Pod Insights SNAFU with Ed Helms Air Transat Flight 236: The Azores Glider That Ran Dry (with Adam Scott) About this episode Adam Scott is fearless. Ed and Adam explore a high-flying SNAFU that showcased just how valiant pilots must be when the engines run dry...literally. This is the tale of the Azores Glider, a complimentary mid-flight snack of FEAR at 30,000 feet.
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Transcript 10,313 words · 11 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 So vibrations from the engine power caused an immense amount of chafing to occur. I know what that's like, let me tell you.
0:09 Speaker 01 Oh, man.
0:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, you hit middle age, the chafing just goes through the roof.
0:15 Speaker 00 Eventually, this created a three-inch crack. I know you know what that's like.
0:20 Speaker 01 One hundred percent. The three-inch crack, you don't have to tell me.
0:27 Speaker 00 You have a three-inch crack?
0:29 Speaker 01 I do.
0:29 Speaker 00 You have a tiny, very cute, tiny little butt with a three-inch crack. I've always...
0:34 Speaker 01 Three inches.
0:35 Speaker 00 I'm gonna cut all this.
0:36 Speaker 01 It's all you need.
0:37 Speaker 00 It's all you need.
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2:22 Speaker 00 Hey, I'm Ed Helms and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups, or rather, a show in which I journey with my wonderful guests through a distinct tale of human hubris and/or buffoonery from the past, examining what these stories say about us as human beings. Today, we'll be flying high above the Atlantic Ocean with the harrowing tale of Air Transat Flight 236, and we'll be joined by an award-winning actor. You know him as the lovable protagonist of such hit shows as Parks and Recreation, Party Down, and of course Severance, and the not-quite-so-lovable antagonist, though insanely hilarious
3:04 Speaker 00 antagonist, of Step Brothers. He was recently announced as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2025, and he may just be the world's biggest R.E.M. fan. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Adam Scott. Hello, Adam. So glad you're here.
3:20 Speaker 01 Ed, thank you for having me. And thank you for that introduction. I like all... Right when you said the R.E.M. thing, I realized behind me is a photo of R.E.M. up on my wall, which is...
3:34 Speaker 00 You're really playing the part.
3:35 Speaker 01 Good lord. I'm so excited to be here.
3:39 Speaker 00 Well, right on. I'm glad to have you. Remind me the podcast that you do about R.E.M.?
3:44 Speaker 01 We, Scott, yeah, Scott Aukerman and I had a podcast called Are You Talking R.E.M. Re Me? That was morphed from the original podcast, which was You Talking U2 to Me, and so we kind of went from band to band for a while. But yeah, R.E.M. was a big deal for me as I was growing up, and this still is.
4:09 Speaker 00 Where did you grow up?
4:10 Speaker 01 I grew up in Santa Cruz, California, up in the Bay Area.
4:13 Speaker 00 Yeah, up in the redwoods.
4:15 Speaker 01 Up in the redwoods.
4:16 Speaker 00 Okay, this is not to try to like outcool you a little bit, because honestly, Santa Cruz is like the coolest place to grow up. But I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, right down the road from Athens, Georgia, when I was a little kid. The the older kids that were like driving me to school in carpools. Had the R E M bootleg tapes from fraternity parties at.
4:40 Speaker 01 Wow.
4:40 Speaker 00 The University of Georgia. So I was listening to R E M before it was even cool, man.
4:46 Speaker 01 That.
4:46 Speaker 00 I'm O G.
4:47 Speaker 01 That's pretty great. If you could get your hands on those bootlegs now, that would be.
4:53 Speaker 00 You you might pay me $12 for them.
4:56 Speaker 01 That's exactly right. I would I would up it to $14, maybe.
5:00 Speaker 00 You've been doing so much cool work. We're gonna get into this snafu here in a second, but I've known you a very, very long time. I don't even remember.
5:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:06 Speaker 00 When or how we first crossed paths, but I remember just thinking of you always as one of my compatriots in in the comedy space.
5:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:16 Speaker 00 But you've been just absolutely crushing dramatic roles now for years.
5:22 Speaker 01 Thanks.
5:23 Speaker 00 Obviously Severance, but then, of course, Big Little Lies. Before that, you were just totally stealing scenes in that. And I'm curious if that was a sort of conscious migration towards drama, or if if it's just sort of a product of of maturity and growing up. Where did that come from? And do you miss comedy? Or do you have a preference either way?
5:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, thanks for saying all that. First of all, it was really nice. I I think that, yeah, it was a conscious thing, because when Parks and Rec ended in 2014, I believe, I did want to try and, because I always thought, you know, when I was starting out and stuff, I thought of myself as a serious actor. I think we all maybe at one point, or when we were starting, kind of thought of ourselves that way.
6:12 Speaker 00 I never did.
6:13 Speaker 01 Certainly did.
6:13 Speaker 00 I always thought I was an idiot and like, maybe I can, maybe I can make money at this.
6:19 Speaker 01 That's an attribute, because it took me years to realize that I was an idiot and I was maybe better at that. But as Parks and Rec was going on, I was I was lucky to be a part of this this show and the kind of comedy community since like Step Brothers and Party Down and Parks. I really love that the whole kind of. of comedy world, but I also wanted to kind of differentiate a little bit and was finding it challenging to do so. And so when parks ended, yeah, I I made a conscious choice to, you know, really chase big little eyes and go audition and really try to be a part of that.
6:58 Speaker 00 Very cool. It was fantastic. Another little dramatic tidbit from your past was you starred in Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone reboot episode Nightmare at 30,000 Feet, which
7:12 Speaker 01 That's right.
7:12 Speaker 00 is extremely relevant to today. In that one, you're on a plane, listening to a podcast from the future, predicting the flight's disappearance. Such an awesome premise. I won't spoil anything, but but that was fabulous. Today, we are talking about a very real nightmare at 30,000 feet. Air Transat, that is the actual name of, do you know this airline?
7:36 Speaker 01 I can't wait to hear what this is.
7:39 Speaker 00 Okay, so Air Transat is actually a major passenger carrier. It's a Canadian airline, and it still exists. But I think as Americans, it's not on our radar. And it's also, to me, a very awkward name for an airline. It's clearly a, it's an abbreviation for transatlantic.
7:56 Speaker 01 Sure. Transat.
7:58 Speaker 00 Transat. I don't know. Air Transat. It doesn't work for me.
8:02 Speaker 01 They need to rebrand.
8:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:04 Speaker 01 So this is still in existence?
8:07 Speaker 00 It is.
8:08 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. Okay.
8:09 Speaker 00 Do you remember Pan Am Airlines?
8:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:12 Speaker 00 That's a cool abbreviation.
8:14 Speaker 01 So cool.
8:15 Speaker 00 Pan Am. I like, or Trans Am, of course, that's a classic.
8:17 Speaker 01 Oh, Trans Am is the best abbreviation of all time.
8:20 Speaker 00 There it is. But anyway, Air Transat, Flight 236, 306 people were on board when it lost all engine power over the Atlantic.
8:30 Speaker 01 Whoa.
8:31 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:32 Speaker 01 That's a big plane.
8:33 Speaker 00 It's a big plane. Yeah. Before we dive in, Adam Scott. Are you a chill flyer or a nervous flyer? Or how would you characterize your, your flying disposition?
8:44 Speaker 01 I, I kind of go through stages. For a while, I was a very jumpy flyer and had a big, big issue every time I got on a plane. Um, I feel like, have you ever gone through that phase of being?
9:00 Speaker 00 I never have. I mean, I've had.
9:02 Speaker 01 You've always been a pretty chill flyer.
9:04 Speaker 00 I, I, yeah, and I think I grew up flying a bunch. I have had little bouts of claustrophobia at times on planes, but like, that's a, to me, a separate thing.
9:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:12 Speaker 00 Um, the flying hat doesn't bother me.
9:15 Speaker 01 I think that, this was more like in my twenties. I just started thinking, we could just drop out of the sky at any second and I wouldn't know it's coming. Like, it could just happen.
9:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:26 Speaker 01 I'm gonna be on this thing for six hours and at any moment, it could all end.
9:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:32 Speaker 01 But that's just destructive thinking. And eventually I just got used to it and stopped. And also I think having kids and, you know, you have, if, if it gets bumpy, you have to make sure they're not.
9:47 Speaker 00 You gotta be the grown up.
9:48 Speaker 01 100%. And there is a really great Instagram account with airline pilots talking about turbulence and what it actually is, what it means.
9:59 Speaker 00 I like that.
9:59 Speaker 01 What's happening and that there's absolutely no danger in turbulence. Turbulence is what's supposed to happen.
10:06 Speaker 00 All right.
10:06 Speaker 01 Um, and so I just sort of repeat that. We were on a flight recently to Montana and when you're going over mountains, it's always a little bumpy. And it was maybe the bumpiest I'd ever, flight I'd ever been on. And my kids were pretty freaked out, but I had to pretend like I was not freaked out at all and, and I was.
10:25 Speaker 00 Now that you mention it, the, the one time that I, I, or not my, I've been nervous on planes, but like, probably the most nervous I got on a plane, was also in the Rocky Mountains, coming into, uh, Telluride Airport, which is like on a mesa. And, and there's like a cliff face, it, right before the runway. And.
10:45 Speaker 01 Totally.
10:45 Speaker 00 I remember it was so bumpy coming into the runway. And the thing that really threw me is like, I'm, I'm actually fine with like up and down turbulence, but at some point the plane started kind of going like this.
10:58 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
11:00 Speaker 00 The nose of the plane was turning. I was like, wait a minute. Now we're not even pointed at the runway. What is going on?
11:06 Speaker 01 It starts feeling like a ride at uh at Magic Mountain or something when it starts making those other kind of modulations.
11:14 Speaker 00 Exactly. Yeah, like we shouldn't be on, we shouldn't be pivoting.
11:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
11:18 Speaker 00 Up and down, I get, but like pit, no, this is weird.
11:21 Speaker 01 Especially when you're about to land and you start going, you know, you, the wind starts blowing you in a different direction. It's unnerving.
11:28 Speaker 00 That's exactly what it was. Just create, anyway, those side gusts, they get you. Okay, so this, this will either be reassuring or triggering for you and I, I hope it's, I hope it's the, the former. Um, but uh, let's dive right in. So we're going all the way back to August 2001. Do you, where were you in August of 2001? Do you remember?
11:50 Speaker 01 August 2001, I was up in Berkeley, California, um, and doing a production of Romeo and Juliet.
11:57 Speaker 00 Cool.
11:58 Speaker 01 Cal shakes is what they call it. It's an outdoor theater up in Arinda, which is right outside of Berkeley. It's a really beautiful place. Um, yeah, that's what I was doing.
12:06 Speaker 00 That's very, very cool. And
12:08 Speaker 01 Playing Romeo, by the way.
12:09 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, nailing it. Awesome. I love it. I was just, I was in New York City, uh, drifting from voiceover audition to voiceover audition. I think that was, and they, the occasional commercial audition. That was
12:21 Speaker 01 And were you doing?
12:22 Speaker 00 Standup comedy.
12:23 Speaker 01 Okay, standup. Okay.
12:25 Speaker 00 All standup, yeah.
12:26 Speaker 01 Was UCB around yet? Or was that a little early?
12:29 Speaker 00 Right, yes, right around then. Uh, it was sort of emerging. It had, it had landed, I think, yeah, and around 99 is when it really was still a little kind of underground. And then by 2001, it was starting to be a thing. And I, yeah, I was taking classes there.
12:47 Speaker 01 Great.
12:47 Speaker 00 I was definitely doing UCB at that time, now that I think about it.
12:50 Speaker 01 Um, that must've been so fun, that whole time.
12:54 Speaker 00 It was very special. Yeah.
12:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. That just sounds so fun, being in New York at the dawn of UCB and doing standup. That sounds so much more romantic and cool than doing Romeo and Juliet in Northern California to me.
13:08 Speaker 00 Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I, two things, one thing you said is true. It was wonderful to be in New York during that time and I, I cherish those days. But also, there is nothing more romantic and badass than playing Romeo in a product. I mean, that is, you're, be, you're professionally acting. None of it, like at that time, I was like lucky, lucky to get 10 bucks for some dumb corporate gig.
13:34 Speaker 01 They both sound cool and fun.
13:41 Speaker 00 All right, we begin our journey north of the border on August 15th, 2001, at the Toronto Pearson Airport in Canada. Air Transat, a Canadian airlines, ran a routine inspection on one of their Airbus A330 models. And mechanics took note of a teensy tiny little maintenance problem. The hydraulic lines in the right engine required a replacement. Now, this particular A330 Airbus wasn't all that old. It had just been made, uh, built in 1999. But it had already accumulated over 10,000 flying hours, which as Malcolm Gladwell told us, makes that plane an expert. And something, have you put 10,000 hours into anything besides acting? Is there some, some skill or that you have, some secret hobby that you're?
14:23 Speaker 01 Other than like watching television? I don't think so.
14:27 Speaker 00 How about listening to R E M? You're, you're a-
14:29 Speaker 01 Sure, probably.
