The Horrific Plane Crashes That Changed Aviation Safety | Mayday: Science Of Disaster | Wonder

[Music] rain we're gonna get our airplane washed hail i don't know how we get through here bill we're down we're sliding wind oh no on the brakes in a heartbeat he's gonna crash bad weather can turn an ordinary flight into a fight for survival the pilots have did their very best to recover from the situation and it didn't work out the right information the right equipment can be the difference between life and death for four engines to fail in a constant battle between the planes we fly and the weather that batters them [Music] it's early december a massive winter storm is pounding the eastern united states this is a pretty interesting weather pattern we have for this time of year we're getting a mixed bag of precipitation and weather across the eastern united states for most people the winter weather is no more than an inconvenience but for those who fly the bad weather can be deadly a continental airlines commuter plane with 48 people aboard crashed into a home in suburban buffalo no survivors one person on the ground also killed the plane was on route from newark to buffalo it was raining with some sleet at the time people are making life and death decisions every day uh based on the weather should i go or should i not go today and once they're up in the air how am i going to make a decision in the next five minutes it's going to keep myself my passengers or my aircraft out of harm's way on this day flights from new york to houston have been delayed and cancelled thousands of travelers are affected that's largely because the people in this room have decided that it is unsafe for pilots to fly in this weather our mission here is is to provide safety and safe flying what's happening now it's an existing condition so it's like some discrete supercells in there this room is every pilot's first line of defense against getting caught in a storm it's the federal government's aviation weather center in kansas city missouri 24 hours a day seven days a week the meteorologists in this room scan the skies across the united states for the kind of weather that can bring down a plane the storm they're tracking today is just that kind of weather what we're monitoring is a lot of severe weather in the carolinas and continuing to get severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado warnings there the meteorologists have detected thunderstorms moving towards atlanta georgia they've warned pilots and air traffic controllers of the looming danger the result is immediate so you had you had planes that were on the ground that could not take off then you had planes that were arriving that were unable to land and then you have to factor in that they were going several hundred miles around this this line of thunderstorms the meteorologists will track this storm throughout the day they know weather can change in an instant so they're not just tracking storm systems they're also trying to predict where new storms are going to develop we've got to keep our eye on every hazard and and always be prepared for it to pop up today the people who work here also have to find a way to keep planes out of the storms that are rolling through the south as traffic managers we need to work with the faa in routing safe routes for aircraft to go around those thunderstorms because they just can't go through them or over them so using these two images together we can get a good three-dimensional or even four-dimensional picture of the atmosphere and how moisture is moving around in there thunderstorms are a lethal threat to pilots the clouds that contain them are massive they're usually much too tall to fly over and the weather inside them can be treacherous in no instance does any aircraft want to go into a thunderstorm lightning strikes hail can certainly damage the airframe and in the extreme cases there can be so much liquid precipitation in that thunderstorm that will cause a jet engine to flame out the meteorologists here understand the danger of thunderstorms and one devastating crash has taught them much of what they know it's april the 4th 1977. good afternoon sir good evening southern airways flight 242 is bound for atlanta georgia just down the aisle on the right sir enjoy your point thank you [Music] boarding pass here in the united states the weather in the southeast usually consists of high humidity and high temperature that's a perfect recipe for thunderstorms it was raining in huntsville and they said oh it's going to be some bad weather don't serve so we did not serve from huntsville to atlanta which is a very short route and we were delighted not to be serving aircraft dispatchers provide flight crews with pre-flight weather information looks like you guys got a good one coming sure thing have a good one that weather was two hours old it was no longer updated i was a little surprised that we took off when we did i really thought we'd taxi out to the end of the runway and hold for a while because the weather looked so bad but we taxed it out and immediately took off before the pilots get very far they receive an ominous weather warning from air traffic control southern airways 242 i'm painting a line of weather which appears