a sense of joy and then a panic

Does that seem ridiculously low to anyone else?

No wonder she had to work a second job at a COFFEE SHOP when she was first hired.  No wonder she was suffering from fatigue and couldn't land her plane in Buffalo in a snowstorm without killing everyone on board.

Good on ya airline industry. 

I don't GET IT.  We're getting NOWHERE.

( spoilers )
Speaking of dying flying vehicles... Air Crash Investigation started without me! Frak! And they're actually doing an Indonesian crash this season. About time. Indonesian airlines are banned in the EU (you know, along with airlines from North Korea and Liberia...), that's how bad they are. Truly it's amazing that people get in and out of that country.

"Well, I'm gonna find that son of a bitch that killed you, and I'm gonna give him the hard goodbye.  Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything."
- Marv; Sin City

As we all know, I was supposed to leave New York-La Guardia on Thursday mid-morning, fly to Milwaukee for a brief stop-over, and then fly on to Omaha.  My mother and I were worried about the plane racing the major snowstorm that was coming in from the West.  Our best-case scenario was catching the OmaLink shuttle from the airport and getting to Lincoln that afternoon.  Worst-case scenario was missing the shuttle and staying overnight in an airport motel in Omaha.  If that was looking likely my mother was going to drive to Omaha to meet me and stay overnight with me. 

Well, this is what happened. 

I get to the airport at 9:30.  The Midwest Airlines check-in counter is moving very slowly.  Eventually one clerk jumps out from behind the counter and tells everyone in line that the flight we're all trying to get on - Flight 4 to Milwaukee - is cancelled due to mechanical failure.  They manage to rebook me on a flight leaving at 2 pm instead, leaving me with a 30 minute layover in Milwaukee and a flight that left at 4 for Omaha.  I figure it's still possible to make our best-case scenario, since my mother reports that the storm is coming in later than originally forecasted.  So I settle in and listen to the passengers trying to get to Kansas City worry about their delayed flight - there was a fog hazard in Kansas City.  They board and pretty soon it's 1:00, and there's no sign of the plane that's supposed to take me to Milwaukee.  Ordinarily it's not a huge deal if there's a delay on Flight #1, because chances are there will be a delay for Flight #2, or they'll hold the flight for you.  So I go to the counter to check, and yes, the Milwaukee flight is delayed until 3:00, and no, I won't make the connection.  It would be holding the flight for half an hour, which is too long when you're trying to beat an incoming weather system, and the plane was in all likelihood already sitting at the gate at Milwaukee - no chance of a delay. 

"And the later flight to Omaha is fully booked," says the Midwest agent.  "So you'd probably be there overnight.  But the problem with the snow is that no guarantee they're going to be getting flights out of there tomorrow."

Well, fuck.  He starts looking for other ways to get to Omaha.  "We can get you to Milwaukee," he says, "but the problem is then you're stuck."  United is booked up, Northwest is booked up.  He looks at other airports.  Denver's full.  "Man, what is with everybody trying to get to Omaha."  

He starts making calls.  This guy really put in effort.  He calls the Washington D.C. people - their flight to Omaha is full too, and they started "crying" to him when he asked if they could put in one more passenger; he calls Milwaukee, and they tell him what he suspected all along - "Don't send [the passenger] here."  Milwaukee already knows, I suspect, that it's going to be fucked - hell, it's already having delays.  So he calls D.C. again and they consent to an overbooking plus 1 - me being the 1.  My only other alternative is to fly to Kansas City, but fuck that - my mother isn't driving two and a half hours to Kansas City to pick me up.  They put me on the D.C. flight, although whether or not I have a seat is up in the air, so to speak. 

"Wait, so do I for sure have a seat?"

The guy makes weird faces at me.  "When you get there, check in - don't even say, do I have a seat, just check in to make sure the flight is still operating."  Why?  Oh yes, because it's leaving D.C. at 8 p.m. and is supposed to get to Omaha at 10 p.m. - right in the middle of the storm.  There's a chance the weather people in Miami might not let us take off that late - and then I'd be stuck in D.C. overnight, and all the Omaha flights the next day are full too.  

"But you know, we don't want you to be stuck here either," he said.  "Because it's already looking bad for us.  You might not get out till Monday if you stay in LaGuardia." 

