Mayday Season 14 Episode 5 Explosive Clues

Mayday is the Canadian documentary television series that investigates air crashes and incidents. In episode 5 of season 14 titled "Explosive Clues," viewers are taken into the crash investigation of a South American airline, which ended in disaster, when the Boeing 737 plunged into the Amazon rainforest.

The show starts with the routine flight between the Brazilian coastal city of Rio de Janeiro and the Amazonian city of Manaus taking off. Things go wrong when the pilots noticed that one of their engines is not functioning correctly. The flight crew takes the decision to turn back to Rio de Janeiro, but before returning, there is a deafening explosion from one of the engines, followed by a fire that spreads through the plane. Panicked, the flight crew attempts to keep the plane in the air and signals the ground crew about the issue.

The episode then recounts how the air crash investigation team works tirelessly to examine every possible clue to identify the cause of the crash. We see experts studying the maintenance records, interviewing the flight crew's family members, reconstructing the plane wreckage, and interviewing passengers who survived the accident. The goal is to determine what caused the engine to explode and why the pilots were unable to maintain control of the aircraft.

The team soon discovers that the cause of the explosion that initiated the fire occurred due to stress corrosion, which led to a rupture in one of the engine's fuel tanks. The team is surprised to learn that around 60% of the engines of this series are vulnerable to this type of failure, and the manufacturer has not taken appropriate measures to fix the issue.

The show also highlights the difficulties faced by the investigators in their task to understand the cause of the crash. For instance, they confront a language barrier while interviewing the passengers as the recording was done in Portuguese, which is not well-understood by the investigators. They rely on translators to understand the recordings and determine what took place in the cabin. Their task becomes even more complicated as many of the passengers do not speak up or reveal what happened during the panic and chaos of the emergency situation.

Another challenge is trying to understand the timing of various circuits, fuel flows, and engine pressure readings while going through the recordings of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR). The team has to go through meticulous details to keep track of the sequence of events leading up to the disaster.

The show also highlights the central role played by the black boxes, which record the flight of the aircraft in detail, providing unprecedented insight into the disaster. We see the experts carefully handle the boxes and extract the data needed to solve the mystery behind the crash.

As the experts piece together previously unknown information and the different scenarios that transpired in the cockpit, they finally narrow down on a possible solution. However, it's not until the aircraft wreckage is traced to a small village in the Amazon, that the investigators finally discover some critical evidence that seals the case once and for all.

The show provides an in-depth account of a crash investigation and the complexities involved in determining the cause of an air crash. It offers a realistic portrayal of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into figuring out the reasons behind such tragedies.

In the end, "Mayday: Explosive Clues" is a must-see for anyone interested in air crash investigations, and it is one of the best episodes this season. It provides a sobering account of the complexities involved in air crash investigations and the need for stringent regulations to ensure the safety of air travel.