January 17, 2025 • 36 mins
Two airplanes have just collided on the runway at Tenerife Airport. While no one on the Amsterdam-bound KLM plane survives the resulting fireball, 71 Pan-Am passengers and crew make it off their plane. But could it have been more? Why did so many Pan-Am passengers die, even though they weren’t injured by the initial collision and their plane was still on the ground?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Trust is at the center of so many cautionary tales.
I've told you about the people who trusted a man
in uniform and allowed him to steal from the city coffers,
and the woman who drove into the desert because she
trusted the sat now ahead of her instincts. Then there
(00:35):
was the celebrity author who trusted photographs of fairies as
proof of their existence. We've had people who trusted in
technology when they shouldn't, and those who didn't trust it
when they should and that's before we get to the doctors,
business leaders, and scammers who abuse the trust put in them.
I'm fascinated by questions of trust, and given that you're
(00:59):
a loyal listener to cautionary tales, I'm guessing you're quite
interested in them too, And that's why I've invited Rachel
Botsman to join me for a special edition of Cautionary Questions.
Rachel is the author of the new audiobook How to
Trust and Be Trusted, So do better to answer your
(01:20):
trust questions. Maybe you'd like to know why we naturally
trust some people but recoil from others. Maybe you're curious
about why so many people are taken in by particular
historical figures, there might be an episode of cautionary tales
that makes you tear your hair out at the gullibility
of those involved. Are we right to be suspicious? Whenever
(01:44):
a politician says trust me? Can being too distrustful be
as dangerous as being too trusting? Whatever your query, you
can trust Rachel to have the answers, So send them
two tales at pushkin dot FM. That's t a l
e s at Pushkin dot FM. Fifty eight year old
(02:12):
Jean Marshall Brown were sitting in the cabin of a
Pan American seven four seven. She ran a travel company
in La Mesa, California. She was leading a group of
retired holidaymakers on a twelve day cruise of the Mediterranean.
The trip hadn't got off to the best of starts.
That had to divert to the next island over from
(02:32):
where their cruise ship was waiting. But now at last
they were taxiing down the runway, ready for the final
short leg of their journey. When what on earth was that?
Whatever just happened, some passengers near Jean when killed. Over
the next few minutes, the ruptured cabin of the pan
(02:54):
and plane will be consumed by explosions, smoke and fire,
and as Jean sits in her seat, the thought pops
into her head.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
This is the way it feels to die in an
airplane crash.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
This is the second of our two part series on
the Tenerif Air disaster of nineteen seventy seven, when two
jumbo jets collided on the runway. It remains the deadliest
accident in aviation history. In the previous episode, we asked
why the captain of one of those airliners operated by
KLM mistakenly believed had been cleared to take off when
(03:34):
the runway was still blocked by the taxiing pan Am.
We heard how everyone on that KLM plane died in
an instant fireball as it clipped the top of the
pan Am then scudded down the runway. But on the
PanAm plane, a lot of people survived the impact, people
like Jean Marshall Brown. In this episode, like the previous one,
(03:59):
will explore a quirk of the human brain. This time
we'll look at how the brain works in the moments
after disaster strikes suddenly and unexpectedly. How would you react?
It may not be how you'd hope. Jean sat in
(04:20):
her seat. Time passed was hard to say how long.
The fire caused by the impact grew stronger. Smoke started
to fill the cabin, but Jean still didn't move. She
just sat and watched. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening
(04:40):
to cautionary tales Hanam. Captain Victor gre Rubs and First
(05:10):
Officer Robert Bragg have had a frustrating afternoon. They've flown
through the night from New York to the Canary Islands,
but just before they could land on Grand Canaria, a
bomb threat closed the airport. They've had to divert to
the tiny airport on the nearby island of Tenerif. When
they get there, they discover lots of other planes have
been diverted before them, including another seven four seven the
(05:33):
KLM ITS captain has let his passengers disembark to kill
time in the terminal, which is now rammed to capacity.
Grubbs has to tell his passengers to stay on their plane.
He feels bad about that most have been on board
since California. He decides to invite everyone for a tour
(05:54):
of the cockpit and repeats the same apologetic story.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I asked if we could circle in the air until
they were ready, but they insisted we land here.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
They've been hanging around for a couple of hours when
word came through the Grand Canaria's airport is open. The
KLM captain has chosen this moment to start taking on
more fuel, and his plane is blocking their way to
the runway. Could they squeeze past? Captain Grubbs sends Robert
(06:25):
Bragg and the flight engineer to pace out the distance
to come back with bad news. The tarmac is just
a few feet too narrow. That have to put one
set of wheels on the grass. But the ground is
soft and the plane weighs over three hundred tons. They
can't risk getting stuck. Grubs is annoyed. Another delay and
(06:49):
now thick fog is rolling in. Are they going to
be able to take off at all? He calls the
KLM captain.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
How much longer are you going to be without refueling?
Speaker 1 (07:00):
About twenty minutes comes the reply. At last, the fuel
trucks depart and the KLM starts to taxi down the runway.
Grubs is told to follow them and take the third
exit to the left. It's so foggy they take it slowly,
Just three miles an hour looking at an airport map
and peering through the window. Was that an exit?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
There?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
On the radio, grubs Brag and the flight engineer hear
the KLM plane talking to the control tower. Sounds like
they've already reached the end of the runway and turned around.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
We're now at takeoff.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Now at takeoff, you better not try to take off yet.
First off, as a Brag reaches for the radio.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And we're still texting down the runway. The clipper once
seven three six, Roger paba out for one seven three six,
report the runway clear. Okay, we'll report when we're clear.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
So the controller now knows that they're still on the runway.
But the message from the KLM plane has made the
mood in the cockpit uneasy. Where is that exit?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Let's get the hell out of here.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Says grubs Brag, and the flight engineer grumble about the
KLM captain. He sounds like he's in a hurry now
after he held them up to refuel. The bastard, says one.
