Speaker 1: Picture this. You are sitting in the darkened cabin of
Speaker 1: British Airways flight nine.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is such a terrifying one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's June twenty fourth, nineteen eighty two. You've
Speaker 1: been flying for hours, just cruising peacefully at thirty seven
Speaker 1: thousand feet over the pitch black Indian Ocean, heading toward Australia, and.
Speaker 2: You're probably exhausted at that point.
Speaker 1: Exactly, you're exhausted. You look out the window into just
Speaker 1: total absolute darkness. But then suddenly the windshield and the
Speaker 1: cockpit is illuminated by this eerie, brilliant white glow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to the pilots it looks exactly like sant Elmo's.
Speaker 1: Fire, which is what exactly.
Speaker 2: It's a crackling electrical sort of spider wave halo you
Speaker 2: sometimes see dancing across the glass during heavy thunderstorms.
Speaker 1: Okay, but here's the crazy part. There isn't a single
Speaker 1: storm cloud on the weather radar. I mean, the sky
Speaker 1: is completely.
Speaker 2: Clear, completely empty, which makes it so much worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then this strange glow just gets worse. Smoke
Speaker 1: starts pouring into the passenger cabin through the air conditioning vents.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't smell like normal smoke, right, No.
Speaker 1: It smells thick and acrid like sulfur. So you look
Speaker 1: out the window again and your blood just runs cold
Speaker 1: because there are huge forty foot jets of sheer, blinding
Speaker 1: flames shooting out the back.
Speaker 2: Of the engines, which is just I mean, incomprehensible as
Speaker 2: a passenger.
Speaker 1: And then the engines make this horrible grating, rumbling sound
Speaker 1: like metal literally tearing itself apart, and they die, all
Speaker 1: four of them. Lital silence, absolute silence. You are suddenly
Speaker 1: falling from the sky in a three hundred ton glider.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate nightmare scenario. I mean, they drop
Speaker 2: for miles, just completely helpless in the dark, and.
Speaker 1: The crew is trying, what just desperately to restart them.
Speaker 2: Again and again, but they get absolutely nothing. So finally,
Speaker 2: at around twelve thousand feet, right as the captin prepares
Speaker 2: to make a completely blind, undoubtedly fatal ditch into the
Speaker 2: rough open.
Speaker 1: Sea, the engine's miraculously roar back to life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One by one they catch yeah, and the crew
Speaker 2: manages to pull the seven forty seven out of its
Speaker 2: dive and they actually limp to a safe lygd ending
Speaker 2: in Jakarta.
Speaker 1: Which is just this incredible story of survival. But the
Speaker 1: truly fascinating part of our deep dive today starts when
Speaker 1: investigators finally look at that plane on the.
Speaker 2: Ground, because what they found completely changed modern aviation.
Speaker 1: It really did. Today, you and I are basically stepping
Speaker 1: into the shoes of the investigators. We're digging into the
Speaker 1: flight recorders, the crash reports, the twisted metal, all of it,
Speaker 1: just to understand the hidden mechanisms of flight.
Speaker 2: Because everyone always says the sky is the safest place
Speaker 2: on Earth, and statistically it absolutely is right.
Speaker 1: But the aviation Safety Manual, it is written entirely in blood.
Speaker 2: Literally every single safety feature on a modern commercial jet,
Speaker 2: from the lights on the floor to the software and
Speaker 2: the cockpit exists because someone somewhere paid the ultimate price right.
Speaker 1: And the clues left behind in these disasters reveal exactly
Speaker 1: how these invisible threats and mechanical ghosts and the fragile
Speaker 1: limits of the human mind revolutionize the way we fly.
Speaker 2: So let's look at the clues from British Aways flight nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because when they inspected the seven forty seven on
Speaker 1: the ground, the paint was practically sand blasted off the
Speaker 1: nose of the plane. The engines were totally choked with
Speaker 1: this fine dust and pieces of hardened rock.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't a mechanical failure at all.
Speaker 1: No, it was Mount Galungum, a volcano one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty kilometers away, had erupted and sent this massive cloud
Speaker 1: of ash directly into their flight path.