14:31 Speaker 00 You're an R E M expert.
14:32 Speaker 01 I, sure, I'm an expert. But you, have you done 10,000 hours of banjo, do you think?
14:37 Speaker 00 Probably, but so, so scattered over 30, 40 years that it's, that it doesn't really count. I feel like that 10,000 hours has to occur in a relatively contained amount of time for expertise to emerge.
14:52 Speaker 01 But when Malcolm Gladwell came out with the 10,000 hours thing, it really felt like, that just felt like it made sense, right? Remember when that was introduced? It was like, oh yeah, of course.
15:03 Speaker 00 I think subsequent researches called it out as being kind of ludicrously arbitrary, but, um, but it does have a nice, nice ring to it.
15:12 Speaker 01 It does. It certainly does.
15:14 Speaker 00 And it has to be at least partially true.
15:16 Speaker 01 When applied to the Beatles, it makes perfect sense.
15:18 Speaker 00 Exactly. So- Our Airbus A330, as expertly attuned as she was to cloud hopping, she needed a little tune up. And a few days later, on August 17th, Air Transat decided to replace the engine altogether. Only the spare engine that would normally be used wasn't readily available. So what do you do when your spare engine isn't ready? You upgrade to the Rolls Royce of loner engines, which was literally a Rolls Royce engine.
15:45 Speaker 01 Sorry, a loner engine just doesn't have a reassuring ring to it.
15:51 Speaker 00 That's my terminology. It's just the engine that they need, that they needed to. It was their engine that they would then replace.
15:59 Speaker 01 And it was Rolls Royce, so yeah, we can, yeah, so we can trust it.
16:03 Speaker 00 Which, by the way, I love. A lot of people, I think, don't realize that Rolls Royce is a huge player in aviation and they make jet engines in addition to like these ludicrously expensive cars that are all driven by butlers. Yeah, I just, I think that's, that's like, that makes Rolls Royce very cool to me in a weird way.
16:19 Speaker 01 And it's butlers that actually put those engines together. It's an all butler crew.
16:24 Speaker 00 I just associate, I associate Rolls Royce with butlers for some reason.
16:28 Speaker 01 Like Grey Poupon.
16:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, all that stuff. All that stuff.
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19:03 Speaker 00 All of Air Transat's A330s were built in a newer, updated configuration. This replacement engine that they borrowed? Older, not fully updated, still living in the past. So it was supposed to be brought up to modern specs, but the shop didn't have the right parts. So instead, they shipped it off with a note that basically said, "Please install new parts when you get a chance." Oh, boy. Okay, so now Air Transat's mechanics get their hands on it, and they did what any responsible adult will do. They opened the Airbus Illustrated Parts Catalog. Oh, God. Not exactly SkyMall. In this case, upgrading was obviously necessary. But can we just step back for a second? Because this reminds me of something of like one of my little...
19:48 Speaker 00 Cultural annoyances, which is like, why do we have to constantly upgrade everything? Like, why? What do we need that this new iPhone software? What it all it does is like, make things look a little different and ruin my muscle memory.
20:00 Speaker 01 I totally agree. Then you have to get used to just a new, a tab being in a different position on the screen. And you're right, your muscle memory just gets screwed up. And so it just makes it, uh, everything slow down.
20:15 Speaker 00 And it's like, everything's begging you to upgrade it. Like you're getting these messages on your phone, you're getting messages in your car. You're getting, it's like you, I expect my refrigerator to sit me down and be like, hey, buddy, why are you holding me back?
20:27 Speaker 01 That's right. That's right.
20:29 Speaker 00 You gotta upgrade me. You're a refrigerator.
20:32 Speaker 01 Exactly.
20:33 Speaker 00 Relax.
20:33 Speaker 01 You keep things cold. But also not just the software, but the equipment itself. Like, we all feel like if we don't upgrade our phone, or whatever it is, then you're a step behind.
20:46 Speaker 00 Yes.
20:47 Speaker 01 And it's ridiculous.
20:48 Speaker 00 They're preying on our existential angst, Adam Scott.
20:51 Speaker 01 That's exactly right.
20:52 Speaker 00 It's not fair. Okay.
20:53 Speaker 01 That's exactly right.
20:54 Speaker 00 Now, our technicians in this case followed the correct protocol. But what they did not follow was an important service bulletin, or SB, uh, which is a set of directions from Rolls Royce about how to properly set up the hydraulic pumps and fuel lines. The computer terminals that they were using, um, I guess on the maintenance floor, they couldn't access these service bulletins for whatever reason. And thus they had to rely on goodwill advice from the maintenance engineering department. According to records, they were able to maneuver a fit on the fuel lines, which, believe me, we will come back to that. And inspections commenced. A successful ground test was run and completed. Several thumbs up were exchanged, I assume, and our A330 was sent off to join the fleet
21:39 Speaker 00 once again.
21:40 Speaker 01 So can I just ask a question? You may not know this. Is this just, is this like day of, like, oh shit, we need to replace this with the spare Rolls Royce engine? Or is this like, just getting it ready to join the fleet and go off?
21:55 Speaker 00 It wasn't immediately urgent. There was a problem with this engine and they We're doing a sort of routine replacement of the engine. But it wasn't like they were like almost ready to go. And then they're like, oh, we got to swap out an engine.
22:05 Speaker 01 Right, right, right.
22:06 Speaker 00 No, we're gonna take this plane out of service for a minute and actually work on it and then we'll put it back.
22:11 Speaker 01 It involved planning and procedures and got it.
22:14 Speaker 00 The first flight with this new Rolls Royce engine, it went great. In fact, the Airbus A330 logged about 64 uneventful flight hours after this engine change. Then came August 24th, 2001. Late that evening in Toronto, 13 crew members and 293 passengers boarded Air Transat Flight 236 bound for Lisbon, about to take a transatlantic trip that would go down in aviation history and become a ride none of them would soon forget.
22:43 Speaker 01 It's a long flight.
22:45 Speaker 00 It is Toronto to Lisbon, right?
22:47 Speaker 01 So it's like eight hours, seven hours?
22:49 Speaker 00 A standard flight, this is, this is, you asked the question and queued me up. A standard flight from Toronto to Lisbon takes about seven hours. And for three hours and 45 minutes of that flight, everything was peachy keen. Passengers comfortably snoozed, snacked, or sipped on their complimentary tomato juices at about 39,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
23:12 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
23:13 Speaker 00 Adam, what's your go to flight activity? Are you reading magazines? Are you napping? Are you watching something on your phone?
23:21 Speaker 01 All I do is drink tomato juice when I'm on flights. That's my, that's, that's it. I don't like doing anything else.