The prick agrees the other, and now grub says he
is through the murk. Captain Grubbs has seen headlights on
(08:31):
the runway ahead for a moment, he seems to assume
the KLM plane must be stationary, waiting at the end
of the runway to be cleared to take off. Perhaps
they've missed their exit and got almost to the end
of the runway themselves. Hold on those headlights, getting closer
they are. That KLM plane is moving. It's moving quickly.
(08:55):
It's heading straight for them.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Look at him. God, damn, that's some of the bitches coming.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Get off, Get off, Get off.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Grubs and Brag both yank their controls hard to the left.
Grubs slams the throttle open. It's clear to them both
that the KLM plane won't be able to stop. All
they can do is try to get their own plane
off the runway. It responds to their controls, but agonizingly slowly.
It weighs over three hundred tons after all. It starts
a lumbering turn towards the edge of the runway. Its
(09:28):
speed inches up to nineteen miles an hour. The first
set of wheels, just under the nose drops off the
runway and onto the grass. Brag glances out of the
window to his right. The KLM plane is right upon them.
It's beginning to lift but not high enough. He sees
the red rotating beacon on its undercarriage.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
It's the only time in my life I have ever
saw something happening that I could not believe was happening.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Instinctively, Brag and Grubs close their eyes and duck. The
moment of impact feels surprisingly gentle, a bump and some shaking.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It was a very slight impact for a slight noise
like that was about it. It was so minor it
was unbelievable until I outen my eyes.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
The first thing Bragg sees is the cockpit windows are gone.
The next thing he sees is a fire on the
wing to his right.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
He reaches up to.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Pull the levers that will cut off the flow of
fuel to the engines. The levers should be right above
him on the ceiling, but his hands are grasping at air.
He looks up. The levers aren't there, nor is the ceiling.
Picture A seven four seven. That hump on the top
of the fuselage near the nose, the cockpits at the
(10:54):
front of that hump. Behind it on this plane was
the first class lounge. When Bragg looks behind him, the
lounge is gone, sheared away completely.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I could see all away the tail of the airplane,
just like someone had taken a big knife and slice
their tire top of the cabin of the airplane off.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Captain Grubbs is first to get out of his seat.
He turns to look back at where the lounge used
to be. It had twenty eight passengers in it. One
a woman is lying on what's left of the floor.
Grubs walks over towards her, but before he can get there,
the floor collapses under him. First off, as a brag
(11:38):
gets out of his seat. There's now only about a
foot of floor left behind him in the cockpit. How's
he going to get out of the plane? There is
one direct way out. It's thirty eight feet down to
the ground. He grabs hold of the captain's seat to
(11:59):
steady himself and jumps. Three hundred and ninety six people
were on board that PanAm flight seventy one made it out,
though some later died from their injuries. At the moment
(12:22):
of impact, the plane was angled across the runway, the
result of the pilot's attempted left turn. The KLM plane lifted,
but not high enough. An engine and landing gear ripped
through parts of the PanAm cabin. The passengers sitting directly
in their path, such as those in the first class lounge,
(12:45):
never stood a chance. But what about those in other
seats who weren't in the way of the engine or
the landing gear. Could more of them have made it
out alive? Why didn't they? We'll explore how the mind
responds to a sudden crisis after the break. One night
(13:12):
in the early nineteen tens, the Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford
Cannon woke up with a flash of inspiration. Canon was
writing a book about how emotions affect the functioning of
animal's bodies. It was a new field of inquiry, and
(13:32):
he'd stumbled across it by accident. When using the newly
discovered technique of X rays to study how digestion works,
Canon experimented on cats. It'd feed them some food mixed
with bismuth salts, which show up on X rays. Then
he'd tie them down and watch on the fluoroscopic screen
(13:52):
as the food traveled down the esophagus into the stomach.
The cats, not surprisingly, sometimes took exception to being restrained.
They'd cry out and struggle to get free. Canon noticed
something intes whenever a cat got distressed.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
The movements in the stomach entirely disappeared. I continued stroking
the cat reassuringly. She became quiet and began to purr.
As soon as this happened, the movements commenced again in
the stomach.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Canon was intrigued. The cat's body seemed to be saying,
in effect, I can't afford to waste energy on digesting
food right now. I've got more important things to worry about.
What else changed about how an animal's body functions when
it gets upset, Canon found a whole range of common responses.
(14:48):
The pulse quickens, there's a spike in blood, sugar, more
secretion from the adrenal glands. The book Canon was writing
is called bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage.
It became a classic due in part to the sudden
inspiration that woke him up in the night. A clever
(15:09):
form of words to tie together the physiological changes he'd discovered.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
The idea flashed through my mind that they could be
nicely integrated if conceived as bodily preparations for supreme effort
in flight or in fighting.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Fight or flight. It's a great phrase still in common use.
More than a century later. In terms of evolution, it
makes perfect sense. That's what animals typically have to do
when they're in mortal peril, either fight back or run away.
We humans, too, experience that fight or flight suite of
(15:49):
bodily changes in moments of sudden stress, but our first
response is often not to fight or flee. Cannon's alliteration
was incomplete, as we'll hear he missed out the most
common f of all. In the cabin of pan Am
(16:10):
flight one seven three six, the passengers haven't heard that
ominous radio message from the KLM plane we're now at takeoff.
Most of them haven't been looking out of a right
hand window to see the headlights approaching through the fog.
As far as they're concerned, this is just a routine
taxi down the runway before a routine flight, a yawning, chatting, reading,
(16:36):
slipping off their shoes, arranging their bags under their seats. When,
as in the cockpit, the initial noise doesn't convey the
severity of what's just happened, Survivors later liken it to
a snapping twig, a swarm of bees passing overhead, or
(16:57):
a length of adhesive tape being ripped off. One woman
assumes that the shuddering thump must mean that the pilot
has veered off the edge of the runway in the fog,
how annoyingly careless of him. No doubt, they'll have to
queue up now for the emergency exits. She calmly leans
forward and reaches under the seat for her handbag, puts
(17:19):
the strap over her shoulder, gets up and looks around.
Only then does she see the carnage, blood and bodies everywhere.