"You're not making me feel better," I tell the agent. 

"When you leave here, you will have a seat," he promises me.  "Don't worry, I feel that this will work out."  They print me a boarding pass for D.C.-Omaha and tell me to run and catch the U.S. Airways shuttle to from New York to D.C.  Beside me, a guy trying to get to Green Bay has been told to take a bus from Milwaukee, because he's also going to miss his connection and the late-night flight to Green Bay is cancelled, and a guy trying to get to Atlanta is going to take his chances with Plan A, hoping to make his connection in Milwaukee.  I leave my bag with Midwest Airlines, hoping it'll get on that late flight to Milwaukee even if there's no space on the flight for me. 

***

Getting to U.S. Airways in LaGuardia is harder than it looks.  Walking to another terminal is easier at, say, LAX, because you can see the other terminal from wherever you are.  At LaGuardia, it just looks like you're walking out onto the New York highway.  The bus that's supposed to come to take passengers to other terminals is hella late - no surprise, because at LaGuardia traffic crawls.  Eventually - with much hysterics directed at my mother, who I had to call to let her know that I wouldn't be there until 10, if at all - the bus arrives and I get to the U.S. Airways terminal.  

Where the check-in agent rips up my Omaha boarding pass.  By mistake.  I notice it's not in my hand when he sends me off to the security check line.  "Wait, where's my boarding pass for my next flight?"

"I gave it to you."  He gave me a ticket for the flight to D.C.

"No, the one you just ripped up!" 

"Oh, shit."  He disappears beneath his counter and sorts through the trash can.  He gives it to me in three pieces.  "There, that's all you need.  Just give it to the Midwest people and they'll print out a new one for you."  Mind you, I had been given the boarding pass ahead of time so that I wouldn't need to print out a new one at the Midwest counter in D.C., in case the flight was overbooked - so as not to call into question whether or not I had a seat.  

But I go through security and get on the 3:00 D.C. shuttle, as it's cutely named, with all the hoighty-toighty businessmen and their Wall Street Journals, and basically spend the 35 minute flight praying that I get a seat on the flight to Omaha and that that flight takes off at all.  As we line up to leave the plane after touching down at D.C., the lady beside me tells me that she's been in the air all day, re-routed from airport to airport as flights get cancelled here and there. 

"I'm like a bird," she says. 

"Where are you trying to get to?"

"Charleston, South Carolina.  And you're trying to get to?"

"Omaha, Nebraska." 

She gives me a sympathetic look.  "Well, have a good holiday." 

***

At first the D.C. airport looks nice.  Down at the U.S. Airways end, it's pretty and decorated and bustling, and looks a lot like Minneapolis.  But I have to get to the far other end of the airport, where the smaller domestic airlines - Midwest, Northwestern, AirTran, and the ever-edgy Frontier - congregate in a circular terminal.  It's about a twenty-minute walk, especially given they don't maintain that part of the airport and the moving walkway's broken.  It feels like walking through the back rooms of a museum - no windows, weird old exhibits, random locked rooms.  It's 4, so I'm in no danger of missing the flight to D.C., but I'm completely rattled with the thought of the new boarding pass, the seat, and the weather forcing a cancellation. 

Finally I get to Terminal A and go to the check-in counter.  Late in the day people are getting frantic.  A college-aged couple is trying to beg people to let them jump ahead in line, because their flight is leaving in half an hour.  Nobody gives them the time of day.  It turns out they're trying to fly stand-by to Milwaukee, but the 5 pm flight to Milwaukee's been delayed by three hours to 8.  Meanwhile I get my boarding pass, thankfully, so I'm feeling pretty certain that I'll have a seat on the plane.  Now I just have to wait and make sure it takes off.

The terminal is crowded with people who are waiting for the Milwaukee and Kansas City flights.  Both are hideously late because of weather delays at both airports.  I'm worried that the plane that will take us to Omaha is coming in from either Milwaukee or Kansas City, but no - it's coming straight from Omaha, and it's right on schedule. 

"It's not a problem because of the weather?" I ask.

"No, it's goin'.  It's goin'," says the ticket agent.

