CSX 8888: The Crazy Eights Incident

CSX 8888: The Crazy Eights Incident

On May 15, 2001, an experienced freight engineer steps down from his locomotive in a rural Ohio rail yard to fix a misaligned switch. He's done this kind of work for thirty-five years, the train is creeping along at walking pace, and he'll be back on board in seconds. Then everything goes wrong. Join Alice and Zach for the story of CSX 8888 — a three-thousand-ton freight train carrying tank cars of toxic chemicals that runs loose through northwestern Ohio with nobody at the controls, and the ordinary railroaders who have to figure out how to stop it before it reaches the next town. This is the story Hollywood turned into the movie Unstoppable, with all the parts they left out. Sources: * "Runaway Train" by William M. Hendryx — Reader's Digest, March 2002 * "A 3,000-Ton Locomotive Was Loose, Unstoppable, and Filled with Toxic Cargo" by Jesse Hicks — Popular Mechanics * "CSX's Runaway Train: The Crazy Eights Incident" — AmtrakGuy365 (YouTube) * "Ordinary Railroaders Stop Deadly Runaway Train: The Crazy Eights Incident" — Fascinating Horror (YouTube) * "CSX 8888 — Crazy Eights" by Dan Robie — WVNC Rails * Federal Railroad Administration incident memo, May 2001 * Contemporary news coverage from CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and CBS News * EPA emergency response documentation on phenol-related rail incidents Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online: * Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com [http://finalboardingcallpodcast.com] * Email: finalboardingcallpodcast@gmail.com * Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod * Facebook: Final Boarding Call Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.

Northwest Airlink Flight 5719

On December 1, 1993, Northwest Airlink Flight 5719 crashed three miles short of its destination in northern Minnesota, killing all 18 people aboard. The weather wasn't extreme. The aircraft wasn't broken. Both pilots were certified, qualified, and physically capable of flying the approach. But as the turboprop descended through the dark, something else was happening in the cockpit — something that wouldn't show up in the wreckage. This is the story of how investigators traced a routine night flight back through twenty years of warning signs that nobody connected, and what the cockpit voice recorder revealed about the silence that killed eighteen people. Sources: * NTSB Aircraft Accident Report AAR-94/05 — Express Airlines II, Inc., Northwest Airlink Flight 5719 * Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript (NTSB Appendix B) * Mayday: Air Disasters, Season 17 Episode 1, "Killer Attitude" * NTSB Safety Recommendations A-94-70 through A-94-72 * Express Airlines II General Operations Manual and Standard Operating Procedures (as cited in AAR-94/05) Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online: * Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com * Email: finalboardingcallpodcast@gmail.com * Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod * Facebook: Final Boarding Call Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.

TACA Flight 110

What happens when a brand-new Boeing 737 flies into a hailstorm so violent that both engines die in the same instant, 16,500 feet above the Gulf Coast? Join Alice and Zach as they explore the 1988 emergency landing of TACA Flight 110, where a 29-year-old captain with one eye, a first officer he trusted, and a brand new aircraft were tested in a way no flight simulator had ever prepared a crew for. Discover how a near-miss nine months earlier was waved off as a freak event, why the engines on one of the most reliable jets in the world were vulnerable in a way no one had imagined, and how a 43-ton glider found the only piece of dry ground for miles. This is the rare story where everyone walks away — including the aircraft itself. Sources: * "Boeing 737-300 | TACA International Airlines Flight 110, N75356" — Federal Aviation Administration, Lessons Learned from Transport Airplane Accidents * NTSB Brief of Incident FTW88IA109 — National Transportation Safety Board * "Nowhere to Land," Mayday: Air Disaster, Season 11 Episode 11 — National Geographic / Cineflix * "Interview with Capt. Carlos Dárdano: Hero of TACA 110" — Carlos Dardano Fans, YouTube * "This Incredible Pilot: Carlos Dárdano" — Plane & Pilot Magazine * "The Miracle on the Levée" — Fear of Landing * "¡Misión Cumplida! Se Jubila el Histórico Piloto Salvadoreño Carlos Dárdano" — El Diario de Hoy * Aviation Safety Network — TACA Flight 110 Profile Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online: * Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com [http://finalboardingcallpodcast.com] * Email: finalboardingcallpodcast@gmail.com * Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod * Facebook: Final Boarding Call Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH134

On the night of July 18, 2018, a Malaysia Airlines Airbus A330 pushed back from Brisbane Airport carrying 215 passengers bound for Kuala Lumpur. Within seconds of takeoff, every airspeed display in the cockpit went red — and the crew had no idea how fast they were flying or why. Join Alice and Zach as they unravel a near-disaster that played out in the dark over the Queensland coast, the chain of small failures that put this aircraft in the air, and the very specific Brisbane Airport problem that nobody at Malaysia Airlines had been told about. Buckle up — this one is a wild ride. Sources: * ATSB Final Investigation Report AO-2018-053 — Australian Transport Safety Bureau, March 2022 * "How Did EVERYONE Miss THIS!? | Malaysian Airlines Flight 134" — Mentour Pilot, YouTube * "Malaysia Airlines mistakes led to 'serious incident' on packed A330" — Australian Aviation * "Pitot covers left on made for tense BUSS ride" — Flight Safety Australia * "A350 pitot probe covers left on prior to pushback demonstrates how assumptions, procedural omissions can lead to unsafe conditions" — Australian Transport Safety Bureau * Malaysia Airlines Flight MH134 — Wikipedia Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online: Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com | Email: finalboardingcallpodcast@gmail.com | Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod | Facebook: Final Boarding Call | Patreon: patreon.com/finalboardingcall Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.

The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

On a cold January morning in 1986, a launch that had been promoted as a celebration of science and education went catastrophically wrong in front of a watching nation. But the real story of this disaster didn't begin on the launch pad. It began six months earlier, in a memo an engineer wrote to his boss. It continued the night before, in a conference room in Utah, where that engineer laid photographs on a table and begged four men not to kill seven people. Join Alice and Zach as they unravel the story of how the warnings were raised, how they were overruled, and what it cost the people who tried to tell the truth. Sources: * Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (Rogers Commission Report), Volumes I–V — NASA History Division * "Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle," Appendix F to the Rogers Commission Report — Richard P. Feynman * The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA — Diane Vaughan, University of Chicago Press * Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster — Allan J. McDonald with James R. Hansen * "Challenger: The Final Voyage" — report by Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin to NASA Administrator, July 28, 1986 * "Ethical Decisions — Morton Thiokol and the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster" — Roger Boisjoly, MIT lecture, January 1989 * "The Challenger Disaster: Making it Personal" — paper presented at ASEE Annual Conference * NASA Challenger STS-51-L crew report and transcript release, 1986 * "Christa McAuliffe's Lost Lessons" — NASA STEM archive * "Former Students Remember Christa McAuliffe" — New Hampshire Public Radio * President Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation on the Challenger Disaster, January 28, 1986 — Ronald Reagan Presidential Library * Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I, August 2003 Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online: * Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com * Email: finalboardingcallpodcast@gmail.com * Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod * Facebook: Final Boarding Call Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.