Plane Crashes

Why? DL itself is now a train wreck, bah-dum-BUM!

Thanks, ladies 'n' germs!

What happened to the old thread?

where is that damn missing plane?

Is there really video of the chaos on the German plane before it crashed in the Alps and would you watch it?

Back in the early 50s, Newark airport was getting busier and within a few months, four airliners crashed in neighboring Elizabeth, New Jersey. Judy Blume just rendered into fiction a novel about the time, but it amazed me how angry the locals were about the accidents, and how the government blithely ignored them.

Since there were four different crashes, with maybe 30 people on each, just google "Elizabeth NJ" and "Plane crashes" to learn about these. I had never heard of them before now.

The SMITHSONIAN Channel airs a great plane crash series.

They crash Real Good on that show, OP.

Sum ting wong?

The best show for plane crash enthusiasts is "Why Airplanes Crash" on the Weather channel. They focus on a single cause such as pilot error, downdrafts, or mechanical error, on each episode. I have worked for a major airline since the 70s and this series is the most spot on.

This one is haunting—a fully-loaded American Airlines DC-10 crashes just after takeoff from Chicago's O'Hare Field. It is the worst crash in U.S. history...

More on AA Flight 191...

That was a bad one, r10 -- many of the passengers had attended a writers/publishers conference, so we lost many of our working print media champs in the crash.

I remember that flight, R9. I was only four years old at the time, but I remember it because I was terrified of flying. I flew for the first time about a month after that. I remember crying and asking the flight attendant if the plane was a DC-10 like AA Flight 191. My family laughs about it, but now that I'm 40, I find it a little strange that a four year old would be asking about the type of plane. In fact, I find it kind of troubling.

Ah, so.

The DC-10 was nicknamed the Death Cab 10 after the Chicago crash and a few other accidents that happened in close proximity.

The DC-8 that hit the Connie and then slammed into Park Slope is the one that bothers me the most. There was one survivor, a little boy found laying in a snowbank with a bloody nose. There is a photo of him just dazed, with people trying to keep the rain and sleet off of him. The look in his eyes is haunting. He only lived another day due to internal injuries. It's one of the pictures that just sticks in your mind, that you never forget.

Daily news Photos

The area today, with a story on the boy:

My great aunt & uncle (who were like another set of grandparents to me) were killed in the 1977 KLM/Pan-Am crash in Tenerife. They were on the Pan-Am flight from Los Angeles. No remains were found. They were just *gone* -- in the most literal sense. I was only 10, but I remember how awful those first couple days were for my family, trying to get information, and seeing those few early images of the wreckage (the world was a bigger place in 1977, news/information didn't travel nearly as quickly).

I'd never really thought about it, until a couple years after 9/11..... but they really died as the result of terrorism. Yes, a hundred mistakes were made that afternoon in Tenerife (by tower & flight crews), which led the collision......but those planes would never have been diverted to Tenerife, if not for a terrorrist bombing at Gran Canaria Airport earlier that day.

I think it was Flight 800? Shot down but the government insisted it was just an electrical problem...no. Flight 800 was shot down. Many people saw it but the government continued with the lie.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

TWA Flight 800 scares the fuck out of me because once the explosion happened, the cockpit dropped off and went into the ocean. Then the rest of the plane went higher in altitude then dropped into the ocean. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?! I can't even imagine how terrifying that would be. Christ!!!!!

R9-10 I was there that day waiting for my trip to begin. I was a very junior stew based out of ORD.

Like many professions, there exists a certain gallows humor within the field, which I believe is solely for the purpose of exorcising one's own fears about whatever disaster has just occurred. We had small L-1011s in those days aboard every aircraft to give the kids along with the pilot/stew wings. The L-10 was our version of the DC-10, which Delta chose not to buy due to a political favor intended to save Lockheed from bankruptcy. There always existed a bit of a inter-airline squabble as to which was the superior 3 engine widebody and Deltoids felt that we had the superior equipment. So, after the UAL crash, it became the joke du jour to pull one of the engines off the little plastic Tristars and declare them a United DC 10. Not that funny I know, but it gives you a bit of a glimpse into the black humor which we all have within the industry. I promise you that the GermanWings Alps crash of a few months ago gave birth to masses of black humor/jokes.

I remember L-1011s rattled like hell during take-off & landing -- like it could shake apart, at any moment -- but actually had better safety records than any other widebodies (namely DC-10) of the time.

R23 You are so right. You should feel that sucker's take off from one the aft jump seats in D Zone(the old smoking section.) It literally felt as if the whole thing was about to come apart. The only bad accident which I can remember involving the L-10 was the DAL crash in DFW back in '85. That was the beginning of pilot's really coming to respect downdrafts and wind shears. And the only survivors of that accident, crew included, were all sitting in D Zone. In that one case, smoking WAS a life saver.

Very surprised that no passenger list has been released for the german wings crash. The cell phone thing is 100% true, and there are probably more like it. The authorities always lie. And I agree about TWA 800, it was clearly shot down. And I agree, after the cockpit broke off and the plane ascended must have been sheer horror. From what I read most passengers would have had such whiplash and their senses would have been overloaded, that no one could process what happened. It was probably far worse to be in a plane like US AIR Flight 427 that crashed in 1994- 28 seconds of dropping out of sky. God rest their souls.

That cellphone recording must be chilling as hell to hear. I didn't realize they haven't release a full passenger list. For some reason I thought they had already.

