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Plane Crash Diaries

Plane Crash Diaries

Di: Desmond Latham
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I'm a pilot obsessed with flying and all things aviation. This podcast series covers more than a century of commercial aviation and how its shaped the world. Aviation is now safer than its ever been, but it took one hundred years of learning and often through accidents and incidents to reduce the risk of flying.All rights reserved Scienza
Episodi
  • Episode 45 - The Pitot-Tube Loving Mud-Dauber Wasp and Birgenair Flight 301

    Episode 45 - The Pitot-Tube Loving Mud-Dauber Wasp and Birgenair Flight 301
    Aug 14 2026
    . This is episode 45 – the Pitot-Tube Loving Mud-Dauber Wasp and Birgenair Flight 301, an episode that follows an email from one of my listeners, Dr Athayde Tonhasca. HE is a Brazilian entomologist working for Scottish Heritage in the United Kingdom. He’s going to help me tell the story of Berginair Flight 301 which crashed in February 1996. Wasps are fascinating creatures, many are solitary and their nest building skills are legendary. This episode is all about the dangers of these remarkable creatures and how they’ve affected global aviation. Birgenair Flight 301 was a chartered flight by Turkish-managed Birgenair partner Alas Nacionales from Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic to Frankfurt in Germany. It was on a two stop route, first in the Canadian town of Gander, followed by a second across the Atlantic in Berlin, Germany. The aircraft was a 12-year-old Boeing 757-225, registered as TC-GEN, which had been stationed at Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic for 25 days. The flight was originally scheduled to be flown with a Boeing 767, but maintenance problems on the original 767 prevented its use, so just 2 ½ hours before Flight 301 was due to take off, TC-GEN - the Boeing 757 was substituted, and a new crew was assigned. The Boeing took off at 23:42 local on 6th February 1996 for the first leg of the flight, heading north easterly out over the Atlantic. It was a black hole situation, completely dark, no clear sight of the horizon. This was going to compound the challenges facing the pilots. At 23:47 AST, the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) sounded - eight seconds later the plane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean at a speed of 220 knots. All 189 occupants were killed, and the Boeing was destroyed on impact. Search and Rescue teams were mobilised. The Dominican Republic General Directorate of Civil Aviation investigated the accident and quickly came to the conclusion that the pitot tube was behind the catastrophe. They also concluded that the probable cause of the obstruction was likely to have been mud from a small insect that built a nest inside the pitot tube during the three weeks it was on the ground in Puerto Plata. Pilots and operators knew about that risk.
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    23 min
  • Episode 44 - The Curious Case of Captain Button and the Pink Porn Kamikaze Pilot