Speaker 2: But this is where people get confused.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is where my brand stalls out on
Speaker 1: this because volcanic ash. You know, when you think about it, it
Speaker 1: sounds like soft, powdery dust you'd sweep out of a fireplace,
Speaker 1: right exactly. I can see it clogging a filter, sure,
Speaker 1: but how does a cloud of dust completely assassinate four
Speaker 1: massive jet engines simultaneously?
Speaker 2: And that is the exact misconception that nearly killed everyone
Speaker 2: on board, Because volcanic ash isn't soft wood ash, right,
Speaker 2: It's basically pulverized rock, glass, and minerals. Under a microscope,
Speaker 2: it's incredibly sharp, jagged, and so.
Speaker 1: That's what Sam blasted the windshields so badly. The pilots
Speaker 1: couldn't even see out of it exactly.
Speaker 2: But the real lethal threat is the thermodynamics. Okay, unpack
Speaker 2: that for me, So inside a jet engine's combustion chamber
Speaker 2: where the fuel is actually ignited. The operating temperature sits
Speaker 2: around two thousand degrees celsius, but volcanic ash being pulverized
Speaker 2: rock melts set around fourteen hundred degrees.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So they essentially flew into a cloud of
Speaker 1: glass and turned their engines into flying kilns.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, they suffocated their own engines with molten rock.
Speaker 2: The engines inhaled thousands of pounds of this abrasive material,
Speaker 2: melted it instantly into this sticky molten goo, and it
Speaker 2: coated the turbine.
Speaker 1: Blades just completely choked off the internal air flaw.
Speaker 2: Right, so the engines choked. They backfired, which caused those
Speaker 2: massive forty foot flames shooting out the back, and then
Speaker 2: they stalled out completely.
Speaker 1: But wait, if the engines were literally coated in molten rock,
Speaker 1: how on earth did they restart at twelve thousand feet?
Speaker 2: And that is the beautiful physics of the offe moment
Speaker 2: for the investigators. Okay, when the engines died, they stopped
Speaker 2: generating that two thousand degree heat, so as the plane
Speaker 2: fell out of the sky, it dropped below the ash
Speaker 2: cloud into clean, freezing air.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see where this is going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the engines cooled rapidly, that sticky molten rock solidified,
Speaker 2: turned brittle, and basically shattered, So the.
Speaker 1: Forward momentum of the falling plane literally blew the shattered
Speaker 1: rock out the back of the engines exactly.
Speaker 2: Once the core was cleared out, the crew was finally
Speaker 2: able to get a spark to catch and restart the turbines.
Speaker 1: That is wild, and because of Flight nine, the aviation
Speaker 1: world learned this terrifying lesson. I mean, volcanic ash is
Speaker 1: completely invisible to standard aircraft weather radar because it's.
Speaker 2: Dry, right, radar bounces off moisture. No moisture, no radar return.
Speaker 1: So today geological agencies and airlines are just constantly communicating
Speaker 1: to track these invisible ash clouds via satellite. So no
Speaker 1: plane ever flies into a volcano's exhaust again.
Speaker 2: But you know that was an invisible threat outside the
Speaker 2: aircraft sometimes the most insidious threat to the ones building
Speaker 2: up quietly right beneath your feet.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, which brings us to June nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: Air Canada Flight seven ninety seven, a DC nine, flying
Speaker 1: from Dallas to Toronto.
Speaker 2: This one starts so innocently.
Speaker 1: It's chilling, it really is. They're cruising smoothly. At thirty
Speaker 1: three thousand feet. The crew hears three circuit breakers pop
Speaker 1: at the back of the plane, specifically the breakers tied
Speaker 1: to the flush motor in the rear.
Speaker 2: Washroom and in the cockpit. A popped circuit breaker isn't
Speaker 2: an emergency. It's usually just.
Speaker 1: A nuisance, like a power surge or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, power surge a mechanical hiccup. You try to reset
Speaker 2: it and if it doesn't hold, you just tape it
Speaker 2: off and write it up for maintenance.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what the captain thought. But fifteen minutes later,
Speaker 1: a passenger notices a strange, wiry smell, like burning plastic.
Speaker 2: Always a bad sign on a plane, right, So.
