Air Crash Investigations, season 3 episode 2
Japan Air 123, August 12 1985, is my third-favorite plane crash. Big plane, big mountain, near-unanimous casualties (520 out of 524, not bad). It nearly ruined JAL and, weeks after the crash of Air India 182, fed a micropanic about the safety of the world’s most famous aircraft. The CVR transcript is one of the chilliest ever (“Recover it.”—“It does not recover.”) The crew, which may or may not have been suffering from hypoxia, fought full hydraulic failure for 40 minutes, absurdly long by the usual standards, during which time everyone on board knew what was coming. I can’t decide if it probably felt like 40 seconds, or 400,000 years.