to be moderate to possibly heavy precipitation starting about five miles ahead okay we're in the rain right now uh it doesn't look much heavier than what we're in right now does it back in 1977 pilots were more reliant on their own skills abilities and knowledge than they were on air traffic control in this particular instance they had onboard weather radar i can't read that just looks like rain bill what do you think there's a hole there's a hole right there that's all i see pilots use their radar to avoid bad weather they stay away from regions that are illuminated on the display screen coming over we had pretty good radar i believe right straight ahead there the next few miles is probably the best way we can go so between that information and looking out the window they were able to make what they believed were the right decisions about traversing the weather as the pilots of southern airways flight 242 attempt to carve a path through the thunderstorms they encounter a wall of storm cells it looks heavy nothing's going through that the storm closes in on the aircraft that's a hole isn't it it's not showing a hole is it the gap between the thunderheads the pilots thought they had seen on their radar no longer seems to exist pilots don't like thunderstorms in any way shape or form only because it poses a threat to the safe operation of the airplane because of the high velocity winds the potential for hail wind shear that all has a dramatic effect on the capabilities of not only the pilot but of course the aircraft as well the hail was probably the loudest noise i've ever heard it sounded like i was in a metal barrel with someone throwing rocks at me the dc-9 plunges into the storm clouds which way do we cross here or go out i don't know how we get through here bill enormous hailstones continue to pound the aircraft you're just gonna have to go out yeah right across that bed all clear left approximately right now the pilots try to escape the storm they use their radar to guide them through it i think we can cut across there but their radar is deceiving them what they think is a whole is in fact the most intense part of the storm ahead the pilots of southern airways 242 ended up flying into an environment where multiple thunderstorms came together and created a line or what they call a squall line that's an area of fast-moving thunderstorms the weather system is moving very quickly and that created not only tornadoes but high velocity winds and hail okay uh 242 uh we just got our windshield busted we'll try to get it back up to 15. we're at 14. while i was looking out at the front of the left engine i could see the hail continuing to put more and more dense into the cowling around the engine and into the cone in the center of the engine and the engine was starting to make sounds like it was quitting the torrent of hail and water overwhelms the engines of the dc-9 it clogs the critical airflow passages and causes the engines to break apart left engine won't spool our lift engine just cut out you say you lost an engine and a busted a windshield yes sir oh my god the other engine's gold too got the other engine going too souther 242 say again standby we lost both engines what happens next leads to one of the most horrific crashes in aviation history and spurs fundamental changes to the way weather forecasts are made [Music] high above brave southern airways flight 242 is falling from the sky we lost both engines this dc-9 is a glider and it's falling at 56 feet per second they're at 14 000 feet they don't have a lot of time i realized i was an emergency situation and i felt like i was going to die but i decided i would do everything i could to try to help my chances the plane emerges from the storm with two dead engines get those engines started billy you have to find me a highway let's get the next clear open field no bill lyman q is a young man who has just come back from the proving ground of southeast asia where he was a naval aviator he learned the niceties of landing on a rolling pitching aircraft carrier in the south china sea in the middle of the night what he was confronted with right now was even a greater test the greatest test he had ever confronted in his life as an airman flaps they're down to 50. unable to restart the engines lyman keel prepares to land his aircraft on georgia state highway 92 without power i'm gonna land right over that guy there's a car ahead i got it i got it now i got it [Music] the aircraft touches down on the highway running through the town of new hope georgia before the plane completely stopped moving there was fire blowing through the cabin the plane clips a utility pole and slams into a gas station where i found myself after we woke up sort of indescribable and i could see a crack of light and i thought i'm going through that crack of light come hell or high water i saw a red reflection like fire in the door that's when i saw what was happening i saw smoke and fire and the people that were coming toward me they weren't screaming they weren't yelling they were quiet i got back to the kitchen and i was just circled by people they knew they were in a house and i guess they felt safe and they needed somebody to help them [Music] and i remembered the day i died just