The Air Florida Potomac River Disaster of 1982 | Episode 112

Hey guys, we're throwing a little fundraiser for this little pet project of ours. Maybe you heard about it. It's a pretty childish sounding game, which is funny, because under testing conditions, it has been observed to create feelings of vengeance. So what's it called? Why, it's Pee Pee Poo Poo, and it's doing its thing on Kickstarter. It's easy to learn and quick to play, and ask yourself if your second favorite card game ever gave you a shart, enema, or diarrhea. Hmm, you've been missing out. Check out Peepy Poo Poo on Kickstarter, and you'll be sounding dumber than a fifth grader and having a great time doing it in no time. A pilot friend of mine has spent more time practicing touch-and-go landings than anyone I've ever met. And his reasoning was that takeoffs and in-flight procedures are irrelevant. The only thing that means anything is the landing. So I asked, what if your takeoff was your landing? And his response was, zero stars, do not recommend. Four minutes. Hello and welcome to Doomsday, history's most dangerous podcast. Together, we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and awe-inspiring, but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, you will learn what makes Florida such a sparkling tropical jewel for snow-weary travelers, You will see what happens when a 200,000 pound plane lands on a 4,000 pound car, and you will hear about a disaster so incredible a helicopter got put in a museum because of it. And if you were listening to this on Patreon, you'd also be hearing why pilots sound no more aroused by the blare of alarms than you do about coupons. You would learn about the incident that led to Boss Bitch Energy becoming no longer welcome in the cockpit. And for reasons you would hear about the second shortest commercial air flight in the world. This is not the show you play around kids, or while eating, or even in mixed company. But just as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that could potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoo the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin. When I was a kid, during the depths of winter, after the annual plague of snow had already set in for the season, and the sun began disappearing over the horizon by 3.30 in the afternoon, I could always be sure that some dink in my class was heading to Florida to escape the cold for a little sun-kissed getaway. Florida was the place to be for families of means, trading snow and ice for sunshine and palm trees. Seven days of core memories and peeling skin? Yes, please. I never actually got to go myself, but the kids in my class who did, upon their return, were treated with a touch of lightly burnt celebrity. Driving to Florida was the North American equivalent of jetting off to the south of France, except that you're driving, and the only French that you would hear would be from happy carloads of Quebecers living out their migratory dream. Today, it's the place you get banned from for ripping a jet ski across a hotel parking lot after playing lose-a-tooth-find-a-tooth at the Waffle House. The last time I was in Florida, I got to stay at a four-star luxury villa in Miami and a bullet-riddled motel outside of Cape Canaveral all in the same trip. Florida can be like that, in equal measure. But, in general, it's known as a place where it wouldn't be that weird to pull into a gas station and have a wild-eye prison escapee with casts on both forearms and a tattoo of an empty grave on his neck just pull a blade or toss a gator through your window for looking at his girl wrong or whatever. The last time I was there, I was also chased in a minivan at 4am onto a backcountry road by a pickup truck and a cop at the same time. This was all on the same trip. The point, of course, being that compared to the rest of Canada and the continental US, Florida is unique. It thrusts its dong-like abode deep into the Gulf of Mexico, putting it in line with other deeply sought-after near-tropical destinations, like the Bahamas and Saudi Arabia. As a group, we all haven't been to Florida since we drove off the Skyline Bridge in Tampa a while back, and it's about time that we returned. So, where will we be traveling today? Well, we are heading south to the yachting capital of the world, Fort Lauderdale. You may remember that I have previously explained if you transpose the second letter of Fort and Lauderdale, you get Fart Lauderdale. But whatever you call it, between roughly December and April, it offers something most of North America does not. Warm, sunny weather and more than 20 miles of sandy Atlantic beaches. The first trick, of course, is just getting there. Well, according to the tickets in our hands, we will be flying aboard Air Florida Flight 90, a semi-direct to Fort Lauderdale with a quick stop in Tampa. The point being, we'll begin today's story at an airport. Washington National Airport, to be exact, right in the heart of the nation, Washington, D.C. Well, not Really, it's actually located just across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. Do you mean the airport where John McClane barbecued all those disloyal terrorists in Die Hard 2? No, I'm afraid that was Dulles International, which is also in Virginia, just about 30 miles in the wrong direction. You'd actually know it better as Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which most people think is kind of crazy considering they named an airport after the president who famously fired 11,359 air traffic controllers because they wanted better working conditions. One listener compared this to renaming a school after a school shooter. And all of this went down only five months before we got here. The blood had barely dried onto the controller stations. But enough about all that. We are here on the morning of January the 13th, 1982, and you will notice the night and day difference between stepping into a terminal which was certainly a lot warmer and more welcoming than the freezing, blowing, monochromatic