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My new favorite nonfiction podcast! Each episode is a deep dive into an incident (ie, crash, averted crash, accident, etc) in aviation. Gus is very knowledgeable (and a student pilot), and Chris asks intelligent questions, and they have a knack for both clear explanations and finding fascinating details. A bunch of the incidents are ones I either hadn't heard of before or didn't know much about, so this is worth listening too even if you know a fair amount about plane crashes.
Plane crash analyses fascinate me because I like in-depth investigations of what went wrong with an eye toward preventing it from happening in the future. They're strangely cheering because aviation is one of the few industries that is legitimately interested in stopping fatal accidents from happening again, as opposed to covering them up and getting legislation passed that indemnifies them if more people die.
They also interest me because when I was a stage manager, one of my duties was ensuring the safety of everyone involved in the production, audience included, and as far as that went, the buck stopped with me. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what could possibly go wrong and what could be done to prevent it. It's a little-known fact that the stage manager has the right and responsibility to halt or refuse to start a show if there's a known danger. I only did that once but it was always in my mind. Of course plays are less dangerous than airplanes but very serious incidents have occurred (mostly fires) so the whole field of accident prevention and analysis is of great interest to me.
Serious civilian aviation incidents tend to involve multiple factors going wrong, because there's enough layers of precautions that, at least in modern times, it's very unusual for any single factor short of a military strike to take down a plane. That both makes for complex and interesting analysis, and is comforting because you know it takes really a lot of things going wrong to kill you on a plane.
Here's some of my favorite episodes so far.
The Gimli Glider. A plane runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet. Their first episode, and it's a good one, with their trademark use of details no one would believe if they weren't true. No one dies.
Things go very wrong on a small, elderly Alaskan plane. Even more stranger than fiction details. This one is so cinematic that the hosts go on an extended riff on Con Air (my personal nominee for the stupidest movie ever made). Very fun, no one dies.
People Sucked Out of Airplanes. What it says on the tin. The second story in particular is truly bizarre. One death.
The Tenerife Disaster. The deadliest civilian aviation accident in history. Fascinating analysis of what went wrong and the steps taken to ensure it never happens again. Some survivors, amazingly.
Hijacker causes crash that breaks the sound barrier. Fascinating story with lots of interesting historical and investigative details about a hijacking by a guy trying hard to get the title of Worst Person in the World. Everyone dies.
All the episodes I've listened to have been good to excellent.
Black Box Down on Audible
Plane crash analyses fascinate me because I like in-depth investigations of what went wrong with an eye toward preventing it from happening in the future. They're strangely cheering because aviation is one of the few industries that is legitimately interested in stopping fatal accidents from happening again, as opposed to covering them up and getting legislation passed that indemnifies them if more people die.
They also interest me because when I was a stage manager, one of my duties was ensuring the safety of everyone involved in the production, audience included, and as far as that went, the buck stopped with me. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what could possibly go wrong and what could be done to prevent it. It's a little-known fact that the stage manager has the right and responsibility to halt or refuse to start a show if there's a known danger. I only did that once but it was always in my mind. Of course plays are less dangerous than airplanes but very serious incidents have occurred (mostly fires) so the whole field of accident prevention and analysis is of great interest to me.
Serious civilian aviation incidents tend to involve multiple factors going wrong, because there's enough layers of precautions that, at least in modern times, it's very unusual for any single factor short of a military strike to take down a plane. That both makes for complex and interesting analysis, and is comforting because you know it takes really a lot of things going wrong to kill you on a plane.
Here's some of my favorite episodes so far.
The Gimli Glider. A plane runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet. Their first episode, and it's a good one, with their trademark use of details no one would believe if they weren't true. No one dies.
Things go very wrong on a small, elderly Alaskan plane. Even more stranger than fiction details. This one is so cinematic that the hosts go on an extended riff on Con Air (my personal nominee for the stupidest movie ever made). Very fun, no one dies.
People Sucked Out of Airplanes. What it says on the tin. The second story in particular is truly bizarre. One death.
