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Why Planes Crash
''Why Planes Crash'' was an aviation documentary TV mini-series based on aircraft accidents and crashes. The series was created and named by producer Caroline Sommers, on behalf of NBC Peacock Productions. The series premiere on July 12, 2009, featured Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's incredible water ditching of U.S. Air Flight 1549 in the Hudson on January 15, 2009, popularly known as "Miracle on the Hudson". Three other ditchings were also featured: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, ALM Flight 980, and Pan Am Flight 6. Originally run on MSNBC, each episode was narrated by Lester Holt. Original production ceased in 2015. The series is still in heavy rotation on The Weather Channel. Plot Normally, each episode would see three accidents discussed. Over the 43-minute program, aviation experts such as veteran pilot and founder of Safety Operating Systems John M. Cox, as well as former NTSB investigators John Goglia and Greg Feith, would discuss the events and what caused or le ...
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Aloha Airlines Flight 243
Aloha Airlines Flight 243 (IATA: AQ243, ICAO: AAH243) was a scheduled Aloha Airlines flight between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii. On April 28, 1988, a Boeing 737-297 serving the flight suffered extensive damage after an explosive decompression in flight, caused by part of the fuselage breaking due to poor maintenance and metal fatigue. The plane was able to land safely at Kahului Airport on Maui. The one fatality, flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing, was ejected from the airplane. Another 65 passengers and crew were injured. The substantial damage inflicted by the decompression, the loss of one cabin crew member, and the safe landing of the aircraft established the incident as a significant event in the history of aviation, with far-reaching effects on aviation safety policies and procedures. Aircraft and crew The aircraft involved was a Boeing 737 200 series and was the 152nd Boeing 737 airframe built at the Renton assembly plant. It was built in 1969 and delivered ...
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ValuJet Flight 592
ValuJet Airlines Flight 592 was a regularly scheduled flight from Miami International Airport to Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. On May 11, 1996, the ValuJet Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9 operating the route crashed into the Everglades about 10 minutes after taking off from Miami as a result of a fire in the cargo compartment caused by mislabeled and improperly stored hazardous cargo. All 110 people on board died. The airline already had a poor safety record before the crash, and the accident brought widespread attention to the airline's problems. The airline was grounded for several months after the accident. When operations resumed, ValuJet was unable to attract the same amount of customers that it had before the accident. It acquired AirTran in 1997, but the lingering damage to the ValuJet name led ValuJet executives to assume the AirTran name. Background ValuJet Airlines was founded in 1992 and was known for its sometimes aggressive cost-cutting measure ...
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Air France Flight 4590
On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde passenger jet on an international charter flight from Paris to New York, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground. It was the only fatal Concorde accident during its 27-year operational history. While taking off from Charles de Gaulle Airport, the aircraft ran over debris on the runway, causing a tyre to blow up and disintegrate. Tyre fragments, flung by the rapidly spinning wheel, violently struck the underside of the wing, damaging parts of the landing gear – thus preventing its retraction – and causing the integral fuel tank to rupture. Large amounts of fuel leaking from the rupture ignited, causing a loss of thrust in the left-hand-side engines 1 and 2. The aircraft lifted off, but the loss of thrust, high drag from the extended landing gear, and fire damage to the flight controls made it impossible to maintain control. The jet crashed into a hotel in nearby Gonesse two minu ...
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Avianca Flight 52
Avianca Flight 052 was a regularly scheduled flight from Bogotá, Colombia, to New York City, United States, via Medellín, Colombia, that crashed on January 25, 1990, at 21:34 ( UTC−05:00). The Boeing 707 flying this route ran out of fuel after a failed attempt to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), causing the aircraft to crash onto a hillside in the small village of Cove Neck, New York, on the north shore of Long Island. Eight of the nine crew members and 65 of the 149 passengers on board were killed. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the crash occurred due to the flight crew failing to properly declare a fuel emergency, failure to use an airline operational control dispatch system, inadequate traffic flow management by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the lack of standardized understandable terminology for pilots and controllers for minimum and emergency fuel states. The flight left Medellín with more than en ...
