Speaker 1: So I want you to picture yourself standing in a dense,
Speaker 1: snow covered forest in Gander, Newfoundland.
Speaker 2: Right, and it's December twelve, nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. It is just pitch black, and.
Speaker 1: There's this freezing rain falling so hard it actually stings your.
Speaker 2: Face, oh man, and emergency crews are just thrashing through
Speaker 2: this heavily wooded area, right.
Speaker 1: But the thing is they don't even need flashlights to
Speaker 1: see where they're going because rising up right in front
Speaker 1: of them is this thirty foot high, burning mass of
Speaker 1: twisted metal and jet fuel.
Speaker 2: The devastation is just absolutely I mean, the smell of
Speaker 2: aviation fuel and well death is completely overwhelming.
Speaker 3: It's horrific.
Speaker 1: And as investigators start to sift through this totally harrowing scene,
Speaker 1: they find something among.
Speaker 3: The scattered debris that just, I mean, it breaks your heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the souvenirs right amidst the fiery wreckage. Are these
Speaker 1: souvenirs the passengers had bought literally just moments before boarding.
Speaker 1: They were these t shirts that read I survived Gander, Newfoundland.
Speaker 2: God is just an unimaginably devastating image and the reality
Speaker 2: of what those crews found in the dark that night
Speaker 2: was even worse because all two hundred and fifty six
Speaker 2: people on board Arrow Airflight twelve eighty five were dead.
Speaker 1: And the vast majority of them were US soldiers, right
Speaker 1: from the famed one hundred and first Airborne Division.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Screaming Eagles. They were returning home from this
Speaker 2: highly tense peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula. They were
Speaker 2: just hoping to be back in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: For Christmas, but instead this wreckage became one of the
Speaker 1: worst aviation disasters in history.
Speaker 2: You really did.
Speaker 1: Welcome to today's deep dive. We are going to unpack a
Speaker 1: stack of really harrowing aviation investigation case files, and our
Speaker 1: mission today is to trace the path of a nearly invisible.
Speaker 2: Killer, right, a killer that brought down three separate commercial
Speaker 2: jets exactly.
Speaker 1: And we're going to see how a crazy storm of controversy,
Speaker 1: human error, and just massive corporate pressure prevented the aviation
Speaker 1: industry from learning a vital lesson until it was almost
Speaker 1: too late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a wild sequence of events.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because I want you to imagine
Speaker 1: a killer hiding in plane sight, something so thin and
Speaker 1: like ordinary that you'd brush it off without a second thought.
Speaker 3: That's what we are dealing with today, right, and.
Speaker 2: Understand how this hidden killer operates. We really have to
Speaker 2: look chronologically at the timeline of that arrow air flight
Speaker 2: and gander.
Speaker 3: Okay, set the scene for us.
Speaker 2: So First Officer John Connolly is at the controls of
Speaker 2: a massive Douglas DC eight and before taking off, you know,
Speaker 2: the flight crew goes through their standard calculations to figure
Speaker 2: out their critical.
Speaker 1: Speeds, right, the numbers they need to actually lift off exactly.
Speaker 2: So the bug on the airspeed indicator, which is just
Speaker 2: a little visual marker for the pilots to know when
Speaker 2: to pull back on the yoke, is set to one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty four knots for lift off.
Speaker 3: Okay, one hundred and forty four knots.
Speaker 2: But as they thunder down the runway into the freezing rain,
Speaker 2: something is deeply, deeply wrong. They don't lift off at
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty four knots.
Speaker 3: They hit one hundred and sixty seven knots.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, It takes them over a thousand feet longer
Speaker 2: than expected just to get the win off the tarmac.
Speaker 1: And reading through the flight data recorder logs in the
Speaker 1: case files, The final moments are just terrifying because just
Speaker 1: thirteen seconds after lifting off, the nose of the plane
Speaker 1: is pulled up radically. The aircraft immediately stalls. It basically
Speaker 1: stops flying like an airplane and starts flying well, as
Speaker 1: the accident investigators describe it, like a pig. Like a pig, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it completely loses aerodynamic lift, begins descending and slams directly
Speaker 1: into those trees about half a mile from the runway.
