Mayday: Plane Crashes Into the Water | Aircrash Confidential Ep 1

thank you a routine arrival at San Francisco International goes catastrophically wrong [Music] nobody knows why how did the airplane manage to crash when they have perfectly good visibility was it the same tragic error that happened in Peru they must have thought we're going to die and again in Northern Canada well I don't like this he said that to the captain the captain ignored it three different investigations reveal that the causes are shockingly simple something so silly can kill 70 people 70 people [Music] [Music] 6th of July 2013. after a 10-hour Journey from South Korea Asiana flight 214 is on the seaward approach to San Francisco International Airport I was in the flight with my kids and my husband I remember that my kids were really eager to come back home the Jang family are returning from a month-long trip of a lifetime my parents wanted us to go to South Korea because that's where they were from and we were just there too see what South Korea was like I was very excited to come back I mean it was a very long trip and being away from your friends for a month is a long time sat behind the jacks on a group of Chinese schoolgirls going to summer camp amongst them 16 year old Yi menguan her friend Juan Lane Jaya they're talented students yuanic cells in science and music and Ling Jaya is a popular classmate praised as a natural leader this trip is an exciting opportunity for them both as the plane comes into land the passengers are told to take their seats one of the other students agrees to swap seats so the two friends can sit together [Music] the pilot captain Lee can cook normally flies Airbus jumbo Jets is relatively unfamiliar with the Boeing 777 beside him is instructor Ki Jung made is guiding him through his familiarity training with land approaching the passengers prepare for landing ladies and Gentlemen please make sure your tray tables are in their full upright position and your seat belt is securely fastened and on Carrier luggage is stowed away thank you okay get it done you done [Music] foreign but at the very last moment it becomes clear something has gone catastrophically wrong [Music] Seawall tears the landing gear from the plane the tail section follows as the nose hits the ground and the craft spins The Carriage skids Off The Runway and grinds to a stop foreign I mean I feel like it just went Dusty and then when it all stopped is when I realized that it was like wow it was a plane crash I have no idea how damaged the plane is whether the passengers are injured in the cabin people are just as confused I just remember it being black so like I don't really remember moving around a lot I think I like blacked out it was most definitely the most shocking thing I've ever seen San Francisco cop Jim Cunningham is patrolling the airport when he gets the news at the time the Asiana crash I happened to be at the the terminal I was there when I got the call of the radio the plane had crashed and I could hear in the voice of the dispatcher that was serious we just ran outside the building and we see the uh smoke and clouds up in the air and looked down towards the red waves and I could see the smoke and dust from the plane crash inside the plane confusion turns to chaos as an emergency escape shoot malfunctions and inflates into the cabin trapping a flight attendant a fire rages outside the plane and an announcement is made to evacuate Sarah Jang realizes that her parents aren't moving I felt really scared that my parents were not going to make it because they weren't able to get off the plane but in the Stampede to get out she can do little to help flight attendants just start yelling at us saying we need to go get off the plane we were all pretty in panic mode at that point so our mind just get off the plane hope for their parents is running out fast I saw the planes starting to catch fire the fire was increasing I climbed inside the airplane and I try to help get some of the people out Jim Cunningham struggles to free one passenger whose leg is trapped between two uprooted seats just trying to use our strength to move the seats wherever we could to get them out the chaos another shoot inflates the wrong way hitting a second attendant to the wall and she's in real danger of suffocation [Music] worse still the fire has spread inside the plane you are smoke in there and also I couldn't breathe like somebody was choking me the second flight attendant is losing Consciousness mercifully she is wrestled free at the other flight attendant is still trapped the cabin manager has to act fast from the flight routes we had any kind of knives with us so we got our knives out of our pockets to help deflate the slide the stewardess is finally free survivors gather on the tarmac the school children realize several of their friends are missing tragically the two schoolmates [Music] Wang Ling Jaya were thrown from the plane on impact neither had been wearing their seatbelts I saw one body near the wing of the plane another body was thrown out the plane the crash has cost the lives of these two teenage girls that's awful to hear that anyone died and especially when they were part of something that you were part of a third school girl is Missing find her they discovered that she was wearing a seatbelt but she was sat near the Tail she took the brunt of the impact [Music] caught by flying wreckage she will also die from her injuries [Music] Sarah and Joseph Jang fear their parents may not have escaped