Speaker 1: Picture this. You know, you're cruising at two thousand feet
Speaker 1: on the state of the art jumbo jet. Right It's
Speaker 1: December nineteen seventy two, and it is a pitch black
Speaker 1: night over the Florida Everglades, just incredibly dark out there, exactly.
Speaker 1: But inside the cabin, I mean, it's completely peaceful. The
Speaker 1: massive engines are just this low, reassuring hum Passengers are chatting.
Speaker 1: You hear ice clinking and plastic cups. People are putting
Speaker 1: away their books, just getting ready to land in Miami.
Speaker 2: It feels completely safe.
Speaker 1: It really feels like the safest place in the world.
Speaker 1: But right below them, completely unseen in that darkness, is
Speaker 1: a harsh, alligator infested swamp. Yeah, and in just a
Speaker 1: few moments, this seemingly perfect, mechanically flawless aircraft is going
Speaker 1: to plunge directly into the mud at nearly two hundred
Speaker 1: miles an hour.
Speaker 2: It is a profoundly terrifying image. What always strikes me
Speaker 2: about that specific moment in aviation history is the absolute disconnect.
Speaker 1: Disconnect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have this total calm inside that pressurized aluminum tube,
Speaker 2: which is just completely divorced from the grim reality of
Speaker 2: what the aerodynamics and you know, the altimeter are actually
Speaker 2: doing right right.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly our mission for you today on this
Speaker 1: deep dive. Okay, let's unpack this. We are opening up
Speaker 1: a stack of harrowing real life aviation case.
Speaker 2: Files and we really need to look at them closely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we aren't just here to recount the tragedies,
Speaker 1: you know, we are stepping into the shoes of forensic investigators.
Speaker 1: We want to reconstruct these scenes, uncover the hidden, often microscopic,
Speaker 1: chain reactions that lead to catastrophic failures.
Speaker 2: Which is so important because a commercial airplane crash is
Speaker 2: almost never just a single, isolated failure. The redundancies that
Speaker 2: are built into these machines are staggering, so an investigation
Speaker 2: usually reveals a sequence of small, compounding errors, like a
Speaker 2: chain reaction. You know. It's where human psychology and mechanical
Speaker 2: engineering suddenly find themselves speaking completely different languages.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is just wild to think about. So
Speaker 1: to start pulling on those threads, I want to look
Speaker 1: at scenarios where the airframe itself was perfectly healthy, like
Speaker 1: the engines were firing smoothly, but the inputs, the very
Speaker 1: eyes and ears of the aircraft fed the crew deadly lies.
Speaker 2: Right, And the textbook case for this is Bursion Air
Speaker 2: flight three to zero one. Oh yeah, So we're in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six on a Boeing seven fifty seven and
Speaker 2: it's climbing out of the Dominican Republic at night. It's
Speaker 2: a heavy aircraft, it's full of passengers heading back to Europe.
Speaker 2: But almost immediately after rotation, like as they pitch up
Speaker 2: into the dark sky, the cockpit absolutely explodes with conflicting alarms.
Speaker 1: Oh. I've actually read the transcripts for this one, and
Speaker 1: it is just pure sensory overload. You have the stick
Speaker 1: shaker activating, which physically rattles the control column to warn
Speaker 1: of an impending aerodynamic stall, right, because the plane thinks
Speaker 1: it's flying dangerously slow. Yes, But simultaneously you have this
Speaker 1: blaring alarms creaming overspeed, warning the crew they are accelerating
Speaker 1: past the structural limits of the airframe.
Speaker 2: It's madness.
Speaker 1: The instruments are essentially telling the pilots you're falling out
Speaker 1: of the sky, but you're also about to tear the
Speaker 1: wings off from going too fast. Like, how does a
Speaker 1: human brain even process that?
Speaker 2: Well, the short answer is it generally doesn't. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's an impossible paradox. What's fascinating here is how the
Speaker 2: brain reacts. The captain looks at his airspeed indicator and
Speaker 2: it shows them pushing three hundred and fifty knots, which
Speaker 2: is way too fast for that phase of flight. Right,
Speaker 2: But the first officer's gauge shows them dropping below two
Speaker 2: hundred knots, which is dangerously slow. So, in that moment
Speaker 2: of sheer cognitive overload, the captain decides to trust his
Speaker 2: own gauge.
Speaker 1: He assumes he's going too fast.
