Mayday

About the show

Statistically, traveling by airplane is safer than driving and other forms of transportation, but when something goes wrong during a flight, it can be catastrophic with potentially hundreds of lives at stake. This series examines some of the world's worst air disasters, using official reports, transcripts and interviews with people involved to tell the stories of midair mishaps and discover what went wrong in each case. 

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Upcoming episodes

Jun 9th
200a

Sight Unseen

November 12th, 1996 — Shortly after take off from New Delhi, Saudi Airways Flight 763 levels off at 14,000 feet. As the crew waits for clearance to climb to their cruising altitude, the plane is hit by a Kazakhstan Airlines jet. The collision cripples both planes. They spiral violently to the ground, killing all 349 people on board. It’s the worst mid-air collision in the history of aviation. The two wreckage fields are five miles apart. As investigators comb through the charred debris for evidence, they try and answer troubling questions: Why did the two planes collide? Who’s responsible? And can they stop it before it happens again?
Jun 9th
300a

Operation Babylift

April 4, 1975.  In the final, chaotic days of the Vietnam War, US President Gerald Ford orders an urgent mission of mercy called ‘Operation Babylift’. Its goal: to rescue Vietnamese orphans from the chaos of the war and take them back to the safety of the US.   Nearly 250 Vietnamese babies and children are loaded onto an Air Force C5A Galaxy, one of the world’s largest planes.  But after a steep and rapid ascent to get out of missile range, the aircraft’s cargo door is violently blown off and the plane crashes to the ground.  What caused the tragic accident?  And can investigators find out before they have to flee the country
Jun 10th
200a

Falling Fast

"It’s August 6th, 2005. Tuninter Flight 1153 is flying to the Tunisian resort island of Djerba. It’s high above the Mediterranean when, suddenly, its right engine fails. As the pilots begin an emergency descent, their situation gets much worse. Their second engine also stops working -- the plane begins falling towards the sea.Despite numerous attempts, the crew can’t restart their engines. They make a desperate choice — to attempt a landing at sea. Twenty people survive — but fourteen of the 34 passengers are killed. Investigators discover a shocking mistake — that could affect one of the most popular turbo-prop passenger planes in the world. "
Jun 10th
300a

Lost

January 1, 2007 - After taking off from Indonesia’s Suribaya airport, Adam Air Flight 574 settles in for the two-hour trip to Manado. But somewhere over the Java Sea, the plane hits turbulence, and air traffic controllers notice the aircraft is hundreds of miles off course… and headed for a major storm. The jet’s navigational systems aren’t working. And the bad weather is closing in. The crew struggle to find their way — when suddenly, flight 574 disappears from radar — 102 people are killed. The investigation uncovers shocking problems with Adam Air — and much of the Indonesian airline industry.
Jun 10th
300p

Pilot vs. Plane

"June 26th, 1988 - The maiden passenger flight and first-ever public demonstration of the Airbus A-320 will be taking place at the airshow at France’s Mulhouse-Habsheim Airport. The airplane is the latest advance to commercial aviation. It’s the first ever passenger jet to use ‘fly by wire’ technology. The flight controls are manipulated not by the pilot, but by a computer so sophisticated that it won’t let the pilot make any move that’s considered unsafe. There are 130 passengers on board this special flight. The crew is planning a breathtaking maneuver — a low-altitude, nose-high fly-by at the slowest speed a plane can fly without stalling. But after getting into position over the tiny airfield the exhibition quickly turns to disaster. The A-320 flies the length of the runway, and then plows into a forest just beyond the airport. The plane bursts into flames, and three passengers are killed. The accident is a tragedy and a public relations nightmare for Europe’s aerospace industry. Investigators must determine whether the accident was the fault of the pilot or the plane. They conduct interviews, recover the data and voice recorders, but in this accident investigators have a rare tool; a high-quality video of the flight. Investigators ultimately discover that the crew was not properly briefed for the flight, and flew much lower than international regulations allow. But the Captain insists his plane failed him. He says his altimeter gave him a faulty reading, that his engines did not respond, and that when he commanded the plane to climb, it fell instead. But investigators ultimately determine that there was no mechanical failure. They conclude the plane was flying too low and too slow.Convinced of a conspiracy against him, the Captain stops cooperating and undertakes a campaign to clear his name. He finds evidence to support his claims, and presents photographs which appear to show that the plane’s Black Boxes had been tampered with. But the French justice system does not buy his argument, the Captain is eventually convicted of involuntary homicide and sentenced to ten months in prison. But years after the accident, controversy about the incident lingers on. The pilot’s accusation that investigators tampered with evidence to conceal problems with fly-by-wire technology still clouds the investigation’s results. Pilot Michel Asseline continues to appeal his conviction and has devoted much of his life to clearing his name"
Jun 10th
400p