Midwest only has three ticket agents handling two delayed flights to Milwaukee, one delayed flight to Kansas City, and the flight to Omaha.  Unsurprisingly, Omaha gets the short end of the stick, and the ticket agent doesn't even notice the plane from Omaha sidling up to the gate until it's almost stopped.  We end up taking off about forty-five minutes after we're supposed to because of the personnel shortage and the plane's delay in getting to D.C., but it's no big deal.  The plane, thank the Lord, is leaving for Omaha.  I call my mother to let her know.  She says the weather is crappy in Omaha, but if they think they can fly the plane in, then they can fly the plane in. 

I'm supposed to be sitting in Row 14, but me and the guy sitting next to me ended up switching seats with a mother and child sitting in Row 1 so they can be closer to the rest of their family in Row 14.  If you sit in Row 1, of course, there's no space for your laptop, so ours get stowed in a secret compartment by the head flight attendant, Janelle.  Thank God for the guy sitting next to me.  He was an Air Force scientific analyst and had the exact right kind of personality that keeps me calm when I'm in crisis - well, let's just say that there's a certain type of guy I get along really well with (like AC and my supervisor in Surabaya), and he was of that type.  We ended up talking about the government bureaucracy, schoolwork, politics, and eventually, Christmas presents and gliders and Arkansas and our aging pets and what presents they ought to get from SkyMall.  As the night wore on, it became vital to talk about something.  Anything.

***

Everything is fine at first.  We're given drinks and the Midwest trademark chocolate chip cookies.  And at around 10 Central time, we start to descend.  I'm pleasantly surprised.  The captain had said that we were facing strong headwinds and no shortcuts were possible.  Then his garbled voice comes on the intercom and mumbled something about restrooms and depressurization and altitude and apologizing for the inconvenience.  I look at Air Force guy.  "I think he said something about his oxygen mask not working.  And that's very serious.  I think that's what he meant about going down to 10,000 feet."

"So we're not landing in Omaha?"

"Uh, that's my impression."

"So where are we landing?"

"Indianapolis, I think?"

I look at Janelle, who's strapped in for landing.  "Does that mean we're not going to Omaha?"

She shrugs.  "That's a decision they're going to have to make."  She rattles on about how she wouldn't mind getting stuck in Indianapolis, because she lives here.  "But who knows, maybe it'll be just something quick they can fix."  

We lower the landing gear early to slow us down and burn fuel for eight minutes to make us lighter, so we'd actually be able to land in Indianapolis.  By the time we land I've all but given up on flying into Omaha that night, although the quiet Indianapolis airport, filled only with Fed Ex planes, doesn't look like the kind of place we could be put up for a night while maintenance was done on the plane.  The captain comes out after we're settled on the tarmac beside the repair hangar and says, "I'm not holding you hostage.  We're going to get this fixed and get you to Omaha as fast as possible."  This is, of course, promising.  "Now you've got a Christmas story," he says, obviously trying to make himself feel better.  But as he says, "When it's your safety in question, it's not even a decision.  The decision has already been made," and without a functional oxygen mask, if we got into air pressure trouble, the captain would be unconscious and he's clearly needed to fly the plane.

But of course we have to wait for the maintenance crew to wake up and use duct-tape (not kidding) to replace the oxygen mask, for the repair paperwork to get faxed in and signed, and for the de-icing machine to come and de-ice us.  It's freezing rain in Indianapolis, and we all know what happens to planes that don't de-ice before taking off (they get too heavy and crash).  The comedy of errors continues, however, because the de-icing truck is "out of diesel".  Me and Air Force guy can hear the airport tell the captain this because we're in Row 1 - it wasn't announced.  I stop listening.  "Do I want to know?" I ask Air Force guy.  "Probably not," he says, trying to stifle laughter.  By the time we take off, fishtailing across the frosty tarmac, it's about 12:30 a.m. 

