On July 4, 2000, Malév Flight 262 rolls into Thessaloniki with big “I’ve done this a thousand times” energy, and then casually forgets the one accessory that makes landings landings: the landing gear.

Bianca and Tiffany break down the incident where a Soviet era Tu-154 turns Runway 28 into a smoke machine, scrapes along the pavement for hundreds of meters, and still manages to go around and fly away like it just bumped a curb. We get the full chaos menu: an approach that starts drifting into tight S turns, a First Officer with very little time who politely hints at reality, and a cockpit culture where the “TOO LOW GEAR” warning is treated as an annoying ringtone you silence, not a final boss you respect.

Then it gets even better, ATC is trying to help, the crew is transmitting PAN PAN, callsigns get mixed up, holding instructions go sideways, and the captain drops the most unintentionally hilarious line of the episode: “After landing I’ll call you.” Yes, after landing. That landing. The one that just happened on the aircraft’s belly.

It’s a story about checklist discipline, CRM that never shows up for work, alarm fatigue, and the uncomfortable truth that a plane can be engineered like a tank, but it still cannot save you from a cockpit that treats procedures as vibes.

Most people think JFK means iconic architecture, glossy international terminals, and the vague scent of overpriced bottled water. But in the early 1990s, Tower Air ran passenger flights out of Building 213 in Cargo Area A, a repurposed Pan Am facility that lived nowhere near the normal terminal loop. It was the airline equivalent of checking in at a logistics park and hoping the boarding announcement was not actually meant for a pallet of machinery.

Bianca and Tiffany explore how Tower Air leaned into pure industrial practicality. They poured serious money into converting Building 213 in 1993, then added a gate “finger” in 1995, turning a former hangar or HR building into a functioning, if deeply unglamorous, passenger terminal. The setup made operational sense: hangars, offices, and aircraft parking all clustered together, with none of the premium real estate costs and gate competition of the main terminals. For price-sensitive travel like religious pilgrimage flights, military charters, and bargain long-haul service on aging 747s, it was perfectly on brand.

Then reality caught up. Tower Air’s story ends the way too many 1990s niche carriers did, with a messy bankruptcy in 2000 and a terminal that outlasted the airline that built it. Building 213 becomes a weird aviation time capsule, rumored to have been repurposed in various ways later on, a reminder that at big airports, terminals are not always glamorous monuments. Sometimes they are just a function in a warehouse, wearing a name tag that says “Departures.”

In the summer of 2008, as fuel prices spiked and airlines panicked, US Airways tried an idea so unpopular it became aviation folklore: charging coach passengers for soft drinks and bottled water. Starting August 1, 2008, it became the first major US carrier to put a price tag on Diet Coke at 30,000 feet, with water and soda priced at two dollars and coffee or tea at one. First class and trans-Atlantic passengers still got drinks for free, but everyone else was suddenly negotiating with a flying convenience store.

Bianca and Tiffany unpack why this move hit differently from baggage fees. Bags feel optional. Hydration does not. US Airways defended the change with the now-infamous ballpark analogy, as if being stuck in a pressurized tube is the same as choosing to buy a hot dog at a game you can leave whenever you want. The backlash came from every direction: annoyed passengers, furious flight attendants forced to handle cash mid-cabin, and a brutal competitive disadvantage when other airlines kept handing out drinks for free.

The experiment lasted only seven months. On February 23, 2009, US Airways announced it would end the fees, and by March 1, 2009, free drinks were back. The airline framed it as a competitive issue, and the revenue numbers were never celebrated publicly, which tells you everything you need to know. The legacy is clearer than the accounting: this episode marks the moment airlines learned there is a line in ancillary revenue, and it sits right around the basic human need for water.