Some people are dead, Some have been hurt by flying
bits of metal or the overhead luggage bins collapsing on
(17:40):
top of them. Still others are unscathed, just confused about
what's happened. They've been talk of a bomb scare at
the airport. Was it a bomb? It's hard to imagine
your world being torn apart like that. It's hard to
guess how you'd react. We all hope we'd react like
(18:02):
passenger Jack Rideout, a thirty three year old entrepreneur sitting
in first class. The first thing ride Out does is
blurt out a call to action, seemingly as much to
himself as anyone. This is it, says ride Out. He
unclips his seat belt, and gets up. He sees his
girlfriend next to him, struggling to get her belt undone.
(18:26):
He helps her up, and the two find their footing
in the aisle amid the fallen contents of the overhead
luggage bins. Rideout looks to the right. He sees the
fire starting on the wing. He looks to the left,
he sees a hole ripped in the fuselage. He notices
that the plane seems to be tilting to the left.
(18:47):
That's the way to get out, then further from the fire,
closer to the ground. Those engines are gonna blow.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
We've got to get out of here.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
The hole in the fuselage is where the emergency exit
door used to be. The door has gone, so is
the door frame, so is the inflatable shoot that should
activate when the door is opened. All that's left is
a gaping hole framed by jagged metal, and a twenty
foot drop to the tarmac below. The girlfriend gets to
(19:21):
the hole, looks down and hesitates. This is no time
to hesitate. Ride Out shouts her out, but he doesn't
jump himself. He turns back into the cabin, telling others
what to do.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
This way, come with me.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
He sees a flight attendant struggling to inflate a rubber raft.
That's a good idea, it'll give people something to land on.
He goes to help her, but by now the fires
starting to spread, Oxygen canisters and fire extinguishers are exploding
in the heat. A fragment of metal shoots across the
(20:02):
cabin and hits the attendant in the head, killing her.
Ride Out finishes in fating the raft and hurls it
through the jagged hole. He looks around for anyone else
to help out of the plane. There's an older woman
seemingly unconscious. He picks her up, but realizes that she's
dead already. Ride Out puts the body down and decides
(20:27):
it's time to jump to safety himself. He lands on
the rubber raft. We'd all like to hope that in
a sudden crisis, we'd react like Jack Rideout, selfless, strong,
and above all, self possessed. Ride Out quickly appraised his
(20:50):
new situation, the need to get out. The fire on
the right, the hole on the left. That's the fight
or flight response, working as nature intended, a laser like
focus on the essential facts, quick and decisive action. But
more often things go quite differently. Our brains don't work
(21:12):
as we'd like to hope they would take Warren Hopkins,
fifty three years old, a meat wholesaler from Illinois, and
his wife, Caroline. They're also sitting in first class. In
the moments after the impact, Hopkins reacted just as quickly
as Jack ride out. He touched his wife on the
arm and said, let's go. He unbuckled his seat belt,
(21:36):
picked his way across the debris in the aisle, and
launched himself through the jagged hole in the fuselage. Only
when he'd landed did he remember that he'd forgotten to
check that his wife was with him. She wasn't because
Caroline had forgotten something else, how to unbuckle a seat belt.
(21:57):
How strange she found herself, thinking, I must have unbuckled
airplane seat belts a hundred times, and I can't remember
how to do it. She later said she thought she
might have been trying to press a button like you
would in a car. Eventually, she remembered how airline seat
buckles unclasp and made her way to the jagged hole.
(22:21):
She looked down and felt vertiginous. She reached out to
hold something and gashed her hand. She jumped and landed
awkwardly on her shoulder. Warren dragged her away. She managed
to get up and saw that a wound in his
head was gushing blood over his formal white dress shirt.
(22:43):
Warren hadn't realized that's part of fight or flight. There's
no time to feel pain. Caroline slipped off her floral
patterned underskirt and wrapped it around Warren's head wound. She
noticed the gash on her hand and wrapped it in
a handkerchief. Warren and Caroline Hopkins later worked with the
(23:05):
author John Ziamec to gather recollections from fellow survivors for
his book Collision on tenor Reef. Their stories of leaps, burns,
and broken bones, but their stories about other passengers too,
passengers who weren't making any attempt at all to get
themselves free. One survivor recalled.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
They just didn't move. I believe at least another one
hundred could have been saved, but they were sitting there,
just transfixed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Another said it.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Was like catching a deer in your headlights.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Eight decades earlier, when the Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon
coined the phrase fight or flight, he missed out what
may be the most important f of all. Most people
on that plane didn't fight or try to flee like
Jack ride Out or Warren Hopkins. Instead, they froze. Cautionary
(24:07):
tales will be back after the break. John Leech is
a cognitive psychologist who studies human survival. In two thousand
and four, he published a paper Why People Freeze in
(24:31):
an emergency. Leach studied survivor accounts of eleven disasters on airplanes,
oil rigs, and ships. One person who got off a
sinking ferry recalled how they hadn't been able to understand
why others weren't trying to help themselves. They just sat
there being swamped by the water when it came in.
(24:54):
Leach came to the startling conclusion that freezing wasn't just common,
it was the most common response to disaster. It happened
to about seventy five percent of people in the cases
he studied. The classic response to danger, wrote Leech, should
be restated as fight, flight or freeze. We hope we'd
(25:19):
react like Jack Rideout. We're more likely to be deer
in headlights. But what's going on when people freeze? There
are two possibilities hard to tell apart from the outside,
but quite different. Physiologists reserve the term freezing for something
(25:40):
that happens before the fight or flight response. The same
bodily changes are going on the surge of adrenaline for
thumping heart. We're primed for action, but not acting yet.
It's as if the body has slammed on both the
accelerator and the break at the same time. In the
(26:01):
animal world, this can make perfect sense. You've seen a predator,
you're not sure if the predator has seen you. You
stay very, very still and hope the predator goes away.
If it comes for you, the break comes off and
you fight or you flee. The other freezing scenario happens
(26:26):
after fight or flight are no longer options. You're trapped.
