Flights Gone Wrong

Real stories. Deeper understanding.

Owen Sato

Regulation and what changed afterwards

Owen Sato follows what happens after the final report: the safety recommendations, the new rules and equipment, and the slow work of putting them in place. His guides explain how investigations work and who runs them, how to read a report's findings, and how a single accident led to changes such as collision-avoidance systems, wind-shear alerts and inspections of aging aircraft. He names the documents behind each change, notes when a recommendation took years, and always ends with what changed.

Writes about

  • How investigations work
  • Reading final reports
  • Safety recommendations
  • Collision and terrain warnings
  • Airport security
  • Aging aircraft rules

Owen Sato is a house byline of the Flights Gone Wrong editorial team. Drafts are prepared with software help, and every fact is checked against the sources cited on the page. How we check facts

By Owen

7 guides

  • TCAS and Terrain Warnings: Cockpit Alarms Born From Crashes

    What changed

    Two cockpit alarms do most of the work of keeping airliners apart from each other and from the ground: TCAS, which tells pilots to climb or descend away from another aircraft, and the ground proximity and terrain warning systems that call out ‘terrain, pull up’. Both were made mandatory after crashes, and the 2002 Überlingen collision showed that they only work if crews follow them.

    7 min read

  • Wind Shear and Microbursts: How Delta 191 Changed Aviation

    Causes

    A microburst is a column of air falling out of a thunderstorm and spreading out at the ground, and an aircraft that flies through one close to the runway can lose its airspeed and height faster than any crew can recover. Delta Air Lines Flight 191 at Dallas/Fort Worth in 1985 led to the airport radar, cockpit alerts and escape training that followed; the FAA says the last wind shear accident in the US was in 1994.

    7 min read

  • How Plane Crash Investigations Work, From Wreckage to Report

    Investigations

    A major air accident investigation usually takes between one and two years, and sometimes much longer, because investigators have to prove what happened rather than guess. This guide follows an investigation from the first hours at the site to the final report and its safety recommendations.

    10 min read

  • How to Read an Air Accident Final Report and Probable Cause

    Investigations

    An air accident final report follows a standard order: the facts, the analysis, the conclusions, including the probable cause, and the safety recommendations. This guide shows where to find reports, how to read each section and what to watch out for, using the NTSB’s report on American Airlines Flight 587 as the example.

    8 min read

  • Who Investigates Plane Crashes? NTSB, BEA, AAIB, TSB, ATSB

    Investigations

    A plane crash is investigated by an independent safety body in the country where it happened, such as the NTSB in the United States, the BEA in France or the AAIB in the United Kingdom. The countries that registered, built and operated the aircraft take part, and this guide explains who does what and where to find each body’s reports.

    7 min read

  • Aloha 243 and the Aging Aircraft Rules That Followed It

    What changed

    In 1988 a 19-year-old Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 lost a large section of its upper fuselage at 24,000 feet because many small fatigue cracks had joined up. This guide explains why the inspections missed them and how the United States changed the rules for older airliners afterwards.

    6 min read

  • What Changed After Pan Am 103: How Airport Security Evolved

    What changed

    Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb hidden in a suitcase over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people. This guide explains what the investigators found about the aircraft’s break-up and how airport and airline security changed in the years that followed.

    6 min read