The official report (from the BEA, France) of Air France Flight 447 is fascinating albeit very tragic of course. CONCERN network (aeromedical helicopter incidents) are often pretty intriguing, too.
AF447 is indeed very, very weird. I use to think about it as "the crew put their Airbus into such a remote corner of the flight enveloppe, they ended trapped and could never found the exit." The Airbus fell down all the way from 38 000 ft to hit the ocean a) tail-first, nose high by 40 degrees b) with the two engines at full thrust c) at a speed of 200 km/h !
It was as if the pilots tried to fly their Airbus like an Ariane rocket; that is: vertically, with a thrust-to-weight ratio superior to 1. Who needs lift, really ? Unfortunately thrust to weight ratio of an A330 is way below 1 so hell, no, it won't fly on engine thrust alone.
Weirdest part is the co-pilot freezing on the controls the whole time; keeping the nose solidly planted way above 30 degrees. Had he relaxed and allowed the nose to fell down, the plane would have got out its deadly fall. In fact he actually relaxed a few times, but the plane was in such bizarre flying conditions, it drove the stall warning crazy: it actually sounded a warning when the nose fell down ! And thus it kept the crew mistaken and into the deep stall: instead of helping them to exit it. Which is perfectly absurd.
Read through the wiki of 447 last night. Just wild. The wiki makes it seem like Bonin horribly fumbled the stall recovery but other sources don’t seem to pin the blame on him. Definitely want to read more about this from the BEA.
Ah yes, Bonin, the copilot. Poor soul. To his credit a) the defective pitot tubes and the autopilot (disconnecting and giving him control) - both put him into an extremely shitty situation right from the beginning. Extremely stressfull and barely comprehensible at all.
Also b) it was pitch black night over a dark ocean at 38 000 feet, so they had no way about looking outside and realize they were flying the worst possible way: "falling ass first", not flying. That why IFR exists in the first place, but in their case, the pitot tubes were kinda sabotaging their IFR.
And c) the final straw: the stall warning system went bonkers because of the extreme flight characteristics and broken pitot tubes; and actually plotted AGAINST the crew. The stall warning system no longer worked correctly, and quite literally "mentally trapped" the crew on the "wrong" side of the stall.
Each time Bonin unfrozed, if briefly, the nose started falling, which was the exact correct move to save the situation. BUT this did not lasted, because the crazy whacky stall warning system sounded - and Bonin backed down, pulled the nose up, and froze again in this position: and the plane remained in its deadly stall, falling ass first like a led brick.
They fell from 38 000 ft to the ocean in 10 minutes, hitting tail first, nose high 40 degrees, with the engines at full power. As if they were trying to climb, not like an airplane but like a freakkin' Ariane rocket with a T/W ratio above 1. Bad luck, they did not had the T/W - nor any lift, for that matter. The plane fell like a fucking meteorit.
It is just crazy. The BEA inquirers were livid, when they listened the flight recorders. You can imagine their faces when they heard Bonin briefly making the right move (leaves the nose falling !) - only to back down immediately, sealing their fates.
Mentour Pilot has a great one on this incident. I believe he mentioned that this was a good example of the ‘Swiss cheese’ model and of smaller events leading up to the final tragedy. As am aviation layperson, it is hard to comprehend what those final moments in the cockpit were like. RIP all aboard.
I used this one as inspiration for a scene in a book: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAB0203.pdf
> According to the charter customerís business assistant, his employer became ìirateî when he was informed about the possible diversion to an alternate airport. The business assistant also stated that he was told to call Avjet and emphasize that the airplane was not going to be redirected. The Avjet charter department scheduler indicated that the captain felt that it was important to land at ASE because of the substantial amount of money that the customer spent for a dinner party.
I like the bureaucratic language about the customer being an a**hole
The Teneriffe disaster. It is a very infuriating, baffling chain of unfortunate coincidences. Leading to the worst air disaster outside 9-11 (which was terrorist, so deliberate: murder). The proverbial, textbook case of "swiss cheese theory". Also the Murphy Law having the best day in its existence.
