Speaker 1: When we board a commercial flight, you know, orderagein drill
Speaker 1: and just sit back. We expect absolute flawless engineering precision, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you expect perfection exactly. I mean, it feels entirely safe,
Speaker 1: completely routine. But the chilling reality for you listening right
Speaker 1: now is that the invisible safety net wrapping around your
Speaker 1: flight today is actually a mosaic and it's pieced together
Speaker 1: from the wreckage of past disasters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the hard truth. Modern aviation is incredibly safe,
Speaker 2: but that safety was literally written in blood. And what
Speaker 2: we do as investigators is look at this diagnostic landscape,
Speaker 2: but what goes wrong when human psychology, invisible atmospheric forces,
Speaker 2: and highly complex machinery violently collide, Which.
Speaker 1: Is exactly what we're getting into today. For this deep dive.
Speaker 1: We are opening up a massive stack of incredibly detailed
Speaker 1: case studies and actual cockpit flight transcripts from five catastrophic
Speaker 1: commercial airline flights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the real source material, right, and.
Speaker 1: Our mission here is to put you right inside the cockpit.
Speaker 1: We want to help you out understand exactly how tiny,
Speaker 1: seemingly insignificant errors can compound into massive tragedies.
Speaker 2: And how these very hard lessons fundamentally rewrote the rules of.
Speaker 3: The sky exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because we're gonna start with a
Speaker 1: scenario that quite honestly sounds like it belongs in a
Speaker 1: psychological thriller.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to start with the environment, specifically the threats.
Speaker 2: The crew can't even see the invisible spell, right, and
Speaker 2: in this first case, the threat with the very air
Speaker 2: they were breathing. So picture August fourteenth, two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: high above Athens Grease. There's a Boeing seven thirty seven.
Speaker 2: This is Helio's Airways flight five twenty two, and it's
Speaker 2: just circling in a holding.
Speaker 3: Past, just flying in circles.
Speaker 2: Completely silent on the radio. Air Traffic control is calling
Speaker 2: and calling and getting nothing. That dead air. So the
Speaker 2: Greek Air Force scrambles two F sixteen fighter jets to intercept.
Speaker 3: Which is terrifying in itself.
Speaker 1: So the F sixteen pilots they pull up alongside the
Speaker 1: seven thirty seven, and they're looking right through the cockpit
Speaker 1: windows and what they see is just it's bone chilling.
Speaker 1: The copilot is slumped over the controls, the captain isn't
Speaker 1: even in his seat, and they can see the oxygen
Speaker 1: masks dangling in the passenger cabin. It's literally a ghost.
Speaker 2: Plane, right. And the thing is, this wasn't a hijacking.
Speaker 2: The invisible killer here was hypoxia, oxygen starvation. It's the
Speaker 2: lack of air exactly. And to understand how a modern
Speaker 2: airliner turns into a ghost ship, we have to look
Speaker 2: back at the ground. Hours earlier in Cyprus, right, a
Speaker 2: ground engineer had been running a pressurization test on the
Speaker 2: rear door and to do that, he switched the plane's
Speaker 2: pressurization panel. It's called the P five switch. He switched
Speaker 2: it from auto to manual. When the test was over,
Speaker 2: he simply forgot to switch it back.
Speaker 1: Wow, one switch just left in the wrong position. So
Speaker 1: the crew gets in, they miss that the switch is
Speaker 1: on manual during their routine preflight checks and they take
Speaker 1: off and as they climb, the plane is not pressurizing.
Speaker 1: The air inside the cabin is just getting thinner and thinner,
Speaker 1: and alarms start going off.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right, at ten thousand feet, the cabin altitude warning
Speaker 2: horn just blares. But here is the critical flaw in
Speaker 2: the system design at the time on this specific aircraft model.
Speaker 2: The alarm sound for a cabin depressurization in the air
Speaker 2: is the exact same sound as the takeoff configuration warning.
Speaker 3: Which is crazy to think about it.