23:27 Speaker 00 It's weird. I've heard, I've seen people tweet about that. They're like, Adam Scott's on my flight and he won't put down, he's like, he's yelling at the flight attendants about getting more tomato juice and they're like.
23:37 Speaker 01 Get me my tomato juice.
23:39 Speaker 00 They're out of tomato juice. It's so weird. Like, relax, Adam Scott.
23:43 Speaker 01 On a plane, I like watching stuff. I like watching movies. I mean, if I have, have to do work and like read, then I'll do that. But that usually just makes me pass right out if I'm start reading. So I just like watching movies that I, that I bring myself. How about you?
24:02 Speaker 00 I, I usually will listen to podcasts or.
24:08 Speaker 01 Sure.
24:08 Speaker 00 I kind of daydream a lot on airplanes.
24:11 Speaker 01 That's interesting.
24:12 Speaker 00 Like, I just kind of let my mind wander. I love, this is a strange thing. I love long flights. I just, to me, it's like this weird.
24:22 Speaker 00 Limbo. It's like you're not in the world. You're in this weird capsule and you get to kind of check out from things.
24:30 Speaker 01 That's why I like it when flights don't have wifi and it's getting more and more rare when you, because I agree, I like a long flight. There's something cozy about it.
24:40 Speaker 00 Yes.
24:40 Speaker 01 And there's something where you, you just get to lay down and, and I like that you daydream. I, I feel like there's less and less boredom, first of all, and there's less and less daydreaming now because we all have something to occupy our eyes and our mind at all times.
24:59 Speaker 00 Hundred percent.
24:59 Speaker 01 And I think it's good to just take a moment and just space out.
25:03 Speaker 00 I love boredom. And I, and I require it of my children. They, like, my kids will come to me and be like, I'm so bored. And I always tell them, go and sit down and get as bored as you can.
25:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:18 Speaker 00 Just get as bored as you possibly can. Like, and I, and I sort of force them to like, try to be bored. And once they're trying to be bored, they instantly start thinking of like, fun activities.
25:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:30 Speaker 00 It's a good, it's a fun little Jedi trick, but.
25:32 Speaker 01 It's, it's so smart. That's where you come up with your tastes. That's where you kind of form what it is you like to do and what you like thinking about. And yeah, I, I think that's great.
25:44 Speaker 00 I'm a great parent. What can I say?
25:46 Speaker 01 That's, that's just really commendable, Ed.
25:49 Speaker 00 Thank you.
25:55 Speaker 00 We're about three hours and 46 minutes into the flight. And the pilot, 48-year-old Robert Pichet.
26:04 Speaker 01 Robert, okay.
26:05 Speaker 00 His phrase Quebecois. A first officer, there's also first officer, 28-year-old Dirk DeJager. They noticed something odd, a fuel imbalance between the right and left engines. Now, our pilots and crew were total professionals with ample amounts of airtime, including over 1,000 combined hours of flying the actual A330 model. So they knew what they were doing. But as we tend to find here. Snafu, sometimes that is just not enough.
26:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:35 Speaker 00 The pilots initiated a new flight plan. They would call, call an audible here and reroute to La Jolla Airport in Tercera Island in the Azores. Tercera Island is a beautiful volcanic island in the North Atlantic, about 900 miles closer from Lisbon, and it's a much, much easier spot to get to for Flight 236.
26:58 Speaker 01 Wow. So, so wait, they're calling this audible because of the fuel imbalance?
27:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, essentially they're realizing that the fuel levels are not what they should be. They're not sensing an emergency yet, but they're sort of like, we just need to make sure we're on a safe landing course here.
27:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:16 Speaker 00 So we have a rendering of their flight paths here. So let's take a look at that and see what it looks like. Yeah. So you can see they say that this is a considerably safer little spot to land on.
27:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's just a tad more than halfway to Lisbon.
27:30 Speaker 00 Have you ever been to the Azores?
27:32 Speaker 01 No, I would love to. Have you?
27:35 Speaker 00 No, I've been to the Canary Islands, which is another one of those weird mid-Atlantic bubbles of islands. But, but yeah, it seems like a really beautiful place.
27:48 Speaker 01 I would imagine it is. It, I mean, look at that. You're right smack in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
27:54 Speaker 00 Yeah. Let's go sometime. You and me, we're going.
27:58 Speaker 01 Go, you know what? Let's go tomorrow.
28:00 Speaker 00 Are we too old to just go on a backpacking trip through Europe?
28:03 Speaker 01 That would be great. That would be so fun. Although I would, I would, my patience would run thin with the hostels.
28:15 Speaker 00 Well, so, no, what we would do, if you and I went backpacking across Europe, is we'd go into like the Severance subreddit and the Hangover subreddit, and we'd be like, hey, fans in Europe, we need places to stay.
28:27 Speaker 01 That's right. We need really nice places to stay.
28:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, put us up. That, that would be really funny. We should do that. We need to do that and make a documentary. That seems like it would be very funny.
28:40 Speaker 01 Great.
28:40 Speaker 00 So it's at this moment. That one of the crew members enters the cockpit, like one of the flight attendants on some just unrelated business, only to learn that they are not going to Lisbon any longer. Uh, not only that, Captain Pichet asks this crew member to then go back and inspect the wings for a fuel leak.
29:01 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
29:02 Speaker 00 Any guess on how you inspect a wing if you're like in the, the fuselage of an airplane? How do you inspect a wing?
29:10 Speaker 01 I just think of the thing in Temple of Doom where they let the fuel out and it just literally looks like liquid coming out of the wing.
29:19 Speaker 00 You're exactly right. All you can do is just, and now it's the middle of the night, keep in mind, this is a red eye. So, uh, so all you can do is walk back and then shine a flashlight out the window of the plane and look at the wing. Now, in the daylight, presumably you would be able to see fuel spraying out the back of an engine in the same way that, that in the Temple of Doom. But at night, even with a flashlight, there's virtually no chance of that. But also like, what if you're that guy sitting at the window? And the flight attendant is just like, I just need to check the wing.
29:58 Speaker 01 Oh my God. Okay.
30:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, so a little tense.
30:03 Speaker 01 He or she goes to the window and shines a flashlight out to the wing.
30:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, and they
30:10 Speaker 01 That would have to be a high-powered flashlight too.
30:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, and probably not powerful enough. And they don't see anything. Because you really probably can't see anything, even though, uh, as we will soon learn, there was a lot happening on that wing.
30:22 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
30:23 Speaker 00 So with no physical evidence and no further alerts, both pilots misdiagnosed the issue as a sensor malfunction. Uh, on the bright side, they had set off from Canada with almost 50 metric tons of fuel, which is five and a half tons more than is required on such a flight path, which is good. You want to pack some extra granola bars when you're going on a hike, right?
