America's stories told by the Smithsonian

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

Air Disasters

Northern Extremes

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

Splash Down

Three flights end in tragedy after miscommunication mix-ups and personality clases; Investigators try to unravel what went wrong.

Cockpit Breakdown

Three catastrophic runway collisions raise the same pressing question; a look at how two planes end up on the same runway at the same time.

Runway Collisions

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.

Frozen Wings

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

Landings Gone Wrong

America has so many stories to tell. And nobody brings them to your home like Smithsonian Channel.

Smithsonian Channel HD

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

Risky Runways

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

Courage in the Cockpit

Following three horrifying crashes, investigators uncover fatal flaws in the very operations designed to prevent aircraft from flying into mountains.

Mountain Impact

When former race car driver Niki Lauda's planes nosedives into a Thai jungle, a one-in-a-million failure reveals a weak spot in every Boeing 767; radio silence between pilots and air traffic controllers send investigators hunting for answers.

Design Flaws

The business jet carrying PGA golfer Payne Stewart and former Alabama football quarterback crashes; how loss of pressurization and structural failure led to this crash and the deadliest aviation accidents in both Greek and Taiwanese history.

Radio Silence

JFK Jr. disappears on the way to Martha's Vineyard; a captain loses his bearings and crashes over the Red Sea; pilots crash a plane over Indonesia.

Deadly Confusion

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Statistically, traveling by airplane is safer than driving and other forms of transportation, but when something goes wrong during a flight, it can be catastrophic with potentially hundreds of lives at stake. This series examines some of the world's worst air disasters, using official reports, transcripts and interviews with people involved to tell the stories of midair mishaps and discover what went wrong in each case. Episodes include a discussion of how the weather affects flights -- including stories of aviation disasters and near-misses -- and a New Year's Eve flight that fell from the sky into the Florida Everglades.

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When an aircraft loses total engine power, a pilot's training can make all the difference in the world, but it's still up to investigators to determine what went wrong.

S20 E4 | Engines Out