Speaker 2: Right, It's an alarm that normally only goes off when
Speaker 2: the plane is still on the ground, telling the pilots
Speaker 2: you know their flags aren't set right for takeoff.
Speaker 1: It's like trying to solve a complex puzzle while someone
Speaker 1: is just slowly unplugging your brain. I mean they are
Speaker 1: in the air hearing a ground alarm exactly. They're utterly confused.
Speaker 1: They're looking at their instrument panels trying to troubleshoot what
Speaker 1: they think is a cooling fan issue, while their brains
Speaker 1: are literally starting for oxygen.
Speaker 2: And what's fascinating here is the mechanism of how hypoxia
Speaker 2: tricks the mind because it is not like suffocating.
Speaker 3: You don't feel it.
Speaker 2: No, you don't gasp for air or feel a burning
Speaker 2: in your lungs at all. As the oxygen levels drop,
Speaker 2: your ears pop, and then you start to feel almost euphoric. Wow,
Speaker 2: it's very total, much like having a few drinks on
Speaker 2: an empty stomach. Your cognitive functions just quietly shut down.
Speaker 2: The crew felt absolutely no pain. They simply lost the
Speaker 2: ability to reason, tunnel vision set in, and eventually they
Speaker 2: just fell asleep.
Speaker 1: Man. Meanwhile, back in the passenger cabin, those oxygen masks drop,
Speaker 1: but those chemical generators they only supply about what twelve
Speaker 1: minutes of oxygen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, about twelve to fifteen minutes, which.
Speaker 1: Is typically just enough time for a conscious pilot to
Speaker 1: dive the plane to a safer, breathable altitude. But with
Speaker 1: the pilot's incapacitated, the passengers pass out too, except.
Speaker 2: For one person right Andrea's promo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty five year old flight attendant who was a
Speaker 1: former scuba diver and a Special Forces soldier, and he
Speaker 1: actually had some pilot training.
Speaker 2: Tromo had just this incredible tolerance and presence of mind.
Speaker 2: Using the plane's portable oxygen bottles, he managed to stay
Speaker 2: conscious for.
Speaker 1: Hours hours, That's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: He used the emergency keypad to unlock the cockpit door
Speaker 2: inside and actually tried to take the controls. The F
Speaker 2: sixteen pilot saw him in there struggling to save the aircraft,
Speaker 2: but by the time he got to the captain seat,
Speaker 2: which was nearly three hours into the flight, the plane
Speaker 2: was completely out of fuel.
Speaker 1: He even called out may Day on the radio, but
Speaker 1: it was still tuned to the departure airport in Cyprus,
Speaker 1: so nobody in Athens even hurt him. Flight five point
Speaker 1: twenty two crashed into a hillside, killing all one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty one people on board.
Speaker 2: Is incredibly tragic, it really is.
Speaker 1: So we just saw how a slow, subtle loss of
Speaker 1: air pressure lulls the crew into a false sense of security.
Speaker 1: But what happens when the atmosphere does the exact opposite,
Speaker 1: when it attacks a plane with this violent, sudden force
Speaker 1: that overrides everything the pilots are doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that takes us to Dallas Fort Worth August nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five, Delta Airlines Flight one ninety one. Right, it
Speaker 2: is a sweltering one hundred and one degrees outside. This
Speaker 2: highly experienced crew is on their final approach and they're
Speaker 2: threading their way through these heavy anvil shape thunderstorm clouds.
Speaker 2: But what they encounter isn't just a strong gust of wind.
Speaker 2: It's a microburst.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's really visualize a microburst for a second. Imagine
Speaker 1: pouring a massive bucket of water onto a flat concrete floor.
Speaker 2: Right, good analogy.
Speaker 1: The water doesn't just hit the ground and stay there
Speaker 1: right it violently splashes outward in a perfect three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty degree circle. A microburst is a massive column
Speaker 1: of cold, dense air doing exactly that. It drops out
Speaker 1: of a storm cloud, hits the ground, and splashes outward
Speaker 1: at incredible speeds. And when a plane flies through that splash,
Speaker 1: it creates a completely deadly sequence of aerodynamic events.
