Plane Crash Diaries Podcast Por Desmond Latham arte de portada

Plane Crash Diaries

Plane Crash Diaries

De: Desmond Latham
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I'm a pilot obsessed with flying and all things aviation. This podcast series covers more than a century of commercial aviation and how its shaped the world. Aviation is now safer than its ever been, but it took one hundred years of learning and often through accidents and incidents to reduce the risk of flying.All rights reserved Ciencia
Episodios
  • Episode 42 - General Aviation Training Accidents BC/AC (Before Covid/After Covid)

    Episode 42 - General Aviation Training Accidents BC/AC (Before Covid/After Covid)
    Aug 9 2025
    This is episode 42, and we’re diving into a particular category of aviation accidents — those that happen right at the beginning of a pilot’s journey. We’re talking about ab initio training mishaps. Ab initio, Latin for “from the beginning,” refers to a training path designed for aspiring pilots who start with zero flight time. Nothing. Not a minute logged, not a system diagram understood. These courses take students from ground zero to the right-hand seat of a commercial flight deck — through a tightly structured mix of theory, simulator time, and real-world flying. They’re intense and sometimes quite fast. And they aim to do two things: produce skilled, airline-ready pilots and identify those who should probably find another career. Many of these programmes are tied directly to airlines, which means you’re taught from the outset to fly their way — their SOPs, their ethos, their cockpit culture. That brings clear advantages. The pathway is laid out: from the classroom to the cockpit, without the detours of fragmented, school-hopping training. For many, there’s financial backing too — covering tuition, even living costs — opening doors for those who’d otherwise never afford to fly. There’s also the camaraderie. Like a military intake, you form close bonds under pressure, guided by seasoned instructors and surrounded by peers. And at the end, a job may be waiting — conditional on success. But it’s not all lift and no drag. Freedom? Limited. You’re often bonded to the airline for years — and leaving early can come with steep penalties. Career flexibility? Not much. Your training is airline-specific, and if you decide to fly charter or head bush, you may be back at square one. Contrary to the doomsaying of many veteran aviators, the accident rate during ab initio flight training in the United States has fallen by close to 50% — measured per flight hour - it shows between 2000 and 2019, the number of fatal training accidents almost halved. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s Air Safety Institute has the data to back it up. In the early 2000s, the accident rate hovered around 0.49 per 100,000 flying hours. By 2009, that fell to 0.39. By 2019, the rate dipped to 0.26 per 100,000 hours — a substantial decline. The top three causes of fatal training accidents haven’t changed much over time. They are, in order: 1. Loss of control in flight 2. Midair collisions 3. Controlled Flight Into Terrain — CFIT — the old nemesis flight into the granite cloud.
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    24 m
  • Episode 41 - Dangerous Dalliances: EgyptAir 804 nicotine addiction & Aeroflot 821 intoxication

    Episode 41 - Dangerous Dalliances: EgyptAir 804 nicotine addiction & Aeroflot 821 intoxication
    Dec 23 2024
    Episode 41 is about substance abuse, technocrats behaving badly, sub-standard crew training and fatal attractions to nicotine and C H 3 C H 2 OH — methylethyl alcohol, otherwise known as hootch, or in South Africa, dop. This is an episode that’s longer than usual, with quite a lot of ATC sound thrown in later. I hope you find it useful - remember this series is all about aviation safety which ironically is one of the positive results of a catastrophe. But only if we institute the improvements — and take note as aviators and administrators. Our first example of a legal drug causing a commercial airliner to crash is EgyptAir Flight 804 which took off from Paris’ De Gaulle Airport heading to Cairo International on 19th May 2016. As is the case in many of these accidents, cutting corners when it came to snag reporting caught up with everyone involved. And the geopolitical high jinks and obscurantism caught up with Bureaucrats too. This was no idle fiddle, an Airbus A320 plunged into the Mediterranean north of Alexandria killing all 56 pax, 7 crew and 3 security staff aboard on that day. B In our second example, cutting the corners on training, more unresolved snags and alcohol caused the Aeroflot flight 821 disaster - a Boeing that crashed while the confused pilots were trying to land at Perm Airport in Russia, killing all 88 on board. Let’s kick off with the EgyptAir flight 804, an Airbus A320 registration SU-GCC serial number 2088 which had picked up mechanical snafus on four previous flights before the accident, according to automated messages analysed after the crash. EgyptAir pilots and the airline’s technical center in Cairo had ignored those errors. The Airbus was 13 years old, logging 48052 flight hours in 20773 flight cycles since its manufacture in 2003. This is one of the cases of a one error after another — and then one too many. The Airbus took off from de Gaule Airport at 23:09 local on the night of 19th May 2016 - bound for Cairo. It never made it. At 2h30 UTC the plane disappeared from radar while flying at 37,000 feet in clear weather 280 kilometers north of Alexandria. Finally, the world learned the Egyptian pilots had indeed been battling a fire in the cockpit. It was this that had caused the plane to spiral and break up, not a bomb, and the Egyptians knew it all along. The French BEA had been brazenly colluding with the Egyptians and hiding the truth.Now for our second example, and its a dangerous dalliance with alcohol that tipped the balance from incident to accident. Aeroflot 821 Boeing crashed on 14 September 2008, on approach to Perm International Airport in Russia, at 5:10 local time - it was dark and cloudy. All 82 passengers and six crew members were killed. Among the passengers was Russian Colonel General Gennady Troshev, Vladimir Putin’s advisor and commander of the North Caucasus Military District during the Second Chechen War. But for once, Putin was not fingered in the suspicious death of a comrade which comes as a surprise. The Air Crash investigation unveiled a litany of bad habits.
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    27 m
  • Episode 40 - Shoddy Maintenance and blown screens