hellscape of white outside. Yes, we did not just come to see bad weather. We came to see some of the worst weather Washington had seen in years. A system of cold Arctic air had settled over the mid-Atlantic, and temperatures plummeted to around minus 5 Celsius or 24 Fahrenheit, and visibility dropped to less than a mile. Everything around us was blanketed in snow and low-hanging clouds, with wet, sticky snow clinging to everything. and the wind only made things worse. And as an American living in the southern states, you might be used to hearing that three-fifths of an inch of snow fell, and that an entire city had ground to a halt. Well today, in Washington, more than 7 inches or 18 centimeters of snow had already fallen. Trucks and buses were getting stuck, and thousands of vehicles were just abandoned. Schools and government offices were closed. conditions only seem to get worse by the hour. This is exactly what we are trying to get away from. But the arrivals and departures board became a flip chart of disappointment as flights were delayed and canceled. Aircraft were being delayed and rerouted and held in extremely long lines, all queuing up, all hoping for same day departure. The whole airport was actually even shut down during part of the morning, as terminal crews fought the accumulation, and around midday, it was reopened for business, such as it was, under some fairly unfavorable operating conditions, and that meant an awful lot of waiting and staring out of windows, watching as aircraft disappeared behind curtains of blowing snow, and wondering, is that my plane? Snow continued accumulating on everything around, and snow removal equipment hungry hungry hippoed their way across the tarmac over and over. For us today, our goal will be boarding a Boeing 737-222, and of all the things turning red on the departure board, Florida Flight 90 was not one of them. Huzzah! We will be joining 79 other souls, that's 74 passengers and 5 crew, equally excited. for the moment. Sadly, there's no easy way to say this, but the weather is going to force us to sit on this thing for the better part of the next two hours waiting for clearance to take off. But, flip side of that coin, at least we are on a plane. And there were several aircraft already cleared for pushback ahead of us. Now, while we are waiting for clearance, let's meet our captain and crew. There are five crew on board, like we said. Two pilots and three flight attendants. And captaining for us today will be Larry M. Wheaton. He's still a pup. He's only 34 years old. And he does have over 8,300 flight hours under his belt, but he's relatively inexperienced operating a 737 in winter conditions. But hey, How better to learn than on the worst day imaginable? In fairness to the guy, he had spent the last 2,300 hours with Air Florida, where snow wasn't really an issue. Assisting him today will be First Officer Roger A. Pettit. He was only 31, with less than half of Wheaton's flight hours. But he was a retired U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and flight instructor, so he did know a thing or two. Coping with the antsy passengers in the back were our flight attendants Kelly Duncan, Judith Mateus, and Lorraine Cooper. Around 2.15 in the afternoon, with the door sealed and the jetway retracted, a tug tried to push her away from the gate, but with all the snow and slush, and without the benefit of tire chains, the thing just slid. So the flight crew spooled up their Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines and deployed thrust reversers to give them a boost, If you don't know what a tug is, it's a little vehicle and it clamps onto the front landing strut of a plane, and then kinda acts like a tow truck. And engine reversers are a little like when you put your palms in front of your mouth and blow to check your breath, but a million times stronger. Metal shields slide into place and partially block the exhaust, which reverses the flow of it and helps push the plane like they were in reverse gear. and it is against company policy to use the engines in this way, and whereas they had a light dusting before, now they were all messy with the stuff, the fact remained, hey, we're moving over here. Meanwhile in the cockpit, while they were performing the post-engine start checklist, when they got to the anti-ice, Captain Wheaton said, nah. Well, actually he said, off, but same difference. They already de-iced us when we were at the gate, and Pettit said, Well, all we need is the inside of the wings anyways, and the wingtips are going to speed up on 80 anyways, and that'll shuck all that other stuff. When they compared their notes, Wheaton said he had a little ice on his wing, and Pettit had about a quarter to half an inch of ice on his. So, Wheaton had a bit of a novel idea. Listen, we're in line. Why not just pull up a little closer to the New York Air McDonald Douglas DC-9 in front of us, and let their engine exhaust do some of the work, They call this jet-blast de-icing, where basically if you get close enough, you let the exhaust warms and melts all the snow and ice from your wings. What could possibly go wrong? Did I just say possibly? Huh, that's the first thing to ever go wrong. Okay, ignoring that, just before 4pm, Flight 90 was cleared to taxi into position and told to hold and wait for runway 36 to free up. and also to be ready for an immediate takeoff. And this announcement came true barely a minute later. Runway 26 points almost directly north along the Potomac River. They're only about three quarters of a mile, about 1.2 kilometers apart. Once across, flights would continue climbing and pretty much pass between the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. If they wanted to get shot down, For Flight 90 specifically, the planned route after takeoff was not to continue straight into the line of fire. A pilot looking straight ahead during takeoff would see the river with the monument and the mall and all the other landmarks in the background. As you can imagine, the