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: [email protected]
• Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod
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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.

A Czech gunner is shot down in no man's land in the winter of 1939 and finds something alive in an abandoned farmhouse. What follows is the story of how a German Shepherd puppy crossed occupied France, went to war, and was decorated for it — a dog who, according to the paperwork, was never there at all. Join Alice and Zach for a story about loyalty, an escape that happened twice, and a war record that officially does not exist. This episode is dedicated to Benji.

Sources:

• "Antis: Dog of War" by Damien Lewis - Royal Air Forces Association
• "The story of a Czech WW II airman and his remarkable dog" - Radio Prague International
• Dickin Medal Roll of Honour - People's Dispensary for Sick Animals
• Recorded interview with Gary Manley, owner of the Antis Dickin Medal

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.

A Boeing 727 lifts its nose on a clear Texas morning, and the rest of the plane refuses to follow. Twenty-two seconds later it's a burning wreck in a field a mile from the runway. Join Alice and Zach as they unravel how a routine takeoff at America's third-busiest airport went catastrophically wrong — a disaster that looked at first like an engine failure, then like a freak mechanical fault, and turned out to be something far more unsettling. Discover the chain of small human decisions, a silent alarm, and an airline's buried problems that put 108 people on a runway they were never going to leave cleanly.

Sources:

• Aircraft Accident Report AAR-89/04, Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 — National Transportation Safety Board
• Crashing after 22 seconds?? Delta 1141 — Green Dot Aviation
• Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 crash coverage — WFAA
• Mayday: Air Disaster, Season 18 Episode 3

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.

On a warm July night in 2013, patrons at a popular Quebec bar heard the screech of metal on metal as an unmanned train barreled toward their town at highway speeds. What followed was a cascade of explosions that turned half the downtown into an inferno, killing 47 people and exposing a corporate culture that valued profits over lives. Discover how a cheap repair, inadequate training, and regulatory failures turned a routine freight run into one of North America's deadliest rail disasters—and why similar conditions persist on railways today.

Sources:

• Railway Investigation Report R13D0054, "Runaway and Main-track Derailment: Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Freight Train MMA-002" — Transportation Safety Board of Canada
• Lac-Mégantic criminal trial testimony, 2017–2018 proceedings — Court record
• "The Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster: Public Betrayal, Justice Denied" by Bruce Campbell — James Lorimer & Company
• "Bomb Trains: How Industry Greed and Regulatory Failure Put the Public at Risk" by Justin Mikulka
• "The public health response during and after the Lac-Mégantic train derailment tragedy" by Généreux et al. — Disaster Health
• Investigation series on MMA corporate culture and safety record — The Globe and Mail
• Trial coverage and witness testimony — CBC News
• "Lives lost: Remembering Lac-Mégantic's victims" — Montreal Gazette
• "Five Years after Lac-Mégantic, U.S. Freight Rail Going Backward on Safety" — The Century Foundation
• Reporting on former engineer Jarod Briggs's warnings about single-person crews — Bangor Daily News

Find Final Boarding Call online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 vanished over the Atlantic Ocean with 228 people aboard. For two years, the world could only speculate about what happened to a state-of-the-art Airbus A330 during a routine overnight crossing. Join Alice and Zach as they explore how a brief sensor malfunction triggered a catastrophic chain of confusion — and why, seventeen years later, the question of who bears responsibility was finally answered in a French courtroom.

Sources:

• Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (BEA) Final Report, July 2012
• "Should Airplanes Be Flying Themselves?" by William Langewiesche, Vanity Fair
• "Air France 447: Vanished" — Mayday/Air Crash Investigation
• "TITANIC of the Skies! The Untold Story of Air France 447" — Mentour Pilot
• BBC News coverage of the May 2026 appeal verdict

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.

A Boeing 737 lands in Okinawa after a routine one-hour hop from Taiwan. The flight is over. The engines are off, the passengers are reaching for their bags — and then someone sees smoke curling from under the right wing. Within minutes the aircraft is an inferno. Join Alice and Zach for the story of a plane that survived every dangerous phase of flight, only to erupt into flames while parked at the gate — and the painstaking investigation that traced the fire back to a single missing part no bigger than a coin.

Sources:

• "China Airlines Flight 120, B18616" — FAA Lessons Learned From Transport Airplane Accidents
• Aircraft Accident Investigation Report, Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB)
• "Deadly Detail" — Mayday / Air Crash Investigation
• First-person account of passenger Jim Caruso

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.

