Note: this accident was previously featured in episode 39 of the plane crash series on June 2nd, 2018, prior to the series’ arrival on Medium. This article is written without reference to and supersedes the original.

On the 8th of January 1989, the 126 passengers and crew of British Midland flight 92 found themselves in a nightmare scenario, trapped aboard a Boeing 737 which had lost both engines at a height of just 900 feet. Within sight of the runway, but unable to reach it, the plane glided helplessly downward toward the countryside below, until with an almighty crash it slammed into an embankment alongside the M1 motorway and came immediately to a halt. Amid the shattered wreckage, the vagaries of physics decided who lived and who died, as 79 people emerged alive and 47 did not.

The puzzling thing about flight 92, in comparison to other cases of dual engine failure, was that its engines didn’t fail at the same time: instead, one gave out during the climb, and the other sputtered and died on final approach. In an effort to solve this mystery, investigators dived into the data, and came to a stunning conclusion: only one engine was ever faulty; the pilots simply shut down the wrong one. How could such an error have occurred? Could better crashworthiness have allowed more people to survive? And why did a brand new engine on a brand new airplane…