Speaker 1: A flight atten and goes to the back, opens the
Speaker 1: washroom door, and this thick, toxic smoke starts creeping out
Speaker 1: into the cabin. There are no visible flames.
Speaker 2: Anywhere, thisoxious, expanding cloud of smoke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the crew initiates a desperate emergency descent into Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: By the time they hit their runway, the cabin is
Speaker 1: pitch black from the soot. Me you can't see your
Speaker 1: hand in front of your face passage.
Speaker 2: As a choking struggling to breathe.
Speaker 1: But miraculously, the pilots actually manage a completely blind landing.
Speaker 2: They get the plane on the ground, the tires screeched
Speaker 2: to a halt. You'd think the nightmare is over right,
Speaker 2: You'd think they survived, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: They opened the emergency doors to evacuate, and ninety seconds
Speaker 1: after those doors open, the entire interior of the plane
Speaker 1: erupts in a massive flash.
Speaker 2: Fire, just devastating.
Speaker 1: Twenty three people died in their seats, including the rising
Speaker 1: folk music star Stan Rogers. They were just seconds away
Speaker 1: from stepping onto the tarmac.
Speaker 2: Which forces investigators to ask this huge question, why did
Speaker 2: it explode after they were safely on the ground, Right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense initially.
Speaker 2: No, But when the National Transportation Safety Board the NTSB
Speaker 2: dug into the charred remains, they uncovered the terrifying chemistry
Speaker 2: of incomplete combustion.
Speaker 1: Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 2: So an electrical fire had started behind the walls of
Speaker 2: the washroom, but it was starved of oxygen inside that
Speaker 2: tight fuselage space, so instead of burning cleanly, the wall
Speaker 2: spaces acted like a chimney oh wow, Yeah, pumping incredibly hot,
Speaker 2: combustible toxic gases straight up into the ceiling paneling of
Speaker 2: the passenger cabin.
Speaker 1: So it was just hovering right above their heads. The
Speaker 1: entire descent, just this hidden toxic cloud packed with carbon
Speaker 1: monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
Speaker 2: Yes, And because it was stars of oxygen, it couldn't
Speaker 2: fully ignite. It just baked the interior.
Speaker 1: But then they opened the doors exactly.
Speaker 2: When they landed, and popped open the overwing exits and
Speaker 2: the main doors, an unlimited supply of fresh, cool oxygen
Speaker 2: rushed into the cabin. It mixed instantly with those superheated
Speaker 2: gases trapped in the ceiling, and it triggered a flash over.
Speaker 1: So the entire cabin ignited simultaneously.
Speaker 2: Instantly burning all the available oxygen in the plane.
Speaker 1: That is just horrified. But think about the last time
Speaker 1: you boarded a flight. You probably noticed those floor track
Speaker 1: lights illuminating the aisle guiding you to the exite. You
Speaker 1: probably notice the smoke detectors installed in every single lavatory,
Speaker 1: or those heavy halin fire extinguishers the crew carries. You
Speaker 1: might take them for granted, but you are sitting in
Speaker 1: the legacy of Air Canada flights seven nine to seven
Speaker 1: because every.
Speaker 2: One of those features was mandated specifically because of the
Speaker 2: people who didn't make it off that runway in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: They finally understood that smoke and fire don't just damage
Speaker 1: the plane. They totally changed the chemical environment of the cabin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, with fire, investigators at least have
Speaker 2: physical clues melted wires, scorch marks, soot patterns. The most
Speaker 2: terrifying investigations are the ones where a plane falls out
Speaker 2: of a perfectly clear sky, obliterates on impact, and leaves
Speaker 2: absolutely zero physical evidence behind.
Speaker 1: The mechanical ghosts exactly. So imagine flying on a beautiful
Speaker 1: windless day, you are just moments from touchdown, landing gears down,
Speaker 1: you can clearly see the runway, and suddenly the plane
Speaker 1: just violently flips onto its side and dives straight into
Speaker 1: the ground. It's unthinkable, but that is exactly what happened
Speaker 1: to United Flight five eighty five in Colorado Springs in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, and then again to US Air Flight
Speaker 1: four to twenty seven in Pittsburgh in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: Both were bowing seven thirty sevens. Both were on their final.
