Air Disasters
Unlocking Disaster
S18 E7:
February 24, 1989. United Airlines Flight 811 takes off from Honolulu International Airport en route to Auckland, New Zealand. Just a hundred miles into the flight, a cargo door malfunction leads to an explosive decompression that rips a huge whole in the plane, taking out five rows of seats and nine passengers. We revisit this headline-grabbing mid-air crisis and the emergency landing that followed, then track the investigations—by both the NTSB and one of the victim’s families—that exposed a disturbing truth within the aviation industry.