Speaker 1: Picture this. It is August two thousand and five. You
Speaker 1: are sitting in the cockpit of a Greek F sixteen
Speaker 1: fighter jet. You're soaring high above the ancient city of Athens. Right.
Speaker 1: The Mediterranean sun is blinding. The sky is this piercing blue.
Speaker 1: But your focus is entirely locked on the aircraft cruising
Speaker 1: right in front.
Speaker 2: Of you, because you've been scrambled to intercept it.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's a seven thirty seven passenger jet Helioserway is
Speaker 1: flight five twenty two. It has gone completely radio silent,
Speaker 1: so you ease the throttle forward, pulling up right alongside
Speaker 1: the commercial jets cockpit. Ok. You look through the glass
Speaker 1: and what you see makes your blood run cold. The
Speaker 1: copilot is slumped over the controls. The captain is just
Speaker 1: well completely missing from his seat.
Speaker 2: Wow. And then you swoop down to check the passenger windows.
Speaker 2: I imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bank the fighter jet to check the cabin
Speaker 1: and everyone inside is motionless. Yeah. Oxygen masks are dangling
Speaker 1: from the ceiling like you know, yellow plastic ghosts.
Speaker 2: It's basically a ghost plane.
Speaker 1: It is a ghost plane flying itself on autopilot. Or
Speaker 1: a bustling city of over three million people and then
Speaker 1: out of the corner of your eye you see it. Wait,
Speaker 1: see what one loan figure moving desperately inside the cockpit?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, welcome to this deep dive. Today, we are
Speaker 1: opening up a stack of real life aviation accident investigation files,
Speaker 1: flight data transcripts, and forensic reports that you've shared with us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are going to examine the harrowing hidden stories
Speaker 2: of what happens when giants of the skyfall, because, I mean,
Speaker 2: the stakes and aviation are just unbelievably high.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Yeah, when I hear ghost plane,
Speaker 1: my mind immediately goes to like a massive electrical failure
Speaker 1: or a deep pressurization caused by a bomb, or maybe
Speaker 1: a hijacking.
Speaker 2: Sure, the usual suspects, Right, How does.
Speaker 1: A massive modern machine like a seven thirty seven just
Speaker 1: go completely silent without the plane physically breaking apart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an absolutely chilling scenario, and it forces us
Speaker 2: to look past the obvious Hollywood explanations. I mean, you
Speaker 2: have an entire commercial airliner that has effectively become a
Speaker 2: flying tomb save one person still fighting, and.
Speaker 1: From the outside, there's no fire, there's no structural.
Speaker 2: Damage exactly in aviation. Massive catastrophes are rarely the result
Speaker 2: of a single catastrophic blow from the outside. They're almost
Speaker 2: always the result of tiny, microscopic, easily overlook details.
Speaker 1: That cascade they just aligned perfectly.
Speaker 2: Right until the system breaks down completely from within.
Speaker 1: So let's jump right back into that cockpit of Helia's
Speaker 1: flight five twenty two to find that tiny detail. This
Speaker 1: is just after takeoff from the island of Cyprus. The
Speaker 1: crew is climbing toward their cruising altitude when a blaring
Speaker 1: alarm goes off.
Speaker 2: But from the transcripts, it's not an alarm they expect.
Speaker 2: It's the takeoff configuration warning.
Speaker 1: Now correct me if I'm wrong, But isn't that an
Speaker 1: alarm that tells pilots their jet isn't ready for takeoff
Speaker 1: while they are still on the runway.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what makes this so confusing. They are
Speaker 2: thousands of feet in the air, climbing rapidly, and an
Speaker 2: alarm is screaming at them that their flaps or gear
Speaker 2: aren't set for.
Speaker 1: Takeoff, so they must be totally bewildered.
Speaker 2: Totally. They radio the ground engineers, who were equally baffled.
Speaker 2: Then a master caution light illuminates, indicating that the cooling
Speaker 2: systems for the electronics are overheating.
Speaker 1: So they're distracted. I'm trying to put myself in their shoes.
Speaker 1: They are troubleshooting an electrical ghost. But what was actually happening.
