Latest / Aviation Survival Stories
When a Nut Fails: The Last Minutes of Flight 261
When a Nut Fails: The Last Minutes of Flight 261
A single failed nut the size of a coffee mug brought a packed airliner to catastrophic failure - 90% of its threads were gone before the flight even began. How did a copper alloy nut lose nearly all its threads across maintenance visits and inspections without anyone noticing, and what were the final minutes like when the pilots fought a machine gone deadly?
In this episode, we follow the timeline from Puerto Vallarta departure to the cockpit voice recorder pulled from the Pacific and describe the decisions, forces, and maintenance lapses that…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.