Flight into Hell: The Terrifying Journey of a Smoke-Filled 747 | Mayday: Air Disaster

[Music] a 747 flying towards South Africa fills with smoke a fire has erupted in the cargo area but the plane can't land it's too far over the Indian Ocean the first thought I think for many many South Africans was what was on that plane the passengers are choking on toxic fumes request a full emergency please affirmative that's Charlie Charlie there's only one way to clear the smoke the crew must try a rarely used and risky maneuver open the doors open the doors in Flight bring 295 it's a Race Against Time as the plane burns up it must reach land before it crashes into the sea9 place made it made [Music] it on November the 27th 1987 a South African Airway 747 flies from Taiwan back home to South [Music] Africa everything good fine Captain ready to take over yes [Music] thanks 9 hours into their flight over the Indian Ocean the main crew returns to their seats allowing the relief crew to rest the crew prepares for a scheduled stop on the island of maius Valerie ltering has enjoyed her first overseas vacation joining her husband Cory while he was on business my father was on a business trip and my mom had gone with for holidays my dad had actually gone to the east to secure uh cell phone technology which was just sort of happening in South Africa at the time the plane is a modified 747 known as a Combi short for combination a passenger plane and a cargo plane in one it's designed to accommodate flexible quantities of passengers and cargo the combi has a large cargo area down below like a regular 747 the combi also has a large cargo area right behind the last row of economy class seats the cockpit sits one level above the cabin uh you could load from 6 to 12 pallets on the main deck adjusting the bulkhead uh for the number of passengers you want to carry and this turned out to be a very worthwhile and useful tool flights 295 is carrying 159 people as well as six large pallets of cargo known as the helderberg the 747 Combi is a vital member of the South African Airways Fleet it's particularly useful for long range flying for South African Airways during the days of aparti a plane like the comi helped them in that respect that because they had to fly around the Bulge of Africa over the Atlantic to protest South Africa's white racist regime the vast majority of black African states refus to allow South African airlines to fly over their air space causing them to fly longer routs there were sanctions heavy sanctions against South Africa on political economic and cultural fronts um South Africa was not welcome anywhere credible in the world on flight 295 less than an hour before its stop in morius the smoke alarm breaks the calm of the cockpit it's for the cargo area on the main deck directly behind the passengers by the time the crew gets to it the fire is Raging it's bad so I get another bottle over there yeah hurry read out the fire checklist for us please in fire emergencies the crew follows a standard checklist to extinguish the fire the breaker pop as well huh we'll check the breaker panel as well the fire is burning through the planes wiring causing short circuits move as far forward as you can but there's a more immediate problem passengers are having trouble breathing duct isolation valve switches open pack valve switches all open recirculating fan switches off the fire checklist instructs the pilot to land at the nearest airport but the closest one is on the island of morius still more than 300 kilm away there's not a lot Captain Ace can do he asks a member of his flight crew to help fight the cargo [Applause] fire bring me another bottle Captain Ace initiates an emergency descent he calls the airport on the island of maius which is on good terms terms with South Africa it's just before 4 in the morning when maius air traffic control receives the call Marius marous springb 2 Niner 5 springb 2 Niner 5 Marius good morning go ahead good morning we have a smoke uh problem and we're doing emergency descent to level 15 140 confirm you wish to descend to level 140 yeah we've already commenced uh due to a smoke problem in the airplane do you uh request a full emergency please affirmative that's Charlie Charlie Captain a sounds calm but he has to find a way of getting rid of the smoke on his plane whatever's burning in the cargo hold is producing thick noxious smoke which is pouring into the cabin it could be deadly to the passengers your actual position please uh say again actual position Captain Ace is losing power to many of his instruments we've lost a lot of electrics we haven't got anything on the uh on the aircraft now he's not sure where he is the airport prepares for an emergency landing while the crew of the helderberg follows instructions from another checklist to get rid of the smoke supplementary vent fan switch off recirculating fan switches on smoke condition hold on I'll check downstairs the crew gets more bad news from the cabin the smoke is getting thicker it's worse we can't breathe down here with the plane approaching an altitude of 4500 m the checklist advises the captain to execute an emergency maneuver that few Pilots have ever performed we need to open the doors repeat open the doors opening the pl's doors in midair is the only hope for thinning a cloud of smoke that could kill the