Speaker 2: Well, the investigators eventually discovered a switch on a control
Speaker 2: panel above the pilot's heads. It's called the P five
Speaker 2: pressurization switch. Okay, During an early morning ground test, engineers
Speaker 2: were looking for a reported leak in the rear service door,
Speaker 2: so to test the seal without turning the massive jet
Speaker 2: engines on, they flipped that tiny pressurization switch from automatic
Speaker 2: to manual.
Speaker 1: Which allowed them to pump air into the cabin on
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 2: Right, But they forgot to flip it back to automatic
Speaker 2: when they were done with the test. Oh no, and
Speaker 2: that is the fatal link. When the new flight crew
Speaker 2: boarded in the bright morning glare, they simply missed that
Speaker 2: the switch was in the wrong position. It's just a
Speaker 2: tiny dial.
Speaker 1: So as the plane climbed into the sky, the system
Speaker 1: that automatically pumps breathable air into the cabin was turned off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cabin simply never pressurized. The air just kept getting thinner.
Speaker 1: And thinner and thinner. Wait, if they were running out
Speaker 1: of air, why wouldn't the pilots just put on their
Speaker 1: oxygen masks. I mean, if my smoke alarm goes off
Speaker 1: in my house, I don't just sit there trying to
Speaker 1: fix the wiring of the alarm. I react to the danger.
Speaker 1: They had alarms going off.
Speaker 2: Because they didn't realize they were suffocating. Think about it
Speaker 2: this way. What if your house was filling with deadly
Speaker 2: odorless carbon monoxide, but the alarm that sounded was the
Speaker 2: exact same beep your microwave makes when your coffee is done.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see. You wouldn't think I'm suffocating any to escape.
Speaker 1: You'd think, why is my microwave broken?
Speaker 2: Precisely, the manufacture of that seven thirty seven used the
Speaker 2: exact same horn sound for the takeoff configuration warning as
Speaker 2: they did for the cabin altitude warning.
Speaker 1: That is terrifying. It's a design flaw masquerading as pilot error.
Speaker 2: It really highlights the subtle horror of high poxia. When
Speaker 2: your brain is deprived of oxygen, it acts a lot
Speaker 2: like alcohol intoxication. You don't feel like you are choking.
Speaker 1: You feel a little giddy. Maybe your ears.
Speaker 2: Pop right your vision tunnels, and then you just lose
Speaker 2: the ability to think coherently. You become confused, lethargic, and
Speaker 2: then you just quietly fall asleep.
Speaker 1: But what about the passengers. You mentioned the oxygen masks
Speaker 1: dangling from the ceiling when the fighter pilot looked in.
Speaker 2: Well, those drop automatically when the cabin pressure drops. But
Speaker 2: here is the chilling part about passenger aircraft design. Those
Speaker 2: chemical oxygen generators above your seat are only designed to
Speaker 2: provide about twelve minutes of air.
Speaker 1: Twelve minutes that doesn't seem like anywhere near enough for
Speaker 1: a flight that takes hours.
Speaker 2: It's not meant to be. That twelve minute window is
Speaker 2: calculated to keep you alive, just long enough for an awake,
Speaker 2: alert pilot to put on their own mass to clear
Speaker 2: an emergency and dive the plane down to ten thousand
Speaker 2: feet where the outside air is breathable.
Speaker 1: But on helios five twenty two, the pilots were already
Speaker 1: incapacitated exactly.
Speaker 2: The plane was lying perfectly on autopilot, maintaining its high altitude.
Speaker 2: Once those twelve minutes were up, the one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifteen passengers and most of the crew simply drifted into
Speaker 2: an irreversible.
Speaker 1: Coma, which brings us back to that lone figure the
Speaker 1: fighter pilot saw moving in the cockpit.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was Andreas per Dromo.
Speaker 1: He was a twenty five year old flight attendant on board,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't even supposed to be working that day.
Speaker 1: He just picked up the shift to be with his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: who was also on the crew.
Speaker 2: But Andreas was a scuba diver and a former soldier
Speaker 2: in the Cypriot Special Forces, so he had training right.
Speaker 2: His background gave him an edge that no one else
Speaker 2: on board had. He understood how to manage his breathing
Speaker 2: under extreme physical stress, so.
