117. The Airliner (ValuJet)

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection.

designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight.

and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named the best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like SimplySafe.

Monday Sidekick, the AI agent that knows you and your business, thinks ahead and takes action.

Ask at anything, seriously.

Monday Sidekick, AI you'll love to use.

Start a free trial today on Monday.com.

This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

Do you guys have a way of checking to see anything out of the ordinary in the airplane?

Do you see smoke?

Do you see any scorching?

I'm showing some smoke on your

number one engine.

Verify, you're showing some smoke on the number one engine.

That's affirmative.

You want to shut number one down.

That's the pilot side.

All right, number one, here we go.

Allegiant Air Flight 864 to Hagerstown, Maryland, had only been in the sky for eight minutes on June 8th, 2015, when its crew and 141 passengers smelled something burning.

Captain Jason Kinzer turned the plane around to make an emergency landing at Florida's St.

Pete Clearwater International Airport from which the flight had departed.

And once safely back on Earth, he radioed the ground crew to ask if there were any visible issues with the aircraft from their vantage point.

I'm showing some smoke on your number one engine, they reported.

So Kinzer shut down the engines and explained to the cabin that they would be evacuating.

That tower, uh, Paragran Allegion 864, we're gonna be evacuating.

864, hold off on your evacuation, please.

Who said to hold off?

Yes, please, hold off on your evacuation.

Yes, who is this?

Yeah, Legion 864.

Who's telling us not to evacuate?

An unidentified voice on the radio, without explanation, advised Captain Kinzer to hold off on the evacuation.

When Kinzer inquired about who and why, there was no response for at least two minutes, and the burning smell had not dissipated.

So concerned about the safety of everybody on board Flight 864, Captain Kinzer deployed the emergency slides and opened the doors.

Then he walked to the back to assist in deboarding a paraplegic passenger.

Anything less, he felt, would have been a dereliction of duty.

Seen here right now in Allegiant flight had to make an emergency landing when the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit.

Six weeks later, Captain Jason Kinzer was fired.

You ordered an evacuation that was entirely unwarranted, read his termination letter from Allegiant Air.

According to the airline, Kinzer had failed in his duty to, quote, operate each aircraft safely, smoothly, and efficiently, and strive to preserve the company's assets.

It is for these reasons that your employment with Allegiant is terminated, effective, immediately.

Jason Kinzer sued Allegiant Air later that year for $10,000 in lost income.

His lawyer claimed Allegiant terminated the pilot maliciously because he hadn't prioritized company assets and negative media exposure over over passenger well-being.

As a pilot, Jason Kensler's safety record was spotless.

Allegiant Air could not say the same.

Meantime, a scare for Allegiant Air passengers.

Their plane lost cabin pressure after two hours in the air.

Third time in two weeks, an Allegiant airplane has had to make an emergency landing.

Then in August, the FAA says a maintenance issue led a plane to prematurely lift off the ground in Las Vegas.

The MD-80 was heading for the runway at the Phoenix Mesa Gateway Gateway Airport when the captain smelled smoke.

This video shows moments after officials tell us an engine caught fire as the plane was getting ready to take off to Fresno.

This is the fifth incident with an Allegiant flight since July.

The Kinser termination was just the latest incident in a deluge of recent negative publicity for Allegiant Air.

Over the past 12 months, beginning in 2014, the Las Vegas-based air carrier made headlines for low fuel warnings, cabin pressurization problems, rapid descents, engine failures, faulty brakes, landing gear malfunctions, hydraulic leaks, electrical issues, missing components, aborted takeoffs, and other problems that would continue and amplify as 2015 came to a close.

Allegiant Air's streak of 60 straight quarters of profits was in jeopardy.

After emerging from bankruptcy in the early 2000s, the budget airline had become one of the most profitable airlines in the United States by serving underserved smaller markets such as Fresno, California, Shreport, Louisiana, and Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Allegiant's unbundling approach to air transportation kept fares low, but revenues were padded by charging additional fees for even the most minor conveniences.

We are very sensitive to all the needs you may have, but we're also able to mine all the profit, the company's CEO, Maury Gallagher Jr.

told Bloomberg.

Gallagher had also once bragged about saving money by having executives build their own office furniture.

However, those examples were non-complimentary peanuts compared to where Allegiant most substantially cut costs.

Allegiant relied heavily on older airplanes purchased second-hand from foreign airlines, most notably the McDonnell Douglas MD-80, a gas-guzzling jet already retired by most carriers by the time its production ended in 1999.

In 2015, buying a new state-of-the-art Airbus A320 could exceed $60 million.

The cost of a 30-year-old MD-80, on the other hand, was about $4 million, barely worth its weight and parts.

The average age of Allegiance fleet of aircraft was 27 years old.

That's not a problem, in and of itself, as long as the machines were meticulously maintained, but according to Allegiant's own pilots and mechanics, that hadn't been the case.

The company's maintenance was performed by contractors and subcontractors who were reportedly overworked, underpaid, and undertrained.

Minor mechanical problems were allowed to linger until they became major malfunctions.

Pilots even claimed they were discouraged from declaring emergencies or reporting problems because it was in Allegiant's business interests to keep the planes in the air to maximize profit.

Pilots have accused Allegiant Air of putting profits over passenger safety, even stating, quote, lives are at risk and the airline is heading down a dangerous path.

In 2016, the Tampa Bay Times spent months analyzing federal aviation records to determine just how dangerous of an operation Allegiant Air really was.

The newspaper published its investigative findings in November of that year.

The data was alarming.

