Speaker 1: I want you to just close your eyes per second
Speaker 1: and put yourself in a very specific, like incredibly terrifying scenario.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: So you are sitting in the cabin of a Boeing
Speaker 1: seven forty seven. You are thirty seven thousand feet up,
Speaker 1: flying through the pitch black night over the vast, totally
Speaker 1: empty expanse of the Indian.
Speaker 2: Ocean, just miles of dark water below.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, And you look at your window and instead
Speaker 1: of just darkness, you see this shimmering, ghostly white light
Speaker 1: just kind of clinging to the wings of the airplane.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, But it actually gets worse because a few
Speaker 1: seconds later you see forty foot jets of solid flame
Speaker 1: shooting straight out of the back of the engines.
Speaker 2: I mean, the visual alone is horrifying. Yeah, and the
Speaker 2: physical sensation inside that cabin would have been just as alarming,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't even imagine.
Speaker 2: Because the deafening, steady roar of those massive jet engines,
Speaker 2: it starts to grind and choke. Survivors actually later describe
Speaker 2: it sounding like a concrete mixer just grinding up, and.
Speaker 1: Then absolute dead silence. All four engines are gone. You
Speaker 1: are literally falling out of the sky.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate nightmare scenario, it really is. And well,
Speaker 2: welcome to this deep dive today. We are stepping into
Speaker 2: the rolls of aviation experts and accident investigators and we
Speaker 2: have a very specific mission.
Speaker 1: Right We're going to forensically examine three harrowing true stories
Speaker 1: of mid air emergencies from the nineteen seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're doing this because, frankly, every single time
Speaker 2: you board a commercial flight today, the safety features you
Speaker 2: take conpolitely for granted, from the tiny lights on the
Speaker 2: floor aisle to the hidden mechanics of the cargo doors
Speaker 2: right below your feet, they were all paid for by
Speaker 2: the terrifying ordeals of the passengers and crews in the
Speaker 2: stories we're unpacking today.
Speaker 1: Exactly, the safety of modern air travel is quite literally
Speaker 1: written in blood and near misses.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is an incredibly robust system today precisely because it
Speaker 1: was built on learning from these catastrophic, just unthinkable failures
Speaker 1: of the past.
Speaker 2: So let's start with that silence seven four to seven
Speaker 2: falling over the ocean. This is British Airways flight nine
Speaker 2: June nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: It's a routine flight cruising over Indonesia heading to Australia,
Speaker 1: the crew is fresh, everything seems completely fine. Radar actually
Speaker 1: shows smooth sailing for hundreds of miles.
Speaker 2: Ahead, nothing on the screens at all.
Speaker 1: Nothing. But then the passengers start noticing this ominous creeping
Speaker 1: haze just kind of filling the cabin.
Speaker 2: And you know, in nineteen eighty two, smoking was actually
Speaker 2: still allowed on airplanes.
Speaker 1: Oh right, I always forget that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a little haze wasn't immediately alarming to people,
Speaker 2: but the cabin crew quickly realized this smoke was entirely different.
Speaker 2: Oh so, well, it was thick, and it smelt heavily
Speaker 2: of sulfur, almost like a really strong electrical fire mixed
Speaker 2: with struck matches.
Speaker 1: That is not what you want to smell at thirty
Speaker 1: seven thousand feet.
Speaker 2: Definitely not. So they initiated this quiet, intense search for
Speaker 2: a fire inside the cabin, pulling up carpets and checking laboratories,
Speaker 2: but they couldn't find a single lane anywhere.
Speaker 1: Because the problem wasn't actually inside the plane. Right up
Speaker 1: in the cockpit, the flight crew start seeing these intense,
Speaker 1: blinding pricks of light completely covering the windshield, which is terrifying.
Speaker 1: It looks exactly like Sane Almo's fire, which is a
Speaker 1: phenomenon you usually only see when flying through highly charged thunderclouds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's electrical discharge.
Speaker 1: But they are looking at their weather radar and the
Speaker 1: screen is completely clear, like there is not a single
Speaker 1: rain cloud in the sky.