Speaker 1: Approach, and both violently rolled out of the sky in
Speaker 1: a matter of ten seconds. No survivors.
Speaker 2: For accident investigators, tracking down the cause of these two
Speaker 2: crashes was literally the equivalent of hunting a phantom.
Speaker 1: They had nothing to go on, right, nothing.
Speaker 2: The NTSB spent ten agonizing years trying to find the cause.
Speaker 2: It was the longest most expensive investigation in aviation history.
Speaker 2: They tested everything I read.
Speaker 1: They even flew planes into dangerous mountain wind rotors just
Speaker 1: to see what would happen.
Speaker 2: They did. They tested for freak electromagnetic interference, scrambling the
Speaker 2: computers too. Nothing made sense.
Speaker 3: Except for one clue, right yeah, The only physical clue
Speaker 3: they had was that in both wreckage sites, the rudder
Speaker 3: you know, the massive vertical flap on the tail that
Speaker 3: steers the nose left and right, had slammed completely to
Speaker 3: one side and stayed there.
Speaker 1: But they had no idea why. None, And they literally
Speaker 1: had nothing until a freezing day in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: East Wind Flight five seventeen is approaching Richmond, Virginia. Suddenly
Speaker 1: the plane aggressively.
Speaker 2: Rolls to the right, just like the others.
Speaker 1: Just like the others. Captain Brian Bishop steps hard on
Speaker 1: the opposite left rudder pedal to level the plane out,
Speaker 1: and the pedal will not budge. It is locked.
Speaker 2: Solid, which is a pilot's worst nightmare.
Speaker 1: For thirty terrifying seconds, they're flying practically sideways, wrestling the
Speaker 1: control column. Then, just as mysteriously as it started, a
Speaker 1: loud pop echoes through the floorboards and the rudder snaps back.
Speaker 2: To normal and they managed to land safely.
Speaker 1: Yes, so, finally, after a decade of ghosts, the NTSB
Speaker 1: had an intact airplane and a living pilot.
Speaker 2: And incredibly, they still almost missed it. Wait, how well
Speaker 2: they poled the power control unit, the hydraulic mechanical muscle
Speaker 2: that actually moves the rudder on the tail, and put
Speaker 2: it on a test bench. They ran it over and
Speaker 2: over and it worked flawlessly.
Speaker 1: It was a perfectly engineered piece of hardware, or so
Speaker 1: it seemed exactly.
Speaker 2: It was only when an engineer decided to design this
Speaker 2: extreme thermal shock test that the ghost finally revealed itself.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about this test.
Speaker 2: They froze the internal servo valve to simulate the freezing
Speaker 2: temperatures of high altitude cruising, and then suddenly blasted it
Speaker 2: with superheated hydraulic fluid, which simulated the heat generated as
Speaker 2: the pilots used the rudder during descent.
Speaker 1: And because of the extreme temperature difference, the microscopic metal
Speaker 1: components inside the valve expanded at different rates, so it jammed.
Speaker 2: Not only did it jam, but the internal flight moved
Speaker 2: just a fraction of a millimeter out of alignment. An
Speaker 2: engineer looking at the hydraulic pressure data realized that the
Speaker 2: valve didn't just lock up, it actually reversed its function.
Speaker 1: Okay, so imagine you were driving seventy miles per hour
Speaker 1: on the highway. You see a pothole, so you naturally
Speaker 1: turn your steering wheel to the right to avoid it. Right,
Speaker 1: But a microscopic mechanical glitch inside your steering column takes
Speaker 1: your right word movement, reverses the hydrault flow and violently
Speaker 1: swerves the car to the left, straight into a concrete wall.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what the dual servvalve did to those pilots.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: When the plane started tilting left due to a gust
Speaker 2: of wind, they pushed the right pedal to correct it
Speaker 2: like they were trained to do, but the reverse valve
Speaker 2: took their input and sent the rudder hard left instead.
Speaker 1: So the harder they thought to save the plane, the
Speaker 1: harder the plane drove itself into the ground. They were
Speaker 1: completely helpless.
