On December 1, 1993, Northwest Airlink Flight 5719 crashed three miles short of its destination in northern Minnesota, killing all 18 people aboard. The weather wasn't extreme. The aircraft wasn't broken. Both pilots were certified, qualified, and physically capable of flying the approach. But as the turboprop descended through the dark, something else was happening in the cockpit — something that wouldn't show up in the wreckage. This is the story of how investigators traced a routine night flight back through twenty years of warning signs that nobody connected, and what the cockpit voice recorder revealed about the silence that killed eighteen people.

Sources:

• NTSB Aircraft Accident Report AAR-94/05 — Express Airlines II, Inc., Northwest Airlink Flight 5719
• Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript (NTSB Appendix B)
• Mayday: Air Disasters, Season 17 Episode 1, "Killer Attitude"
• NTSB Safety Recommendations A-94-70 through A-94-72
• Express Airlines II General Operations Manual and Standard Operating Procedures (as cited in AAR-94/05)

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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.