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Mayday
2003 · TV series · documentary · 46 min episodes · 26 seasons
Created by Bernard Vaillot, André Barro
Major real-life air disasters are depicted in this series. Each episode features a detailed dramatized reconstruction of the incident based on cockpit voice recorders and air traffic control transcripts, as well as eyewitnesses recounts and interviews with aviation experts.
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19 comments on Hacker News
From the Wikipedia article of that flight:
"The incident was featured in season 23, episode 5 of the Canadian documentary series Mayday . . ." [1]
Season 23 - I'm glad I don't fly!
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Astana_Flight_1388
I've seen few episodes of aircrash investigation (mayday), and I've seen multiple times pilots trying to crash where they will do less damage on ground.
> Even if it is safe now, it just is scary to even think that I am in the air on a model that has crashed twice within months killing 100s of people each time. Does anyone know which other airlines are flying this model ?
There's a simple way to make it so you don't have to worry about this.
There's a documentary TV series that is available in much of the world. It's called Mayday in Canada where it is produced, but the name gets changed in some other regions and on some channels to Air Crash Investigations, Air Disasters, or Air Emergency.
Find it and binge watch all 200+ episodes over the course of a month or two.
When you are done you will either be fine with the 737 Max 8 or you will have given up altogether on flying on a commercial passenger service. Either way, problem solved!
There's a TV show that is kinda good: "Mayday". It may also be called " air disasters" or some such in different locations.
Edit: here's a wiki link:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes
> (And, incidentally, airlines do not, in fact, train pilots for "all engines failed"; it is considered too unlikely and too unsurvivable.)
Nope, that is wrong. Even before Sully, pilots are trained for All Engines Out. Aircraft even have systems to handle this like the RAT (Ram Air Turbine) which deploy on loss of power to enable critical systems like control surfaces and basic navigational gear (GPS, Radar, Artifical Horizon). Prop planes will feather all engines to maximize gliding distance. All Engines Out is definitely survivable and in some cases was even recoverable in flight.
After Sully, the practise of training for All Engines Out was expanded to even lower altitudes and earlier in the takeoff procedure (as noone had failed all three engines that low before). You can read that in the FAA report (and the Mayday Episode summarizing it).
There is other episodes too, like cases where the aircraft ran out of fuel (Gimli Glider) or flew through Volcanic Ash (BAF 9).
Overshooting the runway isn't that bad, it's expected in emergency scenarios. In those cases, minor injuries and extensive damage to the aircraft are accepted in favor of something worse. Usually you find rubble pits and soft earth behind a runway for the nose gear to dig into, a 10-20ft drop on the nosegear will hurt but the aircraft is now breaking with it's entire front, not just a rubber wheel. The Mayday TV show had a few incidents where the aircraft overshot and that happened.
The show known as Air Disasters, Mayday, or Air Crash Investigation is pretty good. The first season especially is fairly devoid of sensationalism, but generally the episodes tell the actual story of the air crash with background provided by investigation experts.
The Mayday/Air Crash Investigation episode titled "Hidden Danger" has good info on this and covers several crashes iirc.
I remember watching the Mayday[0] episode about this. I'm always amazed at the depth that these investigations go into.
Some other recommended episodes, in no particular order:
* The Gimli Glider
* Hudson River Runway - this one also got turned into a Hollywood movie, which I enjoyed, but I prefer the less-dramatized version presented by Mayday.
* Grand Canyon Disaster - mainly due to the age of this accident and the changes that stemmed from it.
* Nowhere to Land - the pilot of this flight has an incredible story.
* I'm the Problem - this wasn't a technical problem, this was a human problem.
* Falling from the Sky
There are so many incredible episodes. I don't have cable anymore and this is one of the few things I miss.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_(Canadian_TV_series)
"...plenty of episodes of Mayday/Air Crash Investigation available on Youtube too. (Be warned though, all doomed flights take off from one of the busiest airports in the world .)" Great show. Comment is spot on, and don't forget "investigators were under extreme pressure".
They talked about in one of those crash investigation show.
There are research done in this domain, but unfortunately can not find the reference right now. Basically, even though there are less and less airplane accidents, a common theme now is the pilots saying "I don't understand what the plane is doing".
PS: This is the pilot in question, there is a reference to the "Mayday" episode where he is interviewed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_G._Rasmussen
That's Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Flight_1907
There's also an episode ("Phantom Strike") of the TV series Mayday about the incident; it's probably on youtube.
The problem I have with Mayday is that there is only about 10min of footage repeated over an hour (45min + ad breaks). Most of the time is filled with summaries (after ad breaks), suspense (obtained by temporarily truncating explanations), questions and hyperboles. Also, it's very US-centric, as if no citizen of other nation were as competent as US ones. Multiplied explanations for the same fact feel like they think I'm 5, and the repetion feels like brainwashing. I come out of watching feeling like it would fit in 2 minutes, even though the original non-repeated content is probaboy more than that. I'd love if they could do a cross-season episodes: "It has been found that (spoiler alert) flight XYZ failed because of reasons A, B and C. The cause A happens over 3 accidents, let's study the 2 other causes. C happened when landing the space shuttle too and in the building collapse in another country. (etc)"
RAT provides electrical generation too. Its all layers of protection, there are batteries for limited duration and limited equipment. RAT provides more (duration and functionality).
There are some components that are considered like that GPS that have small enough power requirements and are critical enough that they can have significant battery and others that are powered by the RAT, and yet others that just don't work with a main engine failure.
Highly suggest watching some of the Mayday episodes about the power failure incidents like Gimli, its very educational.
I can highly recommend the Mayday (Air Crash Investigation/Air Emergency/Air Disasters/whatever its called this week) episode that deals with this, https://youtu.be/Bct1mWUp8to, and the show in general.
It'll take me ages to go through all the episodes of Mayday, but I'm certain in one of them the US released highly classified radar data to prevent a wider political catastrophe, and that the narrator described the source of the data was from a new type of radar that had the capability to track every plane in the world.
The series is exceptionally well researched and presented.
I remember watching a "Mayday: Aircrash Investigation" episode (awesome series by the way) from the 80's I think.
It involved an Eastern passenger plane that had miscalibrated it's guidance system and strayed into Soviet(?) territory during a politically tense period at the same time a US spy plane was in the area.
The Russians(?) shot the plane down and it nearly started a war. The country the plane was from didn't believe it had strayed as far as the Russians(?) said it did.
Eventually, the US government released radar data showing the position and path of this plane so that it would avoid a war. It showed this particular plane had grossly gone off course and entered Russian territory. The radar they had was capable of tracking every plane in the world 24x7. This was back a couple/few decades as well! Turned out the plane has set the wrong guidance system pre takeoff which was a terrible and extremely rare mistake. The US held out until the last moment to release this data as they didn't want anyone to know they had the capability.
This leads me to believe some people somewhere know where this plane went down.
I am not sure if I am recalling this precisely, but I 100% remember that the US government back then apparently has this radar tech.
While I can't speak specifically to the Horizon, almost every major disaster is the result of multiple major events chained together.
To illustrate this point I recommend watching the documentaries Mayday, Air crash investigation, and Seconds from disaster.
You might want to watch the documentary series Mayday (also called Air Crash Investigations). They had an episode called "Gimli Glider".
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes#Season_5