The Haunting Last Words of Doomed Flights

Our fascination with final statements is decidedly grim. It's in no way confined to Texas state execution-chamber logs, either, which we try, and ultimately fail making sense of through very sober visualizations.

Take Plane Crash Info, a site that compiles transcripts of cockpit voice recordings and air traffic control tapes from fatal plane crashes. In a lot of ways (though not exclusively) what you get by way of lasts words up above is far more raw than jail cell sign offs, well-thought out and composed as they can be. What you get here is far more panicked, far more urgent, the true last gasps of all those who had no time to prepare much of anything. They're just trying to come to terms with the fact that they won't be able to pull out of that nosedive, despite their best efforts.

So it should go without saying that most of the stuff gathered here on Plane Crash Info is pretty fucking heavy:

From Pacific Air Lines 773, May 7, 1964:

FO [First Officer]: Skipper's shot! We've been shot. I was trying to help.

From Air Canada 621, July 5, 1970:

CA [Captain]: The whole thing is jammed. [crackling noise]

FO: What was that? What happened there, Peter?

CA: That's number 4 (unintelligible). Something's happened (unintelligible).

FO: Oh, look, we've got a (unintelligible). [loud sound of explosion]. Pete, sorry. [louder sound of explosion].

From Pacific Southweast Airlines 182, September 25, 1978:

CAM-2:  We're hit man, we are hit.

RDO-1: Tower, we're going down, this is PSA.

TWR: Okay, we'll call the equipment for you.

CAM [sound of stall warning]

CAM 1: This is it baby!

CAM ?: Bob [name of F/O]

CAM 1: Brace yourself.

CAM ?: Hey baby…

CAM ?: Ma I love you…

From LOT Polish Airlines 5055, May 9, 1987:

Crew: Goodbye, Goodbye, We perish!

Read more here. Meantime, all the more reason to heed Earl Wiener's 15 forgotten rules for computerized flight.

@thebanderson