Plane Crash Diaries

Desmond Latham

I'm a pilot obsessed with flying and all things aviation. This podcast series covers more than a century of commercial aviation and how its shaped the world. Aviation is now safer than its ever been, but it took one hundred years of learning and often through accidents and incidents to reduce the risk of flying.

Episodes

  1. MAY 1

    Episode 44 - The Curious Case of Captain Button and the Pink Porn Kamikaze Pilot

    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..

    18 min

  2. FEB 9

    Episode 43 - Lithium on Board: UPS Flight 6 and the Battery Threat Airlines Fear Most

    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. They’re everywhere. Lithium has revolutionised our lives – and simultaneously poses a risk to aviation. The number of incidents of recharging battery packs and phones overheating is growing by the week. I am certain that the next major airline fire is going to be caused by a battery burn. And I’m not alone in this concern, IATA has just published data which revealed that 83% of pax carry a phone, 60% a laptop and 44% a power bank. So what you say. It’s what they found about what pax know about that dangers that’s of concern. While 93% of travelers consider themselves knowledgeable on the rules for carrying lithium-powered devices, half of those surveyed or 50% incorrectly believe it’s OK to pack small lithium-powered devices in checked luggage, 45% incorrectly believe it’s OK to pack power banks in checked luggage and 33% incorrectly believe that there are no power limits on power banks or spare batteries. Most spare lithium-ion batteries and power banks are limited to 100 Wh without special approval. This covers standard phones, tablets, and most consumer power banks while batteries between 101 Wh and 160 Wh - such as larger laptop batteries, professional camera/video batteries, or massive power banks are liimited to two spare batteries per person and require airline approval. Batteries over 160 Wh are banned in either carry-on or checked baggage, with limited exceptions only for certain mobility aids like wheelchairs. Airlines are collecting data through the Thermal Runaway Incident Program and we now know that across the world, an average of two flights a week have reported thermal runaways and one in five of these events led to a diverted landing. Crucially, we also discovered that two out of five passengers are packing rechargeable batteries in checked luggage. That is tantamount to playing Russian roulette. Back during these days, authorities underestimated the dangers – that was until the terrible UPS Airlines Flight 6 disaster of 2010. UPS Flight six was a scheduled international cargo flight operated by the parcel service which departed Dubai on September 3, 2010 heading to Cologne in Germany.

    28 min

  3. 08/09/2025

    Episode 42 - General Aviation Training Accidents BC/AC (Before Covid/After Covid)

    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. In the early 2000s, the accident rate hovered around 0.49 per 100,000 flying hours. By 2009, that fell to 0.39. By 2019, the rate dipped to 0.26 per 100,000 hours — a substantial decline. The top three causes of fatal training accidents haven’t changed much over time. They are, in order: 1. Loss of control in flight 2. Midair collisions 3. Controlled Flight Into Terrain — CFIT — the old nemesis flight into the granite cloud.

    24 min

  4. 09/01/2023

    Episode 36 - The 1971 Aeroflot Antonov twin crashes and the ATR-72’s achilles boot

    This is episode 36 and its icy cold out there - it’s time to check out the incidents involving icing - starting with a short list and general description of the causes, then focusing on the two Aeroflot Atonovs accidents in 1971 and a design fault in the ATR-72. There’s an unfortunately long list of commercial airliners lost due to icing, more than 540 accidents and events caused by aircraft icing by the late 1980s in the United States alone and most of these were fatal. Anti-icing and de-icing research can be traced back to the early 1930s and in 1948, two scientists, AG Preston and Calvin Blackman conducted the first successful iced flight experiment in which the drag coefficient increased by 81% when the wing was covered and the pilot reported the plane was almost beyond control. I’m not sure of what aircraft they used but the results were extraordinary. Other research by NASA on the DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft measured various conditions and ice shapes and their effect on aircraft thrust, landing flaps, and angle of attack. It’s thought that the first recorded case of a commercial airplane accident caused by icing occurred on December 15, 1920 when a de Havilland DH.4 mail plane operated by the United States Post Office Department crashed near Belleville, Pennsylvania, in the USA due to ice accumulation on the wings and control surfaces.There was a happier end to another on 19th December 1946 where a Railway Air Service Douglas Dakota 3 stalled on take-off 1 km north-east of Northolt Airport in London. This was the case of the scheduled service to Glasgow Airport from London. Four crew and one passenger were on board .. Yes, you heard correctly, one passenger.So to matters more terminal if you excuse the extremely cheesy aviation pun. That be the highly unusual twin crashes of the Antonovs in 1971 both caused by ice accretion. ot Antonov An-12s crashed on approach to Surgut International Airport, just nine days apart. The crashes occurred under near-identical circumstances due to the aircraft type’s lack of preparedness for flying in severe icing conditions. It’s the formation of an ice ridge by water droplets beyond the ice protection system and one side anti-icing system that is likely to cause rolling and overturn according to research documents. A case in point of the ridge cause was an ATR-72 crash in 1994. At that time, the airplane was at a severe level of icing condition, and the co-effect of the electric heating de-icing system at the wing leading edge and the natural conditions formed an ice ridge on the second half of the wing, resulting in a negative pressure zone on the one side's aileron.