Speaker 1: When the masks dropped and the pilots didn't initiate a dive,
Speaker 1: he realized something was catastrophically wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he managed to stay awake by moving through the cabin,
Speaker 2: breathing from the portable oxygen bottles meant for the flight attendants,
Speaker 2: eventually making his way to the cockpit and using the
Speaker 2: emergency entry code to get in and.
Speaker 1: Reading this file. He actually had a commercial pilot's license.
Speaker 1: It was his dream to fly for Helios. He finally
Speaker 1: gets into the captain seat, the military f sixteen's right
Speaker 1: outside his window. He puts on a headset and calls
Speaker 1: may Day five times.
Speaker 2: But no one hears him. Why because the radio was
Speaker 2: still tuned to the departure airport back in Cyprus, which
Speaker 2: was now hundreds of miles out of range. That's just
Speaker 2: But what's fascinating here is the brutal irony of a situation,
Speaker 2: all of Andreas's pilot training, all of his incredible resilience
Speaker 2: to stay awake for nearly three hours while everyone else perished.
Speaker 2: His heroic effort to take the controls, it was all
Speaker 2: entirely useless because of the fuel. Precisely by the time
Speaker 2: he got into that seat and disengaged the autopilot to
Speaker 2: try and save the plane, it had been circling in
Speaker 2: a holding pattern for so long that the engines were
Speaker 2: already flaming out.
Speaker 1: He was completely out of fuel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the plane crashed into a hillside north of Athens,
Speaker 2: killing all one hundred and twenty one people on board.
Speaker 1: It's just devastating. A single switch left in the wrong
Speaker 1: position brought down an entire airliner. But you know, if
Speaker 1: Helios was brought down by an individual's micro error, a
Speaker 1: pilot missing a switch, Our next file shows how a
Speaker 1: plane can be doomed by a macrosystem error. We're shifting
Speaker 1: from a mechanical oversight to a massive institutional blind spot.
Speaker 2: This is the tragic story of IPO twenty one, and
Speaker 2: it requires us to look at how an entire military
Speaker 2: command structure can effectively ignore a mountain.
Speaker 1: I want you to transport yourself to a raw, storm
Speaker 1: battered spring day in April nineteen ninety six, especially designed
Speaker 1: US Air Force seven thirty seven is flying through torrential
Speaker 1: rain into the airport of Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Speaker 2: And this plane is carrying US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown
Speaker 2: and thirty four other distinguished visitors, business leaders, and crew.
Speaker 1: They are on a vital trade mission to help rebuild
Speaker 1: the economy of a region that had just been torn
Speaker 1: apart by a brutal four year civil war in the Balkans.
Speaker 2: The context of that war is crucial here. The Dubrovnik
Speaker 2: airport was totally dubh stated retreating forces had intentionally destroyed
Speaker 2: the modern instrument landing systems and the approach radar, so.
Speaker 1: They had basically nothing to work with.
Speaker 2: Pretty much the airport was essentially operating on aviation technology
Speaker 2: from the nineteen forties, specifically two non directional beacons or
Speaker 2: NDBs located on the ground, which just send out simple
Speaker 2: radio pulses in all directions.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how do they navigate through a storm without
Speaker 1: radar just following radio beams?
Speaker 2: Essentially, Yes, to navigate using those two beacons safely, a
Speaker 2: plane needs two automatic direction finders or adfs in the cockpit.
Speaker 2: These are instruments that listen to those radio pulses.
Speaker 1: You need too so you can listen to both signals
Speaker 1: simultaneously exactly.
Speaker 2: One beacon tells you the path to the runway, the
Speaker 2: other tells you when you've gone too far, need to
Speaker 2: pull up. But this highly specialized military vip jet only
Speaker 2: had one ADF installed.
Speaker 1: Meaning they could only listen to one beacon at a time.
Speaker 2: Imagine trying to tune an old analog car radio to
Speaker 2: a faint station, but you have to do but for
Speaker 2: two different stations, back and forth every few seconds while
Speaker 2: driving a bus down a twisting mountain road in a hurricane.
Speaker 1: That sounds absolutely impossible.
Speaker 2: That was the frantic cockpit workload for these pilots. They
Speaker 2: had a frantically tune a single dial back and forth
Speaker 2: between the two frequencies while flying blind through a heavy
Speaker 2: thunderstorm in a mountainous region they had never flown into.