Speaker 2: The psychological toll of that confusion is just it's hard
Speaker 2: to overstate. You have a brilliant white, shimmering light essentially
Speaker 2: blinding the pilots, right yeah, and passengers are watching massive
Speaker 2: flames shoot out of the engines, but the instruments are
Speaker 2: telling the crew that the sky is perfectly clear. It
Speaker 2: makes no sense none, And then one by one the
Speaker 2: engine surge make that horrible concrete mixer grading sound, and
Speaker 2: they simply die, all four of them, all four within
Speaker 2: a minute and a half. They go from a healthy
Speaker 2: four engine jumbo jet to a three hundred ton metal.
Speaker 1: Glider plunging from thirty seven thousand feet and you know,
Speaker 1: the autopilot doesn't even disengage the way it's supposed to
Speaker 1: do in the training simulators. Oh really, Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: crew has to start a manual engine restart drill, which
Speaker 1: is this incredibly complex checklist that normally takes three full
Speaker 1: minutes to execute.
Speaker 2: And time is the one thing they don't have exactly.
Speaker 1: They calculate their descent rate and figure they only have
Speaker 1: about ten chances to get an engine going before they
Speaker 1: hit the freezing waters of the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 2: And compounding all of this is the immediate loss of cabin.
Speaker 1: Pressure, right because the engines control that exactly.
Speaker 2: The jet engines are what actually pump pressurized air into
Speaker 2: the cabin to keep everyone breathing at high altitudes. So
Speaker 2: without the engines, the cabin pressure drops rapidly to match
Speaker 2: the deadly thin air outside.
Speaker 1: So absolute panic sets in the yellow oxygen masks drop
Speaker 1: from the ceiling. But and this is just the worst timing,
Speaker 1: the first officer's mask is broken. Oh no, yeah, the
Speaker 1: tube literally separates from the mask right in his hands.
Speaker 1: So the captain is forced to make a terrifying maneuver.
Speaker 2: To get to lower altitude right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to save his co pilot from passing out. He
Speaker 1: has to put this massive engineless plane into a steep
Speaker 1: roller coaster dive, dropping six thousand feet in a single.
Speaker 2: Minute, just to reach an altitude where the air is
Speaker 2: thick enough for his crew to actually breathe exactly. I mean,
Speaker 2: that is an incredible display of airmanship, just acting entirely
Speaker 2: on instinct. But dropping altitude forces another terrifying geographic reality
Speaker 2: on them.
Speaker 1: The mountains.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, there is a massive jagged mountain range stretching
Speaker 2: across the island of Java, directly in their flight path.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They need to be at least eleven five hundred feet
Speaker 2: high just to clear those peaks. But they are bleeding
Speaker 2: altitude so fast.
Speaker 1: So Captain has to make an impossible choice. Does he
Speaker 1: ditch the plane and the pitch black ocean, which is
Speaker 1: a maneuver he has literally never practiced outside of a simulator,
Speaker 1: or does he risk crashing blindly into the mountains. He decides,
Speaker 1: if they don't get an engine started in the next
Speaker 1: few minutes, he will turn the plane around and take
Speaker 1: his chances with the ocean.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So they are running the restart drill over and over
Speaker 1: fifty times, maybe more, and then a miracle happens.
Speaker 2: They get one going.
Speaker 1: Yes, just as they're running out of altitude, engine number
Speaker 1: four suddenly roars back to life, and then a few
Speaker 1: moments later engine through kitches. Then the final two.
Speaker 2: That is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are back in business. They divert to Jakarta,
Speaker 1: and somehow, despite their windshield being completely sand blasted opaque,
Speaker 1: and their ground guidance equipment failing at the airport, they
Speaker 1: manually land the plane safely.
Speaker 2: So everyone survives. But the mystery for the accident investigators
Speaker 2: was really just beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they had no idea what happened.
Speaker 2: Right when they looked at the plane the next morning
Speaker 2: on the tarmac, the paint was completely stripped off the
Speaker 2: leading edges. The windshield was deeply scarred and frosted over.
