Missing Safety: Why Dash 8 Flight 1600 Vanished in 13 Minutes

Aviation Survival Stories · Sep 17, 2026 · 16m

Missing Safety: Why Dash 8 Flight 1600 Vanished in 13 Minutes

A 30-minute hop became silence in 13 minutes: a Dash 8 with 38,421 flight hours and two experienced pilots disappeared after departing Lae, killing 28 of 32 on board - and investigators found a missing safety device that should have stopped it. What prevented a routine flight from becoming a catastrophe, and why was that safety mechanism not fitted?

In this episode, we tell what happened on Flight 1600 from takeoff at 16:47 on October 13, 2011, through the decision to deviate around a storm and the descent that followed, and we…