passengers before the struggling jet can land as the cabin of South African Airways flight 295 fills with smoke there's only one way to save the passengers from the lethal fumes out of flight level 1 15 for 14 1 15 140 1 15 the captain begins his emergency descent to 4500 m so the doors can be opened at 4500 m passengers can breathe the outside air at that altitude the difference in pressure between the air inside and outside the cabin is enough to force the cabin air out quickly but not dangerously now the captain must dramatically reduce his air speed to 370 km an hour 200 knots any faster and the crew won't be able to open the doors this is Captain o speaking we're opening two of the entry doors to clear smoke from the cabin do not panic you'll be much more comfortable once we complete this procedure you just crack the door and this generates a tremendous amount of air flow through the airplane BL in springb 295 we've opened the doors to see if we can we should be okay look there close the bloody door Joe switch up quickly then close the hole on your side smoke is now building in the cockpit but there's no outside door to open temperature is 22 22 and the q& is 1 18 hectopascal 108 over the air traffic controller now focuses on giving the captain the information he needs for an emergency landing Roger 108 affirmative and both runways are available if you wish and 295 I request uh Pilot's intention uh we'd like to track in uh on uh 13 confirm Runway 13 Charlie Charlie affirmative you're cleared direct to foxr foxr we report approaching 5 okay Captain Ace has one hope he must make it to the island of maius 265 km away the helderberg continues on its desperate Journey 295 play but at 4:08 in the morning a call by the air traffic controller is not returned springb 295 place it springb 295 plac with no response from flight 295 for 36 minutes Air Traffic Control maius formally declares an emergency an alert goes out to search and rescue crews several aircraft take off from Marius and search the dark waters for the missing plane but find nothing at the airport in Johannesburg South African Airways officially declares flight 295 delayed we were supposed to be going away on our annual holiday so we're all very excited cuz from picking my appearance up from the airport we were supposed to go off to 3 we holiday I think that's maybe the the the extent of the differences of of the emotions is that you're so anxious and excited for them to come home and then the absolute Devastation of the news getting the news you know that the aircraft has gone missing in the afternoon of the next day a rescue plane spots the first signs of floating aircraft wreckage reny Vale the head of South Africa's Aviation safety board is assigned to the helderberg case a normal investigator will only handle a major accident about once in 20 years in his career so this was a quite a big wake up and a challenge to us to start running with this investigation in that morning eight bodies are found in the water all suffering from extreme trauma it was around about 2:00 that we in fact were advised that the wreckage and an oil slick had been spotted it and That Was Then quite apparent that the airplane was lost the most astonishing thing is that my parents had actually the night before they had flown had sorted out their Wills had sorted out their insurances had sort sorted out all of their documentation and paperwork before they flew which was quite amazing my father made very very close family friends of ours our our Guardians our god parents and um we were to love with them South Africa quickly becomes obsessed with what caused the crash in the early days there's very little to examine only small bits of the plane that are floating on the surface contained within that debris renyun sales team discovers three wrist watches the watches give the most a probable time of impact these uh rest watches were in fact part of the baggage and when examined we uh were able to find that the one that stopped and two others were still running and the two running ones were the exact Taiwanese time but the stopped one did give us the minute indication of what we uh could establish as the impact time of the airplane the impact time is only 3 minutes after the last communication with the plane the helderbergs demise was sudden and dramatic in the press and in public opinion it reinforces the idea that something sinister brought the plane down in the Years leading up to the crash South African Airways offices around the world had been the target of protests the South African Airways um Airline at that particular time was a government body it was owned by the government um it was the national carrier but it was also very much perceived to be um part of the South African government so another aspect of this plane crash and another theory that was that was put around was that there could have been a bomb in the cargo that in fact we were a Target South Africa or this SAA plane was a target of terrorists who had um the worst interests of this country at heart experts examine the small bits of wreckage they have searching for the telltale signs of an explosion impact cavities surface pitting or spatter cavities spatter cavities are caused by the white hot fragments from a high explosive device striking and melting the light Alloys of the aircraft