Speaker 2: And when the Canadian Aviation Safety Board the CAASB arrived
Speaker 2: at the scene, they were stepping into what would become
Speaker 2: the most intense political and scientific controversy of the decade.
Speaker 1: Oh totally, because they had to figure out why a
Speaker 1: fully functioning, heavily scrutinized military charter jet.
Speaker 2: Just fell out of the sky right and almost immediately,
Speaker 2: the investigation just fractured into two radically different, highly entrenched theories.
Speaker 1: And that division itself is a massive part of the story.
Speaker 1: It completely paralyzed the investigation.
Speaker 3: Let's look at the.
Speaker 1: Minority report first, which was championed by board member Lesu Loota.
Speaker 2: Right, his faction believed the plane was actually brought down
Speaker 2: by a bomb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you really have to put yourself in the
Speaker 1: geopolitical context of nineteen eighty five. Here, tensions in the
Speaker 1: Middle East were at an absolute boiling point. Oh, for sure,
Speaker 1: these soldiers were returning from the Sinai An anonymous caller
Speaker 1: had actually contacted a news agency claiming Islamic jihad was responsible.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: There were constant whispers of Hezbola involvement and even complex
Speaker 1: rumors tying the flight to covert Iran contra operations.
Speaker 2: And the Minority faction didn't just base their conclusions on
Speaker 2: geopolitical tension, you know, they pointed to highly specific physical
Speaker 2: evidence recovered right from the wreckage.
Speaker 3: Like, what what did they find?
Speaker 2: Well, autopsies of the victims showed extreme levels of carbon
Speaker 2: monoxide in their blood and lungs. To the Minority investigators,
Speaker 2: this strongly suggested that passengers had inhaled heavy smoke from
Speaker 2: a pre crash fire inside the cabin.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, investigators found inward curling metal on one of the
Speaker 2: engine cowlings and red paint transfers on the fuselage and
Speaker 2: to this faction that looked exactly like the localized explosive
Speaker 2: signature of a midair debtonation.
Speaker 1: Okay, But then you have the majority report, driven by
Speaker 1: lead investigators David McNair and Peter bog and they completely
Speaker 1: rejected the terrorism theory intartoly. Yeah, they sent pieces of
Speaker 1: the wreckage, including that curled metal and the red paint,
Speaker 1: to the forensics lab and it came back with zero
Speaker 1: explosive residue, none at all.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They concluded that the inward curling metal and the paint
Speaker 1: were simply damage caused by a front end loader moving
Speaker 1: debried during the frantic search and rescue effort.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, But what about the carbon monoxide?
Speaker 1: They argued that was just a tragic consequence of surviving
Speaker 1: the initial impact just long enough to inhale the toxic
Speaker 1: fumes from the burning jet fuel.
Speaker 2: Right, So instead of a bomb, they found a lethal,
Speaker 2: almost invisible combination of factors, basically extreme weight and microscopic ice.
Speaker 1: Miscalculation alone is just staggering when you dig into the
Speaker 1: log it really is.
Speaker 2: The airline had estimated the passenger weight at one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy pounds per person, which is, you know, a
Speaker 2: standard commercial average derived from civilian.
Speaker 1: Flights, right, accounting for a mix of men, women, and
Speaker 1: children exactly.
Speaker 2: But this wasn't a civilian flight. These were two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty six fully grown, heavily muscled combat soldiers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and anyone who has ever hauled military gear knows
Speaker 1: it is incredibly heavy. The true weight was estimated to
Speaker 1: be closer to two hundred and twenty pounds.
Speaker 2: Per person, which is a huge difference.
Speaker 1: Massive When you multiply that discrepancy across two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six passengers, that means the plane was a massive
Speaker 1: twelve thousand pounds overweight.
Speaker 2: Just crazy.
Speaker 1: And you are compounding that massive weight penalty with the
Speaker 1: freezing rain that was falling in Gander that morning.