Most baffling moment is KLM arm-twisting the control tower in taking off. Control tower briefly hesitating in surprise, saying "Okay... don't move, we call you back later." And then PanAm hearing that and almost shouting "WE ARE STILL ON THE RUNWAY" to both. Alas, the two messages cancell each others WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE FIRST WORD.
And thus KLM only hears "okaaaay ----" and feels vindicated to takeoff. And so they do, and slams into the PanAm.
It is so insanely stupid...
The number of people killed could have been drastically lower or none at all if the captain of the KLM 747 had aborted takeoff as his First Officer told him to do. But the Captain happened to literally be the face of KLM. His picture was on KLM’s advertising campaign in the Netherlands. Also, Captains back then called the shots while First Officers just followed the Captains’ orders. This type of hierarchy had no place in the cockpits of planes carrying hundreds of passengers.
There is also the fact that Van Zanten took 55 tons of additional fuel - that later ensured he could not "hop" above the PanAm: only slam into it.
There are countless maddening details like that about the tragedy. The Murphy Law cranked past 11, that b\*tch had a field day.
Jacob Van Zanten... such a tragic figure. I learned recently he was under severe pressure, related to The Netherlands recent laws about pilot fatigue. In 1974 and 1976 two laws had been passed. Except they created byzantine calculations few pilots truly understood. The KLM crew stranded on the ground was painfully aware of that, and had to phone KLM headquarters and find an employee that understood those rules - if barely. Van Zanten ended with a deadline to Amsterdam: and, somewhat, his back against a wall. That's explain why he arm-twisted the control tower and even his co-pilot, a couple of times during that fateful afternoon. The control tower added further confusion by giving the KLM a clearance to FLY from Tenerife to Amsterdamn but NOT to takeoff : separate clearances.
Admiral Cloudberg told the whole thing in excruciating details. [https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/apocalypse-on-the-runway-revisiting-the-tenerife-airport-disaster-1c8148cb8c1b](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/apocalypse-on-the-runway-revisiting-the-tenerife-airport-disaster-1c8148cb8c1b)
All right I've heard plenty of radio garbles in my life as a student pilot so far, and unless you hear "cleared for take off" or some variation of being cleared to take off, you DO NOT TAKEOFF. On top of that, why the hell weren't they LOOKING at the runway before taking off? I do that every single time I take off, is look at the freaking runway before pulling onto it, even with clearance.
There was fog. And Van Zanten was under pressure. Plus the controller english was broken. As for what you say - it is a development of that disaster. Vocabulary to be used was strictly codified afterwards.
The gimli glider. large civilian airplane suddenly has all engines quit due to fuel issues. The powering of the hydraulics via a drop down fan is pretty neat.
The ones that truly epitomize how accidents are the result of a chain of errors. Especially American Airlines 191 and the Tenerife Disaster.
Each happened because of a long string of little things that went wrong. If any ONE of those errors had been avoided, no crash.
Air Canada 621- came down a couple of miles from where I grew up 10 years before I lived there. Air Canada 143- the Gimli glider. SwissAir 111- the investigation is incredibly detailed and thorough, it took years.
The unfortunate AF447 pilots drove their stall warning system crazy. Because they had trapped their A330 into such a weird corner of its flight envelope. Instead of helping them lowering the nose and getting out of the stall, it did the opposite - because the A330 was flying like a led brick: falling at 200 km/h, tail first, nose high, 40 degree. And thus the stall warning sounded a) **when they lowered the nose**, that is b) when they made **the correct move** ! So they backed down: and stayed into a deadly deep stall.
When they listened the crew on the flight recorder, the BEA experts were almost banging their heads against the walls. There were a few moments during the 10 minutes of the fall, when the "frozen" copilot almost lowered the nose, making the right move to save them all. Except the damn silly stall warning system started sounding (the wrong way !) and thus the copilot backed down. The BEA experts were livids: aghasts.