staring there at the you know trees burning and pine trees burning and pieces of aircraft it's it was so unreal 22 people survived the crash of flight 242 72 people were killed southern flight 242 crashed after the dc-9 jet lost power in both engines the tragedy involving flight 242 was avoidable had the crew been provided up-to-date weather information when they were in huntsville had they had an understanding of the area of thunderstorms how they were starting to come together and how it was going to affect their route of flight they probably either would have found an alternate place to go or they would have stayed in huntsville the importance of timely weather information makes the aviation weather center critical [Music] after southern airways 242 crash in 1977 the ntsb after their research came out with two recommendations one was to improve the resolution of the convective or the thunderstorm forecast information and the other was to put weather service meteorologists in each of the air traffic control centers and within a year we did that at the time of the southern airways crash the weather center issued thunderstorm advisories every four hours and in the united states that's just too long of a window to capture the rapid development that we see in thunderstorms so what they they recommended and which we have done ever since is communicate to controllers and to pilots that are in route every hour and if need be we can do it in between those hourly observations if conditions are developing fast enough as a result of the crash the weather center created a new position a meteorologist who does nothing but monitor the skies above the united states for thunderstorms on this december day the meteorologists tracking thunderstorms are very busy storms that had battered atlanta are on the move and you can see up in here there's a minimum of of aircraft especially where those heavier storms were over eastern north carolina in addition to providing weather reports the people here perform other crucial tasks when the weather gets bad enough they can also shut down huge areas of airspace they do that by issuing warnings called segments it's short for significant meteorological information it's an advisory to pilots to steer clear of the bad weather right now on radar once we become aware or or are highly confident that that there will be some dangerous weather there severe turbulence or severe icing then we will issue what's called the sigma what do i want the pilots to do i want them to avoid that area the lightning secret it's still pretty recent so today's storms are so severe that the meteorologists at the aviation weather center are declaring areas of airspace out of bounds for aircraft we issued a large area from norfolk down through the coastal waters of georgia for severe thunderstorms issuing a sigmet is simple the meteorologists highlight the area that planes are to avoid on their computers the information is passed on to dispatchers air traffic controllers and pilots around the country planes are diverted immediately now some of those planes going through there may be going around they may be being helped by air traffic control to actually navigate around those individual thunderstorm cells no doubt that they're being routed either away from or individually being very carefully tactically moved around those thunderstorm cells the sigmet issued by the aviation weather center affects hundreds of flights along the eastern seaboard once it's issued pilots often have to find a way around the danger zone it's no longer just a suggestion there are legal uh consequences to people to adhere to what we what we've put out they're just legally not allowed to go into that airspace while that segment's in effect declaring a sigmet has enormous implications shutting down a volume of space that's the size of say georgia so that severely impacts traffic the faa and the air traffic controllers now need to decide how they're going to as a system move these routes and these aircraft which can be hundreds of them in this operating in this space around this particular hazard over the next four to six or even longer hours planes can fly around the area affected by a sigmet but that increases travel time and costs the airlines in extra fuel the alternative is to keep planes on the ground until the segment is lifted they may increase safety but sigmets are a headache for airlines and air traffic controllers [Music] it averages out about 7 000 planes to 8 000 planes at any moment being managed and so when you start shutting down large areas of airspace which we certainly can do on a very active thunderstorm day it leaves very little operating room for air traffic controllers to put planes through technology allows the meteorologists here to keep planes away from dangerous weather but in aviation some of the most dangerous weather is all but invisible august the 2nd 1985 10 degree flaps please delta airlines flight 191 is approaching dallas fort worth international airport contact departure when airborne texas heat has turned into afternoon storms traffic at the airport is beginning to back up as the weather gets worse we're gonna get our airplane washed what we're gonna get our airplane washed nothing seemed unusual