Speaker 2: Right, because that freezing rain coded the swept wings of
Speaker 2: the DC eight, and the ground crew didn't de ice
Speaker 2: the plane because well, in the dark under those ramp lights,
Speaker 2: it just didn't look like a thing heavy layer.
Speaker 1: Of ice visually, the wings just looked wet. They thought
Speaker 1: it was harmless water exactly.
Speaker 4: Wait.
Speaker 1: I want to pause here because reading this initially felt
Speaker 1: completely counterintuitive to me. So you have a massive military
Speaker 1: jet with engines generating tens of thousands of pounds of thrust.
Speaker 1: How can a sheet of ice as thin and rough
Speaker 1: as sand paper bring down a machine that powerful, it
Speaker 1: just feels like the engines should just muscle through it.
Speaker 2: It's a completely natural assumption, it really is. But what's
Speaker 2: fascinating here is just the brutal, unforgiving nature of aerodynamics. Okay,
Speaker 2: the majority investigators ran extensive wind tunnel and simulator test
Speaker 2: to answer that exact question, and the science is undeniable.
Speaker 3: What did they find?
Speaker 2: So? An airplane wing generates lyft because of the incredibly
Speaker 2: precise way air flows smoothly over its curved upper surface.
Speaker 2: It creates an area of low pressure above the wing,
Speaker 2: which essentially sucks the plane up into the sky. Right.
Speaker 2: If you add ice that has the texture of course
Speaker 2: sandpaper to the leading edge of the wing, it acts
Speaker 2: like a speed bump. It violently shatters that smooth laminar airflow,
Speaker 2: causing it to separate from the wing entirely. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the wing simply stops generating lift. Thrust cannot save you
Speaker 2: if your wings aren't flying.
Speaker 1: And this perfectly explains the fatal maneuver on the flight
Speaker 1: deck because the plane was twelve thousand pounds overweight and
Speaker 1: wasn't climbing fast enough due to that microscopic ice. First
Speaker 1: Officer Connelly pulled the nose up further to try and
Speaker 1: force the plane into.
Speaker 4: The sky, which is the worst thing you could do,
Speaker 4: right because wait, so, if the wing is already struggling
Speaker 4: because of that sandpaper ice, pulling the nose up isn't
Speaker 4: forcing the plane to climb.
Speaker 1: You're just taking the bottom of the wing and shoving
Speaker 1: it flat against the oncoming wind like a giant air brake.
Speaker 2: Exactly. You're instantly killing whatever forward momentum you have left. Wow,
Speaker 2: that is the exact mechanism of their demise. Pulling the
Speaker 2: nose up increased the angle of attack so severely that
Speaker 2: it initiated a catastrophic aerodynamic stall. The plane literally just
Speaker 2: fell out of the air.
Speaker 1: So obviously we aren't here to declare a winner between
Speaker 1: the bomb theory and the ice theory. But the real
Speaker 1: tragedy of Gander, the absolute gut punch in these files,
Speaker 1: is what happened next. Because of this raging, bitter debate
Speaker 1: over terrorism cover ups and payload physics, the entire Canadian
Speaker 1: Aviation Safety Board fractured, the.
Speaker 2: Release deeply divided, highly contentious reports.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the political fallout was so severe that the
Speaker 1: CASB was actually.
Speaker 2: Disbanded, which is insane.
Speaker 1: And because the headlines were entirely consumed by the argument
Speaker 1: over a potential bomb, the crucial life saving warning about
Speaker 1: the devastating effects of microscopic ice was totally buried in
Speaker 1: the noise.
Speaker 2: And because that safety warning was drowned out by political infighting,
Speaker 2: the aviation industry was essentially flying blind into the next
Speaker 2: brutal winter. Yeah, I mean, a safety board's primary mandate
Speaker 2: is to find the cause of a crash, issue a
Speaker 2: warning and is sure it never happens again. When that
Speaker 2: warning evaporates, it is only a matter of time before
Speaker 2: the exact same invisible physics trap snapshot on another crew.