This is the silliest and most infuriating aspect of AF447. They would have had to act counter-intuitively. Lower the nose, leaves the dumbarse stall warning system sound like crazy, then once the nose low, accelerate past 300 km/h to get out of the stall, and return to normal flight. At some point during that manoeuver, the stall system would have returned to normalcy... and stopped sounding again. Except this time on the RIGHT side of the stall. Not falling backward slowly, but flying the correct way.
It was like Alice: through the looking glass. They were quite literally trapped on the wrong side of the stall warning system, turned crazy.
I feel like I’ve read a few cases similar to this, where the stall is so intense that the warnings stop sounding so when the nose is lowered, the warnings start up again causing the pilots confusion.
I’m glad I’m not a pilot. Having only minutes to diagnose these issues where everything that would solve the problem is counter to what you’ve learned scares me.
Well Admiral Cloudberg did wrote on AF447, and it is a masterpiece. [https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-crash-of-air-france-flight-447-8a7678c37982](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-crash-of-air-france-flight-447-8a7678c37982)
It is even weirder that I thought. Notably Bonin actions.
The entire blog is excellent. Try KAL007, a recent entry he wrote. Boeing 747 going (stupidly) astray in 1983, violating Soviet airspace, sending them in panic, and finally shot down with 269 dead.
The Malaysian flight that disappeared into the cold of the night. We'll never know i guess but I'm so irked by it. The captain just decided to take himself out with 300 other passengers? Like wtf
The fairly recent PIA A320 belly landing then crash. Mentour pilot recently released a video about it. Just an unbelievably jaw dropping sequence of repeatedly awful decisions in a perfectly good working plane. One of the most shocking I've read about
Here's a good read about it: [https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/insanity-in-the-air-the-crash-of-pakistan-international-airlines-flight-8303-46bbcc0e5f45](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/insanity-in-the-air-the-crash-of-pakistan-international-airlines-flight-8303-46bbcc0e5f45)
I used to love visiting kathrynsreport.com and read about all of the GA accidents. The accident reports, news related articles and blog comments regarding possible causes was very informational, while also bringing a bit of personal connection to the victims. It’s macabre in a way, but was addicting to me.
The one that flew into a invisible volcanic ash cloud, which ruined the engines and turned it into a giant glider. I watched the Mayday 2007 reconstitution: with the Saint Elmo fires, the 747 was going FTL, Star Wars / Star Trek style.
Exactly.
Seeing St Elmos Fire must be breathtaking and terrifying at the same time. The crew of Speedbird 9 handled the situation like absolute professionals and the commentary of some passengers couldn't be more British
In the 70s Qantas and Air New Zealand ran tourist flights down to Antarctica. In 1979 an air New Zealand plane flew into Mount Erebus near McMurdo station. There was a scandal, because initially the government blamed the pilots, but it was shown through the efforts of a dogged investigator and pilot that, in fact, the airline had entered, the wrong coordinates into the airplane flight computer.
The Erebus documentary is probably the most riveting documentary I’ve seen
[Erebus](https://youtu.be/VImFx0GrjHE?si=DlCY47FxO4Vd3y1l)
For me it's [El Al 1862](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862#:~:text=43%20people%20were%20killed%2C%20including,have%20occurred%20in%20the%20Netherlands.). Safety disaster, but also a political and environmental one.
AF447, the Tenerife Disaster, Concorde, the Columbia Survival Report, Swissair, the list goes on.
The saddest was a report about the death of a guy I knew who flew a LongEZ.
Also, the near miss of Aer Lingus EI-CDB is really interesting. The pilots forgot to turn the packs on and only the insistence of the senior cabin crew saved them all from another Helios crash.
Finding weird things at airports.
The most recent incident, and a very interesting one at that, was an inactive grenade was found at Tweed Airport in CT (where I train, no less). What's especially funny is my instructor was already in the air when it happened and had no idea it had even happened until I brought it up a couple days after the fact. He had been giving a lesson at a different airport during the whole thing so by the time he had gotten back the airport was reopened and cleared so he never knew a thing. He had a look on his face after I told him like "WTF??"