The Tenerife Disaster. The deadliest civilian aviation accident in history. Fascinating analysis of what went wrong and the steps taken to ensure it never happens again. Some survivors, amazingly.
Hijacker causes crash that breaks the sound barrier. Fascinating story with lots of interesting historical and investigative details about a hijacking by a guy trying hard to get the title of Worst Person in the World. Everyone dies.
All the episodes I've listened to have been good to excellent.
Black Box Down on Audible
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I'm curious. What caused you to halt the performance for safety reasons? (If you can talk about it here.)
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The house manager oversold the show - sold more tickets than were actually available for the performance, which was in a fairly small theatre that seated maybe 100 people. I caught him setting up folding chairs in the aisles, which was a fire hazard and against safety regs. I told him to remove the chairs immediately and tell the extra audience members they'd have to be rebooked, and to not open the house without checking with me. I then proceeded with my other duties.
I returned to find that he'd opened the house and seated audience members in the illegal danger seats. I told him he needed to tell those audience members there'd been a mistake and they'd have to be rebooked. He refused.
In addition to blocking the aisles and being a safety hazard, two of the seats were also placed so if the audience member leaned backwards, the chair would tip over and they'd fall over a ten-foot drop without a rail and land on their head on concrete.
I got onstage and explained the situation and said the people in the danger seats would have to leave and rebook. They refused. (!) I said the show wouldn't happen until those seats were gone. They just sat there stubbornly.
I then told them they had three options. 1. I cancel the entire show for the night. 2. They leave and get tickets for a different night. 3. They watch the show from the stage manager's booth, where they'd have an obstructed view, would hear me talking nonstop, and would have to be absolutely silent and not move or I'd toss them out.
They voted for the last almost before I finished speaking. So they watched the show from the booth. I guess it was a fun, unusual experience for them, but I was seething.
The house manager called the producer and tried to get me fired. I wasn't fired. I forget what, if anything, happened to him.
One year later, in a different theatre with very similar construction in the same area, the exact same thing happened. The stage manager let the show go on, and an audience member leaned back in the middle. His seat flipped over, he fell over the drop and broke his leg, and he sued the theatre. I felt so vindicated.
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I felt so vindicated.
I bet!
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https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports
The most recent one I read was one of those accidents that theoretically should be impossible, when all of the brakes on a train were taken out when it hit a downed tree in bad weather, and in such a way that the fail-safes didn't. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/676754/180111_R012018_Markinch.pdf
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The one I was talking about is this one: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/neither-money-nor-manpower-the-story-of-the-de-havilland-comet-and-the-crash-of-boac-flight-781-36db2a3435ce
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Tenerife was the second deadliest accident, sadly. For the deadliest you need to look to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Flight_123 in 1985. 520 dead, 4 survivors (which is a miracle given the circumstances). Qantas Flight 32 could have gotten into #2 position but amazingly it managed to land safely back at Singapore (despite one engine exploded, one badly damaged, one idling out of control, holes in the wings, flaps wrecked, and two hydraulic circuits bled out). Of course the worst accident to affect an A380 super-jumbo just happened to the one flight that had a regular crew, a second officer, and two very senior training captains on board to conduct exams, so five pilots on the flight deck to handle the workload!
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Tenerife had a total fatality count of 583 (all 248 aboard KL4805, 335 of the 396 aboard PA1736). JL123 is the deadliest single aircraft accident.
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Huh: I misremembered Tenerife as only 400-something dead. Middle-aged brain strikes again.
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Ooo thanks for the rec, this sounds fascinating!
You may have already read this, but I also found Crash Detectives really interesting, particularly the bits about how oxygen deprivation quickly leads to extremely impaired decision making.
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I wanted to rec the book to you a few years ago, when I was mildly obsessed with it, but this made me think you wouldn't be interested in such a technical book. But if you have an interest in detailed explanations of the causes of plane crashes, I can recommend this one (and am happy to send a copy).
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I think it works fine on Kindle, but your call.
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My dad's an aero engineer, and his specialism is reliability-centred maintenance, so part of his job is to determine how often parts need to be replaced/inspected/serviced to keep them working reliably and safely.
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