This episode has been mainly written based on the investigation final report. If you want to find out more, please head to my website at the podcast transcript section, where you can download it. Link is in the description.

Air Florida Flight 90 was a scheduled domestic flight operating from Washington Ronald Reagan International Airport to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, having a stopover at Tampa, also in Florida. Yes, back in the days, it was very common for aircrafts to have a stopover before heading to their final destination. It was a regular scheduled to takeoff at 1415 local time, but was significantly delayed due to the fact that the airport had to sporadically close in order to remove the snow in the taxiway and the runway. The Aircraft today we’ll be talking about was a Boeing 737-200, registered November 6 2 Alpha Fox, operating under the call sign Palm 90 for this flight. So I will eventually call the flight Palm 90 in order to remain clear. And, as a normal 737, November 6 2 Alpha Fox was powered with the two famous Pratt and Whitney engines JT8D-9A, which were easily recognisable to have a kind of cigar shape, which made this version of the 737 quite peculiar. The aircraft in itself has been manufactured in 1969, which made it about a 12 years old boy at the moment of the incident and had already flown for 27.000 hours, which may seem like a lot, but in fact, it’s a normal age for a Boeing. But the aircraft wasn’t really old. To give you an example, the very first aircraft I flew into when I did my very first flight as a pilot was 42 years old.

The Boeing 737 is an excellent aircraft, which I must admit, even though I’m globally a critic of Boeing lately, and, throughout time and regulations, and also incidents, evolved, and is one of the bestseller that the American manufacturer ever made. This aircraft is still operated today, of course in more recents variants, and is trusted by many airlines, and has been famous recently to have its latest so controversial version, the MAX 9 and 10 grounded worldwide due to a plane crash that occurred in Ethiopia in 2019, before the pandemic, but this is not what we’re gonna be talking about today. The 737 was one of the bestselling aircraft’s, at least until Airbus entered the market as the European Union emerged. It’s a twin-engine jet which had a good range for domestic and international flights. But November 6 2 Alpha Fox was operated by another airline prior its sale to Air Florida, which was now in some financial difficulties. And the sale to Air Florida occurred in 1980, two years before the incident we will be talking about today happened.

So we are on January 1982, precisely on the 13th of January, and weather was an absolute disaster in Washington DC. It’s been a few days that it’s been heavily snowing and, as a result, it increasingly overwhelmed the work of the ground staff and pilots at Ronald Reagan Airport. Winters in the north of the US are quite unforgiving and ruthless, and this leads to some airports, especially around New York and Washington to adapt. Amongst the adaptation the Ronald Reagan International airports had was that, during certain phases of the days, the runways would be closed in order to deice, to reopen for a short window of time and allow some aircraft’s to takeoff. But this led to severe delays and aircraft’s having to queue in order to takeoff, and this is perhaps a small detail for you guys but this is actually something that will have an important significance in the outcome of the disaster.

Like I said, the weather was atrocious for flying, or at least for taking off. The visibility under 1,500 feet high was of three miles, reduced by light snow, which means, foggy, in another way. The temperature on that day was at -4.4 degree Celsius (or 24 degree Fahrenheit for our American friends) and the dew point was of an equal temperature. The dew point, if you don’t know what this is, its pretty much the temperature at which air must be cooled to become fully saturated with moisture, leading to the formation of dew, fog, or clouds.

Anyway, we had two experienced pilots on the flight deck today. Captain Larry Wheaton was in charge of this flight, and he was a recently promoted captain. Aged 34, he was hired in 1978 as a first officer and made all the way to the rank of captain, which was honourable. He would be for this part of the flight the pilot monitoring, and had about 8,300 hours of flights, of which 2,322 hours of commercial flights, all logged for Air Florida. But he flew 1,752 hours as a pilot of the Boeing 737, 1,100 of which as a captain. Wheaton was described by fellow pilots as a good pilot, having an excellent knowledge of his aircraft, knew how to operate his aircraft in challenging situations, and was… just another pilot. He was also described as a quiet person in general and, a very nice and friendly guy. His leadership skills were described as good, but not outstanding either. On May 1980, however, he was suspended by Air Florida for unsatisfactory training on important flight regulations and checklists. But, after a review, he was readmitted in the company in August. Same thing happened a year later when he was found having issues with checklists and memory items. But, a month later, was reintegrated after another review.