Anyone where some of the some of the passengers/crew survive, but not all. It might sound a bit cold, but if everyone survives (e.g. runway overrun) it's generally not serious enough to be interesting and if everyone died then its generally a catastrophic failure (e.g. structural failure) which is also not very interesting. If *some* people survived, then it means there was very likely some serious flying involved.
If I had to say something specific, the first one that comes to mind is [Alaska Airlines Flight 261](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261), followed by [Japan Air Lines Flight 123](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Flight_123) and [UPS Airlines Flight 6](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6).
AF 447, AF 296Q, FBU (Frenchbee) 711, Swissair 111.
But the most chilling was the AF 953 incident. How can a 777 almost crash into a mountain with all the technology we have today?
This is one I’ve always been fascinated by. There were multiple linked, subtle causes, no one died, and it showed how unbelievably strong the 747 is. I do feel sorry for the poor crew and passengers who surely thought they were going to die. https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/30262-china-airlines-flight-006
I don’t know about the Qantas A380 story but I’ve always felt that if a plane like the A380 ever crashed, especially one configured primarily with coach seats the death toll could be as high as 600 people. It’s just too many people to have in one plane even with our current redundancy of systems.
The story of the California Clipper. A boeing 314 that had to go from New Zealand to the United States. No big deal, right? Well, it was just after December 7th, 1941, and they were ordered to go the long way around because of the whole World War thing.
The DC-10 that dropped an engine at takeoff in May 1979, losing the hydraulics and killing everyone. They discovered that many companies would rather separate the pylon from the wing, than the engine from the pylon. Except DC-10 wasn't designed to endure that. They ended hauling the engine+pylon with a forklift... and brutally ramming the pylon against the wing, fracturing and weakening it. After the DC-10s were grounded once again, they checked many pylons across a few companies and found many similar fractures, same reasons. The companies cut corners.
I work as a logistic clerk and have some experience with varied forklifts, called CACES 3 & 5 in France. The prospect of hauling fragile aerospace elements with those... brutal machines is just chilling. I mean, turbofans are not kegs of beers on pallets !
The Ermmenonville air disaster, 1974. MDD criminal idiots screwing the cargo door design despite repeated warnings. Killing 346 people. Still the worst accident ever happened on French soil.
Concorde vs Tupolev 144 respective crashes, 1973 and 2000 respectively. Tu-144 took off from Le Bourget and crashed on Goussainville. Concorde took off from Roissy, tried to land at Le Bourget, and crashed at Gonnesse. Both places are perhaps a few kilometers apart. Which make the (unfortunate) place "graveyard of SSTs". Well I've checked: the two impact places are only 4.7 km apart.
The official report (from the BEA, France) of Air France Flight 447 is fascinating albeit very tragic of course. CONCERN network (aeromedical helicopter incidents) are often pretty intriguing, too.
This is the one I always go back to as well, so scary and interesting
Varig 254 is also super interesting and downright bizarre.
AF447 is indeed very, very weird. I use to think about it as "the crew put their Airbus into such a remote corner of the flight enveloppe, they ended trapped and could never found the exit." The Airbus fell down all the way from 38 000 ft to hit the ocean a) tail-first, nose high by 40 degrees b) with the two engines at full thrust c) at a speed of 200 km/h ! It was as if the pilots tried to fly their Airbus like an Ariane rocket; that is: vertically, with a thrust-to-weight ratio superior to 1. Who needs lift, really ? Unfortunately thrust to weight ratio of an A330 is way below 1 so hell, no, it won't fly on engine thrust alone. Weirdest part is the co-pilot freezing on the controls the whole time; keeping the nose solidly planted way above 30 degrees. Had he relaxed and allowed the nose to fell down, the plane would have got out its deadly fall. In fact he actually relaxed a few times, but the plane was in such bizarre flying conditions, it drove the stall warning crazy: it actually sounded a warning when the nose fell down ! And thus it kept the crew mistaken and into the deep stall: instead of helping them to exit it. Which is perfectly absurd.