Speaker 2: Exactly, he pulls back the throttles to slow down, but
Speaker 2: his gauge was the one feeding him the lie. The
Speaker 2: plane was actually already flying too slowly, so by cutting
Speaker 2: the power, he inadvertently stalls the aircraft. It rolls over
Speaker 2: and falls into the Caribbean Sea.
Speaker 1: Wow, but wait, how does some modern redundant Boeing seven
Speaker 1: fifty seven get completely confused about its own forward speed?
Speaker 1: I mean, the systems are designed to cross check each other.
Speaker 2: Right they are. Yeah, but this wasn't a software glitch.
Speaker 2: It was biological biological Yeah. When investigators eventually recovered the wreckage,
Speaker 2: they found the culprit hiding inside the pinto tubes.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: See, the plane had been parked on the tarmac for
Speaker 2: several weeks, and standard maintenance procedures which involved putting these
Speaker 2: bright protective covers over the picto tubes, had just been ignored,
Speaker 2: of course, And during that time, a tiny insect called
Speaker 2: a mud dauber wast found this small hollow metal tube
Speaker 2: on the captain's side and just built a nest of
Speaker 2: hardened mud right inside it.
Speaker 1: So the tube is completely blocked.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if no air is ramming into the tube,
Speaker 1: shouldn't the air speed just read zero? Why did it
Speaker 1: scream overspeed?
Speaker 2: That's the fascinating physics of it, honestly. Okay, the wasp
Speaker 2: sealed the tube while the plane was at sea level,
Speaker 2: which trapped a pocket of dense sea level air inside
Speaker 2: the system.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: I see, yeah, So as the seven to fifty seven
Speaker 2: climbed higher into the atmosphere, the outside ambient pressure naturally dropped,
Speaker 2: but that t wrapped air inside the pidow tube stayed
Speaker 2: at sea.
Speaker 1: Level pressure, so it's pushing outward.
Speaker 2: Exactly relative to the thin air outside. That trapped pocket
Speaker 2: of air acted like a balloon expanding inside the instrument.
Speaker 2: The higher the plane climbed, the more that trapped air
Speaker 2: pushed against the sensors, which trick the computer into thinking
Speaker 2: the aircraft was just continuously accelerating.
Speaker 1: That is just wild. The higher they go, the faster
Speaker 1: the computer thinks they are flying solely because of the
Speaker 1: pressure differential exactly.
Speaker 2: And this highlights a critical vulnerability. You know, we are
Speaker 2: rigorously trained to trust our instruments, but when a machine
Speaker 2: presents a fatal contradiction like that, the human tendency is
Speaker 2: to fixate on the most aggressive warning.
Speaker 1: Right, which in this case was the overspeed. Yep. It
Speaker 1: actually reminds me of another one, Southern Airways Flight two
Speaker 1: forty two.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a classic example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is nineteen seventy seven at DC nine, flying
Speaker 1: over Georgia, and we see another catastrophic lie fed to
Speaker 1: a crew. But this time, you know, it wasn't a
Speaker 1: wasp blocking a censor, it was the weather radar lyning
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 2: Yes. So the crew is flying right toward this massive,
Speaker 2: violent squall line and they are analyzing their monochrome weather
Speaker 2: radar screen in the cockpit and they spot a dark
Speaker 2: area what looks to them like a clear alleyway, like
Speaker 2: a safe passage directly through the thunderhead. So they aim
Speaker 2: the DC nine right for the gap.
Speaker 1: But I don't understand how a commercial weather radar just
Speaker 1: misses a hurricane level cell. I mean, did the equipment fail.
Speaker 2: Well, so the equipment actually functioned exactly as designed, really, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it fell victim to an atmospheric illusion known as
Speaker 2: signal attenuation.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is that?
Speaker 2: So the radar works by sending out microwave pulses and
Speaker 2: measuring how they bounce off water droplets. Think of it
Speaker 2: like shining a flashlight into a room filled with heavy
Speaker 2: smoke and there's a mirror in there. Okay, the light
Speaker 2: hits the first dense layer and bounces right back to you,
Speaker 2: which blinds you to whatever is hiding behind it. In
Speaker 2: this squall line, the rain and hail at the leading
Speaker 2: edge were so violently thick that the raidarways entirely bounced
Speaker 2: off that front wall.
Speaker 1: Oh man, So the radar simply didn't have the energy
Speaker 1: to penetrate the storm because nothing bounced back from the center.