Speaker 1: Before, with a cabin full of VIPs, expecting to land
Speaker 1: on time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to make matters worse, as they were struggling
Speaker 2: with this ancient navigation, they were relying on a commercial
Speaker 2: Jepson approach chart to tell them how low they could
Speaker 2: safely fly without seeing the ground.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the file here, says The chart listed
Speaker 1: the minimum descent altitude at just over twenty one hundred feet,
Speaker 1: But for that mountainous terrain, American safety standards dictate it
Speaker 1: should have been at least twenty eight hundred feet.
Speaker 2: Right, They were flying seven hundred feet too low into
Speaker 2: a mountain range. The plane veered slightly off course in
Speaker 2: the storm, and because they were too low, it crashed
Speaker 2: into Saint John's Hill, killing everyone on board.
Speaker 1: So how does a US military flight end up using
Speaker 1: a chart that is mathematically guaranteed to fly them into
Speaker 1: a mountain.
Speaker 2: Well, the investigation revealed a stunning failure of command. That
Speaker 2: approach chart for Dubrovnik had never been reviewed or approved
Speaker 2: by the US military. You're kidding, No, The military commanders
Speaker 2: in Europe had essentially just waived the safety requirements. Checking
Speaker 2: every foreign airport's civilian charts took too much time and budget,
Speaker 2: so they just skipped it. They were suffering from what
Speaker 2: aviation experts call get their itis, the intense institutional pressure
Speaker 2: to deliver high profile diplomats on schedule, overwriting fundamental safety protocols.
Speaker 1: But wait here is the detail that actually made me
Speaker 1: gasp when I read the source material. Oh, the investigators
Speaker 1: arrive at the crash site. They're digging through the wreckage
Speaker 1: looking for the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice
Speaker 1: recorded the black boxes, and they realized they aren't there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not because they were destroyed, but because this VIP plane
Speaker 1: carrying one of the most important politicians in America didn't
Speaker 1: even have them installed. How is that legally possible?
Speaker 2: It reveals a shocking paradox about institutional arrogance. At the time,
Speaker 2: military VIP flights actually had lower safety requirements than your standard,
Speaker 2: run of the mill commercial passenger jet.
Speaker 1: That's just wild.
Speaker 2: They weren't legally required to have black boxes. They weren't
Speaker 2: held to the same rigid safety oversight. The military assumed
Speaker 2: their inherent operational excellence, their elite pilot training would compensate
Speaker 2: for older equipment and unapproved charts.
Speaker 1: It took the death of a Commerce secretary for the
Speaker 1: Air Force to instantly change their rules, mandate black boxes
Speaker 1: on all aircraft and absolutely forbid landing at unapproved airports.
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it highlights
Speaker 2: how safety regulations are so often written in blood. Institutions
Speaker 2: rarely fixed blind spots until a high profile tragedy forces
Speaker 2: them into the light.
Speaker 1: With IFO twenty one, the military's blind spot was accidental arrogance.
Speaker 1: But what happens when a blind spot is entirely intentional?
Speaker 1: Factuer knows their plane has a fatal flaw and actively
Speaker 1: chooses to hide it. We are moving from bureaucratic oversight
Speaker 1: to known corporate compromise.
Speaker 2: We are looking at the McDonnell Douglas DC ten, specifically
Speaker 2: the mechanics of its cardodors.
Speaker 1: It's June nineteen seventy two, high above Windsor Ontario American
Speaker 1: Airlines Flight ninety six, a brand new DC ten has
Speaker 1: just taken off. Suddenly, the floor of the passenger cabin
Speaker 1: completely caves in.
Speaker 2: A massive hole opens up, A coffin falls out of
Speaker 2: the cargo hold into the sky, and the pilots are
Speaker 2: suddenly flying a crippled giant.
Speaker 1: Because the floor collapsing had severed the hydraulic cables connecting
Speaker 1: the pilots to the tail, rudder and the elevators, they
Speaker 1: had almost no control.
Speaker 2: This was an explosive decompression at thirty one thousand feet.
Speaker 2: The air pressure inside the cabin is artificially kept dense
Speaker 2: and warm so you can breathe, while the air outside
Speaker 2: is unimaginably thin and freezing.
