Speaker 1: I want to transport you to a sweltering Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 1: It's May twenty fifth, two thousand and two in.
Speaker 2: Taipei, Okay. Setting the scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are inside the cabin of a Boeing seven
Speaker 1: forty seven to two hundred China Airlines flight six eleven,
Speaker 1: and the atmosphere is totally routine, right.
Speaker 2: Maybe even a little sleepy in that thick heat, you know.
Speaker 1: Exactly two hundred and twenty five people are settling into
Speaker 1: their seats, buckling in, getting comfortable for what is honestly
Speaker 1: an incredibly common, everyday flight.
Speaker 2: They're heading for Hong Kong. In the aviation industry, this
Speaker 2: specific path is known as the Golden Route.
Speaker 1: The Golden Route.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the most widely traveled, highly lucrative
Speaker 2: flight paths on the planet. I mean, for the crew,
Speaker 2: this is a standard is driving to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: It's just an hour of forty minutes, like a really
Speaker 1: quick hop. So the massive jumbo jet pushes back from
Speaker 1: the gate taxis to the runway and.
Speaker 2: Takes off, and the weather is clear, right.
Speaker 1: Picture perfect. The cockpit voice recordings from that afternoon show
Speaker 1: a completely relaxed crew running through their standard checklists. You
Speaker 1: hear the familiar chime of the seat belt signs.
Speaker 2: Turning off standard procedure totally.
Speaker 1: The plane's autopilot is engaged, and the seven forty seven
Speaker 1: is steadily smoothly climbing toward its cruising altitude of thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand feet over the Taiwan Strait.
Speaker 2: It is tension breaks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty minutes into the flight, the plane simply vanishes
Speaker 1: from the Taipei area control radar.
Speaker 2: No warning, no desperate made a call from the pilots,
Speaker 2: nothing but static. It's gone, right, A massive machine just
Speaker 2: becomes a ghost on the radar screen.
Speaker 1: So today, the mission of this deep dive is to
Speaker 1: figure out why we are pulling from official aviation investigation files,
Speaker 1: decades old maintenance logs, and raw radar telemetry to piece
Speaker 1: together this really suspenseful aviation mystery.
Speaker 2: We want to understand how modern Jembo jet could just
Speaker 2: suddenly shatter in midair and honestly, what this story reveals
Speaker 2: about the hidden, invisible histories of the very machines you
Speaker 2: fly in every single day.
Speaker 1: Because when a modern jetliner falls out of the sky
Speaker 1: without a single word of distress, it challenges all of
Speaker 1: those fundamental assumptions we have about the safety systems we
Speaker 1: take for granted. Okay, let's unpack this. Investigating a high
Speaker 1: altitude mid air breakup is essentially like trying to put
Speaker 1: a shattered pane of glass back together, except you know,
Speaker 1: the shards are scattered over three hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: square kilometers of churning, unforgiving ocean, and.
Speaker 2: The clock starts ticking the second the plane disappears. The
Speaker 2: initial response is absolutely.
Speaker 1: Massive, right over a thousand people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the coast Guard, the Taiwanese military, local fishing boats.
Speaker 2: They all race out into the Taiwan Strait. They are
Speaker 2: desperately looking for life rafts for survivors.
Speaker 1: But what they find floating on the surface of the
Speaker 1: water pants are really grim picture he does.
Speaker 2: The recovery teams pull up heavy mechanical pieces like landing
Speaker 2: gear and massive wheels bobbing in the water.
Speaker 1: Which is terrifying to see floating.
Speaker 2: But floating right next to those heavy machinery parts are
Speaker 2: the most mundane, intimate domestic items napkins, knives, forks, luggage.
Speaker 1: Wow, And tragically they find no survivors. No.
Speaker 2: The reality sets in very quickly that this is no
Speaker 2: longer a rescue mission, it's a recovery investigation mission.
Speaker 1: And naturally, in the absence of a distress call, public
Speaker 1: speculation immediately goes to the darkest possibilities.
Speaker 2: Of course it does.
Speaker 1: You have to factor in the geopolitical tension of the time.
Speaker 1: The relationship between China and Taiwan was incredibly complex. On
Speaker 1: the exact day Flight six eleven vanished, China was conducting
Speaker 1: live military exercises in the Taiwan Strait.
