Send us a textIn what is a podcast series first - and likely last - for Radar Contact Lost, this episode does not tell the story of a tragic plane crash, but rather the intricate details of the landing of the Presidential Helicopter, Marine One, in dense fog. On this day, the fog was so dense, that the helicopter had to divert from its destination of the Presidential Retreat, Camp David, and instead land at a nearby high school football field. Our host describes the details of the landing wit...
Send us a textOn October 12th, 1974, an Air Force weather reconnaissance Hurricane Hunter aircraft crashed into the South China Sea while investigating Typhoon Bess, taking the lives of the six crew members onboard. No debris was ever found, no sign of the crew was ever discovered. The plane seemed to have been swallowed up by the tropical cyclone miles from nowhere. There were no emergency radio calls for help or that indicated any mechanical malfunction. There were no witnesses. To this day...
Send us a textOn Tuesday morning, December 5, 1978, 22 people were rescued off the side of a high Colorado mountain in the southern regions of the Rocky Mountains. They had survived the frigid night at an altitude above 10,000 feet (over 3,000 meters). This was in the midst of a snowstorm, with temperatures well below freezing and winds howling above 30 miles per hour (that’s nearly 50 kilometers per hour). There was only minimal shelter. Some reports estimated the snow to be 8 feet deep and ...
Send us a textOn February 3, 1959, a small, single-engine, 4-passenger plane took off from a remote airfield in rural Iowa. It was after midnight. It was snowing. It was windy. Moments later, the plane rolled over and flew into the ground at approximately 170mph – or about 275 kph. The 21-year-old pilot and the three passengers were killed on impact. The injuries to all four were horrific. This small crash, on a cold winter night, would reverberate through history – not only to this day, but ...
Send us a textOn the evening of February 12, 2009, Colgan Air Flight 3407 was on final approach to Runway 23 at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport in Buffalo, New York. It was dark, it was snowing, it was windy and the pilots had noted the accumulation of ice on the wings and windshield of the 78-seat regional airliner. Still, the pilots were not under undue stress as the cockpit voice recorders indicated a casual, unhurried atmosphere, there was even some unrelated chit-chat on the fl...
Send us a textOn final approach to Havana’s José Martí International Airport in 1977, the Aeroflot Ilyushin IL-62M with 69 people on board, descended below the clouds and the pilot immediately was confronted with power lines between the plane and the runway – and the runway was close. The pilot attempted to pull the nose up to avoid the powerlines, but the emergency maneuver was not enough – the plane clipped the power lines and the steel-reinforced cables severed the vertical stabilizer from...
Send us a textAt just before 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, March 5, 1966, British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 911, took off from Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. Bound for Hong Kong, the Boeing 707 broke apart in mid-air, just 15 minutes after departure. The crash left no survivors. The weather conditions were not an issue – at least, nothing obvious: there were no thunderstorms, no typhoons, there was no rain or snow. In fact, it was a sunny, clear, cloud-free day. It ...
Send us a textToday’s episode, “When a Volcano Silenced a Boeing 747 Over the Indian Ocean," is the heart-stopping tale of a commercial jetliner – a Boeing 747 – that, contrary to every other episode in this podcast series, did not crash. However, the world’s largest passenger jet at the time came about as close to a spectacular and deadly crash as it could, before the crew saved the plane and the lives of everyone on board from near-certain destruction. Even after the plane landed safely, th...
Send us a text“When a Helicopter Crash Silenced ‘Number One’" is about the 1990 crash of a Bell JetRanger helicopter that was carrying a pilot and four passengers. The helicopter crashed into a ski slope at night and in the fog, killing all on board. Among the passengers was Stevie Ray Vaughan, the legendary Blues guitarist from Texas. The crash stunned the world with not only the crash that was attributed to pilot error, but the end of an amazing career of a guitarist that had burst onto the...