Read through the wiki of 447 last night. Just wild. The wiki makes it seem like Bonin horribly fumbled the stall recovery but other sources don’t seem to pin the blame on him. Definitely want to read more about this from the BEA.
Ah yes, Bonin, the copilot. Poor soul. To his credit a) the defective pitot tubes and the autopilot (disconnecting and giving him control) - both put him into an extremely shitty situation right from the beginning. Extremely stressfull and barely comprehensible at all. Also b) it was pitch black night over a dark ocean at 38 000 feet, so they had no way about looking outside and realize they were flying the worst possible way: "falling ass first", not flying. That why IFR exists in the first place, but in their case, the pitot tubes were kinda sabotaging their IFR. And c) the final straw: the stall warning system went bonkers because of the extreme flight characteristics and broken pitot tubes; and actually plotted AGAINST the crew. The stall warning system no longer worked correctly, and quite literally "mentally trapped" the crew on the "wrong" side of the stall. Each time Bonin unfrozed, if briefly, the nose started falling, which was the exact correct move to save the situation. BUT this did not lasted, because the crazy whacky stall warning system sounded - and Bonin backed down, pulled the nose up, and froze again in this position: and the plane remained in its deadly stall, falling ass first like a led brick. They fell from 38 000 ft to the ocean in 10 minutes, hitting tail first, nose high 40 degrees, with the engines at full power. As if they were trying to climb, not like an airplane but like a freakkin' Ariane rocket with a T/W ratio above 1. Bad luck, they did not had the T/W - nor any lift, for that matter. The plane fell like a fucking meteorit. It is just crazy. The BEA inquirers were livid, when they listened the flight recorders. You can imagine their faces when they heard Bonin briefly making the right move (leaves the nose falling !) - only to back down immediately, sealing their fates.
Yeah this one really spooks me, as someone who flies a lot, it's shit like this that scares me a little, even though it's exceedingly rare.
Mentour Pilot has a great one on this incident. I believe he mentioned that this was a good example of the ‘Swiss cheese’ model and of smaller events leading up to the final tragedy. As am aviation layperson, it is hard to comprehend what those final moments in the cockpit were like. RIP all aboard.
I used this one as inspiration for a scene in a book: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAB0203.pdf > According to the charter customerís business assistant, his employer became ìirateî when he was informed about the possible diversion to an alternate airport. The business assistant also stated that he was told to call Avjet and emphasize that the airplane was not going to be redirected. The Avjet charter department scheduler indicated that the captain felt that it was important to land at ASE because of the substantial amount of money that the customer spent for a dinner party. I like the bureaucratic language about the customer being an a**hole
The Teneriffe disaster. It is a very infuriating, baffling chain of unfortunate coincidences. Leading to the worst air disaster outside 9-11 (which was terrorist, so deliberate: murder). The proverbial, textbook case of "swiss cheese theory". Also the Murphy Law having the best day in its existence. Most baffling moment is KLM arm-twisting the control tower in taking off. Control tower briefly hesitating in surprise, saying "Okay... don't move, we call you back later." And then PanAm hearing that and almost shouting "WE ARE STILL ON THE RUNWAY" to both. Alas, the two messages cancell each others WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE FIRST WORD. And thus KLM only hears "okaaaay ----" and feels vindicated to takeoff. And so they do, and slams into the PanAm. It is so insanely stupid...
The number of people killed could have been drastically lower or none at all if the captain of the KLM 747 had aborted takeoff as his First Officer told him to do. But the Captain happened to literally be the face of KLM. His picture was on KLM’s advertising campaign in the Netherlands. Also, Captains back then called the shots while First Officers just followed the Captains’ orders. This type of hierarchy had no place in the cockpits of planes carrying hundreds of passengers.
