Air Crash Investigations

We see how commercial jets rely on a pressurised atmosphere to keep passengers alive and revisit some of the most compelling aviation disasters of the last fifty years to expose the explosive power of decompression. Along the way, we look at the many breakthroughs and design innovations that were implemented only after something went horribly wrong.

Examining how disasters in the sky can be caused by the tiniest fault in the aircraft. Marvels of engineering, today's modern jetliners are made up of hundreds of thousands of parts. Keeping these aircrafts in the sky requires constant maintenance and repair and if just one tiny flaw is overlooked, the result can be catastrophic.

When pilots climb into the cockpit of a modern jetliner, they put their trust in an automated computer system that can control virtually every aspect of flight. It's a complicated relationship between man and machine and when it doesn't work perfectly, disaster can strike in an instant.