Speaker 1: So I'm putting myself in the shoes of investigator Malcolm
Speaker 1: Greyburn here. He strips down these massive engines and finds
Speaker 1: the internal components completely choked with fine dust, ground up
Speaker 1: rock and sand.
Speaker 2: Which points to one very specific geological event.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It turns out that exact night, Mount glongung, a
Speaker 1: volcano like one hundred and sixty kilometers away, had erupted violently.
Speaker 1: Flight nine had flown blindly into a massive ash.
Speaker 2: Cloud, completely invisible to them.
Speaker 1: Right, but wait, I have to stop you here. I've
Speaker 1: always wondered about this volcanic ash is just rock dust.
Speaker 2: Right, Basically, yes, shouldn't.
Speaker 1: A massive jet turbine spinning at thousands of RPMs just
Speaker 1: blow that dust straight out the exhaust? Like? Why would
Speaker 1: it kill the engine?
Speaker 2: Well, that is the logical assumption. But let's look at
Speaker 2: the temperatures inside a jet engine. An engine is essentially
Speaker 2: a continuous explosion. Okay, It sucks in air, compresses it,
Speaker 2: and ignites it with jet fuel at around two thousand
Speaker 2: degrees celsius. Now, volcanic ash is composed of pulverized rock
Speaker 2: and glass.
Speaker 1: Oh I see where this is going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the melting point of that specific ash is around
Speaker 2: thirteen hundred degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So the engine is actual burning hotter than
Speaker 1: the melting point of the rock. It's like a giant
Speaker 1: blast furnace inhaling pulverized glass.
Speaker 2: Precisely, the ash ended the engine as a dry dust
Speaker 2: hit the combustion chamber and instantly melted into a sticky
Speaker 2: molten glass goo.
Speaker 1: That sounds disastrous.
Speaker 2: It was this molten rock completely coated the turbine blades,
Speaker 2: disrupting the precise aerodynamics needed to keep the engine running
Speaker 2: and ultimately suffocated the combustion process. That's what caused the
Speaker 2: engines to flame out.
Speaker 1: Okay, but that brings up an even bigger question. If
Speaker 1: the engines were choked with melted rock, how on earth
Speaker 1: did they magically restart before the plane hit the ocean.
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate aha moment of this investigation, and
Speaker 2: it all comes down to the physics of cooling.
Speaker 1: Okay, explain that.
Speaker 2: When the engines flamed out, they obviously stopped burning fuel
Speaker 2: right because they were no longer generating that two thousand
Speaker 2: degree heat. The internal metal rapidly cooled as the plane
Speaker 2: fell through the freezing high altitude air.
Speaker 1: Let me guess the molten glass goo cooled down right
Speaker 1: along with it.
Speaker 2: It did. The sticky ash solidified back into solid rock.
Speaker 2: But here's the trick. Because the metal engine blades and
Speaker 2: the glass ash contract at totally different rates. As they
Speaker 2: cool down, the ash became incredibly.
Speaker 1: Brittle, like hard candy exactly.
Speaker 2: So the sheer force of the air rushing through the
Speaker 2: dead wind milling engines simply shattered the brittle glass off
Speaker 2: the blades.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the cooling down process actually cleared the airflow just
Speaker 2: in time for the crew to successfully re ignite the fuel.
Speaker 1: That is an unbelievable piece of luck driven by pure physics.
Speaker 1: It makes total sense why this altered global aviation volcanic
Speaker 1: ash is dry rock, It doesn't contain water, and standard
Speaker 1: weather radar on airplanes bounce as signals off moisture like
Speaker 1: rain or hail. So this massive, deadly cloud was totally
Speaker 1: invisible to their instruments, which.
Speaker 2: Is why today we have the volcanic ash Advisory Centers.
Speaker 1: Well that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this single incident forced a brand new line of
Speaker 2: communication between geologists whom want seismic activity and the international
Speaker 2: airlines that actually fly over those regions.
Speaker 1: So BA Flight nine is a story about trusting instruments
Speaker 1: that simply cannot see the invisible forces of nature. But
Speaker 1: our next case transitions us into something much.
Speaker 2: Darker, definitely darker.