airspace in the area is highly restricted. They call it the Washington D.C. Flight Restricted Zone and Special Flight Rules Area, and that all seems pretty self-explanatory. Flight 90 is intended to simply climb straight ahead only briefly, and then remain over or very near the path of the river, taking very specific departure procedures and vectors from air traffic control. They leave Reagan facing north, but once safely aloft and past all the expensive stuff, they do a little loop-de-loop and change their heading south to Florida. The Potomac River is one of the most historically important rivers in the whole United States. If you've never seen it before, just picture a broad, slow-moving river about 405 miles or 650 kilometers long that begins all the way in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and Maryland and then flows southeast through a series of valleys and gorges before flowing past the nation's capital. From there, It just empties into Chesapeake Bay, which then connects to the Atlantic Ocean. If you ever wonder why states sometimes have funny-shaped borders, it's because they have a river like the Potomac creating a natural border between them and the state next door. Because the river runs past D.C., countless presidential events and military ceremonies and state funerals and national celebrations have taken place on or beside it, It is said to be America's most politically significant river after the Mississippi. And if you're thinking, have we been here before? Well, you're probably thinking of an episode we did on February the 28th, 1844. when the USS Princeton was conducting a demonstration cruise along the Potomac for politicians and diplomats and military officers, and even the 10th President of the United States, John Tyler. Of all of the ship's bragging points, the real attention getter was this enormous cannon on deck called the Peacemaker. The cannon had already been fired repeatedly during the voyage, no problem, but they fired it just one time too many, and it blew apart catastrophically under pressure and peppered the guests on deck with a blizzard of heavy and flaming hot iron fragments. President Tyler survived the ordeal simply because he at the time was below deck to hit on a girl And this disaster is remembered for killing more senior U.S. government officials than any other incident in American history. And all this went down about 12 miles or 20 kilometers from where we are now. Anyway, that all killed just enough time for us to get clearance to depart. When the pilots got permission to leave, they threw on the reverse thrusters to bounce from the gate as quickly as possible, which isn't really recommended, but does leave some fairly cool skid marks on the tarmac. They were motivated to get in line as fast as possible before some other controller came on and scrubbed the flight altogether. They pulled in close behind another plane waiting for takeoff. And it had been almost 50 minutes since they were de-iced, and the crew figured hot exhaust blasting from the engines in front of them is going to help melt the snow from their wings. They thought they were being pretty clever. What it did was mix all that snow and ice like a slush, which then refroze across the entire thing. That being said, we now turn onto runway 36 and spool up the engines. They were running a little cold, but just a little tweak here, a little tweak there, and we have our takeoff thrust, no problem, and off we go. During the early part of the takeoff roll, the first officer said, God, look at that thing, that don't seem right, does it? And got into it with the captain a bit about their thrust settings. It didn't feel right. The thrust levers were pushed forward much more than he was used to, and the engine still seemed a little quiet. Pettit worried that the readings must be off, but Wheaton was more focused on let's just get this bird in the air. At this point, they were doing a little, I think we're doing 120, back and forth, and now neither could really be sure. The aircraft accelerated slowly, but continued the takeoff. The captain called out V1, followed by V2, followed by the sound of the stick shaker and warnings and urgent pleas to climb. We've left the ground. No question there, but it seems like the plane is struggling. Even passengers notice they are in the air, but only sort of. The wings just can't generate enough lift. Flight 90 reaches only about 352 feet or 107 meters above the ground before losing airspeed and entering into an aerodynamic stall. Pettit said, Larry, we're going down, to which the captain replied, I know it. And at this point, Flight 90 turned from a beach-mount jetliner to a glider with a weight problem. They'd only been airborne about 30 seconds, but thankfully... They're just gonna return to ground level in a controlled descent and then ride out the landing in the nearest field. Except for the part where this is Washington DC. The entire thing is only 10 square miles. It's not tiny, but it's tiny. My point being, there are no fields of unclaimed land for something like this to just happen over. And we don't have time to worry about it because the Potomac River is coming up fast, and at our descent angle, it looks like we might be in for a bit of a wet landing. Except for one more small snag. Well, not really small. I'm talking about the 14th Street Bridge. Well, bridges, actually. The 14th Street Bridges, as they're called, are a set of adjacent road and rail bridges that cross the Potomac River connecting Arlington, Virginia and Washington, D.C. And from the air, like where we are, the 14th Street looks like multiple highway and rail bridges running parallel across the river. They were designed as low profile steel and concrete style bridges rather than suspension or arch bridges, and at approximately 401 only about 30 seconds into our flight, and we are gonna go see it for ourselves. Instead of clearing it, the aircraft's wing and fuselage struck the bridge structure, and this was during rush hour. I remind