Going down, El Al 1862, going down, going down!”
On the 4th of October 1992, the pilots of an Israeli cargo plane found themselves fighting a desperate battle in the skies over Amsterdam, a struggle which culminated in a final, chilling transmission and a horrific crash that would scar a nation forever. On final approach, just moments away from an emergency landing, the Boeing 747 rolled over, dived toward the ground, and plowed into the center of an 11-story apartment block, cleaving it in two and claiming the lives of at least 47 people. The Netherlands would never forget the images of the riven building, the burning debris, the innumerable shattered lives.
The crash of El Al flight 1862 marked the intersection of two converging narratives: the story of a neighborhood struggling to find its identity, and another featuring faulty design assumptions, questions about maintenance, and a string of seemingly related accidents and incidents around the world. Through a tragic sequence of events, the failure of a single pin would transform life for thousands of people. But first, investigators would need to find out why El Al flight 1862 came apart over Amsterdam — and take action to stop it from happening again.