Speaker 1: What happens when the hazard isn't an unpredictable act of nature,
Speaker 1: but a deliberate human choice. What happens when the instruments
Speaker 1: are literally lying to the pilots because of a fatal
Speaker 1: design flaw.
Speaker 2: Right, we're talking about the McDonald Douglas DC ten and
Speaker 2: a disaster driven entirely by corporate bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: So to understand this, we go back to June nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, American Airlines Flight ninety six, a brand new
Speaker 1: DC ten literally just the fifth one ever built, takes
Speaker 1: off from.
Speaker 2: Detroit, just a normal flight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's climbing through eleven five hundred feet when suddenly
Speaker 1: the pilots here a massive bang followed by an explosive decompression.
Speaker 2: It's pure chaos in the cabin. The floor in the
Speaker 2: rear passenger section literally collapses downward into the cargo hold.
Speaker 1: I can't even picture that.
Speaker 2: It gets worse a coffin being transported down There is
Speaker 2: suck completely out of the airplane and falls to the earth.
Speaker 1: That is insane.
Speaker 2: But the most terrifying part isn't the hole in the plane.
Speaker 2: The severed floor takes out the vital control cables running
Speaker 2: underneath it.
Speaker 1: Oh no, so they can't steer right.
Speaker 2: The crew loses control of the tail engine, the elevators,
Speaker 2: and the rudder, which is jammed hard to the right.
Speaker 1: Under normal circumstances, an aircraft with a jammed rudder and
Speaker 1: severed elevator cables is a boomed aircraft absolutely. But Captain
Speaker 1: Bryce McCormick performed an absolute masterclass and emergency flying with
Speaker 1: his primary control severed. He used differential engine thrust to
Speaker 1: steer the crippled plane.
Speaker 2: Explain how that works, because visualizing that is just wild.
Speaker 1: Okay, So think of it like being in a rowboat.
Speaker 1: If you pull both oars equally, you go straight right.
Speaker 1: If you only pull the left or the boat turns
Speaker 1: to the right. McCormick did the exact same thing with
Speaker 1: his wing.
Speaker 2: Engine, using the engines to steer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by throttling up the left engine and throttle down
Speaker 1: the right engine, the asymmetric thrust pushed the nose of
Speaker 1: the plane around, fighting the jammed rudder.
Speaker 2: That is brilliant.
Speaker 1: Using only engine power, he actually managed to muscle that
Speaker 1: plane back to Detroit for a safe landing.
Speaker 2: Absolute hero, So naturally the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board,
Speaker 2: gets involved. Investigator Chuck Miller looks at the plane and
Speaker 2: realizes the rear cargo door just blew completely off the hinges.
Speaker 1: And why did that happen?
Speaker 2: The reason comes down to a structural design choice. To
Speaker 2: maximize cargo space inside the belly of the plane, McDonald
Speaker 2: Douglas designed the cargo door to open outward like a
Speaker 2: normal house.
Speaker 1: Door, which is a highly dangerous design choice. For a
Speaker 1: pressurized toobe right, very dangerous.
Speaker 2: Most aircraft doors are what we call plug doors. To
Speaker 2: visualize a plug door, think of a bathtub stopper. Okay,
Speaker 2: you put it in from the inside. The more water
Speaker 2: pressure pushes down on it, the tighter it actually seals
Speaker 2: into the drain.
Speaker 1: Oh, like it seals itself exactly.
Speaker 2: A plug door on an airplane works the exact same way.
Speaker 2: The massive air pressure inside the cabin pushes the door
Speaker 2: tighter into the frame. It's physically impossible for it to.
Speaker 1: Blow out, right, That makes total sense.
Speaker 2: But an outward opening door is like trying to hold
Speaker 2: that baptub stopper from underneath the drain while the tub
Speaker 2: is full of water. It relies entirely on its mechanical
Speaker 2: locking latches to hold back thousands of pounds of outward.
Speaker 1: Pressure, and Chuck Miller finds the fatal flaw in those latches.
Speaker 2: He does.
Speaker 1: Baggage handlers on the ground had to close a lever
Speaker 1: on the outside of the door to engage these locking pins,
Speaker 1: but the internal linkage was made of really thin.