Speaker 2: It is a chilling realization. But because of that thermal
Speaker 2: shock discovery, Boeing spent hundreds of millions of dollars entirely
Speaker 2: redesigning and replacing the servo valves on thousands of seven
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty seven's worldwide.
Speaker 1: And they added a secondary override system so a jam
Speaker 1: could never dictate the flight path again exactly. So we've
Speaker 1: seen ghosts inside the machine itself. But what about the
Speaker 1: massive in visible systems guiding the machines.
Speaker 2: From the ground, the air traffic control systems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's shift our focus to August nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: a beautiful, crystal clear Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: air in Mexico. Flight four ninety eight, a DC nine
Speaker 1: is descending toward Los Angeles International Airport.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, a man named William Kramer is flying his family
Speaker 2: in a small private Piper Cherokee.
Speaker 1: And he's a relatively new pilot.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he's unfamiliar with the area, he's lost, and
Speaker 2: he's navigating by basically just looking out the window following
Speaker 2: the freeways below him.
Speaker 1: And without realizing it, he wanders straight into LAX's highly
Speaker 1: restricted airspace.
Speaker 2: Now down on the ground in a dark radar room,
Speaker 2: you have an air traffic controller named Walter.
Speaker 1: White, not the one from the TV show right.
Speaker 2: No, But he's managing a highly complex sequence of massive
Speaker 2: commercial arrivals. But his attention gets diverted by yet another
Speaker 2: private plane, a Grumman Tiger that has also blundered into
Speaker 2: his airspace unannounced.
Speaker 1: So while he's distracted talking to the Grumman trying to
Speaker 1: get it out of the way of the heavy jets,
Speaker 1: the Piper Cherokee and the Aero Mexico DC nine physically
Speaker 1: collide mid air over a suburban neighborhood in Cerritos.
Speaker 2: It's just terrific.
Speaker 1: The Piper slices the jet's horizontal stabilizer completely off. Eighty
Speaker 1: two people die, including fifteen innocent people on the ground.
Speaker 1: Entire houses were wiped off the map by the falling wreckage.
Speaker 2: It is a catastrophic failure of the air traffic system.
Speaker 1: But the most haunting question is how on Earth did
Speaker 1: the controller not see the Piper Cherokee on his radar
Speaker 1: screen heading straight for the jet.
Speaker 2: Well, that crash really exposed the tragic, fatal limitations of
Speaker 2: the technology at the time. The analog radar system suffered
Speaker 2: from something called flicker good flicker. Yeah, if the ancient
Speaker 2: computers got overloaded with data, secondary targets would simply drop
Speaker 2: off the screen for a sweep or two of the
Speaker 2: radar arms.
Speaker 1: So it just vanished.
Speaker 2: Yes. Furthermore, the piper's transponder was really basic. It was
Speaker 2: a mode A, meaning it only broadcast its position, not
Speaker 2: its altitude. Ah, so even if it popped up on
Speaker 2: the controllers screen, it was just this two dimensional blip
Speaker 2: with no height data flashing on and off right at
Speaker 2: the exact moment he was fixated on another rogue plane.
Speaker 1: But wait, it was a perfectly clear sunny day in
Speaker 1: southern California. Even if the radar was glitchy, Why didn't
Speaker 1: the pilots just look out the window and avoid each other?
Speaker 1: I mean, the rules of the sky dictate see and avoid.
Speaker 2: Well, see and avoid is a concept from the era
Speaker 2: of biplanes, and Serrita's proved it has fundamentally flawed at.
Speaker 1: Jet speeds because things are moving too fast exactly.
Speaker 2: It comes down to the strict biological limits of human eyesight.
Speaker 2: Studies conducted after the crash proved that a pilot needs
Speaker 2: a minimum of twelve seconds to spot an approaching aircraft,
Speaker 2: physically focus their eyes on it, recognize it as a
Speaker 2: collision thread, decide on an evasive maneuver, physically move the
Speaker 2: flight controls, and then wait for the inertia of a
Speaker 2: massive jet to actually change direction.
Speaker 1: Twelve seconds at three hundred miles an hour is an
Speaker 1: absolute eternity.
Speaker 2: It really is. Because the piper Cherokee was so small.