Speaker 1: The screen just panted it as empty black space.
Speaker 2: Precisely, so they flew directly into the most destructive core
Speaker 2: of a monster storm. Thinking it was a gap wow,
Speaker 2: and suddenly the aircraft is being hammered by baseball sized hail.
Speaker 2: The sound on the cockpit voice recorder is just deafening.
Speaker 2: Like survivors described it as being trapped inside a tin
Speaker 2: drum while someone throws boulders at it.
Speaker 1: That sounds absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 2: It was. The hail actually shattered the thick, multi layered
Speaker 2: cockpit windshield, But the fatal blow was aerodynamic.
Speaker 1: Right, because jet engines are basically massive vacuums. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they can handle heavy rain, but solid ice
Speaker 1: blocks of that size, it.
Speaker 2: Was just way too much mass. The engines ingested so
Speaker 2: much hail and water that it disrupted the smooth laminar
Speaker 2: airflow through the intake. Oh no, yeah, the hail physically
Speaker 2: form the engine towelings and damage the internal bleed valves.
Speaker 2: When that smooth flow of air breaks down inside a
Speaker 2: jet engine, you get what's called a compressor stall, which
Speaker 2: is bad, very bad. The internal pressure violently surges backward.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a controlled explosion going the wrong way,
Speaker 2: which bent and shattered the heavy steel compressor blades. So
Speaker 2: both engines flamed out completely, meaning.
Speaker 1: They turned a fully loaded forty ton commercial airliner into
Speaker 1: a glider at fourteen thousand feet exactly. I know. The
Speaker 1: crew made an incredibly desperate dead stick landing onto a
Speaker 1: rural highway in New Hope, Georgia, and tragically seventy two
Speaker 1: people died.
Speaker 2: It's a heartbreaking case, it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine driving down a pitch black highway. Your
Speaker 1: GPS is screaming at you to turn right. Your speedometer
Speaker 1: says you're going one hundred and fifty miles an hour,
Speaker 1: but your car is physically shaking like it's about to stall.
Speaker 1: You just don't know what to believe. If the sensors lie,
Speaker 1: the humans die.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly why these crashes revolutionize the industry. You know,
Speaker 2: burgeon are changed how we train pilts to isolate unreliable
Speaker 2: airspeed data and just fly the aircraft using known peugein
Speaker 2: power settings and Southern airways directly led to the FAA
Speaker 2: mandating high definition color weather radar. Today, the radar differentiates
Speaker 2: between moderate rain and severe hail cores, which virtually eliminates
Speaker 2: that deadly shadow of signal attenuation.
Speaker 1: So we see how bad data can freeze a pilot's brain.
Speaker 1: But what happens when the data in the cockpit is
Speaker 1: completely accurate, and the brain just chooses to ignore it,
Speaker 1: which brings us back to the flight from the beginning
Speaker 1: of our deep dive Eastern Airlines Flight four oh one
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: This is perhaps the ultimate study and fatal distraction. As
Speaker 2: you mentioned that L ten eleven was the absolute pinnacle
Speaker 2: of aviation tech at the time.
Speaker 1: State of the r exactly.
Speaker 2: So, they are on approach to Miami. The crew drops
Speaker 2: the landing gear, but one single twenty cent light bulb
Speaker 2: on the instrument panel fails to illuminate. Oh Man, the
Speaker 2: green light indicating the nose gears locked down just stays.
Speaker 1: Dark a twenty cent bulb. So the crew borts the landing,
Speaker 1: climbs up to two thousand feet, puts the plane on autopilot,
Speaker 1: and they just circle out over the pitch black Everglades
Speaker 1: to troubleshoot. And then the entire flight crew, the captain,
Speaker 1: the first officer, the flight engineer, and even a visiting
Speaker 1: maintenance specialist who happened to be in the jump seat,
Speaker 1: they all become hyper fixated on this one tiny piece
Speaker 1: of plastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they really do. The flight engineer actually physically climbs
Speaker 2: down into this small avionics bay beneath the cockpit called
Speaker 2: the hell hole to try and visually confirm the gear
Speaker 2: is down through a tiny window. Wow, and up in
Speaker 2: the cogpit, the captain is violently tugging at the jammed
Speaker 2: light bulb assembly, and in his frustration, you know, he
Speaker 2: turns around to speak to the engineer, and as he does,
Speaker 2: he leans on his control yoke. It was just a
Speaker 2: slight inadvertent pressure on the column.