other than the fact that we were starting to get busy and aircraft were starting to pile up [Music] tower delta 191 heavy out here in the rain feels good 191 heavy we're not getting any bad warnings from the weather or from other pilots which we rely on as they come through it as the pilots of delta 191 prepare for landing the rain begins to fall harder it seemed like the closer we got in the dfw the worse the weather got and it was turning into the the rain instead of going around it at the foot of the runway one of the most ferocious types of storm clouds stands in their way before landing check landing gear down three green at the time the type of storm the delta crew is approaching barely has a name john mccarthy is one of the world's leading experts on these storms it is a tiny thing meteorologically speaking compared to a a big storm or a snowstorm or a hurricane it's just a like a needle in a haystack the needle is a micro burst one of the deadliest and at the time most poorly understood weather phenomena [Music] they've taken down airliners before but as delta 191 makes its approach there are no warning systems that can effectively alert the pilots of the danger they're in prior to 1985 the radars onboard the aircraft were built to detect thunderstorms essentially heavy areas of precipitation they were not effective they weren't even designed to detect the microburst if you're at the kitchen sink and you turn on the water and it goes straight down and it splashes out in all directions and that's kind of what a microburst is except that it is extremely bad news if you're an airplane flying through it when a plane hits a microburst it encounters a complex and powerful set of conditions downdrafts and tailwinds batter a plane it's a deadly combination at its maximum strength it's it's no more than two miles across and it lasts no more than 15 minutes so if you look at that little space and time window it's very small and so the probability of hitting one is low just short of the runway delta 191 flies into the microburst [Music] we're gonna lose it all of a sudden there it is [Music] i pulled my seatbelt tight as i could but but the same time you could hear a pin drop nobody was talking hang on to the son he's gonna cry damn the pilots of delta flight 191 did their very best to recover from this situation and it didn't work out i must have caught sight of him just at the last millisecond and he cartwheeled into the tank in just an instant and then of course there was fire not a ball of fire but a wall of fire [Music] it seemed like it was only a few seconds five seconds at the most i don't know how long it was we was everything was stopped then all of a sudden you look up and it's just nothing there it's everything's gone you just see the whole big picture outside like the plane just opened up people just thrown around on the ground some were closed on some without clothes on some were burned just 27 people survived the crash of delta 191 137 people are killed [Music] i had seen death before as a medic in vietnam but it had never been aimed at civilians certainly not on a mass casualty situation and certainly not this suddenly it's hard to blame the air crew their job is to afford thunderstorms and this probably a forecast for thunderstorms every day at dallas in the summertime which ones do you avoid and it's you know it's a very difficult problem after the crash of delta 191 the federal aviation administration races to develop technology that can prevent microbursts from killing again if there is one crash that we can look back on now and say this made things safer because we learned from it it was delta 191 one of the most important lessons that the technology in use at the time simply wasn't good enough what we found out is that doppler radar which is on the ground is incredibly effective in detecting microbursts unlike weather radar in use at the time of the crash of delta 191 doppler radar can also detect the direction of winds inside a storm if you look through the doppler radar you see a part of it that's going away from the radar and a part that's coming towards the radar and if it's small it's absolutely a microburst it can be nothing else so it has what we call an unambiguous signature of a microburst which means we got it when the doppler radar system at an airport detects a microburst it sends an alert to air traffic controllers the controllers relay the warning to pilots on approach flight 236 microburst alert one mile final say intentions after the crash of delta 191 terminal doppler weather radar was installed in airports across the united states dallas fort worth was one of the first to apply the system but technology is only one link in the chain sometimes even with all the right information pilots make disastrous decisions there's your big what italy yeah we gotta get over there real quick [Music] this december day has been a long one for thousands of airline passengers across north america a winter storm is moving across the southeastern united states the meteorologists at the aviation weather center have shut down a large area of airspace [Music] hundreds of flights have been grounded or forced to divert around the storm but shutting down that airspace doesn't take the pressure