Alaska Airlines 261 also scares the fuck out if me. They were flying upside down for a brief moment before impact. FLYING UPSIDE DOWN!!!!!! I don't know why I'm really bothered by it when I think about it. If that happens, I'll be dead and won't "remember" it. Still, though, to have your last moments like that...

The flight mishap portrayed in the Denzel Washington as drunk pilot movie was based on the Alaska Air crash

Those pilots of Alaska Air were OUTSTANDING pilots. The cockpit voice recorders show extremely professional, focused, and and honorable men. That thing dropped out of the sky and those pilots fought until the bitter end.

Now, this one just makes me angry. Some asshole pilot lets his kids sit at the controls of the plane AGAINST COMPANY REGULATIONS and the son's movements at the controls contradicts the autopilot causing it to crash. What. The. Fuck. 75 people are dead because some asshole lets his 16 kid sit at the controls. I would be livid if a family member of mine were on that plane.

Fuck off R21, with that bullshit excuse, experts knew what they were seeing. It was a missal.

[quote] It was a missal.

Yes, a Catholic one.

I remember Flight 191, Chicago. That was pretty horrific, I believe it's the first crash I can remember seeing on TV.

I'm not going to argue the point, because one seldom can convince a conspiracy theorist to change his mind regardless of the facts, but I will say this: I have studied TWA 800 along with many high hour Delta captains since it occurred. There is not ONE single captain or first officer who believes that the equipment was shot down by a missile. There are reasons why it appeared that there might have been a missile to those eyewitnesses, but those reasons have been adequately rebutted by the NTSB. Pilots would be the group most paranoid about the possibility of the government/military ordering a shoot down of a commercial carrier, and believe me, those fuckers are a right wing, conspiracy theory, Alex Jones listening bunch of former Navy and AE pilots. If THEY don't believe TWA 800 was shot down, it wasn't shot down.

That should have read AF pilots, not AE

What are you talking about, R30? I didn't mention a missile in my post. I said "the explosion". If there was a missile, there would be an explosion. If the cause was a gas leak or whatever their "findings" were, there would still be an explosion. I didn't take a stand for either side. I was just talking about the fact that the cockpit blew off and the back part of the plane kept flying. That was my issue, so just back the fuck off with your attitude. Or don't post on Datalounge when you've been drinking.

What. Did. You. Say. To. me?!

LA lost many residents in the TWA 800 crash including the entire Silverman family. The father was a prominent tax attorney in the city and was taking his wife and daughters to Europe, but ended up on the TWA Paris flight after their flight to Rome was cancelled. The family was seated in the first class row where the nose separated from the fuselage. One of the daughters was the first body found when boats arrived to mount a rescue, and the deck hand said later that she looked like she was sleeping in the water...

R21's accurate description of the the break off of the cockpit is precisely why it appeared to the eyewitnesses that there was a "missile" involved.

Crash of the Day -- June 6, 1971 -- Hughes Airwest Flight 706

Hughes Airwest Flight 706 was a regularly scheduled flight operated by Hughes Airwest, from Los Angeles, California, to Seattle, Washington, with numerous intermediate stops. On Sunday, June 6, 1971, the Douglas DC-9-31 serving the flight collided in mid-air with a U.S. Marine Corps F-4B Phantom II over southern California.

Flight 706 had departed Los Angeles just after 6 pm, en route to Seattle, with stopovers in Salt Lake City, Utah; Boise, Idaho; Lewiston, Idaho; Pasco, Washington and Yakima, Washington. Completing a cross-country flight, the F-4B Phantom was arriving from Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada to land at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro near Irvine. Its pilot and all 49 passengers and crew aboard the civilian airliner died in the collision over the San Gabriel Mountains, near Duarte. Only the radar intercept officer of the F-4B survived. The crash of RW 706 prompted the US Armed Forces to agree both to reduce the number of military aircraft operating under visual flight rules in civilian air corridors, and to require military aircraft to obey civilian air traffic controllers.

This one is not a crash, but a shocking near miss where a fully-loaded United 747 lost an engine on takeoff from San Francisco SFO, and very nearly hit San Bruno Mountain—in fact, the giant airliner cleared the mountain by only 100 feet! ...

More on UA Flight 863, which had taken off from SFO, bound for Sydney, Australia...

All righty, then, R33. Thanks for settling that one for us.

Just one other thing, if it's not too much trouble?

If a missile didn't bring the plane down, then what, exactly, DID happen? According to your pilots, or whomever?

R42 It was a fuel tank explosion caused by faulty wiring which was exposed to fuel vapors in the mid tank. This phenomenon had occurred before, so it wasn't unprecedented. I remember for the following year, each flight I worked with an empty mid-tank gave me a serious case of the heebie jeebies. Of course that was unnecessary because, as in all post-crash scenarios, the FAA is nothing if not extremely quick and effective in requiring that changes be made immediately to all equipment. That's why, as tragic as crashes are, they are also the reason why air travel is so safe. Buy it or not, I just thought that with all the conspiracy theories floating out there in the ether, TWA 800 is one which is unworthy of another moment's thought. As I said, there isn't a commercial pilot who doubts the explanation given by the NTSB.

A good source for further info is Patrick Smith's "Ask the Pilot." Just as in the case of the mysterious "Chemtrails," once you understand the science/avionics behind it, there really s no mystery.

I remember the 1986 midair collision of an LAX-bound Aero Mexico airliner and a private plane over Certitos. 5 houses on the ground were destroyed, and nine others damaged. 15 people on the ground died along with everyone on both planes.