The Times found that in 2015 alone, 42 of Allegiant's 86 airplanes were forced to make unexpected landings at least 77 times due to serious mechanical failures.

many times due to repeated failures of the same systems.

The newspaper calculated that Allegiant Air was four times as likely to fail during a flight than other major U.S.

airlines.

CBS's 60 Minutes picked up where the Tampa Bay Times investigation left off by conducting its own review of federal aviation safety records.

In a segment that aired in April 2018, reporter Steve Croft detailed how Allegiant Air had experienced another 100 serious mechanical issues in 2016 and 2017, three and a half times the rate of American Airlines, United, Delta, JetBlue, and even Spirit.

You're a former member of the NTSP.

Would you fly on an Allegiant plane?

I have encouraged my family, my friends, and myself not to fly on Allegiant.

Perhaps most concerning, both the Tampa Bay Times and 60 Minutes revealed that despite recommendations by its own inspectors, the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency responsible for ensuring airline safety, had repeatedly declined to take any enforcement action against Allegiant Air.

This passive approach had to do with a policy change, according to CBS News.

Quote, over the last three years, the FAA has switched its priorities from actively enforcing safety rules with fines, warning letters, and sanctions, which become part of the public record, to working quietly with airlines behind the scenes to fix the problems.

It may well be what's allowed Allegiant to fly under the radar.

Allegiant discounted that notion.

CEO Mari Gallagher had referred to its 77 mechanical failures in 2015 as simply a, quote, bad summer.

Allegiant says, quote, CBS produced a one-sided narrative by cherry-picking interviews and ignoring publicly available facts.

Although they downplayed concerns about the airline's safety record, Allegiant executives did admit that operations had been, quote, stressed as a result of the company's rapid growth.

When Gallagher took over as CEO in 2001, Allegiant serviced only a handful of cities.

15 years later, they had expanded to over 100.

Allegiant also announced that it was in the process of modernizing its fleet.

The recent bad press probably expedited those efforts.

The airline's last MD-80 took its final flight in November 2018.

It was delayed by 30 minutes.

The recent bad press also had major financial implications for the company's shareholders.

According to a stockholder derivative lawsuit filed in December 2018, The fallout from Allegiant's devaluation of safety, maintenance, and training erased more than $373 million in market cap.

However, according to the complaint, Allegiant executives dodged the worst of it by selling more than $50 million of their own shares before the negative publicity tanked the stock price.

And they're lucky.

We are lucky, that that's the worst that happened as a result of Allegiant Air's questionable operation at the time.

And that's really all it was.

Luck.

Disaster seemed narrowly avoided.

As a former FAA inspector told the Tampa Bay Times, quote, it is not through anything the FAA has done.

A former prosecutor for the FAA named Loretta Auckley shared a similar view to 60 Minutes.

You know, if God forbid there is an accident, she worried, I think there will be a lot of people saying, well, we knew, we knew, and we did nothing.

A former prosecutor at the FAA with 30 years of experience says, quote, you know, if God forbid there is an accident, I think there will be a lot of people saying, well, we knew, we knew, and we did nothing, end quote.

That's U.S.

Representative for Illinois Luis Gutierrez discussing the 60-minutes expose of Allegiant Air on the House floor.

We ought to demand the experts inside and outside of Congress get the facts and hold people accountable, he said, because Allegiant Airline is a tragedy waiting to happen.

Allegiant Airline is a tragedy waiting to happen.

And they really should know better, as we as a country should know better, because the CEO of Allegiant is none other than one of the founders of ValueJet.

Actually, there were five ValueJet executives, including two of the company's three founders who were now in key positions at Allegiant.

What is ValueJet?

Well, it was an ultra-low-cost air carrier in the 90s that was riddled with safety incidents and operational red flags that federal regulators chose to ignore.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, the parallels are almost uncanny.

Allegiant Air was a tragedy waiting to happen.

ValueJet was a tragedy that happened from waiting.

Questions of corporate and government accountability arise after a horrific aviation accident on this episode of Swindled.

They bribed government officials to find accounting for violations of the AI state law earlier they unethical pay to play

tens of millions of dollars

Dummied up its books and records to hide that.

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection, designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight, and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by US News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simply safe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simply safe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like SimplySafe.

Once going to Florida meant a very long car ride.

Just one more day or a very high airfare.

Then ValueJet Airlines introduced low-low fares to Florida.

Now Florida still means a very long car ride.

Where'd everyone go?

We are probably flying ValueJet.

But it no longer means a very high airfare.

Low fares every day, everywhere we fly.

The first ValueJet took flight in October 1993.

It marked the beginning of a new era in transportation.

airfare made affordable for the average Joe.

The cabin door was now open to everybody.

Low-cost air carriers were nothing new.

Southwest Airlines popularized the business model in the early 70s, but ValueJet's vision of a no-frills airline took the low-cost concept even further.

Passengers received only the seat they paid for and a complimentary breath mint.

Any perks beyond that came with a fee.

The key to the Atlanta-based airline's success was to maintain the lowest operating costs possible.

This meant relying on older, second-hand planes and outsourcing the maintenance.

ValueJet did not own repair hangars or keep inventories of spare parts.

Lewis Jordan, the president and founder of the company, even bragged about using a $100 desk he bought at Home Depot.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Lewis Jordan.

I'm president of ValueJet Airlines.

ValueJet pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics were also paid the lowest wages in the industry.

Mass layoffs in the 90s had created a large labor pool that was willing to work for cheap.

