Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast

Dave Gorham
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  • Aviation
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"Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast" will discuss the tragic circumstances involved with some of the worst airplane crashes. When weather conditions are at fault or are a contributing factor to the accident (as is so often the case), the meteorology will be examined and explained. Hosted by a meteorologist with 40 years of professional experience including U.S. Air Force, broadcast and commercial meteorology. The Radar Contact Lost team includes experts from the fields of commercial meteorology, commercial aviation and air traffic control.

  1. 4d ago

    When the Mysterious Crash of Northwest Orient Flight 293 left No Survivors and No Airplane

    Send us Fan Mail On a pleasant Monday morning in June, 1963, a Douglas DC-7C departed from McCord Air Force Base in Washington state. The plane was loaded with military members of the United States Armed Forces. The destination was Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. The airliner never reached its destination. What exactly happened to this airliner remains a mystery. However, several theories hold some elements of reality. Though, like many fantastic or tragic stories with too few answers, there is at least one theory that will keep us on the edge of our seats. A rescue effort reached the crash site within hours, yet no plane was found and no bodies were found. What was found did little to dispel the most dramatic of those theories, though the small amount of wreckage couldn’t fully support any of the possible outcomes – conspiracy, or otherwise. This is the mysterious story of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 293, a civilian commercial airliner contracted by the United States government to transport military service members and their families to their new homes and their new jobs on the front lines of the Cold War. With no real evidence but a small amount of wreckage, several theories have gained strength over the decades. One theory is that the airliner was shot down by a missile fired by a United States Air Force fighter jet.  Most peculiar, is that the U.S. government is prohibited from looking for this plane and those on board. This is not because the whereabouts are unknown, or that the cost would be too high. It is because of one sentence in one regulation, what has become known as the Civilian Charter Loophole. Join Radar Contact Lost for this special in-depth look at the strange case of Flight 293. We'll visit the Gulf of Alaska, have a lesson in aviation meteorology, and drop in on Washington, DC where the Flight 293 Remembrance Act is in front of Congress today.

    1h 31m

  2. Apr 16

    TACA Flight 110: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Aviation Excellence

    Send us Fan Mail On Tuesday afternoon, May 24, 1988, Transportes Aéreos del Continente Americano (TACA) Flight 110 was painting thunderstorms and rain showers on the cockpit weather radar. The plane was enroute from San Salvador to New Orleans. It was a regularly scheduled flight, and the route across Central America and the Gulf of Mexico was routine. Cruising at about 35,000 feet (or 11,000 meters), no one onboard, not the crew and not the passengers, had any idea of what was about to happen.  Only moments after the plane began its descent into the heavy rain showers and developing thunderstorms below, not one, but both engines flamed-out. TACA Flight 110 was now dead-sticking into heavy rain and thunderstorms. What had been a quiet and relaxing flight, had now become a flight into Hell. One that will likely result in a crash into the Gulf of Mexico, or maybe onto the land, with a loss of all passengers and crew. Except, that didn't happen. This is the story of TACA Flight 110 – a miraculous, dead-stick landing of a commercial airliner, with the crew fully expecting to land in Lake Pontchartrain next to the City of New Orleans. Instead, the crew spotted a narrow strip of levee, a dirt and grass strip of land barely wider than the plane itself, where they could attempt to land the plane, instead of ditching into the lake.  The remarkable airmanship of the young pilot saved the plane and passengers, but what caused the dual flame-outs and why did the captain seemingly willingly fly into a thunderstorm? Radar Contact Lost examines the weather, the engines of the brand new 737 and celebrates one of the most remarkable emergency landings in aviation history.

    53 min

  3. Feb 9

    What is Turbulence and Why is Everybody Scared to Death About it?