The first officer, Roger Pettit, however, had less experience than Wheaton, but was described as an absolutely outstanding copilot. He had at the moment of the incident a total flight time of 3,353 hours and had 992 of them on Air Florida’s 737. But Pettit came from the army, he was a fighter pilot. He was in fact a pilot instructor and had 669 hours as an instructor which was amazing. Everybody who worked with him used to say, he was someone really fantastic to work with and was always speaking up when things didn’t match up.

But, these are for the facts of the flights and our main protagonists. Now, first, to understand what happened, we need to come back from the beginning.

I may ask you a silly question, but, still, let’s take a moment to think about this: do you know thanks to what an airplane can fly? Now, think about this for a second. You got it? Right.

So let me tell you a story that we certainly all experienced once. When I was younger, I travelled a lot throughout France and sometimes, during long days of car journeys with my grandfather. And we travelled by roads across the country and one of my favourite things to do was, opening the window and passing my hand in the flow of air passing through the car. But what struck me was this: not only it was funny to feel the air passing above and under my hand, I realised that, if my hand was bigger, like a wing… perhaps there could be a way to make the car fly off?

And all this story to say, that’s how an airplane can fly. With its wings. It may sound obvious, and making sense, but the principle to make an airplane fly is that, the air passing above the wing must be equal the air passing below the wing. If you manage to reach that, you will generate what is called a lift. But for generating a lift, yes, of course you need the flow of air to be equal but you also need thrust, this is why every airplane do have engines.

This is why runways can be long and an airplane need to reach a high speed before taking off, the lift is generated on the runway, when the airplane sets its thrust full power, or TOGA, this being an acronym standing for Take Off Go Around Thrust, and this sets the full power of the engine to reach a certain speed, usually 60 knots for my Cessna but more generally between 180 to 200 knots for an airliner. And this speed will be the point when the aircraft will generate enough lift to start flying, a speed that you must always keep flying above, in order to keep your lift generated. But for taking off, you need to rotate, which means that you’ll slightly decrease the pressure above your wing to increase the depression, or the flow of air under your wing. But, the fact that you would do that with your aileron will be controlled, meaning that the flow above and under your wings will still surround your wing and generating enough lift to make you take off from the ground. Doing this is called increasing or decreasing your angle of attack, angle of attack being the quite specific name for the angle you want to reach to keep your aircraft either pitching up or going down. So, how does an aircraft fly? Yes, thanks to its wings… but thanks also to its thrust.

But once your lift has been generated, then air will envelop your aircraft. This is called the flight envelope, where your aircraft will safely fly. And this envelope will be like your road when you’re in the air. If air behaves normally and flows along the fuselage of the aircraft smoothly, then you’ll enjoy a very pleasant flight. If, on the contrary, flow of air are going faster than you at different direction, nothing really dramatic will happen, but you’ll experience turbulences. Turbulences, to compare it to a car, would be like driving on rocky roads. And depending on the air movement, your turbulences could be either severe or mild, but one thing is sure: as long as you keep the same speed and you maintain a normal angle of attack, so you do not upset the flight envelope, even if you’re in severe turbulences, well, you’ll keep on flying. But what if you increase your angle of attack a bit too dramatically… or you lose your speed?

If you listened to the trailer I uploaded in March, you may have heard the stall warning STALL. And that’s the answer, if you start upsetting the flight envelope, you’ll place the aircraft you’re flying in a dangerous situation where the aircraft does no longer generates its own lift. This is what we call a stall. If it happens, there are many procedures to follow and it’s part of our training to deal with that, but globally a stall must be always treated in the first place, because a stall is something that goes more stronger as the aircraft flies. We will see the consequences in this episode but also in another episode in this series. But this to say, if you do not recover your lift in the first seconds, then stall will develop and it’s gonna get even worse if you keep on aviating your aircraft. Of, at least if you can.

A stall can be triggered by a numerous of factors, such as loss of speed or the angle of attack being too high or too low, but this is usually just the ultimate consequences of a series of problems. It’s like, the final result. In the case of Palm 90, what was mostly part of triggering the crash was the de-icing.