The company also forced its employees to pay for their own training and uniforms, offered no sick leave, and only paid its pilots for flights completed.

The majority of ValueJet's workforce consisted of contractors, subcontractors, and temporary employees, also known as Jordan's Temps, named for the ValueJet president whose ex-wife's employment agency supplied the fresh meat.

The hours were long.

the probationary periods even longer.

But that's the kind of exploitation required to offer $39 airfare to Tallahassee.

Since deregulation, we've had numerous carriers, and ValueJet is one of them.

It comes into existence trying to squeeze the eagle off the dollar.

And in doing so, they can only afford to operate at or close to the legal minimums.

In a few short years, ValueJet's blue and yellow branding was widely recognizable.

The company's marketing featured a cute little cartoon airplane mascot named the Critter.

The same name also served as the ValueJet air traffic flight identifier.

The strategy proved successful.

ValueJet went from operating eight flights a day to four cities using two planes to 124 flights a day to 17 cities using 51 planes in the span of only 14 months.

The company's stock price almost tripled in the same amount of time, and there were no signs of slowing down.

ValueJet, which is headquartered in Atlanta, has grown rapidly since it was founded three years ago.

It now has 3,500 employees.

Its 51 planes fly to 31 cities in the U.S., with plans for further growth later this year.

That kind of growth, along with its discount fares, some as low as $39,

has at times raised questions within the industry.

Of course, there were some growing pains, but that was to be expected.

A few mishaps here and there, but nothing major, thankfully.

ValueJet strived to make improvements every day.

Besides, the company doesn't become one of the most profitable airlines in the United States almost overnight without some bumps in the sky.

Flying a plane is all Candelan Kubek ever wanted to do.

It was in their blood.

Her grandfather was a pilot in World War I.

Her uncles were pilots in Vietnam.

Candy actually received her license to fly before she could legally drive, and she had been flying ever since, accumulating almost 9,000 hours in the sky.

But it hadn't been easy.

especially commercially, even though she was wholly qualified.

The only way Candy Kubeck could get her foot in the door as a female pilot was to cross the Eastern Airlines picket line in 1989.

Consequently, Candy was harassed, bullied, threatened, and ultimately blacklisted from flying for any of the major airlines.

That's how she found herself working for non-unionized Value Jet for $43,000 a year.

But the salary was mostly irrelevant.

Candy Kubeck honestly just loved the job, and she loved the people she worked with, and they loved her back.

When Captain Kubak arrived for duty on Saturday, May 11th, 1996, she found her cockpit had been decorated for her birthday.

Candy had just turned 35 years old the day before.

What better way to celebrate than to pilot an old McDonnell Douglas DC-9 from Miami to Atlanta?

ValueJet had acquired the 27-year-old airplane in time for its opening day in 1993.

It was originally owned by Delta Airlines, but they'd retired it a year earlier.

The DC-9 that Candy Kubeck would be flying that afternoon had been in service since 1969.

Joining Captain Kubeck on the routine journey was her first officer, 52-year-old Richard Hazen, who had joined ValueJet after 20 years in the Air Force, and three Dallas-Fort Worth-based flight attendants, Lori Cushing, Jennifer Stearns, and Mandy Summers.

The plane's 105 passengers consisted of people from all walks of life.

There was Dan and Lisa Jarvis, high school sweethearts who had grown apart and then reconnected after their respective divorces.

They were returning home to North Carolina from a Caribbean cruise.

The McNit family was also returning from a dream vacation.

Neil, Judy, and their three young daughters needed to be home in suburban Atlanta in time for a planned family reunion on Mother's Day.

Kim Reynolds, a junior in college, had spent a week scuba diving in the Florida Keys with her mother.

Lisa Pearson was going back to Kansas City after cashing in her prize for a round trip to Florida that she had won in a a beauty pageant.

Rodney Culver, a running back for the San Diego Chargers, was also on board, enjoying the off-season with his wife Karen.

And then there was Dale Marie Walker, returning to the scene of the crime where she had brutally murdered a friend in an argument over money just weeks earlier.

You never know who you're sitting next to.

The estimated flight time of ValueJet Flight 592 from Miami International to Hartsford, Jackson, in Atlanta, was one hour and 32 minutes.

Departure was delayed an hour because the plane was late getting in.

At 2.03 p.m., Flight 592 was cleared for takeoff.

Captain Kubek guided the DC-9 down the runway, throttled up, lifted into the sky, and ascended over the next several minutes to 11,000 feet.

At 2.10 p.m., Captain Candy Kubeck heard a singular, brief brief thumping noise from below.

What was that?

She asked her co-pilot.

I don't know, Richard Hazen replied.

We got some electrical problem, Captain Kubeck noticed on her instrument panel.

That battery charger's kicking in, Hazen pointed out.

We're losing everything, Kubek said, somehow maintaining a calmness in her voice.

We need to go back to Miami.

Just then, a flight attendant opened the cockpit door.

There's smoke in the cabin, she told them, over the cries of fire fire from the passengers behind her.

592 days I need to return to Miami.

Put a 592, Roger, turn left heading 270, descend and maintain 7,000.

What kind of problem are you having?

The air traffic controller immediately began to reroute other planes in preparation for Flight 592's emergency landing.

Turn left and descend, instructed Kubek and Hazen.

The pilots veered southeast in silence, completely focused on the task at hand.

Again, the flight attendant interrupts.

We need oxygen.

We can't get oxygen back here.

The cabin was filling with a thick, toxic smoke.

Chaos unfolded.

Completely on fire, you can hear a voice in the background say over the radio.