Speaker 2: It creates a forty seven second fight for survival.
Speaker 3: Forty seven seconds.
Speaker 2: That's all it was. First, the plane hits the outflow
Speaker 2: coming toward them, which acts as a massive headwind. Now,
Speaker 2: this actually increases the relative airflow over the wings, creating
Speaker 2: sudden lift. So the plane balloons upward.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it gets pushed up.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and the natural pilot reaction there is that push
Speaker 2: the nose down and pull back the throttles to reduce
Speaker 2: speed and stay on the proper glide path to the runway.
Speaker 1: But just seconds later, because they're flying through it, they
Speaker 1: hit the center of the microburst, which is the violent downdraft,
Speaker 1: and it literally shoves the plane toward the ground.
Speaker 2: Yes, and as they exit the other side of that
Speaker 2: down draft, the trap closes completely. The tailwind right the
Speaker 2: wind shifts to a massive tailwind, so now the wind
Speaker 2: is moving in the exact same direction as the plane.
Speaker 2: The relative airflow over the wings drops to almost nothing,
Speaker 2: and the lift simply vanishes. The plane is now just
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty meters off the ground, essentially falling
Speaker 2: out of the sky.
Speaker 1: And normally pilots have a defense mechanism for losing lyft, right,
Speaker 1: they trade altitude for air speed. If you lose lyft,
Speaker 1: you point the nose down, you dive to pick up speed,
Speaker 1: and you regain that necessary airflow over the wings.
Speaker 2: But one hundred and fifty meters there is no altitude
Speaker 2: left to trade.
Speaker 1: You're too close to the ground exactly.
Speaker 2: Their only option was raw engine power. The crew slammed
Speaker 2: the throttles to maximum fighting this fierce cross wind that
Speaker 2: rolled the plane violently.
Speaker 3: And they almost made air.
Speaker 2: They almost did, but the microburst was just too massive.
Speaker 2: The plane slammed into a highway, killing one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty seven people. And the thing is, conventional weather radar
Speaker 2: at the time couldn't detect this.
Speaker 3: It just saw rain, So they were flying completely blind
Speaker 3: into a trap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that crash was the tipping point for the industry.
Speaker 2: It forced the FAA and NASA to completely revolutionize how
Speaker 2: we detect wind shear. They developed terminal Doppler weather radar
Speaker 2: for airports, which actually bounces radio waves off microscopic dust
Speaker 2: and water particles in the air to measure wind speed
Speaker 2: and direction, not just precipitation. And more importantly, they developed
Speaker 2: forward looking Doppler radar mounted right on the nose of
Speaker 2: commercial jets. NASA literally flew a seven thirty seven into
Speaker 2: the worst microburst they could find just to test these systems.
Speaker 1: Out, because giving a crew just fifteen or twenty seconds
Speaker 1: of advanced warning, just enough time to throttle up and
Speaker 1: gain speed before they hit the bad air, is literally
Speaker 1: the difference between life and death. Absolutely, So we've seen
Speaker 1: how the external environment can steal control. But often the
Speaker 1: most dangerous element in the cockpit isn't the air outside.
Speaker 1: It's the human mind's reaction to distraction inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we call it task saturation.
Speaker 3: Task saturation.
Speaker 2: Right, Let's look at New Year's Day two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: ATOM air Flight five seventy four, which was a budget
Speaker 2: airline flying over Indonesia. They get caught in the severe storm,
Speaker 2: But the primary problem isn't actually the weather. It's a
Speaker 2: broken navigation system. The inertial Reference system or IRS, and
Speaker 2: the IRS is the vital piece of equipment that tells
Speaker 2: the autopilot exactly where the plane is in three dimensional space.
Speaker 1: Right, and from the transcripts, this unit had been malfunctioning
Speaker 1: for months. The airline was just slapping band aids on it.