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Eastern Air Lines Flight 401
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from New York JFK to Miami. Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades, causing 101 total fatalities. Three of the 4 cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; there were 75 survivors. The crash occurred while the entire flight crew were preoccupied with a burnt-out landing gear indicator light. They failed to notice that the autopilot had inadvertently been disconnected and, subsequently, the aircraft gradually lost altitude and crashed. This was the first fatal crash of a wide-body aircraft. It was also the first hull loss and fatal crash of a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. Aircraft Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a regularly scheduled flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. On the day of the crash, Flight 401 was operated usin ...
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American Airlines Flight 587
American Airlines Flight 587 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Las Américas International Airport in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. On November 12, 2001, the Airbus A300B4-605R flying the route, crashed into the neighborhood of Belle Harbor, Queens, Belle Harbor, on the Rockaway, Queens, Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York City, shortly after takeoff. All 260 people aboard the plane (251 passengers and 9 crew members) were killed, as well as five people on the ground. It is the second-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history behind the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 in 1979, and the second-deadliest aviation incident involving an Airbus A300. The location of the accident, and the fact that it took place two months and one day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center (1973–2001), World Trade Center in nearby Manhattan, initially spawned fears of another terr ...
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Colgan Air Flight 3407
Colgan Air Flight 3407 (marketed as Continental Connection Flight 3407 under a codeshare agreement with Continental Airlines), was a scheduled passenger flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Buffalo, New York, which crashed on February 12, 2009. The aircraft, a Bombardier Q400, entered an aerodynamic stall from which it did not recover, and crashed into a house at 6038 Long Street in Clarence Center, New York, at 10:17 pm EST (03:17 UTC), killing all 49 passengers and crew on board, as well as one person inside the house. Note: The predicted stall speed for this aircraft at a flight load of 1.42 Gs would be about 125 kt, which is arrived at by multiplying 105 kt (the predicted stall speed at 1 G) by 1.19164 (the square root of the flight load in Gs). The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted the accident investigation and published a final report on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, which found the probable cause to be the pilots' inappropriate response to the stall ...
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Los Angeles Runway Disaster
On the evening of February 1, 1991, USAir Flight 1493, a Boeing 737-300, collided with SkyWest Airlines Flight 5569, a Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner turboprop aircraft, upon landing at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Though air traffic was not heavy at LAX, as Flight 1493 was on final approach, the local controller was distracted by a series of abnormalities, including a misplaced flight progress strip and an aircraft that had inadvertently switched off the tower frequency. The SkyWest flight was told to taxi into takeoff position, while the USAir flight was landing on the same runway. Upon landing, the 737 collided with the twin-engined turboprop, continued down the runway with the turboprop crushed beneath it, exited the runway, and caught fire. All 12 people aboard the smaller plane were killed, as well as an eventual total of 23 of the 89 occupants of the Boeing 737. Rescue workers were on the scene of the fire within minutes and began the evacuation of the plane. ...
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Continental Airlines Flight 1713
Continental Airlines Flight 1713 was a commercial airline flight that crashed while taking off in a snowstorm from Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, on The Douglas DC-9 airliner, operated by Continental Airlines, was making a scheduled flight to Boise, Idaho. Twenty-five passengers and three crew members died in the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation of the accident determined that the most probable cause of the accident was the failure on the part of the pilot in command to have the aircraft deiced a second time before takeoff. Background information Aircraft Flight 1713 was operated using a 21-year old McDonnell Douglas DC-9-14, a twin-engined, narrow-body jet airliner with the registration number N626TX. The aircraft was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7B engines. It was originally delivered to Air Canada in May 1966 and sold to Texas International Airlines in 1968, where it served the majority of its service un ...
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Northwest Airlines Flight 255
On August 16, 1987 a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, operating as Northwest Airlines Flight 255, crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, about 8:46 pm EDT (00:46 UTC August 17), resulting in the deaths of all six crew members and 148 of the 149 passengers, along with two people on the ground. The sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl who sustained serious injuries. It was the second-deadliest aviation accident at the time in the United States. It is also the deadliest aviation accident to have a sole survivor. Aircraft and crew The aircraft involved in the crash was a twin-engined McDonnell Douglas MD-82 ( registration number N312RC), a derivative of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and part of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series of aircraft. The jet was manufactured in 1981, entered service with Republic Airlines, and was acquired by Northwest Airlines in its merger with Republic in 1986. The aircraft was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-217 turbofan engine ...
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