But the plane calms down then, because we're on our way to Omaha.  Janelle turns off the cabin lights and everyone tries to go to sleep.  Unfortunately, the turbulence is awful and progress is slow, because we're flying into the storm.  There's no drinks this time - the captain keeps calling the flight attendants to tell them to stay strapped to their seats.  Thank goodness for my Dramamine.  The captain tries to get to an altitude that's comfortable, but then it's time to descend, and we descend into an effectively white haze.  It's very rocky and the snow has blanketed the tarmac.  We all hold our breath as the plane touches down at 2 a.m. Central time, but the captain impressively slows down as the plane approaches earth and then just glides it down the runway - one of the softest landings ever, snow or not.  He even manages to steer it into our designated gate, barreling through unplowed snow to do so.  It was surprising, to be honest, that Omaha accepted any planes, but ours was the last one in, and it's possible they wanted to push it because they knew conditions would only get worse.

Weather didn't actually get worse for Nebraska, but I guess it did get worse for places more in the "Midwest" - Milwaukee wasn't taking traffic in or out the next morning, meaning I would have been stuck there overnight (my bag got to Omaha about 45 minutes before I did, on that flight from Milwaukee that was too full to take me), and 600 flights were cancelled between New York's three airports.  Indiana apparently got hammered along with Illinois. 

And I eventually became convinced that college life was trying to give me "the hard goodbye".  This was my last attempt at flying home from Barnard for winter break, and the past three times had all been silk, so to speak.  I told Air Force guy I thought it was karma.  At one point (I think when the de-icing truck ran out of fuel), he said, "You must have been really bad this year." 

That's how I managed to land in Omaha eleven hours after I was supposed to.  I give a lot of credit to Midwest Airlines' handling of everything that happened.  They even drew a smiley face on a RUSH tag on my bag.  Whenever storms are involved, there's a chance of a lot of things going really bad in air travel - and as much as we complain about cancellations and delays, the humility of pilots and air traffic controllers is something to be thankful for.  We had a really good captain who obviously had a lot of experience flying with snow and storms (as any Midwest pilot should be!) and wanted to make sure we were as safe as possible while still getting us to Omaha. 

For more, see: Racing the Storm, an Air Crash Investigation episode.  

"Disasters don't just happen.  They're a chain of critical events." 
- Seconds From Disaster motto

"When you do an analysis of an accident, you've got to look at the human errors in judgment that were made and try to rectify those.  That is my hope and dream for human spaceflight."
- Jon Clark, husband of Laurel Clark

I've decided that catastrophes and terrorist attacks and wars and nuclear meltdowns and disease outbreaks are all just big long plane crashes.

I just realized that I don't remember anything - anything - about the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.  I was watching its Seconds From Disaster episode and assuming it happened in the 90s when suddenly there was a clip of President Bush addressing the nation.  I looked it up, thinking it happened when I was in middle school and out of it, but it was 2003.  2003!  I was a sophomore in high school and I remember nothing!  How can that be?  I remember researching this just last semester and reading Laurel Clark's letter and somehow I didn't understand that this had happened very recently and I should have had memory of this. 

I asked my roommate if she remembered it.  She said, "Didn't that happen in nineteen ninety something?"  I said it was 2003 and she couldn't believe it either.  I don't know if this is a matter of inadequate media attention or us just being too obsessed with our own lives and unable to register important global events. 

From wikipedia:

Aliens?  Really?  Something is wrong with us.  

Since I just recently saw Encounters at the End of the World, I find it interesting that there's a memorial for Columbia at "the bottom of the world", in McMurdo Station in Antarctica.  God.  We have a very strange sentience, a very strange homemade divinity. 

All are on YouTube, but all contain scenes that may cause discomfort, and viewer discretion is strongly advised.  Those asterisked are the ones where the re-enactment of the crash caused me the most discomfort.  Cutting Corners was for me the most horrible crash, but because of the story behind it I placed it in "infuriating" rather than "scary".  Conclusions I've drawn are the following: 1) sit by the wing, as it's the strongest part of the plane, or slightly behind it; 2) do not fly on a 737 or an MD-80; 3) Canada seems to have pretty good pilots; 4) do not under any circumstances trust manufacturing company McDonnell Douglas.  Their MD-80s are the ones American Airlines recently were seen to be flying - and have since grounded - despite needing repairs.  I won't say anything about airlines because very few airlines worldwide have had no incidents, and even the best can suffer calamity.  I will say that one of these airlines without incidents, knock on wood, is Southwest. 