OK, R33 / R43. We thank you.

(Believe it or not, one of my mother's cousins - who had been a bridesmaid during her wedding to my dad in 1954 - was killed in that crash. True story.)

R24, there was also Eastern Airlines 401, which crashed in the Everglades in 1972, while circling Miami International. 101 fatalities, 75 survivors. The pilot & flight crew became preoccupied trying to make visual confirmation that the front landing gear was down (there was a burnt-out indicator light) and failed to notice/respond to warning chimes from the autopilot system that the plane was actually in a very slow, imperceptible descent. By the time the pilot returned to his seat & realized how close they were to the ground, it was too late; crashed 10 seconds later. It was the first crash of a wide-body, and the subject of two late-70s t.v. movies, "Crash" and "The Ghost of Flight 401".

R46/23 When Eastern went out of business in 1990, DL purchased their crappy Tri Stars at bargain basement prices. They were primarily used for parts, but a few of them actually continued to fly after refurbishment. The particular aircraft(I used to know the ship number, but my memory isn't as good as it used to be)which crashed in the Everglades was parceled out in bits and pieces after being purchased by us. The lower galley was installed into one of our own L1011s, and F/As swore that they saw the face of the Flight Engineer/2nd Officer in the window of the #4 oven on several occasions. If you saw "The Ghost of Flight 401," you'll remember that Ernest Borgnine's face would mysteriously appear in the window of that oven following it being returned to the fleet post-crash. The legend was that he wasn't a malevolent of creepy ghost, but that he was "destined" to watch over that ship forever keeping all aboard safe(since it was his lack of attention to the screens and gauges which caused the accident. Of course, I don't believe that for a minute, but you can't believe how many crew members did buy it.

Heh. Yes, I am well aware of those stories, [R47].....because my father produced that movie .

My older brother went on to work in aviation and knew some people at Delta, who dated back to Eastern merger, and asked them about all that (wasn't just the microwave door, but seats, windows). They said the people they knew from Eastern really did believe those crew-members stories -- they weren't loons, etc.

I have no idea.....but it made for a good t.v. "ghost" movie.

Very cool R46. We have some cool posters on this thread.

The TWA Crash had a bunch of magicians glitter being shipped onboard. A lot of the bodies were covered in glitter. I read a story about a woman who visited her brother's body after it was found at the funeral home, she opened the casket and his body in the body bag was covered in glitter. The story is still online if you google it. Very haunting.

[quote]"Crash" and "The Ghost of Flight 401".

I saw those movies recently and what struck me was how different the straight men were in those days -- they had their mustaches and their lairs with pool tables and cooperative live-in girlfriends...

Good luck. We're all counting on you.

What was the airplane disaster where they plane landed but the top was sheared off? I remember seeing the photo of it as a kid and being freaked out. I can recall the passengers, still buckled in. I think it was in Hawaii.

R52 - Aloha Airlines Flight 243.

R52 - and here is a little info about what happened to that flight attendant.

So, did you all know that David Koch, the business man, survived US Air Flight 1493? He was interviewed For "Air Crash Investigation" on Nat Geo.

One of the links r49 mentioned about the glitter found at the TWA 800 crash:

A Coast Guardsman’s story of experiencing the death of TWA Flight 800

Thanks R56, have read his account a few times. Pretty gruesome/horrifying.

The worst single plane crash was JAL 123 in 1985. A 747 with over 500 on board had an explosive decompression in the tail section, which severed the vertical stabilizer and led to the loss of all hydraulic fluid, rendering the plane uncontrollable. Amazingly the pilots flew on for half an hour by using the engines alone to steer, circling and turning in an attempt to reach a suitable runway. Ultimately they were forced to crash into a mountain ridge. Singer Kyu Sakamoto known for the 1960s hit "Sukiyaki" was among those killed. Incredibly, 4 survived.

This one also scares the hell out of me. I remember when this happened, people started calling ValuJet ValuDeath.

1974 was a bad year for crashes but the one with the widest repercussions happened in Virginia, on Mount Weather with it secret government bunkers. A TWA 727 was bound for National but was re-routed to Dulles due to high winds. A major misunderstanding in land clearances cause the plane to slam into a basalt ledge, killing all on board.

I've been up to the site. It is eerie enough with the surveillance cameras everywhere, but the air was so still and there was no bird or wind noise. Even if I didn't know what happened I would have felt uneasy.

The Japanese one was bad because the passengers knew what was happening and had time to write goodbye letters to their family.

From what I've read the ValuJet thing was just a matter of time.

I used to use it to get from Nashville to DC and CT and it was a fun, ragtag flight. Most of the DC9's still had groovy 70s color schemes on the inside. They creaked on take-off. It felt like a regional service does now - the windows are dirty, the paint is fading, the pilots are 23...

Which Japanese crash, R61?

R63, see R58

R26 - my sister-in-law was an Alaska airlines flight attendant and was scheduled to be on flight 261. However, she had to attend her grandmothers funeral and missed being on the flight that day. It freaks me out to even think about losing her in a plane crash. She is lucky to be alive.

The Japanese crash and the famous United "corn field crash" in Iowa had a lot in common. Not the cause, because in the case of the United crash there was a severing of hydraulic lines which lead to a loss of control, but in the way that the crew attempted to continue to pilot the aircraft. It was nothing short of miraculous in the way that the crew members(including a deadheading captain onboard)were able to "land" the DC10 without any steering control whatsoever. I can tell you that prior to Sully's "miracle on the Hudson," the cornfield crash was considered the greatest feat of pilot prowess in the history of commercial aviation(by other plots.)