Cleared for Disaster

"February 1st, 1991 - It’s a busy night at Los Angeles International Airport, and US Air Flight #1493 is on its final approach. The pilots configure the 737 for landing and although they repeatedly radio the tower for instructions, their calls go unanswered. They finally get clearance just moments before landing, but within seconds of touching down, the aircraft erupts in flames and crashes into an abandoned brick building. Rescue workers rush to the scene, and as survivors emerge from the inferno, firefighters find the propeller from another plane in the wreckage. The discovery has horrifying implications: there were two planes involved in this accident. Controllers confirm that somehow a commuter plane was on the same runway, waiting for clearance to take off. All 12 people on board SkyWest Flight #5569 are dead, along with 22 others from Flight #1493.With a reputation for an alarming number of close calls, the runway collision thrusts LAX into the media spotlight, and NTSB investigators examine the 15 minutes leading up to the accident to find out what went wrong.They eventually conclude the controller in charge of runway 24L was distracted by a missing flight progress strip and by the other flights under her control, forgot about the commuter plane waiting on the tarmac, and inadvertently instructed both flights to use the same runway at the same time. When investigators dig deeper, however, they learn that LAX’s ground radar was out of commission, and that controllers’ view of the runway from the tower was impeded by a glaring light. They conclude that the controller’s chances of discovering her error were slim. Investigators also determine that since the commuter plane’s lights were the same color and brightness as the lights on the runway, Flight #5569 was all but invisible to the pilots of Flight #1493 as they descended towards the airport.As a result of the disaster, LAX implements long-overdue improvements in an attempt to make the airport safer. "
Jun 10th
500p

Target Is Destroyed

"August 31st, 1983 - Korean Airlines Flight #007 is high above the Sea of Japan with 269 people on board. The Boeing 747 is on the last leg of a marathon journey from New York to Seoul South Korea. The pilots are climbing to a higher altitude in an effort to conserve fuel. When the aircraft reaches its new altitude, it is rocked by rapid decompression, the plane is out of control. The pilots try in vain to bring the jetliner under control, but it spirals towards to the sea and breaks up in mid-air. The disaster sparks a major international controversy, and days later, officials from the Soviet Union reveal they shot down the passenger plane. They claim it was in restricted airspace on a US government spy mission. With Cold War tensions at an all-time high, the UN urgently calls for an impartial international inquiry, but from the start it is mired in secrecy and deception. The Soviets ultimately find the wreckage, retrieve the black boxes and keep the discovery a secret, and the American government admits it had in fact been flying spy planes over the Russian border. As for investigators, with only limited data to go on, they figure that Flight #007 was hundreds of miles off course and that it inadvertently drifted into Soviet airspace after pilots failed to switch on their navigation system.Then in 1992, investigators get the hard evidence they need. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the communist regime, the new Russian administration finally hands over Flight #007’s confiscated data recorders. The Black Boxes prove that the pilots of Flight 007 did not activate their Navigation system. Instead they followed a compass heading straight into Soviet air space. The Soviets dispatched fighter jets to shoot the intruder down. Tragically, investigators discover that Flight 007’s climb to a higher altitude was perceived by one of the fighter pilots as an evasive maneuver, and assuming his target was trying to escape, he locked on and fired two missiles at the passenger jet. One of those missiles ripped a hole in the side of the plane, crippling vital flight controls. To this day, that pilot believes KAL 007 was on a spy mission."
Jun 10th
600p