Now, you probably have seen on TV those images of airports under the snow and people spraying liquids on it, and you may have wondered why. Let me give you an example: during winter, the windshield of your car may ice. The reason is the difference of temperature between the inside of your car and the outside, if your car is not moving. Now, in the case of an aircraft, the main danger of ice is when it forms on the wings, because it will distort the wing. So now you may wonder, okay, ice can be blown off at take off with the speed the aircraft takes to generates lift… but, not actually. I mean, yes, if the ice is still mild and falls on the aircraft after the plane has been deiced and is ready for takeoff, but, not if the aircraft has been remained static for an extended period of time.

Wings are studied to have the perfect aerodynamic shape in order to make sure that the aircraft generates lift, and this with no obstacles. Now, let’s imagine that you takeoff with your airplane all covered with snow and ice, then, snow will be blown off at takeoff. But ice is particularly sticky and will remain on the wing, forming an obstacle on how the air would normally flow. This, once the air starts gets moving and generates its lift, the aircraft will become more sensitive to the flow of air passing on its wing, and will automatically increase of decrease your angle of attack when you are in the air, rendering the control for the pilot immediately more difficult to manage, should you not expect it. And the angle of attack control at takeoff is something particularly important… since it’s the most sensitive part of the flight, along with landing. But this was something we knew in 1982. Or, we knew… we knew that deicing an aircraft was particularly important. But we didn’t know really well about the consequences if an aircraft is not PERFECTLY deiced.

And it’s here that the problem occurs. Deicing fluid requires two things: on one part the monopropylene glycol, and another part of hot water. But we started using that recipe since 1956. The final report reads as follow about the history of this recipe:

“It was used by the United States Air Force in its cold weather operation and a military specification was developed. After civilian operators started using the same formula about 1960, they found that the deicing needs for commercial use were substantially different from those of the USAF, which was using ethylene glycol and propolene glycol in a three to one ratio. Union Carbide’s recommendation for commercial use of its deicer fluid d’or de icing follows: use a 50 percent dilution of the UCAR ADF II (which is the solution we’re talking about) and apply it at a temperature ranging between 66 to 82 degrees Celsius for the most effective removal of frost and ice from aircraft surface. Remove most of the heavy snow before spraying. A coarse stream of spray loosens and displaces ice from aircraft surface.”

Now, having this in mind, at the moment Palm 90 took off, it was moderately snowing, so it was required that, at 24 degrees Fahrenheit, the percentage of glycol fluid was of thirty and the rest was hot water. The problem was, Air Florida followed American Airlines manual for deicing, for the reason that the employees involved into the deicing of Palm 90 were in fact employees of American Airlines. But even though American Airlines operated aircraft deicing manual at the moment of the incident, the major difference between Air Florida and American Airlines was the fact that, the manual was designed for Boeing 707 or 727, but not for Boeing 737, for the reason that AA did not operate this type of aircraft back in the days, and this may be a tiny detail… but this changed the proportions of glycol and the way to apply it on the aircraft. Because a 707 or a 727 needed less fluid. So, what that means in there, it’s pretty simple: the aircraft was simply not properly decided. And, you remember why I said that deicing was important?

But now there was another issue. Amongst the things that are to be deiced, there was a system that the pilots can activate in order to keep the probes warm, called the anti-ice system. The idea behind this is that, it must protect the sensitive parts of the airplane, such as the pitot probes to measure speed, or other various probes a bit everywhere in the aircraft. But, of course, the engine, providing the thrust necessary to help the aircraft reaching its speed, has also its plethora of probes, and amongst those are the engine pressure ratio probes, that I will refer to here as EPR. It’s important to measure it to know at what performance the aircraft can operate, by knowing if, when we set thrust, the engine is cold or hot.

The idea behind measuring the EPR is in fact to help measuring your engine’s performance. Because, after all, the plane was de-iced… ish, but another problem come to the attention of the first officer: the EPR was high. What that meant? Well, ice was forming inside the engine.

It’s all about a story that is called Hold-over time, that is today fully understood thanks to the events that I’ll be talking about shortly, but that was not really understood at the moment of the incident. The hold-over time is all about the time when the aircraft has been completely de-iced, until it takes off, but the problem was, there was a lot of traffic that day preventing Palm 90 to takeoff on time. Back to the EPR, this is calculated between two probes, which have the poetic and beautiful name of P2 and P7, placed respectively in the front and in the rear part of the engine. The idea is that, during takeoff, EPR measures the performances of the aircraft and the fact that, it must be hot to deliver the best of it. During a normal time, the perfect EPR for a Boeing 737 must be of 1.70 or nearby, which is calculated by the flow captured in probe P7 with the P2. If it goes higher, as the EPR was now of 2.04, then… that’s the first sign of a problem. The EPR can be decreased, however, by activating the Anti-ice system, and this increase of EPR could be explained by the fact that, as the aircraft was not properly de-iced, so that meant that ice was forming around the spinner and the sucker of the engine. Because it sucked snow. Keep that detail in mind.

