Years later, Captain Dardano drinking a cold one and watching the Miracle on the Hudson on the news: "salud, compadre"

This is actually the second unbelievably impressive landing of Captain Carlos Dardano's career. About 10 years before this event, when taking off from an airfield in El Salvador, Captain Dardano was shot in the head and managed to fly his plane and passengers safely for about 20 minutes to land at another airfield. It cost him his left eye though it clearly did not affect his ability as a pilot. Nerves of steel that man.

It was the first time a 737 was landed anywhere but on a runway. And the pilot, Carlos Dardano, did it with no power. It is considered by many the greatest emergency landing in aviation history.

We hear the phrase, "Pilot error." This was a case of "Pilot brilliance!"

Let us not forget to praise the builders of the levee whose structure didn't simply collapse under the crushing weight of the pilot's balls of steel.

The best aviation story almost no one knows about.

The pilot had excellent stick and rudder skills, some obtained from his own small private plane. He's one of my heroes, though I've sadly never met him.

I am from Guatemala, and because of these I had flown Taca, wich now is Avianca múltiple times. I met the captain, and flew on the glider, as they nicknamed the plane. Amazing story

I actually called Southwest a few times, trying to get this airplane sent to a museum. I ultimately failed, but, through my persistence, I was told that they were giving the flight yoke from the aircraft to the pilot who made the miracle landing. :)

What a great story, and a great pilot!

08:44 Perfect Short Field Landing by Carlos D. Passed the test perfectly..

Thank you. As a Latin American in the United States gives me pride and joy to see , when "we" can contribute back doing our best successfully.

Yay, a plane crash story that doesn't end in grisly death. This history does indeed deserve to be remembered.

What those pilots did was nothing short of astounding. Time and time again, similar incidents have led to tragically high death tolls that indiscriminately end the lives of adults and children alike. Such professionalism under crisis situations deserves the highest commendation.

When the chips are down, there’s really no substitute for an experienced flight crew in the cockpit.

Thank you so much for your video! I remember vividly when this incident occurred, it was all over the news back in my home country, El Salvador. I have met captain Carlos Dardano in person, both of my brothers attended his flight school. What makes the story even more interesting, is that in the 80s, during the civil war, captain Dardano was flying as a private pilot, when insurgents attacked while his plane was in a dirt runway out in the country. He was able to get his plane in the air, but unfortunately he was hurt by small arms fire during take off, one round hit his face and he lost one eye. He managed to fly his plane back with its occupants to safety, even after that grievous injury. He later became a successful commercial pilot, despite the fact that he had no depth perception due to having only one eye. In my opinion that makes the fact that years after that incident, he managed to glide a fully loaded commercial jet, and land it without a single casualty, even more extraordinary. Once again, thank you very much for your videos, they are so entertaining, and your detailed and passionate description of the events makes them so fun to watch. Please keep your videos coming, you are an amazing story teller!

What a great story of airmanship and courage under fire. Thanks for sharing.

I've worked in aircraft maintenance for 30 years and you use all the right techo words. Brilliant :)

I have flown TACA many times, they are a really good airline and have a great safety record.

This pilot did all of this with one eye after being shot through the cockpit window by a guerrilla in the mountains of El Salvador. Absolute mad lad.

I was working at Michaud at the time this happened and remember it well. A couple of guys I worked with were in the area in their service truck and saw the plane coming in. One of the guys was a volunteer EMT and radioed security to roll ambulances while they sped to meet the plane. They were two of the first responders, meeting passengers as they evacuated. The only way the pilot could've picked a better spot would've been to land at an airport. Michaud was equipped with its own fire service and ambulance, as well as its own emergency room with on-staff doctor. The story was that the pilot thought about landing on Saturn Blvd. but didn't as he was worried about crossing powerlines. The other thing that made this landing optimal was that Michaud had aircraft tow trucks used to move the external tanks around. These were used to move the plane around to in front of the pressure test building, where it was parked while being repaired. I was witness to the plane actually taking off from Saturn Blvd. A 737 doesn't need much runway when it's empty of passengers. Quite a sight. Thanks for the great report and trip down memory lane.

The pilot if I remember correectly was praised for his amazing skill and the story of the recovery of the plane was just as interesting as its original incident. Was nice to hear that the plane continued service for so long did not know that fact. Very good choice, this definitely deserves to be remembered.

Storm: you can't do better than me! Pilot: watch me. This story was straight up insane. It really really stresses how training and experience can literally save lives.

I remember hearing of this at the time. You said it right - they NAILED it!

My stepdad was worked at Michoud when this happened, he still can’t believe that crew managed to land a 737 right on the levee like that.

There should be a "Commercial Pilots Hall of Fame".