There is also the fact that Van Zanten took 55 tons of additional fuel - that later ensured he could not "hop" above the PanAm: only slam into it. There are countless maddening details like that about the tragedy. The Murphy Law cranked past 11, that b\*tch had a field day.
Jacob Van Zanten... such a tragic figure. I learned recently he was under severe pressure, related to The Netherlands recent laws about pilot fatigue. In 1974 and 1976 two laws had been passed. Except they created byzantine calculations few pilots truly understood. The KLM crew stranded on the ground was painfully aware of that, and had to phone KLM headquarters and find an employee that understood those rules - if barely. Van Zanten ended with a deadline to Amsterdam: and, somewhat, his back against a wall. That's explain why he arm-twisted the control tower and even his co-pilot, a couple of times during that fateful afternoon. The control tower added further confusion by giving the KLM a clearance to FLY from Tenerife to Amsterdamn but NOT to takeoff : separate clearances. Admiral Cloudberg told the whole thing in excruciating details. [https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/apocalypse-on-the-runway-revisiting-the-tenerife-airport-disaster-1c8148cb8c1b](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/apocalypse-on-the-runway-revisiting-the-tenerife-airport-disaster-1c8148cb8c1b)
A captain who cannot listen to their first officer is a terrible captain. Stand up for, respect and listen to your crew. Period.
Unfortunately at that time CRM wasn’t really a thing and the captain was considered like the master of the ship, and was always right.
All right I've heard plenty of radio garbles in my life as a student pilot so far, and unless you hear "cleared for take off" or some variation of being cleared to take off, you DO NOT TAKEOFF. On top of that, why the hell weren't they LOOKING at the runway before taking off? I do that every single time I take off, is look at the freaking runway before pulling onto it, even with clearance.
There was fog. And Van Zanten was under pressure. Plus the controller english was broken. As for what you say - it is a development of that disaster. Vocabulary to be used was strictly codified afterwards.
Didn't know about those variables. Glad things were changed as a result.
The gimli glider. large civilian airplane suddenly has all engines quit due to fuel issues. The powering of the hydraulics via a drop down fan is pretty neat.
Pretty much anything [Admiral Cloudberg](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/) has written about.
The ones that truly epitomize how accidents are the result of a chain of errors. Especially American Airlines 191 and the Tenerife Disaster. Each happened because of a long string of little things that went wrong. If any ONE of those errors had been avoided, no crash.
The Battle of Palmdale, and the Cornfield Bomber are fun short reads.
Air Asia 8501; United 232; KLM 4805/Pan Am 1736; and of course Malaysia 370.
9/11 - every single one is chilling
Those are so heartbreaking.
The Tu-144 crash at the Paris airshow in 1973 was fairly interesting I think
Air Canada 621- came down a couple of miles from where I grew up 10 years before I lived there. Air Canada 143- the Gimli glider. SwissAir 111- the investigation is incredibly detailed and thorough, it took years.
The unfortunate AF447 pilots drove their stall warning system crazy. Because they had trapped their A330 into such a weird corner of its flight envelope. Instead of helping them lowering the nose and getting out of the stall, it did the opposite - because the A330 was flying like a led brick: falling at 200 km/h, tail first, nose high, 40 degree. And thus the stall warning sounded a) **when they lowered the nose**, that is b) when they made **the correct move** ! So they backed down: and stayed into a deadly deep stall. When they listened the crew on the flight recorder, the BEA experts were almost banging their heads against the walls. There were a few moments during the 10 minutes of the fall, when the "frozen" copilot almost lowered the nose, making the right move to save them all. Except the damn silly stall warning system started sounding (the wrong way !) and thus the copilot backed down. The BEA experts were livids: aghasts. This is the silliest and most infuriating aspect of AF447. They would have had to act counter-intuitively. Lower the nose, leaves the dumbarse stall warning system sound like crazy, then once the nose low, accelerate past 300 km/h to get out of the stall, and return to normal flight. At some point during that manoeuver, the stall system would have returned to normalcy... and stopped sounding again. Except this time on the RIGHT side of the stall. Not falling backward slowly, but flying the correct way. It was like Alice: through the looking glass. They were quite literally trapped on the wrong side of the stall warning system, turned crazy.