I was too young to remember but one of my co-worker's parent died in that crash R6, DC 10 AA flight 191. They sued AA and in the trial, they found that the planes were not properly maintained and were cutting costs etc. Terrible.

So sad that Malaysian Flight that went missing hasn't been found. Most on the plane were Chinese from China, why hasn't China used their hacking skills to find out where the fucking plane went? Someone must know something.

[quote]In that one case, smoking WAS a life saver.

It also was in Air Florida flight 90 which crashed into the Potomac, killing all but 5 smokers and the flight attendant in back. The footage obtained from that rescue in the frozen river is still very chilling. It had everything, from the distraught, semi-conscious flight attendant, to a guy jumping in the river to rescue a woman who kept dropping the helicopter's lifeline, to the guy who kept handing the helicopter line to other survivors and eventually froze to death in the river.

Regarding Air Florida Flight 90, There are a few photos out there, one of a body floating in river, with his eyesopen. and of the recovery of frozen bodies- still frozen in seated position. There but for the grace of god go all of us!

Air Florida flight 90

R69 The surviving F/A aboard Air Florida 90 is Kelly Duncan. Her dad was a Captain for DAL at the time of the crash, and he arranged a meeting with us (in the flight safety ops~F/A recurrent training corps) in 1984. At that time I was bouncing back and forth between "the line" and the training center. I could have listened to her and picked her brain for HOURS. She was amazingly strong and incredibly resilient. I doubt that I would have been so had it been me in the Potomac in the freezing snow. IIRC, she went to work for us later that year.

I read that the woman who lost her husband and infant son on AF90, the one who was flailing in the frozen water and was rescued by a bystander, was fucked up by it for life and has never been able to move on. Never remarried, moved back in with her parents, developed recurring problems with booze and drugs, couldn't hold a job.

I don't fucking blame her.

This crash occurred in the suburbs of LA just before I started flight school. The eyewitness comments are fascinating.

The site itself is interesting -- I found a bunch of disasters in my state that I never knew about.

This is the flight where singer songwriter Stan Rogers died:

R75 The Air Canada inflight fire was the cause of the most changes in air travel and inflight safety as any event which preceded 9/11. That's when smoke detectors were installed in the lavs, and the importance of fire fighting while aloft was stressed as a must win scenario. It was a real game changer.

Flight 800 was shot down by a missal. Many people saw it but of course the government went about trying to muddy the waters and refer to the witnesses as nut cases or ignorant, or simply didn't know what they saw. Actually the witnesses knew what they had seen and many of them spoke up but were then hushed up. It was probably a missal from one of our ships that accidentally honed in on the wrong target.

R77 I can see that you haven't read through the explanation on this thread. If by some chance you have, then I see you are just a dumb tinhat.

r43 any opinions on the Helderberg? I lurk on a few aviation forums where people were close to the situation. Even very conservative old saffers are sceptical of the inquiry.

Thank you for that "Ask the Pilot" link.

The show Mayday on the discovery channel is an excellent show. I don't know if it's on in the US (I'm Canadian), but they do a wide range of historical crashes, including recent ones.

Mayday is called Air Crash Investigation in the US and that show is like porn to me.

[quote]It was probably a missal from one of our ships that accidentally honed in on the wrong target.

Thrown by a priest sharpening a knife?

Never forget PSA flight 1771.

One of the best Mayday programs. Terrifying.

"I'm the problem."

Yikes, just read about PSA 1771 ...had never heard of that b4. Wow!!!

R81, me too! I've seen every episode and repeated the ones where there are survivors relating the stories. Some of my favorite survivors: the Captain of the Pan Am 747 in Tenerife, some cunty lady in an Air France Plane that caught on fire and she couldn't stop complaining about the service and incompetence, the guy who couldn't find his son during Miracle on The Hudson and found him later in a tearful reunion, and the glamorous black FA who did a lot of rescuing with her white gloves and high heels on in an AA DC10 1972 mishap involving a hole in the cabin.

R83, "I'm the problem" is one of my favorite episodes. Better than most intense, action thrillers...and all of it a true story!

The spookiest one was the Greek airliner "ghost flight" where everyone but one male FA had passed out in the cabin and military planes were able to see everything unfold through the windows.

R73 I believe Priscilla Tirado died a few years ago and there's only one survivor left alive nowadays from Air Florida Flight 90 (the stewardess).

I guess I got the update on Flight 90 wrong. It seems Priscilla Tirado is still alive.

The first part of this episode focuses on the glamourous stewardess with he gloves. Starts at about 4:45

Yes R78 I did read it but I don't always believe bullshit. You go ahead and believe some ridiculous explanation but I'll believe the more plausible one.

R88 That's the thing!! The missile scenario is NOT plausible. Did you see where I said, and it was backed up by The Pilot Speaks, that this has happened before? Before 800, there was a problem with the wiring in the center-main fuel tank, and it was retrofitted and fixed immediately. And I suppose you take the opinion of online conspiracy theory websites over the opinions of top captains and pilots on all airlines??

Eyewitness testimony is horribly inaccurate when it comes to plane crashes. In nearly every one where there was controlled flight into terrain, eyewitnesses reported seeing an "explosion" before the equipment hit the ground. And guess what? That was never the case. People's eyes and brains are slow and out of sync when witnessing something so fast and traumatic. The "explosion" they think the see before impact is simply the result of the impact. The "missile" which people on Long Island thought they saw was simply the cockpit and forward bulkhead flying away from the main cabin.