30:44 Speaker 01 100% when you're hiking across Europe.
30:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, yes.
30:48 Speaker 01 So don't, don't forget to pack extra granola bars, by the way. When we, when we go on our trip.
30:53 Speaker 00 And this is where our pilots made a bit of a tough call and like very likely the incorrect one. There's actually a protocol for a suspected fuel leak, even if you can't verify it. Now, they could have followed that, but instead they felt confident that this was just a computer system error and there was no leak. And so they initiated the fuel imbalance procedure instead. And this fix wasn't exactly crazy. This is not, this is something that happens. Um, and since the, there was indeed an imbalance, um, but it was probably the worst thing they could have done. So in an effort to balance the weight of the aircraft, they, they start pumping fuel from the left wing over to the right. Not realizing that a massive crack in the fuel line of the right engine
31:37 Speaker 00 was spitting out their fuel almost as quickly as they were pumping it over. So in essence, they were just dumping fuel into the Atlantic Ocean. It's like a classic case of just making the problem worse when you're trying to solve it.
31:48 Speaker 01 So they basically are doing what they did in Temple of Doom and just dumping their, their fuel.
31:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
31:55 Speaker 01 Oh God.
31:56 Speaker 00 At this point, flight two thirty six was down to seven tons of fuel, which is only six percent of the plane's total fuel capacity.
32:04 Speaker 01 Oh no.
32:05 Speaker 00 But they're like over the middle of the Atlantic.
32:08 Speaker 01 Jesus.
32:09 Speaker 00 Pichet continues to fiddle with various engine settings and configurations to try to save fuel. And all of a sudden, the right engine shuts down. It just flames out.
32:21 Speaker 01 Because it's out of fuel.
32:22 Speaker 00 Yes.
32:23 Speaker 01 Oh God.
32:24 Speaker 00 The pilots, this is when the pilots send a mayday signal. Thirteen minutes later, the left engine also completely dies.
32:33 Speaker 01 Because it is out of fuel.
32:35 Speaker 00 Also out of fuel.
32:36 Speaker 01 Can I ask a question? Maybe you don't know this. If you have only one engine in a giant. Plane like this.
32:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
32:44 Speaker 01 Can you negotiate your way through a trip like this? Or is it also really dicey?
32:51 Speaker 00 This is an awesome question, and I wish I had a better answer for you. But the answer I have is that I know you can fly a jet on a, on one engine. So like if, if one engine goes out, you can still fly on, on one, which is with the physics of that are insane to me because it seems like a plane would just start spinning around, right?
33:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:11 Speaker 00 But, um, but there are, I guess, trims and controls and ways to just sort of like keep you on track.
33:16 Speaker 01 Sure.
33:16 Speaker 00 Um, and, and just using that one, uh, one, one jet engine for power.
33:21 Speaker 01 Wow.
33:22 Speaker 00 As we're about to find out, there are cascading set of issues when an engine dies out. At this point, they're 65 nautical miles away from La Jolla's airport with no engines.
33:34 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
33:35 Speaker 00 This is wild. I heard some interviews with some passengers, uh, that were on this plane. And one of them was talking about how it just went dead quiet. How terrifying is that? Like the
33:50 Speaker 01 No, thanks.
33:50 Speaker 00 The jet engines die. And so it just, now you're just
33:57 Speaker 00 like it's just the air.
33:59 Speaker 01 Cause that's all the noise when you're on a passenger jet. It's that, it's what you have the noise cancelling headphones for is to cut out that constant.
34:08 Speaker 00 Yes.
34:08 Speaker 01 Noise.
34:09 Speaker 00 It just goes silent.
34:10 Speaker 01 Oh, God.
34:11 Speaker 00 So creepy. Okay. So they have to drop altitude. They dipped to 30,000 feet because there's so little oxygen up there and they're going to lose cabin pressure and all this. They'll have to don their acts, oxygen masks. Uh, have you ever had to do that on a plane?
34:24 Speaker 01 No, I haven't. Have you?
34:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, me neither. Thank God. The jet engines of an airplane are also the primary source of electrical and hydraulic power on the plane.
34:32 Speaker 01 Imagine, yeah, sure.
34:34 Speaker 00 They're essentially like generators for, for all of your electricity on a plane. So when the engines go out, instantly all of the primary electric functions on the aircraft go out as well.
34:43 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
34:44 Speaker 00 And it's starting to look like they're going to have to ditch the plane in the ocean with all 306 people on board.
34:51 Speaker 01 Fuck.
34:52 Speaker 00 Yeah. That's, that's the right word.
34:54 Speaker 01 Pitch dark.
34:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's the middle of the night.
34:58 Speaker 01 Good God.
34:59 Speaker 00 Yeah. Okay. So now we're coming to the gliding portion of our evening.
35:04 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
35:05 Speaker 00 And, uh, this is how this incident earned the name, the Azores Glider Incident.
35:14 Speaker 00 Keep in mind, the A330 Airbus model is a wide-bodied jet. It ain't designed for gliding.
35:21 Speaker 01 No.
35:22 Speaker 00 Um, but any airplane can glide somewhat. Of course, the wings will give you some lift.
35:28 Speaker 01 Depending on wind and all of that probably as well, right?
35:32 Speaker 00 Well, yeah, and your airspeed, you know, it was obviously going very fast. Uh, at the time that the engines died, so it's got speed. And then, and then just the descent, uh, is going to give you additional speed.
35:44 Speaker 01 So that's right.
35:45 Speaker 00 You can, you can glide these things, which is incredible. You're a passenger on this plane and the electricity goes out. Your oxygen mask is dropped. You're getting word that you might have to ditch in the ocean. They're probably making, uh, preparations inside the cabin for a water landing. Like what's going through your head, Adam Scott? Are you good in a crisis? Are you going to be steady for people or are you going to lose your shit?
36:10 Speaker 01 Uh, dude, I, I feel like that's the kind of thing that you never know until you are faced with a situation like this. Like you don't know what gear you're going to shift into until you kind of find yourself faced with, uh, circumstances like this. I mean, if I'm just gonna, if I just think about this trip a few weeks ago, when the plane was going, it was a small plane and was going all over the place when we were coming into Montana and my daughter was upset. I could see my son trying to keep a brave face on, but scared shitless. And I just had to maintain complete confidence that everything was fine.
36:55 Speaker 01 Don't worry, but I was wavering. I was not sure.
36:59 Speaker 00 Inside.
37:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, 100%.
37:02 Speaker 00 This is, this is good dadding right here. I'm proud of you, Adam. That's awesome.