Speaker 1: The plane's metal skin is the only thing holding that
Speaker 1: high pressure.
Speaker 2: In Exactly if a the door suddenly gives way, all
Speaker 2: that high pressure air rushes out instantly to seek equilibrium.
Speaker 2: The air and the passenger cabin pushed down with such
Speaker 2: immense force to get out the open cargo door that
Speaker 2: it crushed the floor into the cargo.
Speaker 1: Hold, taking the vital flight control cables down with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Captain Bryce McCormick was an absolute legnand with no
Speaker 1: rudder and hardly any elevators, he used the thrust of
Speaker 1: the engines on the wings, powering up one side and
Speaker 1: powering down the other to steer the plane.
Speaker 2: That's incredible airmanship.
Speaker 1: He somehow managed to nurse this broken jet back to
Speaker 1: Detroit and landed at three hundred kilometers an hour, saving
Speaker 1: everyone on board. It was miraculous. But how does the
Speaker 1: door just pop off in mid air? Doesn't the pressure
Speaker 1: inside keep it sealed?
Speaker 2: Usually? Yes, most airplane doors are plug doors, meaning they
Speaker 2: open inward, so the pressure inside the plane actually acts
Speaker 2: like a witch, pushing the door tighter against the frame
Speaker 2: the higher you go.
Speaker 1: But to maximize space for luggage in the cargo hold,
Speaker 1: McDonald Douglas designed the DC ten cargo door to open
Speaker 1: outward right.
Speaker 2: That meant the door constantly fought against the internal pressure
Speaker 2: of the plane trying to blow open, so it relied.
Speaker 1: On heavy locking pins to stay shut rather than.
Speaker 2: Physical exactly, and investigators found a terrifying mechanical flaw. A
Speaker 2: baggage handler could physically force the external locking lever closed
Speaker 2: with his knee, which would bend the internal metal linkages
Speaker 2: and turn off the warning light in the cockpit.
Speaker 1: Even if the heavy internal locking pins hadn't actually engaged.
Speaker 2: The door looked locked. The pilot's light said it was locked,
Speaker 2: but it was just barely hanging on. It was a
Speaker 2: ticking time bomb.
Speaker 1: And this is where the scandal erupts. During a later lawsuit,
Speaker 1: a smoking gun document was discovered in the files. It
Speaker 1: was known as the Applegate Memo.
Speaker 2: Yes, written by Dan Applegate, the director of product engineering
Speaker 2: for the company that built the fuselage. He wrote it
Speaker 2: right after the winds aor near miss, and he explicitly
Speaker 2: warned management that the plane demonstrated an inherent susceptibility to
Speaker 2: catastrophic failure.
Speaker 1: He stated plainly that it was only a matter of
Speaker 1: time before a major disaster happened.
Speaker 2: The manufacturer and knew the floor would collapse if the
Speaker 2: door blew out. They even knew about the door failing
Speaker 2: during ground pressure tests years before the plane ever flew passengers.
Speaker 1: That's like ignoring the check engine light on a school
Speaker 1: bus full of kids. I mean, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: miss a flaw on a complex machine. It's another to
Speaker 1: see the glaring defect, read a memo detailing exactly how
Speaker 1: it will kill people, and agree to just put a
Speaker 1: piece of tape over it so you don't slow down production.
Speaker 2: And the tape in the scenario was a gentleman's agreement.
Speaker 2: The National Transportation Safety Board demanded immediate design changes, but
Speaker 2: they didn't have the regulatory power to ground the planes.
Speaker 1: Only the Federal Aviation Administration the FAA could do that
Speaker 1: by issuing an airworthiness directive, which have the force of law.
Speaker 2: But the head of the FAA and the head of
Speaker 2: McDonald douglas made a backroom deal. They wanted to avoid
Speaker 2: the directive because it would be terrible pr for this
Speaker 2: brand new billion dollar jet program.
Speaker 1: So they agreed to voluntary confusing fixes instead.
Speaker 2: Think about that for a second, because it was voluntary.
Speaker 2: A Turkish airline's DC ten in Paris two years later
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four didn't have the proper support plate installed.
