May 11, 2026
Here’s an angle on this 30th anniversary of the value jet disaster that you probably won’t hear elsewhere. Just about everyone who’s been in aviation the last 20 years knows about the cause and consequences of this catastrophe.
What people may not know is the series of missed chances through the decades, to prevent subsequent tragedies.
Most don’t know, for example that ValuJet 592 is the “ghost” of American Airlines flight 132, eight years before ValuJet, another DC-9 with 120 passengers and 6 crew. And like ValuJet there were undeclared Div 5.1 Oxidizers in the belly compartment, in a Class D cargo compartment without any fire suppression equipment.
Like ValuJet, a fire started after the flight was enroute, like ValuJet the fire burned so hot it started melting the aircraft, like ValuJet that was no way to fight the fire that was furiously supplying its own oxygen to the combustion in a compartment that no one could reach.
As the passengers’ seats started to sink into the melting floor the flight crew declared an emergency and immediately an emergency descent the closest airport. Unlike ValuJet, the pilots were able to maintain control of the aircraft just seconds to spare, made an emergency landing in Nashville everyone evacuated down the slides of the plane; fire rescue converged on the scene. Eighteen people were injured, but nobody was killed.
This was 1988 mind you — almost a decade prior to ValuJet. The NTSB recommended substantial changes to the Class D Cargo Compartment System along with recommendations around better identification of such cargo especially a Division 5.1 oxidizer, which is capable of sustaining its own combustion.
In 1993 the FAA did not force the airline system to make changes it could have possibly prevented the ValuJet disaster less than three years away.
You know what else happened in 1993? This was the year the attack on the World Trade Center using… Division 5.1 Oxidizers (ammonium nitrate fertilizer in this case.) The Twin Towers almost collapsed because a terrorist had decided to repurpose Hazmat into an explosive device.
Two years later, in 1995, the same oxidizers were used to blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Division 5.1: Oxidizers, Ammonium Nitrate Fertilizer.
On May 11th, 1996, the ValuJet disaster happens because of a shipment of undeclared Division 5.1 oxidizers (in this case, chemical oxygen generators) in the belly of the aircraft.
Fast forward another 8 years… the ship MV Rhesus made port in Beirut on November 21, 2013, carrying 2,750 tons of Division 5.1 oxidizers, again ammonium nitrate. It goes into a customs warehouse where it sits for almost six years before it explodes, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever experienced. Three hundred thousand people left homeless, 77,000 apartments/buildings damaged. 7,000 people wounded, hundreds killed.
Imagine if there were a greater awareness and recognition of these hazards. Would that help prevent a future incident? If someone had said, “Hey, didn’t that guy Ramzi Yousef try to blow up the World Trade Center with a bunch of fertilizers?” Why is that so dangerous? What happened? Oh, that’s an oxidizer? What’s that? What’s that Yellow placard with the flaming “O” mean?
Two years later in 1995, Timothy McVeigh goes to rent a Ryder truck and fills it with, again, Div 5.1 fertilizer… 168 people, including children killed, over 600 injured.
One year later, ValuJet crashes. Again, Oxidizers.
I’m not trying to villainize oxidizers — our lives depend on them in so many way, from fertilizers to help feed the world to the oxygen generators in the overhead compartment of the aircraft. It’s just a point about the recognition of the “Danger” in “Dangerous Goods.”
In 2013, what would have happened if somebody in the port of Beirut had said, “Wait a minute, that stuff’s really dangerous. After all, it was responsible for a bunch of disasters.”
Maybe we should not unload and park six million pounds of this in our customs warehouse.
At a speaking opportunity with TIACA at their Executive Summit in Hong Kong last year, I was asked to comment on airlines investment in systems, automation, etc in safety, and I basically said, we have lots of technology. What we really need is more imagination.
Quite frankly, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination if you learn the history behind these tragedies. We owe it to future generations who are going to be learning from folks like us in the DG community… one observation, one comment, one push-back against an unsafe idea, might prevent the unthinkable. And I guess that’s how it happens, right? It’s unthinkable… until it happens.