DAN AIR 1008 Accident 1980

[LAS1997]

I was unable to log onto the other threads that relate to this accident; but just come across this BBC Panorama programme.

YouTube - Air Crash Investigations What Happened to Flight 1008 Da (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPoUWpf-CwY&NR=1)

[PLovett]

A link to the full program is available here (http://www.filefront.com/16213809/Dan_Air_1008_by_apapele182.wmv/).

I have some problem with it as it tends to blame the controller for what was, I admit, a very dodgy clearance, whereas I would have thought the crew would have queried it and would most certainly have questioned a turn into high ground when it would put them below LSALT. :eek:

Before someone accuses me of jumping up and down on the graves of the airmen, I am not. There may have been a lot more to the crash than the program shows, there usually is, but at the end of the day it is the crew who are ultimately responsible for their safety and that of their passengers.

[DozyWannabe]

Fascinating stuff, albeit with due respect for those that lost their lives. Put into historical context it indicates a time when the package tour phenomenon was rapidly outgrowing the infrastructure that allowed it to happen in the first place.

After all this time, blame is a pointless thing to pursue - I don't see the programme as particularly bent on blaming the controller (in fact a young Paxman makes that point specifically), but rather to highlight the fact that large segments of the industry as a whole needed urgent overhaul. The debate over the amount of responsibility aircraft captains hold in situations with as much grey area as this continues to this day.

On a complete tangent - I noticed that the second segment of the programme was a debate on whether Polaris should be replaced with Trident - the more things change...