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.
When his Lancaster caught fire over Germany and his own parachute burned in the fuselage, RAF tail gunner Nicholas Alkemade jumped anyway, with no parachute at all. He fell three miles through the dark, landed in snow-covered pine trees, and got up with nothing worse than a sprained knee.
Read The Full Case File →Ninety seconds out of LaGuardia, US Airways 1549 flew into a flock of Canada geese and lost both engines at 2,818 feet over New York City. Captain Sullenberger and First Officer Skiles had 208 seconds. They turned down two runways, glided a silent A320 across Manhattan and put it on the Hudson wings-level. Commuter ferries reached the wings inside four minutes. All 155 people aboard survived.
Read The Full Case File →Three men hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 and demanded Australia. Captain Leul Abate told them for three hours that the fuel would never reach it, and flew south along the African coast instead of out over open ocean, so there would be land beneath him when the engines quit. He was fighting a hijacker for the controls when the 767 hit the water off a Comoros beach. Fifty of the 175 people aboard lived.
Read The Full Case File →At 24,000 feet, 18 feet of Aloha Airlines Flight 243's roof tore away explosively, sweeping flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing out of the aircraft. Captain Robert Schornstheimer and First Officer Mimi Tompkins flew the open, structurally broken 737 to a safe landing on Maui, bringing all 94 other people aboard home alive.
Read The Full Case File →In 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 thirteen minutes, restarted the engines, and landed safely in Jakarta with a sandblasted windscreen.
Read The Full Case File →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, but nobody was killed.
Read Full Report →In 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.
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. Cabin crew calmly worked the aisles and kept 365 people under control through an emergency descent and diversion to Manila.
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