Out of Fuel Over New York (Avianca Flight 52) - DISASTER BREAKDOWN 

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The amount of poor communication by everyone involved and how easily this could've been avoided is just tragic.

Don’t apologize. The longer the videos, the better.

The part where ATC asked if they had enough fuel to make it to the airport and then there's just silence makes my blood curdle. That silence was so so very loud

I really do not believe we can fault the air traffic control here. The crew should have declared an emergency in plain language, at which point they would have been given priority to land. I don't understand how they could run their reserve so low without seeming to be particularly worried about it.

You have the perfect voice, tone and music for these videos, makes them deep and i always feel connected in some way with the people that died, it's weird.. Amazing and informative video as always..

I’m sorry everybody can go back-and-forth when the surviving member of the flight crew said that nobody in the cockpit ever communicated anything to the passengers on the plane not even a brace for impact I put 100% on the flight crew

3:49 anyone else noticed the person going through the plane?😆

Your videos are of such high quality, I’m amazed with the quality, amount of research, time taken, your passion, your channel is the entire package! Gunna binge watch a load of these amazing videos! Instead of dramatising everything, you humanise everything, give us the hard facts, and report these accidents in a respectful manner, something I massively appreciate. I find aviation fascinating, but dislike a lot of TV shows because they dramatise everything and don’t focus as much on the facts, and come across as disrespectful with how much they sensationalise everything, which is extremely disrespectful when there’s loss of life, so your channel is an amazing breath of fresh air, factual, respectful, and extremely educational!

Great video. I've seen a few full-length docs on this crash, but you've included all relevant information and a robust analysis in less than half the time. Your streaminling of the disaster timeline really helps highlight how the whole situation was tragic and avoidable. Looking forward to the next upload.

First Officer failed to warn ATC. "Pan Pan Flight 052, fuel priority! Pan Pan! That would've been clear as day to ATC.

They offered $75000 to the survivors? Woohoo! You almost killed me but sure, 75K is fine.

Great video. I much prefer this to the documentaries with the loud music and sound effects. Thank you!

They should have said "we are running out of fuel" as soon as it had started cutting into their reserve and not when they had barely 5 minutes of flying time left.

The FO didn't sound assertive enough in my opinion. It seemed as if he was driving down the road coasting on gas fumes thinking everything would work itself out.

You are kinder to the ATC than some reconstructions have been. They were obviously under a lot of pressure, but not understanding “I am running out of fuel” as a statement of emergency is still a little odd.

The crew waited too long before declaring at CAMRN that they don't have enough fuel to continue holding. Per regulations, a plane must have enough fuel to taxi, takeoff, fly to its destination, conduct an approach, conduct a missed approach, fly to it's alternate, conduct an approach, and fly for an additional 45 minutes. By the time they had reached CAMRN or before and it was indefinite holding at the time, they should have flown to Boston. When they went missed, the co-pilot should have very clearly explained how serious their low fuel situation was by saying how much fuel they had remaining, "we must land immediately", and/or declined all instructions except for heading directly back to JFK. After the First Officer said that they were running out of fuel, the approach controller should have queried more about this. The reason why the Captain, despite flying for Avianca for over 20 years, was lacking in his English proficiency skills is because in South America, pilots mainly speak Spanish to the Air Traffic Controllers, but ATC must be proficient in English as well. In this day and age with planes being operated by 2 pilots instead of 3 or 4, all Spanish pilots must be proficient in English as if the English speaking pilot becomes incapacitated while flying over English speaking territory and the other pilot doesn't know English, they're pretty much screwed. Edit: yesterday I talked to a pilot who is from Mexico about this and he told me that ALL pilots and Air Traffic Controllers in the aviation world must be fluent in English. At the time of the Avianca crash it was common for Spanish pilots to fail their English proficiency tests but still be allowed to fly either because the Captain was very experienced or the co-pilot was fluent in English. The pilot told me that when this crash happened it reverberated around the aviation industry regarding English proficiency amongst pilots from non-English speaking countries as the Captain of Avianca 52 had to ask the co-pilot 9 times for clarification or what was going on.

Excellent narration with an accurate display of clips and photographs in regards to the subject, a lot of good and real input! Thank you!

So, i'll be taking a boat to go travel from now on.

I have thought for a long time that they need people that can monitor the cockpit in real time from a ground station.

It's all the pilots fault. You can't have controllers trying to play detective. One of the pilots should have declared an emergency.

The lack of communication killed everyone. The end. This among the most infuriating crashes I've seen.