Think what you like, but you are an idiot if you continue to believe this was a planned event.

I'm r37 -- the point I was trying to make is that, except for losing her clothes, Miss Silverman's body was intact and unmarred. As she was sitting where the nose separated from the fuselage, had that crack been caused by a missile, she would have been hamburger. Since the fuel tank exploded above her and the force went out through the top of the plane, she was neither burned nor mangled.

Also, a missile would have taken out an engine (they are heat seeking) and blown off the wing and destroyed the side of the cabin. This did not happen. If it did, Miss Silverman would have also been badly mangled.

She is the key to the story.

Two inside reports.

TWA was NOT shot down. That 747 had been dry leased to an Asian airline for several years. That airline was obligated to do the maintenance and complying with Air Worthiness Maintenence Directives. They did NOT do the required repairs, including the re wiring of fuel tank Boost Pumps. They pencil whipped the AC maintain logs. TWA had no idea how great this failure was until after the fact.

Re AA DC 10 Chicago crash....in response to this tragedy engines now have thick stripes painted where they attach to the wing pylons. If there is so much as a small slip of placement it is extremely evident to the naked eye. Post flight and Preflight inspections are Routine by flight crew, as are inspections carried out by ground Maintenance staff.

Thank you R91. But yanno there will always be a few knuckleheads who just WANT to believe it was a conspiracy.

Yes the visual of TWA nose peeling off was possibly the most heinous image from the entire nightmare.

The 747 in early year had a forward belly cargo hold in which the "claws" that locked the door were made of aluminum. Over time the locks would break, in a very very few cases (3 or 4 worldwide?) the nose would separate. The skin around the belly would peel from the door opening and continue to peel around the body of the AC in direct line with that hold area.

I dreaded flying those older 74's unless I could check that the claws had been replaced with Steel as per the FAA Modification. However given the hundreds and hundreds of 74' flying at the time such incidents were like a million to one. Facts will never stand in the way of a Conspiracy Theorist.

The Valujet crash had nothing to do with the planes themselves. DC-9's were some of the best planes ever built. It was directly caused by dangerous goods being transported, which were improperly stored oxygen generators. Granted, this was probably the result of an airline with a poor safety record and lax enforcement of safety precautions. The FAA instituted mandatory cargo hold smoke detection and fire suppression equipment after this crash.

Here's the Air France thriller with the complaining cunt.

French prosecutor: Germanwings copilot 'feared going blind'

11 June 2015 9:38AM PST -- from Paris

The copilot who crashed a Germanwings jet into the Alps feared that he was losing his eyesight, and some of the many doctors he consulted believed he was unfit to fly, a French prosecutor said Thursday.

The doctors didn't report their concerns to Andreas Lubitz's employers, however, because of German patient privacy laws, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin told reporters in Paris.

Robin met with families of victims Thursday and updated reporters on the status of the investigation into the March 24 crash, which killed all 150 people aboard. Families are just starting to receive remains of their loved ones and will start holding burials in the coming days and weeks.

Robin said the investigation so far “has enabled us to confirm without a shadow of a doubt … Mr. Andreas Lubitz deliberately destroyed the plane and deliberately killed 150 people, including himself.”

Investigators say he locked the pilot out of the cockpit and flew the plane into a French mountainside, after having researched suicide methods and cockpit door rules and practiced an unusual descent.

Robin said Lubitz had also investigated vision problems and “feared going blind” — a career-ending malady for a pilot.

Lubitz had seen seven doctors within the month before the March 24 crash, including three appointments with a psychiatrist, Robin said. Some of the doctors felt Lubitz was psychologically unstable, and some felt he was unfit to fly, but “unfortunately that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements,” the prosecutor said.

In Germany, doctors risk prison if they disclose information about their patients to anyone unless there is evidence they intend to commit a serious crime or harm themselves.

The question for investigators now is who could be held responsible. The prosecutor upgraded the investigation from a preliminary probe to a full-fledged manslaughter inquiry, which hands the case to investigating magistrates who can file eventual charges against people or entities.

German lawyer Peter Kortas, whose firm represents relatives of 34 victims, said negotiations with Germanwings about compensation began several days ago. Families were also seeking answers about delays in the return of victims' remains.

Nearly half of the victims were German, 47 were Spanish and there were 17 nationalities among the remainder.

More JoAnn Cordary-Bundock, possibly the most irritating air crash survivor in history.

The viewer comments ripping her a new asshole are pretty spot-on.

Loved those comments r97. She could be the new Bonnie Franklin. I forgot she had the ovaries to complain about going through a "second disaster"(referencing AF's response and service) after surviving the first.

Still no passenger list on Germanwings. Beyond odd.

What are y'all bitching about that Air France woman? I just watched that show. Every one of the passengers made it off that plane and yet they were stuck in a holding pen for hours while their frantic relatives waited just a few meters away for news. Anyone watching the fire on the news would've assumed that passengers died. Massive fail on the part of AF/Toronto Airport. How difficult is it to go around and ask people's names and then go out into the hall and read them out??

Nope, some pissant wanted to control the information. Jeezus, spare me.

Another really bizarre one - a passenger jet crashes near some housewife's backyard and the burnt, stunned survivors - in varying degrees of stupefied shock - start filing into the woman's living room, which then becomes a first response treatment center.