But now you get that: the Air Florida Maintenance Manual Instruction for Winter Operations specifically said that No aircraft will be dispatched and no takeoff will be made when the wings, tail surface have a coating of ice, snow or frost.

So now, we’ve got the recipe for the disaster to come. Now let’s get back to this January 13, 1982.

It was on this day at 1415 Washington time that the Air Florida aircraft, parked at Gate 12, arrived from Miami and was about to make the way back to Tampa. Snow was falling from various intensity at this point of the day and continued all the way to the afternoon. The airport closed, of course because of the snowfall between 1338 and 1453 and, as a result, Palm 90, supposed to takeoff at 1415, was delayed. Seventy-one passengers as well as three kids boarded the aircraft between 1400 and 1430, and this flight had two pilots and three flight attendants. But as the flight was delayed, the captain requested the airport to have his plane deiced at about 1420, and a small truck came containing the fluid to deice it. The thing was that the deicing truck operator stated that the captain told him that he wanted to start deicing just before the airport was set to reopen so they could get in line straight for their departure, as they were already late. But, when the aircraft was deiced by the American Airlines staff who carefully followed the manual they had for the Boeing 707 or 727 for the Air Florida 737 at an ambiant temperature of -4.4 degrees as I stated before, observed that the aircraft was in fact covered with one-half inch of wet snow before applying the deicing solution.

Either way, during the deicing, Palm 90 was informed that 11 other aircraft’s were granted departure before them and only five of them had priority departure before Palm 90 could be allowed to request pushback from the gate in order to get ready to taxi straight out for departure. As a result, it delayed the deicing operation, knowing that Palm 90 would takeoff late, but by 1445, Captain Wheaton requested that the deicing operation would resume, and, as it was done this way, the left side of the aircraft was deiced first, but since snow was still falling, the longer the aircraft would stay on the gate, and the longer deicing would take. But its there that something would happen: between 1445 and 1500, the operator of the truck deicing the aircraft was changed over by one of his colleague, and he told him that the left side of the aircraft has been deiced.

And why was that important? Simply because the colleague deicing the aircraft now applied a different way: he started deicing the right side of the aircraft with hot water only, then he applied, once the aircraft was completely deiced, a protective liquid coat made of 20 to 30 percent of glycol, and then 70 to 80 percent of hot water. Why? Because he based his proportions on the information that the temperature was of -2.2 degree, whilst the actual temperature was of -4.4 degrees. So what that means is that, the aircraft was not deiced properly on both wings. Either way, Palm 90 was completely deiced at 1510 but the thing was, at this time, about two to three inches of snow fell around the aircraft and the gate where the aircraft was stationed was just simply a puddle because of the fluid that fell along the aircraft. One other thing was important to see was that, during the deicing of the right side, no covers were placed nowhere on the various engines and other probes, meaning that, as we were in negatives temperatures, water could easily freeze one of the probes. Which was what happened in the engine.

At 1515, the aircraft was closed up and the jetway was retracted. But whilst the jetway was being retracted, through the radio, Captain Wheaton asked the Air Florida Station manager standing near the main cabin door on how much snow was on the aircraft. He replied that there was a light dusting of snow on the left side of the left wing, from the engine to the wingtip and that the area from the engine was clean.

Now, you may already have seen that the tragedy was ahead.

Now, the aircraft, on a queue for takeoff, had its pushback request granted by air traffic control. So, the pushback is when a tug comes in the front of the aircraft to, as the name suggests, push the aircraft back to make it in line for departure. But, we need to ask for pushback all the time to the airport, as the guy on the tug cannot be everywhere, but at 1516, the pushback clearance was given to Palm 90. But, the tug was not equipped with chains on its wheels. As it arrived at Gate 12 ramp to push back the aircraft, a combination of snow, ice and glycol on the floor made the gate a genuine puddle, and indeed prevented the tug to push back the aircraft. From there, nothing really surprising.

