Swiss Air Crash - Disasters of the Century

Video Statistics and Information

Video

Captions Word Cloud

Captions

[Music] September 2nd 1998 Swissair flight 111 takes off from JFK International Airport bound for Geneva Switzerland 14 crew members and 215 passengers are on board and despite the hopes and desperate prayers of those who await their library there will be no survivors [Applause] [Music] September 2nd 1998 Wednesday evening in the village of Fox Point near Blandford and overlooking st. margarets bay Nova Scotia tuna fisherman Bob Conrad arrived home after a long but successful day he'll be out again tomorrow but for now all he wants to do is relax that's what I did collapsed on the couch TV was on and it was only a matter of moments and I was gone Bob Konrad doesn't know it but he'll be back on the water sooner than he thinks JFK International Airport New York passengers gather in Terminal three waiting to board Swissair flight 111 the flight was considered a UN run right I mean it was used by the United Nations to go back and forth Geneva to New York on a regular basis that was an informal kind of thing but it was felt that that it was a plane that was for the higher end the higher class passengers the passenger list includes several UN officials a number of scientists and researchers on their way to attend conferences abroad and business people hoping to expand into European market 16 year old tariffs federal is one of the passengers she looked forward to attending a prestigious boarding school in the Swiss Alps 8:00 p.m. passengers begin to board the McDonnell Douglas aircraft that will take them to Geneva the captain on this flight is cooler's Zimmerman that's was their veteran of 27 years one of the airline's most experienced pilots a father of three he's looking forward to getting back to Switzerland it was the 50th birthday and it was a big celebration that his wife was planning for to discover that even a veteran pilot he was not only a considered a good pilot from the point of view of being a pilot he was good enough to train other pilots so is his co-pilot 36 year old first officer define low also a father of three he has recently moved his family into a new house while many passengers are leaving behind family and friends 24-year old Stephanie Shaw is on her way home her father Ian a retired executive for a Swiss watch company intends to meet her definite was in an apartment of her own in the town of Geneva where we were living in Switzerland and she was in her final year and she never university Steffen have gone to New York for four days Emily and she phoned and evening before she was due to arrive to say she was staying an extra day which put her on board to serve and lessen the first part of the flight was uneventful nothing untoward would have been going on immediately they would have started to surf the first meal people would have been choosing their wines and you know the food would have been coming out in fact most passengers that day are confident they will be well taken care of happy to be booked on Twitter one of the safest airlines in the world so there was a very big player in the international airline and it had a great reputation for safety for service in a little over an hour all that will change Wednesday September 2nd 1998 just after 10 p.m. Atlantic Time 40 minutes after leaving New York's JFK Airport Swissair flight 111 to Geneva enters Canadian airspace the aircraft is now in the hands of air traffic controllers in Moncton New Brunswick who will guide her as she travels eastward in first and business class passengers like 16 year old Kara federal are checking out the list of movies available on the personal in flight entertainment system with their as with a number of other airlines were experimenting with in-flight entertainment systems very specific state of the art and so what that meant was that there were a lot of wires that were going here there and everywhere because essentially we added the computer under every seat after just a few months Swissair complains that heat generated by the system sometimes causes hard drives under the passenger seat to fail the safety concerns that existed existed beneath the surface in other words your average consumer would not have known anything about them but it didn't seem to raise the kind of flag that clearly in retrospect would have been useful 10:12 p.m. 53 minutes after takeoff the pilots detect an odor in the cockpit then notice a small amount of smoke the pilots find nothing in the aircraft electronics compartment and the smoke quickly dissipates while an odor remains captain or Zimmerman does not alert air-traffic control instead he begins a systematic electronic safety check for smoke in the cockpit as required by Swissair a process that can take up to 20 to 30 minutes less than a minute later the smoke reappears and there is more of it captain Zimmerman contacts air traffic control in Moncton it has been 3 minutes and 18 seconds since the smoke was first discovered captain Zimmerman uses the codeword for a problem they consider serious but not yet an emergency you say to Boston you want to go but would you prefer to go into Halifax with our 111 Roger there's me director Halifax Halifax is closer than Boston about 100 kilometers from the planes position but the pilots can't be sure it is enough distance to allow them time to descend for a safe landing at this point perhaps there is no other choice copilot to fajn low reduces altitude at a rate of four thousand feet per minute until captain zimmerman closed him down to allow flight attendants time to prepare the passenger cabin for landing zimmerman sends word to chief flight attendant Renee over Hemsley of conditions in the cockpit at this point air traffic control passes from Moncton to Halifax International Airport Swiss Air 111 good evening at the scent of 3000 the altimeter is two Niner seven Niner it is eight and a half minutes since the pilots first smelled smoke how a fax control informs them that they will be landing on the airport longest runway okay that course approach for 1:06 you've got three miles apply to threshold twist there 111 Roger you can turn left heading three zero six to loosen altitude to allow flight 111 time to lose altitude the air traffic controller sets it on a 360 degree course first officer low essentially flies in a circle while continuing to descend both pilots agree they need to dump some of their fuel they are 22 tons over the suggested weight for a successful landing it's still possible but risky given their rapid descent we do that in Assyria during your Roger are you able to take a turn back to the self that you want to stay closer to the airport the pilots decide they still have time to double back out to sea rather than risk dumping fuel over land it is just 16 kilometers back to the coast and they are still within 40 kilometers of the airport the decision is to dump fuel in the ocean and then try to make the landing so that it would be paper land and with reduced fuel and it's at that point that they fly out over st. margarets bay through all of this captain Zimmerman is still occupied with the emergency checklist carefully following procedures that require him to track down the source of the smoke in the cockpit it includes the use of a special smoke switch the terms electrical circuits off and on one third at a time a testing device designed to isolate a problem