r/aircrashinvestigation

A few of mine...

• Explanation of how flaps & slats work

• "Because the aircraft is American made, the NTSB joins the investigation."

• Data from badly damaged FDRs and CVRs turns out to be fine

• Crash sequence carefully edited to avoid spoilers (no pun intended)

• Pilot revealed to have a history of failure but was flying anyway

What are some of your favorite tropes you like to see again and again?

any crash from the 1910s-30s have no chance probably.

Hi all, sorry for the delay but please see below the results of the poll I created about 2 weeks ago:

A total of 63 votes were received. The most voted episodes for each season were as follows:

• Season 1 - Cutting Corners (Alaska Airlines Flight 261) (23 votes)

• Season 2 - Deadly Crossroads (2002 Überlingen mid-air collision) (27 votes)

• Season 3 - Fight for Your Life (Federal Express Flight 705) (26 votes)

• Season 4 - Ghost Plane (Helios Airways Flight 522) (21 votes)

• Season 5 - Gimli Glider (Air Canada Flight 143) (27 votes)

• Season 7 - Lockerbie Disaster (Pan Am Flight 103) (23 votes)

• Season 9 - Target is Destroyed (Korean Air Lines Flight 007) (19 votes)

• Season 10 - The Heathrow Enigma (British Airways Flight 38) (25 votes)

• Season 11 - Impossible Landing (United Airlines Flight 232) (30 votes)

• Season 12 - Air France 447: Vanished (Air France Flight 447) (24 votes)

• Season 13 - Speed Trap (Hughes Airwest Flight 706) (22 votes)

• Season 14 - Niki Lauda: Testing the Limits (Lauda Air Flight 004) (26 votes)

• Season 15 - Fatal Delivery (UPS Airlines Flight 6) (32 votes)

• Season 16 - Disaster at Tenerife (Tenerife airport disaster) (26 votes)

• Season 17 - Explosive Proof (TWA Flight 800) (25 votes)

• Season 18 - Deadly Airspace (Malaysia Airlines Flight 17) (24 votes)

• Season 19 - Football Tragedy (LaMia Flight 2933) (20 votes)

• Season 20 - Cockpit Killer (LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470) (20 votes)

• Season 21 - Grounded: Boeing Max 8 (Lion Air Flight 610) (23 votes)

• Season 22 - Double Trouble (Trans-Air Service Flight 671) (29 votes)

• Season 23 - Pressure Point (Japan Air Lines Flight 123) and Cockpit Catastrophe (Sichuan Airlines Flight 8633) (21 votes for both)

• Season 24 - Under Fire (Saudia Flight 163) (31 votes)

• Season 25 - Power Struggle (Sriwijaya Flight 182) (23 votes)

• Season 26 - A Perfect Storm (Nürnberger Flugdienst Flight 108) (27 votes)

See the full results here:

As last time, a final poll will be conducted to determine the subreddit's overall favourite episode out of the most voted episodes for each season. Please see the link below, vote for as many episodes as you like but please only vote once. This poll will be open for a week.

Besides the animation is pretty bad (no offense), it's fun seeing how ACI editing team made "Tenerife disaster in 30 seconds"

Have just watched the UK TV show Bergerac and Jonathan plays Richard, never knew he was an actor and sounds different from what he narrates on ACI

Yes, is same person but seems multi talented

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, think of these as red herrings. In every episode of Air Crash Investigation, the team of detectives make a list of guesses as to why this plane crashed, and the first three are never the actual answer (e.g. Everyone thought the explosion of TWA Flight 800 was a terrorist attack when it was actually a short circuit in the fuel tank that caused the explosion)

But had there been a plane crash where the investigators’ first guess was the actual caus?

For me is the 747, is always nostalgic because is when i started to watch the show.

Now I know that Air New Zealand flight 901 had been a planned episode but was cancelled due to various issues. But what other incidents were planned to have episodes but were scrapped?

would it be possible to recover, by putting full right input, full right rudder, and engine no.1 as max thrust and engine no.2 at idle?