The predator has got you. In this situation, you'll sometimes
see animals stop struggling and play dead. This too has
evolutionary logic. Predators don't want to eat meat that might
have been dead for a while. It could poison them.
(26:48):
Play dead and they might lose interest. It's a last
desperate roll of the dice. Physiologists call this state tonic immobility,
and it seems to happen to humans too. Were some
PanAm passengers experiencing tonic immobility. We can't ask the ones
(27:10):
who died, but it seems likely. One survivor recalls hearing
an elderly woman turn to her husband and say, I
think this is it. The same words as Jack ride out,
but a different meaning. The task of getting out is
realistically beyond us. Perhaps it was, but we can ask
(27:33):
the passengers who froze initially before the breaks came off
and fight or flight kicked in. Remember Jean Marshall Brown,
this is.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
The way it feels to die in an airplane crash.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
She found herself thinking before she sat and watched the
cabin fill with smoke around her, and then another thought
popped into Jean's head.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
We can get out of here.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That thought unfroze her. Jean turned to the couple sitting
next to her, who were also deer in headlights. Unfasten
your seatbelts, she told them, We've got to get out.
They clambered out of the broken fuselage and onto the wing.
We can't know for sure how long Jeane was frozen,
but she thinks they were the last ones out. If
(28:22):
she had stayed frozen for another few seconds, the fire
would have been too intense to survive. It already was
for the couple she had roused. They jumped from the
wing but died from their burns. Jeane spent two months
in hospital and lived. What can snap you out of
(28:44):
a frieze? Jean Marshall Brown's story suggests there are two things,
a thought popping into your head or someone else showing
you the way. Jean's story was mirrored elsewhere on the airplane.
David Alexander was twenty nine years old, an amateur photographer.
He later wrote a book about his experience called Never
(29:07):
Wait for the Fire Truck. Just like Jeane, David Alexander
remembers the first thought to cross his mind, I Am
going to die. Then along came another thought, No, I'm not.
Alexander doesn't remember what he did next. Not forming memories
is another common feature of the fight or flight response,
(29:29):
but a couple sitting near him later told him what
he did and how it made them realize what they
too had to do. They saw him climb up onto
the back of his seat and clamber his way out
of a hole in the ceiling. They got up from
their seats and followed his route out of the plane.
The psychologist John Leech says that when people freeze in
(29:52):
an emergency, it's because their memory contains no appropriate response
for their brain to latch onto, and as stress hormones
flood their brains, they can't come up with one. Their
thinking is sluggish, their reasoning impaired. If you know there's
a particular kind of emergency you might encounter, you can
(30:14):
train for it. Do drills again and again until the
right response pops straight into your brain. That makes sense.
For soldiers or pilots see a fire on the wing,
reach above you for the levers that cut off the
fuel to the engine, and most of us aren't likely
ever to be in an airplane crash or a sinking ferry.
(30:35):
Training again and again for specific emergencies isn't a wise
use of our time. So what can we do to
reduce the likelihood that we freeze if disaster strikes. The
best advice is boringly predictable. Don't ignore the in flight
safety briefing. But the experience of Jean Marshall Brown and
(30:59):
David Alexander tells us why we should pay attention, even
if we've heard it a hundred times before. In a
sudden disaster, You can't predict which thoughts will flash into
your mind. I'm going to die, or we can get
out of here. If you've recently said to yourself, my
nearest emergency exit is three rows behind, maybe that thought
(31:22):
will pop into your head. It might be enough to
save you. Years after the crash, Jack ride Out talked
to a journalist at the Los Angeles Times. He was,
of course haunted by flashbacks, but the most disturbing memory
(31:45):
not when he exclaimed, this is it. Not the flight
attendant being killed by shrapnel while trying to inflate the
rubber raft, not shoving his girlfriend through the jagged hole
in the fuselage. What kept coming back to him, said
ride Out, was seeing all those people, not harmed, but
(32:06):
not doing anything, just looking calmly ahead. Hundreds of them.
He thought they could all have got out. Hundreds an exaggeration, surely,
but perhaps not by much. Investigators later tried to piece
together how many people had died in the collision and
(32:28):
how many survived the impact but died in the fire.
They did this by seeing if the bodies had soot
in the trichea, that would indicate they'd still been breathing
as smoke filled the cabin. Almost half the bodies were
too badly burned to tell either way of the others.
They found sixty without soot. They had been killed before
(32:51):
the fire took hold, but almost twice as many one
hundred and eighteen did have soot in the trachea. These
people had survived the crash, then died in the inferno. Some,
no doubt, had been knocked unconscious or injured too badly
to move, but others it seemed simply froze until they burned.
(33:20):
First Officer Robert Bragg falls thirty eight feet and rolls
on the grass. He's broken an ankle, but he doesn't
notice that. Captain Victor Grubbs tumbles through the floor into
the main first class seating area, then falls through that
floor too, into the cargo hold. He sees a hole
(33:40):
ripped in the side of the hold and wriggles towards it.
He drops onto the tarmac and lies there, burned and bleeding.
Someone comes towards him. It's one of the flight attendants.
He looks at her, whatever done to these people? She
slips a hand under.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
His arm kraw kept him Krahl.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Grubs drags himself away from the fiery wreckage. He finds
Robert Bragg. You get to their feet. A passenger approaches them.
It's Warren Hopkins, wearing one shoe, a blood soaked white
dress shirt, and his wife's floral patterned underskirt wrapped around
his head.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
What the hell happened?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
The crazy bastard did it? The klam took off.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
He was supposed to be holding, and.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
He took off.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
They watch as fire and explosions consume what's left at
the pan Am seven four seven. It makes no sense,
but they got out by now. For anyone else who
could have, it's too late. An important source for this
(35:10):
episode was Collision on tenna reef for How and Why
of the World's worst aviation disaster by John Ziamec and
Caroline Hopkins. For a full list of our sources, see
the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
(35:32):
written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced
by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
of Ben Crowe, Melany Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jammas Saunders and
rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
(35:55):
the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Beteal Millard,
John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary
Tales is a production of Pushkin Indus. It's recorded at
Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like
the show, please remember to share, rate and review, tell
(36:19):
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plus
Pushkin. Trust is at the center of so many cautionary tales.
