Episode 11 - Fires on board commercial airliners and the mystery of the SAA Helderberg
Plane Crash DiariesShow Notes
This episode covers the terrifying examples of fire on board commercial airliners. One of the first was the Imperial Airways Armstrong Argosy II incident in Dixmude Belgium in 1933 where a fire thought to have been started by a passenger attempting to commit suicide caused the plane to crash killing all 15 on board. It was the deadliest accident at that point in the history of British civil aviation. It is also thought to be one of the first airliner ever lost due to sabotage. When you hear the story, perhaps you’ll agree with the findings at the time during the investigation. Everything centred around one passenger, by the name of Albert Voss, who was seen to jump from the aircraft as it came down over the Belgian countryside. Imperial's London–Brussels–Cologne route had been flown since 1928. But on the 28th March 1933 the plane was travelling from Brussels to London taking it over the northern Flanders region before crossing the coast for the 50 mile flight across the English Channel. It was delayed and eventually took off at 12.30 in the afternoon. While flying over Flanders, onlookers saw flames burst from the fuselage, before the aircraft lost altitude and plunged to the ground. As the Armstrong Argosy biplane slipped from the sky, a passenger was seen falling from the rear – someone had jumped. Another example of an accident that was caused by crew actions combined with a design fault was the United Airlines Flight 608 Douglas DC-6 on 24 October 1947. The four engine plane, registration NC37510, was on a scheduled passenger flight from Los Angeles to Chicago when it crashed just before 12.30 in the afternoon southeast of Bryce Canyon Airport, Utah, United States. 5 crew and 47 passengers died – all on board. It was also the deadliest air crash in the United States aviation history at the time and caused by a fire on board. Sometimes lateral thinking by pilots can be fatal if operating procedure is flouted. One of these lateral thinkers was the pilot of Swissair Flight SR306, a Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle III, which was a scheduled international flight from Zürich to Rome, via Geneva. His decisions which flew in the face of standard operating procedure doomed his passengers and crew unfortunately. The Sud-Aviation SE 210 crashed near Dürrenäsch, Aargau, on September 4, 1963, shortly after take-off, killing all 80 people on board. Another example of crew error which led to a fire took place near Toronto, Canada, on the 7th May 1970 where an Air Canada McDonnell Douglas DC-8 exploded after leaking fuel ignited – 109 on board died. This was an example of pilot error, but also a confused use of spoilers which are designed to slow an aircraft down rapidly. It was the misuse that led directly to a fire and explosions as you’ll hear. Had the crew followed the check list this accident would not have happened, as is the case with so many disasters. Captain Peter Hamilton and First Officer Donald Rowland had flown together before this terrible incident – but they seemed out of kilter when it came to exactly when to arm the spoilers. The check list indicated the spoilers should have been armed at the beginning of the final approach. Yet hoth agreed they’d arm the spoilers in the middle of the landing flare when the engines were throttled back and the plane was close to the runway. The final example in this episode is of South African Airways flight 295 probably one of the more mysterious in-flight fires where the cause has never been identified. It is known as the Helderberg disaster in South Africa.
More from Plane Crash Diaries
. This is episode 45 – the Pitot-Tube Loving Mud-Dauber Wasp and Birgenair Flight 301, an episode that follows an email from one of my listeners, Dr Athayde Tonhasca. HE is a Brazilian entomologist working for Scottish Heritage in the United Kingdom.
