Panama’s Deadliest Crash Happened In 2 Minutes Of Chaos | Mayday Air Disaster

Copa Airlines Flight 201 takes off from Panama City for the one-hour flight to Cali, Colombia. But, moments later, the plane disappears from radar. On June 6, 1992, Copa Airlines Flight 201, a Boeing 737 carrying 47 passengers and crew, vanished from radar over Panama’s remote Darién Gap, the densest and most impenetrable jungle in Central America, killing everyone on board in what remains the deadliest air disaster in Panama’s history. With witnesses reporting a fireball falling from the sky and the crash site sitting on a notorious drug-smuggling corridor, investigators faced immediate speculation of a bomb, a mid-air collision with a smuggler’s plane, or a repeat of the still-unsolved rudder failure that had recently downed another 737. Battling venomous snakes, extreme heat, and a debris field scattered across more than 100 square miles, NTSB and Panamanian investigators ruled out sabotage, mechanical failure, and severe weather one by one, only to discover a cockpit voice recorder that had been broken for a week before the crash ever happened. What the flight data recorder ultimately revealed was a series of violent, unexplained maneuvers in the final two minutes of flight that sent the aircraft into a high-speed, inverted dive unlike anything investigators had seen before. This episode of Mayday: Air Disaster breaks down the brutal jungle recovery effort and the investigation into one of aviation’s strangest and most baffling in-flight breakups. Panama’s Deadliest Crash Happened In 2 Minutes Of Chaos | Mayday Air Disaster | S14E04 | Sideswiped **Licensed from Cineflix. All rights reserved. Welcome to Machina! Where you can find everything and anything about cars, motorbikes, planes, trains and much more! SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE MACHINA: https://bit.ly/3VgYf2o Do not forget to click the notification bell to get more Machina videos like this and share your experience. Your support fuels our exploration! Help us uncover new stories and share diverse voices by donating to our channel through Super Thanks! All of the content on this channel is UNDER LEGAL LICENSE (We have written contracts) from various copyright holders and distributors. We ask you to please contact us if you believe there are any copyright issues via - rights@vamedianetwork.com Machina is owned and operated by VA Media Ltd. All rights reserved. #cars #automotive #motorbike #maydayairdisaster #aircrashinvestigation #aviationdocumentary #copaairlines201 #ntsb 0:00 – Cold Open 1:17 – Boarding Flight 201 In Panama City 2:38 – Detouring Around A Storm 3:54 – Climbing To Cruising Altitude 4:09 – Flight 201 Vanishes From Radar 5:18 – A Fireball Reported From The Ground 6:25 – Searching For Survivors 7:30 – Investigators Arrive In Panama City 9:42 – The Jungle Search Begins 11:07 – Mapping The Debris Field 12:03 – Considering A Drug Trafficking Connection 14:09 – Ruling Out A Mid-Air Collision 15:27 – Investigating A Possible Bomb 18:39 – Recovering The Black Boxes 20:49 – A Shocking Discovery On The CVR 23:17 – Reading The Flight Data Recorder 25:41 – The Baffling Final Maneuvers