you, everything was being closed. The wings, engine, landing gear, and lower fuselage essentially swept across the bridge, catastrophically crushing everything in its path, including seven occupied vehicles. About 100 feet or 30 meters of guardrail and portions of the bridge's barriers were also destroyed. It was a four-lane bridge, about 16 meters or 52.5 feet wide, and the Boeing 737-222 was just under twice as long as the bridge was wide, so it did not quite stick the landing. I couldn't tell you exactly how many people were on the bridge at the time that the 737 bounced off it, but traffic was bumper to bumper. The aircraft's left wingtip struck the bridge first, and those six cars and one truck found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and were struck by the wing and landing gear before the fuselage swept across the roadway in an enormous and dramatic shower of sparks. They had been flying almost level with the bridge deck, and because of that and the weather... Most people on the bridge had no idea what was happening till it was right on top of them, literally. A 200,000 pound plane landing on a 4,000 pound car is just about as uneven a match as I can think of. Four were immediately killed and another four were injured. George Malone was one of those victims. While most of the vehicles had simply been crushed, His was skipped and then thrown off the bridge and into the river below. And a moment later, we follow, plunging about 200 feet offshore between two spans of the bridge and straight through the icy surface. Only the tail section and scattered debris remain visible, but the rest of the aircraft was completely submerged beneath the water. Only the tail section and scattered debris remained visible, with the rest of the aircraft completely enveloped beneath the water, which was only about 1 degree Celsius, or 34 Fahrenheit. The water was only about 10 to 15 feet deep, that's between 3 and 4.5 meters, which sounds like a lucky break, but it only really belied how much damage had been done beneath the slush and broken chunks and sheets of ice. Your brain probably wants to imagine a kind of an intact tube that simply sank to the bottom of the river. However, the aircraft had been traveling almost 130 miles an hour. That's 210 kilometers. That tube of the fuselage that you imagine started breaking apart way up on the bridge. And by the time it impacted the water, most of one wing had been ripped off, including the engines and the landing gear in the water. The nose cone, cockpit, and pilots had been two-dimensionalized. The flight deck was crushed and scattered. The forward cabin flooded immediately as the skin of the plane was peeled and ruptured. The floor beams had buckled and the seats had become detached. You cannot imagine what this must have been like for people inside. The center fuselage had experienced twisting and tearing as the wings were removed. The thing to remember is that when the plane hit the water, it decelerated instantly, and everything inside the plane did not. The aft fuselage remained relatively intact, but again, everything inside it involuntarily wanted to move to the forward cabin. Seats were torn free, the overhead bins detached, luggage had been thrown everywhere. Combine all of that with broken interior panels and all of the exposed ribs and wires and insulation floating everywhere, and it is fair to say that most passengers experienced immediate and unsurvivable blunt force trauma. Meanwhile, back above on the bridge, motorists were now out of their vehicles and too stunned to react. What they were seeing was impossible to imagine, and many struggled to get down to the embankment. As the plane continued to shift and sink Fuselage around the tail tore open, and the tail had broken away. And of the 79 people on board, only 6 were given a chance to escape. Survivors started to appear bobbing amongst the ice as the wreckage was still settling. As they surfaced, they gathered by the tail, being the only solid object still above water. Except for the ice, of course, but ice was impossibly cold to hold onto. The crash itself hadn't killed the survivors, but the water was going to try its best, and if they were not rescued fast, the water would succeed. In the first minute, they would face cold shock, which causes an involuntary gasp, which, because you are in water at the time, can be immediately lethal. If your head was above the water, you would be breathing about 5 to 10 times faster, and your heart rate and blood pressure are going to go crazy. Within 10 to 15 minutes, everything becomes almost impossible, including swimming, and after half an hour, it was good to know you. And it was at this point that I would like you to meet Roger Olean. He was a federal budget analyst, not a terribly exciting career, not exactly Indiana Jones rope swinging away from giant boulders. Well, Roger had been driving home from work and now he found himself swimming towards the wreckage through the ice and slush with no regard for his own safety. As he leapt into the water, his intentions were good, but the river was not exactly navigable through the ice, and the people in the water were at least 200 feet or 60 meters from the shore. There were no rescue boats to be had, and there weren't any ropes long enough to throw. And although there wasn't a single piece of rescue equipment on the scene, it was definitely on its way. Every news van and fire truck in a hundred miles was racing to the scene. Roger Olean didn't just freeze to death and die, but he wasn't able to reach anyone either. So he did what he could. He shouted encouragement for them to hold on just a little longer until help arrived. Emergency units, firefighters, police officers, park police aviation crews, and even military personnel from the Pentagon responded almost immediately. Like we said, getting a boat through that ice wasn't much of an option, so helicopters became the most practical solution, and the first on the scene belonged to the U.S. Park Police, Eagle 1, a Bell 