At 2.11 p.m., Richard Hazen radios back to air traffic control.

We need the closest airport available, he says.

Critter 592, the controller responds, sensing the urgency in the co-pilot's voice.

Opalaka airports at about 12 o'clock.

There was no response.

Flight 592 descended from 7,800 feet to 1,000 feet in 40 seconds.

The right wing dropped, the plane rolled over and plummeted toward the Earth at 500 miles per hour at about a 75-degree angle about 10 minutes after takeoff, 15 miles northwest of the Miami Airport.

Terrain terrain.

Uh, yes, I am fishing at Everglades Holiday Park.

And a large jet aircraft has just crashed out here.

Large, like airliner size.

At the airplane, winning everything's fine.

Everglades Holiday Park along Canal 1267.

I harvest you need to get your choppers in the air.

I'm a pilot.

I love a GPS.

I'll give you four.

Walton Little had just caught the biggest bass of his life.

About eight and a half pounds, he told the media.

Quote, it would have been a nice memory, but it won't be much of one now.

Walton was admiring the catch in his boat near the canal in the Everglades Holiday Park at 2.15 p.m.

on May 11, 1996, when he saw a large commercial airliner diving toward the ground at a high rate of speed.

Mr.

Little didn't see the impact because the plane disappeared over the horizon about a mile away, but he heard it, and he saw the 200-foot-high mushroom cloud of mud and water splash into the air.

Mr.

Little, a pilot himself, had a GPS with him and provided an emergency operator with the coordinates of the crash.

And this is not a hoax, the operator asked.

This is not a hoax.

No.

Scorched earth and small pieces of debris.

These are the only visible signs of the fatal crash of Flight 592.

The value jet DC-9 plummeted into the alligator-infested swamps of the Florida Everglades shortly after takeoff from Miami International Airport.

Out of all the places on earth where a plane could crash, the Florida Everglades might be one of the worst.

The inhospitable marsh is covered in three to five feet of water.

Below that is another five feet of thick, black peat moss muck and rotting vegetation that can and will swallow anything it touches.

You can hide 100 elephants in one of these Everglades sinkholes and nobody would even know it, a wildlife expert at the University of Miami told the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel.

Fortunately, there were no concealed elephants to worry about, just everything else.

Alligators, venomous snakes, violent vegetation.

Rescue workers familiar with the environment knew they were in for a challenge.

But how much of a challenge was unclear initially.

From dry land several hundred yards away, there was very little evidence that a crash had even occurred.

First responders would have to wait for helicopters and airboats to get a closer look.

Even then, accessibility would be an issue.

The closest highway was five miles away.

To bring in heavy equipment, recovery teams considered paving a road, constructing a bridge, and building a dam around the crash side to drain the swamp.

All of these ideas quickly proved impractical.

Instead, emergency personnel used a road near an embankment 300 yards away.

Boats picked up dive teams wearing specialized suits to protect them from the jet fuel in the water.

Sharpshooters tagged along as added protection from any creatures lurking below.

But even atop the crash site, rescuers found nothing.

The 54-ton airplane had seemingly just disappeared.

There is no large wreckage, no wing sections, no tail sections that can be seen.

It's It's our understanding there were 109 people on board.

At this point, there's no sign of survivors.

No fuselage, no wings, no bodies.

Just small pieces of metal and plastic scattered atop the water, along with some personal effects belonging to the passengers and crew of Flight 592.

Purses, wallets, a photo album, a child's teddy bear.

Meanwhile, the families of those missing gathered at the airports in Atlanta and Miami, where the ambulance chasers and bloodthirsty media lie in wait.

There a problem?

I don't know.

I'm trying to find out.

Who are you expecting?

My sister.

And where is she coming from?

From Miami.

This woman is being led to a room where she and many others were given the awful news that the flight en route from Miami to Atlanta crashed in the Everglades.

The recovery mission continued throughout the night using generator-powered lights and infrared devices, but not a single soul was found.

By day two, all hope was lost.

The search for survivors was called off, but accident investigators would continue to pick up the pieces.

The following is a paid advertisement for the Swindled Valued Listener Rewards Program.

Are you tired of hearing advertisements in Swindled like this one?

Do you wish there was more swindled content to distract you from your miserable existence?

Don't settle for those other inferior podcasts with the annoying hosts who laugh at their own jokes.

Become a swindled valued listener today to receive easy access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes that are not available anywhere else.

Completely advertisement-free.

It's fun for the whole family, but don't take our word for it.

I drive trucks for a living.

Big trucks.

And besides this old pooch here, my valued listener membership is the only co-pilot I need.

Best $5 I've ever spent.

Well, besides that one time at that truck stop Glory Hole down in Birmingham, God, I miss her.

Or him.

Millions of swindled fans have discovered the secret of becoming a valued listener.

Try it in your own home today.

Also, act now to receive the valued news for valued listeners update show at no extra cost.

That's a $5,000 value for one easy monthly payment of $499.

Go to valuedlistener.com to sign up using Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Patreon.

No long-term commitments, satisfaction guaranteed, foreign currency accepted, canceled anytime.

Please, just give us your money.

Support for Swindled comes from Bombas.

Falls here.

The kids are back in school.

Vacations are done.

And cozy season has officially started.

Which means time to slide into some bombas.

You know, bombas, the most comfortable socks, slippers, tees, and underwear out there.

All made from premium materials built for this time of year.

We're talking merino wool that keeps you warm when it's cold, but cool when it's warm.

Sapima cotton that's softer, stronger, and more breathable than the regular stuff.