Speaker 2: By the time it was physically large enough in the
Speaker 2: DC nine's windshield to trigger a visual reaction, they were
Speaker 2: well passed that twelve second window.
Speaker 1: You literally biologically cannot react fast enough.
Speaker 2: The human eye is just not designed to prevent mid
Speaker 2: air collisions at jet.
Speaker 1: Speeds, and that realization completely transformed the airspace we fly
Speaker 1: in today. Congress actually stepped in and mandated a system
Speaker 1: called TCAs the Traffic Collision Avoidance System, which is brilliant Today.
Speaker 1: Every commercial jet is constantly invisibly broadcasting its position, speed,
Speaker 1: and altitude, communicating directly with the planes around it.
Speaker 2: Right, So if two planes get dangerously close. The computers
Speaker 2: bypass the air traffic controllers entirely.
Speaker 1: They talk to each other, and they issue loud voice
Speaker 1: commands directly into the pilot's headsets. One plane is commanded
Speaker 1: to climb, the other is commanded to descend.
Speaker 2: It takes the flawed human reaction time completely out of
Speaker 2: the equation.
Speaker 1: Which highlights a profound truth in accident investigation. You can
Speaker 1: engineer out the mechanical flaws, you can build flawless radar,
Speaker 1: you can invent TCA.
Speaker 2: But there is one variable in the cockpit that can
Speaker 2: never be fully engineered, updated, or patched.
Speaker 1: The human mind.
Speaker 2: The human element is, without a doubt, the most complex,
Speaker 2: unpredictable system on any aircraft.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about August nineteen ninety seven. Korean air flight
Speaker 1: eight oh one is on final approach to the island
Speaker 1: of Guam. It's well past midnight, and it.
Speaker 2: Is pouring rain, terrible conditions.
Speaker 1: Captain Park is a highly decorated pilot, but he is
Speaker 1: running on fumes. He is deeply fatigued. To make matters worse,
Speaker 1: the airport's electronic glide slope, the invisible radio beam that
Speaker 1: guides planes vertically down to the runway, is out of
Speaker 1: service for routine maintenance.
Speaker 2: So they are essentially flying a non precision approach blind
Speaker 2: in a tropical storm, relying entirely on altitude charts and timing.
Speaker 1: Which leaves very little room for error.
Speaker 2: Exactly. But there is a massive systemic failure lurking in
Speaker 2: the background here, well is it? The airport had a
Speaker 2: Minimum Safe Altitude Warning System or MSAW. It's a radar
Speaker 2: safety net designed to layer an alarm at the air
Speaker 2: traffic controllers if a plane drops dangerously low toward the.
Speaker 1: Terrain right to warn them they're about to hit a mountain.
Speaker 2: But the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, had deliberately moved
Speaker 2: the system's tracking zone eighty kilometers out to sea.
Speaker 1: Okay. I remember reading this in the report and thinking
Speaker 1: it was a typo. Why on Earth had an aviation
Speaker 1: authority take a safety net designed to protect mountains and
Speaker 1: move it out over the empty ocean.
Speaker 2: It's a psychological phenomenon called alarm fatigue.
Speaker 1: Oh, like when a car alarm goes off so much
Speaker 1: you just ignore it.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The MSIW alarms kept going off for planes that
Speaker 2: were landing perfectly safely. It was just too sensitive and
Speaker 2: instead of recalibrating the software. The controllers considered the constant
Speaker 2: beeping and nuisance, so.
Speaker 1: They basically turned it off to stop.
Speaker 2: The annoying alarms in the tower. They essentially disabled the
Speaker 2: safety net by moving its parameters where no planes were flying.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Because of that bureaucratic decision, the controllers sitting in the
Speaker 2: tower had absolutely no idea that Captain Park, battling critigue
Speaker 2: in the storm, had lost his situational awareness and was
Speaker 2: descending his seven forty seven way too.
Speaker 1: Early, and the result is devastating. They crash into the
Speaker 1: dense jungle of Nimitz Hill, three miles short of the runway,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty four people on board, and only
Speaker 1: twenty six survive.
Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: One of those survivors is a man named Barry Small,
Speaker 1: a helicopter pilot. His survival story highlights how incredibly arbitrary
Speaker 1: surviving a crash can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah. His story is intense.