    Send us Fan Mail On July 30, 2025, Delta Airlines Flight 56, an Airbus A330-900, carrying 275 passengers and 13 crew, was cruising at about 37,000 feet/11,300 meters over the high plains region of south central Wyoming. The evening flight had been underway for about 40 minutes; there were perhaps 9-or-so hours remaining before reaching the destination of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. Meal service had begun and passengers were settled in for the long, overnight flight. Looking out to the late afternoon horizon, those with window seats could see lightning from thunderstorms. The plane suddenly experienced a series of sudden, unexpected and severe vertical jolts up and down. As the plane was slammed downward, unbelted passengers were thrown into the ceiling, along with the flight attendants, who were in the midst of meal service. The turbulence was so severe that an emergency landing was necessary and 25 passengers were hospitalized.  This episode is all about turbulence. How it forms, why it forms and where it forms. How aircrews train for turbulence and how airplanes are built to withstand it. Even tips for passengers on how to mitigate turbulence before ever stepping onto the airplane. If you’re a white-knuckle flyer, have aerophobia or aviophobia – the fear of flying – then this episode of Radar Contact Lost is for you.

    56 min

  4. 2025-11-28

    When British Cadets Fell from the Oklahoma Sky

    Send us Fan Mail It was Saturday morning, February 20, 1943. The morning fog lay thick over the prairie of northern Texas and the rolling hills of southeastern Oklahoma, clinging to the fields and tree lines like a wet gray blanket. The sun had not yet burned through the mist, and visibility in a few places was little more than a few hundred feet. At this time of year, locals in the area—farmers, mostly—were used to crisp, clear mornings or the bluster of a winter wind. But this morning was different – the fog felt like it would take a while to burn off, if it ever did. Above that fog, somewhere in the pale early morning light, 12 small aircraft, each with a student pilot and student navigator, were flying a training mission. The young pilots, students who were early in their flight training, were searching for a break in the blanketing mist. These pilots weren’t from Oklahoma or neighboring Texas. They weren’t even American. They were young British airmen—cadets of the Royal Air Force – training thousands of miles from home. Somewhere up there, in the limited visibility, the group of twelve airplanes got separated. There was a group of three, and then that group of three became a group of two. But soon, each of those three planes found themselves alone in the fog, each desperately looking for a way out: looking for a patch of blue sky or, perhaps, a hole in the fog so that maybe they could take a chance at an emergency landing – somewhere; anywhere. Two of the twelve planes crashed in the fog that day. Four RAF cadets, a pilot and navigator in each plane, perished in the Oklahoma mountains. This is the story of those British pilot cadets who crashed on February 20, 1943, and a training program that brought a small piece of London, England, to a small Texas town named Terrell. In addition to the burial of the four British cadets, it also brought a memorial that was erected nearly 60 years later, by students of a different kind: Elementary school students who learned of the nearby airplane crashes in their reading class at school.

    43 min

  5. 2025-09-24

    When TWA Flight 6963 Crashed While Trying to Find a Dark Airport

    Send us Fan Mail On Saturday, December 28, 1946, a Lockheed Constellation airliner, known as the Cairo Skychief, was beginning the landing sequence at Shannon Airport on the western coast of Ireland. It was 2 o’clock in the morning so, naturally, it was dark. But it was also quite cloudy with low ceilings, fog and light rain – the visibility of the crew was restricted quite a bit. But this crew was experienced and the airport, despite being relatively new, was well known amongst international aircrews, as it was – and is – used regularly for both westbound and eastbound Transatlantic air traffic. Its location puts it in line with most direct flights to and from Canada and the United States. Yet oddly, as the crew was given clearance to land by the Shannon control tower and the plane turned toward the runway, the lights of the airport went dark. As the pilot struggled to compute this unprecedented turn of events, the left wingtip struck the ground. The aircraft then quickly crashed and caught fire. Like so many other aircraft accidents that are featured here on Radar Contact Lost, the weather at the time of the crash played a key role, yet it was not the sole cause – or even the primary cause of the crash. It would take months for investigators to understand what happened, but when the accident report was completed and made public, and the primary cause of the crash was revealed, it became clear that there was something much more significant than the weather that caused this crash. Of all the aviation accidents we’ve looked at on this podcast, we’ve never had a primary cause of an aviation accident like this one.