either [Music] thousand total shock and I was scared that my parents weren't alive [Music] I was in a lot of pain somehow I managed to get up and walk out of the plane the parents are among 49 people badly injured along with three tragic fatalities the tragedy deeply affects Jim Cunningham I start crying I start thinking about what happened and I was surprised I was like why am I crying like this I can't believe it I was in uniform too because I never cried my uniform I just felt sad about what happened you know and sometimes I like right now I feel a little sad thinking about it as the Emergency Services get the situation under control the question turns to how such a routine Landing could have gone so horribly wrong the national Transportation safety board are quickly on the scene the brief field confirms eyewitness testimony that that the plane clipped the sea wall on approach the airplane was coming into the runway Threshold at a high angle of attack and that the tail struck the sea wall and it tore the tail off Bill Bramble is a senior NTSB investigator it's amazing that the number of people survived that did when I saw that I assumed we were going to have a lot of fatalities as ex-head of the safety board Mark rosenka knows well the evidence that investigators will be looking for could the pilots be under the influence of something could they be fatigued could there be a mechanical failure of some kind could it be a crime nothing is off the table when you get to an accident site despite the horrific nature of the crash landing the flight data and cockpit voice recorder are recovered intact the so-called black boxes can reveal second by second data about the plane leading up to the crash [Music] while this critical evidence is extracted Bill Bramble interviews the witnesses from the plane how did the airplane manage to crash in such benign circumstances you know Blue Sky not a lot of wind and they have perfectly good visibility of the airport soon becomes clear that even before landing passengers suspected something was wrong I always look out the window before we land we definitely felt like we were going a little slower and I was wondering where the runway was because I know that we were a little too low too under questioning recalls the moment he realized that the plane was below its normal approach altitude [Music] it's not Sabine instructor's call is too late the landing gear catches on the sea wall the question was how did they get low how did they get slow but understanding why is not straightforward some of them needed assistance with translation and so the interviews were slow it took us a while to get through all the things we needed to talk about Pilots rely heavily on critical information displayed in the cockpit they were getting faulty readings having false readings on the instruments is incredibly confusing if the altimeter setting was off or the the altitude sensing system was malfunctioning then they wouldn't be able to read the altitude of their flight instruments Captain John Cox has consulted on numerous cases for the safety board if there is a an error in either the altimeter or with the airspeed indicator which could affect what the pilot believed his actual speed was that could lead to the airplane being too slow too low the NTSB think it is plausible after all they know full well how disastrously faulty instrument readings can be it's just after midnight and Jorge Chavez airport in Lima Peru stopover passengers board for the second leg of a journey from Miami to Santiago Chile [Music] the aeropuru flight 603 is scheduled to arrive in Santiago in a little under four hours [Music] the pilot is Captain Eric Shriver ladron de Guevara a veteran with 22 000 hours of flight time his co-pilot his first officer David Fernandez riveredo who was close to qualifying as a captain Guido Fernandez Lanas is David's uncle and mentor my nephew David he had 7 400 hours and he was ready to be a captain he was very good in fact David wasn't expecting to be on this flight he was called in from sick leave he had a bad call but they called him and asked him he would take the flight and he said I'll take the flight with all final checks complete the plane is cleared to fly Peru said so three win comes you authorized for takeoff Runway one fight pilot flying and they run down the runway everything seems fine he rotates lifts Off The Runway Sylvia Wrigley is an aviation journalist who has closely studied the unfolding events the first thing you're going to do is look for your rate of climb make sure you've got a positive rate of climb and then he asks for the undercarriage to be retracted at which point he notices that the ultimator is not showing the altitude that he would expect the altimeters aren't Rising quickly enough worried and saying you know you need to climb David Fernandez disagrees he's just taken off from the runway and he knows what he was doing go up go up you're going down I'm up I'm the captain and his co-pilot have no way of settling the argument outside the night is Pitch Black they have no visual reference whatsoever they could be flying up down they can't trust their altimeter David Fernandez declares an emergency with air traffic control we need to know what's going on we've got nothing showing up on the ultimators we have no idea of our altitude please just give us a reading to tell us where we are Air Traffic Control calmed the situation by confirming their altitude you seem to be going up now reaching 1700. air traffic ground radar confirms