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A few days before Christmas in 1995, the pilots of an American Airlines Boeing 757 wound up lost over the Andes mountains in South America. Under pressure to make it to the airport quickly, they began to make mistakes. What started out as a simple lapse in judgement, quickly snowballed into a series of critical errors, each one compounded by the one before it. In a few short minutes, these mistakes would result in the deaths of nearly everyone onboard.

This is the story of American Airlines flight 965.



This video was inspired by Admiral Cloudberg's analysis here:   / childrenofthemagentathecrashofameri...  

Final Report:
https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/f...



All music licensed through Epidemic Sound

Maps: Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.

American Airlines 757 Livery: https://forums.xplane.org/index.php?...

Pictures:

787:
Masahiro TAKAGI from Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons

A320:
Ken Fielding/https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenfiel..., CC BYSA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons

A330:
JetPix (GFDL 1.2 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/oldlicen... or GFDL 1.2 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/oldlicen..., via Wikimedia Commons

A340:
Iberia Airlines, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons

AAL965 Crash site pictures:
FAA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons



00:00 Intro
01:05 Flight background
01:54 Pilots
03:38 Flying in Latin America
05:50 Initial descent
09:10 The first mistake
10:45 A shortcut
16:30 Wrong turn
18:58 Confusion begins
23:52 Terrain
24:54 Crash
25:26 Aftermath and Investigation
27:38 Children of the Magenta
29:10 Situational Awareness
29:40 Speedbrakes
30:50 American 965 documentary
31:44 EGPWS