And even rag wool, the thick, durable, classic cozy sock that's practically made for fall.

And it's not just socks.

Bombas has slippers too.

The sharper-lined Sunday slippers that make it hard to leave the house.

The gripper slippers, perfect for travel, even waterproof Friday slides.

But here's the best part.

For every item you buy, Bombas donates one to someone experiencing homelessness.

That's over 150 million items donated so far.

And with their happiness guarantee, if you're not 100% satisfied, they'll make it right.

No risk, all reward.

I've worn Bombas for years, and honestly, they've outlasted every pair of socks in my drawer.

They stay soft, they don't sag, and it feels good knowing my purchase helps someone else.

Head over to bombas.com/slash audio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase.

That's bombbas.com slash audio.

Code audio at checkout.

Good evening.

In the Florida Everglades tonight, all hopes have ended that there will be any survivors from the crash of ValueJet Flight 592.

But now there are questions, many of them, about the airline's safety record and the federal agency that has known about it all along.

There was no way to know what caused the crash of Baloujet Flight 592 until the wreckage could be analyzed.

Investigators and recovery teams waded through the Everglades looking for the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, the so-called black boxes that often shed light on moments leading up to catastrophe.

Historically, the majority of aircraft accidents can be attributed to pilot error.

It was too early to rule that out in the case of Flight 592, but Captain Candle and Kubeck's associates were skeptical, including ValueJet President Louis Jordan, who described the pilot as, quote, very experienced, very well trained, and very competent.

Candy Kubeck was quick on her feet, an expert problem solver.

According to the Sun Sentinel in September 1994, while landing one of ValueJet's DC-9s on a wet, short runway in Chicago, Kubek maneuvered the skidding plane sideways to avoid disaster.

She was no stranger to emergency situations.

In fact, as the media quickly pointed out in the wake of the accident, most ValueJet pilots were no strangers to emergency situations.

Since the budget airline's inception, there have been numerous incidents involving mechanical malfunctions.

For example, one of ValueJet's planes embarked on 140 flights with a leaky hydraulic system before it was fixed.

Another was allowed to fly 31 times with a broken weather radar system.

More recently, in June 1995, the Turkish bot engines installed in one value jet plane caught fire on a runway in Atlanta, causing significant injury to a flight attendant.

Rach O'Neill's legs were horribly scarred by the shrapnel wounds and second and third degree burns.

The DC-9 that disappeared in the Everglades was the culprit in many such emergencies.

According to the safety record of the 27-year-old airplane, an overheating engine, failed cabin pressurizations, and unsealed exit doors had led to eight unscheduled landings and two aborted takeoffs in the past two years.

Coincidentally, or maybe not so much, a source told CNN that Flight 592 had been delayed the day it crashed because of continuous problems with the circuit breaker behind the pilot's seat.

Could this have sparked an electrical fire that ultimately took the plane down?

Unlikely, but it added another layer of scrutiny to the budget airline, which suddenly found itself under a microscope.

Our sincere

emotions go out

to the people who are on board the airplane, their families, their loved ones, their friends.

That includes both the customers on board that airplane and ValueJet's crew members.

ValueJet President Louis Jordan found himself in a unique position, juggling the roles of crisis manager and damage controller while simultaneously defending the airline as the company's spokesperson.

The age of ValueJet's fleet was not an issue, Jordan assured while touting the company's excellent maintenance program.

The media, he criticized, was too quick to rush to judgment.

We have a lot of hysteria out in the industry right now.

At this moment in time, for the people who are looking to determine, should I just stay away from low-cost carriers?

Misinformation or rush to judgment is particularly concerning.

The Federal Aviation Administration provided the embattled airline a vote of confidence on the day of the accident via statements from its administrator, David R.

Henson, as did the Transportation Secretary for the Clinton administration, Federico Pena, and Robert Francis, the vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Federal officials say ValueJet has an acceptable record and people should not be afraid to fly discount airlines.

My daughter has been on ValueJet fairly recently.

I would go on ValueJet tomorrow.

Whenever we have found any issues, ValueJet has been responsive.

They have been cooperative.

They have in some cases even exceeded the safety standards that we have at the FAA.

And I want to emphasize that I have flown ValueJet.

ValueJet is a safe airline.

Nevertheless, the FAA announced it would intensify its regulation efforts of ValueJet in response to the crash of Flight 592.

All 51 jetliners the company operated would be inspected thoroughly.

ValueJet President Jordan Lewis welcomed the examination.

ValueJet needed to restore the public's confidence in the airline, which had quickly waned in the ensuing days of the tragedy.

Newsweek reported that 53% of Americans polled were less likely to use ValueJet after the crash.

In a separate crash, the company's stock had lost 20% of its value, but not before Timothy Flynn, one of the ValueJet founders, sold 1.5 million of his own shares.

Lewis Jordan continued his attempts to stop the bleeding.

I fly frequently on every airplane in our fleet and I think it just is illogical and makes no sense for any of our critics, no matter what they think of ValueJet Airlines, to assume I would want to run anything other than the safest airline that we could possibly run.

I simply do not understand the logic of those who think that running an unsafe airline could ever contribute to profitability.

Everyone agreed that increasing inspections of the company's jets was a good start, but the public was soon shocked to learn that ValueJet had already been under federal scrutiny.

Three months before the crash of Flight 592, the FAA had placed ValueJet under what it called a special emphasis review in response to four safety-related incidents in January and February 1996.

Nothing disqualifying was found, reportedly, and the company was cooperative, which federal officials were probably referring to in their recent defenses of the company.