structure but experts spot no sign of an explosion and when air traffic control tapes are studied fale hears that the crew appeared to be coping with the emergency L springbar 295 we've opened the doors to see if we can we should be okay we've had rumors of atomic bombs for example in the airplane that won't cause the airplane to burn it will take out the airplane we did not have that same experience here this airplane flew for 22 minutes it's out of the ordinary circumstances this was not an explosion that took out the airplane with just small pieces of the plane to study investigators are stumped they don't know what caused the fire or what role it played in the destruction of the plane the obvious thing to do was to go and try and retrieve the cockpit voice recorder fly data recorder and as much wreckage as we can from the aircraft to establish what really had happened the problem is Vale doesn't even know where to find the underwater wreckage it could be far from the floating debris no one is sure exactly where the plane crashed he turns to the United States States looking for help an American salvage company is hired to find the wreckage and black boxes but time is running out the boxes have built-in locating devices called pingers which run on batteries and will eventually run down a driving Factor was that the Pinger on the data and voice recorders was transmitting and uh it it only had a 30-day guaranteed sh self life if we couldn't get out there in 30 days the chances were that we wouldn't be able to detect it by the time the proper equipment can be assembled in the Indian Ocean only 7 Days remain before the batteries and the pingers will die out meanwhile blood tests are performed on the human remains pulled from the Deb field all show traces of soot in their traia it's determined that at least two of the passengers died from smoke inhalation investigators face a disturbing realization even as the crew was struggling to land their plane some of the passengers were already dead while searching for the black boxes investigators continue to examine the floating wreckage amongst the hundreds of recovered items a partly melted graphite tennis racket offers a Telltale clue about the fire graphite only Burns at temperatures greater than 600° C investigators now know that the fire on the helderberg was extremely hot this discovery may explain why a fully charged extinguisher from the front of the plane is recovered with other floating wreckage investigators notice a melted piece piece of cargo netting on the outside of the extinguisher they determined that the extinguisher is from the passenger cabin suggesting that as the fire burned a crew member grabbed the extinguisher and brought it to the cargo area a full fire extinguisher in a plane that was brought down by a fire shows that for whatever reason it it wasn't discharged because the crew member couldn't access the area because of the Heat or the fact that there was melted metal on the fire extinguisher is further evidence to the intensity of the fire before this accident in the 20year history of the 747 Combi no one had ever died from fire or smoke when we heard about a fire in the helderberg this was the first time for for a widebody airplane it was it was news and because it was so new and the thought was that we really couldn't have anything like that what could have caused such an intense fire on the helderberg was it a wiring problem on the plane or had the cargo itself somehow started the blaze initially the investigation of course focused on what was to Cargo the fire obviously had originated in the main de cargon compartment so the logical thing is to look what did the way bills IND the gate was carried in the airplane investigators learned that there were six pallets of cargo on board flight 295 using Master way bills Van's team is able to determine that 47,000 kg of baggage and cargo was officially on [Music] board investigators discover that before takeoff a Taiwanese Customs official performed a random inspection of some of the cargo he found nothing suspicious more than ever investigators need to find the rest of the plane and locate the helderbergs black boxes but 30 days after the crash fun sales team gets some very bad news there's still no signal detected from the black boxes and they're still not certain exactly where the majority of the wreckage is so far the search has cost 1.5 million us and the team has been unable to locate vital evidence the helderberg crash is quickly becoming a test of vale's abilities and his resolve the investigation reaches a standstill Vale has failed to discover the cause of the fire or even find the plane's wreckage if he keeps looking it'll cost Millions more and the chances of success are getting increasingly remote this wasn't just an airplane this was a Boeing 747 the largest airplane of its time and this was um 747 of South Africa's national Airlines the hundreds of thousands of people who FW the 747 every day at that time were dependent on a satisfactory answer to as to whether or not this aircraft was safe and whether or not there were any structural or design deficiencies in the airplane so the stakes for us were quite large in the stakes for Mr bzel as the head of the South African investigation were enormous it would have been very very easy for this African government