Mayday Fatal Transmission (2003– ) Online

Quincy, Illinois, has a small airport with few runways and no tower and therefor no air traffic controllers. A regional airliner carrying 14 passengers lands according to plan and brushes against a smaller airplane with two people.

Everyone aboard the commuter airliner survives the initial impact. The problem is that they cluster around the main door, forward, the one they entered through, and the door wouldn't open, so everyone aboard died is smoke inhalation and burns. All deaths are horrible but waiting to be burned must be one of the worst.

As it turned out, the door malfunctioned because there was a bit of slack in the cable linking the handle to the cams that lock the exit. There were two other exits but they were ignored by the passengers because of the chaos and fire that immediately followed the crash.

When I first began watching these programs I was concerned that the responsibility, in the absence of any contradictory evidence, would be pinned on the pilots. "Pilot error" is a judgment that all pilots dread and feel is over-applied.

But as a previous reviewer has pointed out, there seems to be little hesitation in blaming the pilots, although the text is usually masked with words like "confusion" and "distraction." On the other hand, the aircraft manufacturers are treated rather gently and the National Transportation Safety Board seems, like Sherlock Holmes, never to err.

It's a gripping episode, and well done.