Speaker 1: He survived the extreme g forces of the impact because
Speaker 1: his legs smash into a solid metal baggage crossbar under
Speaker 1: the seat in front of him. It shattered his femur,
Speaker 1: but it physically stopped his body from flying forward and
Speaker 1: breaking his neck.
Speaker 2: And he actually lobbied relentlessly after the crash to have
Speaker 2: those seat designs change.
Speaker 1: He did, but as he sat trapped in the wreckage,
Speaker 1: he watched a massive fire tear through the cabin, A
Speaker 1: fire heavily fueled by hundreds of liters of duty free
Speaker 1: alcohol stored in the overhead bins, just bursting and raining
Speaker 1: down on people.
Speaker 2: It's a stark reminder of the brutality of these events.
Speaker 2: I mean a metal crossbar or shattered leg, a bottle
Speaker 2: of liquor. These completely arbitrary details dictate who lives and dies.
Speaker 1: But the root cause wasn't the storm. It was human
Speaker 1: fatigue in the cockpit and a culture of complacency on
Speaker 1: the ground that disabled a vital safety net just to
Speaker 1: avoid a nuisance alarm.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to a climax in our investigation today,
Speaker 2: a story of human error and psychology that is almost
Speaker 2: unbelievable to comprehend.
Speaker 1: February nineteen eighty five, China Airlines Flight Zebra zero six
Speaker 1: is flying high over the Pacific Ocean en route to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It's the middle of the night. Suddenly, engine
Speaker 1: number four on the far right wing starts losing.
Speaker 2: Power, so thrust becomes asymmetrical and the massive plane begins
Speaker 2: to slowly bank to the right.
Speaker 1: Instead of disconnecting the computers and manually pushing the left
Speaker 1: rudder pedal to keep the plane flying straight, Captain Hoe
Speaker 1: leaves the autopilot engaged.
Speaker 2: And here's the fatal trap of automation. The autopilot on
Speaker 2: that specific seven forty seven cannot control the rudder. It's
Speaker 2: just not wired too. It recognizes the plane is tilting right,
Speaker 2: so it tries the level of the wings using the
Speaker 2: ailerons the flaps on the wings, but the aerodynamic drag
Speaker 2: of the dead engine is just too strong.
Speaker 1: That's what happens.
Speaker 2: The autopilot reaches its mechanical limit. The plane keeps tilting
Speaker 2: further and further until it literally slips upside down onto
Speaker 2: its back and goes into a vertical dive.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop you here because they are
Speaker 1: in a seven forty seven. They have three highly trained
Speaker 1: pilots sitting in the cockpit. I know they're flying over
Speaker 1: the Pacific in the middle of the night, so their
Speaker 1: body clocks must have been completely wrecked. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can barely operate my microwave on severe jet lag. Let
Speaker 1: alone troubleshoot a dying engine exactly.
Speaker 2: Fatigue plays a huge role, But how do.
Speaker 1: Three pilots just watch their plane roll upside down into
Speaker 1: a thirty thousand foot free fall, dropping out of the
Speaker 1: sky at near supersonic speeds. The g forces were so
Speaker 1: intense that the flight engineer was physically pinned to the floor.
Speaker 1: Passengers were watching the ceiling panels rip off from the
Speaker 1: sheer aerodynamic stress. How does a crew let it get
Speaker 1: to that point?
Speaker 2: Investigators isolated down to three specific psychological traps, they completely
Speaker 2: overrode their training. First task fixation okay, meaning what the
Speaker 2: crew became utterly obsessed with trying to restart that single
Speaker 2: failing engine. They stared relentlessly at the engine gages and
Speaker 2: completely stopped scanning their primary flight instruments vision.
Speaker 1: The engine became the only thing in the world that
Speaker 1: mattered exactly.
Speaker 2: Second trap, spatial disorientation. When they finally broke their fixation
Speaker 2: and looked at the attitude indicator, the artificial horizon that
Speaker 2: tells you which way is up, it was showing the
Speaker 2: plane almost completely upside down in a vertical dive.
Speaker 1: But they didn't believe it.