Most infuriating episodes (although all are infuriating to some extent):
1.  Missing Over New York (1990): Avianca Flight 52 is delayed for hours hovering near JFK due to massive fog and too many planes instructed to land at the airport.  It is never told to divert to Boston.  It is essentially ignored by air control because the crew doesn't use the word "emergency" and runs out of fuel, then crashes.  73 out of 158 die. 
2.  Behind Closed Doors (1972, 1974): American Airlines Flight 96's cargo door bursts open over Windsor, Ontario and the pilot skillfully lands the plane.  The NTSB strongly recommends that McDonnell Douglas fix their faulty cargo door but there is no air worthiness mandate issued because McDonnell Douglas begs the FAA that it can fix it without making the error public, to save profits on its brand-new prized plane.  The fix is not made and two years later, Turkish Airlines Flight 981's cargo door bursts open en route to London and this time it's worse, killing all 346 on board.  McDonnell Douglas, riddled with lawsuits, is now owned by Boeing.
3.  Cutting Corners* (2000): Alaska Airlines Flight 261's pilots notice a jamming horizontal stabilizer that despite their many misguided efforts to troubleshoot it with absolutely no help from ground maintenance soon falls off, dooming all 88 to a terrifying nosedive, and then a few moments of flying upside-down before dying upon contact with the Pacific Ocean just short of L.A.  2-1/2 years before a mechanic had inspected the plane and recommended fixing a jackscrew of the horizontal stabilizer, saying the plane was unfit to fly.  His supervisor overruled to save money and cleared the plane for flight, the mechanic told the FAA, and was subsequently suspended by the airline.  The crash occurred two months before a planned inspection - the jackhammer had not been replaced.  Also a McDonnell Douglas plane, which built the jackscrew without making it failsafe.

Most unbelievable episodes (as in how the fuck did this happen):
1.  Kid in the Cockpit* (1994): The captain of Aeroflot Flight 593 lets his children sit in his seat in the cockpit and encourages them to "fly" the plane by setting the course through autopilot so their hands can follow the steering gear.  His son, however, accidentally shoves the plane off autopilot and then unknowingly holds it in neutral when autopilot tries to correct the plane's course.  The distracted pilots don't notice the coming spin until too late and by then the G-forces are pinning the 15-year-old into the captain's seat.  Despite his and the co-pilot's efforts, all 75 die. 
2.  Fatal Distraction (1972): Eastern Airlines Flight 401's landing gear light doesn't turn on the dysfunctional crew preoccupies itself with seeing whether the gear is broken or the light bulb just burned out, not noticing that the captain's elbow bumped the plane off autopilot and that the plane is now slowly descending into the Everglades.  101 people die.  It turns out that it was just a burned out light bulb after all.  Later ghosts of the crew are seen on other Eastern Airlines planes that have "cannibalized" the salvageable parts of 401, leading to a decommissioning of all 401's parts and the eventual bankruptcy of Eastern Airlines. 
3.  Ghost Plane (2005): Helios Airways Flight 522 from Cyprus stops talking to air traffic controllers in Greece as it circles in a holding pattern over Athens.  Fearing a terrorist attack - the countries are tense politically - Greece sends fighter jets up to the Boeing 737.  The fighter jet pilots see everyone inside slumped over their seats wearing oxygen masks, including the pilots.  A flight steward wearing a different type of mask is seen stumbling into the cockpit and trying to regain control - the fighter jets ask him if he can land it and he motions no, they are going to crash.  Sure enough the plane runs out of fuel and crashes, killing all.  Rampant rumors spread that Greece shot down the Cyprus plane, and a lack of information from authorities doesn't help.  The authorities blame the co-pilot's incompetence but the case remains extremely unsolved.
4.  Invisible Killer (1985): A mini-thunderstorm pops up on the runway out of nowhere as Delta Airlines Flight 191 tries to land, whipping it off course without warning and straight into a highway, where the engines demolish one man and his car.  The plane violently comes apart in a field, killing 128 of 152.  Leads to the ability by planes to detect microburst windshear. 
5.  Death and Denial* (1999): First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti, unqualified and nearing retirement age, takes control of EgyptAir Flight 990, and turns off autopilot as well as apparently the engines, repeatedly and only saying, "I rely on God."  The captain battles incredible G-forces to make it back to the cockpit but can't save the plane especially since the First Officer isn't cooperating with his upward pull, killing everyone on board near Massachusetts.  Egypt fervently denies that this was a suicide/homicide although all signs point to it. 
6.  Fanning the Flames (1987): A cargo fire strikes South African Airways Flight 295 while over the Indian Ocean, making landing out of the question.  Toxic fumes kill most of the passengers before the plane even crashes despite the pilots' resorting to opening the cabin doors mid-flight to let the fumes out, and all die.  Then-apartheid South Africa says it was something in the cargo inventory; then that it was a freak accident.  Over time it becomes clear that a faction of the warring government has hidden presumably chemical weapons on board and they caused the ignition, but there is no proof and likely never will be. 

