 So my new album, Ambient Archive, number one, is now out on Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes and anywhere else you get your music from. The album is a collection of the ambient music from the Plainly Difficult Channel. To celebrate the release, I'm giving away five CD copies shipped to anywhere in the world. To enter, you have to either be one of my Instagram followers, second YouTube channel subscribers, Patreon members, YouTube members or Bandcamp follower. There'll be five copies, so one will go to each of those. Right without further ado, let's get on with this week's Disaster video. It is May 1996 and an aircraft had just crashed into the Everglades, Florida. The plane is operated by Valuejet, a company quickly becoming notorious for poor safety. The disaster would ruin the company's reputation and quickly became a prime example of what is known as a system accident. Where an unanticipated interaction of multiple failures can result in disaster. I'll chat a bit about this more later on in the video, but it always boils down to improper training and misunderstanding of how dangerous an action can actually be. Today, we'll be looking at the tragic but avoidable Valuejet 592 crash. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. Cheap, but at a cost. Reducing the cost of airline tickets has always been a difficult task in the complex world of air travel. You see, planes aren't cheap and they drink a lot of pricey fuel. On top of that, qualified staff cost a penny or two and maintenance can be a bit of a financial drag. Ultra low cost airlines became popular in the late 1960s, initially targeting the Atlantic routes. A number of startup airlines would drastically undercut more established carriers. Aggressive cost cutting enabled lower fares offerings. This was done in a number of ways, such as hiring newly qualified crew and buying second-hand aircraft. Usually, a ticket price was just for a seat on the plane. All extras would be chargeable on top. These airlines are great for short tops. I, for one, have experienced the joys of Ryanair from London to Ireland West Airport. Although, the times I've been there, I could have sworn that we always called it Knock Airport. Anywho. So in the US, cheap domestic flights are pretty popular. Shorter flights mean for companies quicker turnaround times and thus more bang for your buck out of the planes. And one such carrier created to tap into that low cost market was Valuejet. The company was founded in 1992 and started operations in October 1993, initially flying from Atlanta to Orlando, Jacksonville and Tampa. All of this with just one second-hand aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9. The company was headed by some very experienced industry managers and with them at the helm Valuejet would expand its fleet to 15 planes pretty quickly and would become one of the fastest growing players in the low-cost market. The airline went public in June 1994. High airfares. Low fares every day. Everywhere we fly. It would seem the company was taking the industry by storm. Customers loved cheap prices and the shareholders were seeing some profit. But this did come at a cost. The airline's average fleet age was 26 years, the oldest in the United States. This was because buying second-hand aircraft was much cheaper than buying new, especially when purchasing individual units. The cost-cutting didn't end there. The company didn't own any hangers and it subcontracted out its maintenance to the lowest bidder. Even in some cases, with the winning companies then subcontracting the work out to even smaller firms. Financial incentives, shall we say, were handed down to mechanics if they failed to meet targets. Basically, yeah, they didn't pay them. Obviously, this would end up in multiple corners being cut. Something you don't want in aircraft maintenance. It's not like skipping a tyre rotation on your car. Pilots were only paid for completed journeys and cabin crew got only the most basic of training. Again, saving money, but at the costs of effective safety, decision-making and passenger comfort. Between 1993 and 1996, Valujet had 129 emergency landings. This poor record resulted in the company's Department of Defense contract bid being refused on grounds of poor quality assurance. The Federal Aviation Authority weren't happy either, ordering the company to seek approval before increasing its fleet in February 1996. Now, talk about 1996, it would be a very bad year for the airline with the company's highest profile disaster. Flight 592 So, Flight 592 was a regular service run by Valujet between Miami and Atlanta. This would be no different on the 11th of May 1996. Today, the run will be completed by DC-9 with a tail number, November 904 Victor Juliet. She was 27 years old and had been sold back to her manufacturer in 1992, after which had been bought up by Valujet in 1993. She had had a number of incidents in her short service life with Valujet, including two aborted take-offs and eight emergency landings. But today, will clearly be the worst flight for the aircraft yet. In command of Valujet, 592 is captain Candy Kubik and first officer Richard Hazen. Both pilots are very experienced with many thousands of flight hours of time under their belts. 592 is set to take off at 1pm, but she has been delayed. The preceding flight, 591, flown by the same aircraft and crew, had been late leaving Atlanta due to a last-minute urgent repair. For her return flight, the aircraft was now running late. Upon arriving at Miami, she was loaded up with mail, luggage, passengers and company-owned material. This material was made up of spare aircraft parts, but also four boxes labelled as oxygen canisters empty. The shipping document was shown to the first officer and the cargo was allowed to be loaded. You see, the oxygen canisters were actually chemical oxygen generators and they weren't empty. They were used in the event of an emergency, giving an oxygen supply for passengers. Although potentially life-saving in the event of a disaster, they contain explosive material, but they have a shelf life and thus need to be disposed of properly when life expired. The explosive material is to generate the oxygen quickly. The reaction of generators, well, generators exothermic. When you from the factory, these generators have a retaining pin and safety cap, which protects the percussion cap, which is used to start the generator off. During installation into an aircraft, these are removed. This leaves a problem when the oxygen generators are out of date and they have to be removed from the aircraft and shipped for disposal, because by now the safety pin and cap has probably long since been discarded. This leaves an issue. How do