Speaker 2: So mid flight, the pilots realize they are miles off
Speaker 2: course over the ocean, surrounded by a violent storm, and
Speaker 2: they get entirely fixated on fixing this one computer glitch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the captain decides to switch the navigation computer into
Speaker 1: what's called attitude mode. Now, in aviation, attitude refers to
Speaker 1: the plane's orientation, it's pitch and roll relative to the horizon. Okay,
Speaker 1: switching to this mode is a way to try and
Speaker 1: reset the system's baseline. But what the captain fails to
Speaker 1: realize is that select in this mode physically forces the
Speaker 1: autopilot to disengage.
Speaker 2: Oh no, yeah, the plane.
Speaker 1: Is now flying manually, and like a car with the
Speaker 1: alignment slightly off, a seven thirty seven has a natural
Speaker 1: tendency to roll slightly without the autopilot holding it perfectly level.
Speaker 1: The plane begins to roll to the right at a
Speaker 1: rate of just one degree per second, just one degree,
Speaker 1: very slow. For a full minute, neither the captain nor
Speaker 1: the copilot notices they are slowly rolling upside down. See
Speaker 1: I have to push back on this. How is that
Speaker 1: physically possible? I mean, I get distracted by my phone, sure,
Speaker 1: but how do too highly trained pilots not feel their
Speaker 1: massive passenger jet rolling onto its side. Don't you feel
Speaker 1: the gravity shifting in your seat?
Speaker 2: It sounds impossible, but without a visual horizon, which they
Speaker 2: didn't have because they were inside a dark storm cloud,
Speaker 2: the human inner ear is completely untrustworthy. Really, it's a
Speaker 2: physiological phenomenon called spatial disorientation. The fluid in your inner ear,
Speaker 2: which detects motion, basically settles when a role is very gradual,
Speaker 2: So your brain tells you that you are flying perfectly
Speaker 2: straight and level, even when you're tilted sixty degrees.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: It's like the aviation equivalent of staring at a frozen
Speaker 1: Google Map screen on your phone while you're driving and
Speaker 1: completely failing to notice that you've slowly veered into oncoming traffic.
Speaker 2: Exactly, your brain just deletes the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: And the plane's computerized voice is screaming, bank angle, bank Angle,
Speaker 1: But they are so hyper focused on this broken IRS
Speaker 1: unit they don't even process the audio warning.
Speaker 2: No, they tune it out entirely. By the time the
Speaker 2: captain finally looks up and realizes what's happening, they are
Speaker 2: past the point of no return.
Speaker 3: He realizes too late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he pulls back on the controls while they're still
Speaker 2: banked over, which actually forces the plane into a nine
Speaker 2: hundred kilometer per hour spiral dive directly into the sea.
Speaker 2: The plane literally ripped apart from the gravitational forces before
Speaker 2: it even hit the water.
Speaker 3: That is just horrifying.
Speaker 1: So if getting hyper fixated on a broke blokn screen
Speaker 1: in midair is one form of distraction, what happens when
Speaker 1: that distraction happens on the ground before you even take off?
Speaker 2: Well, that takes us to Detroit August nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: Northwest Flight two fifty five. This is a highly experienced
Speaker 2: crew and they got a last minute runway change due
Speaker 2: to thunderstorms rolling in. They are stressed, They are forty
Speaker 2: five minutes behind schedule, and they are completely distracted trying
Speaker 2: to navigate the complex taxiways to find this new shorter runaway.
Speaker 2: So they're rushing. They're rushing, and in that confusion, they
Speaker 2: completely forget to run their taxi checklist. Oh man, and
Speaker 2: that checklist contains one absolutely vital step. Extending the wing
Speaker 2: flaps and slats. Right.
Speaker 1: Think of flaps and slats like a bird extending its
Speaker 1: feathers to catch more air. When they slide out from
Speaker 1: the wing, they physically change the shape of the wing,
Speaker 1: curving it to cup the air and generate lift even
Speaker 1: at slower takeoff speeds.
Speaker 3: Without them, the wing is just too sleek. It just
Speaker 3: slices through the air without lifting the plane at all.