Speaker 2: Metal, so it could bend.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If the pins didn't ligne perfectly, a baggage handler
Speaker 1: could physically force the exterior lever down, sometimes literally using
Speaker 1: their knee for leverage and bend the internal metal rod, and.
Speaker 2: The lever would sit flush on the outside, making it look.
Speaker 1: Locked exactly and even worse, forcing the handle triggered the
Speaker 1: electronic sensor to turn off the warning light in the cockpit,
Speaker 1: so the pilot's instruments told them it was locked, but
Speaker 1: the door was essentially a ticking time bomb.
Speaker 2: And this explains the collapsed floor perfectly. An airplane cabin
Speaker 2: is pumped full of pressurized air so you can breathe.
Speaker 2: The cargo hold below is also pressurized, right, But when
Speaker 2: that cargo door bleue open, the pressure in the hold
Speaker 2: instantly vanished, So you suddenly had a cabin full of
Speaker 2: high pressure air sitting directly above a low pressure hole.
Speaker 1: So the air just rushes down.
Speaker 2: Yes, the air rapidly sought the exit, and the sheer
Speaker 2: force of that pressure equalization crushed the passenger floor downward,
Speaker 2: taking all those control cables with it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the NTSB discovers this catastrophic mechanical flaw and
Speaker 1: the vulnerability of the floor in nineteen seventy two. My
Speaker 1: immediate thought is like, if I buy a new car,
Speaker 1: and the manufacturer finds out the brake lines can easily snap.
Speaker 1: There is a mandatory recall.
Speaker 2: Right, you ground the cars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the FAA has the power to issue an airworthiness
Speaker 1: directive which legally forces all DC tens out of the
Speaker 1: sky until the locks and floors are fixed.
Speaker 2: And the NTSB strongly recommended the f do exactly that.
Speaker 1: But they didn't know.
Speaker 2: We have to look at the economic reality at the
Speaker 2: aviation industry at the time. Grounding a brand new billion
Speaker 2: dollar fleet of aircraft overnight would have crippled airlines and
Speaker 2: sent shockwaves through the global economy.
Speaker 1: So what do they do instead? Just let them fly?
Speaker 2: They engaged in what investigators later bitterly referred to as
Speaker 2: a gentleman's agreement.
Speaker 1: Oh that's sound shady.
Speaker 2: It was the head of the FAA and the president
Speaker 2: of McDonald douglas made a backroom deal. An airworthiness directive
Speaker 2: would have been a pr nightmare for McDonald douglas, who
Speaker 2: was locked in a fierce existential sales war against Boeing
Speaker 2: and Lockheed.
Speaker 1: Ah, so it was about money totally.
Speaker 2: So McDonald douglas promised to implement a fix voluntarily during
Speaker 2: routine maintenance, and the FAA agreed not to ground the planes.
Speaker 1: A voluntary fix for a door that blew off in midair.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but that is just infuriating, it really is,
Speaker 1: and it leads right into the tragedy. Two years later,
Speaker 1: March nineteen seventy four, Turkish Airlines Flight ninety one takes
Speaker 1: off from Paris. It's packed with three hundred and forty.
Speaker 2: Six people and we know what happens next.
Speaker 1: As it climbs through eleven thousand feet, the exact same
Speaker 1: cargo door with the exact same bent locking mechanism blows off.
Speaker 1: The floor collapses again.
Speaker 2: But this time it's worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This time, the collapsing floor severs all the redundant
Speaker 1: hydraulic lines.
Speaker 2: And without hydraulics, the crew had absolutely no way to
Speaker 2: move the flight control surfaces. Differential thrust just couldn't save.
Speaker 1: Them, so they were totally helpless.
Speaker 2: Completely. The plane pitched down, accelerated to five hundred miles
Speaker 2: per hour, and crashed into a forest outside Paris. It
Speaker 2: was the worst plane crash in aviation history at the time.
Speaker 1: When Chuck Miller from the NTSB went to France and
Speaker 1: looked at the wreckage, he must have been absolutely sick
Speaker 1: to his stomach.
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine.