206L1 Long Ranger 2, if you're interested in that kind of thing, And piloting was a man named Donald Usher. And joining him that day was Melvin Windsor. He was a rescue tech and a paramedic, and neither of them were particularly thrilled. I mean, they were consummate professionals who were about to perform difficult and heroic work, but they did worry about the snow. In fact, they hadn't even been told that an airliner had crashed. What they had gotten was, I know this sounds weird, but are you guys available to fly? and then asked them to search for a missing aircraft, and what they found shocked them. Now, Eagle One did not have a rescue basket set up to help winch survivors to them, so they were going to have to just hover above the water and improvise. Between the tail and the bridge spans and the wind and the snow, this was going to be some of the most dangerous flying anyone had ever seen. Bert Hamilton was one of those people floating below, and he had become priority because it was clear he was drifting away and probably becoming hypothermic. If they didn't get to him now, they were never going to. They were able to throw him a rescue line he was able to secure around himself and they towed him to shore into the awaiting arms of rescuers. Then they raced back as quickly as they could and second verse same as the first. This time, the line reached a man named Arland D. Williams Jr., who immediately refused it and handed it off to flight attendant Kelly Duncan. She had injuries to the head, chest, foot, hand, and a big old gash in her thigh. And here's the thing, she was beside herself with pain, and what does she do? She gave away the only available life vest to a girl named Nikki Felch, whose injuries were even worse. 11 broken bones, a collapsed lung, a deep head wound, broken ribs, internal injuries, you name it. The line was looped around her and she was flown to shore. For the chopper's third rescue pass, they dropped two lines because at this point they were worried that at some point the survivors were going to die from hypothermia. Arlen Williams handed one of the lines to a man named Joe Stiley, who, in spite of having the structural integrity of an inflatable tube man outside of a car dealership, he was trying to physically support Priscilla Tirado and Nikki Felch. Joe Stiley was somehow functioning despite the notable handicaps of having a skull fracture, and a broken jaw, and a broken arm, a broken leg, spinal injuries, and dozens of other fractures. Also, he worked with Nikki. She was his secretary. Priscilla Tirado was a young mother with two broken legs and a variety of cuts and bruises. She was only 22 years old. As the helicopter towed the trio, Belch and Tirado lost their grip and fell back into the water. They'd lost most of the dexterity in their hands to the cold, and the line continued without them. And at this point, they were no longer able to assist with their own rescue. Everyone watched helplessly as Priscilla weakly pawed for it before her eyes became unfocused and she began to disappear beneath the water, no doubt thinking about her two-month-old baby son and husband who had not survived the crash. Watching her tortured face numbly cover over with water as she stared helplessly upward, a man standing on the riverbank tore off his boots and his coat and threw himself into the river. Lenny Skutnik had been driving home during the snowstorm. They basically kicked him out of work early. And he ended up abandoning his car to watch the helicopter rescue. Lenny was a 28-year-old employee at the Congressional Budget Office. He wasn't an action hero or an athlete. He was just a pencil pusher who found himself with a tremendous lack of self-concern and a chance to do something unspeakably brave. This man swam 30 feet or 9 meters through water a lot colder than I will ever find myself in, grabbed Priscilla and supported her in the water, kicking as hard as he could until rescuers were able to pull them both safely onto shore. Myself, along with the rest of America, watched the whole thing live on TV. Meanwhile, Toronto had drifted away from the safety of the tale. She was seriously injured and exhausted. and freezing, and blinded by jet fuel in her eyes. Jet fuel in the eyes, or nose, or lungs, or stomach, or wounds is not great, and of course, all of the ferocious vomiting that comes right after. Priscilla Tirado was visibly weakening and looked panicked as she realized she was alone. She was barely floating, hanging onto a life preserver before her grip finally gave out. As Eagle One towed Kelly Duncan to the waiting rescuers on shore, she couldn't keep her grip on the rescue line. She had lost most of the dexterity in her hands to the cold. She fell back into the icy water as the tow line continued without her. At this point, she was no longer able to assist with her own rescue, and everyone on shore watched helplessly as she weakly pawed for the line before her eyes became unfocused and she began to disappear beneath the water, no doubt thinking about her two-month-old baby son and husband who had not survived the crash. Watching her tortured face numbly cover with water as she stared helplessly upward, A man, standing on the riverbank, tore off his boots and coat and threw himself towards her. Lenny Skutnik had been driving home during the snowstorm and abandoned his car to watch the helicopter rescue. He was just a 20-year-old employee of the Congressional Budget Office, and he wasn't an action hero or athlete. He was just a pencil pusher who found himself with a tremendous lack of self-concern and a chance to do something unspeakably brave. This man swam 30 feet or 9 meters through water a lot colder than I'll ever find myself in, grabbed her, and supported her in the water, kicking as hard as he could, until rescuers were able to pull the both of them safely to shore. And myself, along with the rest of America, watched this all unfold on live TV. Eagle One had raced back to the scene and Usher lowered the skids into the water so that