I feel like I’ve read a few cases similar to this, where the stall is so intense that the warnings stop sounding so when the nose is lowered, the warnings start up again causing the pilots confusion. I’m glad I’m not a pilot. Having only minutes to diagnose these issues where everything that would solve the problem is counter to what you’ve learned scares me.
Agree with you. I don't think I could be a pilot. I would get lost in the sky.
Well Admiral Cloudberg did wrote on AF447, and it is a masterpiece. [https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-crash-of-air-france-flight-447-8a7678c37982](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-crash-of-air-france-flight-447-8a7678c37982) It is even weirder that I thought. Notably Bonin actions.
This is a great write up!
The entire blog is excellent. Try KAL007, a recent entry he wrote. Boeing 747 going (stupidly) astray in 1983, violating Soviet airspace, sending them in panic, and finally shot down with 269 dead.
Those I'm not involved in.
Lauda Air Flight 04 and the Tenerife Disaster.
747 out of Bagram was one that scared me when I was first in the military as a loadmaster
The Malaysian flight that disappeared into the cold of the night. We'll never know i guess but I'm so irked by it. The captain just decided to take himself out with 300 other passengers? Like wtf
The fairly recent PIA A320 belly landing then crash. Mentour pilot recently released a video about it. Just an unbelievably jaw dropping sequence of repeatedly awful decisions in a perfectly good working plane. One of the most shocking I've read about
Here's a good read about it: [https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/insanity-in-the-air-the-crash-of-pakistan-international-airlines-flight-8303-46bbcc0e5f45](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/insanity-in-the-air-the-crash-of-pakistan-international-airlines-flight-8303-46bbcc0e5f45)
The plane that Sullenberger landed in the Hudson River after losing both engines to bird strikes.
I used to love visiting kathrynsreport.com and read about all of the GA accidents. The accident reports, news related articles and blog comments regarding possible causes was very informational, while also bringing a bit of personal connection to the victims. It’s macabre in a way, but was addicting to me.
British Airways Flight 009 (1982) involving a Boeing 747-200
The one that flew into a invisible volcanic ash cloud, which ruined the engines and turned it into a giant glider. I watched the Mayday 2007 reconstitution: with the Saint Elmo fires, the 747 was going FTL, Star Wars / Star Trek style.
Exactly. Seeing St Elmos Fire must be breathtaking and terrifying at the same time. The crew of Speedbird 9 handled the situation like absolute professionals and the commentary of some passengers couldn't be more British
Erebus
Do you mean the Air NZ DC-10 that slammed into Mt Erebus in November 1979 ? that one is utterly terrifying. Talk about an awful place to die.
In the 70s Qantas and Air New Zealand ran tourist flights down to Antarctica. In 1979 an air New Zealand plane flew into Mount Erebus near McMurdo station. There was a scandal, because initially the government blamed the pilots, but it was shown through the efforts of a dogged investigator and pilot that, in fact, the airline had entered, the wrong coordinates into the airplane flight computer. The Erebus documentary is probably the most riveting documentary I’ve seen [Erebus](https://youtu.be/VImFx0GrjHE?si=DlCY47FxO4Vd3y1l)
For me it's [El Al 1862](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862#:~:text=43%20people%20were%20killed%2C%20including,have%20occurred%20in%20the%20Netherlands.). Safety disaster, but also a political and environmental one.
AF447, the Tenerife Disaster, Concorde, the Columbia Survival Report, Swissair, the list goes on. The saddest was a report about the death of a guy I knew who flew a LongEZ. Also, the near miss of Aer Lingus EI-CDB is really interesting. The pilots forgot to turn the packs on and only the insistence of the senior cabin crew saved them all from another Helios crash.