37:06 Speaker 01 That is dadding. Um, so I don't know. I guess it depends on who I'm with. If I'm by myself, I'm freaking out and I'm trying to, maybe I'm trying to contact my wife at this point. I'm not sure. How about you? How, how? You feel in a situation like
37:23 Speaker 00 Oh, I'm so badass. I'm cool as a cucumber. No question.
37:27 Speaker 01 You're going up and trying to take the controls of the airplane.
37:30 Speaker 00 Totally. Um, I, uh, well, like you said, it's very hard to know. And the dad thing is huge. Like, I do think that being, having that responsibility to sort of like keep other people calm
37:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:43 Speaker 00 does sort of foist a whole different perspective onto someone in that situation. And I've, I've certainly been like dealt with bad injuries or things with kids. And where it's like, your calmness is so important, even when it's very hard. And I've made it through some of those incidents. Uh, and so I, I don't know. I, I like to think I would be a, a, a steady sort of source of strength for, for people around me, but, uh, I might just be screaming and bawling and like just going nuts. Who knows?
38:17 Speaker 01 Well, I'm sure you're right that it's not just who you're with, like if you have your family with you, but also how the people around you are reacting. That would probably have a lot to do with what part of the puzzle you fit into.
38:30 Speaker 00 It could either spin you up more or give you more sort of impetus to, to like try to calm.
38:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's right.
38:37 Speaker 00 Who knows? Yeah, it's such a wild.
38:39 Speaker 01 Good Lord.
38:40 Speaker 00 I think we would be great. I'm just gonna say, I'm just gonna go on record. You and I would be great.
38:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think you and I would be, dare I say, heroic.
38:47 Speaker 00 I think you're right.
38:48 Speaker 01 Hundred percent. And we're gonna have this on display when we backpack across Europe.
38:53 Speaker 00 We're gonna encounter all kinds of emergencies and we're gonna be heroic. It's just who we are, Adam.
38:57 Speaker 01 Two heroes.
38:58 Speaker 00 Yeah, two heroes. That's the name of the doc.
39:00 Speaker 01 That's right.
39:02 Speaker 00 Okay, back to that night in 2001. Despite misreading a major fuel leak as a minor sensor issue, Captain Pichet was solid on one crucial thing. He knew the plane's gliding ratio, which is 15 to one. That means for every 15 units forward, the, the aircraft was traveling, it was dropping one unit in altitude. So at 33,000 feet, that gave them a gliding range of roughly 75 to 100 miles.
39:29 Speaker 01 Wow. Okay, wait. Sorry. Do we know how far they are from the landing strip on the island?
39:36 Speaker 00 They're under, they're around 75 miles.
39:40 Speaker 01 Holy shit.
39:42 Speaker 00 Yeah. So at this point, they glided 75 miles for 19 minutes. Until at last, they are approaching their rerouted destination, the Laje's Air Base. It's in sight, sort of. Because it's so dark at night, and this is a, this is a small island. So there's not like a ton of light around to kind of like help, help them see what's happening. I find it very surprising that a massive airliner can glide for 75 to 100 miles. Is that, do you find that reassuring a little bit?
40:17 Speaker 01 I find it reassuring and I find it fascinating that these things are built. It gives you a sense of how powerful these engines are, but it also, it gives you a sense of just how beautifully built these planes are.
40:32 Speaker 00 The physics and engineering of it, it's insane.
40:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, the physics of it are fascinating.
40:37 Speaker 00 It's really, really wild.
40:38 Speaker 01 I would imagine it also has to do, and probably as they get lower, there's more air for them to glide on. The air gets a little less thin as they get lower. Is that?
40:51 Speaker 00 I'm sure you're right.
40:53 Speaker 01 I have no idea what I'm talking about.
40:54 Speaker 00 That's some cool atmospheric calculation you're doing. I like that.
40:59 Speaker 01 That's right. That's, I like that I just did an atmospheric calculation. That sounds great.
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43:36 Speaker 00 Well, now, it's still really early in the morning, or late at night, depending on how you're looking at it, so it's very, very dark. Pichet and Diager, they couldn't exactly see their surroundings very much, not to mention the fact that it's basically dark. They have some electric. This is very cool. The, uh, there's another special piece of technology that was a bit of a rock star that night, and that is what's called a ram air turbine, or RAT. So in case of emergency engine out scenarios, and these do happen more often than you think, uh, there is this RAT. It is a small wind turbine that deploys, I think from the bottom of the jet usually, uh, and it's basically, uh, a little propeller
44:18 Speaker 00 that is a power generator. And so the power of the wind is hitting this little turbine, and it generates some extra hydraulic and electrical power when everything else has failed.
44:29 Speaker 01 It gives them just enough power to, to have the minimum hydraulics that they need.
44:36 Speaker 00 Exactly, and to power some of the instruments in the cockpit and so forth, so like-
44:40 Speaker 01 That's wild.
44:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, and talk about, I mean, you're, you're marveling at the engineering of these things. There's so many things about airplanes that are just mind blowing.
44:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:48 Speaker 00 So with help from the RAT-
44:50 Speaker 01 Do you, do you also wish, as I do, that it was an actual RAT that deploys in emergencies? He has a little captain's hat on?
44:58 Speaker 00 I do wish that.
44:59 Speaker 01 And he really knows what he's doing?
45:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, and he's, he just has a, a hamster wheel, and that's what's generating the power.
45:06 Speaker 01 That generates all the power, that's right.
45:08 Speaker 00 Oh, that would be amazing. I actually wish it was the Heavy Metal Band RAT.
45:12 Speaker 01 Oh, God, me too.
45:14 Speaker 00 And that they were on the plane, and that they would just rock so hard that there was, right? Remember the Hair Metal Band RATs?
45:21 Speaker 01 Talk about generating power, man.
45:22 Speaker 00 Exactly.
45:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, they just need to play out of the cellar, and everyone would be rocking out so much, they wouldn't even realize they're in danger.