Gene Windsor could step out and grab Nikki Felch by the clothing, dragging her onto the skid while Usher rushed them to shore. The only soul left in the water was Arland Williams Jr., and at this point he had been there for half an hour. The Park Police helicopter returned one final time, but by now the wreckage had shifted. and the tail section, along with Williams, were no longer visible. They didn't know if he became entangled in the wreckage or lost consciousness from hypothermia. What we do know is that this man had a guaranteed chance of safety and refused it four times to save people he had never met. And then, cruelly, he joined 74 others who did not make it to Florida that day. Ultimately, Along with the 74 of 79 people aboard Air Florida Flight 90, four people on the bridge also lost their lives. So, what happened? Well, first, it snowed like hell, and parts of Washington were shut down for the day, including the airport, while they scrambled to clear the snow. Of course, while all this was happening, snow continued to accumulate on the wings while they waited. The Boeing 737-222 was equipped with engine anti-ice, which is designed to use hot air from the engines to keep their sensing probes free of ice. They call them EPR probes, and they're traditionally a pretty good way of letting the pilots know exactly how much power the engines are producing. But when they clog with ice, the pilots were led to believe that the takeoff thrust was much higher than it actually was. And add to that, They were producing less thrust because it doesn't take much to destroy a wing's airflow. A clean wing is a happy wing. Planes only work because air flows smoothly over the curved upper and flatter lower surfaces of the wing shape. As long as the air pressure moving over the top is lower than the pressure of the air on the bottom, you get lift. Thing is, it's magic, so it's an extremely delicate balance. The wings had been de-iced, but then nearly 50 minutes went by in the continuing snowfall. And even a thin layer of contaminating snow or frost or ice on either surface can create turbulence that ruins the airflow, which increases drag and dramatically kills lift. You know what you call a plane with no lift? A bus. The pilots had to increase power and create a higher angle of attack to compensate for what was happening. Of course, they didn't know this because their instruments were giving them the thumbs up, but the engines weren't producing nearly enough thrust to climb safely away from the airport. They reached 138 knots, or V1, which is the critical engine failure recognition speed, and went on to hit 140 knots for VR, which they call rotation speed, which if you will remember is the speed that you hit where the crew begin to pull back on the controls, which lifts the nose and you just become airborne. The first officer rotated at the correct speed, but they didn't leave the runway, and this forced the captain to lower the nose to try to increase the speed. They were finally able to stagger into the air, but only after having traveled about a half a mile or 800 meters further down the runway than normal. So you're trying to fly south to escape the snow and work on your tan a little, but your plane starts feeling a little weird, just enough that now you find yourself quickly working on your will. Would you know what to do? commercial jet crashing into very cold water in wintery conditions is about as terrible and frightening an experience as I can imagine. I worked with a guy who was terribly afraid of flying, so when he was going to Italy to visit family, I told him to bring along a penlight. I explained to him how a mid-Atlantic water landing would be an incredibly shocking and discombobulating experience, so when his plane had crashed in the ocean and filled with water, he should use the penlight to watch for bubbles, and this way he would always know what direction was up. He did not make that flight. He drank himself silly at the airport and was denied boarding. Now, with Flight 90, most victims had died from a combination of impact injuries and entrapment, which led to drowning after their cold water incapacitation. Your survival may have a lot to do with how you in particular handled your cold water shock response. Well, that and surviving the initial impact. So imagine this, your aircraft crashes, the cabin fills with water, then it rolls or sinks. And as the windows are covered, visibility drops to pretty much zero and loose objects are floating everywhere. Your biggest concern is going to be hypothermia, but your first job is going to be getting out and then staying afloat. When you get onto a plane, know your exits, So count the rows between you and the nearest exits when you first get on. And believe it or not, a tighter seatbelt works better than a loose one. And before you start scratching out your last will and testament, put on your life vest. But do not inflate it while you're still inside the aircraft. It's a flotation device. It could pin you against the ceiling and completely ruin your escape. So finish up that will and assume the brace position. Which I am not even going to describe to you, because you should really be listening to the flight crew and all of their safety instructions before you took off in the first place. But okay, so now that you've crashed, it would be incredibly useful if you remained conscious. So what I want you to do is check yourself to make sure you're not upside down before you unbuckle, because some people don't. Surviving a crash can be extremely confusing. Now, give your head a shake and make sure that you remember where the nearest exit was. Or maybe you get lucky and the fuselage just ripped open on impact. Either way, once you're outside, now is the time to blow that life vest. The first minute in the water is probably the most dangerous. Cold water causes the victim unexpected hyperventilation and that involuntary gasp reflex we talked about, and of course, panic. So many people drown from the gasp reflex that focusing