I've told you about the people who trusted a man
in uniform and allowed him to steal from the city coffers,
and the woman who drove into the desert because she
trusted the sat now ahead of her instincts. Then there
(00:35):
was the celebrity author who trusted photographs of fairies as
proof of their existence. We've had people who trusted in
technology when they shouldn't, and those who didn't trust it
when they should and that's before we get to the doctors,
business leaders, and scammers who abuse the trust put in them.
I'm fascinated by questions of trust, and given that you're
(00:59):
a loyal listener to cautionary tales, I'm guessing you're quite
interested in them too, And that's why I've invited Rachel
Botsman to join me for a special edition of Cautionary Questions.
Rachel is the author of the new audiobook How to
Trust and Be Trusted, So do better to answer your
(01:20):
trust questions. Maybe you'd like to know why we naturally
trust some people but recoil from others. Maybe you're curious
about why so many people are taken in by particular
historical figures, there might be an episode of cautionary tales
that makes you tear your hair out at the gullibility
of those involved. Are we right to be suspicious? Whenever
(01:44):
a politician says trust me? Can being too distrustful be
as dangerous as being too trusting? Whatever your query, you
can trust Rachel to have the answers, So send them
two tales at pushkin dot FM. That's t a l
e s at Pushkin dot FM. Fifty eight year old
(02:12):
Jean Marshall Brown were sitting in the cabin of a
Pan American seven four seven. She ran a travel company
in La Mesa, California. She was leading a group of
retired holidaymakers on a twelve day cruise of the Mediterranean.
The trip hadn't got off to the best of starts.
That had to divert to the next island over from
(02:32):
where their cruise ship was waiting. But now at last
they were taxiing down the runway, ready for the final
short leg of their journey. When what on earth was that?
Whatever just happened, some passengers near Jean when killed. Over
the next few minutes, the ruptured cabin of the pan
(02:54):
and plane will be consumed by explosions, smoke and fire,
and as Jean sits in her seat, the thought pops
into her head.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
This is the way it feels to die in an
airplane crash.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
This is the second of our two part series on
the Tenerif Air disaster of nineteen seventy seven, when two
jumbo jets collided on the runway. It remains the deadliest
accident in aviation history. In the previous episode, we asked
why the captain of one of those airliners operated by
KLM mistakenly believed had been cleared to take off when
(03:34):
the runway was still blocked by the taxiing pan Am.
We heard how everyone on that KLM plane died in
an instant fireball as it clipped the top of the
pan Am then scudded down the runway. But on the
PanAm plane, a lot of people survived the impact, people
like Jean Marshall Brown. In this episode, like the previous one,
(03:59):
will explore a quirk of the human brain. This time
we'll look at how the brain works in the moments
after disaster strikes suddenly and unexpectedly. How would you react?
It may not be how you'd hope. Jean sat in
(04:20):
her seat. Time passed was hard to say how long.
The fire caused by the impact grew stronger. Smoke started
to fill the cabin, but Jean still didn't move. She
just sat and watched. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening
(04:40):
to cautionary tales Hanam. Captain Victor gre Rubs and First
(05:10):
Officer Robert Bragg have had a frustrating afternoon. They've flown
through the night from New York to the Canary Islands,
but just before they could land on Grand Canaria, a
bomb threat closed the airport. They've had to divert to
the tiny airport on the nearby island of Tenerif. When
they get there, they discover lots of other planes have
been diverted before them, including another seven four seven the
(05:33):
KLM ITS captain has let his passengers disembark to kill
time in the terminal, which is now rammed to capacity.
Grubbs has to tell his passengers to stay on their plane.
He feels bad about that most have been on board
since California. He decides to invite everyone for a tour
(05:54):
of the cockpit and repeats the same apologetic story.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I asked if we could circle in the air until
they were ready, but they insisted we land here.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
They've been hanging around for a couple of hours when
word came through the Grand Canaria's airport is open. The
KLM captain has chosen this moment to start taking on
more fuel, and his plane is blocking their way to
the runway. Could they squeeze past? Captain Grubbs sends Robert
(06:25):
Bragg and the flight engineer to pace out the distance
to come back with bad news. The tarmac is just
a few feet too narrow. That have to put one
set of wheels on the grass. But the ground is
soft and the plane weighs over three hundred tons. They
can't risk getting stuck. Grubs is annoyed. Another delay and
(06:49):
now thick fog is rolling in. Are they going to
be able to take off at all? He calls the
KLM captain.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
How much longer are you going to be without refueling?
Speaker 1 (07:00):
About twenty minutes comes the reply. At last, the fuel
trucks depart and the KLM starts to taxi down the runway.
Grubs is told to follow them and take the third
exit to the left. It's so foggy they take it slowly,
Just three miles an hour looking at an airport map
and peering through the window. Was that an exit?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
There?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
On the radio, grubs Brag and the flight engineer hear
the KLM plane talking to the control tower. Sounds like
they've already reached the end of the runway and turned around.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
We're now at takeoff.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Now at takeoff, you better not try to take off yet.
First off, as a Brag reaches for the radio.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And we're still texting down the runway. The clipper once
seven three six, Roger paba out for one seven three six,
report the runway clear. Okay, we'll report when we're clear.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
So the controller now knows that they're still on the runway.
But the message from the KLM plane has made the
mood in the cockpit uneasy. Where is that exit?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Let's get the hell out of here.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Says grubs Brag, and the flight engineer grumble about the
KLM captain. He sounds like he's in a hurry now
after he held them up to refuel. The bastard, says one.
The prick agrees the other, and now grub says he
is through the murk. Captain Grubbs has seen headlights on
(08:31):
the runway ahead for a moment, he seems to assume
the KLM plane must be stationary, waiting at the end
of the runway to be cleared to take off. Perhaps
they've missed their exit and got almost to the end
of the runway themselves. Hold on those headlights, getting closer
they are. That KLM plane is moving. It's moving quickly.
