3 Signs You Could Be Seconds From Disaster!
From time to time, I like to watch National Geographic’s docuseries, Seconds From Disaster , especially the episodes covering airplane crash investigations. As the series illustrates, man-made disasters often stem from seemingly minor and easily overlooked errors. Most often, they’re caused by a chain reaction of such errors, any of which could’ve been avoided. Once there was a manufacturing defect in a jet engine’s turbofan. Over the years, and after 40,000 hours in the sky, this defect developed a stress fracture invisible to the human eye. Flight after flight, this hairline fracture grew, but maintenance crews never noticed. Finally, one summer day in 1989 at 37,000 feet above the earth, the fan ripped apart and shattered. Like rockets, these shards of titanium tore through the engine and the tailfin of the aircraft, severing the hydraulic lines and rendering the aircraft nearly uncontrollable. As the plane lurched toward the earth, the pilots summoned every ounce of flying sk...