Looking for someone who can record flights in a flight simulator with cinematic, varied camera angles — similar to what @greendotaviation does on YouTube.

I’ll be providing the full voiceover for a plane crash documentary series, so this is a long-term project that requires smooth flying and polished cinematography.

DM me if you’re interested and confident in both flying and recording. Serious inquiries on

if they manage to climb or maintain altitude by being inverted like in the movie flight, how will they crash land? If they try to roll the plane back to normal, wouldn’t it just nose dive again because of the broken jackscrew?

is the only option to crash-land inverted?

I’m collecting irredeemable idiots and utterly evil pilots in this show.

Yes, the Germanwings pilot is a mass murderer and should have his remains scattered to the sea.🤬

The lead hijacker of Pan Am 73 released an autobiography. It can be found on Amazon. It's titled What Actually Happened A Memoir of Safarini.

Not really related to Air Crash Investigation but I'm sure fans of the show might know what I'm talking about. Anyone else remembers seeing a particular air crash montage video that was probably uploaded in 2007 or 2008, maybe 2006?

What made this video unique to me is that it starts of by showing an Eastern illustration of a hummingbird and it plays some Asian music (I believe) while it shows the montage of aircraft accidents.

Particular accidents I remember seeing in the video montage were like two helicopters flying side by side over a neighborhood and one of them clips the other and they both fall to the ground. Another I remember being included was the V-22 Osprey crash that occurred in 1991, where it crashes back into the ground as it tries to lift into the air.

I remembered there were a lot of air crash montage videos uploaded in that early era of YouTube, so I'm betting you Millennials and Zillennials can attest to this. This a question for the older members of Reddit who were using YouTube on its earlier years back in the 2000s, any of y'all remember seeing this particular video. Just wanted to see if anyone else remembers seeing it and if they remember any other particular ones.

We all know how the Chinese authorities never publish any report, so one must search throughout texts and articles claiming to be an official one.

I found this one about Wuhan Airlines flight 343:

But only page 1 is archived, other texts in Baidu have this same title but are different, paid access, and are possibly complemented with AI.

Anybody saved this one?

I feel it can be said that South African Airways flight 295 did break up in mid air for several reasons.

1. The fire was hot enough to burn through the fuselage.

2. There were multiple debris fields separated by up to 1.6 miles apart.

3. The main section of the 747 hit the water banked 90* to the right with no forward or rearward momentum as if it was dropped by a crane, and the APU wasn't catapulted forwards through the rear pressure bulkhead as one would expect if the aircraft hit the water intact.

My theory, but I wouldn't be my life savings on, is that the fire caused a loss of pitch control while descending to 5,000 feet and they went into a phugoid cycle. Then the nose came up, the plane stalled and the tail snapped off which could explain the rapid plunge and why the engines weren't producing power on impact. (Granted, the pilots could have turned the engines off after the breakup but I'd explore other possibilities first.)

Anyway, I have seen more than few comments on this subreddit (yes, I'm guilty of supporting this notion myself in the past) that during the SAA 295 inquiry Boeing was pessimistic about the 747's reputation if the Margo Commission declared that fire caused an in-flight break up and instead persuaded them to leave the possibility open that the aircraft hit the water intact.

Is there sufficient ground that Boeing was this pessimistic here or could they have just had data that couldn't conclusively determine whether the aircraft struck the water intact? Yes, as an aircraft manufacturer you want to protect the aircraft's reputation (Turkish 981, United 585 and 737 MAX are prime examples) but this seems pretty extreme. Especially considering the fact that the fire began when they were roughly 45 minutes from the nearest land based on the ETA of 38 minutes the captain gave the controller.

A Vintage ACI from WW2

The Forgotten Prince: The Mystery of the Duke of Kent

Exploring the circumstances and conspiracies surrounding the death of Prince George, Duke of Kent, who died in a military plane crash in 1942. A former Metropolitan Police detective reveals long-buried documents that could answer the questions conspiracy theorists have been asking for years

The Forgotten Prince: The Mystery of the Duke of Kent airs on 5 +1 at 10:00 PM, Saturday 21 March. (Subtitles, new.)