Speaker 1: The voluntary fixes that McDonald douglas's promise. They were pathetic.
Speaker 1: They literally just added a tiny people for baggage handlers
Speaker 1: to physically look and see if the pins were engaged.
Speaker 1: But they didn't even explain what to look for.
Speaker 2: And the warning signs were written only in English.
Speaker 1: Right, baggage handler who closed the door spoke three languages,
Speaker 1: but none of them were English.
Speaker 2: The fallout from this was just monumental. During the massive
Speaker 2: lawsuits that followed, a journalist named Paul Eddie uncovered a
Speaker 2: document that changed everything.
Speaker 1: The Applegate Memo, yes.
Speaker 2: It became known as the Applegate Memo, was written by
Speaker 2: Don Applegate, the director of product engineering for Conveyor. They
Speaker 2: were the subcontractor that actually built the fuselage doors for
Speaker 2: McDonald douglas.
Speaker 1: And tell me the timeline of when this memo was written,
Speaker 1: because this is the part that just haunts me.
Speaker 2: Applegate wrote this memo just weeks after the first Windsor
Speaker 2: incident in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: Wow, two years before Paris exactly.
Speaker 2: He explicitly warned his superiors that the outward opening door
Speaker 2: and the unvented floor above. It created an inherent susceptibility
Speaker 2: to catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Failure, so he knew exactly what was going to happen.
Speaker 2: He quite literally predicted that an airplane would be lost
Speaker 2: and a major disaster would occur if they didn't fundamentally
Speaker 2: redesign this aste.
Speaker 1: So they knew, They absolutely knew, and they pushed it
Speaker 1: through anyway because of the bottom line. During the trial,
Speaker 1: evidence actually came out that the cargo door had failed
Speaker 1: during a ground pressure test four years before the Paris crash.
Speaker 1: The industry later coined a term for this tombstone technology.
Speaker 1: It's such a dark it's this dark pragmatic calculus where
Speaker 1: a manufacturer essentially waits for enough people to die before
Speaker 1: the lawsuits cost more than simply spending the money to
Speaker 1: fix a hazard they already knew about, and.
Speaker 2: It ultimately cost McDonald douglas over eighty million dollars in damages.
Speaker 2: The FAA finally issued the legally binding airworthiness directive to
Speaker 2: fundamentally redesign the doors and vent the cabin.
Speaker 1: Floors, but their reputational damage was terminal, and McDonald douglas
Speaker 1: never fully recovered its dominance. No, they didn't, okay, so
Speaker 1: we've moved from the unpredictable forces of nature in our
Speaker 1: first story to the hidden structural flaws in our second.
Speaker 1: Let's move to the final story, which deals with the
Speaker 1: most imal visceral threat in the sky fire. We need
Speaker 1: to remember that an airplane is essentially a massive, highly
Speaker 1: pressurized metal tube flying miles above the earth. What happens
Speaker 1: in one small, hidden corner of that tube eventually affects
Speaker 1: every single person inside it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. So We're in June nineteen eighty three Air Canada
Speaker 2: Flight seven ninety seven, a DC nine, flying from Dallas
Speaker 2: to Montreal. Okay, they are cruising at seventy three thousand
Speaker 2: feet when three electrical circuit breakers for the rear washroom
Speaker 2: toilet motor suddenly pop out in the cockpit Zap, zap, zap.
Speaker 1: Like a machine gun. Captain Donald Cameron waits a few minutes,
Speaker 1: tries to push them back in to reset them, but
Speaker 1: they just pop right back.
Speaker 2: Out, which happens sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he assumed someone flushed to paper towel and jam
Speaker 1: the motor. It's annoying, but it certainly doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: a life or death emergency.
Speaker 2: But then the pastures sitting near the back start noticing
Speaker 2: an odd smell. It wasn't the smell of a cigarette
Speaker 2: or wood smoke. It was a harsh, wiry, burning plastic.
Speaker 1: Smell, like melting wires exactly.
Speaker 2: A wisp of gray smoke starts leaking from the seams
Speaker 2: around the washroom door. The flight attendants grab a fire extinguisher,
Speaker 2: open the door and spray it inside, but they can't
Speaker 2: actually see any flames.
