"I'm the mother of the captain of ValuJet 592, Captain Candalyn Chamberlin Kubeck, and I am very angry."
— Marilyn Chamberlin, speaking at an inquiry regarding the accident in question, "Fire in the Hold"
Considering the topic of the series, it should surprise no one that many cases of Outliving One's Offspring are covered by the series.
NOTE: In order to be listed, both the death of the offspring and the survival of the parent must be either stated by the episode or strongly implied (e.g parent and offspring are together, offspring boards flight soon after without parent and dies as a result of an accident involving the flight); no digging through historical records to find such cases. On the other hand, trope does apply even if the death wasn't caused by the accident (e.g character backstory).
Episodes with this trope:
- "Unlocking Disaster": The parents of Lee Campbell, who dies in the decompression, handle their own investigation about the accident. This is also mentioned in special episode "Ripped Apart".
- "Fire on Board": Stephanie Shaw is one of the dead passengers. Her father was involved with producing this episode a few years later, and his wife was also still alive at that point.
- "Cutting Corners": Patty Sanchez and Fred Miller, both of whom were interviewed when producing this episode, each lost a daughter on this flight.
- "Deadly Crossroads": Not surprising, considering that the Russian plane passengers were mostly children flying without their parents. The episode explicitly states this, as well.as mentioning that Vitaly Kaloyev had a wife and children on the other flight.
- "Lost": Gonzalo Dussan Sr. was one of the survivors of the crash. His son, taken off the mountain alive, subsequently dies of his injuries.
- "Kid in the Cockpit":
- While Captain Kudrinsky and his children die in the crash, his wife isn't on the plane, so she survives.
- One of the passengers on the flight is Adrian Deville. His parents are interviewed during the production of the episode, over a decade later.
- "Final Approach": Sean Burke died in the crash. His father and stepmother were among those who took part in the production of the episode.
- "Out of Sight":
- Teresa Estrada survived because she was out shopping at the time of the crash; of her 3 children, only one survived.
- Mary Wang's two sons were on Aeroméxico 498 and died in the crash. She had not gone on the trip to Mexico, so she survived.
- "Ghost Plane": Andreas Prodromou was a flight attendant on the flight, and died when it crashed; his father was involved with the production of the episode.
- "Dead Weight": Christiana Shepherd was killed in the crash; her parents are still alive to be interviewed for this episode.
- "Southern Storm": At the end of the episode, Allen Griffin says that his parents lost "two of their children and all their grandchildren" in the crash.
- "Air India: Explosive Evidence": Lata Pada's husband and daughters were on the flight and were killed; she had flown to India previously and wasn't.
- "Fire in the Hold": The episode starts with the captain's mother speaking at a conference six months after the crash. The captain, like everyone else on the plane, died in the crash.
- "Pushed to the Limit": One of the people interviewed for this episode is the father of the first officer, who—like everyone else on the flight—died in the crash.
- "Disaster on the Potomac": Priscilla Tirado survived the flight, while her baby didn't.
- "Death in the Arctic": Implied. Cheyenne Eckalook died on a flight after visiting her father, who wasn't on the flight.
- "Death Race": Ron Morcom's brother was one of the dead; their father survived the accident.
- "Cockpit Killer": This episode covers an intentional crash by a pilot. The captain lost his son in a car crash one year earlier. It's suspected that this, along with other troubles in his life, played a role in his decision to crash the plane.