Speaker 2: Right the timing was suspicious to people.
Speaker 1: Exactly plus, just eight months before this, a Siberia Airlines
Speaker 1: flight had been accidentally shot down by a stray missile
Speaker 1: over the Black Sea during a military training exercise. So
Speaker 1: the media immediately starts asking, you know, was Flight six'
Speaker 1: eleven shot?
Speaker 2: Down but investigators have to tune all of that noise
Speaker 2: out and look exclusively at the physical. Evidence they impartially
Speaker 2: and methodically ruled the missile theory out by exact ammining
Speaker 2: the recovered metal.
Speaker 1: Because the metal tells a.
Speaker 2: Story exactly when you hit a plane with a high explosive,
Speaker 2: missile the metal tells the story of that. Impact you
Speaker 2: would find shrapnel deeply embedded in the fuselage you'd find
Speaker 2: explosive soot chemically bonded to the, debris and most, importantly
Speaker 2: high explosives caused the metal skin of an aircraft to
Speaker 2: curl and tear outward in a very highly, specific unique.
Speaker 1: Way so the investigators look at the wreckage they pulled
Speaker 1: from the, sea and none of that is.
Speaker 2: There none of.
Speaker 1: It no, sut no curled, metal no. Shrapnel the missile
Speaker 1: theory is officially.
Speaker 2: Dead it's completely off the.
Speaker 1: Table but if it wasn't an external, attack what on
Speaker 1: earth causes a fully functioning seven forty seven to just
Speaker 1: explode on a routine.
Speaker 2: Climb, well the team from THE Us National Transportation Safety,
Speaker 2: board THE ntsb who flew into assist, trade they had
Speaker 2: a leading theory based on a massive investigation they concluded
Speaker 2: just a few years PRIOR twafla eight hundred, exactly that
Speaker 2: was also a seven forty. Seven it also broke Into
Speaker 2: pece without warning while still, Climbing and, crucially it also
Speaker 2: took off in very hot.
Speaker 1: WEATHER i remember that in THE twa, case the plane
Speaker 1: had been sitting on the hot tarmac with its air
Speaker 1: conditioning units running full, blast, right.
Speaker 2: And those units sit directly underneath the center fuel. Tank
Speaker 2: the heat basically boiled the residual fuel inside the, tank
Speaker 2: and a stray spark caused the vapors to violently.
Speaker 1: Explode so you look at flight six eleven taking off
Speaker 1: in the sweltering heat Of, taipei and the immediate question
Speaker 1: is could a hot air conditioning unit have boiled the
Speaker 1: center fuel tank? Again?
Speaker 2: Right but to prove, that they had to actually find
Speaker 2: the center fuel, tank and the problem was it was
Speaker 2: resting deep on the ocean floor miles. Down, Yeah so
Speaker 2: they brought in a sophisticated salvage vessel and sent down
Speaker 2: a remote operated vehicle an.
Speaker 1: Rov it navigates in pure, darkness guided only by its
Speaker 1: own lights and, sonar searching the ocean floor for this
Speaker 1: specific piece of.
Speaker 2: Metal and when they finally locate the center fuel tank
Speaker 2: in the murky, depths the visual evidence is. Undeniable what
Speaker 2: did they? See, well if the tank get exploded from
Speaker 2: the inside, out the metal would be blown, outward the
Speaker 2: edges would be violently splayed open like a firecracker going
Speaker 2: off inside of.
Speaker 1: Ten, can right outward. Forth, yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly but the tank they found on the ocean floor
Speaker 2: was relatively, intact and more, importantly it was crumpled in.
Speaker 1: There we crumpled.
Speaker 2: Inward, yes it had been crushed by the massive ambient
Speaker 2: water pressure as it sank miles down to the bottom
Speaker 2: of the.
Speaker 1: Ocean oh, Wow so there was no internal.
Speaker 2: Explosion, none no soot inside. Either THE twa eight hundred
Speaker 2: fuel tank theory just evaporated.
Speaker 1: Completely so we have a massive sea of wreckage and
Speaker 1: literally zero leading. Theories the bomb theories, out the missile theories,
Speaker 1: out the fuel tank theory is. Out the investigation hits
Speaker 1: a brick.