Speaker 1: Because the fire isn't in the washroom itself. Right Suddenly,
Speaker 1: all hell breaks loose. The master warning light illuminates the cockpit.
Speaker 1: Electrical systems across the entire plane begin to fail one
Speaker 1: by one.
Speaker 2: It's spreading fast.
Speaker 1: The cockpit loses its sophisticated navigation screens. The co pilot
Speaker 1: goes back to check the washroom again, and the metal
Speaker 1: door handle is burning hot to the touch. They declare
Speaker 1: may day.
Speaker 2: They initiate a rapid emergency descent towards Cincinnati, but the
Speaker 2: loss of electrical power means they are flying blind, relying
Speaker 2: on primitive mechanical backup.
Speaker 1: Instruments, and the fire is causing physical damage too.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, worse, the fire is now physically melting the
Speaker 2: flight control cables in the rear of the plane. Captain
Speaker 2: Cameron is trying to push the nose down to descend,
Speaker 2: but the control wheel is actually fighting him. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it requires over forty pounds of physical pressure from his
Speaker 2: arms just to keep the plane from pitching up into
Speaker 2: a stall.
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine sitting in that cabin. The
Speaker 1: horror is just unimaginable. The acrid, bitter smoke is seeping
Speaker 1: out of the ceiling panels, slowly lowering over the passengers
Speaker 1: like a toxic blanket.
Speaker 2: And they can't even get oxygen.
Speaker 1: No, the flight attendants can't drop the oxygen masks because
Speaker 1: the system produces oxygen, which would instantly feed the hidden fire.
Speaker 1: So passengers are forced to take tiny, shallow breasts through
Speaker 1: clothing just to avoid.
Speaker 2: Choking, just trying to survive.
Speaker 1: One passenger actually takes out his wallet, puts his jacket on,
Speaker 1: and zips it up specifically so his body could be
Speaker 1: easily identified for his wife.
Speaker 2: Wow. It's just a sobering detail that really grounds you
Speaker 2: in the absolute terror of those minutes.
Speaker 1: It really is.
Speaker 2: But against all odds, with air traffic control talking them down,
Speaker 2: Captain Cameron manages to muscle the plane to a hard
Speaker 2: landing in Cincinnati fire trucks are waiting on the runway.
Speaker 2: You'd think the odeal is finally over.
Speaker 1: But it's not. The cabin is pitch black and completely
Speaker 1: filled from floor to ceiling with toxic fumes. The crew
Speaker 1: pops the emergency exits over the wings and the main doors.
Speaker 1: Passengers are stumbling blindly feeling their way over seats, just
Speaker 1: trying to get to fresh air. And then, only ninety
Speaker 1: seconds after the plane touches down and the doors are open,
Speaker 1: the entire interior of the jet erupts in a massive
Speaker 1: flash over explosion. Ninety seconds, the flames roll through the
Speaker 1: cabin like a freight train. Twenty three people die, including
Speaker 1: the rising folk music legends Stan Rogers.
Speaker 2: The investigation into this was incredibly complex. The NTSB initially
Speaker 2: tested the sea's toilet motor, assuming it had overheated.
Speaker 1: Right because of the circuit breakers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they found it only reached about four hundred
Speaker 2: degrees celsius when jammed hot, but definitely not hot enough
Speaker 2: to ignite the surrounding metal walls.
Speaker 1: So how did this happen? Like how does a fire
Speaker 1: hide and then suddenly explode ninety seconds after everyone thought
Speaker 1: they were safe, Their.
Speaker 2: Cockpit voice recorder held the clue three minutes before the
Speaker 2: circuit breakers popped. The microphone picked up the faint sound
Speaker 2: of electrical arcinc static, just a buzzing sound. Yeah, eight
Speaker 2: separate times. Deep behind the washroom floor, the protective insulation
Speaker 2: had rubbed off some wires coming from a generator. They
Speaker 2: were sparking against the frame.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to picture the chemistry of this disaster dynamic.