Speaker 1: But wait, why did the autopilot fight him? Like if
Speaker 1: I try to steer my car out of the lane
Speaker 1: while anisis is on, it actively pushes back.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. It's because of how autopilots were
Speaker 2: designed in the early nineteen seventies. The L ten eleven
Speaker 2: had a mode called control wheel steering or CWS. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the logic programmed into the computer was that if a
Speaker 2: pilot applies a specific amount of physical force to the yoke,
Speaker 2: the autopilot just assumes the human actively wants manual control. Interesting,
Speaker 2: it doesn't blare a warning horn or anything. It just
Speaker 2: quietly disconnects the altitude hold, assuming the pilot is now
Speaker 2: flying the pitch of the aircraft.
Speaker 1: So the plane just starts a painfully slow, uncommanded descent,
Speaker 1: dropping from two thousand feet down to one thousand down
Speaker 1: to five hundred yep. And because it's a moonless night
Speaker 1: over a totally dark swamp, they are basically flying in
Speaker 1: a black hole. There are no city lights rising in
Speaker 1: the window to give them a sense of the horizon.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, the aircraft actually did try to
Speaker 2: warn them.
Speaker 1: It did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, As they drifted below their assigned altitude, a chime,
Speaker 2: the sea cord altitude alert sounded in the cockpit. It's
Speaker 2: clearly audible on the cockpit voice recorder, just ringing out
Speaker 2: from the speaker right behind the flight engineer's seat.
Speaker 1: Nobody reacted. I mean, why did they just not care?
Speaker 2: No, their brains literally deleted the sound.
Speaker 1: What do you mean.
Speaker 2: It's a psychological phenomenon called inattentional blindness or, in this
Speaker 2: specific case, inattentional deafness.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: When the human brain dedicates one hundred percent of its
Speaker 2: cognitive bandwidth to a single high stress focal point, like
Speaker 2: a jammed light bulb assembly, it acts like a filter.
Speaker 2: It actively blocks out secondary sensory inputs.
Speaker 1: That is wild.
Speaker 2: They didn't just ignore the chime, their conscious minds never
Speaker 2: even heard it until it was too late.
Speaker 1: I mean, the plane glided right into the swamp and
Speaker 1: the aftermath was horrific, jet fuel everywhere, Survivors trapped in
Speaker 1: the mud, facing down alligators and deadly swamp bacteria in
Speaker 1: the pit's black.
Speaker 2: It was a nightmare scenario.
Speaker 1: It really was. Real life. Heroes like Bob Marcus rushed
Speaker 1: out on airboats to pull people from the water. And
Speaker 1: you know, the absolute tragic irony of it all is
Speaker 1: that the NTSB found the landing gear was perfectly fine.
Speaker 1: It was locked the whole time. Only the twenty cent
Speaker 1: bulb had burned out. Here's where it gets really interesting, though,
Speaker 1: because this crash changed how crews operate.
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, This tragedy exposed a massive cultural flaw in aviation.
Speaker 2: You had a highly experienced crew but completely flatlined situational awareness. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it birthed CRM crew resource management. It fundamentally restructured cockpit hierarchy.
Speaker 2: Before CRM, the captain's word was absolute law, right, he
Speaker 2: was basically God on the flight deck.
Speaker 1: Right. Whatever he says goes exactly.
Speaker 2: So if the captain focused on a light bulb, everyone
Speaker 2: focused on the light bulb. CRM mandated that no matter
Speaker 2: what goes wrong, someone must be explicitly assigned to fly
Speaker 2: the airplane, and junior crew members are required to vocalized threats.
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. But you know, distraction isn't just
Speaker 1: a danger inside the cockpit. It's just as fatal when
Speaker 1: it happens on the ground.
Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 1: Let's look at nineteen eighty six Aero Mexico flight four
Speaker 1: ninety eight. It's a beautiful, crystal clear Labor Day weekend
Speaker 1: over Cirito's California and Air Mexico DC nine is descending
Speaker 1: toward Lax, but simultaneously, a private Piper Cherokee strays directly
Speaker 1: into the highly restricted terminal control area around Lax without clearance.
Speaker 2: Right and down on the ground, an air traffic controller
Speaker 2: named Walter White is managing the radar screen. But just
Speaker 2: as the DC nine and the Piper Cherokee are converging,
Speaker 2: White's attention is abruptly hijacked by a third plane.