Speaker 2: Wall it really.
Speaker 1: Did to get past, it the managing director Of Taiwan's
Speaker 1: Aviation Safety, council along with THE, ntsb they decide they
Speaker 1: need to stop looking at the ocean and start looking
Speaker 1: at the. Sky they turn to the raw radar.
Speaker 2: Telemetry, yeah they employed a highly advanced technique called ballistic trajectory. Analysis,
Speaker 2: okay what is. That, well they had the ground based
Speaker 2: radar that was tracking the flight's transponder at the exact
Speaker 2: moment the event. Happened the radar signal actually split apart
Speaker 2: into multiple sizeable.
Speaker 1: Pieces just shattered on the.
Speaker 2: Screen, yeah the radar watched these heavy pieces fall from
Speaker 2: thirty five thousand feet all the way down to the ocean.
Speaker 1: Surface so the investigators decide to take eighteen specific pieces
Speaker 1: of recovered wreckage from all different parts of the, plane the,
Speaker 1: front the, middle the, back and they feed the exact
Speaker 1: weight of each, piece its aerodynamic, shape the wind speed that,
Speaker 1: day and the ocean currents into a specialized computer.
Speaker 2: System and the goal of this simulation is to figure
Speaker 2: out the exact sequence of. DISINTEGRATION i, mean logic dictates
Speaker 2: that the very first piece to break off the airplane
Speaker 2: is going to be the very first piece to hit the.
Speaker 1: Water, OKAY i have to ADMIT i really struggle to
Speaker 1: wrap my head around this. Concept how, so, well how
Speaker 1: can a computer tell you what broke off first just
Speaker 1: by looking at where it washed? Up isn't that like
Speaker 1: tossing a handful of rocks and leaves into the wind
Speaker 1: and trying to guess which left your hand. FIRST i,
Speaker 1: mean the leaves are gonna blow miles away and the
Speaker 1: rocks are going to drop straight.
Speaker 2: Down that's a great. Analogy but what's fascinating here is
Speaker 2: that the brilliance of the computer model is that it
Speaker 2: accounts for exactly that rock versus leaf.
Speaker 1: Physics oh, really.
Speaker 2: Yeah every piece of debris has a specific drag coefficient
Speaker 2: basically how it catches the, air and the specific terminal
Speaker 2: velocity based on its.
Speaker 1: Weight, okay that makes.
Speaker 2: Sense so the computer takes THE gps coordinate of where
Speaker 2: the piece was found in the. Water then it mathematically reverses.
Speaker 1: Time it rewinds it.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yep it calculates how far the ocean current pushed.
Speaker 2: It then it calculates how far the wind blow it
Speaker 2: as it, fell it strips away the wind in the,
Speaker 2: water mathematically rewinding the fall of that specific piece until
Speaker 2: it reaches thirty five thousand. Feet that is.
Speaker 1: Incredible and when they did this for all eighteen, pieces
Speaker 1: the computer pinpointed exactly when each item separated from the
Speaker 1: main body of the.
Speaker 2: Aircraft, yes and the result of that simulation is absolutely.
Speaker 2: Terrifying it paints a picture of the exact moment of.
Speaker 2: Failure where did it? Start the breakup started at the
Speaker 2: very back of the. Airplane the tail of the mass
Speaker 2: of seven forty seven ripped off.
Speaker 1: First that is a nightmare, scenario and that data point
Speaker 1: perfectly aligned with another bizarre. Clue the recovery teams had
Speaker 1: just pulled from the. Water.
Speaker 2: Right, yes investigators recovered nineteen distinct panels CALLED d, panels
Speaker 2: and out of the nineteen they, found four of them
Speaker 2: were locked in the open.
Speaker 1: POSITION i know these are pressure release, volves but why
Speaker 1: does finding them open point to the tail falling.
Speaker 2: Off to understand the significance of THE d, panels we
Speaker 2: have to look at the hidden anatomy of a seven forty.
Speaker 2: Seven the floor beneath your feet in the pasture cabin
Speaker 2: is also the ceiling of the cargo. Hold right beneath
Speaker 2: those floorboards runs the entire nervous system of the, airplane
Speaker 2: the vital steel cables that connect the pilot's controls to
Speaker 2: the rudder and elevators on the.