Scariest episodes (although all are scary):
1.  Hidden Danger* (1991, 1994, 1996): United Airlines Flight 585, a Boeing 737, suddenly and violently rolls over during approach and then nosedives straight into the ground, killing all 25.  No one knows what happened.  Three years later, USAir Flight 427, another 737, experiences the same thing, killing many more.  Panic is triggered about all 737s in service.  Two years later, Eastwind Airlines Flight 517's pilot manages to stop the plane from rolling over completely, holding it at a 90-degree angle, twice.  He and his co-pilot prepare to crash in a non-populated area but he manages to land and no one is killed.  Turns out thermal shock can cause the 737 rudder to not only jam but then reverse, so that whatever the pilot does, the plane will do the opposite. 
2.  Panic Over the Pacific* (1985): After China Airlines Flight 006 loses one of four engines the crew mistakenly tries to restart the engine too high up, causing the plane to slowly bank to the right.  The jetlagged, sleep-deprived captain disconnects the autopilot and the plane enters a horrific 180-degree nosedive, losing ten kilometers in 2 minutes.  Because they're in a cloud and the crew is disoriented, they can't pull out of the dive until they come out of the clouds 11,000 m over the Pacific, which they do with no fatalities and a heroic 747 that didn't come completely apart. 
3.  Vertigo* (2004): Another jetlagged and disoriented pilot doesn't correct a right bank of a red-eye Flash Airlines Flight 604 shortly after take-off.  With no horizon the pilot doesn't know which way is up.  They crash into the Red Sea, killing everyone.  Another case of Egypt vehemently denying any fault of the pilot, blaming instead mechanical failure. 
4.  Dead Weight (2003): Air Midwest Express Flight 5481 takes off too back-heavy and soon starts plummeting.  The pilot, one of the only female pilots worldwide, has no way of saving the plane but saves lives on the ground by veering into the corner of a hangar instead of the populated hangar itself.  Turns out the calculations of the weight of each passenger and baggage is woefully under the real weight of overweight people and overstuffed bags. 
5.  Fire on Board (1998): A wire sparks a blaze in the cockpit of Swissair Flight 111 that due to flammable insulation blankets spreads across all the plane's vital systems and destroys all hope of landing the plane safely.  It is yet another McDonnell Douglas plane.  The pilots, desperately fighting fire and smoke and likely dead before the crash, cannot save the plane, which nosedives suddenly off the coast of Nova Scotia and disintegrates.  All black boxes are found missing the last crucial six minutes and the investigation takes 4 years.  Though this is no fault unique to Swissair, which previously enjoyed a very good reputation, and Swissair takes out everything that might cause a fire on its entire fleet, it goes bankrupt. 
6.  Mixed Signals (1996): Failure of the pilot's air speed indicator equipment causes the crew of Birgenair Flight 301, already a replacement for a broken plane, to get hopelessly confused over how fast their plane is going during takeoff.  The autopilot reacted to the captain's false readings and the pilots don't disconnect it in time to get the plane going fast enough, and it crashes into the Caribbean Sea near the airport, killing all 189.