(08:55):
It's heading straight for them.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Look at him. God, damn, that's some of the bitches coming.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Get off, Get off, Get off.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Grubs and Brag both yank their controls hard to the left.
Grubs slams the throttle open. It's clear to them both
that the KLM plane won't be able to stop. All
they can do is try to get their own plane
off the runway. It responds to their controls, but agonizingly slowly.
It weighs over three hundred tons after all. It starts
a lumbering turn towards the edge of the runway. Its
(09:28):
speed inches up to nineteen miles an hour. The first
set of wheels, just under the nose drops off the
runway and onto the grass. Brag glances out of the
window to his right. The KLM plane is right upon them.
It's beginning to lift but not high enough. He sees
the red rotating beacon on its undercarriage.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
It's the only time in my life I have ever
saw something happening that I could not believe was happening.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Instinctively, Brag and Grubs close their eyes and duck. The
moment of impact feels surprisingly gentle, a bump and some shaking.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It was a very slight impact for a slight noise
like that was about it. It was so minor it
was unbelievable until I outen my eyes.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
The first thing Bragg sees is the cockpit windows are gone.
The next thing he sees is a fire on the
wing to his right.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
He reaches up to.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Pull the levers that will cut off the flow of
fuel to the engines. The levers should be right above
him on the ceiling, but his hands are grasping at air.
He looks up. The levers aren't there, nor is the ceiling.
Picture A seven four seven. That hump on the top
of the fuselage near the nose, the cockpits at the
(10:54):
front of that hump. Behind it on this plane was
the first class lounge. When Bragg looks behind him, the
lounge is gone, sheared away completely.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I could see all away the tail of the airplane,
just like someone had taken a big knife and slice
their tire top of the cabin of the airplane off.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Captain Grubbs is first to get out of his seat.
He turns to look back at where the lounge used
to be. It had twenty eight passengers in it. One
a woman is lying on what's left of the floor.
Grubs walks over towards her, but before he can get there,
the floor collapses under him. First off, as a brag
(11:38):
gets out of his seat. There's now only about a
foot of floor left behind him in the cockpit. How's
he going to get out of the plane? There is
one direct way out. It's thirty eight feet down to
the ground. He grabs hold of the captain's seat to
(11:59):
steady himself and jumps. Three hundred and ninety six people
were on board that PanAm flight seventy one made it out,
though some later died from their injuries. At the moment
(12:22):
of impact, the plane was angled across the runway, the
result of the pilot's attempted left turn. The KLM plane lifted,
but not high enough. An engine and landing gear ripped
through parts of the PanAm cabin. The passengers sitting directly
in their path, such as those in the first class lounge,
(12:45):
never stood a chance. But what about those in other
seats who weren't in the way of the engine or
the landing gear. Could more of them have made it
out alive? Why didn't they? We'll explore how the mind
responds to a sudden crisis after the break. One night
(13:12):
in the early nineteen tens, the Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford
Cannon woke up with a flash of inspiration. Canon was
writing a book about how emotions affect the functioning of
animal's bodies. It was a new field of inquiry, and
(13:32):
he'd stumbled across it by accident. When using the newly
discovered technique of X rays to study how digestion works,
Canon experimented on cats. It'd feed them some food mixed
with bismuth salts, which show up on X rays. Then
he'd tie them down and watch on the fluoroscopic screen
(13:52):
as the food traveled down the esophagus into the stomach.
The cats, not surprisingly, sometimes took exception to being restrained.
They'd cry out and struggle to get free. Canon noticed
something intes whenever a cat got distressed.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
The movements in the stomach entirely disappeared. I continued stroking
the cat reassuringly. She became quiet and began to purr.
As soon as this happened, the movements commenced again in
the stomach.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Canon was intrigued. The cat's body seemed to be saying,
in effect, I can't afford to waste energy on digesting
food right now. I've got more important things to worry about.
What else changed about how an animal's body functions when
it gets upset, Canon found a whole range of common responses.
(14:48):
The pulse quickens, there's a spike in blood, sugar, more
secretion from the adrenal glands. The book Canon was writing
is called bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage.
It became a classic due in part to the sudden
inspiration that woke him up in the night. A clever
(15:09):
form of words to tie together the physiological changes he'd discovered.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
The idea flashed through my mind that they could be
nicely integrated if conceived as bodily preparations for supreme effort
in flight or in fighting.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Fight or flight. It's a great phrase still in common use.
More than a century later. In terms of evolution, it
makes perfect sense. That's what animals typically have to do
when they're in mortal peril, either fight back or run away.
We humans, too, experience that fight or flight suite of
(15:49):
bodily changes in moments of sudden stress, but our first
response is often not to fight or flee. Cannon's alliteration
was incomplete, as we'll hear he missed out the most
common f of all. In the cabin of pan Am
(16:10):
flight one seven three six, the passengers haven't heard that
ominous radio message from the KLM plane we're now at takeoff.
Most of them haven't been looking out of a right
hand window to see the headlights approaching through the fog.
As far as they're concerned, this is just a routine
taxi down the runway before a routine flight, a yawning, chatting, reading,
(16:36):
slipping off their shoes, arranging their bags under their seats. When,
as in the cockpit, the initial noise doesn't convey the
severity of what's just happened, Survivors later liken it to
a snapping twig, a swarm of bees passing overhead, or
(16:57):
a length of adhesive tape being ripped off. One woman
assumes that the shuddering thump must mean that the pilot
has veered off the edge of the runway in the fog,
how annoyingly careless of him. No doubt, they'll have to
queue up now for the emergency exits. She calmly leans
forward and reaches under the seat for her handbag, puts
(17:19):
the strap over her shoulder, gets up and looks around.
Only then does she see the carnage, blood and bodies everywhere.