Speaker 1: Tail so if something happened thanks to that, floor the
Speaker 1: plane goes completely brain.
Speaker 2: Dead exactly. That back in nineteen seventy, four A turkish
Speaker 2: airline's flight had a faulty cargo door blay out mid.
Speaker 1: Flight, Oh i've heard of.
Speaker 2: This, Yeah the cargo hold suddenly lost all its air,
Speaker 2: pressure but the passenger cabin above it was still fully,
Speaker 2: Pressurized so you suddenly had a massive invisible weight of
Speaker 2: high pressure air pushing down on the floor of the
Speaker 2: passenger cabin with no pressure. Underneath to support it so
Speaker 2: just caves in it violently collapse downward into the cargo,
Speaker 2: hold severing all those vital flight control. Cables the pilot's
Speaker 2: lost complete control the. PLANE.
Speaker 1: Wow so to prevent that nightmare scenario from ever happening,
Speaker 1: again the aviation industry INSTALLED d. Panels they're, small spring
Speaker 1: loaded doors located near the. Floorboards they are designed to
Speaker 1: spring open automatically and instantly equalize the pressure between the
Speaker 1: passenger cabin and the cargo hold to save the floor from,
Speaker 1: collapsing and.
Speaker 2: They only open if there is a sudden catastrophic loss
Speaker 2: of pressure in the belly of the.
Speaker 1: Plane so connecting the from the, data FOUR d panels
Speaker 1: are permanently locked, open meaning the lower belly of the
Speaker 1: plane ruptured, violently and the ballistic trajectory analysis proves the
Speaker 1: tail fell off, first something catastrophic happened to the lower
Speaker 1: back half of the seven forty, seven.
Speaker 2: Which gives the recovery teams a laser. Focus instead of searching,
Speaker 2: blindly they know exactly what part of the plane they
Speaker 2: need to, find.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the docks of the Pengu.
Speaker 1: Islands hundreds of pieces of battered metal are piling up
Speaker 1: on this massive pier and ntsp metal are just. Named
Speaker 1: Frank zacar is walking the yard methodically sifting through the, debris.
Speaker 2: And he spots item number six. Forty item six.
Speaker 1: Forty what is?
Speaker 2: It it is a massive chunk of the lower aft,
Speaker 2: fuselage the lower rear, section and it includes part of
Speaker 2: the rear cargo. Door it is the exact area the
Speaker 2: computer models pointed.
Speaker 1: To so he found the needle in the.
Speaker 2: Haystack he, did And zakor immediately focuses not just on the,
Speaker 2: piece but on how the metal itself is.
Speaker 1: Broken because typically if a plane breaks apart in mid,
Speaker 1: air the five hundred mile per hour wind just shreds the.
Speaker 1: Structure it's what metaler just call an aerodynamic overload.
Speaker 2: Fracture right when metal is ripped apart violently by winds
Speaker 2: and extreme, stress the edges tear it at itstinct jagged.
Speaker 2: Angle it's a, chaotic violent.
Speaker 1: Fracture but When Frank zacar runs his hands along the
Speaker 1: torn edges of piece six, forty they aren't, jagged they aren't.
Speaker 2: Angled, no the edge is perfectly flat and.
Speaker 1: Smooth here's where it gets really. Interesting it's the physical
Speaker 1: difference between forcefully grabbing a thick piece of cardboard and
Speaker 1: ripping it in, half where you see all those, jagged
Speaker 1: torn paper, fibers versus taking a metal paper clip and
Speaker 1: just bending it back and forth slowly for.
Speaker 2: Weeks, right eventually the structural integrity of that paper clip
Speaker 2: simply gives up and it snaps, clean just. Snaps item
Speaker 2: six forty didn't rip in the. Wind it. Snapped it
Speaker 2: is a textbookcase of metal.
Speaker 1: Fatigue so this metal didn't break suddenly as it fell
Speaker 1: from the. Sky the separation happens slowly over an extended
Speaker 1: period of.
Speaker 2: Time, Yes and As zakar inspects this fatigue, crack he
Speaker 2: notices a visual anomaly on the outside of the. Fuselage
Speaker 2: sitting right over this massive flat crack is A doubler. Plate.