On March 16, 1962, a military charter flight carrying 93 Army Rangers vanished over the Pacific Ocean during a secret mission to Vietnam. Despite one of the largest searches in aviation history, no trace of the aircraft or its 107 occupants was ever found. Join Alice and Zach as they explore how a mission so classified that soldiers had to leave their wedding rings and dog tags at home became one of aviation's most enduring mysteries—and why, 60 years later, families are still fighting just to prove their loved ones existed.

Sources:

• Civil Aeronautics Board Aircraft Accident Report, File No. 1-0002, April 8, 1963
• "Listing on Vietnam Wall sought for troops killed in 1962 plane crash" - Stars and Stripes, July 24, 2013
• "'He knew something': The 1962 flight of Army Rangers that vanished into thin air" - SFGATE, May 10, 2021
• "60 Years Missing: The Mystery Of Flying Tiger Line Flight 739" - FLYING Magazine, March 16, 2022
• "A New Memorial Is Unveiled for Those Lost on a Missing Vietnam War Transport Plane" - Military.com, May 22, 2021
• Wreaths Across America official documentation and family testimonies
• "The Mystery of Flying Tiger Line flight 739" - The History Guy (YouTube), 2024

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.

On October 1, 2015, the cargo ship SS El Faro steamed directly into the path of Hurricane Joaquin and vanished with all 33 crew members aboard. Join Alice and Zach as they unravel how a routine "milk run" between Jacksonville and Puerto Rico became America's worst maritime disaster in decades. Discover the deadly combination of outdated weather data, corporate pressure, ignored warnings, and mechanical failures that turned a survivable storm into an unsurvivable nightmare. Through audio recovered from three miles beneath the Atlantic, hear the final hours of a crew fighting against impossible odds—and learn how their deaths changed maritime safety forever.

Sources:

• National Transportation Safety Board Marine Accident Report MAR-17/01: "Sinking of US Cargo Vessel SS El Faro, Atlantic Ocean, Northeast of Acklins and Crooked Island, Bahamas, October 1, 2015"
• U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation Final Report (September 24, 2017)
• NTSB Voyage Data Recorder Audio Transcript (510 pages)
• Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro by Rachel Slade (HarperCollins, 2018)
• "The Clock is Ticking: Inside El Faro" by William Langewiesche, Vanity Fair (April 2018)
• CBS News 60 Minutes: "Voices of the Lost" (March 5, 2017)
• House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure hearing transcripts (January 30, 2018)
• The Working Waterfront: "'Into the Raging Sea' details human failings that cursed El Faro"

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod
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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.

When a mysterious package in the cargo hold of American Airlines Flight 444 suddenly detonates at 30,000 feet, 80 people find themselves trapped in a smoke-filled Boeing 727. Join Alice and Zach as they explore the chilling story of a midair bombing that failed only because of a single ingredient mistake—and the 17-year manhunt it set in motion. Discover how one of the most intensive investigations in FBI history began with a parcel that was supposed to kill everyone on board. Buckle up for a story that changed aviation security forever.

Sources:

• "Unabomber" - FBI Famous Cases
• "Bomb Jolts Jet" - The Washington Post, November 16, 1979
• "A Chronology of the UNABOM Investigation" - Cornell Law School

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.

On July 19, 1967, Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 collided in midair with a small Cessna over the mountains of North Carolina, killing everyone aboard both aircraft — directly above a children's summer camp at lunchtime. Join Alice and Zach as they trace how a confusing radio clearance, a controller working without radar, and a single misunderstood instruction lined up into catastrophe. Discover the safety technology this disaster helped create, and the questions one investigator was still asking nearly forty years later.

Sources:

• "Aircraft Accident Report AAR 68-AJ" – National Transportation Safety Board
• "The Crash of Piedmont Airlines Flight 22: Completing the Record of the 1967 Midair" – Paul D. Houle (McFarland & Company)
• Asheville Citizen, July 20-22, 1967
• Asheville Times, July 19-20, 1967
• Times-News (Hendersonville), July 19, 1967
• Winston-Salem Journal, July 20, 1967
• Twin-City Sentinel, July 19, 1967
• "Piedmont Flight 22 and the Midair Collision Over Hendersonville" – Legeros Fire Blog
• "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" – Robert McNamara
• The Pentagon Papers

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
• 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.