Yet, the United States Department of Defense apparently did not like what it saw and ordered a temporary halt to ValueJet's use for its own purposes.

The American public, however, was never made aware.

It's far too early to determine whether the drive to keep costs down was a factor in today's crash in Florida, but aviation experts complain cost-cutting can lead to skimping on safety and that the FAA needs to crack down harder.

Even worse, an unearthed internal FAA memo dated February 14, 1996, three months before the crash, warned of safety issues at ValueJet.

The memo, which officials initially denied its existence, was proof that the agency responsible for aircraft safety was aware of serious deficiencies at the company, but did nothing.

The FAA's own study reported that ValueJet's accident rate was the highest in the industry, 14 times higher than the rate of major airlines.

What do you have to say about that, Mr.

Jordan?

I have spent the last number of days of my life dealing with a a human tragedy and the families and the loved ones that lost their lives and I ain't bothering with a lot of statistics right now, okay?

Yeah, neither have the FAA.

Despite its own inspector's recommendations of grounding the airline and requiring a recertification, again, the agency felt no compulsion to warn the flying public about its concerns with ValueJet.

However, the recovery and investigation of the crash were still ongoing.

Perhaps it was a bit premature to assign any blame.

We have a number of very senior NTSB investigators who are here, who have done tens, hundreds of accidents,

and a number of them have commented that this is the most difficult

scene that they have ever

encountered for the recovery

of

the aircraft.

The month-long search for wreckage and bodies in the Florida Everglades was the most grueling and expensive in the National Transportation Safety Board's history, according to the agency's chairman, Jim Hall.

The divers couldn't see an inch in front of their faces in the murky waters.

They relied on radar and felt around in the mud with their feet.

It's an archaeological dig, one recovery worker described it.

The largest piece of wreckage found was only eight feet long.

The plane probably disintegrated on impact.

after striking limestone under the water's surface with a force of between two million and five million pounds, the Sun Sentinel reported.

The humans on board suffered the same fate.

Fingers, feet, and chunks of flesh were plucked out of the water, stored in bags, and shipped to the temporary morgue.

The identification process would be just as painstaking as the recovery.

This is about as bad as it gets, said Dade County Medical Examiner Roger Middleman.

Right now we have roughly 40 body parts.

Some of them are very small, some of them a little bit larger.

What's the largest body part you have?

The largest part would be, for example, a knee.

When the recovery operation was called off on June 10th, 1996, only an estimated 20% of the total human remains had been found.

With no intact bodies, it would be difficult to determine cause of death.

Was it smoke inhalation?

Were they burned alive?

Were they wide awake and white-knuckled at the end?

More encouraging news was that the plane's black box had been found, and the data and recordings were salvageable.

Investigators were hopeful that that information in conjunction with the recovered aircraft sections would help piece together the puzzle of what happened on that fateful day.

We believe that we have recovered about 75% of the aircraft wreckage.

Portions of the wreckage are being reconstructed to help us learn what we can about the origin and extent of what we believe to have been an intense in-flight fire.

Preliminary theories had emerged.

Some had more evidence to support them than others, but what was almost a certainty was that a fire had occurred on board Valuejet Flight 592 before it went down.

The cockpit voice recordings of the pilots describing smoke and background screams of fire lend credence to that theory, as do the soot-covered pieces of wreckage that were pulled from the Everglades.

But how the fire might have started remained a mystery.

NTSB investigators were able to rule out an engine failure.

Both the DC-9 engines were recovered and reconstructed in the warehouse along with the rest of the plane.

There were no signs of it being a point of ignition.

There was also the faulty circuit breaker that had caused issues earlier in the day, but again, investigators were doubtful that it could have borne an inextinguishable blaze.

Could it have triggered an electrical failure?

Sure, but that's not something that would have overwhelmed experienced pilots like Candy Kubik and Richard Hazen.

Soon, accident investigators landed on its primary suspect, oxygen generators.

The hairspray-sized steel canisters, typically mounted in an airplane's ceiling, to provide the oxygen to the mask utilized by passengers when there's a drop in cabin pressure.

The generators produce oxygen through a chemical reaction, which produces a tremendous amount of heat.

It would not be the first time an oxygen generator was responsible for a fatal aviation disaster.

Except this time, the oxygen generators in question were not mounted in the cabin.

According to shipping documents, as many as 150 of these oxygen generators have been loaded into the cargo area by ValueJet's maintenance contractor, a St.

Louis-based company called Sabretech.

Sabretech had recently replaced the expired canisters in ValueJet's planes in Miami and was sending the discards back to ValueJet headquarters in Atlanta.

Oxygen generators have a shelf life like fire extinguishers, regardless if they're empty.

Even if they were empty, In terms of responsibility, it was almost irrelevant.

A used oxygen generator contains a highly flammable byproduct of barium salt, which is considered hazardous waste, which ValueJet was not authorized or equipped to transport.

Full or empty, the oxygen generators were dangerous and never should have been loaded as cargo on Flight 592.

And the fact that they had been meant that someone made an egregious mistake.

No one was more relieved to hear that than ValueJet President Lewis Jordan.

My preliminary briefing shows me that we had canisters on board the airplane that were designated as empty.

If that information is correct, then we were not at fault.

The show was sponsored by BetterHelp.

We've all been there, venting to the group chat, unloading on our barista, or oversharing with a stranger in a bathroom line.

And while those people are great listeners in the moment, Let's be honest, they're not trained to help us with anxiety, depression, or relationship issues.