The comet disasters weren't due to engine problems as suggested here but rather to the design flaw of square window corners (concentrated stresses), cold temperatures and cabin pressurization.

This incident is amazing. Right there with the Gimli Glider, Sully’s Hudson River, and all the other miraculous saves.

"Trying a deadstick landing with a passenger airliner can be described as ... not ideal." LOL! I missed this story in the day but thanks for the great retelling.

I love the energy and vigor in your presentation. Keeps me on the edge of my seat!

"A landing which should not have happened"- there's a whole load of people who are glad it *did* happen though. Hats off to the skill and experience of your flight crews wherever you fly. As passengers, we salute you all. Thank you History Guy for another episode of History which deserves to be remembered.

Those pilots were on point. Love it when someone has extraordinary skills and know how to use them.

Many viewers have mentioned that the NASA Michaud assembly facility is pronounced "Mi-shoo." The photo of the Coast Guard helicopter at the end is an HH-60 "Pave Hawk." Actually, the Coast Guard at the time were operating the HH-65 "Dolphin." The three Comet crashes that resulted in the model being temporarily withdrawn from service were in 1954, not 1956. Some viewers were under the impression that the plane took off from the levee itself. That is not the case. After performing an engine replacement in situ, the plane was towed a short distance and took off from a road in front of the NASA Michaud Assembly Facility. This was notable because the plane did not have to be disassembled to get it to a repair facility.

This rates right up there with "the miracle on the Hudson". I like to think that the pilot and co-pilot receive gifts from the passengers every Christmas.

I can tell The History Guy is an aviation buff as well as a history buff, because the accuracy of his technical explanations are spot on.

I'm a flight attendant at Southwest and flew on this plane numerous times before it was retired in 2016. It was a celebrity of our fleet. Employees always wanted to take pictures with this great aircraft.

He got shot in the face by an M16 and lost an eye to a bullet; with a bloody face and the left eye hanging on his face and sticky blood on his arms, he flew 25 minutes to another airport and landed the plane with no damages. 5 years later he lost all engines on a 737, he again landed with no damages. Tough guy.

You know what... this episode did it for me. I became a patron. I hope you are around for a long time History Guy!

Capt. Sully: "Just landed a plane in a river" Capt. Dardano: "That's cute"

In addition to reporting the history, your did an excellent technical job of describing the situation!

Holy Shit!!!!! Having thousands of hours under my belt.....Never heard this story!! (Just the aftermath) Now you know why you are my absolute favourite channel and the only channel I have notifications enabled. Thank you Professor 👍👍 (I am surprised the cockpit had room enough for the huge brass balls of the heroic flight crew)😀

WOW! What a flight crew and story. They really do need to be remembered. Thanks for sharing this.

My great uncle was the head of pilot training for that airline for many years. He lived in Picayune, Mississippi and commuted via New Orleans to British Honduras (Belize). He was still working for TACA when this occurred. I never got to ask him about it.

I met the pilot and he was so humble that i learned about his assign about 30 years later on KZfaq..

No matter how many times I hear this story it still makes my heart swell. Lovely.

*God Bless these pilots who remembered that Job #1 is.... "Fly The Plane".* These are REAL aviators and heroes!

Can't believe how many details you add to stories we might have heard before, making it captivating. Bravo and thank you, Professor.

I brings tears of joy to my eyes when air travel safety can be reevaluated and improved upon without any loss of life.

Also, lets not forget that my compatriot, the pilot, only had one eye too!! Thank you for the video!

One of my favorite flight stories!

Truly amazing. 30" per hour rain and a levy deadstick landing. Then continued until 2016 it's mind boggling. Thanks for teaching us history, we are damned to repeat what we don't know.

Never heard of this before. What an amazing story!

I hadn't heard of this flight and I watch a lot of air accident docs. I was on the edge of my seat when I learned that they landed fine on a levy and it made me so happy!

My wife and I love this channel. You make history so fun to hear and learn. There are two channels on KZfaq we refuse to miss this is one of them. Thank you and keep doing the great job.

I have just discovered your Channel. I am a new subscriber. I am also a Flight Attendant at Southwest. There are a small group of us that are fans of history and we knew about this plane. At TACA the plane had a registry number of N75356. When it ended up at Southwest the tail number became N697SW. Every time I flew on it, I would tell the story of the only "off site" landing of a commercial passenger jet in aviation history to my crew. It was a lot of fun to be on that plane and tell that story. We also had in our fleet the very first 737-300, first 737-700, and most recently the very first 737-8MAX. Thank you for remembering.

I have read about and saw so much about this flight, as I have been in love with aviation since I had my first flight in a DC3 in 1968 and have seen so many great escapes in aircraft. Captain Dardano and his crew, no matter how many times I review it, it deserves a film of their own including Dardano's early career. Sully was a wonderful tribute to a professional crew but there have been many heroic flights over the years. Including United 232.