Send us a textThis is Part 2 of 2. On a summer day in 1975, Eastern Airlines Flight 66 crashed just yards away from its intended runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport near New York City. Witnesses at the time, said the plane exploded in midair, but this was not the case. The plane had flown through a thunderstorm and had been shoved to the ground by a microburst. In 1975, thunderstorms were not well understood and their potential for severe damage had not been realized. Updraf...
Send us a textPart 1 of 2. On a summer day in 1975, Eastern Airlines Flight 66 crashed just yards away from its intended runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport near New York City. Witnesses at the time, said the plane exploded in midair, but this was not the case. The plane had flown through a thunderstorm and had been shoved to the ground by a microburst. In 1975, thunderstorms were not well understood and their potential for severe damage had not been realized. Updrafts, downdrafts...
Send us a textIn 1963, there was an unusual crash of a U.S. Air Force B-52 Bomber. The plane, while attempting to escape severe turbulence, lost its vertical stabilizer and rudder – essentially losing its ability to fly straight. The plane lost control and then crashed into a mountain in north-central Maine, located in the far northeastern corner of the United States. The crash killed seven of the nine crew members. The two who survived – one spent the frigid January night in shoulder-deep sn...
Send us a textImagine a world where the word "tornado" is banned from public weather announcements and tornadoes are considered unforecastable. This was not Bizzaro World, but the United States of America in the 1940s. It was thought the the mere word, tornado, would cause panic and the mass hysteria would cause more death than the tornado itself. Meanwhile, U.S. Air Force weather forecasters were laying the ground work for the first tornado forecast after two tornadoes in five days tore acro...
Send us a textOn December 8, 1963, Pan Am N709PA, a Boeing 707 with the call sign "Clipper 214," exploded in flight just minutes from its final destination. Thunderstorms delayed that landing and frequent lightning around the plane made the passengers uneasy. But lightning doesn't cause airliner crashes, so the crew took no special measures to avoid the lightning. And then the plane exploded, killing all on board. Investigators quickly ruled out lightning, focusing instead on sabotage, ...
Send us a textThis is the tragic tale of an Air Force cargo plane that went un-rescued for 60 years after it crashed in a blinding snowstorm and over some of the harshest terrain that Alaska has to offer. Lost and entombed in a glacier after the large Globemaster II crashed in 1952, it was finally recovered in 2012 thanks to an Air National Guard helicopter crew on a routine training mission. Today, each summer, dedicated members of the Air Force and Army return to the Colony Glacier to searc...
Send us a textIn the conclusion of "When Delta Flight 191 Crashed into the Ground One Mile Short of the Runway," we will look at the complicated way weather information moves from the air traffic controllers to the cockpit and the various sources of weather data the pilots have access to - both today and in 1985. We'll also examine some factors that may have been rising frustration levels on the ground and in the cockpit. Other aspects of this episode will examine the emergency response to th...
Send us a textOn August 2, 1985, a Lockheed-Martin L-1011 - Delta Flight 191 - crashed into the ground just over one mile from the runway at the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport (DFW). It was a hot afternoon in Texas and thunderstorms were beginning to percolate. However, one of these small storms was growing at the end of Runway 17L, almost directly in front of the approaching jetliner. The plane never made it to the runway, despite being less than 2 minutes from the anticipated touch-...
Send us a textIt was a cold and snowy day in Washington, DC as passengers boarded the narrow-body Air Florida 737. The plane was sprayed with de-icing fluid while waiting at the gate, but a series of errors before the plane reached the runway, and more errors on the runway, sealed the fate of this flight. Just moments after take-off, the plane fell from the sky and crash-landed on the 14th Street Bridge and then plunged into the icy Potomac River. Only five passengers and one crew member surv...
Send us a textIt was a cloudy, dreary July day in New York City in 1945. What was supposed to be a routine flight from Massachusetts to New Jersey to South Dakota, ended suddenly when a combat pilot with hundreds of hours in the flak-filled skies over Germany, inexplicably slammed his B-25 bomber, the Old John Feather Merchant, into the 79th floor of the most iconic building in the United States - the Empire State Building. Did this seasoned pilot let his guard down? Did the weather forecast ...