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

Air Disasters

Splash Down

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

Cockpit Breakdown

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 feats of flying.

Courage in the Cockpit

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

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

Runway in Sight

Three planes fatally out of balance force investigators to question every calculation; it's a flight risk that's entirely preventable, and yet repeated disasters reconfirm the need for critical backup systems.

Perilous Payload

History's most terrifying air disasters, and the investigations that followed, are revisited and reexamined.

Fuel Trouble

A passenger ferry sinks after crashing into rocks off the coast of a Greek island, killing 82; it leads to a shocking investigation.

Collision Course

Three devastating crashes make front-page news around the globe; the media frenzy puts intense pressure on investigators to uncover the causes.

Headline News

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

S20 E19 | Maintenance Mistakes