Podcast #38 - Suicide by Airplane

In this month's podcast we look at five different incidents that, together, can be known as "Suicide by Airplane". We look at LAM Mozambique Flight 470, Germanwings Flight 9525, PSA Flight 1771, FedEx Flight 705, and The Theft of Horizon Air plane N499QX.

In the 38th podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we discuss the downing of the I35West bridge in Minneapolis in August 2007. The collapse of the I35W bridge took out one of the most popular bridges in Minnesota, and brought nationwide attention to the poor state of our bridges and roads in the United States.

In the 37th podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we delve into the troubled history of the de Havilland Comet, and how the lessons learned from those crashes led to safer airplanes today, led to a better understanding of metal fatigue, and unwittingly gave rise to de Havilland's competitor, Boeing, taking the lead in jet airliners.

In the 36th podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we delve into the last time the world was under the grips of a disease on a massive scale - the Spanish Flu of 1918. In this podcast, we talk about the potential origins, why it's called The Spanish Flu when there was no origin of the virus in Spain, and how one city avoided the second wave of the flu, only to be taken down the the third wave.

In the 35th podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we delve into the most powerful earthquake to rock Japan that has ever been recorded, and the ensuing tsunami and nuclear disaster. Also, I interview Professor Daniel Aldrich who has written a book about survival when it comes to Japan's 3/11 Catastrophes, and the surprising (to me, at least) rates of survival and how people who were more socially connected were better prepared for not just the event, but for survival afterward.

In the 34th podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we look at the worst single-aircraft accident loss of life in aviation history, and the bungled rescue operation that was so bad it cost people their lives.

In the 33rd podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we look at the mid-air collision of a Boeing 727-200 and a Cessna, how some symptoms of the crash linger on in aviation even today, and what changes came about because of the crash, making aviation that much safer.

In the 32nd podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we look at two very different incidents of uncontained engine failures, and how airline travel has gotten safer between the first incident in 1989 and the second incident in 2018.

In the 31st podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we go back to 2005 and delve into the series of events that caused the crash of Helios Airlines flight #522 outside of Athens, Greece, and what has happened since to help this terrible catastrophe from ever happening again.

In the 30th podcast from CatastropheCast.com, we go back in time more than 100 years and discuss the incident that destroyed the city of Halifax while World War I was raging on the other side of the planet, how hard it was to survive, and the heroes that came out of it. And we also touch on two recent Boeing 737MAX crashes, in the hopes of coming to a successful conclusion soon, to make flying safe once again.