2:38 “That should not have happened!” Your delivery of that was golden, got me laughing. Loved the video!

He's my El Salvadorian Sully. Although Sully's Hudson landing was nearly 20 years after this. They're both my aviation heroes. As well as Kevin Sullivan.

You are a treasure. Not just a font of facts, but a real presenter. You get INTO IT. Even your voice "leans in" for favored underscore or exclamation or emotional iteration. Such a joy. So riveting. Thanks for sharing...

I always love hearing stories of extraordinary Airmanship. Respect for Capt. Dardano and his crew.

For those interested, planes only have a starter motor on what is called the APU, or auxillary power unit. It is a small jet engine within the tail of the aircraft which is used to provide hudraulic, electric, and bleed air power. It's used on ground to provide this power where ground power is not available. Ground power is literally just plugging a big power cable into a socket but this isn't available everywhere. The bleed air is either used on the ground for the air conditioning packs, or to start the first engine. Basically compressed (bleed) air is used to spin the engine up to a point where its ignition takes over. One that engine is started, the bleed air from *that* engine is used to start the other engine(s). This is why only one engine starts at a time. After this, the APU is shut down in flight. But if there is a problem with one of the engines or it's generators, the APU can be fired up again to provide that redundancy for electric and hydraulic power. It also means that if the engines are both perfectly serviceable but one of the generators is not, they'll just use the APU and the craft is still certified to fly. Aircraft have so many redundancies you'll be amazed at how much *isn't* working when they take off, and you will never know.l

I'm familiar with this incident. These pilots are amazing aviators and deserve much thanks for their incredible decisions to save the passengers and the plane.

Even that's a miracle, but also he is a super hero. He deserves to be recognized as one of the best pilots in the world.

Great story! The History Guy deserves to be remembered too!

I’m flying out to LA next week and despite all my travels, I’m still terrified of flying. Thanks for the morale boost!

"The History Guy " is freaking awesome !!!!

In a world that fancies bad news over good... this is a wonderful piece of history that truly deserves to be remembered. It is especially relevant to today (December 2019) , and all the issues Boeing is currently going through.

This history deserves to be remembered and your channel really deserves some more attention. Awesome work.

When you hear about air accidents where an aircraft crashes because of a series of events it is great to come across one where a little bit of luck made all the difference.

There is one other factor, relating to how magnificent, this feat of airmanship actually was.. The captain, was a military pilot as well, and had lost an eye previously, though was still able to medically qualify to fly, for his airline.. Add the reduced depth perception that would result, and you see just how good, this pilot really was.. That's the type of guy you want, in the pointy end of your flight, when the crap hits the fan. Just a simply awesome aviator, who just happens to be your pilot that day..

It still blows my mind how these things can even leave the ground. Everytime I see a plane take off, its Star Trek to me. Aviation is something I will never be able to even fumble, none the less grasp.

You do such a beautiful job on these aviation videos! I am a retired airline pilot, and am shocked by your level of research. Well done!

You should look up the Gimli glider (Air Canada 143). It was a B767 that ran out of fuel mid-flight and had to make an emergency landing without power.

This is one of your best stories. That pilot really does deserve to be remembered that is an incredible piece of flying and a heroic example of someone that just would not give up.

A C3 comet, amongst blowing its top off because of windows being too square, and much higher pressurization above 8 psi had major issues with its engines They were built out of magnesium, anyone that knows turbines knows magnesium and water do not mix, and causes the turbine to seize or to shred apart A turbine works on the principal of suck, squeeze, burn, blow Most issues even in today's turbines happen between squeeze and burn, today most commercial turbines are ducted high bypass, meaning some air is routed past the engine core and deflects some hail and rain, and even bird strikes around the core bypass by centrifugal forces I was on the BOAC C3 Comet restoration team at Seattle's museum of flight, very advanced with simple components but nothing like today's complicated machines, truly a joy to restore such an important aircraft of history Thanks for your videos History Guy I Love them

"Senior" at 29 years, 13,000 flight hours. Amazing.

I always thought that dead sticking got it's name because when the engines lose power, the flight stick (yoke) loses power as well, making it hard as hell to fly. Like a car that loses power steering.

Captain Carlos Dardano showed superb airmanship. Brilliant pilot. Even with one eye. He deserves to always be well-known. He was Sully before Capt. Sully. And I always thought 'dead stick' referred to the yoke of the plane not the propellers. Back in the early days of aviation, it literally was a simple control stick, pilots used to control the plane. And flying 'dead stick' meant that control stick was no longer responding.