Welcome back to Plane Crash Diaries with me, your host and pilot, Des Latham. Episode 44 and we’re exploring more bizarre stories of pilot suicide with the tragedy of A10 Captain Craig Button and the Kamikaze Pink Porn Pilot, Mitsuyatsu Maeno. A listener called Clifford who’s a SouthWest Airlines pilot suggested the topic for this episode and it’s taken me a year to get around to it – the curious case of Captain Craig Button. The incident has been called one of the most puzzling in US Air Force history. We’ll also hear about an off the wall weird example of pilot suicide in the second half, Japanese porn actor and pilot Mitsuyasu Maeno who dressed up in Kamikazi gear than tried to kill a Yakuza crime boss with a loaded Piper Cherokee. I decided to look at these two in particular because of how cosmology, religion, and extremism can hide in plain sight in someone who may be sitting next to you on the flight deck. Neither were examples of commercial aviation-linked suicides, but they are a warning to all of us to keep an eye out for folks who may harbour dark secrets. Let’s start It on April 2nd, 1997. Captain Craig Button was leading a three plane A-10 Thunderbolt Warthog formation conducting a live-weapons training mission from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. Button inexplicably broke formation. He flew 800 miles off course, and zigzagged across Arizona and Colorado the plane obviously being handled in a controlled fashion, maneuvering through bad weather, and in places, changing altitude. Button was tracked by radar, until he flew into Gold Dust Peak near Vail in Colorado, hitting the mountain just 100 feet below the summit. Apart from the mystery of what caused the accident, there was also a small matter of four 500 pound MK82 bombs which were never found despite extensive searches. It appeared he dropped them over the desert somewhere, like trees falling in a forest, unseen but as you’ll hear in a minute, not unheard. What caused this highly respected and skilled instructor to apparently commit suicide, which is what the Air Force concluded had happened. Unrequited love perhaps? Confusion over his role as a fighter pilot? The missing motive and missing ordnance were equally baffling. A search and rescue began immediately. The wreckage was finally spotted on 20 April 1997 by a Colorado Army National Guard helicopter crew, 18 days after Button went missing,on the northwest face of Gold Dust Peak at about 13,200 feet. Because the crash took place at such a high elevation during spring, most of the bits were buried under deep snow. Like the mysterious flight MH370, the pilot here had picked a spot on earth that was extremely difficult to access. Let’s move onto the second example of the pilot suicide took place On March 23, 1976. This involved love of a very different kind. Japanese porn actor and pilot Mitsuyasu Maeno staged a kamikaze-style attack, crashing a Piper PA-28 Cherokee into the Tokyo home of right-wing figure Yoshio Kodama. Maeno was dressed in a World War II Kamikazi pilot uniform and died on impact. He was the only fatality. The attack was motivated by rage over what was called the Lockheed bribery scandal. Yoshio Kodama was a notorious political fixer, Yakuza-connected gangster, and key figure in corrupt business practices..
This is episode 43, and I thought instead of taking a closer look at the plethora of pilot suicides, another topic is heating up fast. The dangers of lithium-based batteries, lithium polymers, now playing probably on your wrist theatre, or perhaps in your hand, or gauging your heartbeat, monitoring the baby, inside your laptop, powering your GPS and your vaping device.
This is episode 42, and we’re diving into a particular category of aviation accidents — those that happen right at the beginning of a pilot’s journey. We’re talking about ab initio training mishaps. Ab initio, Latin for “from the beginning,” refers to a training path designed for aspiring pilots who start with zero flight time. Nothing. Not a minute logged, not a system diagram understood. These courses take students from ground zero to the right-hand seat of a commercial flight deck — through a tightly structured mix of theory, simulator time, and real-world flying. They’re intense and sometimes quite fast. And they aim to do two things: produce skilled, airline-ready pilots and identify those who should probably find another career. Many of these programmes are tied directly to airlines, which means you’re taught from the outset to fly their way — their SOPs, their ethos, their cockpit culture. That brings clear advantages. The pathway is laid out: from the classroom to the cockpit, without the detours of fragmented, school-hopping training. For many, there’s financial backing too — covering tuition, even living costs — opening doors for those who’d otherwise never afford to fly. There’s also the camaraderie. Like a military intake, you form close bonds under pressure, guided by seasoned instructors and surrounded by peers. And at the end, a job may be waiting — conditional on success. But it’s not all lift and no drag. Freedom? Limited. You’re often bonded to the airline for years — and leaving early can come with steep penalties. Career flexibility? Not much. Your training is airline-specific, and if you decide to fly charter or head bush, you may be back at square one. Contrary to the doomsaying of many veteran aviators, the accident rate during ab initio flight training in the United States has fallen by close to 50% — measured per flight hour - it shows between 2000 and 2019, the number of fatal training accidents almost halved. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s Air Safety Institute has the data to back it up.
Episode 41 is about substance abuse, technocrats behaving badly, sub-standard crew training and fatal attractions to nicotine and C H 3 C H 2 OH — methylethyl alcohol, otherwise known as hootch, or in South Africa, dop.