Speaker 1: And a baggage handler who couldn't read the English warning
Speaker 1: signs forced the lever closed with his knee.
Speaker 2: Nine minutes after takeoff, the door blew off, the floor collapse,
Speaker 2: the control cables were severed, and there was no miraculous save.
Speaker 2: This time.
Speaker 1: The plane plunged into a forest at eight hundred kilometers
Speaker 1: ersn hour. All three hundred and forty six people on
Speaker 1: board died.
Speaker 2: It remains one of the darkest chapters in aviation history.
Speaker 2: It proves that when corporate interests compromise absolute safety when
Speaker 2: legal mandates are traded for handshakes. The cost is ultimately
Speaker 2: paid in human lives.
Speaker 1: We've covered mechanical failures, bureaucratic arrogance, and corporate negligence. But
Speaker 1: what happens when the systems actually functioned exactly the way
Speaker 1: they're supposed to, but a malicious external force exploits a
Speaker 1: tiny loophole?
Speaker 2: What happens when our own convenience is weaponized against us?
Speaker 1: Exactly? That brings us to our final file. Air India
Speaker 1: Flight one eighty two in June nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: This was a seven forty seven nicknamed Kanishka, flying from
Speaker 2: Canada to London, high over the Atlantic. It had three
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty nine people on board, mostly families going
Speaker 2: on vacation, lots of children. Right at eight fourteen in
Speaker 2: the morning, Shannon Air Traffic Control in Ireland is tracking
Speaker 2: the flight. Everything is totally normal.
Speaker 1: And then the radar blip just vanishes. In less than
Speaker 1: sixty seconds, without a single distress call, A massive seven
Speaker 1: forty seven falls out of the sky.
Speaker 2: The initial investigation was mind boggling because there was almost
Speaker 2: zero physical evidence. At first, the wreckage was sitting six
Speaker 2: thousand feet below the surface of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Early on, investigators were distracted by a red herring. The
Speaker 1: plane was carrying a massive fifth engine strapped under its wing,
Speaker 1: a routine procedure for transporting a broken engine back for repairs.
Speaker 2: They wondered if the drag or a structural failure from
Speaker 2: that fifth engine ripped the wing.
Speaker 1: Off, but the flight data recorder showed the pilots were
Speaker 1: perfectly compensated for the drag. The plane was flying fine.
Speaker 1: So they send a deep sea submersible down to the
Speaker 1: wreckage field, and out.
Speaker 2: Of hundreds of thousands of shattered pieces, they pull up
Speaker 2: a section of the floor from the front cargo.
Speaker 1: Bay, and that single piece of metal told the entire story.
Speaker 1: It had holes in it where the metal was violently
Speaker 1: pushed upward and curled outward like the petals of a flower.
Speaker 2: It was the classic forensic signature of a high exclusive
Speaker 2: detonation from inside the luggage hold.
Speaker 1: But how does a bomb get onto a passenger plane
Speaker 1: if the terrorist isn't on board to blow it up.
Speaker 2: This takes us back to the terminal in Vancouver and
Speaker 2: a masterclass in exploiting human nature. A man named Em
Speaker 2: Singh walks up to an overwhelmed ticket agent right, he
Speaker 2: has a ticket to Toronto, but he demands his maroon
Speaker 2: bag be checked all the way through to the Connecting
Speaker 2: Air India flight going to New Delhi, even though his
Speaker 2: reservation for that flight isn't confirmed.
Speaker 1: The ticket agent told him she couldn't do it. It
Speaker 1: was against the rules. You can't put a bag on
Speaker 1: a plane if you aren't guaranteed a seat.
Speaker 2: But Sing bullied her. He browbeat her in front of
Speaker 2: a long line of impatient, angry passengers until she finally caved.
Speaker 2: She let the bag go through just to get him
Speaker 2: out of her line.
Speaker 1: Sing's bag was loaded into the belly of the plane,
Speaker 1: but Sing himself never got on the aircraft exactly. But
Speaker 1: what about security? Didn't they scan the bags?