    Episode 40 - Shoddy Maintenance and blown screens
    Aug 22 2024
    Episode 40 is about maintenance blunders. Aviation is littered with a long list of these, sometimes it the failure of unofficial parts, sometimes its poor management, sometimes engineers who cut corners - and believe it or not, all three. Because the topic is vast, I’m going to return to this subject in future podcasts. In this episode we’re going to focus on ground crews replacing important components with non-certified parts and what happens to aeroplanes when you do that. Our first nomination - the 1949 Strato-Freight Curtiss C-46A crash into the ocean 10 kilometers west of San Juan-Isla Grande airport in Puerto Rico which killed 53 of the 81 people aboard. The plane was en route to Miami and what happened was not just a story of bad maintenance. Three days prior to the accident, on 4 June 1949 the Strato Freight C-46 arrived in San Juan from Newark, New Jersey for regular maintenance. Mechanics installed a new flap follow cable, then checked both engines and they noted the right engine was misfiring. Thirteen new spark plugs were installed, the engines cleared and the Curtiss C-46 D registration NC92857 was sent back to its routes. We’ll come back to the problem with the plugs in a moment. On 7 June the Curtiss was cleared for a flight to Miami, taxying to the runway at 00:10 a midnight flight. Cheaper flight and strike two was the crew overloaded the plane. There were 75 passengers aboard, including five infants, babes in arms, and 14 other children aged between 2 and 12. Captain Lee Howard Wakefield was in charge, also on board were Captain Alfred Cockrill — the company chief pilot and vice president of Strato-Freight. Copilots were John Connell and George Cary. Stewardess as they called them back in the day, was Judith Hale.Moving along to example two of flouting maintenance rules A Transat Flight 236 from Toronto to Lisbon scheduled August 24th 2001. Everyone survived this accident as you’ll hear. The Airbus A330 lost all engine power while flying over the Atlantic Ocean- all because of improper maintenance. This incident became known as the Azores Glider - it was the longest passenger aircraft glide without engines at that point, gliding for nearly 75 miles or 121 km As you’re going to hear, the flight crew made the situation worse although they apparently appeared to get a bad rap. Experienced pilot 48 year-old Captain Robert Piché was in command, first officer was 28 year-old Dirk DeJager. Piche had 16 800 hours with 796 on an Airbus, while DeJager had logged 4800 hours - 386 on an Airbus. The aircraft was registered as C-GITS configured with 362 seats and placed in service by Air Transat on April 28, 1999. It was powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent 772B-60 engines. Leaving the gate in Toronto, the aircraft had 46.9 tonnes of fuel on board, 4.5 tonnes more than required by regulations. So how did it run out of fuel?The third example of poor maintenance involved the British Airways Flight 5390 1990 event which is very well known, when an improperly installed windscreen blew out, causing the Captain Timothy Lancaster to be sucked partially out of the flight deck. Again, this was a matter of millimetres. First the events of 10th June 1990. The County of South Glamorgan was a BAC One-Eleven Series 528FL jet airliner, registered as G-BJRT, captained by 42-year-old Timothy Lancaster. He had 11,050 flight hours, including 1,075 hours on the BAC One-Eleven, while the first officer was 39-year-old Alastair Atchison who had logged 7,500 flight hours — 1,100 of them on the BAC One-Eleven. The aircraft carried four cabin crew and 81 passengers. Atchison flew what was called a routine take-off at 08:20 local time, then handed control to Lancaster as the BAC One-Eleven Series climbed. As was the habit at the time, both pilots released their shoulder harnesses and Lancaster went further, loosening his lap belt.
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    24 m
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Great speaker telling interesting stories of air tragedies. Very addictive! Story of Paine Stewart a great example start there. Also airship history!!!

Factual, fascinating, darkly fun

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This guy has some really good stuff. His battle of stalingrad podcast is a must for ww2 historians

Perfect

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nice flow of events and aviation details. enjoyable for listening . from a 60 year veteran pilot.

well said

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I was really bored and hoping for something interesting. I dibt know what he was going on about, but it wasn't anything crash fans don't already know (most crashes happen at night? Well, DUH! You can't see the horizon. Next he'll say that you're very likely dead if you hit the water. Show me a water crash, minus Scully, where ANYONE survived...). 25 seasons of Mayday Air Disasters and it's WAY more common that everyone dies over ANYONE surviving. The one that stunned me that anyone lived where the plane hit the runway and cartwheels down it on film. It's literally a miracle anyone survived when you see the film.

So, when they tell you some ridiculous lie about how so many people survive, go watch Mayday. Clean Tube has it commercial free. There it is. It especially makes me nervous when you have SEVERAL crashes with the same call numbers. Like Delta snd American flights 191. There might be MORE with that same number on different airlines, as I recall. What are the odds, if it's so damn safe?? Particularly since "Idiocracy," is coming true hundreds of years before they said in the movie. It's shocking if you find someone who knows what they're doing and does it correctly these days. Most of the time, you have to watch them and then go repeatedly check up on them.

He also doesn't sound sober, either.

You get what you pay for, I guess. That's why it's free. Reviews are way too positive overall to not be manipulated in general. You have to hunt the 1-star stuff to find the truth. Example, SMEG appliances are horrible and way overpriced. Yet, they're in every magazine. Bought a way too expensive pink toaster that never worked ONCE. It was PLASTIC! For like 130.00!! This is just like that. 25.00 metal one works just fine, btw.

He didn't go into any details, and what he did say, was nothing you don't already know.

Not exactly Mayday Air Disasters, is it?

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