But it’s at this moment that the captain had an idea. An idea that seemed to be certainly good, but in fact was the worst one to have at this stage. He said to the tug operator, “I’ll tell you what, let’s use the thrust reversers to help pushing back the aircraft.” The thrust reversers are, as the name suggests, devices implanted on the engine designed to slow down the aircraft when it lands by simply reversing the thrust and, as a result, pushing the air in front rather than aspiring it. Nowadays, it’s something that is placed onto the engine and simply pushes the wind but in the case of the 737-200, it was in fact some sort of parachute that closed on the rear side of the engine, pushing the exhaustion gas in front to slow down the aircraft. And maybe that, doing that was common practice back in the days, but the manufacturer of the aircraft, Boeing, recommended against doing that. Why? Because using this had the tendency to slightly increase the angle of attack of the aircraft at takeoff.

Now, the tug operator and various eyewitnesses said that the reversers were used for a period of between 30 to 90 seconds, and indeed, this was completely unsuccessful because the aircraft did not move of a single inch, but in fact, doing that pushed the water to be aspired by the engine number 1, on the right side. Nothing on the other one. It also melted the water nearby. But, seeing that this went unsuccessful, Wheaton shut both engines down, but of course, with the thrust reversers still deployed. Indeed, during Wheaton and the tug operator experiences, it was still snowing. And, as the manager, still in the hangar, for Air Florida saw that, he still saw that snow started accumulating again on the aircraft. And a light dusting started on the left side of the wing. At 1533, the tug got disconnected and another tug came, tug that successfully pushed back the aircraft at 1535, without real difficulties in fact. But, it was only at 1538 that the aircraft was in fact completely pushed back and ready to taxi away towards the runway, away from the gate.

Now remember that it was still snowing and, the aircraft was deiced at 1500. It was now thirty minutes after an improper fluid was used against the aircraft to deice it, and the plane was still waiting for takeoff. Most likely, the deicing at this stage was no longer effective.

As the procedure wants, once the aircraft is pushed back, the pilot flying would aviate the aircraft towards the runway, and the pilot monitoring would carry out with the checklist. For this leg of the flight, First officer Pettit would be the pilot flying and Captain Wheaton would be the pilot monitoring. Now, amongst the various items being checked, when the first officer called for the item “anti-ice”, Wheaton replied, “off.” But, this seemed to have escaped Wheaton and even Pettit’s attention, certainly that the fact that, they were now in a rush to leave, and they didn’t want to lose their place in the queue. Various other comments were made by the captain but it wasn’t clear and it contained the word deiced, to which Pettit replied “yeah — that’s about it”. The problem was that, nice other airliners and seven smaller aircraft’s were already waiting for departure when Palm 90 was pushed back.

Now, if you are a pilot, you would take it that, the normal thing to do at this stage was to refuse to takeoff and go back to the gate for getting deiced again. It was now 1540 when the aircraft was in the queue for departure, and nearly 40 minutes happened since the aircraft was completely deiced. In this case, the aircraft was unsafe to operate, but several factors came here: first, aircraft were lining close to each other, and Wheaton made this comment at several occasions: he wanted to use the exhaust thrust of the aircraft’s in front of his to deice the aircraft which was, indeed, the worst idea ever. But, remember that they were now more than an hour and a half late, and they had a place in the queue they didn’t want to lose. Wheaton made comments when aircraft’s were turning before his saying that, “tell you what, my windshield will be deiced, don’t know about my wings”, which, in my view is unacceptable.

But that was just a part of the problem.

You remember when I talked about the EPR? At precisely 1548, Pettit, who was the kind to speak up when something wasn’t right, said about the EPR difference that, “see the difference in that left engine and right one?” To which Wheaton replied “yeah.” Pettit immediately commented that “I don’t know why that’s different. Less it’s hot air going into the right one, that it must be… from his exhaust – it was doing that at the chocks a while ago… ah”. In fact, Pettit was trying to make sense the difference between the temperature between the engine, as one of them, due to the fact that they had water coming into the engine, that could have now one of its probe frozen and, therefore, malfunctioning. But Wheaton dismissed it. In fact, he was more preoccupied by other aircraft’s and their exhaust gas to defrost his wings.