Saddest episodes (although almost all episodes are sad):
1.  Out of Control (1985): Japan Airlines Flight 123's rear pressure bulkhead bursts as it climbs into the clouds, completely demolishing the vertical tail of the plane and crippling all hydraulics.  The pilots manage to keep the plane aloft far longer than any of the pilots in ensuing simulations could, but without that vertical stabilizer any flight is doomed.  It hits a mountain ridge and crashes into Mt. Otsuka.  Although many survive the crash, Japan's rescue teams assume all are dead and bunk down for the cold night instead of pressing on to the crash site - during the night, nearly all the survivors die.  4 are ultimately found alive in the morning out of 524 passengers, most of whom were going on a spiritual pilgrimage.  It is the largest ever death toll of a single-aircraft disaster.  Turns out the plane previously had to have the bulkhead repaired and Boeing only repaired it with one line of rivets instead of the required two.  Though Japan Airlines is not at fault, it takes the airline decades to recover.
2.  Deadly Crossroads* (2002):  Over Germany, passenger jet Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 carrying 45 children on a school trip and cargo plane DHL Flight 611 are dangerously close to each other.  Their computer collision-aversion systems warn them and tell them how to avoid disaster, but air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, overworked and unhelped by air control elsewhere, misreads and gives them the opposite instructions - then goes to the bathroom.  DHL follows their computer but Bashkirian Airlines does not.  The collision snaps the passenger jet in two, and the DHL crashes shortly thereafter.  A total of 71 people are killed, bodies strewn all over.  Peter Nielsen, already guilt-stricken to the point of depression and having quit his job, is then murdered by a man who lost his wife and two children on board.  The man, a local government official, receives two years in prison and is still regarded as a hero.  
3.  Fire Fight (1983): Air Canada Flight 797 has a crazy fire in-flight in the toilet, the cause of which will never be determined.  A heroic emergency landing on the pilots' part is overshadowed by half the passengers, upon landing, not being able to find the exits in time.  The pilot is the last to be dragged out of the plane before the plane bursts into flames, killing everyone still inside.  Led to the development of floor lights to guide people to the exits.
4.  A Wounded Bird (1995):  Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529 essentially loses an entire propeller during mid-flight due to metal fatigue.  The pilots magically manage to keep it aloft for nine minutes, sending out a cry for Atlanta rescuers to meet them.  They crash in a backyard and everyone is alive, but because the air controller didn't pass on the message, there's no rescuers there to meet them and the plane quickly starts to burn.  Only because the man whose backyard it landed in called 911 do local rescuers arrive.  Burns and a heart attack kill nine passengers, seven in the E.R., and the heroic pilot.  A passenger with an ax and then a firefighter save the First Officer, who made the last recorded words of the cockpit: "Amy, I love you." 
5.  Lost (1995): American Airlines Flight 965 gets incredibly confused trying to fly to Cali, Colombia at night.  Flight management system mix-ups and language mishaps lead to such disorientation that the pilots don't know they're about to clip a mountain.  160 die and only 4 passengers, including a college student on her 21st birthday who loses her parents and a man who loses his wife and son, but not his daughter, and a pet dog survive, also lost in the rainforest for several days.

Uplifting episodes (there are so few of these):
1.  Falling From The Sky (1982): British Airways Flight 9 flies over Indonesia and starts filling with smoke.  Passengers see the wings encased in St. Elmo's fire and the pilots see only psychedelic bright flashes through the windshield.  All four engines flame and then flame out, leading to a rapid descent and panic.  The calm captain famously tells his 200-some passengers, "All four engines have failed.  We are doing our damnedest to get them back.  I trust you are not in too much distress."  On the umpteenth try the engines suddenly restart and the plane makes a successful though difficult landing in Jakarta.  Turns out they flew over an undetected volcano and the ash clogged the engines.  They don't fly over volcanoes anymore. 
2.  Gimli Glider (1983): Air Canada Flight 143 runs clean out of fuel mid-flight because the plane is one of the first to use metric systems to measure fuel and ground maintenance doesn't convert into metric and gives them way too little before take-off.  Winnipeg air control has no idea how to help them as they are too far from the airport and figures they're dead, but the pilot has beyond masterful control and experience in the Air Force flying gliders, and the co-pilot knows of an obscure airbase in nearby Gimli.  Turns out the airbase is now a motorpark filled with families, but the emergency landing kills no one and the plane doesn't even catch fire, though it does end up sitting on its nose.  The Gimli Glider, as it is now called, was repaired and is still in service twenty-five years later.