off if thunderstorms do start to develop become very strong and organized we can't let that distract us from other hazards such as icing turbulence or even strong surface winds or low-level wind shear the meteorologists here can see troubling weather ahead and let pilots know how to avoid it but sometimes what pilots do with that information can lead to disaster june the 1st 1999 american airlines flight 1420 has been delayed by weather dispatch please yeah it's my fellow girl storms threatened this flight's destination little rock national airport in arkansas [Music] the pilots of 1420 had received a briefing from their dispatch department about all of the thunderstorm activity that they were going to encounter between dallas and little rock they were also warned about the fact that because of the fast-moving weather system that they would be entering into an area called or what was characterized as the bowling alley [Music] two hours behind schedule the pilots decide to make the flight [Music] they race to fly through a gap in the storm system whoa looks like it's moving this way though yeah just some lightning straight ahead i think we're gonna be okay though right there yep right down the bowling alley as my friends would say california cool cool beachy exactly if they don't make it in time they will either have to divert to another airport or land in severe weather conditions they were made aware by dispatchers that they were going to have to get into this alley or this area of clear weather and they didn't have a lot of time to do it but as they near the airport the weather gets even worse american 14 20. it appears we have a second part of this storm moving through the wind now is three four zero at one six gusts three four okay did you notice something did you see the airport there where there okay right you're on a base for it okay it's it's right there i'm on a base now it's it's like a dog leg we're coming in and and there it is right there uh i lost it yeah i don't see how we can maintain visual the plane was rocking and rolling at that point it was pretty doggone unstable i don't know what made me aware so dog gone to where that we were gonna have a problem i don't know what did that one of the things that we analyzed was a statement by the captain that was recorded on the cockpit voice recorder yeah i hate droning around visual at night and weather without having any clue where we are it gave us an indication that they didn't have situational awareness they didn't really understand the gravity the environment that they were flying into american 1420. right now we have heavy rain on the airport i don't have new weather for you but visibility is less than a mile and the runway fluorite rvr is three thousand as the pilots of american airlines flight 1420 attempt to land visibility has been reduced even further the winds now three five zero at three zero gusts four five can we land zero three zero at four five american fourteen twenty three thousand rvr we can't land on that no three thousand what do we need no it's 2400 rvr okay right yeah we're fine the stress level of a pilot increases especially in an environment where there's thunderstorms only because multiple decisions are having to be made in very short periods of time 15. and landing gear down lights please the pilots could divert to another airport but they decide to attempt the landing air traffic controllers have detected a dangerous crosswind on the runway windshear alert center field wind 3-5-0 at 3-2 gusts 4-5 north boundary wind one zero at two nine north east boundary wind three two zero at three two thousand feet twenty forty forty land this this is a can of worms i'm gonna stay above it a little there's a runway off to your right you got it no i got the runway in sight you're right i got it stay where i got it i got it wind 3-3-0 at two three damn we're off course no i can't see it way off i can't see anything goddess got it with winds pounding the airport and the runway slick with rain the pilots make their final approach 40. 30 20 10. we're down we're sliding oh no they lose control of the aircraft as they speed down the runway another one another one [Music] the plane runs off the end of the runway and crashes into several steel columns well i knew i was not going to die on that thing i got out of that plane probably in 10 seconds it's like being in war go go go but not everyone is so lucky 11 people are killed in the crash of american airlines flight 1420 including captain richard bushman [Music] did they really know what they were getting themselves into that was a key point for us as investigators they went into an environment that was detrimental to their safety the national transportation safety board rules that the pilot's decision to land at little rock airport was the primary cause of the accident on the day of the crash the pilots of flight 1420 had to rely on controllers to relay information about conditions on the runway at the aviation weather center meteorologists are trying to get rid of that middleman we can provide a picture right in the cockpit and the pilot can navigate uh looking at a picture as opposed to trying to translate uh some words that they've heard read to them over a radio they can see what