Excellent video. Knew the background to this, but this has great clarity!

where did you get the 707? Nice video by the way :)

videos are always great quality and very informative with a lot of background information very glad I found this channel!

So I've watched a couple of videos on this channel about 2 different disasters that I knew about already, now I've watched this one about one I didn't know about. I'm down the rabbit hole, I'll see you all on the other side when I've watched everything he's ever uploaded three times :D

And this is one of the many reasons why foreign pilots should receive a lot of English-speaking lessons before being cleared for flying Like it or not English is the most spoken language in the world Then again when a foreign pilot says to me that he needs priority because he is running out of fuel That should be a clear fucking sign that they indeed need priority

Just discovered this channel and am very impressed. You've definitely got a new sub and fan. 👍

Quality contents. You deserve more 🤗

This all could’ve been avoided with flex tape

Wow you actually said Norfolk correctly. Thank you 😊 great video btw

Flight crew screwed up soo bad here, damn..

Shocking. Sad.Unnecessary .

hey, we're out of fuel, no biggie tho no rush

Most frustrating accident. So unnecessary.

Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliers, covers this incident in great detail. It's worth a read for this part (and the parts involving Korean carriers) alone. The NY controllers are brusque and hurried, but according to Gladwell, the reason for the crash is purely a cultural/linguistic one.

Not even a pan-pan: low fuel??

I'm starting to prefer your vids to Cineflix' ACI. Wasn't there a piece of Tangerine Dream track around half way into the video? Nice production indeed.

I was so angry when I learnt of the cause of this accident, especially at atc putting the onus of the accident with the pilots when they were already told about the fuel state multiple times, regardless of the precise language used. Multiple calls of "Running out of fuel" should be enough to expedite getting them on the ground.

Almost an hour and twenty minutes of extra flight time in holding patterns...that's a lot of fuel. FO was waaaaay too casual when talking to ATC. I'm not sure he understood just how dire the situation was. Hard to place the blame on just one thing here, but if the captain really did ask the FO to declare an emergency TWICE...and he didn't do it... RIP to all who perished.

Lets be real, the co-pilot does not sound sober.

In a plane, low fuel means mayday!!!

33 years ago today!

Best channel on YT💜🏅

Was there some reason they did not use the 7700 transponder code? (I don’t know what year that came out)

6:02 the pilots actually hand fly the aircraft IFR all the way to new york?!! And this was only 30 years ago! What the fuck

Why do they say "heavy" when they contact ATC?

Rip to the souls who perished… why not try to land at Islip, Trenton, or newark

The question "Who is to blame" is the worst question. The right questions would be "What have we learned from this? How can we avoid this in the future?"

Never been this early

What a bloody mess

I remember this

Klotz seemed incompetent

Great video. You should definitely look into doing voice acting and narration work in general if you aren't already.

Avianca hasnt lost a plane since this accident. They certainly learned from it

Just imagine walking out of your house and seeing a 707 crashed 10 feet in front of your house entrance. I am actually surprised the house wasn't damaged more. Why the FO didn't call in an emergency is just mind blowing. The only good thing about running out of fuel is that there was no fire after the crash which probably saved most of the people on that flight. RIP to the victims of Avianca flt 52.

I think the stress should have started when they were about to miss their alternative airport in terms of both, the schedule and fuel reserve.

The fact that anyone survived is incredible.

I'm actually listening to your videos while cleaning so I don't know about the graphics, but your description is easy to understand for a non aviation listener and your diction is clear. I enjoy these videos a lot, thank you!

For the content you get,I rather pay you than some subscription to watch aviation disaster documentaries

This first officer is the point where cool under pressure is no longer a good thing

The pilot should have said I’m almost out of fuel I’m landing on the middle lighted runway so clear the f-in runway!!!

This channel is pure gold, every video is so well made on such a tight uploading scedule. Great work

16:31 “ I guess so, thank you very much “. The person in the cockpit who relayed that message didn’t make it sound like they were in danger of running out of fuel and that it was an emergency situation. His tone sounded like he was ordering lunch or something.

In defense of air traffic control, the guy said we are running out of fuel so casually that it could be assumed that they had at least enough fuel to land

"I guess so, thank you very much." f-ing what!? Unbelievable with so many lives hanging in the balance.

This is the best amateur Avianca 52 video I've seen. Just a few things to add: - Hand-flying for over 6 hours should have been highlighted more in the video. It gave way to a tired and complacent atmosphere in the flight deck. - Pilots were not informed of low-level windshear on approach, which almost led to a crash on their first approach. The dissenting statement from Mr. Burnett (final report, NTSB) did make a point of this. - You did mention the Boeing fuel bulletin, but not the "at least 7000 lbs as the minimum indicated fuel quantity for landing". The FE didn't realize that the flight was running on emergency fuel until he started considering gauge inaccuracies. Keep up the good work!