The two flight attendants on that backyard crash (Flight 242 Southern Airways) survived the crash and were later commended for preparing the passengers for a crash landing without knowing what was going on, due to the pilots failure to communicate with them. The senior stewardess even got kicked out of the cockpit when she went to ask what was going on.

They did ask people to remove shoes. In this case it would have been better for everybody to overcushion and overprotect themselves, and keep their shoes on. But what did they know? Thank you pilots (neither of whom survived the crash, getting ejected from the cockpit still strapped to their seats upon a resultingf impact after safely landing). Most people died of blunt forces and fire.

8 people died on the ground, including a family of seven which was exiting a gas station store when the plane hit some of the gas pumps, creating an explosion.

BTW, one of the kids who lived in that house is now a pretty hot (albeit I'm sure somewhat scarred) guy. He is in this episode.

A fire in flight is my worst nightmare: Nigerian Airlines 2120 is a prime example. An entire DC-8 is consumed in minutes, people engulfed in flames, falling from the aircraft....

PSA San Diego Crash photos from the SD Aviation Museum:

The Swissair 111 was especially scary. I've been to Peggy's Cove were the rescue operations were launched.

One of the crashes not covered by that series is one which is the subject of conspiracy theories, United 553.

It starts at 16:12 of the podcast

Awesome program acout what it's like to fall 33,000 feet.

Allegheny Airlines flights 736 and 737 crashed two weeks apart, flying the same route, near the same airport. Both planes were the same model as well.

R107, they actually rolled twice and fell 29,000 feet, not 33,000. Stop exaggerating!!

FedEx disgruntled employee hijacks one of their jets, set to crash it and make it look like an accident so his family can collect insurance. Grossly injured pilots who had been hit in the head with a hammer, fight back and win, in perhaps one of the most gruesome, hair-raising thrillers in the Air Crash Investigation series. This story should be turned into a movie - it has all the elements of an action thriller and it was true! On a previous post, I had mistakenly said that about the "I'm the problem" episode, because that accident was also caused by a disgruntled employee, but in that event, everybody was killed to smithereens, so it's just sad, not thrilling. This one's a real rollercoaster ride.

Allegheny Airlines was the predecessor of US Air. The first crash was on Christmas Eve. The survivors built a bonfire out of their luggage to stay warm. The fire was how the rescuers found them in the woods.

Poor James Horner -- his last Hall of Fame:

This one still freaks me out.

Thursday is the 50th anniversary of this crash of a USAF transport plane into a mountain above Irvine, CA

It's not smart to own a house near Chicago Midway Airport.

On the one that r113 linked - what happened in o the plane? Any survivors?

Some frightening ones

For r116:

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Air India 182.

Surviving the 1989 Iowa Crash:

Cincinnati had a bum runway approach that took out a few planes.

Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 21

Thursday, July 8, 1965

In-flight Bomb

What a great excerpt, r120! I already added the book to my Amazon cart.

1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident

Star Dust (registration G-AGWH) was a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner which crashed into Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes on 2 August 1947, during a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile. A comprehensive search of a wide area (including what is now known to have been the crash site) was fruitless, and the fate of the aircraft and occupants remained unknown for over 50 years. An investigation in 2000 determined the crash was caused by weather-related factors,[1][2] but until then speculation had included theories of international intrigue, intercorporate sabotage and even abduction by aliens.

In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. It is now assumed that the crew became confused as to their exact location while flying at high altitudes through the (then poorly understood) jet stream. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks, and Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.

The last word in Star Dust's final Morse code transmission to Santiago airport, "STENDEC", was received by the airport control tower four minutes prior to its planned landing and repeated twice; it has never been satisfactorily explained.

"Flight 191"

Flight 191 doesn’t refer to a specific crash but to incidents that have plagued a range of flights numbered 191. In fact, there have been so many catastrophes that, much like hotel owners who refuse to have a 13th floor, some superstitious airlines have completely done away with the number “191.”

Since the 1960s, five flights with the number “191” have ended in fatal crashes, including the worst aircraft disaster in American history: American Airlines Flight 191, which killed 273 people. Most recently, in 2012, JetBlue Airways Flight 191 made headlines after the pilot went crazy during the flight and started ranting about Jesus, terrorists, and 9/11. He was kicked out of the cockpit by the co-pilot and subdued by passengers. Later, he was put in a mental hospital.

Although the misfortune of flights ending in 191 is likely a coincidence, numerologists have had a field day trying to decipher the hidden meaning of the numbers.

Still no official cause of the AirAsia 8501 crash. I have a scary feeling they found an issue with Airbus and it is being supressed until the airline can come up with a corrective procedure.

It's the one-year anniversary of the murderous Russian attack on the Malaysian Airlines 777 over Ukraine today.

This one was bad:

This one was really bad:

I know someone whose father died on Swissair Flight 111. I'd feel bad for the guy because plane crashes terrify me, but he's an asshole. A real low-life.

191 is a rearrangement of 911

BOAC 911 crashed into Mt. Fuji in 1966. I don't believe the official explanation that a "mountain updraft" caused it.

119 is an emergency number in Japan and China

Swissair probably had the most obliterated plane ever. I could not understand because the plane crashed into the ocean from a low altitude.

But I guess water is like concrete in a plane crash, and the engines were running at full throttle.

That crash was seriously horrifying in every way. The fire . The dark. The ocean.

R133, the worst thing is that the crash could have been prevented if the pilots had flown to Halifax right away instead of turning the plane around to dump fuel.

