Mayday Specials

March 27, 1977 – At 2:00 in the afternoon a thick fog rolled into the usually quiet Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. On the runway sat two fully loaded jumbo airliners, blanketed in fog. A bomb explosion at a nearby airport had re-directed air traffic to the undermanned airfield at Tenerife. Within three hours, a KLM 747 slams into a taxiing PAM 747, killing 583 people. The planes never left the ground.

This special looked at how people survive aviation accidents, in part with demonstrations at the Czech Airlines Training Centre. It provided case studies on the following flight: - Asiana Airlines Flight 214 - Air France Flight 358 - Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 8 - Air Canada Flight 797 - US Airways Flight 1549

This special looked at how failures in communication lead to disasters

This special looked at how pilots' aggressive or unprofessional behaviour can cause deadly accidents.

This special looked at how pilots safely land their aircraft in emergency situations.

This special looked at how automation in the cockpit causes deadly misunderstandings.

This special looked at terrorist acts, including bombings and shootdowns.

This special looked at pilots' carefully planned strategies in deliberately crashing aircraft.

This special looked at foreign items, including ice, a chemical oxygen generator, and a bomb as the cause.

This special looked at disasters where multiple investigations don't agree on the cause of these accidents.

This special looked at how pilots' deviation from cockpit duties lead to crashes.

This special looked at disasters caused by fires, either on the ground or in the air.

Three devastating crashes make front page news and the media frenzy puts intense pressure to uncover the true cause of these deadly disasters.

While commercial pilots undergo hundreds of hours of training and testing, even experienced pilots can make deadly rookie errors.

Investigators comb through the wreckage of three separate midair collisions in a race to prevent another fatal impact.

When an aircraft loses total engine power, a pilot's training can make all the difference in the world.

Three mysterious accidents send investigators hunting for clues. In the end, all three trails lead back to the same source - the fuel tank.

Three planes fatally out of balance highlight to investigators a flight risk that's entirely preventable, and yet seemingly not stopping.

If pilots aren't prepared when the runway is in sight, a landing can quickly become a tragedy as evidenced in these three crashes.

Spatial disorientation is one of the leading causes of all air accidents. Even the most experienced pilots are susceptible to its subtle yet deadly effects.

Radio silence between pilots and controllers can mean many different things, but in these stories, the physical evidence reveals the truth.

Drawing the attention of the entire world, three fatal design flaws put air crash investigators in a storm of controversy.

Devastating systems failures in the air put pilots to the test and shine a light on three astonishing feats of flying, including Qantas Flight 32.

Mid-air tragedies are particularly horrifying when they occur over a community, and rain terror on the people below.

Revisit three crashes involving high-profile passengers and the pressurized investigations into the causes that followed.

These are three horrific air disasters that provoked fundamental changes to airport security and the measures we follow across the world today.

Follow three horrifying crashes that revealed high-tech blind spots in the technology preventing aircraft from ploughing into mountains.

From the wreckage of three airplane crashes, survivors emerge to tell harrowing tales and provide critical data about what to do in an emergency.

Follow three mid-air tragedies that rained terror on those below when they happened over crowded areas.

When aviation decisions are made in the heat of the moment, even minor issues can have fatal consequences.

A trio of crashes reveal that when the nuts and bolts of maintenance go unchecked, it can spell catastrophe.

Three flights ending in tragedy prove that minor missteps during take-off can have disastrous consequences.

Confused, flying blind and lost in the dark, three crews lose site of the horizon and fall into the same deadly trap.

Three crews experience the same devastating event, but with radically different outcomes when an engine falls off their commercial airplane.

Faced with a mid-air crisis, pilots must make life-and-death decisions, but the wrong approach can trigger a far more serious problem.

In Sao Paolo, the Himalayas, and on the Norwegian coast, three flight crews are pushed to the limit by the toughest landings on earth.

Relying on instinct rather than the rule book, three flights end in tragedy when crews improvise on their final approach.

Three planes are brought down by ice, and it's up to investigators to determine how modern aircraft could possibly end up with frozen wings.

Three catastrophic runway collisions raise the same pressing question: How could two planes end up on the same runway at the same time?

Illustrating the deadly consequences of a mismatched crew, three flights end in tragedy, leaving investigators to unravel what went wrong.

Three last-resort water landings-all handled differently-yet each one crucial to improving the outcomes of ditching on open water.

Faced with the extreme conditions of the far North, three flights fall out of the sky leaving investigators to uncover the cause.

Misidentification and accidental bombing of enemy territory are among the many risks pilots face in military zones around the world.

As they rush to finish, some pilots overlook important steps and danger signs and make decisions that threaten the lives of the passengers as well as their own. A Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 crashes into the ground minutes after landing at Amsterdam Airport. A Continental Airlines flight crew ignores normal procedures in Denver amid heavy snow and ice and as the pilots of Ansett New Zealand Flight 703 try to resolve a minor landing gear failure, they hit the ground and their approach ends tragically wrong in the New Zealand slopes.

The pilots avoid three dangerous situations where there was no room for error and manage to land damaged planes. A female passenger is sucked out the window of Southwest Flight 1380. The cabin of a Boeing 737 explodes over Hawaii and Air Canada Flight 797 catches fire 90 seconds after an incredible crash landing.

This special looked at mid-air collisions caused by either pilot error or meltdowns within air traffic control.

Approaching Charlotte, US Air Flight 1016 crashes violently into the ground after a gust of wind. A 737 drops like a rock while flying blind over Perú half a mile from the jungle, and a scientific expedition into the eye of Hurricane Hugo goes terribly wrong.

Three flights are sabotaged. When hijackers break into the cockpit of an Ethiopian plane, the captain manages to make a life-threatening sea landing. Scientists debate a pair of conflicting theories when an Italian plane explodes in the sky and Namibian investigators come to a chilling conclusion after examining clues found in the wreckage of LAM Mozambique Flight 470.