Speaker 1: That happened exactly four years later in the freezing remote
Speaker 1: wilderness of Dryden, Ontario.
Speaker 2: March ten, nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Right, Dryden is this remote town locked in a brutal
Speaker 1: Canadian winter. The temperature is hovering around freezing, wet snow
Speaker 1: is falling heavily, And here we meet Captain George Morewood.
Speaker 2: He is piloting a twin engine Falker F twenty eight
Speaker 2: for Air Ontario.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's an old school professional, highly respected, but
Speaker 1: on this day, the case file show he is incredibly stressed.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's an hour behind schedule. He's got a plane
Speaker 2: full of frustrated families trying to make connections for their
Speaker 2: march break ski vacations.
Speaker 1: And the weather is deteriorating rapidly. But the real trap
Speaker 1: Captain Morewood is stepping into isn't just meteorological. He's backed
Speaker 1: into a corner by his own aircraft.
Speaker 2: Right because the plane's auxiliary power unit, the APU, is
Speaker 2: completely dead.
Speaker 3: Can you explain what the APU actually does?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, the APU is a critical piece of machinery.
Speaker 2: It's essentially a small jet engine located in the tail
Speaker 2: of the aircraft. Its main job on the ground is
Speaker 2: to provide pneumatic air pressure to spin up and start
Speaker 2: the massive main engines.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, because Morewood's APU is broken, if he shuts
Speaker 1: off his main engines to refuel and Dryden, he can't
Speaker 1: restart them himself exactly.
Speaker 2: And because Dryden is a small, remote airport, they do
Speaker 2: not have a ground based air cart to jumpstart a
Speaker 2: commercial jet.
Speaker 1: So he is forced to do a hot refuel yep,
Speaker 1: he has to leave one of the main engines running
Speaker 1: while the ground crew pumps jet fuel into the wing tanks,
Speaker 1: which sounds incredibly stressful, noisy, and risky, but it's the
Speaker 1: only way he can physically leave Dryden.
Speaker 2: But this creates a catastrophic domino effect regarding the ice.
Speaker 2: How because that engine is running, airline policy strictly prohibits
Speaker 2: de icing the plane.
Speaker 3: Wait, really, why is that?
Speaker 2: The reason for that policy comes down to basic chemistry
Speaker 2: and passenger safety. De Icing fluid is highly toxic. Oh
Speaker 2: I See, when an engine is running, it continuously sucks
Speaker 2: in massive amounts of outside air, which it uses to
Speaker 2: supply the cab and air conditioning and pressurization systems. If
Speaker 2: ground crews sprayed the plane with toxic de icing fluid
Speaker 2: while the engine was running, the atomized chemical fumes would
Speaker 2: be sucked right into the cabin.
Speaker 1: Bleeds, basically gassing the passengers. Exactly so, Morewood is forced
Speaker 1: to sit on the tarmac for thirty minutes in a snowstorm,
Speaker 1: waiting for a delayed cessenetal Land and he is unable
Speaker 1: to de ice his plane.
Speaker 3: Right, And this is where a.
Speaker 1: Terrifying physical phenomenon known as cold soaking comes into play.
Speaker 1: Because you have to remember this F twenty eight just
Speaker 1: flew in from cruising altitude, where the ambient air temperature
Speaker 1: is around minus fifty degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: Right, so, the thousands of gallons of jet shuls stored
Speaker 2: directly inside the aluminum wings becomes super chilled.
Speaker 1: The fuel essentially turns the wings into literal freezers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, even though the air temperature in Dryden is
Speaker 2: right around the freezing mark, the metal skin of the
Speaker 2: wing is intensely cold.
Speaker 1: So as the wet, heavy snow falls onto the aircraft,
Speaker 1: it melts slightly on contact with the ambient air, but
Speaker 1: the moment that moisture touches the super cool old aluminum wing,
Speaker 1: it freezes instantly.
Speaker 2: From the bottom up, it creates a perfectly clear, dense
Speaker 2: sheet of ice, and visually from the cockpit or a
Speaker 2: passenger window, it just looks like a sheen of harmless water.