Your content is so high quality! When I first watched you I assumed this was a short documentary from Netflix or something 🤣

This is the most heartbreaking and avoidable tragic disaster I've ever seen on this channel. It's utterly stupifying that this plane crashed cause it ran outta fuel over an airport!!! Smh

It is often said accidents like this are the result of a chain of seemingly unrelated factors that, if combined in certain unforeseen ways, lead to catastrophe. This is no exception. Among the many sub-optimal behaviors displayed by the crew, one in particular fairly early on didn’t get much focus but effectively doomed the flight. And that was the failure of the crew to set a mandatory decision time where, regardless of their location relative to JFK, MUST abandon JFK altogether and go to their alternate in Boston. They did not do this, however, and only after their fuel level was too low realized that going to Boston was no longer viable. That put enormous risk on every aspect of the JFK approach to the extent there was no room at all for error. RIP

So much negligence on the part of the flight crew for burning through their alternate fuel instead of diverting to alternate like they were supposed to when they got to bingo........

The First Officers actions are infuriating. Talk about complacent. Why tf didn't he declare a fuel emergency after the Captain had repeatedly ordered him to do so?!

I comment for the algorithm, but I’m immensely impressed by the quality of your content

they flew from Colombia to NY by hand?! That's pretty fun, and probably degraded their range calculations somewhat along with all the holding patterns. This is like the opposite of the 2 pilots who overshot their destination by more than an hour when they were bored (ahem, snoring)

As soon as they got to NYC airspace they should've told ATC "I need priority landing, we are in our reserve fuel". Or declare an emergency if ATC is hesitant to land you promptly. Flight crew really dropped the ball here

Honestly, seems like both ATC and flight crew had some pretty big screw ups come together for this one. The first screw up chronologically is one not mentioned, that the plane was told to hold for a time severely exceeding what they where prepared for. The second screw up was a failure of the engineer to use the word "emergency" even when directly told to. The third was ATC's failure to note that the plane had 5 minutes of holding fuel left, and their general failure to react to that piece of information as seriously as it clearly deserved. The fourth failure was the plane actually following through on instructions they should have known would put them far too close to running out of fuel for safety. After the failed landing attempt, the plane should have refused to ascend, repeat that they are minutes away from running out of fuel, and probably performed a water landing or immediately looped around to try again.

I've been binge watching these reports for days now. It's some strange psychology that these terrifying events fascinate me so much... Anyone else get the feeling of "peering over the edge", so to speak, when watching these videos?

I lived on Long Island when this happened. I remember hearing a very low flying plane go over our house, in the wind, rain, and snow outside. The next morning when I heard the news I knew what I heard was this airplane.

Sooo....I’m getting on a plane right now....This’ll be fun to watch!

Most of the flight attendants likely died because they were not seated and moving about the cabin. The pilot's didn't even do the bare minimum which is to make sure everyone is buckled in during an emergency. These deaths didnt have to happen.

Worst thing to say/hear when the pilot says he has a problem: "Radar Contact Lost"

Normally I feel saddened and/or have a great deal of sympathy towards flight crews involved in these type of videos, but I'm simply just angry at the flight crew for their negligence. Especially the first officer.

I am very familiar with this accident as I attended the NTSB Hearings in support of a professional organization I was with. Like most accidents, there were multiple factors that led to the outcome, but one that your otherwise excellent video failed to mention was, as the NTSB put it, "the airline's failure to utilize an airline operational control system" and this was listed as the first contributing factor after NTSB's probable cause statement. The listing of this lack of operational control ahead of all the other factors such as weather, ATC, and language difficulties is significant in that the lack of that operation control system set the very stage for the accident, and essentially loaded and cocked the gun that those other factors would fire. What did US airline flights have that night that Avianca 52 didn't have? The answer is an FAA-licensed aircraft dispatcher who was responsible for not only properly planning the flight, but also monitoring it after departure and providing the flightcrew with updated weather and delay information, and also monitoring the aircraft's fuel state. BOS was never a legal destination alternate due to the weather, and an alternate with better weather should of been used. Once the holding at ORF and BOTON had consumed so much fuel, diversion to a better alternate (such as IAD or BWI) within fuel range of the aircraft should have been initiated. The aircraft dispatcher had (under FAA Part 121 regulations) the legal authority and responsibility to declare an emergency independently of the captain. This didn't happen with Avianca 52 because, as a foreign airline, they were operating under Part 129 of the FAA regs, which reverted the flight to be operating under regs applicable to the airline's home country, which in this case were more lax.

