Plane Crash Diaries20 Jul 2021

Episode 23 - Imperial Airways and the link between flying boats and passenger briefings

This is episode 23 and we’re dealing with flying boat accidents. You may be surprised to hear but one accident in particular involving an Imperial Airways flying boat in 1939 set in motion the use of specialised carb heaters for all aircraft. The safety inspector also recommended that all passengers should be instructed in the fastening of lifebelts and location of emergency exits as well as other lifesaving equipment like rafts become mandatory in aircraft flying over the ocean. So all those trips you’ve taken where the cabin crew point out the emergency exits and spend time showing you how to use a lifejacket can be directly linked to this one accident in 1939. Remember this series is really about aviation safety more than just a story about a crash. Discovering the cause of an accident usually implies a technical or human error which must not be repeated and much of what we’ve heard so far in the previous 22 episodes seeks to identify those moments. First a quick word about flying boats and amphibious aircraft. Frenchman Alphonse Pénaud filed the first patent for a flying machine with a boat hull and retractable landing gear in 1876, but Austrian Wilhelm Kress is credited with building the first seaplane Drachenflieger in 1898, although its two 30 hp Daimler engines were inadequate for take-off and it later sank when one of the two floats collapsed. A flying boat is not amphibious, just by the way. It’s an aircraft that has to land and take off using water with no fixed landing gear. It’s also different from a floatplane which has two or more slender floats mounted under the fuselage for buoyancy. A flying boat uses its fuselage as part of the buoyancy like a boat – thus flying boat.

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Episoder(44)

Episode 44 - The Curious Case of Captain Button and the Pink Porn Kamikaze Pilot

Welcome back to Plane Crash Diaries with me, your host and pilot, Des Latham. Episode 44 and we’re exploring more bizarre stories of pilot suicide with the tragedy of A10 Captain Craig Button and the ...

1 Mai 18min

Episode 43 - Lithium on Board: UPS Flight 6 and the Battery Threat Airlines Fear Most

This is episode 43, and I thought instead of taking a closer look at the plethora of pilot suicides, another topic is heating up fast. The dangers of lithium-based batteries, lithium polymers, now pla...

9 Feb 28min

Episode 42 - General Aviation Training Accidents BC/AC (Before Covid/After Covid)

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. A...

9 Aug 202523min

Episode 41 - Dangerous Dalliances: EgyptAir 804 nicotine addiction & Aeroflot 821 intoxication

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...

23 Des 202427min

Episode 40 - Shoddy Maintenance and blown screens

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 corne...

22 Aug 202423min

Episode 39 - Deadly delays during Ramadan as Saudia Airlines Flight 163 crew dawdles

This is episode 39 and we’re looking at a horrendous accident, Saudia Airlines Flight 163, a Lockheed TriStar which was gutted in a blaze on the ground on 19th August 1980 - all 301 aboard died. Th...

19 Jun 202414min

Episode 38 - Newark Airport’s “umbrella of death” and Jimmy Doolittle’s clear ways

This episode we’re going to take a look at commercial airliners that have hit obstacles near runways and how three accidents in the small town of Elizabeth New Jersey in 1951 and 1952 led to rules abo...

6 Feb 202420min

Episode 37 - Sharing the skies: A short history of bird strikes and improved safety

This is episode 37 and we’re dealing with bird strikes. The most famous of these was US Airways flight 1549 from New York City's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte. Pilot Sully Sullenberger and first off...

4 Des 202322min