Speaker 1: And lacking the clear institutional warning from Gander about how
Speaker 1: lethal microscopic ice is. Morewood initiates takeoff.
Speaker 2: Which is just heartbreaking to read.
Speaker 1: The survivor's accounts in the investigation files are absolutely chilling.
Speaker 1: They described the takeoff run as sluggish, like a heavy
Speaker 1: person trying to run up a steep hill. Right the
Speaker 1: plane barely clears the tree line at the end of
Speaker 1: the runway. Then it starts shaking violently. One survivor said
Speaker 1: the vibrations were so intense it felt like being trapped
Speaker 1: inside a kitchen mix master. Jesus, the aircraft violently crashes
Speaker 1: into the snowy bush, breaking open and immediately catching fire.
Speaker 1: Twenty four of the sixty nine people aboard die in
Speaker 1: the freezing wilderness.
Speaker 2: It is a devastating, entirely preventable tragedy, and it really
Speaker 2: forces us to look past the cockpit.
Speaker 1: This is exactly what I kept thinking while reading the
Speaker 1: accident reports. I look at Captain more Wood, and I
Speaker 1: see a pilot who is basically painted into an impossible corner.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Completely, It's like being.
Speaker 1: Forced to drive down a treacherous, icy mountain road with
Speaker 1: bald tires because your company's mechanic is closed and your
Speaker 1: boss is screaming at you to make the delivery on
Speaker 1: time or you're fired.
Speaker 3: I mean, was this really just.
Speaker 1: A localized pilot error or did the corporate culture physically
Speaker 1: force his hand?
Speaker 2: Well, that is the precise question, Just as Virgil Mushansky
Speaker 2: asked when the Canadian government appointed him to lead an
Speaker 2: exhaustive inquiry into the dryed and crash. Mshansky didn't just
Speaker 2: look at the aerodynamic properties of ice, you know, he
Speaker 2: looked aggressively into the air Ontario boardrooms and he discovered
Speaker 2: a highly toxic corporate culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The financials and operational decisions in the report are just damning.
Speaker 3: They were deferring essential maintenance constantly.
Speaker 1: The only reason the APU was broken was because the
Speaker 1: airline had a shortage of replacement parts and decided to
Speaker 1: keep flying the plane anyway.
Speaker 2: Exactly. They were consistently push their pilots to prioritize flight
Speaker 2: schedules over safety margins. Right. Moshansky famously stated in his
Speaker 2: findings that while Captain Morewood made the final fatal decision
Speaker 2: to advance the throttles, there were a lot of other
Speaker 2: hands on those throttles pushing those throttles forward.
Speaker 1: Wow. The airline essentially engineered a scenario where a professional
Speaker 1: pilot felt compelled to choose between basic safety protocols and
Speaker 1: keeping his job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Mashansky wasn't going to let this get buried
Speaker 2: in political noise like the Gander Report.
Speaker 3: No, he really stepped up knowing.
Speaker 2: There were dozens of these specific Fokker F twenty eights
Speaker 2: flying out of cold weather airports all over the world.
Speaker 2: He took an incredibly unusual step for an investigator.
Speaker 3: What did he do?
Speaker 2: He issued an urgent, highly detailed interim report long before
Speaker 2: his full inquiry was finished.
Speaker 3: Wow okay.
Speaker 2: He explicitly warned the global aviation community that the F
Speaker 2: twenty eight is incredibly vulnerable to even the slightest icing
Speaker 2: due to its wing design, and he laid out exactly
Speaker 2: how to fix the broken DIA protocols.
Speaker 3: So he found the operational cure.
Speaker 1: He diagnosed the exact vulnerability, and prescribed the necessary changes
Speaker 1: to save lives.
Speaker 3: He did, but the aviation.
Speaker 1: System failed to administer the medicine, which brings us to
Speaker 1: March twenty two, nineteen ninety two, right exactly fifteen months
Speaker 1: after Justice Mshansky issued his urgent warning. We are at
Speaker 1: LaGuardia Airport in New York City, another Fokker F twenty eight,
Speaker 1: this time operated by US Air and the weather the
Speaker 1: exact same snowy, freezing conditions we saw in Dryden, and.