the hazard's going to be in relation to aircraft and start making decisions immediately as opposed to decoding drawing where that hazard is thinking about where they are in relation to the hazard and then trying to make that decision it will speed up the process throughout the day meteorologists in this room have been tracking a band of fierce thunderstorms in the southern united states those storms are beginning to die down meteorologists have started to reopen airspace they had previously closed air traffic is returning to normal the most active convective weather was over eastern north carolina and southward now there is a lot of lower top precipitation that doesn't have thunderstorms and they're more than likely if they're going up across western north carolina and central virginia they're able to pretty much fly over that weather the thunderstorms in the southern united states are dying down but the meteorologists are now keeping a close eye on a very dangerous new development a volcano south of the united states volcanic ash clouds can be a hazard and do a lot of damage to the aircraft and to engines nolan duke is tracking weather over the gulf of mexico this is super hills this is near antigua in the in the in the windward islands south southeast of uh of puerto rico and uh it blew its stack sufria hills volcano has been venting ash for the past week the volcanic ash cloud it's been releasing could prove deadly if pilots were to fly through it the aviation weather center has issued a segment to keep planes away from the plume each one of these frames is an hour [Music] and by sunrise the volcanic ash cloud is this little milky region right in here sometimes it's very difficult to discern between the ash clouds and the meteorological clouds but a well-trained eye with a lot of experience we'll see this ash cloud we have 30 000 people living on platforms drilling platforms out here at any given time and they have 650 air helicopters that fly every day over the northern gulf of mexico delivering people materials and food to keep these drilling operations going we thought it would end yesterday and they forecasted it to puff and disappear but it's still going today as long as we can see ash plume we will continue to issue the segment unlike ash that you might see in a chimney or after a fire in a forest this is not soft material at all this is very fine ground up particles of solid rock and minerals but that fine dust has the power to stop a 300 ton airliner on june the 24th 1982 the devastating effects of an ash cloud took the crew of a british airways jet completely by surprise barry and i were just sitting there minding the shop pitch dark knight of course and then we started to get these impricks of light on the on the windscreen mount galangang on the island of java has erupted but no warnings have been issued to pilots when the 747 flies into the cloud it collides with the volcanic ash particles inside the friction creates a bright shimmering glow on the windscreen because it's such a dry environment up there that frictional electrification produces the glow that we refer to as saint elmo's fire same on my side but the crew had no idea what they were looking at this light show if you like it become more intense in fact we ended up sitting there with with two sheets of brilliant white light in front of us in place of the windscreen passengers aboard the flight also see a strange glow around the plane's jet engines smoke begins to seep into the cabin around them volcanic ash has been sucked into the aircraft's ventilation system with ash particles clouding the cabin and the aircraft lit up the volcanic cloud deals its most deadly blow [Applause] engine failure number four fire action number four the ash has snuffed out one of the jet's four massive engines closed start lever there were huge flames coming out of the back of the engines twenty some people said 40 feet long shooting out of the back of of all the engines is it going to penetrate from the outside of the aircraft is it going to come into the cabin are we going to burn to death are we going to choke to death on the smoke number two engine's gone all right then begin the engine shut no we'll wait the other three just went out almost immediately and that's when it begins to be a serious emergency a minute and a half we've gone from four engines running normally to having none the 747 is suddenly powerless and it's quickly falling to the sea starting the engines has become the crew's only priority but volcanic ash is making that task impossible the temperature in the combustion chamber where this ashes flowing through are around 2000 degrees centigrade and so the volcanic ash we know melts at about 1300 1400 degrees the volcanic ash transforms into molten goo within the jet engines the material blocks key air passages and causes the engines to surge and shut down [Music] we got a fundamental disturbance of the airflow in the main core of the engine which caused the engine to backfire and the engines flamed out and that was the cause of the problem roger declare emergency mayday mayday made a speed bird nine we have lost all four engines out of three seven zero without the engines the 747 begins to fall from the sky at an altitude of 35 