When the systems fail and the checklist runs out, someone still has to fly the airplane. These are the pilots and crew whose composure under pressure turned near-certain disaster into a story everyone walked away from.
Minutes after takeoff, a bird strike knocked out both engines. With no runway in reach, the captain made a split-second call: ditch in the Hudson River. All 155 people on board survived.
Read Full Report → PDFA fuel calculation error left a Boeing 767 completely powerless at 41,000 feet. The captain, a trained glider pilot, dead-sticked it onto a decommissioned runway now packed with go-kart racers.
Read Full Report → PDFWith every hydraulic system severed by a catastrophic engine failure, a DC-10 crew improvised a way to steer using only engine thrust — a technique that had never been taught, and has saved lives since.
Read Full Report → PDFIn 1982, British Airways Flight 9 flew into an invisible cloud of volcanic ash from Mount Galunggung at night, and all four engines flamed out. Captain Eric Moody's crew glided in silence for agonizing minutes, restarted the engines, and landed safely in Jakarta with a sandblasted windscreen.
Read full report →When an uncontained engine failure ripped a hole in the fuselage and depressurized the cabin, a captain with a background flying fighter jets brought the aircraft down calmly enough that passengers said she "sounded bored."
Read full report →When British Airways Flight 2276 suffered an uncontained engine failure and caught fire during its takeoff roll in Las Vegas in 2015, cabin crew evacuated all 170 people aboard down the slides before the fire crews even had it under control. Twenty were hurt in the evacuation — nobody was killed.
Read Full Report → PDFIn 1988, TACA Flight 110 flew into a violent thunderstorm on approach to New Orleans and lost both engines to hail ingestion. With no power and no runway in reach, Captain Carlos Dardano dead-stick landed the Boeing 737 on a grass levee by NASA's Michoud plant. All 45 people aboard survived with only minor injuries.
Read full report →An oxygen cylinder exploded in the cargo hold of Qantas Flight 30 in 2008, tearing a five-foot hole in the fuselage and triggering a rapid decompression at cruising altitude. As oxygen masks dropped, cabin crew calmly worked the aisles and kept 365 people under control through an emergency descent and diversion to Manila. Nobody was seriously hurt.
Read full report →With smoke pouring into the cockpit from a cargo fire at 33,000 feet, the crew of FedEx Flight 1406 overruled air traffic control's suggested airport and diverted to the nearest strip they could reach. They landed and got out just before the DC-10 was consumed by fire in 1996 — a split-second call investigators credited with saving all five people aboard.
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