This plane RAN OUT of FUEL in the middle of the OCEAN!! (Patreon)

In the dead of the night, halfway over the Atlantic ocean, an Airbus A330 carrying 306 passengers and crew suddenly runs out of fuel. The lights go out, the oxygen masks drop, and the noise of the engines is replaced with an eerie silence. In pitch darkness, the giant aircraft begins drifting down towards the ocean below. The pilots are stunned, and begin trying to glide the aircraft as far as possible. The flight attendants prepare the passengers for an emergency ditching in the ocean - something which is likely be a death sentence for all on board.

This is a living nightmare, but incredibly - it never had to happen in the first place. Many accounts of this incident focus on its technical aspects, but that is only half of the story. The truth is that at bottom, this is a fascinating story about human psychology. It’s a story about how people make decisions under pressure, when faced with ambiguous information. This is the story of Air Transat flight 236.