Some people are dead, Some have been hurt by flying
bits of metal or the overhead luggage bins collapsing on
(17:40):
top of them. Still others are unscathed, just confused about
what's happened. They've been talk of a bomb scare at
the airport. Was it a bomb? It's hard to imagine
your world being torn apart like that. It's hard to
guess how you'd react. We all hope we'd react like
(18:02):
passenger Jack Rideout, a thirty three year old entrepreneur sitting
in first class. The first thing ride Out does is
blurt out a call to action, seemingly as much to
himself as anyone. This is it, says ride Out. He
unclips his seat belt, and gets up. He sees his
girlfriend next to him, struggling to get her belt undone.
(18:26):
He helps her up, and the two find their footing
in the aisle amid the fallen contents of the overhead
luggage bins. Rideout looks to the right. He sees the
fire starting on the wing. He looks to the left,
he sees a hole ripped in the fuselage. He notices
that the plane seems to be tilting to the left.
(18:47):
That's the way to get out, then further from the fire,
closer to the ground. Those engines are gonna blow.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
We've got to get out of here.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
The hole in the fuselage is where the emergency exit
door used to be. The door has gone, so is
the door frame, so is the inflatable shoot that should
activate when the door is opened. All that's left is
a gaping hole framed by jagged metal, and a twenty
foot drop to the tarmac below. The girlfriend gets to
(19:21):
the hole, looks down and hesitates. This is no time
to hesitate. Ride Out shouts her out, but he doesn't
jump himself. He turns back into the cabin, telling others
what to do.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
This way, come with me.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
He sees a flight attendant struggling to inflate a rubber raft.
That's a good idea, it'll give people something to land on.
He goes to help her, but by now the fires
starting to spread, Oxygen canisters and fire extinguishers are exploding
in the heat. A fragment of metal shoots across the
(20:02):
cabin and hits the attendant in the head, killing her.
Ride Out finishes in fating the raft and hurls it
through the jagged hole. He looks around for anyone else
to help out of the plane. There's an older woman
seemingly unconscious. He picks her up, but realizes that she's
dead already. Ride Out puts the body down and decides
(20:27):
it's time to jump to safety himself. He lands on
the rubber raft. We'd all like to hope that in
a sudden crisis, we'd react like Jack Rideout, selfless, strong,
and above all, self possessed. Ride Out quickly appraised his
(20:50):
new situation, the need to get out. The fire on
the right, the hole on the left. That's the fight
or flight response, working as nature intended, a laser like
focus on the essential facts, quick and decisive action. But
more often things go quite differently. Our brains don't work
(21:12):
as we'd like to hope they would take Warren Hopkins,
fifty three years old, a meat wholesaler from Illinois, and
his wife, Caroline. They're also sitting in first class. In
the moments after the impact, Hopkins reacted just as quickly
as Jack ride out. He touched his wife on the
arm and said, let's go. He unbuckled his seat belt,
(21:36):
picked his way across the debris in the aisle, and
launched himself through the jagged hole in the fuselage. Only
when he'd landed did he remember that he'd forgotten to
check that his wife was with him. She wasn't because
Caroline had forgotten something else, how to unbuckle a seat belt.
(21:57):
How strange she found herself, thinking, I must have unbuckled
airplane seat belts a hundred times, and I can't remember
how to do it. She later said she thought she
might have been trying to press a button like you
would in a car. Eventually, she remembered how airline seat
buckles unclasp and made her way to the jagged hole.
(22:21):
She looked down and felt vertiginous. She reached out to
hold something and gashed her hand. She jumped and landed
awkwardly on her shoulder. Warren dragged her away. She managed
to get up and saw that a wound in his
head was gushing blood over his formal white dress shirt.
(22:43):
Warren hadn't realized that's part of fight or flight. There's
no time to feel pain. Caroline slipped off her floral
patterned underskirt and wrapped it around Warren's head wound. She
noticed the gash on her hand and wrapped it in
a handkerchief. Warren and Caroline Hopkins later worked with the
(23:05):
author John Ziamec to gather recollections from fellow survivors for
his book Collision on tenor Reef. Their stories of leaps, burns,
and broken bones, but their stories about other passengers too,
passengers who weren't making any attempt at all to get
themselves free. One survivor recalled.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
They just didn't move. I believe at least another one
hundred could have been saved, but they were sitting there,
just transfixed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Another said it.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Was like catching a deer in your headlights.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Eight decades earlier, when the Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon
coined the phrase fight or flight, he missed out what
may be the most important f of all. Most people
on that plane didn't fight or try to flee like
Jack ride Out or Warren Hopkins. Instead, they froze. Cautionary
(24:07):
tales will be back after the break. John Leech is
a cognitive psychologist who studies human survival. In two thousand
and four, he published a paper Why People Freeze in
(24:31):
an emergency. Leach studied survivor accounts of eleven disasters on airplanes,
oil rigs, and ships. One person who got off a
sinking ferry recalled how they hadn't been able to understand
why others weren't trying to help themselves. They just sat
there being swamped by the water when it came in.
(24:54):
Leach came to the startling conclusion that freezing wasn't just common,
it was the most common response to disaster. It happened
to about seventy five percent of people in the cases
he studied. The classic response to danger, wrote Leech, should
be restated as fight, flight or freeze. We hope we'd
(25:19):
react like Jack Rideout. We're more likely to be deer
in headlights. But what's going on when people freeze? There
are two possibilities hard to tell apart from the outside,
but quite different. Physiologists reserve the term freezing for something
(25:40):
that happens before the fight or flight response. The same
bodily changes are going on the surge of adrenaline for
thumping heart. We're primed for action, but not acting yet.
It's as if the body has slammed on both the
accelerator and the break at the same time. In the
(26:01):
animal world, this can make perfect sense. You've seen a predator,
you're not sure if the predator has seen you. You
stay very, very still and hope the predator goes away.
If it comes for you, the break comes off and
you fight or you flee. The other freezing scenario happens
(26:26):
after fight or flight are no longer options. You're trapped.
The predator has got you. In this situation, you'll sometimes
see animals stop struggling and play dead. This too has
evolutionary logic. Predators don't want to eat meat that might
have been dead for a while. It could poison them.