45:31 Speaker 00 No. No, not at all. The engineering to get the banned rat into the cargo hold of every airplane flight, that seems like a tricky proposition, but I'm sure we could figure it out. It's challenging, but this is America. Not insurmountable. Yeah, this is, this is America. You're right. That's right. With the help of this ram air turbine, the pilots managed to bring a few critical systems back online and fly the plane by hand, but they're still dropping really, really fast with limited control and zero thrust, right? Right. They just is getting closer and closer, which means, uh, there is no time for caution. This is it. Uh, they have one shot at this landing. None of this is normal. None of their
46:11 Speaker 00 trajectory and descent rate and all those things, none of it is, is like chill. So air traffic controllers at Lejeune are actually flickering the runway lights on and off to help them see in the dark, which is insane. The A330 approaches Lejeune's airport at a very high speed and steep descent angle. Pichet actually had to maintain a speed over 140 knots so that the ram, uh, air turbine would continue to function, but he couldn't go above 200 knots or the landing gear might not extend. Oh my God. As they get closer, Pichet realized he may have been, and this is another little tasty bit of irony, he may have been too good at gliding because a normal approach
46:56 Speaker 00 is you would come into the airport at 3,000 feet from when you're about 10 miles away from the runway. Pichet had kept the plane up so high for so long that they were actually at 13,000 feet and now only eight miles away. So they're too high. They're too high. The Pichet, he's got some serious balls on this guy. He's a badass. Yeah. He decides to pull a 360 degree turn so that he could drop several thousand feet, all while Diager is putting out the landing gear. That is a roll of the dice because you're dropping the whole time. With no thrust, you cannot go back up. You've got no room to go back up. So if he gets too low, then they're fucked.
47:39 Speaker 00 Right. But he makes this basically like a You know, a circle. And meanwhile, De Jager is dropping the landing gear. Now, this is a wild thing. Usually it's a hydraulic system that is like fully electronic and everything and it just drops. But when you have no power, there are actually these, these levers or sort of like pull latches on the floor of the cockpit under a panel that you open up and you pull these latches up. And that's it. You manually deploy the landing gear. Wow. And it pulls these cables and it releases the landing gear. The landing gear then falls from the plane from gravity, not from hydraulic pressure. So it's really why, that's why he has to maintain a speed.
48:23 Speaker 00 Cause if he's going too fast, it will. It won't. Yeah, they get the landing gear out by hand in the, what's called the free fall method of, of landing gear deployment. And down they're going. 200 knots. The plane makes contact with the runway and it hits hard. I bet. In fact, it hits so hard that the plane bounces and the landing gear and the tires burst from the impact. Oh, God. Somehow Pichet brings it back down and the crew manages to keep the aircraft on the runway and bring it to a stop. And holy shit, we are saved. Wow. Are you surprised? Pichet. Yep.
49:09 Speaker 00 This guy. This guy is a badass. Yeah. That is crazy. Some, some questionable choices in the mix of the, the process, but no question, this man has mad skills and a serious like pilot's disposition. Here's the casualty list. 16 passengers sustained minor injuries and most of those were from the evacuation of the plane. Sure. Which, that's usually what happens. Yeah. Yeah, right. Which reportedly was completed in approximately 90 seconds. And that's incredible to me because when I think of like people deplaning, it is such a just dumpster fire of elbows and anger and luggage pulling down and whatever.
49:53 Speaker 00 But I would also imagine that being scared of a plane exploding might help you get off a plane quicker. Yeah.
50:00 Speaker 01 I have a question for you. I always think about, because just the other day, people had to evacuate a Southwest flight or something, and I saw the footage of them like bouncing down the slide that they deploy off the side of the plane.
50:12 Speaker 00 Oh, I missed that.
50:13 Speaker 01 And I know that they always say, when you are evacuating a plane, do not grab your bags, nothing, you just get off the plane. Would you have a tough time just leaving your stuff on the plane? I feel like I would grab my bag, no matter what they said.
50:28 Speaker 00 Well, that's a good question.
50:29 Speaker 01 I guess it depends how dire the situation is.
50:31 Speaker 00 What's in your bag, Adam?
50:33 Speaker 01 Listen, don't worry about it.
50:34 Speaker 00 Is it your heroin?
50:35 Speaker 01 Don't worry about it.
50:35 Speaker 00 Like, what's going on here?
50:36 Speaker 01 Don't worry about it.
50:36 Speaker 00 Do we need to talk about this?
50:37 Speaker 01 Ed, take it easy.
50:41 Speaker 00 Your question raises additional questions.
50:46 Speaker 01 I guess you're right. Never mind.
50:48 Speaker 00 Never mind, moving on. I think I would, I think I would be pretty okay leaving my bag.
50:53 Speaker 01 Okay.
50:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, I like my AirPod Maxes and I love my laptop. I kind of would die without it. I don't love it, but I would be in trouble without it. But I would leave it.
51:03 Speaker 01 Okay.
51:03 Speaker 00 I would leave it behind.
51:04 Speaker 01 All right.
51:05 Speaker 00 I don't think that makes me a better person than you, Adam, but maybe, maybe a little.
51:08 Speaker 01 I was just kidding when I said all that about wanting to grab my bag. That, that wasn't real.
51:12 Speaker 00 I still think you're a good person.
51:14 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you, thank you. Okay, great.
51:15 Speaker 00 I still think you're a good person, no matter what.
51:22 Speaker 00 Remarkably, all 306 people onboard survived, and the plane,
51:27 Speaker 01 amazing.
51:27 Speaker 00 the plane itself was mostly intact. Pichet and Diager were heroes. Later, investigations found that had the pilots followed any of the traditional fuel leak procedures set in place, remember, they opted not to do so.
51:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:42 Speaker 00 They would have actually been much better off and landed totally safely with 3.8 metric tons of fuel still onboard. But hindsight is 2020. Despite this, Pichet was awarded the Superior Airmanship Award and was even the subject of a 2010 docu-drama about the events of the fateful night called, in French, Pichet Entre ciel et terre.
52:07 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
52:08 Speaker 00 Or, in English, Pichet, Between the Earth and the Sky.
52:14 Speaker 00 Ah, gotta see it. Yeah, yeah, check it out. And just what was the cause of the fuel leak, Adam Scott? Well, it turns out, uh, that the, the fuel tube, uh, and the hydraulic line didn't have as much separation as the mechanics thought. So vibrations from the engine power caused an immense amount of chafing to occur. Ah, I know what that's like, let me tell you.
52:41 Speaker 01 Oh, man.
52:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, you hit middle age, the chafing just goes through the roof.
52:45 Speaker 01 Ah, yeah.
52:46 Speaker 00 Eventually, this created a three-inch crack. I know, you know what that's like.
52:51 Speaker 01 One hundred percent. The three-inch crack, you don't have to tell me.
52:58 Speaker 00 You have a three-inch crack?
53:00 Speaker 01 I do.
53:00 Speaker 00 You have a tiny, very cute, tiny little butt with a three-inch crack. I've always...
53:06 Speaker 01 Three inches.
53:06 Speaker 00 I'm gonna cut all this.
53:08 Speaker 01 It's all you need.
53:09 Speaker 00 It's all you need. So vibrations from the engine power caused an immense amount of chafing to occur, eventually creating a three... All this chafing eventually created a three-inch crack in the fuel tube. Here's an image, let's take a look.