area 10:24 p.m. Atlantic Daylight Time suddenly Swissair flight 111 begins to shut down first ago is the auto cluster 111 you can block between 5,000 and 4,000 feet if you wish in the cockpit the md-11 electrical systems are failing one after the other in accelerating so sir why 11 just a couple of miles I'll be right with you copy that Swiss Air 111 you are clear to metric fuel dump on track and buys me when you're fueled under complete [Music] so if they're 111 check your equip start your field on 1026 p.m. with communication gone captain or Zimmerman and first officers to fan low are on their own and flying blind electronic displays and instrumentation have shutdown the ceiling above and behind the pilot game has become so hot that aluminum is melting liquefied plastic drifts into the cockpit there are no visual references outside either where the night sky is cloaked in heavy cloud the aircraft continues to descend circling out over st. margaret's say headed away from you know that goes to coach then circling back toward Halifax Airport as it passes over the community of Blandford it's circular path continues out to open sea the plane was in total darkness and what we think may happen the pilot is they become disoriented they lose because they do not have any instrument to go by the aircraft plummet in an accelerating spiral towards the water traveling at more than 650 kilometres per hour at the split-second of impact the planes exterior patterns like an eggshell its tail telescoping forward into the nose I had the expectation that many people would have that feel if you crash into water water is more forgiving but the reality is that it is like crashing into concrete basically the nerves that in exhaust and within that quarter half second the rest of the plane would have arrived there it's impossible to survive something like that at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography near Halifax scientific instruments record a seismic event coming from the direction of the waters beyond state margarets bay at air traffic control in halifax Swissair flight 111 disappears off the radar screen it is 10:31 p.m. Twist Air flight 111 bound for Geneva after departing New York has declared an emergency over the waters just off Nova Scotia then it disappears from air traffic controllers radar screens in Fox Point Nova Scotia fishermen Robert Conrad wakes up on the couch where he fell asleep hours before television was on and in a very peculiar way was awakened by the report of a suspected near crash and and I remember hearing the word Blandford and I began to awaken rather quickly at that point so then it was a matter of notifying my life that that I had to go and back out to sea by the time Bob Conrad steers his boat out of st. margarets bay rescue operations are well underway helicopters p3 Orion prop plane and fishing boats are already searching for survivors in an area southwest of the harbour the p3 Orion's were releasing flares and so the sky had a kind of eerie sense about it with these these orange flares lighting up the sky and it was overcast and just a rough night could be out there only a short period of time past after we were there that we it became clear that survivors weren't going to be found what Bob Conrad and the others do find is debris as far as the eye can see this plane shattered into millions bits some of them were inch or quarter an inch big part of that debris is what remains of the 229 people aboard Twitter flight 111 people are first take aboard parts of bodies and this was not you know for our Conrad or any of the other fishermen what they'd expected when they went acted and so it was very traumatizing my spotlight fell on what I thought was a dog that has you know been part of somebody's luggage and so I live with the boat over inside this goal only to realize that it wasn't at all at all it was a young child and I was able to reach down and get the child place it on deck of my vote it was a quite an experience to hold that child in your arms and realize that no one in the family would ever do that anymore that night was a long night and before it became daylight it started to rain and it just it's just added to the bleakness of the sadness of that night the emotions that Bob Conrad experiences that morning are magnified a thousand times in the hearts and minds of those left behind by the passengers and crew of flight seven in Switzerland Ian Shaw is looking forward to hearing about his daughter Stephanie's trip to New York I wrote the next morning around 6:00 and there was a news flash on television saying erroneously that a flight had gone down in the ocean and I knew that Stephanie was gone the only thing I can liken it to is [Music] being hurled off a precipice in the dark and you are falling a very long time and you can't understand what has happened inspire you in this very altered state of falling through darkness and obviously when you land you are completely broken smashed Barbara and Mark Federals are expecting a call from their 16-year old daughter Karen to say she has arrived safely in Geneva mark got up I guess it would have been very early that morning she hadn't called he went down to the computer just to look up the information on the flights arrival and he went to this with airtight and that's where he found the message that the plane had crashed he essentially collapsed that computer and his wife who was waiting for him to return him to come back to the bedroom and telling this you know Tara was okay and that the plane had landed everything was fine came down and found him there and found with the message on the computer screen so you can imagine just how traumatizing that would have been the investigation into the cause of the crash is conducted by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada its focus is the cockpit where investigators find a section of burned wiring in the ceiling the area includes wires connected to the aircraft in-flight entertainment system not long after the accident Swissair removes similar systems from its other aircraft in February 2003 the Transport Safety Board releases its final report on the crash of flight 111 the ultimate cause of the crash is the complete failure of electronic navigation and communication systems that left the pilot flying blind with no link to air traffic control [Music] on Canada's East Coast visitors to Nova Scotia will find two memorials erected to honor the passengers and crew of flight 111 they may also find Ian Shaw who moved here after the disaster where he is building a new business and a new life I cannot describe to you the level of compassion shown by people here and that is the only justification for continuing and that is what I believe I have been able to do here thanks to the wonderful people who are in this community here you [Music]

Info

Channel: Bad Day HQ

Views: 615,233

Rating: 4.5435896 out of 5

Keywords: swiss flight crash, swissair disaster, swissair crash, worst plane crash in canadian history, swiss plane tragedy, swiss plane disaster, china airlines crash, un shuttle crash, un plane crash, canada's worst plane crash, canada's worst air disaster, 1998 plane crash, worst plane crash in history, plane disaster footage, plane disaster documentary, halifax disaster, nova scotia disaster, bayswater disaster, peggys cove

Id: 3nYPWmMCGUs

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2017

Reddit Comments