Speaker 2: Watching the timeline of flight four h five in the
Speaker 2: files is just excruciating. The plane is actually de iced
Speaker 2: twice at the terminal gate. They are using what's called
Speaker 2: type one fluid. Type one is essentially a heated mixture
Speaker 2: of water and propylene glycol. It is sprayed on hot
Speaker 2: to melt the snow and ice currently resting on the plane.
Speaker 2: But it has severe life threatening limitations.
Speaker 1: Right, and this is a critical distinction that Mashensky had
Speaker 1: already pointed out. Type one fluid is highly effective at
Speaker 1: cleaning a plane, but it is not designed to protect
Speaker 1: the plane for very long afterward, exactly because it's a
Speaker 1: relatively thin liquid. It simply runs off the wing. Under
Speaker 1: the best conditions, it might buy you fifteen minutes of protection.
Speaker 1: In heavy snow or freezing rain that chemical clock drops rapidly,
Speaker 1: it might only protect the wings for six minutes before
Speaker 1: new microscopic ice starts to form.
Speaker 2: So Flight four or five gets de iced with this
Speaker 2: thin Type one fluid and then push back to the taxiway.
Speaker 2: But Laguardi is notoriously busy. Oh yeah, They get stuck
Speaker 2: in a long line of departing traffic waiting behind a
Speaker 2: small cessna, and the minutes are just ticking by ten minutes,
Speaker 2: twenty minutes, thirty five minutes pass since they were.
Speaker 1: Sprayed, so the six minute chemical clock on their wings
Speaker 1: expired nearly half an hour ago.
Speaker 2: Right First Officer John Ruba shines a light out his
Speaker 2: side window onto the wing. In the dark, he can't
Speaker 2: see the clear, microscopic ice building up underneath the slush.
Speaker 2: He says, it looks pretty good, and they initiate their
Speaker 2: take off roll.
Speaker 1: And the nightmare of Dryden repeats itself exactly. The plane
Speaker 1: reaches its rotation speed. The pilot pulls back on the yoke,
Speaker 1: but the wings absolutely can support the weight of the aircraft.
Speaker 2: The invisible sandpaper ice has completely destroyed the aerodynamic lift.
Speaker 1: Just thirteen seconds later, they plunge violently into the icy,
Speaker 1: dark waters of Flushing Bay. Twenty seven of the fifty
Speaker 1: one people on board lose their lives.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate catastrophic breakdown in institutional communication.
Speaker 1: I mean, I found myself having to reread this part
Speaker 1: of the file multiple times. Mshansky maps out the exact
Speaker 1: chemical limitations of type one fluid, warns everyone about the
Speaker 1: specific aerodynamic vulnerabilities of the Fokker F twenty eight and
Speaker 1: fifteen months later, an identical plane goes down the exact
Speaker 1: same way. How does a globally circulated safety warning just
Speaker 1: evaporate well.
Speaker 2: In Mushanski's interim report, he had specifically warned about the
Speaker 2: short life span of type one fluid, and he strongly
Speaker 2: recommended that the industry transition to type two fluid for
Speaker 2: active winter precipitation.
Speaker 3: What's the difference.
Speaker 2: Type two is entirely different chemically. It's a thicker, highly viscous,
Speaker 2: almost mucous like substance, utilizes non Newtonian properties.
Speaker 1: Wait like it changes depending on the force applied.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it acts thick like honey while the plane is
Speaker 2: sitting still, shielding the wing from falling snow for up
Speaker 2: to forty five minutes. But as the plane accelerates down
Speaker 2: the runway, the sheer force the wind causes the fluids
Speaker 2: chemical bonds to temporarily break down. It becomes thin as
Speaker 2: water and blows right off the wing, leaving a perfectly
Speaker 2: clean aerodynamic surface just as the wheels leave the ground.
Speaker 3: That's brilliant.
