Air Scare Stories

On Halloween night in 1979, a DC-10 making a routine red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Mexico City encountered a catastrophic problem just as they were touching down at their final destination. The plane briefly lifted back up into the air before slamming to the ground and bursting into flames, killing most of the passengers and crew. This is the story of the fatal crash of Western Airlines flight 2605.

Just one month after 9/11 ANOTHER airplane crashed into the citizens of Queens, New York. The investigation concluded that it wasn’t caused by terrorism, but blamed the first officer’s flying skills. Was it really his fault though? This is the TRUE story of what happened to American Airlines flight 587 in November 2001.

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In November 1971 a passenger on a short flight in the Pacific Northwest told a flight attendant he had a bomb in his briefcase. They ended up giving him $200k ($1.5 million in 2022) in ransom and some parachutes. He took them, jumped out the back of the plane over the Oregon wilderness, and has NEVER been caught!

This is the true story of the hijacking of Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 by the man known as D. B. Cooper.

On July 10, 1985 a Tupolev Tu-154 cruising over Soviet Russia suddenly stalled and entered a flat spin from which the pilots were unable to recover. All 200 people aboard were killed in the subsequent crash. Did something mechanical go wrong or were the pilots to blame? Or was it something else? This is the story of Aeroflot flight 7425 & the lessons learned about human factors in aviation.

On April 4th, 1979 a Boeing 727 cruising at 39,000 feet suddenly rolled over and took a nose dive toward the Earth. The pilots were able to regain control just 5,000 feet above the ground. Did they lose control after trying an unauthorized maneuver at cruising altitude or were they betrayed by their airplane? This is the story of what happened on TWA flight 841 & the investigation that followed.

On February 2nd, 1959, three rock n' roll stars decided to charter a private plane to get them to their next show since they were sick of their buses always breaking down. The private pilot they hired hadn't passed his IFR practical test yet, and the weather went from bad to worse. This is the story of the tragic deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper; three of the biggest musical acts of late 1950s America.

On March 3rd, 1974 a brand new McDonnell Douglas DC-10 took off from Paris, France and crashed in a forest less than 10 minutes later, killing all on board. The manufacturers knew their plane had a deadly design flaw, but they rushed it to market anyway. They gambled with the lives of 346 people, and lost. This is the story of what happened to Turkish Airlines flight 981

This is the true story of how two Boeing 747s collided at high speed on a small runway on the island of Tenerife in March of 1977. This crash resulted in the deaths of 583 people, making it the single worst accident in the history of aviation.

This is the story of how a one-eyed pilot tried to land an airplane full of passengers on a grass levee after it lost both engines in a freak storm. It sounds crazy, but it really happened! TACA Flight 110.