Speaker 1: Oh doubler plate is essentially an aviation, patch right.
Speaker 2: Exactly you can think of it like taking a heavy
Speaker 2: rubber patch and vulcanizing it over a puncture on a
Speaker 2: bicycle tire to restore its. Strength airplanes get dinged and
Speaker 2: scratched all the, time so finding a repair patch on
Speaker 2: a twenty two year old airplane is standard.
Speaker 1: Procedure but what wasn't standard were the dark longitudinal streaks
Speaker 1: visibly leaking out from underneath the edges of this specific metal.
Speaker 2: Patch, right something had been seeping out from behind the doubler,
Speaker 2: plate staining the white paint on the outside of the, Plane.
Speaker 1: And for an, investigator a leaking patch is a massive red,
Speaker 1: flag huge red.
Speaker 2: Flag they immediately cut out a large section Of piece
Speaker 2: sixty passion all and ship it to the Chung Shan,
Speaker 2: institute which is a highly advanced military science facility In.
Speaker 1: Taiwan they are about to peel back a metal patch
Speaker 1: that has been hiding a secret for. Decades when the
Speaker 1: scientists finally remove the doubler plate in the, lab they
Speaker 1: don't find a, clean professional repair, underneath not at.
Speaker 2: All they find massive deep gouges in the original aluminum,
Speaker 2: skin covering the entire fractured. Surface inside that massive crack
Speaker 2: is a thick layer of aluminium, oxide.
Speaker 1: Which is the aviation equivalent of. Rust, Right but the
Speaker 1: chemistry behaves a bit, differently doesn't it very?
Speaker 2: Differently when iron, rusts it flakes away and destroys the metal,
Speaker 2: Rapidly but when aluminum is exposed to, oxygen it oxidizes
Speaker 2: and creates a, hard protective.
Speaker 1: Shell OH i.
Speaker 2: See, yeah so for that oxide layer to build up
Speaker 2: thick enough to be clearly visible to the naked, eye that,
Speaker 2: raw unpainted metal had to be exposed to the air for,
Speaker 2: years not days or. Hours, wow the chemistry proved definitively
Speaker 2: that this crack was.
Speaker 1: Ancient this forces the investigators to dig deep into the
Speaker 1: plane's maintenance. Archives they pull the physical, logbooks and they
Speaker 1: uncover a story that takes us back exactly twenty two.
Speaker 2: Years back to nineteen.
Speaker 1: Eighty, yeah This boeing seven forty seven is practically and.
Speaker 1: New it's barely six months. Old it's landing In Hong,
Speaker 1: kong and the pilot comes in at too steep of an.
Speaker 2: Angle the nose is held too, high which means the
Speaker 2: heavy tail drops too.
Speaker 1: Low so the belly of the rear fuselage literally scrapes
Speaker 1: across the concrete runway at over one hundred miles an, hour, sparks, flying, metal,
Speaker 1: grinding smoke trailing behind the.
Speaker 2: Aircraft it's what the industry calls a tail.
Speaker 1: Strike and tail strikes, happen right they.
Speaker 2: Do there are a known risk during takeoff and, landing
Speaker 2: And boeing has very, specific rigorous protocols for how mechanics
Speaker 2: must fix the.
Speaker 1: Damage what does the manual?
Speaker 2: Say according to the official structural Repair, manual if the
Speaker 2: scratches from a runway scrape or, shallow you can safely
Speaker 2: stand them, smooth. Okay but if they're deep, gouges the
Speaker 2: manual explicitly requires mechanics to completely cut out the damage
Speaker 2: section of the fuselage skin and replace it with, fresh uncompromised, metal.
Speaker 1: Because you cannot leave deeply gouged metal on a pressurized. Aircraft,
Speaker 1: exact but the investigators looking at the ancient gouges under
Speaker 1: that patch realize the chilling. Truth the mechanics In Hong
Speaker 1: kong in nineteen eighty didn't cut the damage.
Speaker 2: Out it took a.
Speaker 1: Shortcut they merely sanded down the deepest, scratches slapped a
Speaker 1: doubler plate over the top that barely even covered the damaged,
Speaker 1: area and then wrote it up in the log book
Speaker 1: as a perfect bowing compliant by the book.