    Episode 44 - The Curious Case of Captain Button and the Pink Porn Kamikaze Pilot
    May 1 2026
    Welcome back to Plane Crash Diaries with me, your host and pilot, Des Latham. Episode 44 and we’re exploring more bizarre stories of pilot suicide with the tragedy of A10 Captain Craig Button and the Kamikaze Pink Porn Pilot, Mitsuyatsu Maeno. A listener called Clifford who’s a SouthWest Airlines pilot suggested the topic for this episode and it’s taken me a year to get around to it – the curious case of Captain Craig Button. The incident has been called one of the most puzzling in US Air Force history. We’ll also hear about an off the wall weird example of pilot suicide in the second half, Japanese porn actor and pilot Mitsuyasu Maeno who dressed up in Kamikazi gear than tried to kill a Yakuza crime boss with a loaded Piper Cherokee. I decided to look at these two in particular because of how cosmology, religion, and extremism can hide in plain sight in someone who may be sitting next to you on the flight deck. Neither were examples of commercial aviation-linked suicides, but they are a warning to all of us to keep an eye out for folks who may harbour dark secrets. Let’s start It on April 2nd, 1997. Captain Craig Button was leading a three plane A-10 Thunderbolt Warthog formation conducting a live-weapons training mission from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. Button inexplicably broke formation. He flew 800 miles off course, and zigzagged across Arizona and Colorado the plane obviously being handled in a controlled fashion, maneuvering through bad weather, and in places, changing altitude. Button was tracked by radar, until he flew into Gold Dust Peak near Vail in Colorado, hitting the mountain just 100 feet below the summit. Apart from the mystery of what caused the accident, there was also a small matter of four 500 pound MK82 bombs which were never found despite extensive searches. It appeared he dropped them over the desert somewhere, like trees falling in a forest, unseen but as you’ll hear in a minute, not unheard. What caused this highly respected and skilled instructor to apparently commit suicide, which is what the Air Force concluded had happened. Unrequited love perhaps? Confusion over his role as a fighter pilot? The missing motive and missing ordnance were equally baffling. A search and rescue began immediately. The wreckage was finally spotted on 20 April 1997 by a Colorado Army National Guard helicopter crew, 18 days after Button went missing,on the northwest face of Gold Dust Peak at about 13,200 feet. Because the crash took place at such a high elevation during spring, most of the bits were buried under deep snow. Like the mysterious flight MH370, the pilot here had picked a spot on earth that was extremely difficult to access. Let’s move onto the second example of the pilot suicide took place On March 23, 1976. This involved love of a very different kind. Japanese porn actor and pilot Mitsuyasu Maeno staged a kamikaze-style attack, crashing a Piper PA-28 Cherokee into the Tokyo home of right-wing figure Yoshio Kodama. Maeno was dressed in a World War II Kamikazi pilot uniform and died on impact. He was the only fatality. The attack was motivated by rage over what was called the Lockheed bribery scandal. Yoshio Kodama was a notorious political fixer, Yakuza-connected gangster, and key figure in corrupt business practices..
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    18 min
  • Episode 43 - Lithium on Board: UPS Flight 6 and the Battery Threat Airlines Fear Most

    Episode 43 - Lithium on Board: UPS Flight 6 and the Battery Threat Airlines Fear Most
    Feb 9 2026
    This is episode 43, and I thought instead of taking a closer look at the plethora of pilot suicides, another topic is heating up fast. The dangers of lithium-based batteries, lithium polymers, now playing probably on your wrist theatre, or perhaps in your hand, or gauging your heartbeat, monitoring the baby, inside your laptop, powering your GPS and your vaping device. They’re everywhere. Lithium has revolutionised our lives – and simultaneously poses a risk to aviation. The number of incidents of recharging battery packs and phones overheating is growing by the week. I am certain that the next major airline fire is going to be caused by a battery burn. And I’m not alone in this concern, IATA has just published data which revealed that 83% of pax carry a phone, 60% a laptop and 44% a power bank. So what you say. It’s what they found about what pax know about that dangers that’s of concern. While 93% of travelers consider themselves knowledgeable on the rules for carrying lithium-powered devices, half of those surveyed or 50% incorrectly believe it’s OK to pack small lithium-powered devices in checked luggage, 45% incorrectly believe it’s OK to pack power banks in checked luggage and 33% incorrectly believe that there are no power limits on power banks or spare batteries. Most spare lithium-ion batteries and power banks are limited to 100 Wh without special approval. This covers standard phones, tablets, and most consumer power banks while batteries between 101 Wh and 160 Wh - such as larger laptop batteries, professional camera/video batteries, or massive power banks are liimited to two spare batteries per person and require airline approval. Batteries over 160 Wh are banned in either carry-on or checked baggage, with limited exceptions only for certain mobility aids like wheelchairs. Airlines are collecting data through the Thermal Runaway Incident Program and we now know that across the world, an average of two flights a week have reported thermal runaways and one in five of these events led to a diverted landing. Crucially, we also discovered that two out of five passengers are packing rechargeable batteries in checked luggage. That is tantamount to playing Russian roulette. Back during these days, authorities underestimated the dangers – that was until the terrible UPS Airlines Flight 6 disaster of 2010. UPS Flight six was a scheduled international cargo flight operated by the parcel service which departed Dubai on September 3, 2010 heading to Cologne in Germany.
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    28 min
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