Speaker 1: Wait, a third plane, Yeah, a.
Speaker 2: Grumm and Tiger that also wandered into his restricted airspace
Speaker 2: and is actively calling for help on the radio.
Speaker 1: Oh man, So White gets into a long drawn out
Speaker 1: radio conversation with this Grumman pilot to guide him out. Yes,
Speaker 1: and while his eyes are locked on that one radar target,
Speaker 1: he completely misses the piper Cherokee merging with the Aero
Speaker 1: Mexico jet. And here's my question. This was a perfectly clear,
Speaker 1: sunny California day. I know we talk about radar limitations,
Speaker 1: but why didn't the pilots just look out the window?
Speaker 2: I mean it seems obvious, right, but the human eye
Speaker 2: has severe biological imitations, specifically regarding angular resolution and something
Speaker 2: called empty field myopia.
Speaker 1: Empty field myopia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when pilots scan a futureless blue sky, the
Speaker 2: eyes naturally focus at a resting distance of just a
Speaker 2: few meters, making it incredibly difficult to spot a distant object.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, a piper Cherokee and a DC nine approaching each
Speaker 2: other at a combined closure rate of over four hundred
Speaker 2: miles an hour means they cover a mile in just seconds.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The piper just remains this microscopic speck on the windshield.
Speaker 2: It doesn't trigger the brain's motion detection peripheral vision because
Speaker 2: they are on a direct collision course, meaning there is
Speaker 2: no relative lateral movement.
Speaker 1: It just looks stationary exactly.
Speaker 2: By the time the piper blossoms in the windshield into
Speaker 2: a recognizable shape, the pilots had less than two seconds
Speaker 2: to react.
Speaker 1: And aerodynamically, two seconds is nothing. The piper slammed directly
Speaker 1: into the horizontal stabilizer of the DC nine's tail. It
Speaker 1: ripped the entire tail assembly clean off the airline.
Speaker 2: Which is catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Once you lose the horizonal stabilizer, you lose all
Speaker 1: pitch control. Yeah, the DC nine essentially becomes a lawn dart.
Speaker 1: Both aircraft plummeted into a suburban neighborhood, killing eighty two people,
Speaker 1: including fifteen on the ground.
Speaker 2: It was a horrific wake up call. That collision proved
Speaker 2: that the FAA's see and avoid strategy was just completely
Speaker 2: inadequate for modern speeds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Clearly.
Speaker 2: It actually forced Congress to mandate TCS, the traffic Collision
Speaker 2: Avoidance system. It required all commercial jets to actively interrogate
Speaker 2: the transponders of nearby aircraft.
Speaker 1: How does that work?
Speaker 2: The computers basically calculate the closure rate and if a
Speaker 2: collision is imminent, TCAs physically speaks to the pilots and
Speaker 2: the copkit, commanding one to climb climb and the other
Speaker 2: to descend, descend. It completely removes the distracted human from
Speaker 2: the detection loop.
Speaker 1: That is brilliant. So, okay, we've covered humans being fed
Speaker 1: bad data and human suffering from fatal distraction. I wanted
Speaker 1: to transition into our final phase. What happens when the
Speaker 1: human does everything perfectly right, but the machine itself harbors
Speaker 1: a deadly microscopic flaw right.
Speaker 2: We call this the ghost in machine. To understand it,
Speaker 2: we look at China Airlines flight zero zero six in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Okay, set the scene for us.
Speaker 2: So a massive seven forty seven is cruising over the
Speaker 2: Pacific Ocean and the dead of night at forty one
Speaker 2: thousand feet and suddenly engine number four flames out.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously a seven forty seven can fly perfectly fine
Speaker 1: on three engines right, but the loss of thrust on
Speaker 1: the far right wing means the plane naturally wants to
Speaker 1: yaw or twist heavily to the right exactly. The standard
Speaker 1: procedure is to manually step on the left rudder pedal
Speaker 1: to counter that twisting force and keep the nose pointed
Speaker 1: straight but the captain leads the autopilot engaged for too long.
Speaker 1: Why didn't the autopilot just.
Speaker 2: Step on the rudder for him, Because on that generation
Speaker 2: of the seven forty seven, the autopilot was completely isolated
Speaker 2: from the rudder controls.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, couldn't move the tail at all to fight the yaw.