Speaker 2: Repair it documented a structural replacement that never, happened and
Speaker 2: because the logbook said the damage metal had been, removed
Speaker 2: no future mechanic ever had a reason to remove that
Speaker 2: patch to check underneath.
Speaker 1: It they had unwittingly created a ticking time. Bomb.
Speaker 2: Right if we connect this to the bigger, picture to
Speaker 2: really grasp why a scratch can bring down a, jet
Speaker 2: we have to talk about the physics of. Pressurization let's do.
Speaker 2: It every time a commercial airplane climbs to, altitude the
Speaker 2: air inside the cabin is artificially pressurized so you can breathe,
Speaker 2: normally while the air outside is thin and. Freezing the
Speaker 2: plane essentially inflates like a. Balloom, exactly the entire fuselage expands,
Speaker 2: outward stretching the metal. Skin when the plane, lands the
Speaker 2: pressure is released and the metal.
Speaker 1: Deflates right and over its twenty two year life, Span
Speaker 1: flight six eleven took off and landed more than twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: times so that.
Speaker 2: Means twenty thousand times the metal skin of that airplane, expanded,
Speaker 2: stretched and contracted.
Speaker 1: Back going back to the earlier, analogy it's like bending
Speaker 1: that metal paper clip twenty thousand. Times trapped beneath that hidden,
Speaker 1: patch those deep scratches from the runway strike were taking
Speaker 1: all the stress of the expanding.
Speaker 2: Cabin, right every single, flight a microscopic crack began to
Speaker 2: grow in the compromised metal millimeter by, millimeter year.
Speaker 1: After, year until that tiny scratch grew into a monstrous
Speaker 1: two point three meter fracture spanning completely across the lower
Speaker 1: belly of the.
Speaker 2: Plane and, then On may twenty, five two thousand and,
Speaker 2: two at thirty five thousand, feet the structural integrity finally.
Speaker 1: Failed the metal gave, way the d panels blew, open
Speaker 1: the tail ripped, off and the plane.
Speaker 2: Disintegrated it is a devastating chain of. Causality and what
Speaker 2: makes this story almost unbearable is that the aviation industry
Speaker 2: already knew this could.
Speaker 1: Happen they.
Speaker 2: Did they had a massive wake up call about this
Speaker 2: exact type of danger long Before flight six to eleven
Speaker 2: crashed back in nineteen eighty, eight and Aging boeing seven thirty,
Speaker 2: seven operated by A Loha airlines flying In, hawaii literally
Speaker 2: had its roof peel off mid flight due to severe
Speaker 2: metal fatigue and hidden.
Speaker 1: Corrosion Oh i've seen the photos of. That it's.
Speaker 2: Terrifying, amazingly the pilot managed to land, it but the
Speaker 2: imagery sent a shock wave through the. Industry The Federal
Speaker 2: Aviation administration mandated worldwide rigorous inspections of all older, planes.
Speaker 1: So airlines were ordered to go back and physically reevaluate
Speaker 1: all existing structural.
Speaker 2: Repairs, yes And China airlines actually started this mandated process
Speaker 2: one year Before flight six eleven. Crashed they brought the
Speaker 2: plane into the hangar and photographed all thirty One dudler
Speaker 2: plates on the, fuselage specifically preparing for this deep dive.
Speaker 1: Inspection, wait they photographed the exact patch hiding the fatal.
Speaker 2: Crack they, did oh, wow.
Speaker 1: And here's the smoking. Gun, Literally remember those dark streaks
Speaker 1: leaking out from the patch That Frank zacar.
Speaker 2: Noticed on the, docks, right the stains on the.
Speaker 1: Paint investigators looked at the photos from a year, prior
Speaker 1: and those stains were clearly visible on the pristine white.
Speaker 1: Paint but they weren't. Dirt they were. Nicotine.
Speaker 2: Nicotine, yeah because when smoking was legally permitted on, airplanes
Speaker 2: the cabin air was saturated with nicotine and.
Speaker 1: Tar, right And China airlines had banned smoking on their
Speaker 1: flights seven years.
Speaker 2: Before the, Crash so for over a, decade this highly
Speaker 2: pressurized cabin full of cigarette smoke was acting like a.