on your breathing is the best way to spend your first minutes in the water. If you're close enough to anything, like a boat or a dock, anything stable, go for it. Otherwise... We're stuck here, so save your strength. Strenuous swimming will not warm you up. It'll only rob your body of more heat and quicken your departure into God's waiting room. More often than not, you're at the mercy of rescue coming to you. So get onto anything that floats, like a wing section or floating wreckage. Even getting part of your body out of the water can improve your chance of survival. For the rest of us, We're getting into the help position. Remember the heat escape lessening position? It's not a great acronym. The steps are, you pull your knees to your chest, and then wrap your arms around your torso, and keep your legs together, and of course, don't drown. They actually say to keep your head above water, but like I said, it's not a great acronym. And now it's a waiting game while you await rescue while your nipples cut into your knees. It might not seem like a particularly glamorous or reassuring position to find yourself in, but at least you survived the first thing trying to kill you. They faced a double punch. The contaminated wings were producing too little lift while the engines were producing too little thrust. Basically, the 737 was behaving like a much heavier plane, and long story short, they ended up in the Potomac. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the cause of the disaster was a combo of the flight crew's failure to use engine anti-ice, their decision to take off with snow and ice on the wings, the limited experience of their flight crew in winter, and the captain's failure to reject the takeoff during the early stages in spite of his co-pilot pointing out a lot of bad juju in the engine readings. In a nutshell, pilot error. Now, saying that, there could have been onboard mechanisms to better warn pilots about the buildup of ice, or the airport could have done a better job of scheduling checks and cleanings, but That's just water under the bridge, if you'll forgive that. They would go on to issue recommendations to the FAA around blocked-up engine instruments, the finer points of de-icing fluids, and ground operations in winter conditions. Pettit had expressed his concerns repeatedly, but because he didn't quite give it the emotional gravitas needed to get Captain Wheaton on side, they kind of blamed him. saying Captain Wheaton interpreted what he was saying as less urgent than it actually was intended and continued the liftoff. In the wake of this disaster, the airline industry underwent a cultural shift in how flight crews behaved in the cabin. To this point in time, Daddy knew best, and the captain was not to be questioned, so the new idea was that questioning the captain is not only acceptable, but expected when safety is in question. Some airlines would end up going so far as to say, if safety is at stake, subdue the captain and assume control. The rescue operations on the Potomac changed helicopter rescue procedures around the world. The crew aboard Eagle One had performed incredibly in conditions that most pilots would have considered unflyable. The helicopter itself has been preserved at the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington as a historic artifact. The crash became one of the most closely observed aviation disasters in history. And what stayed with me since childhood about this disaster wasn't the details of the disaster itself, it was the incredible and extraordinary bravery of ordinary people. Actually, when I really think about it, it was Nikki Felch's face that did it. Roger Olean and Lenny Skutnik had no reason to put themselves out to the degree that they did, and they did it anyways. Together with the extraordinary flying of the U.S. Park Police helicopter crew and the selflessness of Arlen D. Williams Jr., this incredible national tragedy became something remembered, yes, for the catastrophe, but more for the incredible acts of human courage. It's one thing to rescue someone selflessly, and Priscilla Tirado almost certainly would have drowned before the helicopter could make another attempt if Lenny Skutnik hadn't done what he did. And Lenny Skutnik would learn that it's one thing to rescue someone selflessly, it's quite another to do it on live television. CNN had just introduced what became known as the 24-hour news cycle, and they were prepared to play footage of survivors struggling in the water around the clock, or at least until something equally splashy happened. Lenny became an immediate national figure, and two weeks later, he was introduced to the nation by President Ronald Reagan on his very first State of the Union address. He introduced him as an example of ordinary Americans performing extraordinary acts of courage. But after that, he just returned to normal life, pushing papers for the Congressional Budget Office, insisting whenever asked that he wasn't a hero, and just trying to play everything down. Of course, doesn't matter what he wants. To this day, him getting chatted up by Reagan on TV set the precedent for future presidents using a bit of their State of the Nation address to honor special guests. And behind the scenes, those people are known as Skutniks. Then comes the matter of Arlen D. Williams Jr. His family were awarded a posthumous Coast Guards Gold Lifesaving Medal and... The 14th Street Bridge was renamed in his honor. In a Time magazine article on him, it said, If the man in the water gave a lifeline to people gasping for survival, he was likewise giving a lifeline to those who observed him. His actions became one of the most celebrated and cherished examples of civilian heroism in modern American history. Flight attendant Kelly Duncan was the only crew member that survived. She returned to flying only a few months after the accident, but eventually she left the field. She would teach preschool and go on to start her own family. Of the 79 people aboard, investigators believed that 