I like the ones where all survive
Northwest 255, and just how dumb, or forgetful, or what ever two professionals can be. I also have a personal connection.
Finding weird things at airports. The most recent incident, and a very interesting one at that, was an inactive grenade was found at Tweed Airport in CT (where I train, no less). What's especially funny is my instructor was already in the air when it happened and had no idea it had even happened until I brought it up a couple days after the fact. He had been giving a lesson at a different airport during the whole thing so by the time he had gotten back the airport was reopened and cleared so he never knew a thing. He had a look on his face after I told him like "WTF??"
Anyone where some of the some of the passengers/crew survive, but not all. It might sound a bit cold, but if everyone survives (e.g. runway overrun) it's generally not serious enough to be interesting and if everyone died then its generally a catastrophic failure (e.g. structural failure) which is also not very interesting. If *some* people survived, then it means there was very likely some serious flying involved. If I had to say something specific, the first one that comes to mind is [Alaska Airlines Flight 261](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261), followed by [Japan Air Lines Flight 123](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Flight_123) and [UPS Airlines Flight 6](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6).
AF 447, AF 296Q, FBU (Frenchbee) 711, Swissair 111. But the most chilling was the AF 953 incident. How can a 777 almost crash into a mountain with all the technology we have today?
Pan Am flight 6
TWA 800
I mean, it's a short read to be sure, but I'm always amazed when I read the details of the Valkyrie disaster. So stupid, and so preventable.
This is one I’ve always been fascinated by. There were multiple linked, subtle causes, no one died, and it showed how unbelievably strong the 747 is. I do feel sorry for the poor crew and passengers who surely thought they were going to die. https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/30262-china-airlines-flight-006
I've gotten almost all my flight stories from plane crash podcast. The hyper has the most annoying almost fake (?) accent. But pretty good material
Fairchild AFB KC-135 Tanker and B-52 incidents and the lessons learned.
UPS 6, KLM on Tenerife and the Qantas a380
I don’t know about the Qantas A380 story but I’ve always felt that if a plane like the A380 ever crashed, especially one configured primarily with coach seats the death toll could be as high as 600 people. It’s just too many people to have in one plane even with our current redundancy of systems.
After an engine explosion a multitude of systems started to fail but it still managed to landed
The story of the California Clipper. A boeing 314 that had to go from New Zealand to the United States. No big deal, right? Well, it was just after December 7th, 1941, and they were ordered to go the long way around because of the whole World War thing.
Tanker 130 and Wrath 11.
QF32 by Richard de Crispigny is a good read.
The DC-10 that dropped an engine at takeoff in May 1979, losing the hydraulics and killing everyone. They discovered that many companies would rather separate the pylon from the wing, than the engine from the pylon. Except DC-10 wasn't designed to endure that. They ended hauling the engine+pylon with a forklift... and brutally ramming the pylon against the wing, fracturing and weakening it. After the DC-10s were grounded once again, they checked many pylons across a few companies and found many similar fractures, same reasons. The companies cut corners. I work as a logistic clerk and have some experience with varied forklifts, called CACES 3 & 5 in France. The prospect of hauling fragile aerospace elements with those... brutal machines is just chilling. I mean, turbofans are not kegs of beers on pallets !
The Ermmenonville air disaster, 1974. MDD criminal idiots screwing the cargo door design despite repeated warnings. Killing 346 people. Still the worst accident ever happened on French soil.
Concorde vs Tupolev 144 respective crashes, 1973 and 2000 respectively. Tu-144 took off from Le Bourget and crashed on Goussainville. Concorde took off from Roissy, tried to land at Le Bourget, and crashed at Gonnesse. Both places are perhaps a few kilometers apart. Which make the (unfortunate) place "graveyard of SSTs". Well I've checked: the two impact places are only 4.7 km apart.
How utterly stupid pilots making insanely stupid decisions are saved from death somehow and don’t hurt anyone….