Speaker 1: And he didn't just recommend new chemical fluids, right, He
Speaker 1: recommended a complete overhaul of airport infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he saw exactly what happened at LaGuardia before it
Speaker 2: even occurred. He warned that if you de ice a
Speaker 2: plane at the terminal gate, by the time it taxes
Speaker 2: and waists in line at a busy runway, it will
Speaker 2: freeze over again. He explicitly recommended building dedicated d icing
Speaker 2: pads right next to the runway so a plane gets
Speaker 2: its protective coating and immediately takes off before the chemical
Speaker 2: clock expires.
Speaker 1: So when investigators ask the Federal Aviation Administration the FAA,
Speaker 1: why these life saving protocols weren't in place for flight
Speaker 1: four h five, the FAA claim they never received Moshansky's report.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they stated, it simply never crossed their desks. That
Speaker 2: is insane. Mushansky was understandably furious, suggesting it likely just
Speaker 2: sat on a bureaucrat's desk gathering dust somewhere. And it
Speaker 2: is a harsh, brutal truth of safety engineering. A lesson
Speaker 2: is not truly learned until it is actively applied. Having
Speaker 2: the data in a binder somewhere doesn't save lives. It
Speaker 2: only provides a tragic roadmap of what you should have done.
Speaker 1: It is infuriating. The warning was right there, sitting in
Speaker 1: a filing cabinet. But as we pull back and look
Speaker 1: at the legacy of these three crashes. The sheer horror
Speaker 1: of Flight four or five plunging into Flushing Bay finally
Speaker 1: violently forced the aviation industry's hand.
Speaker 2: Yet the crash in New York could not be ignored.
Speaker 2: It was too public and the parallels to Dryden were
Speaker 2: just too exact. Following that disaster, Mushansky's full list of
Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety two recommendations was finally implemented globally.
Speaker 1: It completely revolutionized the physics and chemistry of winter flying.
Speaker 2: It did today the industry has evolved even past type
Speaker 2: two fluid. Airports frequently use Type four de icing fluid,
Speaker 2: which is an incredibly advanced, brightly colored chemical that can
Speaker 2: stick to a wing and protect it for up to
Speaker 2: two full hours in freezing rain.
Speaker 1: And those runway de icing pads Mashansky practically begged for
Speaker 1: they are standard practice at major winter airports around the world.
Speaker 1: Planes get a final thick spray just moments before the
Speaker 1: engines throttle up.
Speaker 2: Because of these sweeping systemic changes, the remaining Fokker F
Speaker 2: twenty eighths flying today and every other commercial jet do
Speaker 2: so safely.
Speaker 1: The industry finally learned to respect the invisible killer. They
Speaker 1: stop blaming the pilots for systemic chemical failures, and they
Speaker 1: re engineered the environment to protect the aircraft.
Speaker 2: It's a profound testament to the fact that aviation rules
Speaker 2: are quite literally written in blood. Every safety protocol we
Speaker 2: enjoy today is the result of a catastrophic failure in
Speaker 2: the past.
Speaker 1: So we want to leave you this The next time
Speaker 1: you are sitting on a plane in the dead of winter,
Speaker 1: you're looking out your window and you see that thick,
Speaker 1: gooey green or orange de icing fluid sprang aggressively against
Speaker 1: your glass. Right, maybe you're angrily checking your watch because
Speaker 1: your flight is delayed and you have somewhere important to be.
Speaker 3: Take a breath. Look at that fluid.
Speaker 1: Remember the incredibly heavy price paid by the soldiers in Gander,
Speaker 1: the families in Dryden, and the commuters at LaGuardia to
Speaker 1: get that exact spray onto your wings. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: leaves you with a lingering question to chew on. In
Speaker 1: our hyper fast modern world, where corporate efficiency and speed
Speaker 1: are prized above almost everything else, what other invisible ice
Speaker 1: is currently building up in our systems? What other dangers
Speaker 1: are hiding in plain sight, masked by our obsession with schedules,
Speaker 1: just waiting for the exact right moment to stall us out.