19 survived the initial impact, but only six managed to escape the sinking aircraft. The remaining survivors drowned before they could escape. Now, it's possible you've been thinking this whole time, isn't there where there was some kind of helicopter accident not that long ago? Yes, you are thinking of the January 2025 mid-air collision that sent American Eagle Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter into each other after the helicopter futzed its way into the airspace. Well, that day saw 67 souls fall into the Potomac River. And this accident also happened about half a mile from the runway and about 300 feet off the ground. a car ride between the two sites would only take a few minutes. And as dramatic and recent as it was, it's not going to hold the public's memory and attention the way our story today will. Air Florida Flight 90 is remembered as the deadliest air crash in the history of the Washington National Airport, but also one of the most famous weather-related airline crashes in U.S. history. It is less remembered for its effects on reshaping procedures around winter safety than it is for being one of the most widely televised rescue operations of all time, which I'm thinking may have actually held that record until 9-11. Air Florida Flight 90 is not among the deadliest American airline disasters, but the Air Florida Potomac River disaster of 1982... lives near the top of that list. And, as a record of note, it may also be one of the best-known stories of civilian heroism that we have ever described in the history of the show. Believe it or not, I did the math. and apparently, ice would only need to be 50 inches thick to hold the weight of a fully loaded 737, provided it's not moving, not arriving at 200 miles per hour. And also, it occurs to me that what they met that day was not 50 inches thick. It's kind of weird doing two separate disasters on the same river, but here we are. The USS Princeton explosion of 1844 episode with the cannon and everything did represent the greatest loss of American political life in the history of the country. And right up until 1982, every American citizen was all, get your hat off, boy, they're talking about the Princeton. But because the Flight 90 disaster was recorded in real time by reporters on television... Every single American born since 1982 is all, what's a cannon? And I know I spoke about this disaster in a passing earlier episode. I was nine years old, and I came to a kind of an epiphany about this story. I was nine years old, and I was sitting in my parents' basement watching TV, and it was the news, and this was all happening. And it came to the point where I remember watching Priscilla Tirado's half-panicked, half-dead-looking face slipping beneath the water. And maybe that was a bit much for a kid as young as I was, but it's like Mr. Rogers said about when you see something bad happen like this, you'll feel better if you watch for the rescuers and all the people who want to help. And ultimately, Lenny Skutnik's swim made what I think of as a lifelong impression, and it still hasn't faded with time. In fact, I have no tattoos. I can never really arrive at anything that I would just want on me forever. And now I'm wondering if I could actually get Lenny Skutnik swimming somewhere on me. I'll have to think about that. Anyways, at the time when I first brought it up, I mentioned that there's a good chance that this story that I just told you today is in fact the reason that I do this show. It cemented that idea in my head that good can come from bad. So I tell terrible tales, but I also try to be helpful and make people realize they're never really truly alone. And on that happy note, I truly appreciate the way so many of you saw a guy struggling and put on your headphones and safety glasses to help him out. As the rest of you may have heard, Doomsday and Nacho Shark have created the world's most childish-sounding but adult-oriented game that marries the strategy of poker and go fish, but with pee, poo, and fart cards. It's currently over-performing on Kickstarter, and we could not be happier. But the greater it grows, the shorter these announcements get, so it's win-win. If you ever wanted to help out the show and have a buttload of fun while doing it, head on over to Kickstarter and search for Pee Pee Poo Poo, or just look for a link on our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram pages. You can also look for info at patreon.com slash funeralkazoo. As much as I love your support there as well, beggars can't be choosy, so the only support I'm asking for at the moment is sharing the word of our fundraiser for our crazy game. It is at this time I would like to offer my quick and heartfelt shoutout to B. Price, BP, Rachel Hervé, Tara Kyle, Rachel Pettigrew-Burger, Jessica McCowan, and I'm saying hey to Silky Socks. I see you out there. I say thank you to you all, and to all my Patreons for helping support me on this show. Older episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please leave us a review, and tell your friends. You thought I was gonna say about Pee Pee Poo Poo. Well, thanks for the reminder. But as much as I would love to mug you all for myself, I always also ask, if you could spare the money and had to choose, to consider making a donation to Global Medic. Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They are often the first and sometimes only team to get critical interventions to people in life-threatening situations, and to date, they have helped over 6 million people across 89 different countries. You can learn more and donate at globalmedic.ca. On the next episode... You know, we have done just about every form of disaster there is. So, for the next episode, we're going to do something a little bit different. Our very first legal disaster-sode. You mean, like, a court case? Well, yes, but this one has a corpse in it. It's the Cadaver Synod Legal Disaster of 897 A.D. We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off. And thanks for listening.