December 29, 1972. Eastern Airlines Flight 401, a Lockheed Tri-Star, is on

approach to land at Miami International Airport. 176 people are on board this

flight from New York's JFK airport. When the crew lowers the landing gear, the

light indicating that the nose landing gear is locked and placed fails to

illuminate. The crew begins troubleshooting the problem to determine whether

or not they can safely land. Distracted by investigating this problem, they end

up crashing into the Everglades, killing 101 people on board. December 28, 1978.

United Flight 173 is on approach to land at Portland International Airport in

Oregon. 181 passengers and eight crew members have just flown from Denver on

an uneventful flight. When the crew lowers the landing gear, they hear a

thud, fuel a strange vibration in the aircraft, and the light indicating that

the right landing gear is locked, fails to illuminate. The plane circles

Portland for an hour while the crew troubleshoots the problem before crashing

into a suburban neighborhood killing 10 on board. What do these flights have in

common? How can such a simple problem like a single-fail light bulb result in a

plane crash and loss of life? Could this still happen today? We'll find out on this

episode of Black Box Down. Hey everyone, welcome to Black Box Down as always

Amgus, and I have a passion for airline aircraft incidents and I've been, I

don't know, I guess, kind of researching them in an amateur way, which is a

weird thing to say, for many years now. And I'm joined by Chris, who's new to all

of this information. Welcome Chris. Yeah, thank you. So you really, for the most

part, don't know much about any of this. You flown, you know, like a normal

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