Cold Case

"March 10th, 1989 — Bound for Winnipeg, Air Ontario Flight #1363 prepares for takeoff after a brief layover in Dryden, a remote Northern airport. Already an hour behind schedule, the pilots fear the heavy snowfall will further delay their departure, and after refueling, they taxi into position and accelerate. The jet reaches takeoff speed but struggles to get airborne, and although it clears the trees at the end of the runway, starts shaking violently and less than a minute later crashes into the woods. Emergency crews rush to the site, and although 45 passengers emerge from the wreckage, 24 people die in the disaster. The crash sparks one of the biggest transportation investigations in Canadian history – including a judicial inquiry – and since the flight’s data recorders are too damaged to be of any use, investigators rely heavily on eyewitness reports. It takes years to unravel the myriad factors that led to the crash, but investigators eventually uncover a fatal flaw in the aircraft’s wing design making it prone to ice build-up and therefore susceptible to stalling. The final report also outlines a sequence of unfortunate events that contributed to the tragedy of Flight #1363. One of the most important was Air Ontario’s decision to allow the plane to fly with a broken APU. This meant the plane’s engines could not be restarted if switched off, and since the Dryden airport’s policy prohibited de-icing with an engine running, Flight #1363 was not de-iced prior to takeoff. Lacking a safety culture, airline management put passengers and employees at risk by cutting corners and focusing too much on the bottom line.The investigation led to significant changes in safety regulations and in the way planes are de-iced. Tragically, however, a breakdown in communicating the report’s findings caused another Fokker F28 — US Air Flight #405 — to crash under similar snowy conditions in March 1992. "
Jun 10th
700p

The Final Blow

"January 20th, 1992 — High over France’s mountainous Alsace region, Air Inter Flight #148 starts its descent towards Strasbourg airport. An Airbus A-320, the aircraft is the world’s first fully computerized passenger plane, and while its autopilot is programmed to land on a specific runway, high winds and heavy winter weather mean the pilots must take over the controls to land on another runway. Slightly off course, a controller guides the pilots as they prepare to make a visual landing. But as they descend through the clouds, the aircraft suddenly rips through the treetops below and slams into the side of a mountain.With the plane’s emergency locator beacon destroyed by the impact, officials are unable to pinpoint the crash site. And, in the meantime, survivors climb from the burning wreckage to face sub-zero temperatures in an isolated forest. Amazingly, one of them eventually stumbles upon a team of journalists, and while nine people are rescued several hours later, 87 passengers and crew are dead.Although a judicial inquiry initially stalls the investigation and the aircraft’s data recorder is too damaged to be of use, the cockpit voice recorder reveals the pilots were anxious about the manual landing. After months of painstaking analysis, data from the quick access recorder (QAR) reveals further clues, and investigators eventually discover that human error and a series of ill-fated weaknesses in the airline industry caused the crash.Flight #148’s pilots had insufficient training and experience flying the sophisticated Airbus - an industry-wide problem – and the controller’s mistakes and unusual terminology also helped bring the plane closer to the mountain. A confusing cockpit console displaying both the aircraft’s vertical speed and flight path angle lead to the pilots inadvertently setting a deadly rate of descent they then failed to notice, and, in a tragic coincidence, momentary turbulence engaged one of the auto-pilot’s emergency features commanding the plane to make a blazing fast descent.Concluding that a ground proximity warning system could have averted the disaster, the investigation recommends sweeping changes, including a new heat resistant design for black boxes, and improvements in cockpit console design and pilot training."
Jun 13th
200a

Deep Freeze

"October 31, 1994 — It’s a frigid Halloween night in the skies above Chicago. Bad weather is delaying dozens of flights, including American Eagle 41-84. Suddenly — the plane spins wildly out of control. The pilots fight desperately to right their plane — but can’t. It smashes into a cornfield. All 68 people on board are killed instantly. Investigators eventually discover the cause is a rare weather phenomenon — and a fatal design flaw."