But, at 1553, the first officer said “boy, this is a losing battle here on trying to deice those things, it gives you a false feeling of security, that’s all it does” but the conversation resumed until 1557 at which the two pilots proceeded for their pre takeoff checklist. The EPR was part of the checklist, and they realised that the runway, as they became next for takeoff, was slushy and wet. What that means is that, in case they needed to reject the takeoff, they would have needed to do it before the V1 speed.

So that’s something you’ll hear on the CVR ahead. V1 is in fact the first setting preceding V2, and V1 is in fact the speed at which the aircraft cannot reject anymore any takeoff and needs to fly anyway, even if it has a problem. It was set at eighty knots for this flight. At 1558, Ground traffic control cleared Palm 90 to align on the runway, and at 1559, they received their takeoff clearance, with the request not to delay departure because the queue was now of two miles and a half for runway 36, to which the captain replied, “okay”. This would be the last transmission of Wheaton to Air Traffic Control.

But now Takeoff was ongoing. Wheaton gave the throttles to Pettit, and the engine were spooled up on TOGA. But the first officer was concerned by the EPR, commenting, “Real cold, real cold” First officer comment. Later on, as the takeoff was still ongoing and the aircraft still didn’t reach V1 speed, he said that, God, look at that thing, that don’t seem right, does it? And insisted a few second later that, no, that’s not right… - to which the captain replied, yes it is, there’s eighty. The first officer insisted again, naw, I don’t think that’s right but then said, nine seconds later, ah, maybe it is. Either way, now that the aircraft reached 80 knots, a rejected takeoff was now impossible.

Now, the rule is, rejecting a takeoff, before reaching V1 must be done when either the first officer or the captain sees something that is not right. Whatever it could be, even if we aren’t sure of something. We cannot fly an aircraft if we sees something that isn’t right. But whilst the captain knew the pressure he had on his shoulder should he reject the takeoff, dismissed the comments of his first officer, knowing that going back to the gate for being deiced or even rejecting the takeoff would have its consequences for the airport and even for them. Two seconds later, he called hundred and twenty, which was V2, the rotation speed, and the first officer said I don’t know.

But now the aircraft was airborne, in a rush and of course, not deiced. The bet of the captain was that the few snow that accumulated in the wings would be blown off at takeoff. And remember that he used the thrust reversers and restarted his engines with the thrust reversers still deployed. As it was meant to happen, the aircraft pitched way too importantly when it took off, and as a result, this was upsetting the lift that the aircraft needed to be correctly airborne. Now, Boeings aircraft’s do not have this Stall warning. Instead, for indicating that the aircraft is stalling, the yoke that is used to control the aircraft starts vibrating quite forcefully, which is what we call a stick shaker, making, in the flight deck, this sound, making it really noisy and uncomfortable for the pilots. If the bank angle is too important, the aircraft, with the stick shaker event, triggers a stick pusher event, which is the airplane pushing the yoke by itself to try to regain proper lift, but a stick pusher was not triggered on this flight.

Now the aircraft banked ways too dangerously, and the captain said that forward, forward, after adding we only want five hundred. But the aircraft was now far too quickly in a fully developed stall and recovering from that was extremely difficult, if not impossible. But looking at their instruments because the visibility was atrocious, and seeing that the vertical speed of the aircraft was not important whilst the aircraft was in full pitch, the captain said afterwards come on, forward, forward, just barely climb.

But the aircraft was not flying at all. And started collapsing a few seconds after takeoff. At this moment, the final words were exchanged between the first officer and the captain, and panic seemed to have struck the cockpit as a bridge was now ahead of them.Captain Wheaton yelled, Stalling, we’re falling! When First officer Roger Pettit said Larry, we’re going down, Larry, before Larry Wheaton said, I KNOW!

The sound of the explosion that just followed was in fact at 1601, when the aircraft struck the heavily congested northbound span of the 14th Street Bridge crossing the Potomac River.

In the aftermath of the accident, four passengers and and one crew member were injured, one of them seriously. But seventy passengers, including three kids and four crew members, including the two pilots, immediately perished in the incident. Four people on the bridge were also killed, four other were injured, and one of them seriously. Nineteen people, however, were said to have survived the impact, but were ways too injured and died afterwards. Several heroes from the incident emerged, one of the most famous being Lenny Skutnik as well as Roger Olian, two civilian who came to help the survivors of the crash were awarded for their response and help to the crash. The only crew member surviving from the incident, Kelly Duncan, was recognised by the NTSB for her unselfish act, as she gave the only life vest she could find to a passenger. The aircraft was of course completely destroyed on the impact.