Is that even true R134?

I do not recall reading that. I will google that.

That sucks.

I met the ORD FAA person who was assigned the tracking for Flight 191. He was relocated to Las Vegas pronto so that the lawyers could not get at him. He was an army veteran who later became a flight controller. A nice guy who hated being in Vegas.

Yes, R135. Watch this.. at 19:20

Sorry, here's the video..

Wow...

Isn't the recent Indonesian one bad? Three fatal plane crashes in 8 months. I heard TSA is panicked because they know a major airliner crash is inevitable with extreme heat and stress conditions.

Strange silence sontinues with the Germanwings crash...

Here is an F-18 crash in California where the pilot ejected, but they still can't find him:

New season of Air Crash Investigation starts tonight on NatGeo.

SwissAir Flight 111

SwissAir Flight 111 recreation

thanks to those who keep our skies safe!

They couldn't land at Halifax without dumping fuel, but they should have dumped it right there and fuck the regulations.

Horrific, but I think the Saudi Haj flight from Jeddah that caught fire on takeoff was much worse.

Funny how the Germanwings crash just disappeared and stopped being mentioned.

Africa has the biggest chunk of banned airlines, R147. They're not allowed to enter Europe.

Another vote for something that passes for the truth about the Germanwings disaster.

Glenn Miller

Patsy Cline

Buddy Holly

Otis Redding

Jim Croce

Most of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Rick Nelson

Stevie Ray Vaughn

Aaliyah

No wonder musicians travel by bus today.

I am with R147- I have researched many crashes, and that one is one of the worst in terms of what the crew/passengers endured.

Even if they no longer mention passengers (and stopped doing so almost immediately) usually the families are raising hell in some manner, and the press writes about their lawsuits and the memorials they are building.

With this crash, nothing.

R43, quit talking out your ass. I was there. I saw the stories of fireworks in the news before the Feds got there and locked that shit down. It was a terrorist attack. Missile from raft. Local fire depts were not allowed pass the pine barrens.

Right before Olympic games, too.

Anyone recognize this crash? I read about a flight from Florida (Miami?) to Canada (Toronto?), in which then difference between the passengers who survived the crash and made it out alive, and the passengers who did not was the person's blood alcohol level. The passengers were mostly people coming home from vacation.

Great posts, guys. Now here's some hero tales

Perhaps he's related to the Trudeau as he spent a year in prison smuggling weed in his younger years What this guy accomplished gives me goosebumps You just don't glide an aircraft that big to safety. Oh, but he did!

Where is he now? Working for Air Inuit?

Do you guys realize that no complete passenger list has ever been released for Germanwings? SO fucking weird. And unheard of. EVERY crash from the last 15-20 years has memorial website.

One horrible crash long forgotten in the USA was the Swedish Airlines crash at Linate (Italy). It happened shortly after 9/11 and right before that American Crash in Queens. It was really messed up and some were imprisoned to my knowledge.

I've actually been there when flight Avianca crashed into tennis star mcenroes old house in the cove.

As it passed my home, myself and two others were like, WTF? It was an odd wind shear sound. Rattled some windows

Then came the sirens from Cold Spring Harbor.

Living a few doors down from Yoko Ono's pad. Flight Avianca.

Well we're due for another air disaster soon

Any psychics on this board to predict?

Germanwings passenger list

R162, I posted about the German Wings passenger list- By the way, the link you posted (which I watched months ago) is the ONLY version of any passenger list out there. You can google this. I don't even know if it is correct or how the person got the names.

Linate was like a replay of Tenerife with new actors, a collision on the runway. The airport manager and the air traffic controller were jailed.

A small plane clipped a downtown Anchorage office building and then slammed into a nearby commercial building Tuesday, killing at least one person onboard, authorities said.

Anchorage Assistant Fire Chief Alex Boyd said there were no injuries on the ground, but it's unclear if anyone else was in the plane.

The plane clipped the corner of the office building, where some state employees work, at about 6:20 a.m. It then crashed into the lower side of an adjacent multi-story commercial building, starting it on fire.

Crews responded quickly and had the blaze under control, said Don Tallman of the Anchorage Fire Department.

The commercial building appeared to be unoccupied at the time of the crash, though crews were searching it to make sure, Tallman said. Authorities cordoned off an area around the building, closing several roads.

The aircraft also struck a transformer, Boyd said, and some power outages were reported in the area.

The crash happened in the heart of downtown, in an area surrounded by office buildings, hotels and other businesses less than 10 miles from the Anchorage airport. It occurred before most nearby businesses opened for the day.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. He had no additional details on the plane or the crash.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

I posted about this after the Germanwings crash while searching for airplanes that crashed into mountains: the 1979 crash of an Air New Zealand DC-10 into Mount Erebus in Antarctica. A MASSIVE scandal in NZ, but this was the first I was learning about. It's heartbreaking.

The crash itself was due to a dumb mistake -- the scandal was in the way the government and the airline handled it.

R167- That was a horrible crash. They actually have photos out there taken by passengers (It was a site seeing tour) moments before the crash.. I recommend the documentary on Youtube

The last photo taken by a passenger inside of Air New Zealand:

LAN Airlines flight LA3509 sustained damage following an impact with an unknown object at FL350 in the Bogotá FIR.

The aircraft, an Airbus A320, departed Cancún Airport, Mexico at 21:18 hours UTC. The aircraft was en route at FL350 between the KAKOL waypoint and the RNG VOR when, at an airspeed of 480 kts, the aircraft impacted an object.

