Mayday: Season 8

2009 · 2 episodes · ★ 8.2

What Season 8 of Mayday

Mayday: Air Disaster reconstructs the events behind accidents, near misses, hijackings and attacks in aviation history. Each episode mixes dramatic reenactments, computer animation and archival footage with interviews with experts, retired pilots and investigators. "System Failure" examines accidents caused by communication errors between pilots and air traffic controllers. It also looks at the Next Generation Air Transportation System, a technology designed to prevent collisions by reducing reliance on the controller and distributing some of their tasks to computers installed on each aircraft. "Cruel Skies" focuses on the role bad weather plays in air disasters and shows, from a weather station, how information reaches pilots once they are already in flight.

2episodes

Jun 10, 2009released

Jun 17, 2009latest episode

1.5 hrtotal runtime

Season 8 Episodes

8x01 System Breakdown (Next Generation Air Transportation System)
Jun 10, 2009 · 45 min
1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision, 1986 Cerritos mid-air collision, Avianca Flight 52, Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907, Überlingen mid-air collision.This special looked at the role of air traffic controllers in the airline industry, and took a look at the Next Generation Air Transportation System, a new technology meant to eliminate mid-air collisions by reducing overall dependence on radar and radio, as well as delegating some of the air traffic controllers' tasks to computers on board each plane.
Directed by: Larry Bambrick · Written by: Christopher Blow
8x02 Cruel Skies (Bad Weather) Season Finale
Jun 17, 2009 · 45 min
Southern Airways Flight 242, Delta Air Lines Flight 191, American Airlines Flight 1420, British Airways Flight 9.This special looked at the role of bad weather in disasters and examines the US Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, Missouri, to see how information on weather is transmitted to pilots in the sky.
Directed by: Larry Bambrick · Written by: Christopher Blow