Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast
"Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast" will discuss the tragic circumstances involved with some of the worst airplane crashes. When weather conditions are at fault or are a contributing factor to the accident (as is so often the case), the meteorology will be examined and explained. Hosted by a meteorologist with 40 years of professional experience including U.S. Air Force, broadcast and commercial meteorology. The Radar Contact Lost team includes experts from the fields of commercial meteorology, commercial aviation and air traffic control.
Episodes
It was a little after 4 o’clock in the afternoon, on Friday, July 2nd, 1982, when Pan Am Flight 759, a B-727 carrying 138 passengers and 7 crew members, began to climb from the runway at New Orleans International Airport. In only a moment’s time, the narrow-body airliner slammed back down to the ground, after just barely becoming airborne. It was stormy around the airport, but there were no advisories, watches, warnin...
The first significant snowfall of the season had just begun in central Colorado. At Denver's Stapleton International Airport, Continental Flight 1713 began to accelerate down the runway for takeoff. Within a moment of lifting off the ground, the DC-9 slammed back down onto the runway, rolled over and skidded on its roof. The left wing tore away completely, then the skin of the fuselage ripped away, exposing the p...
This episode is about the crash of a small, twin-engine plane: a Beechcraft Baron 58. This crash occurred on April 22, 2019 in the Texas Hill Country, about an hour northwest (by car) from San Antonio. The flight was a relatively short one, from the west side of Houston to the Texas Hill Country town of Kerrville. The focus of the NTSB investigation of the crash was that the plane ran out of fuel, and it did. But why ...
In what is a podcast series first - and perhaps 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 fo...
On 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 an...
On 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 s...
On 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, ...
On 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...
On 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 th...
At 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 rai...
“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 d...
This episode 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 guitar...
This 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 ...
Part 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...
In 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 sur...
Imagine 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 f...
On 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. I...
This 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 o...
In 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 coc...
On 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,...
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