That's where BetterHelp comes in.

BetterHelp has been helping people find their right match for over 10 years with a 4.9 rating across 1.7 million client session reviews.

Their therapists are fully licensed, clinically trained, and work under a strict code of conduct.

And instead of leaving it to chance, BetterHelp does the matching work for you.

using a quick questionnaire to connect you with one of over 30,000 therapists.

If it's not the right fit, you can switch at any time, no extra cost.

It's all online, totally flexible, and has already helped more than 5 million people worldwide.

Therapy when you need it, at the click of a button.

As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise.

Find the one with BetterHelp.

Our listeners get 10% off the first month at betterhelp.com/slash swindled.

That's betterhelphelp.com slash swindled.

FA inspectors performed the equivalent of four years of surveillance in just four weeks.

Following some 2,000 inspections, the airline has not demonstrated that it has an effective maintenance control system.

Therefore, the airline has agreed to halt voluntarily its operations until such time as it demonstrates appropriate corrective action.

ValueJet has agreed to cease passenger operations voluntarily at midnight tonight Eastern Daylight Time.

On June 17th, 1996, Federal Aviation Administrator David Henson announced that the agency's 30-day intensive inspection of ValueJet found several serious maintenance deficiencies and that the company had agreed to halt operations until they were corrected.

It was a complete about-face from the FAA's stance in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

When asked what changed, Mr.

Henson replied, circumstances.

ValueJet accepted the terms and vowed to come back stronger than ever.

However, due to recent bad luck, Lewis Jordan announced the company would probably have to lay off 4,000 employees, depending on the timeline.

This is an accident that could have happened to any airline in the world, he noted.

ValueJet Airlines is also a victim, and ValueJet people are victims.

We plan to start all over and bring ourselves back as successful, strong, safe, reliable, and yes, fun and friendly still.

In September 1996, four months after the crash of Flight 592, As shoes and other items of clothing continued to bubble up to the surface in the Everglades, the FAA considered ValueJet's reformations acceptable and allowed the company to return to the skies at a much reduced scale.

Instead of 30 cities, the airline would service only five with the opportunity to expand in the future.

To celebrate and to win back its passengers, ValueJet launched a promotion, $19 one-way fares to all locations.

But the biggest draw, it's cheap.

A one-time deal of less than $20 a seat.

What brings you to ValueJet?

$19 fares to Orlando?

It took another year after ValueJet's re-emergence for the National Transportation Safety Board to conclude its investigation and issue its report into the crash of Flight 592.

The technical cause of the accident was more or less as suspected.

144 improperly packed and mislabeled oxygen generators started a fire in the cargo bay of the airplane.

An employee of Sabretech told investigators that the generators had been sitting around their stockroom for weeks until he had been instructed by management to clear them out.

A potential colossal client, Continental Airlines, was scheduled to inspect Sabretech's Miami facility soon.

So that Sabretech employee stacked those canisters about 30 to a box horizontally in the end.

Bubble wrap was placed on top and the boxes were sealed.

Aircraft parts was written on the side.

The shipping ticket read, Oxy canisters, empty.

Sabertech delivered those five boxes to a ValueJet ramp agent who says he wedged the boxes together on top of and between three jet tires, two large and one small.

He later told investigators that he remembered hearing a metal clinking sound as he jostled them around.

Investigators couldn't determine whether one of the canisters ignited during the cargo loading or the taxi, but it was likely that ValueJet Flight 592 was doomed before it had even taken off.

In the NTSB's recreation of the fire, it took only minutes for the oxygen generators to reach temperatures over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which ignited the bubble wrap on top and the cardboard cardboard boxes, which then spread to the tires, one of which popped.

That was the sound, investigators concluded, that Captain Kendal and Kubik asked about five minutes before she died.

What we did here is try to simulate in a very rough way what the conditions would have been on the MD-80 aircraft

visualization.

That sound is the oxygen generators releasing their oxygen under these higher temperatures.

We have the tire here, which will get involved in the fire shortly.

And the tire does rupture as a result of the high temperatures

during the sequence of events.

According to the accident investigators, the intense fire burned through the cargo hold and then through the steering cables above it, causing the pilots to lose all control of the plane.

It could also not be ruled out that the pilots accidentally forced the plane into a dive when they slumped over the controls after becoming incapacitated by the cyanide-laden fumes from the burning plastic around them.

Investigators presumed that that's how most of the passengers died.

It was a shame because it could have all been so easily and in the spirit of ValueJet cheaply avoided.

There are plastic safety caps for oxygen generators that can be used during transport.

At the time, they cost three cents cents each.

Sabretech did not use them in this instance, but the paperwork said they had, and the supervisor signed off on it.

The investigation showed that the fire was initiated

by one or more oxygen generators that was accidentally triggered when the firing mechanism was not properly secured.

The NTSB offered another idea.

a fire detection and suppression system in the cargo holds.

Actually, that was the same idea that the NTSB had pitched to the FAA nine years earlier.

That recommendation was rejected after the FAA calculated that it would cost the airlines $350 million to retrofit their fleet of aircrafts, which far exceeded the $159 million value placed on the potential loss of human life.

Instead, the FAA compromised and required basic smoke alarms in the airplane lavatories, mostly to prevent passengers from trying to sneak a cigarette.

Incredibly, federal investigators virtually predicted the Everglades crash in 1988.

That's when the National Transportation Safety Board first urged the FAA to require that smoke detectors be installed in 2,800 widely used passenger jets.

It has not happened.

