Special — Multiple incidents: Aircraft fatally out of balance from misloaded or unsecured cargo — a risk that's entirely preventable, yet keeps recurring.

Perilous Payload

Stephen Bogaert

Runway in Sight

Fuel Trouble

Special — Multiple incidents: Three crashes that made front-page news around the world, and how intense media pressure shaped the investigations that followed.

Headline News

Special — Multiple incidents, including LAPA Flight 3142, American Airlines Flight 587, and Colgan Air Flight 3407: Even highly trained crews can fall prey to the most basic mistakes — with devastating results.

Rookie Errors

Special — Multiple incidents: Mid-air and on-course collisions, and the systems built to keep aircraft — and vessels — safely apart.

Collision Course

Special — Multiple incidents: When an aircraft loses all engine power, training and airmanship become the last line of defense.

Engines Out

Special — Multiple incidents: Flights brought down not by their machinery but by the fuel meant to keep them flying — from mismanagement to mechanical failure.

Special — Multiple incidents: Crashes that happened with the airport already in view, when the final moments of flight proved the most dangerous.

Special — Multiple incidents: Cockpits overwhelmed by conflicting information, where confusion in critical seconds turned recoverable situations into disasters.

Deadly Confusion

Special — Multiple incidents: Flights that stopped responding to the outside world, and the race to understand what was happening on board.

Radio Silence

Special — Multiple incidents: Hidden weaknesses engineered into aircraft long before takeoff, and the crashes that finally exposed them.

Design Flaws

Special — Multiple incidents: Crews forced to make split-second decisions under extreme pressure — some heroic, some catastrophic.

Heat of the Moment

Special — Multiple incidents: When the instruments pilots depend on begin feeding them lies, crews must decide what — and whether — to believe.

Instrument Confusion

Special — Multiple incidents: Crashes that claimed prominent figures, and the extraordinary scrutiny those investigations drew.

VIP on Board

Special — Multiple incidents: Disasters that began on the ground, when security measures meant to protect passengers failed.

Lapse in Security

Special — Multiple incidents: Aircraft brought down by terrain, and the technology developed to keep crews from flying into mountains they never saw.

Mountain Impact

Special — Multiple incidents: Passengers and crew who lived through the unthinkable, and what their stories reveal about surviving a crash.

Survivors

Special — Multiple incidents: Disasters that reached beyond the aircraft, when falling planes and debris brought tragedy to those below.

Death from Above

Special — Multiple incidents: Crews who faced impossible circumstances and, through skill and nerve, gave their passengers a fighting chance.

Courage in the Cockpit

Special — Multiple incidents: Small errors in hangars and workshops that grew into catastrophes at altitude.

Maintenance Mistakes

Special — Multiple incidents: The most critical seconds of any flight — and the crashes that happened before aircraft ever truly left the ground.

Take Off Tragedies

Special — Multiple incidents: Darkness strips pilots of the horizon and hides danger — these crashes show how quickly night flying can turn deadly.

Dead of Night

Special — Multiple incidents: Engines that failed catastrophically — or tore away entirely — and the crews left to fly what remained.

Engine Gone

Special — Multiple incidents: Decisions made in cockpits and operations rooms that sealed a flight's fate long before the moment of impact.

Lethal Choices

Special — Multiple incidents: The world's most demanding airports, where terrain, weather, and short pavement leave crews little margin for error.

Risky Runways

Special — Multiple incidents: Approaches and touchdowns that unraveled in the final seconds, when nearly home proved not close enough.

Landings Gone Wrong

Special — Multiple incidents: Ice — nearly invisible and ruthlessly effective — and the flights it brought down before its dangers were fully understood.

Frozen Wings

Special — Multiple incidents: Disasters that happened entirely on the ground, when two aircraft ended up on the same strip of pavement.

Runway Collisions

Special — Multiple incidents: When teamwork in the cockpit collapses — through conflict, hierarchy, or silence — the aircraft pays the price.

Cockpit Breakdown

Special — Multiple incidents: Flights that ended in the water, from controlled ditchings to high-speed impacts, and what determined who survived.

Splash Down

Special — Multiple incidents: Aviation at the edge of the map, where cold, isolation, and unforgiving conditions magnify every mistake.

Northern Extremes

Catastrophic incidents in aviation history are meticulously reenacted, providing insight into what went wrong and if the crashes and near-disasters could have been prevented. Accounts from survivors combine with cockpit recordings and computer images to weave the gripping tales, and expert testimony reveals the hows and whys behind the events, some of which have resulted in important changes to aviation safety and regulations.

Perilous Payload

Seasons25

Season 20 Episodes30

Cast1

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Episode Summary