Speaker 2: Exactly. They accelerate down the runway, they pull the nose up,
Speaker 2: and nothing happens.
Speaker 3: It just won't fly.
Speaker 2: The plane barely leaves the ground, It rolls side to
Speaker 2: side and crashes into a highway overpass, killing one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty four passengers and crew. There was only one survivor,
Speaker 2: a four year old girl named Cecilia, which is a.
Speaker 3: Miracle in itself. But wait, that doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1: Modern jets like the MD eighty have automated alarms specifically
Speaker 1: designed to blare if you try to take off without
Speaker 1: your flap set? Why was the cockpit voice recorder totally silent?
Speaker 2: Ah? That was the mystery that puzzled the NTSB for
Speaker 2: a long time. Yeah. Investigators eventually found the answer by
Speaker 2: looking closely at a single circuit breaker in the cockpit wreckage,
Speaker 2: the P forty breaker. It was covered in greasy smudge
Speaker 2: marks mark Yeah. You see. The takeoff configuration warning was
Speaker 2: notoriously irritating on this plane. When pilots were just taxiing
Speaker 2: on the ground, simply pushing the throttles up slightly to
Speaker 2: turn the plane would trigger this loud, blaring alarm.
Speaker 3: Oh I see.
Speaker 1: It was a nuisance alarm, huge nuisance.
Speaker 2: So it had become a widespread, completely unspoken habit among
Speaker 2: pilots to pull the P forty circuit breaker just to
Speaker 2: shut the alarm up during taxing.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. They pull it for
Speaker 1: peace and quiet, got entirely distracted by getting lost on
Speaker 1: the taxiway, completely skipped the checklist that would have reminded
Speaker 1: them to deploy the flaps right, and without that circuit
Speaker 1: breaker engage, the plane couldn't even warn them they were
Speaker 1: about to attempt an impossible take.
Speaker 2: Off exactly, and this crash changed aviation procedures fundamentally. NASA
Speaker 2: sent a research scientist named Asaf de Gani to study
Speaker 2: how pilots were actually using checklists in the real world
Speaker 2: and what did he find. He found they were often
Speaker 2: horribly designed to long know logical flow, and if a
Speaker 2: crew is interrupted by say, radio call, they'd lose their
Speaker 2: plays and just guess where to resume.
Speaker 3: Just skimming it basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Degani revolutionized the design, creating the modern electronic
Speaker 2: smart checklists we use today. These forced crews to follow
Speaker 2: a logical, chunked flow and the system literally won't let
Speaker 2: them proceed until the computer verifies the action is actually completed.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, So we've seen environmental threats, and we've seen
Speaker 1: what happens when the human mind is distracted. But what
Speaker 1: if the environment attacks, the human does exactly the right
Speaker 1: thing and the machines hidden programming, fights back.
Speaker 2: That is the terrifying paradox of Scandinavian Airlines Flight seven
Speaker 2: fifty one. Yeah, it's December nineteen ninety one in Stockholm,
Speaker 2: freezing rain and snow, I mean Donald Douglas DC nine
Speaker 2: takes off just twenty five seconds into the flight, Massive
Speaker 2: booming sounds rock the cabin. The pilots can smell smoke.
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 2: What happened is that clear ice had formed on the
Speaker 2: wings overnight. When the wings flexed turn the force of takeoff,
Speaker 2: that ice shattered, slid back. It was sucked straight into
Speaker 2: the two rear mounted engines.
Speaker 1: And that heavy ice just mangled the titanium. Fan blights
Speaker 1: pull it chew them up right. And when jet engines
Speaker 1: can't process the air coming in smoothly, the aero dynamics
Speaker 1: inside the engine just break down. The fuel ignites violently
Speaker 1: and shoots forward out the front of the engine. It's
Speaker 1: called a compressor surge. And from the accounts it sounds
Speaker 1: like a series of artillery explosions.
Speaker 2: Yes, but Captain Stan Rasmussen is a highly experienced pilot.