000 feet the pilots have less than half an hour before their aircraft will crash into the indian ocean all right begin restart drill set battery check on the standard restart drill takes three minutes to complete anything anything no again all right then from the top the crew will have fewer than 10 attempts to start the engines fire switch in british airways flight 009's dead engines are having an effect inside the cabin the engines usually maintain air pressure without them the pressure is dropping passengers are having difficulty breathing breathe normally but i'm not deep standby power open cross feed up fire switch closed we hadn't had any success with the drill at all um despite all the efforts we were putting in but it was it was the only thing we had left to cling on to so that's what we did from the top again battery check on standby mission all right are we getting something it's not starting i knew it was so difficult to land airplanes on the sea even when you had everything going for you and i thought that well we haven't got much going for us here i'd never done it before ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking we have a small problem all four engines have stopped we're doing our damnedest to get in under control i trust you are not in too much distress all right from the top then bartram check out no all right then from the top again battery we had very few uh chances left of starting the engines before having to turn out to to sea again because we wouldn't have been able to clear the mountains on the south coast of java then with just 12 000 feet separating british airways flight 009 from the ocean engine number four roars to life [Music] engine 4 back online the noise that a rolls royce engine makes when it starts up is low rumbling noise you know and it was uh it was just well it was wonderful to hear it the glass now is half full it's not half empty we're now in with a real chance and i'll tell you what the three of us would have dragged that airplane around the whole island of java thrust lever closed start lever cut off fuel pressure uh available standby ignition on start lever on engine three back online do you believe it engines one and two both back online as soon as you came out of the volcanic ash and the engines were not running remember so everything cooled down it was enough for this stuff to break off and allow the engines to restart we say right let's get this thing on the ground as quickly as we can ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking we seem to have overcome that problem and have managed to start all the engines [Applause] we are diverted to jakarta and expect to land in about 15 minutes british airways flight 009 landed safely no one was injured and an important lesson was learned we have learned quite a bit and we've incorporated this learning into pilot training pilots now for example know what signs to look for after british airways flight 009's emergency landing in jakarta communications were improved between the geologists who watch volcanoes on the ground and the pilots who must avoid the ash clouds during the day they are plainly visible to pilots and then at night time they're relying a lot on their onboard radars and that's not going to detect volcanic ash anything on the radar no so they're completely blind to it and they just blindly fly right into the ash cloud today meteorologists were forced to shut down airspace due to violent thunderstorms and volcanic ash the weather on the east coast is now clearing and the volcanic plume is starting to thin we never really seem to get a break uh where we can sit back and put our feet on the desk and relax there's always something going and there's always the next storm coming down the pipeline and and we gotta address it the next storm has begun to appear pilots in the seattle region are calling in with reports of severe turbulence but we've got two systems actually over the west that we're watching one over now over central california and what looks like it's a little bit more powerful storm coming onshore into washington and oregon that's certainly going to be our attention getter for the next day and a half [Music] more than a million people got on an airplane on this stormy december day some planes were delayed but there wasn't a single accident due to weather that's the kind of result these meteorologists hope for every day ideally we never have clouds or or any type of a hazardous weather for pilots and everything be clear skies and smooth sailing we're here to help people be safe and and when that that duty calls we're prepared we'll catch our breath today and get ready for tomorrow [Music] you

Channel: Wonder

Views: 573,234

Keywords: air crash documentaries, air crash investigations, air disaster documentaries, air travel investigations, aircraft accidents, aircraft crashes, aircraft risks evaluation, aircraft safety protocols, aircraft tragedies, airline disasters, airline incidents, aviation catastrophes, aviation engineering, aviation standards, aviation tragedies, aviation warnings, flight critical events, flight dangers, flight incidents, flight safety measures

Id: KJPHRPAWd14

Length: 50min 3sec (3003 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 14 2021