to say say the water is too deep it's too far from Marias we cannot investigate this accident well beneath the gray waves of the Indian Ocean the wreckage of the helderberg remains hidden now one man renie van must decide whether to spend the money needed to recover the plane's wreckage but almost 2 months after the helderberg slammed into the Indian Ocean no one even knows the precise location of the main wreckage Vale decides he must try to recover what he can without the wreckage we'll never know the truth so they spent on one investigation what we spent in 6 months of conducting our all of our investigations in the United States before investigators can salvage the helderberg they must find it the wreckage lies somewhere very deep underwater 61 days after the crash of the helderberg vanel received some intriguing news from his team sophisticated sonar equipment has detected a large object 4,400 M underwater on a flat Plateau it could be the helderberg and they presented me with a piece of paper with a lot of black docks of various sizes on it and they said that's your wreckage and my question to them was how do I know it's the wreckage of the 747 maybe this is a submarine from the second world war or something and the response was just R it is it because we tell you it is the wreckage but no one's ever gone that deep to salvage anything including the Titanic Vale has no choice to find out whether the sonar images are in fact the wreckage he must launch the most expensive part of the investigation operation resolve a remote controlled sub called The Gemini will be sent to the ocean floor to videotape what's there if it is the helderberg the Gemini will search for key items including the black boxes the problem is that the mini Saab must be attached to the Mother Ship by a flexible fiber optic cable that's almost 7 km long no cable that long has ever been built we needed a 20,000 ft cable there was no existing cable so we had to go to a cable manufacturer and get a cable designed and built but before the fiber optic cable is assembled Vale launches a separate investigation into the firefighting capabilities of the helderberg he would discover that the very design of the combi may have doomed the flight investigators want to know whether the combi was properly designed to protect the passengers on South African Airways flight 295 from fire the smoke should not have entered the com's cabin the American team leader in the investigation Barry strch goes to Boeing's headquarters in Seattle to find out how the combi was tested for certification in fire prevention stouch's team learns that to comply with Federal Regulations Boeing's fire tests were conducted by setting a bail of tobacco leaves on fire when a technician enters the cargo area to fight the demonstration fire no smoke enters the passenger cabin the smoke remains localized the fire is quickly extinguished well that was in the test conditions that Boeing used to get the the airplane approved but in the reality as we saw in this accident um it didn't work that way because um you didn't have a nice clean fire with with fans blowing the smoke towards the SE you had pallets you had a fire that would have grown considerably before the smoke is generated and you had plastic sheeting that would provide fuel to the fire in addition to all the cardboard and packing materials within the pallets themselves the combi is designed to prevent smoke from entering the passenger cabin the air there is kept at a slightly higher pressure than in the cargo area when the door between the two is open the air should flow into the cargo area keeping the passengers safe [Music] [Applause] investigators then conduct their own test they set a large pallet of tightly packed cargo on fire mimicking conditions on the helderberg The Blaze is more intense and the temperature is hotter investigators discover that this much hotter flame has a radical impact on the air in the cargo hold when the cargo door is opened the smoke now flows into the passenger cabin Boeing tests used tobacco leaves and batches of tobacco in the fire in the helderberg uh it was a very very different fire than the kind of smoke generating fire that Boeing used in their tests heat would have been generated within the cargo compartment that would have created its own pressure and would have negated the pressure differential between the cargo compartment and the passenger compartment without the pressure differential there would be nothing to restrain the smoke and keep it on the car side and therefore the smoke would have penetrated into the passenger side smoke that contained as we know carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide then investigators discover something potentially more lethal as the passenger cabin filled with smoke a checklist instructed the crew to turn on the cabin's recirculating fans the intention of the checklist is to dissipate the smoke in the passenger cabin after the fire has been extinguished recirculating fan switches on but in this case turning the fans on may have been deadly fans draw air from above the cabin ceiling and from the cargo compartment before recirculating it back to the passengers the carbon monoxide levels were extremely high and were fatally high in the fact the one body and we have to stress again he was allocated the seat