Wait. I thought the minute you hit your reserve fuel you had to be given priority, i.e. NEXT...?

Imo no one shone in this incident. ATC, the flight crew & Avianca all failed the passengers to some degree. For me though the biggest issue was the lack of English proficiency & lack of CRM in the cockpit. Though that isn't on the flight crew it is on Avianca. Avianca had many (16?) years to insist that the captain improve his English proficiency yet they didn't provide this. The captain had no idea what the first officer or ATC were saying. They could have been swapping recipes for all he knew. How can a captain effectively lead when he has no idea what's happening.

I'm no pilot so excuse my ignorance as I ask this but, what stopped them from using the standard emergency "Pan” or "Mayday" calls? Aren't these terms universally known and designed to express urgency? Can they not be used in a critical fuel emergency?

Loved the video! What's crazy is that, in fact, the dialect of Spanish used most commonly in Columbia (el seseo) would have made "emerjencia" sound even closer (like :eh-mer-HEN-sya:) to the English "emergency." Unbelievable to think that they were in such a dire situation and didn't communicate with any urgency...

I went to the crash site that night and helped get a woman still strapped to her seat out of a tree. I could see the torso of one of the pilots also hanging from a tree.

My deepest regards to the family of the cargo handler at 3:49 who lost his head.

Holy shit how did it it not hit that house?!? That's WILD.

This is so disgusting so maddening. This occurrence totally totally did not need to happen. When I first heard about this occurrence decades ago I was angry with ATC but now I realize that the flight crew really dropped the ball on this one. Their conduct was totally unprofessional. They had a fuel emergency which got progressively worse and worse and they did... NOTHING. Until it was too late. To be fair, JFK ATC has to eat some of the blame on this one because they were informed that this flight was critically low on fuel and did not immediately bring the plane in. Worse yet, after being informed that they were low on fuel, ATC handed this flight over to another controller and did not inform the other controller the flight was critically low on fuel. This is not acceptable either.

Great job visualizing the incident with flight patterns (even the "Mayday" series didn't do as good of a job!). It begs the question: why do air-traffic controllers not monitor the number/timing of holding patterns? I'm not saying they need to know the exact starting fuel of every plane in the air, but when you've had a plane in a holding pattern for 2+ hours for a 5+ hour flight, there has to be a point where the ATC should be concerned about fuel levels, independent of a specific declaration of "emergency". A colossal failure of communication from both sides, although in the end, it's the flight crew's responsibility to protect their passengers, which they didn't do (and left the crew in the back of the plane in the dark...not allowing them to tell passengers to brace, perhaps saving lives and many injuries).

makes me wonder if they wasn't in so long holding patterns could everyone be around today, RIP to those who died very sad

Thank you Disaster Breakdown for being one of the few sources to treat this crash objectively, instead of using Avianca's Lawyers as the sole source of information (looking at you Mayday). To put the "we are running out of fuel" in perspective. EVERY Plane in the sky that night was grumbling about fuel. There was a major storm screwing up air travel on the US Eastern seaboard. Planes were in the air for hours. The ATC's were trying to get everybody on the ground as quickly as they could. and triaging the needs. But it was still up to the pilots to properly monitor and manage their fuel, to know their diversion limits and activate them. ATC didn't hand over fuel information about the plane to the next ATC because they had not declared a Pan or an emergency. The cause of this crash was not a failure of communication between ATC, it was a complete failure of communications and cockpit management by the flight crew. Avianca and its Lawyers have spent the past 25 years and millions of dollars trying to bombard the public with misinformation in order to cover that fact up and shift blame onto the FAA's ATC. The only misinformation attempt more blatant egregious and widespread continues to this day be the Dutch Governments Bullshit regarding Tenerife.

its hard for me to understand that the crew did not communicate the fuel situation with an emergency

Damn bro the graphis fresh af! You're real gifted with it -great job as always!

Your content is awsome my dude. Keep it up!!!

Great video. I grew up and currently live very, very, close to the crash site in one of the surrounding towns and my family had some friends on board. I was only 1 when this crash happened but according to a surviving family friend, she woke up inside of a body bag on the “triage” lawn. Haunting stuff.

This accident should have NEVER happened, language barrier or not. You tell ATC your out of fuel before you run out of fuel. Planes need fuel to fly in all languages!

God dam that music you use is so sad sounding and fits so well!