Speaker 2: They tried, but the X ray machine in Toronto was
Speaker 2: actually broken that day, so security used a handheld explosive
Speaker 2: sniffer wand it actually beat when it passed Sing's bag. Wait,
Speaker 2: it beat, yeah, but it was a slightly different beat
Speaker 2: than the training model the guard was used to, so
Speaker 2: the guard just assumed it was a false positive and
Speaker 2: let it pass.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: The bomb was loaded into the cargo bay right next
Speaker 2: to the plane's critical electronics.
Speaker 1: So wait, how does a bomb in the cargo bay
Speaker 1: taking out the electronics instantly drop a massive seven four
Speaker 1: to seven at a single May Day call.
Speaker 2: It comes back to the physics of explosive decompression. When
Speaker 2: you denonate a bomb inside a pressurized passenger cabin at
Speaker 2: thirty one thousand feet, you aren't just dealing with the
Speaker 2: fire and shrapnel of the explosive.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with the pressure.
Speaker 2: Right. The explosion is more like a shotgun blast going
Speaker 2: off inside a submarine. The bomb punches a hole in
Speaker 2: the metal skin, and the immense internal pressure of the
Speaker 2: airplane violently rushes out that new hole, seeking the thin
Speaker 2: atmosphere outside.
Speaker 1: It tears the entire fuselage apart in midair in milliseconds.
Speaker 1: The electronics were instantly severed, the pockpit was separated from
Speaker 1: the rest of the plane.
Speaker 2: Three hundred and twenty nine people died because one ticket
Speaker 2: agent broke a rule under pressure to keep the line
Speaker 2: moving and a security guard misunderstood Beep.
Speaker 1: The next time you are at the airport and you
Speaker 1: are annoyed because your bag has to be pulled off
Speaker 1: a flight after you missed your connection, remember M saying.
Speaker 2: This raises an important question about the delicate balance between
Speaker 2: passenger convenience and absolute security. Today, because of Air India
Speaker 2: one eighty two, we have strict passenger baggage reconciliation. If
Speaker 2: you check a bag and you don't physically board that plane,
Speaker 2: your bag is pulled off period.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you? You might be
Speaker 1: listening to this on your commute at your desk thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not a pilot, sure, but we all rely on
Speaker 1: incredibly complex systems every single day. The medical systems that
Speaker 1: treat us, the financial networks that hold our money, the
Speaker 1: corporate structures we work within.
Speaker 2: And these files prove that catastrophic failures are rarely a
Speaker 2: single massive blow. They perfectly illustrate what safety experts call
Speaker 2: the Swiss cheese model. Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese
Speaker 2: stack together. Each slice represents a layer of defense in
Speaker 2: our lives, alarms, regulations, security guards, corporate oversight.
Speaker 1: But each slice has holes in it human error, fatigue,
Speaker 1: a broken X ray machine, a backroom deal.
Speaker 2: Usually a problem slips through one hole but is stopped
Speaker 2: by the next solid layer of cheese. But every once
Speaker 2: in a while, the holes in the cheese aligned perfectly,
Speaker 2: and the disaster passes straight through all our defenses.
Speaker 1: A switch left on manual, an unapproved chart in a storm,
Speaker 1: a bullied ticket agent.
Speaker 2: It's the invisible chain reaction. You pull one tiny thread
Speaker 2: and the whole tapestry comes.
Speaker 1: Undone, and that leads to a final lingering concept that
Speaker 1: exists in the aviation world, the paradox of tombstone technology.
Speaker 2: Every smooth routine flight you take today, every seamless takeoff
Speaker 2: and landing, is silently guided by an invisible architecture of
Speaker 2: safety that was entirely drafted by the ghosts of the past.
Speaker 2: The rules exist because someone died to write them.
Speaker 1: Is the feeling of absolute safety we have when we
Speaker 1: buckle our seat belts just a necessary psychological illusion we
Speaker 1: all agree to believe so we can board the plane
Speaker 1: and live our modern lives.
Speaker 2: That is a thought that will stick with you next
Speaker 2: time you're sitting at the boarding gate watching the luggage
Speaker 2: carts go by.
Speaker 1: When you look into that cockpit, you aren't just seeing
Speaker 1: a pilot pulling levers. You are seeing the combination of
Speaker 1: thousands of hard learned lessons paid for in unimaginable ways.
Speaker 1: Keep questioning the invisible systems around you. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us on this deep dive