Speaker 1: The fire started in these tiny hidden spaces behind the walls,
Speaker 1: and because there isn't a lot of free flowing air
Speaker 1: back there, the fire didn't just burn up cleanly. It
Speaker 1: starved for oxygen.
Speaker 2: Right, Exactly, when a fire burns in an oxygen starved space,
Speaker 2: it produces highly combustible, unburnt fuel in the form of
Speaker 2: superheated gases.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's just building up, right, Those.
Speaker 2: Hidden wall spaces acted exactly like a chimney. The superheated
Speaker 2: gases traveled up the walls and collected in the ceiling
Speaker 2: space directly above the passenger's heads. It was a creeping
Speaker 2: buildup of toxic, flammable gas permeating the entire pressure vessel.
Speaker 1: And here's the fatal moment when they landed and popped
Speaker 1: those emergency doors open. It was like takeing the lid
Speaker 1: off a pressure cooker over an open.
Speaker 2: Flame, a deadly combination.
Speaker 1: An unlimited rush of fresh outside oxygen flooded into the cabin.
Speaker 1: That oxygen mixed with those superheated fuel gases in the ceiling,
Speaker 1: providing the final ingredient for combustion. It instantly triggered an
Speaker 1: explosive flashover.
Speaker 2: A flashover burns up all the remaining oxygen in the
Speaker 2: cabin instantaneously, making it totally unsurvivable for anyone still inside.
Speaker 1: That's devastating, But.
Speaker 2: The NTSB investigation burst some of the most sweeping reforms
Speaker 2: in modern aviation history, and.
Speaker 1: This is the legacy we live with today. The investigators
Speaker 1: realized passengers died because they simply couldn't find the exits
Speaker 1: in the thick black smoke that rises to the ceiling right.
Speaker 2: They were blinded.
Speaker 1: So what do you see every time you board a
Speaker 1: plane today? Track lighting on the floor, those little raised
Speaker 1: bumps on the overhead bins to help you literally feel
Speaker 1: your way to an exit row in the dark.
Speaker 2: We also saw the federal mandate of smoke detectors in
Speaker 2: every single airplane lavatory and autumn halon fire extinguishers installed
Speaker 2: in the wastebins. All because of this, the actual composite
Speaker 2: materials used to build the interior panels were changed globally
Speaker 2: to limit heat release and smoke production. Every one of
Speaker 2: those regulations was a direct result of Air Canada's sevent
Speaker 2: nine to seven.
Speaker 1: So bringing this all back to where we started, every
Speaker 1: seemingly annoying regulation, every pre flight safety briefing where they
Speaker 1: point out the exits and tell you the floor lights
Speaker 1: will guide you, it is a monument. It really is
Speaker 1: a monument to the people in these three stories who
Speaker 1: didn't make it, to the crews who fought impossible odds
Speaker 1: with unmatched skill, and to the brilliant investigators who worked
Speaker 1: tirelessly to ensure these specific tragedies would never happen again.
Speaker 2: It's a powerful reminder that aviation safety doesn't just rest
Speaker 2: on incredible engineering. It rests on relentless forensic investigation and
Speaker 2: a refusal to accept the unknown. We have largely engineered
Speaker 2: away the mechanical flaws and physical blind spots of the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: But I want to leave you with a final lingering
Speaker 1: thought to ponder our on your own as we enter
Speaker 1: the next great frontier of aviation, a future that is
Speaker 1: incredibly reliant on artificial intelligence, complex, millions of lines of code, software,
Speaker 1: and autonomous flight. What are the unseen volcanic ash clouds
Speaker 1: of tomorrow?
Speaker 2: That's a scary thought.
Speaker 1: What are the new gentlemen's agreements happening in boardrooms right
Speaker 1: now regarding algorithms rather than cargo doors. We've fixed the
Speaker 1: physical hinges and the mechanical wires, but are we inadvertently
Speaker 1: coding the invisible blind spots of the future. We really
Speaker 1: might be something to think about the next time you're
Speaker 1: sitting in a cabin thirty seven thousand feet up, looking
Speaker 1: out the window into the pitch black night, trusting the
Speaker 1: invisible systems keeping you safely in the sky.