaker 1: flying the plane the short distance to the airport in
Speaker 1: New Orleans. It is the wildest epilogue to a crash
Speaker 1: landing in aviation history.
Speaker 2: It is wild. But while the plane is saved, the
Speaker 2: investigators in the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA
Speaker 2: are deeply troubled. The engines in that plane were the
Speaker 2: CFM fifty six model. These engines were renowned for their reliability.
Speaker 1: They were used everywhere, right everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they powered not just the Boeing seven thirty seven,
Speaker 2: but airbus airliners and military tanker planes around the globe.
Speaker 2: So flying through heavy rain and hail can cause a
Speaker 2: dual engine failure. Thousands of planes flying every single time,
Speaker 2: they are at immediate catastrophic risk.
Speaker 1: To solve this, investigators ship the damaged engines to the
Speaker 1: General Electric Testing Finality in Ohio. GE designed these engines
Speaker 1: and they have specialized rigs for testing them under extreme conditions. Right,
Speaker 1: the investigators recreate the FAA's stripped standard for water ingestion testing.
Speaker 1: They fire up the engine and blast it with high
Speaker 1: speed water from massive cannons, literally simulating flying through a
Speaker 1: torrential downpour.
Speaker 2: They spray unbelievable amounts of water directly into the roaring
Speaker 2: fan blades, and the engines perform flawlessly. They do not stutter,
Speaker 2: they do not lose RPMs.
Speaker 1: So the investigators are scratching their heads. They know the
Speaker 1: plane got battered by hail. I mean the dents on
Speaker 1: the nose of the plane prove it. So they calculate
Speaker 1: the massive volume of one inch hal the plane must
Speaker 1: have encountered in that specific.
Speaker 2: Storm cell, which is a huge amount of ice.
Speaker 1: Yes, they convert that solid ice volume into a liquid
Speaker 1: water equivalent, and they blast the engines again, flooding them
Speaker 1: with even more water than before. Fill the engines hum
Speaker 1: along perfectly.
Speaker 2: This is where the frustration really sets in for an
Speaker 2: AXIT investigator. According to the strict FAA rulebook and all
Speaker 2: their scientific models, this dual engine failure should be impossible.
Speaker 2: The engine was designed to swallow a virtual monsoon without choking, right,
Speaker 2: So if the test prove the design works, what crucial
Speaker 2: variable are they missing?
Speaker 1: Well, Their investigators use a borescope, which is a long
Speaker 1: flexible camera on a wire to look deep inside the
Speaker 1: engine components. They are looking for physical damage from the ice.
Speaker 1: Did a hailstone crack a compressor blade? Did ice smash
Speaker 1: a sensor? But they find absolutely nothing, nothing at all.
Speaker 1: The compressor blades are pristine. The only damage is the
Speaker 1: melted turbine blades at the back, which they already know
Speaker 1: was caused by the hot start after the initial failure.
Speaker 1: So what the heck caused the flames to go out
Speaker 1: in the first place.
Speaker 2: The big breakthrough, that sort of aha moment, comes when
Speaker 2: they analyze the data from the flight data recorder, the
Speaker 2: black box. The investigators look at the exact operational parameters
Speaker 2: at the airplane in the minutes just before they entered the.
Speaker 1: Store, and what do they find?
Speaker 2: They noticed something vital. Air Traffic control had just cleared
Speaker 2: TACA one to ten to descend from their cruising altitude
Speaker 2: down to four thousand feet.
Speaker 1: Okay, and when a plane is cleared to descend, the
Speaker 1: pilot doesn't just point the nose down. The auto throttle
Speaker 1: automatically pulls back the power to slow the plane down
Speaker 1: as it drops. The flight data shows that just as
Speaker 1: they hit the storm, the engines were throttled down to
Speaker 1: roughly thirty five percent.
Speaker 2: Power, you were essentially running at idle speed right.
Speaker 1: So, armed with this new variable, the investigators go back
Speaker 1: to the ge test facility in Ohio. They run the
Speaker 1: massive water and hail ingestion test one more time, but
Speaker 1: this time, instead of running the engine at full cruising power,
Speaker 1: they dial the engine speed all the way down to
Speaker 1: thirty five percent. Yep, they turn on the water cannons and.
Speaker 2: The engines fail almost immediately. The flame is snuffed out
Speaker 2: and the engine just dies.
Speaker 1: It's a stunning revelation. But if you are not an
Speaker 1: aerospace engineer, you might be wondering why the speed of
Speaker 1: the engine matters so much. Why does a slow engine
Speaker 1: die when a fast engine survives the exact same amount
Speaker 1: of water.
Speaker 2: It comes down to the physics of centrifugal force. At
Speaker 2: high speeds, like during takeoff or normal cruising, the giant
Speaker 2: fan blades at the front of the engine are spinning
Speaker 2: incredibly fast. Ok So when heavy rain or hail hits
Speaker 2: those fast moving blades, centrifugal force acts like a centrifuge.