Speaker 2: No, because they were flying through thick, pitch black clouds
Speaker 2: with no visual horizon outside the window. Their inner ears
Speaker 2: were lying to them. The reading on the instrument was
Speaker 2: so extreme, so aerodynamically impossible. In their minds, they just
Speaker 2: assumed the instrument.
Speaker 1: Was broken, so they didn't think they were falling.
Speaker 2: The somatographic illusion made them feel like they were flying levels,
Speaker 2: so they didn't believe the plane was actually plummeting.
Speaker 1: And the third trap is the exhaustion you mentioned right, yes.
Speaker 2: De synchronosis severe jet lag. In the previous six days,
Speaker 2: Captain Hoad crossed eighteen time zones. His circadian rhythm was
Speaker 2: completely shattered. His brain was physiologically in its deepest, most
Speaker 2: sluggish sleep cycle, right at the exact moment he needed
Speaker 2: his maximum cognitive and creative problem solving skills.
Speaker 1: It was an over reliance on automation compounded by an
Speaker 1: exhausted crew whose senses were actively lying to.
Speaker 2: Them, But somehow, incredibly they saved it.
Speaker 1: I still can't believe this part. They fall vertically through
Speaker 1: the clouds for tens of thousands of feet. Finally they
Speaker 1: break through the cloud deck. The captain sees the actual
Speaker 1: horizon of the ocean. His brain snaps out of the illusion,
Speaker 1: and at ninety five hundred feet, literally seconds away from
Speaker 1: hitting the water, he grabs the yolk and manually pulls
Speaker 1: the plane out of the dive.
Speaker 2: They pull massive G forces.
Speaker 1: The landing gear doors rip right off the plane from
Speaker 1: the extreme aero dynamic stress. The horizontal stabilizer is severely damaged,
Speaker 1: but they managed to pull up and limp to an
Speaker 1: emergency landing in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: It is an absolute masterpiece of recovery, but it is
Speaker 2: preceded by a terrifying cascade of completely avoidable human errors.
Speaker 1: And it forced the entire aviation industry to rethink how
Speaker 1: humans and computers interact in the cockpit.
Speaker 2: We realized that if pilots rely too heavily on automation,
Speaker 2: their basic flying skills degrade and their situational awareness just evaporates.
Speaker 1: When we look at all the twisted metal and the
Speaker 1: flight data we've unpacked today, one thing becomes crystal clear.
Speaker 1: The aviation industry truly is a monument built on hard
Speaker 1: learned lessons.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: When we trace the Saint Elmo's Fire of British Airways nine,
Speaker 1: the suffocating, hidden smoke of Air Canada seven ninety seven,
Speaker 1: the mechanical ghosts lurking in the seven hundred thirty seven rudders,
Speaker 1: the tragic blind spots over Cerritos, and the automation traps
Speaker 1: over the Pacific. Every single feature of modern flight safety
Speaker 1: owes its existence to these events.
Speaker 2: It's a testament to the relentless dedication of investigators, the
Speaker 2: courage of the survivors, and an industry that fundamentally refuses
Speaker 2: to let these tragedies be in vain. We investigate, we learn,
Speaker 2: we engineer, and we adapt.
Speaker 1: But I want to leave you with a provocative thought.
Speaker 1: The next time you are sitting in a terminal waiting
Speaker 1: to board your flight, look out the window at the
Speaker 1: cockpit and consider this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a big one.
Speaker 1: As we push relentlessly toward a future of fully automated
Speaker 1: computer flown AI driven jets, we are desperately trying to
Speaker 1: design out human error. We want perfect algorithms flying perfect routes.
Speaker 1: But in doing so, by removing the human element, are
Speaker 1: we slowly stripping away the human intuition.
Speaker 2: That's split second creativity.
Speaker 1: Exactly, that split second creativity that is sometimes the only
Speaker 1: thing capable of recognizing an impossible situation, grabbing the controls
Speaker 1: and pulling a doomed flight out of a thirty thousand
Speaker 1: foot free fall.
Speaker 2: Because when the sensors fail, the screen go dark and
Speaker 2: the manual doesn't have the answer. You need a human
Speaker 2: mind to read the murky waters.
Speaker 1: Think about that next time you look up at the sky.