The Kegworth Plane Crash: Danger of Trusting Experts (Anatomy of Catastrophe Book 5)

Passenger on British Midland Flight 92 reflecting on hearing the pilot announce he was shutting down the right engine: “We were thinking: ‘Why is he doing that?’ because we saw flame coming out of the left engine. But I was only a bread man. What did I know?”

Every man-made disaster and catastrophe has at least six Cascade Events leading up to the final event, the catastrophe according to the Rule of Seven.

This is a quick read of the Cascade Events that led up to the crash of a Boeing 737-400 just short of the runway near Kegworth in the UK.

Bob examines the Rule of Seven, and how human error plays a role in many catastrophes. Nothing happens in isolation or as a result of a single event. Thus, by learning from history, we can gain insight into preventing a similar catastrophe in the future. The staggering error that’s one of the cascade events for this crash was that the pilots turned off the wrong engine (the good one), announced it, and no one sitting in the main cabin, who knew the wrong one had been shut down, alerted the pilots!

This is one of many catastrophes that Bob Mayer, former Green Beret, West Point Graduate and NY Times Bestselling Author, examines in his series of shorts: The Anatomy of a Catastrophe.