Скачать или смотреть The 5-Minute Mistake That Doomed Flight 191: The Catastrophic Engine Separation.

On a clear afternoon in 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 took off from Chicago O’Hare Airport and crashed just 31 seconds later, becoming the deadliest aviation accident in United States history. It was not an engine failure, but a systemic breakdown that began months before the flight, inside a maintenance hangar.

Aviation Vault uncovers the devastating chain of events: an unapproved maintenance shortcut, used to save time, placed excessive stress on the DC-10’s engine pylon, creating invisible cracks. The engine separation after takeoff was technically survivable—but its consequences were not. As the engine tore away, it severed the hydraulic lines powering the left wing slats and disabled the stall warning system, leaving the crew completely blind to the aircraft’s lethal aerodynamic condition.

Watch this forensic analysis to understand:

How a critical failure in maintenance procedures led to the collapse of the engine pylon.

How the aircraft was stripped of its redundancy, making the loss of lift on the left wing undetectable to the pilots.

The lasting legacy of Flight 191: how this tragedy triggered the worldwide grounding of the DC-10 fleet and fundamentally changed aviation safety protocols, maintenance oversight, and pilot training (CRM).

This accident is definitive proof that safety does not fail loudly, but quietly—incrementally—through small decisions made far from the cockpit.