(26:48):
Play dead and they might lose interest. It's a last
desperate roll of the dice. Physiologists call this state tonic immobility,
and it seems to happen to humans too. Were some
PanAm passengers experiencing tonic immobility. We can't ask the ones
(27:10):
who died, but it seems likely. One survivor recalls hearing
an elderly woman turn to her husband and say, I
think this is it. The same words as Jack ride out,
but a different meaning. The task of getting out is
realistically beyond us. Perhaps it was, but we can ask
(27:33):
the passengers who froze initially before the breaks came off
and fight or flight kicked in. Remember Jean Marshall Brown,
this is.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
The way it feels to die in an airplane crash.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
She found herself thinking before she sat and watched the
cabin fill with smoke around her, and then another thought
popped into Jean's head.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
We can get out of here.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That thought unfroze her. Jean turned to the couple sitting
next to her, who were also deer in headlights. Unfasten
your seatbelts, she told them, We've got to get out.
They clambered out of the broken fuselage and onto the wing.
We can't know for sure how long Jeane was frozen,
but she thinks they were the last ones out. If
(28:22):
she had stayed frozen for another few seconds, the fire
would have been too intense to survive. It already was
for the couple she had roused. They jumped from the
wing but died from their burns. Jeane spent two months
in hospital and lived. What can snap you out of
(28:44):
a frieze? Jean Marshall Brown's story suggests there are two things,
a thought popping into your head or someone else showing
you the way. Jean's story was mirrored elsewhere on the airplane.
David Alexander was twenty nine years old, an amateur photographer.
He later wrote a book about his experience called Never
(29:07):
Wait for the Fire Truck. Just like Jeane, David Alexander
remembers the first thought to cross his mind, I Am
going to die. Then along came another thought, No, I'm not.
Alexander doesn't remember what he did next. Not forming memories
is another common feature of the fight or flight response,
(29:29):
but a couple sitting near him later told him what
he did and how it made them realize what they
too had to do. They saw him climb up onto
the back of his seat and clamber his way out
of a hole in the ceiling. They got up from
their seats and followed his route out of the plane.
The psychologist John Leech says that when people freeze in
(29:52):
an emergency, it's because their memory contains no appropriate response
for their brain to latch onto, and as stress hormones
flood their brains, they can't come up with one. Their
thinking is sluggish, their reasoning impaired. If you know there's
a particular kind of emergency you might encounter, you can
(30:14):
train for it. Do drills again and again until the
right response pops straight into your brain. That makes sense.
For soldiers or pilots see a fire on the wing,
reach above you for the levers that cut off the
fuel to the engine, and most of us aren't likely
ever to be in an airplane crash or a sinking ferry.
(30:35):
Training again and again for specific emergencies isn't a wise
use of our time. So what can we do to
reduce the likelihood that we freeze if disaster strikes. The
best advice is boringly predictable. Don't ignore the in flight
safety briefing. But the experience of Jean Marshall Brown and
(30:59):
David Alexander tells us why we should pay attention, even
if we've heard it a hundred times before. In a
sudden disaster, You can't predict which thoughts will flash into
your mind. I'm going to die, or we can get
out of here. If you've recently said to yourself, my
nearest emergency exit is three rows behind, maybe that thought
(31:22):
will pop into your head. It might be enough to
save you. Years after the crash, Jack ride Out talked
to a journalist at the Los Angeles Times. He was,
of course haunted by flashbacks, but the most disturbing memory
(31:45):
not when he exclaimed, this is it. Not the flight
attendant being killed by shrapnel while trying to inflate the
rubber raft, not shoving his girlfriend through the jagged hole
in the fuselage. What kept coming back to him, said
ride Out, was seeing all those people, not harmed, but
(32:06):
not doing anything, just looking calmly ahead. Hundreds of them.
He thought they could all have got out. Hundreds an exaggeration, surely,
but perhaps not by much. Investigators later tried to piece
together how many people had died in the collision and
(32:28):
how many survived the impact but died in the fire.
They did this by seeing if the bodies had soot
in the trichea, that would indicate they'd still been breathing
as smoke filled the cabin. Almost half the bodies were
too badly burned to tell either way of the others.
They found sixty without soot. They had been killed before
(32:51):
the fire took hold, but almost twice as many one
hundred and eighteen did have soot in the trachea. These
people had survived the crash, then died in the inferno. Some,
no doubt, had been knocked unconscious or injured too badly
to move, but others it seemed simply froze until they burned.
(33:20):
First Officer Robert Bragg falls thirty eight feet and rolls
on the grass. He's broken an ankle, but he doesn't
notice that. Captain Victor Grubbs tumbles through the floor into
the main first class seating area, then falls through that
floor too, into the cargo hold. He sees a hole
(33:40):
ripped in the side of the hold and wriggles towards it.
He drops onto the tarmac and lies there, burned and bleeding.
Someone comes towards him. It's one of the flight attendants.
He looks at her, whatever done to these people? She
slips a hand under.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
His arm kraw kept him Krahl.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Grubs drags himself away from the fiery wreckage. He finds
Robert Bragg. You get to their feet. A passenger approaches them.
It's Warren Hopkins, wearing one shoe, a blood soaked white
dress shirt, and his wife's floral patterned underskirt wrapped around
his head.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
What the hell happened?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
The crazy bastard did it? The klam took off.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
He was supposed to be holding, and.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
He took off.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
They watch as fire and explosions consume what's left at
the pan Am seven four seven. It makes no sense,
but they got out by now. For anyone else who
could have, it's too late. An important source for this
(35:10):
episode was Collision on tenna reef for How and Why
of the World's worst aviation disaster by John Ziamec and
Caroline Hopkins. For a full list of our sources, see
the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
(35:32):
written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced
by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
of Ben Crowe, Melany Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jammas Saunders and
rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
(35:55):
the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Beteal Millard,
John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary
Tales is a production of Pushkin Indus. It's recorded at
Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like
the show, please remember to share, rate and review, tell
(36:19):
your friends and if you want to hear the show
ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show
page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash
plus
Host
Tim Harford
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