    27 min

  5. 08/04/2019

    Episode 5 – Miss Macao: The first commercial airliner to be hijacked

    I’m your host and pilot, Desmond Latham. Every week we tackle a different area of aviation and this week it’s the history of hijackings. The first ever hijacking of a commercial plane took place on the 16th July 1948. It involved a Catalina Seaplane owned by Cathay Pacific and operated by subsidiary Macau Air Transport Company registered in Hong Kong. At that time Hong Kong was still a British Territory. And ironically the plane that took off from the sea was going to be affected by what was called piracy originally. The struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists was in full flow – the civil war reverberated around the region and law and order had collapsed in many parts of China. The Miss Macao, as the seaplane was called, was on a routine flight from Macau to Hong Kong. In 1948 Macao was a Portuguese territory. But it never made it to the rapidly growing metropolis of Hong Kong. The plane was hijacked a few minutes after take-off by four men, three armed with guns, one of whom demanded that the pilot surrender the controls. Just to add to the crazy scenario – he was from Mexico but was not Mexican. The pilot, an American by the name of Dale Warren Cramer, refused to hand over control to the hijackers and at that moment his co-pilot attacked one of the intruders with a flag-post rod. In the confusion, Cramer was shot dead, and collapsed onto the flight controls. The plane went into an uncontrolled dive and crashed into the sea. Miraculously one person survived by jumping out of the emergency exit as the plane hit the ocean. Unfortunately it was one of the hijackers although in a sense some would say its fortunate that at least someone survived to tell the story. Twenty-five of the twenty-six people aboard died in the crash. Through this series you’re going to hear how often one person survives – and its more often than you think.

    18 min

  6. 06/25/2019

    Episode 2- Air France 447, frozen pitot tubes & confusion on the flight deck

    This is the series that tracks air disasters through history and how each has led directly to the safety we almost take for granted every time we climb aboard an airliner. Last week it was the story of the first recognized commercial air crash involving a dirigible over Chicago in July 1919 that killed 13 people, three on board and 10 on the ground. That led to new no-fly rules over city central business districts. This week we have jumped forward to the crash of Air France 447 which took place in June 2009. Two hundred and twenty eight crew and passengers were on board. None made it out alive. A crucial piece of equipment malfunctioned leading to incorrect decisions being made by the air crew. The piece of equipment is called the Pitot tube. At the end of this episode I’ll update the Short History of section with more details about the background to the PITOT tube. Pitot tubes are amazingly simple yet vital hardware and you can find these on all aircraft, big or small. It’s linked to pressure-sensitive instruments and used to determine airspeed, altitude, and rate of climb or how fast a plane is climbing or sinking. Modern airliners have more than one, but that didn’t make any difference in the early morning hours of June 1st 2009. Air Airbus A330-203 registration F-GZCP took off from Rio de Janeiro at on May 31st 2009 routing to Paris. Because the duration of the flight was more than 10 hours, there were 3 crew which meant each could take a break. The flight's captain was Marc Dubois, while the co-pilots were Pierre-Cédric Bonin and David Robert.[12] There were 9 cabin crew onboard and 216 passengers. Unfortunately for all on board, the first sign of poor aviating that night a severe chain of thunderstorms appeared in the inter tropical convergence zone, the area north and south of the equator which registers cumulo nimbus based storms that can rise to nearly 50 000 feet which is higher than any airliner flies. No large commercial airliner can fly that high.

    24 min
  7. Episode 1 - An Airship plunges into a Chicago Bank

    06/18/2019

    Episode 1 - An Airship plunges into a Chicago Bank

    This series called Plane Crash Diaries is really about how safe aviation has become. This sounds like a contradiction, but its through the experience of more than a century of commercial aviation that experts have been able to build an extremely safe sector in the 21st Century. Decades of improving safety and regulations as well as operating procedures have led to a form of transport that is now regarded as crucial to the development of the world economy. There are more than 2,000 airlines operating more than 23,000 aircraft at 3,700 airports around the world. These airlines serve a total of more than 3.5 billion passengers a year or about 96,000 passengers a day. The commercial aircraft industry has been growing at 5% per year over the past 30 years and is expected to double over the next decade. This is success in anyone’s book. With all those planes flying about, safety is paramount and has been since the early days of aviation. Consider how many aircraft are flying compared to the number of incidents and you’ll agree that aviation is surely one of the safest methods of getting around in the modern world. But it wasn’t always like that. Each accident that has taken place since the first heavier than aircraft commercial aviation began after the First World War has led to improved standards. So in this series we’ll track these accidents from across the one hundred years since the first was logged. That was on July 21st 1919 when a GoodYear blimp the Wingfoot Express, crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago. Thirteen people died – three of the five on board the dirigible and ten others on the ground. The accident led to new regulations eventually about how high aircraft should fly above congested city centres. As a pilot I have to follow these to this day even here in South Africa where Air Law states that no Central Business District may be overflown without consent from the Civil Aviation Authority.

    20 min
  • 7 Episodes

4.6
out of 5
157 Ratings

About

I'm a pilot obsessed with flying and all things aviation. This podcast series covers more than a century of commercial aviation and how its shaped the world. Aviation is now safer than its ever been, but it took one hundred years of learning and often through accidents and incidents to reduce the risk of flying.

Information

  • Creator
    Desmond Latham
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    Plane Crash Diaries

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