Valujet Flight 592
Valujet Flight 592 was a flight that flew from Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida to Hartsfield International Airport (now known as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport) in Atlanta, Georgia.
On May 11, 1996, the DC-9 aircraft on this route began a normal ascent, then reported smoke in the cockpit and passenger areas of the aircraft. Air traffic control advised flight 592 to turn around after its pilot declared an emergency and demanded an emergency landing at the closest possible airport. The plane disappeared from radar before reaching any airport, and was found to have crashed in uninhabited territory inside the Florida Everglades. All 110 passengers and crew died in the crash.
Recovery of the aircraft and victims was extremely difficult due to the location of the crash. The nearest road of any kind was more than a quarter mile away from the crash scene, and the location of the crash itself could have been summarized as a deep water swamp with a bedrock base. The DC-9 shattered on impact with the bedrock; very few large portions of the airplane remained. Sawgrass, alligators, and risk of bacterial infection from cuts plagued searchers involved in the recovery effort.
The NTSB investigation eventually determined that the source of the fire that downed flight 592 was a cargo compartment below the passenger portion of the plane. The cargo compartment's fire suppression amounted to a no-air recycling environment, so a standard fire would simply run out of air and burn itself out.
The circumstances of this fire were unique, however. It was determined that the fire was caused by the firing of expired chemical oxygen generators placed in the cargo compartment in a box marked 'Airplane parts' by ValuJet's maintenance contractor, FAA for not requiring active fire suppression equipment in this cargo compartment. SabreTech was convicted of criminal charges, the first time this had happened to an aviation company in connection with an airplane crash in America. The bad publicity quickly drove SabreTech out of business entirely.
The disaster hurt the credibility of the ValuJet airline so much that what remained of it was forced to change its name to Airtran.
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