Speaker 1: Pump it was constantly pushing that nicotine stained air right
Speaker 1: out of the microscopic expanding crack in the, belly.
Speaker 2: Leaving a, vivid dark brown stain on the outside of the.
Speaker 2: Airplane any seasoned mechanic looking at that stain would know
Speaker 2: exactly what it.
Speaker 1: Meant what does it mean to?
Speaker 2: Them it meant high pressure air was escaping from behind
Speaker 2: a patch that was supposed to be completely hermetically. Sealed
Speaker 2: it was a, massive brightly colored arrow pointing directly to
Speaker 2: a structural. Failure so what does.
Speaker 1: This all mean for anyone listening who has ever tried
Speaker 1: to hide a scratch on a rental car with a
Speaker 1: little buffing Con this is that human instinct to cover
Speaker 1: up a, mistake but on a terrifying catastrophic, scale is
Speaker 1: exactly a highly visible clue was. Overlooked the photos were
Speaker 1: filed away in a, cabinet and the mandatory physical tear
Speaker 1: down inspection of that patch was scheduled for a major
Speaker 1: maintenance overhaul On november, two two thousand and, two.
Speaker 2: Which means they missed the deadline by five. Months the
Speaker 2: plane fell from the sky In. May that is just.
Speaker 2: Tragic the fallout from this revelation was. Sweeping THE ntsb
Speaker 2: in THE faa fundamentally changed the rules of. Maintenance mechanics
Speaker 2: can no longer just trust the paperwork of an undocumented
Speaker 2: or a poorly documented patch from decades.
Speaker 1: Ago they have to physically inspect underneath.
Speaker 2: Them, Yes boeing actually developed a specialized ultrasound technology to do.
Speaker 2: This it's it's essentially the exact same technology doctors used
Speaker 2: to look at a baby inside the, womb but calibrated
Speaker 2: for dense. Aluminum that's. Fascinating, yeah mechanics can outpress a
Speaker 2: wand against the outside of a plane and use high
Speaker 2: frequency sound ways to as essentially see through the. Metal
Speaker 2: they can detect hitting cracks underneath old doubler plates without
Speaker 2: having to rip the entire plane.
Speaker 1: Apart but we have to remain realistic about the current, landscape.
Speaker 1: RIGHT i, mean the technology exists and the regulations are much,
Speaker 1: stricter but the danger isn't entirely a. RaSE.
Speaker 2: No keeping aging fleets of planes safe requires, relentless extremely expensive.
Speaker 2: Vigilance look At Southwest airlines in The United states what happened.
Speaker 2: There six years after The China airlines. Crash southwest was
Speaker 2: hit with a record breaking ten point two million dollar
Speaker 2: fine by the government for missing these exact types of
Speaker 2: mandatory fatigue inspections on their older. Planes. Wow the financial
Speaker 2: pressure to keep planes in the, air flying roots and
Speaker 2: making money is a constant counterweight to the downtime needed
Speaker 2: for deep invasive.
Speaker 1: Maintenance which brings this entirely back to you the next
Speaker 1: time you are sitting in an airport, terminal staring out
Speaker 1: the window out the plane pulling up to your. Gate
Speaker 1: when you step onto a commercial, jetliner you aren't just
Speaker 1: placing your life in the hands of the pilot who
Speaker 1: is flying that.
Speaker 2: Day, no you are inherently trusting an, invisible decades long
Speaker 2: chain of human.
Speaker 1: Beings you are trusting mechanics who may have worked on
Speaker 1: that exact fuselage twenty years before you even bought your.
Speaker 2: Ticket you're trusting that someone decades ago didn't decide to
Speaker 2: take a short cut on A friday afternoon because they
Speaker 2: were tired or behind.
Speaker 1: Schedule so we'll leave you with this, lingering unsettling thought
Speaker 1: to explore on your. Own if our, modern highly, advanced
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar safety systems ultimately rely on the absolute perfection
Speaker 1: of a handwritten maintenance log from twenty or thirty years,
Speaker 1: ago how many other poorly applied doubler plates are currently
Speaker 1: flying thousands of feet above us right now silently hiding
Speaker 1: the microscopic mistakes of a tired mechanic from a different.
Speaker 1: Era