really below the Reser fan Inlet area that was the highest level I think we're talking around about 66% that is not a survivable level at all by following their checklist the crew may have fed toxic gas into the passenger cabin and it might very well have been that most of your passengers would have fix before impact no checklist for a 747 Combi had ever foreseen the helderberg simultaneous problems a cargo fire problem and a cabin smoke problem the smoke removal checklist is predicated on the assumption that the fire has been extinguished in that event descending to 14,000 ft and opening the cabin door would be the appropriate thing to do it would get the smoke out of the airplane enable people to breathe regular air if the fire hasn't extinguished that would have the function of actually increasing the air flow to the fire and increasing the supply of oxygen to the fire we think that's what happened in this case that the fire had never been extinguished and in fact the crew's attempts to make the situation better may have in fact made the situation worse investigators begin to realize that fighting a fire in the com's cargo area is much more difficult than previously thought if there was a fire in one of these pallets it was quite likely that by the time the crew was alerted to the fire it would be too late then the cabin instantly filled up with smoke but fale still doesn't know what caused such a fierce fire how had the blaze started and how had it brought the plane down the answers are still deep under the ocean it takes months to build the fiber optic cable that's long enough for the Gemini to reach the bottom of the sea and to modify the submarine for this Mission we had to take the ROV existing ROV that we had which was designed for 6,000 ft and we had to modify it so it would go to uh 20,000 ft Roy Truman's team had to give the sub thicker walls to withstand the enormous pressure it would encounter and modify its cameras for the extreme depth on September the 23rd 1988 the Gemini begin its record-breaking Journey we were hesitant to say that everything would work because we didn't even have time to do SE trials on this all of this new equipment the cable allows technicians at the surface to manipulate the Gemini at 4400 M it also carries video signals from that remarkable depth it's the first time that video images have been recorded from this deep in the Indian Ocean marine biologists are fascinated by the discovery of unique new [Music] species some of the stuff that we saw on the seabed was pretty mindblowing then one year to the day after it disappeared the helderberg is found from a depth of 4,400 M the submarine sends back images that could only be the wreckage of South African Airways flight 295 there would be lots of luggage just strewn all over the seabed massive structures the wings tail huge parts of the cabin split open and you could see all of the ribs and the the wiring the hydraulic piping I mean it was was incredible just to see everything that went into a machine spread over an area of about five 6 square miles it was incredible Fun's expensive gamble is beginning to pay off descending to the helderbergs wreckage is a Triumph for him and his team but just finding the debris isn't nearly enough a year after the accident van is still hoping for the improbable the recovery of the cockpit voice recorder one of the major aspects we aimed at in operational resolve was the recovery of the CVR we really wanted to know whether the cabin crew reported to the captain that there was an explosion or what was happening at the back hundreds of hours of videotape are recorded it's exhausting work if you can imagine being on a football field with a flashlight that only illuminates a square foot of the football field and you're looking for nearing one of the football players lost uh during during the game in the dead of night that's similar to what it's like when we're on the seabed then at 9:00 one morning something catches the eye of one of the technicians go back go back for a second we might have passed at long last the black box is discovered there that's it that's it right there Michael we found it we found it that was a very fulfilling moment to Now find what we had aimed for we have achieved we're getting it it takes a full 5 hours for the Gemini to bring the black box Up From the Bottom of the [Music] Sea the South African media turns the discovery into front page news it's now 1989 and the apartheid government is still running the country with an iron fist fale makes an unusual decision he takes the sealed Black Box to Washington and opens it there CU otherwise I would have been accused of having covered up something or left something out or whatever and we the fa and the NTSB guys all listen to this type at the same time for the first time 10 in the room is high the cockpit voice recorder should be a tape of the last 30 minutes of the flight as the crew fought the fire but the tape turns out to be a major frustration after a year on the bottom of the ocean it's difficult to understand [Music] anything it was the worst time time of my life sitting in the uh playback room at the NTSB facilities and you watch the time and there is absolutely no indication of problems on the tape and I'm watching the clock at about 25 minutes I I was really getting very very anxious for 