STUNNING feats of daring-do. DANGER! PERIL. RISK! Everything I LOVE about a story in one History Guy episode. THANK YOU history Guy. U R the BEST!!!!!!

This would make a nail biting movie!

Fascinating story...and thanks for all the details.

Some years after this happened, I flew a round trip on TACA between Houston and Belize City. Both ways, I had new planes that were the cleanest and spiffiest I've ever had the pleasure to ride, and the service was equally impressive. I gained tremendous respect for TACA.

I have always loved history and this channel is fantastic for providing a brief, informative escape while feeding my love for history.

Yeah this was an amazing piece of airmanship. One thing that helped was that when the engines refused to restart initially, the captain made the unusual move of starting the APU in-flight, normally used just to provide electric power while sitting on the ground with engines off, it allowed them to have power for their controls and instruments throughout the ordeal, normally this would be lost within a few minutes of the loss of generator power from the engines. So since the engines could not be re-started, this turned out to be a very good move on his part. Also I have read that this captain was actually blind in one eye from a bullet wound when he was younger. This type of incident also happened in '77 with a DC-9 that attempted a dead-stick landing on a county road in Georgia after a double flame-out from hail ingestion. It didn't turn out as well, however. The aircraft broke apart and hit a gas station at a crossroads, there were several killed on the ground as well as all but 20 or so aboard. As with the TACA incident, they believe it was a case of weather radar attenuation issue leading them to seek out the absolute worst part of the thunderstorm clouds (the 'vault' it's called by meteorologists, where all the hail/precip concentrates), by making it appear to be a clear slot on their display. That was an issue before newer types of radar with more bands to select became common.

Another masterpiece from The History Guy. While learning to fly in New Orleans in 1991, this story was still very much talked about, but as always I learned so many new details from your video. Very much appreciated, as someone now with 8000+ hours in the 737. I don't know how NASA officially speaks of their facility there, and it's certainly not worth re-doing the video, as no one outside of Louisiana should be expected to pronounce things as they do, but locally they pronounce it "MEE-shoo".

Incredible! I lived about 20 minutes from where this happened and it was big news at the time. I’ve been searching for any videos of the takeoff after one of the engines and other minor repairs were completed....but haven’t found any yet.

Im glad you brought this to point ,, expecting complete disaster,, to an no event ending.. there is NO award high enough for the pilots of this flight

I had to "dead stick" a Cessna 175 back in 82. Freaked me out. Barely made it on to Kadena-05. Best advice, do your own pre-flight checks.

this is one of my favorite commercial aviation stories and one i bring up frequently around work, which is of course airline maintenance, i was not aware of the captain's much longer story thank you comments section, some of my others are franz stigler and charlie brown's encounter during ww2, the gimli glider and the amazing near recovery of the stricken united 232 a few as mentioned in the comments

those pilots are heros. Its always amazing to see these story's with your great visualizations and great story telling voice. I love these thing i would normally never find. Great channel love ya

My father worked for American Airlines from 1968 to 1973 and he was based in San Francisco, while mother, my sister and I lived in Texas. We were very young and several times during the year we would fly from TX to CA as unaccompanied minors. I remember flying on the relatively new 747, very exciting! So I've been a commercial jetliner passenger for over 50 years. And all those years and all those flights, I've experienced only 2 emergency landings, 1 episode of extreme and severe turbulence...and 1 instance of chain reaction of coincidence or divine intervention ( I missed my departing flight that caused me to miss my connecting flight, scheduled to depart Miami at 2 pm, May 11, 1996, ValuJet 592. I lost two friends.

An important fact was missing, A fact that makes this feat even more remarkable. The capitain was half blind and could only see from 1 eye.

3:35, The pattern displayed by the radar is a classic hook echo. Somebody underneath that angry red slash is having a very bad day.

For all those comparing this to the miracle on the Hudson, what sully did was amazing, BUT Carlos accomplished this remarkable feat of airmanship at 29 years old, he was essentially a kid and pulled this off. Sully was much, much older and more experienced.

Hi, as a private pilot, I can say the crew of this airliner did an exceptional job at airmanship. The company they fly for should have given these pilots the airline for their service and skills. Top gun!!!

I take it back. Not all history is horrible. I like a lot of your videos.

Great video and story. I worked at the Michoud Facility when this happened. You should add a bit to the story and talk about the take-off of that jet on such a short runway. It was amazing to see how quickly they got it off the ground, and at such a steep angle.

I live in NY, so I may occasionally brag about our "Miracle On The Hudson" with captain "Sully" Sullenberger, but I think this one sounds like it has us beat. No one hurt- FANTASTIC!

You all never fail to amaze me with all these little pieces of history. Thank you for sharing. I hope everyone involved keeps up the awesome work. Thank you 🙏

This flight and the Hudson landing were both amazing.