Speaker 2: The autopilot only used the ailerons, you know, the control
Speaker 2: surfaces on the trailing edge of the wings, to try
Speaker 2: and bank the plane level. Yeah, but aero dynamic forces
Speaker 2: are unforgiving. The ailerons eventually hit their maximum mechanical deflection
Speaker 2: and they simply weren't strong enough to fight the massive
Speaker 2: asymmetric thrust of the engines.
Speaker 1: Wow. So the plane slowly banks steeper and steeper to
Speaker 1: the right until it literally rolls over onto its back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It plunges into a terrifying graveyard spiral, dropping thirty thousand
Speaker 1: feet in mere seconds.
Speaker 2: Just a total loss of control.
Speaker 1: And the g forces build so intensely that passengers are
Speaker 1: pinned flat against the floorboards, pulling up to five g's
Speaker 1: up in the cockpit, the crew is completely disoriented in
Speaker 1: the thick clouds. I mean, a seven forty seven is
Speaker 1: not designed to fly inverted, so their instruments are spinning wildly.
Speaker 2: They are totally blind, but then plummeting through nine thy
Speaker 2: five hundred feet they punch through the bottom of the
Speaker 2: cloud deck. In goodness, Yeah, the captain finally sees the
Speaker 2: faint line of the ocean horizon, and in a masterpiece
Speaker 2: of sheer physical flying, Captain hoe wrestles this massively damaged,
Speaker 2: structurally tearing aircraft out of the dive just seconds before
Speaker 2: impacting the water.
Speaker 1: It's an absolute miracle the wings didn't snap off.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: But the NTSB investigation had to answer why a veteran,
Speaker 1: highly experienced captain made the fundamental error of letting the
Speaker 1: autopilot hold the plane until it rolled.
Speaker 2: Over right, and to answer that, the NTSB introduced a
Speaker 2: totally new physiological factor into their reports, circadian rhythms like
Speaker 2: jet lag exactly, specifically severe desynchronosis or deep jet lag.
Speaker 2: The captain had crossed eighteen time zones in six days. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so at the moment of the flame out, his biological
Speaker 2: body clock was screaming that it was his deepest phase
Speaker 2: of rem sleep. He was heavily fatigued, operating at a
Speaker 2: vastly diminished cognitive capacity, and he basically defaulted to trusting
Speaker 2: the automation to solve the problem it physically lacked the
Speaker 2: hardware to fix.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: It really exposed the absolute limits of human physiology in
Speaker 2: a high tech cockpit.
Speaker 1: Which perfectly sets the stage for our final in undeniably
Speaker 1: most terrifying mystery, the ten year serial killer. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about United Airlines Flight five eighty five in
Speaker 1: Colorado Springs and US air Flight four to twenty seven
Speaker 1: in Pittsburg.
Speaker 2: Two Boeing seven thirty sevens, which is the undisputed workhourse
Speaker 2: of the global fleet. Yeah, these trushes have been years apart,
Speaker 2: but they crash with identical chilling precision on perfect clear days.
Speaker 2: While approaching the runway. The planes suddenly violently roll over
Speaker 2: to one side and dive straight into the ground, just
Speaker 2: out of nowhere, less than ten seconds from perfectly stable
Speaker 2: flight to complete obliteration. Zero survivors, and for.
Speaker 1: Years the NTSB had absolutely nothing. The planes hit the
Speaker 1: ground of such kinetic energy they were shattered into pieces
Speaker 1: the size of coins.
Speaker 2: It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle made of ash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were hunting an aviation serial killer that left
Speaker 1: no fingerprints. They actually had to release an undetermined cause
Speaker 1: for United five eighty five, which was the first time
Speaker 1: they'd done that in decades.
Speaker 2: But then in nineteen ninety six, a breakthrough east wind
Speaker 2: Flight five seven is approaching Richmond, Virginia. The plane violently
Speaker 2: rolls to the right. That's like the others exactly, but
Speaker 2: this time the pilot, Captain Brian Bishop, fights it. He
Speaker 2: stands on the left rudder pedal with all his strength,
Speaker 2: but it feels like it's encased in concrete. It won't budge.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: He manages to manipulate the engine thrust to keep the
Speaker 2: plane from flipping, and magically, thirty seconds later, the rudder releases,
Speaker 2: the plane snaps back. He lands safely, and for the
Speaker 2: first time in history, the NTSB has an intact aircraft
Speaker 2: and a living pilot to interrogate.