In conclusion, the NTSB assigned equal blame to ValueJet, Sabretech, and the FAA for the Flight 592 disaster.

The ValueJet accident resulted from failures all up and down the line, Chairman Jim Hall said at the day-long hearing, from federal regulators to airline executives in the boardroom to workers on the shoproom floor.

Sabretech was to blame for its mishandling and mislabeling of the oxygen canisters, ValueJet for its mismanagement of subcontractors and inadequate training of its own employees, and the Federal Aviation Administration for its lax oversight and failure to adopt and enforce preventive measures.

This is Mary Chiavo, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Transportation at the time, who was publicly critical of the FAA, an agency her department oversaw.

That's been their nickname for some time, not just this administration, but for several administrations.

Our safety agency is called the Tombstone Agency.

Why?

Because they wait for major loss of life before they'll make a safety change.

Unfortunately, that day had arrived.

As predicted, Long overdue safety changes were implemented in response to the crash of ValueJet Flight 592.

For one, the Department of Transportation banned oxygen generators as cargo, so you can relax about that, but I never will.

And two, the FAA finally adopted new rules that required all commercial airliners to be outfitted with fire detection and suppression systems and cargo departments.

You can almost hear 110 souls applauding the government from beyond the grave for not letting them die in vain.

ValueJet had already tried to wash the stink off before the NTSB had even published its findings.

In July 1997, 14 months after the disaster, they acquired Orlando-based budget airline Airtran Airways and adopted their name.

Airtran operated for another 14 years before it was acquired by Southwest Airlines for $1.4 billion.

Sabretech didn't make it out as lucky.

The company filed for bankruptcy a few years later, as a quote, direct result of the ValueJet crash, according to the company's attorney Kenneth Quinn.

We were just unable to pull ourselves out of this tailspin, he told CNN, presumably, regrettably.

Sabertech agreed to pay a fine of $1.75 million for 37 hazardous material violations, but admitted no wrongdoing.

It was the largest hazardous materials fine ever levied by the FAA, which was not compelled to fine itself.

Even more unprecedented, in 1999, Sabretech, the corporation, and three employees were criminally charged with terrorism, essentially.

A 24-count federal indictment accused the company, its vice president of maintenance, David Gonzalez, and two mechanics, Eugene Florence and Mauro Valenzuela Flores, of making false statements, mishandling hazardous materials, placing a destructive device on a civil aircraft, and conspiracy to make false statements to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation.

The corporation faced fines totaling $6 million.

The employees were looking at up to 55 years in jail.

At the same time, the state of Florida charged Sabretech and those same three employees with 110 counts of manslaughter and 110 counts of third-degree murder.

This crash was completely preventable, said Catherine Fernandez-Rundle, a Florida state attorney.

Hopefully, this chilling reality of criminal charges will send a very clear message to the aviation industry that will save lives in the future.

This corporation is not going to be allowed to escape unpunished when it committed crimes and acts that resulted in these many, many deaths.

And make no mistake about it, again, I repeat, this was not an accident, this was a crime, it was a homicide.

Sabretech was convicted of nine counts of criminal hazardous materials violations at its federal trial in December 1999.

The company and two employees, David Gonzalez and Eugene Florence, were acquitted of the most serious charges.

The third employee charged, Mario Balanzuela Reyes, did not attend the trial because he had fled the country and hasn't been seen since.

Authorities believe he's living somewhere in South America under an assumed identity.

To this day, there's a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

It took ValueJet Flight 592 just 11 minutes to crash in flames into the Everglades.

It took a Florida jury less than three days to acquit Sabretech, ValueJet's maintenance company, on most of the criminal charges it faced.

And two of the company's employees were acquitted on all charges.

Sabretech was ordered to pay $11 million for those violations, but that was later reduced to just $500,000.

Sabretech agreed to donate another $500,000 to an aviation safety organization in exchange for having the murder and manslaughter charges dropped by the state of Florida.

Instead, the company agreed to plead no contest of one count of unlawful transport of hazardous waste.

Big business getting away with murder, said Laura Sawyer, whose grandparents died in the Flight 592 crash.

Is anyone surprised?

Responsibility for this accident goes from Sabretech to ValueJet to the FAA.

It was a comedy of errors, and they just stacked up against one another, and they caused this crash.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen.

with original music by Trevor Howard, aka DeFormer, aka The Critter.

For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok at SwindledPodcast.

Or you can send us a postcard at PO Box6044, Austin, Texas, 78762.

But please, no packages.

We do not trust you.

Swindled is a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy moneymen, no fancy desks.

We build our own furniture around here, god damn it.

We plan to keep it that way, but we need your support.

Become a valued listener on Patreon, Apple Podcast, or Spotify at valuedlistener.com.

For as little as five bucks a month, you will receive early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes that you can't find anywhere else.

And everything is 100% commercial-free.

Become a valued listener at valuedlistener.com.

Or if you want to support the show and need something to wear on your next budget flight to Florida, consider buying something you don't need at swindledpodcast.com/slash shop.

There are t-shirts, patches, hats, hoodies, posters, coffee mugs, and more.

Swindlepodcast.com/slash shop.

And remember to use coupon code Capitalism to receive 10% off your order.

If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the homepage.

That's it.

Thanks for listening.

Hello.

My name is Gwen from New Bern, North Carolina.

My name is Raquel from Woody Earth, California.

Hello, my name is Tamara from Ohio, and I'm a concerned business

listener and a value listener.

your well-being.

Bye.

Thanks to Simply Safe for sponsoring the show.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like Simply Safe.