Saturday 26 August 2017

How the worst airline accident in history was avoided

https://youtu.be/3sEOwMfF7MA?t=1m18s

My favorite air disaster documentarian, Allec Joshua Ibay, recreated last month's SFO taxiway near-miss, complete with real radio traffic. I skipped the scene-setting in the above embed: an inbound pilot mistaking a taxiway, with a bunch of loaded planes on it, for the runway.

I find these quiet, unvarnished real-time recreations far more harrowing than mouthy cable TV dramatics. A sentence of radio chatter likely saved hundreds of lives in what would have been the worst accident in aviation history.