Speaker 1: And Captain Dishap points them directly to the tail, specifically,
Speaker 1: a highly complex component called the dual servo valve inside
Speaker 1: the power control unit, which is the hydraulic heart that
Speaker 1: physically moves the massive rudder right.
Speaker 2: So investigators took the specific valve to Boeing's labs in Seattle,
Speaker 2: and subjected it to the most tortuous thermal shock testing imaginable.
Speaker 1: What do they do to it?
Speaker 2: They froze the metal with dry ice to simulate cruising
Speaker 2: altitude temperatures, and then blasted it with superheated hydraulic fluid.
Speaker 2: And they finally caught the ghost.
Speaker 1: They discovered a terrifying microscopic flaw in the metallogy. I mean,
Speaker 1: inside this valve are two concentric metal slides, one inside
Speaker 1: the other, controlling the flow of high pressure fluid. Under
Speaker 1: extreme thermal shock, the secondary slide could warp and jam.
Speaker 2: And when it jammed, it didn't just freeze the rudder
Speaker 2: in place. No, the geometry of the ports meant that
Speaker 2: if the pilot pushed on the pedals to command the
Speaker 2: rudder one way, the jammed slide physically routed the hydraulic
Speaker 2: fluid into the opposite chamber.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, So when the pilot of USAir four
Speaker 1: twenty seven pressed the left rudder pedal to save his
Speaker 1: plane from spinning right, the mechanical flaw actually forced the
Speaker 1: hydraulic fluid backwards, pushing the rudder to its maximum limit
Speaker 1: further to the right. Yes, that's like driving on a mountain.
Speaker 1: Pass turning your steering wheel to the left to avoid
Speaker 1: driving off the cliff, and the internal mechanics of the
Speaker 1: car violently steering you over the edge. Anyway, how do
Speaker 1: you even fight that?
Speaker 2: You don't, I mean, the aerodynamics make it impossible. The
Speaker 2: pilot on USIR four twenty seven fought to his very
Speaker 2: last breath pushing that pedal, desperately trying to save his passengers,
Speaker 2: not knowing that the very machine he trusted was translating
Speaker 2: his life saving command into a death sentence.
Speaker 1: That is just deeply chilling.
Speaker 2: It is, But if we connect this to the bigger picture,
Speaker 2: it's also a testament to the sheer tenacity of forensic science.
Speaker 2: The NTSB stalked this microscopic mechanical flaw for ten grueling years.
Speaker 1: They just wouldn't let it go.
Speaker 2: They refused to close the book. When they finally proved
Speaker 2: the reversal phenomenon, Boeing spent hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 2: replacing every single one of those servo valves globally and
Speaker 2: mandated a total redesign of this seven hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: seven redder system.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: The seven thirty seven is the incredibly safe, dependable aircraft
Speaker 2: we fly on today directly because those investigators refuse to
Speaker 2: let a ten year mystery go unsolved.
Speaker 1: Which brings us back to you listening right now. The
Speaker 1: next time you settle into your window seat, feeling that
Speaker 1: that familiar rumble of the engines and hearing the little
Speaker 1: chime of the seat belt sign remember these stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, you.
Speaker 1: Aren't just sitting in a metal tube. You are surrounded
Speaker 1: by the legacy of these investigations. The sky is the
Speaker 1: safest place on Earth right now, specifically because forensic investigators
Speaker 1: tore through burning wreckage, waded into alligator infested swamps in
Speaker 1: the dead of night, and hunted microscopic ghosts in the
Speaker 1: machine to rewrite the rules of the air. So what
Speaker 1: does this all mean?
Speaker 2: Well, it leaves us with a fascinating and maybe slightly
Speaker 2: unsettling reality to ponder. Yeah, today, modern aircraft are flying supercomputers.
Speaker 2: They are packed with layers of automation, TCA, collision avoidance,
Speaker 2: complex RM protocols, and redesigned hydraulics, all meticulously put there
Speaker 2: to save us from our own human errors and distraction.
Speaker 2: But as we continue to perfect the machine, as we
Speaker 2: increasingly remove the human from the loop. Are we slowly
Speaker 2: breeding a generation of pilots who are more like system
Speaker 2: monitors than actual aviators If the screens go completely dark tomorrow,
Speaker 2: do we still remember how to physically fly