On the morning of November 12, 2001, ninety seconds after leaving JFK, an Airbus A300 bound for Santo Domingo came apart in clear air over Queens. All 260 people aboard and five more on the ground were killed. In a city nine weeks removed from September 11th, there seemed to be only one possible explanation — and the FBI, the NTSB, and an entire grieving neighborhood spent the next three years finding out whether it was true. Join Alice and Zach for the second-deadliest aviation disaster in American history: the flight that served as a lifeline between New York and the Dominican Republic, the three-year investigation that followed, and the finding that quietly rewrote what pilots around the world are taught about their own airplanes.

Sources:

• "Aircraft Accident Report: In-Flight Separation of Vertical Stabilizer, American Airlines Flight 587, Airbus Industrie A300-605R, N14053, Belle Harbor, New York, November 12, 2001" (NTSB/AAR-04/04) — National Transportation Safety Board
• "Mayday: Air Disaster," Season 13, Episode 5 — Cineflix Productions
• "Government Indicts Second 'Shoe Bomber' In Boston" by Howard Schwach — The Wave
• "Crash of Flight 587 Remembered 21 Years Later" — The Rockaway Times
• "Dominican Americans Cope With Lasting Impact of Flight 587 Crash 20 Years Later" by Gaby Acevedo — NBC New York
• "The Grief of a Forgotten Plane Crash in Elizabeth Acevedo's 'Clap When You Land'" by Rigoberto González — NBC News

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: finalboardingcallpodcast@gmail.com
• Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod
• Facebook: Final Boarding Call

Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.