53:22 Speaker 01 That's what caused all this?
53:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
53:27 Speaker 01 That's it?
53:27 Speaker 00 That's it. Yeah, that, that is where all of the fuel just like gushed out into the Atlantic Ocean. Uh, we're not even talking about the poor fishies who are like...
53:38 Speaker 01 I know.
53:39 Speaker 00 Drinking gasoline all of a sudden, that's a big bummer.
53:41 Speaker 01 They're like, what the fuck is all this?
53:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
53:44 Speaker 01 It's crazy when you look at something like that, which is just a crack in a tube, that shit doesn't go wrong more often.
53:52 Speaker 00 Yeah.
53:53 Speaker 01 With these giant aircraft.
53:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, I agree. Why can't we bring the same attention to detail and like, perfect execution, track record to...
54:07 Speaker 00 Homeless management or like city government or all these things like efficiency and and safety with which these airlines operate, it's totally breathtaking.
54:18 Speaker 01 Mind blowing, yeah.
54:19 Speaker 00 And the amount of maintenance and upkeep that these planes require, and they're all with, they're just, there are so many protocols and safeguards in place.
54:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:30 Speaker 00 That the safety record is amazing. I mean, there's still, obviously still accidents, but like, it's incredible.
54:35 Speaker 01 It really is.
54:37 Speaker 00 And it, to me, that's like, one of the great human achievements is just like, successful commercial aviation. It's just, it's mind blowing.
54:45 Speaker 01 Hundred percent. And for, I'm sure you fly all the time, of people that fly all the time, it really, you couldn't be more grateful that we have, that the world really has this aviation system.
54:57 Speaker 00 Yeah.
54:58 Speaker 01 That's pretty close to perfect.
55:00 Speaker 00 Think about if, if the safety record degraded from here, even just a little bit.
55:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:08 Speaker 00 What, what, how damaging that would be to the entire industry. I mean, not to mention like, dangerous for people, but like, it, it, it could just implode the airline industry because.
55:20 Speaker 01 Hundred percent.
55:21 Speaker 00 Once people don't trust it, like, it's life, every flight is life or death.
55:24 Speaker 01 Totally.
55:26 Speaker 00 So, this little Airbus A330 that could, it was miraculously repaired and returned to service. It continued to fly for Air Transat until it retired in 2021. As a result of Flight 236, Air Transat revised its maintenance procedures and enhanced crew training. And despite the incident, the airline's reputation remained largely intact because of the successful landing, thanks to Pichet. Flight 236 is now a case study used in aviation schools and pilot training programs. And that is our story, Adam Scott. Any major takeaways? Major observations or lessons for you?
56:05 Speaker 01 Well, as I learned from Nathan Fielder, most airline incidents are due to pilot error, but also most airline kind of.
56:18 Speaker 01 Close calls or, or, or things going right are because of pilot's skill. So they hopefully balance each other out. I remember once we were on a flight to Hawaii and just short of the halfway mark to Hawaii, the pilot came on and said, we were turning around because of a malfunction.
56:40 Speaker 00 Oh, no.
56:41 Speaker 01 And so for the two and a half hours, whatever it was, back to Los Angeles, all I could think was we were just about halfway. Whatever it is that's wrong with the plane, they are buying the 20 to 30 minutes. Rather than just, you know, continuing on, they think it's serious enough that we. So it was two and a half hours of holy shit, what's going to happen?
57:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
57:08 Speaker 01 And, you know, that may have been a pilot just making a call. Um, and he or she made the right call. So you just kind of never know. I don't know if I would be able to make calls like that, I guess, is, is what I'm trying to say.
57:21 Speaker 00 I do think there's, you're on to something. We were joking earlier about how we would handle a crisis like this. It's, the pilots are tested so rigorously and trained so much that they are very often very reliable in these emergency situations. And it is incredible. I don't know if you remember the movie, The Right Stuff? Did you ever watch that movie?
57:45 Speaker 01 Hundred percent.
57:46 Speaker 00 Right?
57:47 Speaker 01 It's great.
57:47 Speaker 00 Sam Shepard plays Chuck Yeager, the famous test pilot. Chuck Yeager had a reputation for just never, ever, ever panicking. And even in the most insane, like, like his, he would be testing a jet that would fall into a flat spin and start cartwheeling back down to earth. And he'd just be like, okay, I need to engage right flaps. And just always have the most, and he was legendary for that.
58:13 Speaker 01 That's so crazy.
58:14 Speaker 00 That's like a pilot's disposition. There's something superhuman about it. And I think that's incredibly cool and admirable because it's not just being cool under pressure. It's like maintaining the ability to problem solve.
58:27 Speaker 01 That's right.
58:27 Speaker 00 And stay analytical and like, keep your wits about you. I, I feel like I could, like, it would be heroic. Just to remain calm.
58:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:36 Speaker 00 You know?
58:36 Speaker 01 Just to keep that heart rate down.
58:38 Speaker 00 Or to keep the veneer of calm, the kid to keep like for as a parent, you know, but even if you're panicking inside, but to stay calm and still be able to process and think and make shrewd decisions like that is extremely badass.
58:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:54 Speaker 00 Adam Scott, I am already planning the logistics of our backpacking trip across Europe in my mind, and I can't wait for that to happen. And we're going to make an Oscar winning documentary about it.
59:05 Speaker 01 That's right.
59:05 Speaker 00 And.
59:06 Speaker 01 Thank you for saying Oscar. I think you're right. That's exactly right. It'd be feature film. Yes.
59:12 Speaker 00 I always love hanging out with you and I'm so grateful you came on board.
59:15 Speaker 01 Yeah. Thank you for having me. I'm really, really happy to be here. Thanks, man. That was a great story, too.
59:20 Speaker 00 Thank you. Awesome. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post-production and creative support from Good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The Collected Works. Legal
1:00:02 Speaker 00 review from Dan Welsh, Megan Holson, and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
1:00:41 Speaker 04 Pumpkin carving sounds fun, until you're elbow-deep in pumpkin guts. There's an easier pumpkin tradition: Reese's Pumpkins. No seeds, no giant kitchen knife, no pressure to create a masterpiece that's just gonna shrivel up on the front porch three days later. And if something goes wrong, just eat it. Every mistake is still pretty delicious. So this Halloween, skip the mess of pumpkin carving and stock up on Reese's Pumpkins.
1:01:10 Speaker 08 Halloween's almost here, and I've got plans. My first stop is Total Wine & More for cold beer, ready-to-drink cocktails, and a bottle of wine to share. And I know I'm getting the lowest prices. Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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