you ship this potentially explosive device? Well, how about a bit of duct tape? That was the plan for ValueJet's subcontractor SaberTech, who had been tasked with refitting three second-hand MD-80s. The old oxygen generators were placed in boxes with bubble wrap and then placed in an area for shipment back to ValueJet's headquarters in Atlanta. At some point, the potentially deadly contents were misunderstood and when asked to create shipping labels, a clerk was instructed to write oxy canisters empty on them, after which they found their way onto Flight 592. As the ValueJet loading crew had thought that the oxygen generators were just empty safe canisters. So I should say that the DC-9 didn't have fire detection equipment in its hold. Instead relying on an airtight seal, that would in theory stop any fire spreading due to lack of oxygen. Well, you don't need to be mystic Meg to figure out what happens next. Sorry for this little bit of a diversion, I mean I did have to add a little bit of extra context. Anyway, by just after 2pm, Flight 592 was, albeit running late, nearly ready to depart. On board are 110 people, which includes passengers and crew. The aircraft pushed off from G2 gate and a few minutes later, at 2.04pm, began to take off from runway 9. As the aircraft began its ascent, smoke began to permeate its way into the passenger cabin. This was about 10 minutes after 2pm. Around the same time, the pilots heard a loud bang on their headphones. Passengers started to shout out, fire, fire, fire. Investigators would later hear on the cockpit voice recorder shouts from the passenger cabin, meaning the pilot's compartment door had been open, which also meant that toxic smoke from the fire could make its way in. The pilots requested a return to Miami airport and in preparation, Flight 592 started turning towards the left. Shortly after at 2.12pm, Flight 592 disappeared off the radar. Witnesses on the ground saw the DC-9 bank sharply roll onto its side and nose dive into the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area in the Everglades, at a speed estimated of over 500 miles an hour. No one would survive the impact. Due to the crash being witnessed, 911 calls came in pretty quickly. And this, coupled with air traffic control reporting the loss of radar, search and rescue efforts began almost straight away. Although dispatched quickly, emergency workers found reaching the crash site very difficult due to the boggy mass land. It was pretty clear that no one had survived the crash, but the wreckage would still need to be recovered. The aftermath. Friends of this channel, the NTSB would be the ones to launch the investigation into Flight 592. Usually with these things, the onboard cockpit voice recorder and data recorders would be the thing to take priority for recovery first. And in the Everglades, this was no different. They were found and the exterior of the CVR showed evidence of structural damage. The tape was recoverable. As too was the data recorder, even though this was also severely damaged. It would help lay the groundwork of the final minutes of Flight 592. This would be vital. However, the wreckage would also be a very important part of the NTSB's investigation. The wreckage for the most part would be removed from the crash site by hand and reconstructed in a hangar. Fire damage was found. It was established that the source was not from any kind of electrical issue and this led investigators to try and find out how the fire had started aboard. Eventually, after interviews with Saberstaff and Valuejet's ground crew, the cargo over the oxygen canisters was discovered. It was also discovered that the state of the packaging was less than ideal. The NTSB theorized that one of the generators, which had been improperly secured against ignition, was triggered during the flight 592's taxiing and bumping along the tarmac. The fire now began to spread. It was found during experiments that nearby items to the generators could reach temperatures of 260 degrees centigrade, which in turn was set off more of the canisters. The airtight seal of the cabin was useless in a fire caused by an oxygen generator, as it provided plenty of O2 for the fire to be self-sufficient. The fire burnt through the aircraft's control cables that ran to the rear, which resulted in the pilot's apparent lack of control, which caused them to fly over 500 miles an hour into the ground. The DC-9 had no fire alarms in the hold due to the airtight nature of its design. This left the crew with no indication of the disaster as unfolding behind beneath them. Well, until it was too late at least. The NTSB would lay the blame squarely at Valuejet for not managing its subcontract of Sabertech. The FAA also came under criticism for not mandating smoke detection and fire suppression systems in cargo holds, as recommended in 1988 after a similar incident. Now, the disaster is a prime example of a system accident, in which multiple complex systems interface with one another. This disaster was kind of unpredictable, as it was a series of misunderstandings and miscalculations of the risks associated with transporting essentially many bombs. Now, Valuejet would take a massive reputational hit after Flight 592. Hardly much of a surprise. Especially after the damning NTSB report came out 15 months after the crash. Valuejet was grounded by the FAA on June 16, 1996, but was allowed to resume flying again on the 30th of September the same year. The company was not criminally charged, which didn't make many very happy, especially with the families of the victims, as it's not like the company wasn't known for being unsafe and rubbish. The company wouldn't really recover, eventually merging with AirTran Airways, but although being the buyer of the latter airline, Valuejet would actually trade under the AirTran name, until the company was merged into Southwest Airlines in 2014. So what happened with SaberTech? Well, their maintenance supervisor, Daniel Gonzalez, and two mechanics were charged with conspiracy and making false statements. Two of the three workers were acquitted, however one of the men went on the run and was found guilty in absentia. The company also had to stump up $2 million in fines and pay $9 million in restitution. This is a plain default production. All videos on the channel created commons at Tuition ShareLite licensed. Plain default videos are produced by me, John, in the currently sunny corner of southern London, UK. I have a second YouTube channel, Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it, Instagram, as well as Patreon and YouTube members who support this channel financially and I'd like to thank you very much. So all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please.