28 minutes the tape reveals nothing unusual then everything changes next minute of course the alarm Bell goes on the CVR and we had about uh a minute's worth of relevant recording on the tape before the tape stopped normally the Black Box records the final moments of a flight but not this time instead investigators are able to listen to the start of the accident before the recording mysteriously stops it's not what Vale was hoping for but it gives him crucial new insight into the fire read out the fire checklist for us please 14 seconds after the fire alarm goes off the plane's circuit breakers start to pop breaker po as well huh we'll check the breaker panel as well yeah investigators estimate that up to 80 circuits were disabled the wires to the cockpit voice recorder are destroyed only 81 seconds after the fire alarm first goes off fale has not received the key evidence that he hoped for but the fire is revealed as more violent than previously thought the recording leaves many questions unanswered but it does help fun sale to arrive at a personal opinion as to why the plane may have crashed a lot of things were happening in the cockpit and we believe that he probably was faced to up to 80 circuit breakers popping in the cockpit at the time may have made controlling of the aircraft extremely difficult and the possibility then even of the airplane just gradually descending into the sea whether it was a controllable flight uh I have my dots I put myself in the cockpit on this thing and I said I would have been terrified heaviness you know just figure now what do we do you know did they do the checklist correctly we'll never know but investigators still don't know what triggered the helderberg fire the mystery can now only be solved by salvaging parts from the crashed plane we realized that what we had to do was just to continue recover as much wreckage as we could from the ocean floor Van's focus is on certain key pieces of the com's cargo area they're brought to a hanger and reassembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle his plan is to reconstruct the section of the cargo area where the fire most likely started fale discovers that the cargo area floor is Untouched by fire so we know that the fire never burned lower than 1 meter of the cargo floor but the walls and ceiling at the front of the cargo area reveal severe fire d damage fale makes a dramatic Discovery the seat of the fire was on the front right pallet of the cargo so we were looking at the very localized fire on one pallet the front right pallet was mostly filled with computers protected by polyarene packaging investigators suspect that a fire within the pallet came in contact with the poyene packing material producing gases which accumulated near the ceiling when the gases became hot enough they ignited into a flash fire that spread throughout the cargo hole once smoke penetrated the polyethylene sheets that fire would have been very very hot but even if the packing material had helped spread the blaze Vale still didn't know why it started after millions of dollars and more than a year and a half of work he has to end his investigation I would have felt a lot better if we had been in a better POS position to give more factual information to the board to consider but that was not to be and we were not going to fabricate but interest in the wreck of the helderberg doesn't die Dark Rumors circulate about a possible cause of the fire it's against this backdrop of um a very repressive aparted government at that particular time the first thought I think for many many South Africans was what was on that plane was there something in that cargo hold that could have caused that terrible fire because planes don't just burst into flames midair and crash then a South African government chemist makes a startling discovery which leads to a controversial new Theory a microscopic iron particle on the nylon netting next to the pallet has a unique profile the airflow patterns on the iron suggest that it traveled at a very high velocity while in a molten State the discovery could mean that the fire on the helderberg was not a flash fire triggered by packing materials this was a different kind of fire this this was a fire that was had his own oxygen if you can imagine something like a sparkler which has fuel and its own oxygen it was some kind of material similar to a sparkl that we feel was the cause of the fire a British fire and explosion analyst examines the exterior skin of the plane above the pallet and comes up with another piece of evidence to support the new Theory the skin on the outside of the plane reached temperatures as high as 300° Centigrade you must remember that it's very difficult to burn through an airplane skin in flight because the tremendous amount of cooling from the air flow the outside of the skin Dr David clo is one of numerous experts who question what caused the fire it would have involved substances which normally would not have been carried aboard an aircraft particularly a passenger aircraft in other words it could not have been a normal packing material wood cardboard plastic fire you don't carry the things of that nature which carry the their own oxygen which can produce an accelerated fire for a number of reasons one of which they are generally unstable the second reason is that normal fire