    1h 2m

  6. 2025-08-07

    When UPS Flight 1354 Crashed into the Ground More Than a Mile from the Runway

    Send us Fan Mail It was the early morning hours of Wednesday, August 14, 2013, when a United Parcel Service cargo jet slammed into the ground about one mile short of the runway at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, in Birmingham, Alabama, located in the southeastern United States. Even though the plane was more than a mile from the airport, the crash occurred on undeveloped airport property – the plane did not crash into a neighborhood or a business district, or land on a highway; the pilot and co-pilot were killed, but there were no other fatalities or injuries related to this crash. Though the low clouds in the area certainly contributed to this crash by visually obscuring the airport from the crew, there were plenty of other things that added to a list of crash-contributors, including several mistakes made by the captain and the first officer, as well as the dispatcher for United Parcel Service. Take the weather out of the equation, and all the other errors that brought down this Airbus were the result of mistakes made by aviation professionals. Like so many other aircraft accidents that are featured here on Radar Contact Lost, this was a needless and avoidable crash. The sequence of events that led to this crash began before the plane ever took-off.

    1h 4m

  7. 2025-06-07

    When Trans Canada Flight 810-9 Was on Fire, Losing Altitude and Lost Over the Cascade Mountains

    Send us Fan Mail The plane at the center of this episode of Radar Contact Lost was in a bad way: One engine was on fire – there were three others, but the plane was struggling to maintain altitude. In addition to the engine fire, it was experiencing turbulence and severe icing, it was crossing the mountains at night, and in the middle of winter storm. As if that wasn’t enough, the plane was also lost. It appears the crew didn’t realize they were lost, but they were well off-course, just the same.  This alarming situation was taking place over western Canada in a 4-engine propeller airliner in the middle 1950s. The plane had no empty seats. The passengers were likely unaware of the dire situation, though many had likely seen the engine fire and were aware that one engine was not working.  In this episode, we’ll talk about the plane and the mountain that the plane crashed into. We'll also talk about the memorial to the victims of Trans Canada Flight 810-9 and what it was like to be a passenger on a commercial airliner in the 1950s. I'll also share the meaning behind a weather term that I’ve noticed a lot of television weather forecasters use – and that they use it many times without an explanation – or at least without much of an explanation. The term is, “the atmosphere is capped,” or “the atmosphere is uncapped.” I’ll explain what a capped or uncapped atmosphere is all about.

    1h 12m

  8. 2025-04-08

    When a Quiet Neighborhood Next to an Airport Became a Scene of Fire, Horror and Devastation

    Send us Fan Mail It was a little after 4 o’clock in the afternoon, on Friday, July 9th, 1982, when Pan Am Flight 759, a B-727 carrying 138 passengers and 7 crew members, began to climb from the runway at New Orleans International Airport. In only a moment’s time, the narrow-body airliner slammed back down to the ground, after just barely becoming airborne. It was stormy around the airport, but there were no advisories, watches, warnings or aviation warnings in effect. It was noted by the plane's own weather radar that rain showers (not thunderstorms) were located near the departure end of the runway. Given the weather conditions and the crew's flight manual, there were no avoidance or delay procedures recommended. When the planed crash-landed, it set a neighborhood adjacent to the airport on fire. What happened to Flight 759? Why was the plane unable to climb away from the airport? Why, despite thunderstorms in the area, did the plane's weather radar not indicate the storms? Why were there no weather alerts in effect? This is the story of a plane crash nearing the end of an era - an era of mysterious weather with unknown capabilities and destruction. Not that weather forecasters have it 100% figured out today, but this crash happened at a time when one of the great weather mysteries, the microburst, was only just beginning to be unraveled.  Join Radar Contact Lost for a seat in the cockpit of the fated airliner, as well as what it was like to be an aviation meteorologist in the early 1980s. Learn about advancements in thunderstorm prediction and even how to predict a microburst yourself. Also, learn why the latest technology of the time, the Low Level Wind Shear Alert System, was not up to the task.

    1h 14m
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About

"Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast" will discuss the tragic circumstances involved with some of the worst airplane crashes. When weather conditions are at fault or are a contributing factor to the accident (as is so often the case), the meteorology will be examined and explained. Hosted by a meteorologist with 40 years of professional experience including U.S. Air Force, broadcast and commercial meteorology. The Radar Contact Lost team includes experts from the fields of commercial meteorology, commercial aviation and air traffic control.

Information

  • Creator
    Dave Gorham
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    29
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast
  • Show Website
    Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast

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