The accident of the Air Florida Flight 90 became a widely studied incident due to the fact that it implemented a lot of regulations, it was in fact one of the plane incidents that changed the most the aviation industry. Many recommendations were issued by the National Transportation Safety Board, and those recommendations were implemented worldwide. Through this crash we understood the importance of properly deicing an aircraft and brought its plethora of training for pilots on what to do in such situation, when the aircraft isn’t properly deiced and the importance of returning to the gate to deice properly the aircraft, even if time is running out. Of course, the investigation highlighted the captain’s dismissing concerns of the first officer and he was mostly blamed for this, but Air Florida was also blamed for the crash, considering that the captain only flew with Air Florida, and most of them were in fact starting their career in aviation less than five years before being promoted as captain.

At the time of the incident, Air Florida was passing through important financial difficulties, and this crash became one of factors that led the company to declare bankruptcy and cease operations two years later.

Now, let’s come back to the story that at the beginning. And let’s compare it to the Air Florida Flight 90 incident. Andrew’s mum refused to buy his bike, but didn’t state why. The grandfather wanted to have his grandson happy. Andrew wanted to have a ride after school with his nice bike. His mother, Kate, said no because she was too tired after a long day at work and wanted to have some rest. Andrew went outside and met Tom, this little guy who challenged him. They both rode, and the crash happened.

Captain Wheaton was late for his takeoff and had only one place that the airport allocated him in the queue for takeoff, place that he couldn’t lose. He used the thrust reversers because he was late for this and knew that his company was in financial difficulties so he had pressure from his management to have flights departing on time and make sure customers would be happy. Because customers don’t care about the snow and other safety concerns, they want to leave Washington on time. The first guy deicing the aircraft followed the incorrect manual, and the second didn’t follow the proper deicing procedures. The first officer says that deicing the aircraft by using other aircraft’s exhaustion thrust is rubbish, and gives his concerns during takeoff.

Now if you take all the two stories, you realise that, in the end, there is not just one factor that triggered the accident, but multiple. Think about this, take the entire Air Florida crash and remove a simple variable. Imagine that, for example, the airplane was deiced properly. Or the tug managed to push the aircraft on time. Then this accident would probably never have happened, or would have been a minor event, and perhaps we would never learn from this and this lack of knowledge would have put multiple of other lives in danger. Now, who’s accountable for a crash is more of a point of view. Depends where you stand. But in both cases, no-one is clearly responsible for the accident. Whilst everyone is responsible for the accident. But a crash isn’t here to blame someone, and this is the takeaway thing I would like you, dear fellow travelers of the unknown, take from this episode. A takeaway that I learned as a pilot and even as a manager myself. When there is a crash, it is not about blaming the person who crashed the airplane. It is not about blaming Kate because she was too tired and said to Andrew to use his bike not far from home. It is not about blaming Captain Wheaton because he was under pressure to leave the airport on time because he knew he could lose his position in the queue and would have delayed other aircraft’s if he rejected the takeoff. Lack of accountability is all about seeking someone to blame because he failed to do something that led to an incident, by ghosting the general context that led to it. But accountability is all about acknowledging the mistakes we made and making lessons out of it, trying to understand them and ensuring that those mistakes would never happen again.

And I hear you guys, fellow nervous flyers amongst our travellers of the unknown. This is why we say today that the aviation industry is the safest. Because we learned from our mistakes.

As we come to the end of today’s episode, we’re left grappling with the chilling story of Air Florida Flight 90, a tragic tale etched into the icy waters of the Potomac River. In moments of dire circumstances, heroes emerged, but so did the ineffable questions surrounding human error, decision-making, and the frailty of life. In the grand scheme of things, Flight 90 serves as a stark reminder of the unpredictable nature of existence, even in an age of technological advancements and safety protocols. As we take a moment to reflect on this unsettling narrative, I invite you to share your thoughts in the comment section below and to subscribe to this channel as many new topics are coming soon, or become a patron on my website, if you wish to be part of it! Could this tragedy, born of a series of unfortunate events and decisions, prompt a reevaluation of how we approach air travel safety? Until our next rendezvous with the enigmatic and the inexplicable, keep your minds vigilant and your hearts empathetic. See you next week, fellow seekers of the unknown