extinguishing methods will not put them up what could start such a fire the only dangerous goods listed on the cargo manifest are computer batteries some believe the helderberg must have been carrying cargo that wasn't listed at the time South Africa was under an international arms embargo the country was also fighting a war with Angola South Africa didn't have capacity to do everything itself and there were times when it had to buy from other countries SAA was seen as a surrogate Cargo Carrier that they could somehow through its um commercial airline use also bring in substances for the South African government undercover under protection no questions asked it was not that easy for them to fly a quasi military Airline into different countries and pick up military Contraband which you must remember we were laboring under an arms embargo at the time the media fuels the Flames of suspicion that the government was using passenger Jets to secretly import weapons arms score is the corporation responsible for supplying the South African forces with Munitions at the time there was a need to produce a better rocket system a more efficient rocket system for dealing with the air Menace in Angola and the rocketry systems which are used uh for those purposes have as their propellent major component of the propellant is ammonium proc chlorate and that is what I believe was being carried aboard the helderberg but it is not the sort of compound you want on an aircraft when you are flying on that aircraft because it is unstable it is susceptible to self- ignition by any kind of vibration and violent movement the official investigation into the crash does not come to the conclusion that the helderberg was carrying illegal arms imagine but the rumors won't go away and more than 10 years after the crash the dark theories force a very different South African government to take another [Music] look the helderberg accident revealed that the 747 Combi was vulnerable in the event of an onboard fire South African Airways immediately stops using the 747 Combi American officials take notice and the FAA went through and developed some new regulations but for the weight and everything that was going to be have to be added in there did not make it an economically feasible and so essentially after the helderberg accident 747 copies were not used [Music] anymore there are tributes and memorials to the 159 victims but closure does not come easily for the families I need an answer for why I was orphaned at 14 and I feel that as I say probably touching on on here say but there's a lot of a lot of evidence that does point to to something not being right on that flight and that the flight was carrying something illicit 10 years after the helderberg crash the new South African government launches a commission to reexamine the accident okay the truth commission was tasked was basically uncovering the truth about apartate atrocities and one of the areas it was tossed to look at was the role of the SAA in sanctions busting during the 80s and whether or not the helderberg was a freak accident or not in 1998 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission makes a controversial conclusion namely that nothing that was listed in the cargo manifest could have caused the fire and the truth commission recommended that there was something UNT about what had happened to the helderberg the truth and Recon ciliation commission exposed the improbabilities of the of the government version as to what had happened if nothing in the cargo inventory caused the fire what did and how did it get on board the reality unfortunately is unless somebody today comes up and says yes I did this or yes we were responsible for this and you can prove them not to be involved in a hoax that will be probibly the only time in which we will really know what had happened in and caused and was the source of ignition of the fire in its final report the commission suggests that the Attorney General's office continue to investigate the accident but surprisingly that has never happened the ANC lead government hasn't pursued that and of course we have to ask ourselves why and I think that the answer lies in what many people believe is that it's just going to be too costly they don't want to open it for the simple reason that it will be financially disastrous for the airline reny fale devoted years of his life to solving the mystery of the helderberg his inability to definitely prove the cause for the fire does not stop him from seeing the benefit of his investigation I believe that we as a team had done the best that we could under extreme challenging conditions and circumstances what we had done had never been done before it was pioneering work the frustration is we could not establish the source of ignition and we will probably never know I believe that there people are still out there that know exactly what happened to that aircraft I know that they thought processes at the time were our country was at War and they were doing their Duty for their country but I just feel that they should have a heart for the families and bring out that information

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

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Id: fm7QPv70gcg

Length: 50min 7sec (3007 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2023