Speaker 2: It physically flings the heavy water and ice outward away
Speaker 2: from the delicate hot core in the center of the engine.
Speaker 2: The ice gets thrown into the bypass duct, which is
Speaker 2: the outer ring of the engine, where it just flows
Speaker 2: harmlessly out the back.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, But at low speeds, like during
Speaker 1: a descent, when the engines are idling at thirty five percent,
Speaker 1: those fan blades are spinning much much.
Speaker 2: Slower exactly, and slower blades mean significantly less centrifical force.
Speaker 2: The hailstones, carrying massive velocity and momentum from the storm
Speaker 2: were not flung outward. Instead, they were able to slip
Speaker 2: right through the physical gaps between the slower moving fan blades. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they hail bypassed the outer duck entirely and dumped straight
Speaker 2: into the blazing hot core the engine. Once inside the compressor,
Speaker 2: that massive volume hiz instantly melted into an overwhelming flood
Speaker 2: of water, completely drowning the combustion chamber and snuffing out
Speaker 2: the fire.
Speaker 1: It was basically an issue of terrible catastrophic timing. The
Speaker 1: storm caught them at the exact moment their armor was down.
Speaker 1: They were most vulnerable because they were doing exactly what
Speaker 1: they were supposed to be doing descending.
Speaker 2: Once the investigators understood this specific mechanism. The fix was
Speaker 2: remarkably straightforward. Aviation safety is highly collaborative. When a flaw
Speaker 2: is found, the industry moves quickly.
Speaker 1: Did they have to completely redesign the engine?
Speaker 2: No, they didn't have to completely redesign the entire engine. Instead,
Speaker 2: engineers slightly reshaped the engine nose cones the spinner at
Speaker 2: the very front, and tweaked the spacing and angle of
Speaker 2: the fan blades to ensure they deflected hail outward into
Speaker 2: the bypass duct even at low idle speeds.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's smart.
Speaker 2: And they also added X bleed doors to the engine corps,
Speaker 2: which acted like drains to expel excess water much faster
Speaker 2: if it did somehow manage to get inside, and.
Speaker 1: The solution worked flawlessly. Within a year, every Boeing seven
Speaker 1: thirty seven three hundred in the world was retrofitted with
Speaker 1: these mechanical upgrades. Because of this investigation, that exact engine
Speaker 1: failure scenario has never happened again.
Speaker 2: As for the human legacy of this flight, Captain Carlos
Speaker 2: Stardano was rightfully celebrated as an absolute hero. He saved
Speaker 2: forty five lives that day, executing a maneuver with one
Speaker 2: eye that most pilots would struggle to perform in a
Speaker 2: computerized simulator totally. His legacy lives on in his family today.
Speaker 2: Both his son and daughter have actually followed it in
Speaker 2: his footsteps and fly as commercial pilots themselves.
Speaker 1: That is so cool, and Lee Burmeister made at home.
Speaker 1: She survived an unpowered ditching in a commercial airliner, sliding
Speaker 1: sideways onto a muddy levee without popping a single stitch
Speaker 1: in her stomach.
Speaker 2: The story of TACA one to ten stands as an
Speaker 2: incredible testament to two things, the sheer resilience and skill
Speaker 2: of human beings under unimaginable pressure, and the rigorous, unyielding
Speaker 2: nature of modern accident investigation. They refuse to stop testing
Speaker 2: until they found the truth.
Speaker 1: It really is a masterclass and problem solving. You know,
Speaker 1: looking back at all the technical details and the sheer
Speaker 1: terror of this flight, there's a lingering thought I cannot
Speaker 1: quite shake. What's that When we face a crisis, or
Speaker 1: when we see turbulence ahead, we always assume that slowing down,
Speaker 1: throttling back and descending is the safest course of action.
Speaker 1: You pull back the power to get closer to the ground,
Speaker 1: to find.
Speaker 2: Safety, right it's instinctual.
Speaker 1: But in this case, the very act of reducing power,
Speaker 1: the standard universally accepted, perfectly safe procedure for descent, was
Speaker 1: exactly the thing that made the plane vulnerable to the ice.
Speaker 1: It is the action that almost brought them down.
Speaker 2: That's a fascinating point.
Speaker 1: It leaves you wondering, you know, in your own life,
Speaker 1: how often do the standard quote unquote safe procedures you
Speaker 1: rely on every day actually blind you to the unique,
Speaker 1: invisible storms you're flying right into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes the mask of storm wears isn't just a
Speaker 2: technological glitch on a radar screen. Sometimes the true danger
Speaker 2: is hidden right in the false comfort of our own routine.
Speaker 1: Keep your eyes open out there. We will see you
Speaker 1: on the next deep dive.