Speaker 2: He knows exactly what to do. He pulls back the
Speaker 2: throttles to reduce the fuel flow and stop the surging
Speaker 2: so the engines can recover.
Speaker 3: Makes total sense.
Speaker 2: But inexplicably, the throttles push themselves forward against his hand,
Speaker 2: maxing out the engine power. Wait on their own, on
Speaker 2: their own, the surgeon gets so violent that both engines
Speaker 2: completely destroy themselves. Less than two minutes into the flight,
Speaker 2: They're essentially sitting in a giant metal glider falling out of.
Speaker 1: The sky, so Rasmussen has to make a split second decision.
Speaker 1: They are way too low to turn back to the
Speaker 1: airport because you know, turning bleeds altitude, so he just
Speaker 1: glides straight ahead and miraculously maneuvers this unpowered jet into
Speaker 1: a clearing in a dense pine forest. The trees cushion
Speaker 1: the impact. The fuselage breaks into the three pieces, but
Speaker 1: astonishingly all nunder and twenty nine people on board survive.
Speaker 2: It was incredible flying.
Speaker 1: He's immediately hailed as a national hero. But then the
Speaker 1: flight data recorder showed the throttles moving forward, So the
Speaker 1: question was did rasmusen panic and throttle up instead of down.
Speaker 2: Well months later, the manufacturer revealed a hidden piece of
Speaker 2: software called ATR Automatic Thrust.
Speaker 3: Restoration Hidden Software.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a brand new feature designed for noise abatement.
Speaker 2: The FAA had noticed that pilots were throttling back too
Speaker 2: much after takeoff to keep the noise down over residential neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: which was dangerous because they'd lose speed. Okay, so the
Speaker 2: software was programmed to automatically push the throttles back up
Speaker 2: if it sensed power being reduced at a low altitude.
Speaker 3: But the airline didn't know they had bought this update.
Speaker 2: No one told them.
Speaker 1: Rasmussen certainly didn't know it was there. He reduced power
Speaker 1: to save the surging engines, and the software, acting exactly
Speaker 1: as programmed, pushed the throttles forward. It physically fought him,
Speaker 1: flooded the damaged engines with fuel, and blew them apart.
Speaker 1: If the software hadn't been there, the engines might have
Speaker 1: actually survived.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they likely would have. And the psychological impact on
Speaker 2: the captain was profound. I mean, he did everything right,
Speaker 2: but the machine he trusted betrayed him. Yeah, he was
Speaker 2: cleared of all wrongdoing, celebrated as a hero, but he
Speaker 2: couldn't get back in the cockpit. He eventually left aviation
Speaker 2: entirely because that sacred bond of trust between him and
Speaker 2: the machine was completely broken.
Speaker 1: Man. You know, it really makes you realize that every
Speaker 1: single chime you hear, every checklist your pilots run through,
Speaker 1: every automated safety feature on your next commercial flight, it
Speaker 1: isn't just theory. It is a set of hard lessons
Speaker 1: written in the wreckage of flights like Helio's five twenty.
Speaker 3: Two, Delta one ninety one, and Northwest two fifty five.
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean? Ultimately, aviation is the
Speaker 2: ultimate test of balancing human intuition with technological failsakees. We
Speaker 2: build machines to protect us from our own errors, but
Speaker 2: we also have to rely on human adaptability when those
Speaker 2: very machines fail completely misinterpret the environment.
Speaker 1: We started out by talking about that invisible safety net
Speaker 1: being a mosaic built from past disasters, and honestly, it
Speaker 1: makes you wonder about the future. As artificial intelligence and
Speaker 1: automation take over more of our daily lives, from the
Speaker 1: self driving cars on our streets to the commercial planes
Speaker 1: we fly in. Will the next era of safety be
Speaker 1: about training humans to perfectly blindly trust the machine or
Speaker 1: will it be about knowing exactly when we need to
Speaker 1: violently yank the circuit breaker and turn the machine off.
Speaker 1: Think about that next time you hear that pleasant ding
Speaker 1: at thirty thousand feet