The crew checked the aircraft systems but did not notice any indications of a malfunction. They decided to continue the flight and landed safely at Bogotá at 00:13 UTC (19:13 LT).

During the inspection of the aircraft, the left front section of the aircraft showed a dent measuring 20 cm and there was a substance was observed that will be examined to determine its composition.

The Colombian Aerocivil classified this as a Serious Incient and initiated an investigation.

(UFO?)

Plane crash in Canada yesterday, small plane in northern Saskatchewan. All 25 passangers and crew survived.

This sounds awful. It's a miracle that everyone survived.

[Quote]Willie John Laurent said one of the last things he remembers before Wednesday night's crash of a plane carrying community members from Fond-du-Lac, Sask., was it turning sideways in the air and the people aboard screaming.

[Quote]"Everyone was trapped on my side [of the plane]," Laurent said, more than 13 hours after the incident. "I crawled over the seat, because the aisle was all crushed. There was no aisle because it was all bent together."

Someone from the Saskatchewan plane crash died. RIP.

There was a Christmas eve day plane crash In Florida I think and the pilot was killed along with his family. The irony is that the pilot was some kind of ambulance chase-y attorney who surely would have sued himself had he lived.

R15, I remembered young Stephen Baltz for many decades. He was travelling by himself and had a few dollars in his pocket.

R21, No, the rest of the plane did not ascend, not even briefly. That was part of the lie concocted and depicted by the FBI (Kalstrom), agents of which illegally took over from the NTSB.

R33 Exactly what else would you expect any of those men to say to you?

The US Govt lied through its collective teeth about the presence of Naval vessels; after the mishap, ships and crews were re-deployed post-haste.

A "Goldilocks" theory, neither a center tank explosion nor an accidental shoot-down, is posited by Elaine Scarry: an electro-magnetic causation.

R91, You realize you saw only an artist's rendering of the plane (as dictated by the FBI), right? There is no film.

R151, Hello?!

The story of the sole survivor of the LANSA 508 crash. She fell through the sky still attached to her seat after the plane was struck by lightning. The seat cushioned her fall into the rainforest. She cleverly followed a stream knowing that water eventually leads to civilization. Other passengers survived the crash but died waiting for rescuers to show up.

Um, r151 and r181!...

That John Denver one was the worst because it was a total design flaw that basically was set up by the original plane owner where you had to pull some kind of o ring over your shoulder, but to do so you had to take your foot off the gas or whatever and turn around in your seat, and in doing so he lost altitude quickly and crashed.

The two planes that collided over the Grand Canyon during the 50s must have been a difficult recovery. There wasn't much air traffic control at the time, it was more or less look for other planes in the air. Yikes.

Amazing person who has lived 3 lives: Michael Matz -Olympic rider for USA, survivor of Sioux City air crash and rescuer of children, trainer of Kentucky Derby winner and hard luck story horse Barbaro.

r179 there is a lot of dirty laundry in the aviation industry that is not publicly discussed, particularly around cargo & cargo manifests. However, that doesn't automatically mean bizarre conspiracies are happening. OTOH, there have been conspiracies (Helderberg) that always give me pause about dismissing anything out of hand at the other extreme.

Another aspect a lot of the public doesn't realize is the high-level EMS weapons that are out there now. It's possible for an aircraft to be targeted or run afoul of classified manoeuvers. The US government has been developing 'beam weapons' for at least forty years.

Of course officially we don't have them, but if you look at reputable but off mainstream sites you can find stories about them. . I realize this makes me sound like I'm tightening the tin-foil, but I've seen it discussed on avsites as a foregone conclusion (even if the posters don't agree they caused a specific incident, they don't debate their existence.)

r188 If I never flew again it would be because of that and this, the Fearless one.

The creepiest part from black box recordings, when you can actually listen to the audio, is the 'whoop whoop PULL UP' warning.

I know, r 190. If I ever heard that sound from my seat in some flight, I'll be bracing.

Interestingly enough, watching all these crash shows has made me less fearful of facing adversity when flying in general - perhaps because when you know what's going on, you are able to discern panic from real danger. Or just plain more able to help or contribute.

All I know is that when I fly now and feel turbulence (which is always impressive as you feel this big machine hitting bumps at 600 mph), I'm less nervous now that I'm more informed.

I urge anyone who is scared of flying to watch any of these documentaries or tech shows.

Fortunate escape for all on board this Pegasus B737-800 which skidded off the runway after landing.

OMG R192, if they had deployed the inflatable slides, the jumping passengers and crew would have continued sliding into the Black Sea.

Dear Lord in Heaven!

Why do they build airports and runways next to cliffs, mountain sides, or congested building complexes?! It's not like Turkey is St. Marteen or some encrusted Swiss Alp town!

Not a plane crash, but I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet. It's weird that nobody made a thread about it.

[Quote]CDC meets plane at JFK after passengers report feeling ill

This says 19 passengers were deemed sick.

And Vanilla Ice was there, to comment on it in real time r197.

The Air Crash Investigation episode isn't on Youtube any more, but this is a fair recreation. British Airways Flight 5390 had a cockpit window blown out shortly after takeoff and the captain was sucked out of the window. Incredibly, he survived because the flight attendants hung on to his feet and the flight officer descended to a level at which the air was more breathable, and the captain was also unconscious.

Oh man, when will the chick whose head got sucked out the window have her story told? That was so fucking sad and insane.

Bump

R199, aren't pilots often sucked out in flights?