the readings from the onboard altimeters troll placed them at nearly 7000 feet safely away from the ground and that's wonderful wonderful news in terms of now we can take a moment to sort the problem out the passengers are completely oblivious to the drama in the cockpit there's lots of gentle terms they wouldn't even recognize that they haven't been continuing their flight because it's dark outside and it's cloudy outside they can't see a thing but as they try to identify the source of the problem an alarm sounds warns they are over speeding if this is true it's extremely worrying if your aircraft is over speeding you must react you have to do something about this your engines can flame out you can cause structural issues to the aircraft to stop them going too fast cut power to the engines and put on the speed brakes then stick Shaker alert activates this contradicts the airspeed warning as I suggest the plane is flying too slow the stick Shaker is a warning device that tells you that the airplane is about to stall and that normally happens when the air speed is too low it's critical that they react to this because if they don't react to it their aircraft is going to stall and effectively fall out of the sky confusion turns to panic it can't be over speed over speed when we're stalling we're not stalling we are not storing it using dishes both alarms can't be true both require immediate action which should they believe if the stick Shaker warning is correct then what they need to do is increase the air speed if the over speed warning is correct then what they need to do is slow the aircraft down they need to stop hurtling at an unsafe speed so they need to reduce the power not increase the power and they have no means whatsoever of knowing which one is the correct message neither pilot can agree co-pilot Fernandez thinks they are too slow Captain Shriver thinks they are going too fast they had a stick Shaker and at the same time they had over speed warning that's crazy they didn't have a slightest idea what was going on that's when they thought things couldn't get any worse it's another critical warning ground proximity warning system starts blaring and this is a very loud very aggressive alarm to tell you that there is terrain and that you are close to it this alert suggests they are dangerously close to the ground but controller shows them that they are ten thousand feet in the air craft Roger according to monitor it indicates Fly level one zero zero Over the Sea we have terrain alone we're supposed to be at 10 000 feet in the cockpit is a pull-up terrain pull-up Terrain and this is sounding over all these other warnings it's chaos in that cockpit the alarms worn they are fast ascending if you do not arrest that that sink the rate of descent you will impact the ground in short order the only course of action would have been maximum thrust and to attempt to climb away Fernandez makes another check with control 9700 according to presentation control has them at nine thousand seven hundred feet safely above sea level but what no one realizes is that controls altitude readings are being received from the plane's onboard instruments [Music] Air Traffic Control are sending the false readings straight back to them so the only piece of information that is giving them any confidence at all is that they're at a safe height and even that information was wrong and they're about to learn just how wrong the tip of the wing dips momentarily into the sea they kept it amazingly manages to pull the aircraft away from impacting the water at that moment but he's struggling with a plane flying too slow to react Arrow Peru 603 a final alarm tells them to pull up they don't have enough air speed Arrow Peru 603 can you hear me [Music] that's the moment when they must have thought we're going to die it was much too late and there wasn't anything that anyone could do come on Peru 603 then there's silence and he doesn't hear from them Arrow Peru 603 can you hear me calls and calls and he gets no answer [Music] the rescue teams can't locate the crash site until daylight it is immediately clear that all 70 passengers and crew have perished [Music] investigator is called the announcement comes as a terrible shock I was working as an inspector for the Peruvian Aviation Authority I was at home and they called me at four o'clock in the morning have you heard about the Aero Peru are you asking who's the who's the crew because I didn't know who the crew you know the crew is a Eric labor and David oh my God she said but Barrel it had been less than a week since Guido saw his nephew six days before I was with him Wednesday the week before I I was with him that was the last time I saw it now Guido Fernandez is as driven as anyone to find out how this horrific accident could have taken the life of a cherished family member Peruvian and U.S Navy worked together to recover the wreckage for evidence remote submersibles rescue The crucial black boxes but when the cockpit voice recorder is recovered Guido has the daunting task of hearing his nephew's final minutes it was very hard to me that I have to investigate it when I listened to cover record was terrible Mr Turtle just to listen them to be helpless they don't know what to do among the Myriad alarms it was the critical instruction to slow down that proved fatal in the initial belief that they were they were overspeed they reduced the power they let the airplane get too slow without AirSpeed the plane lost altitude Darkness they sank dangerously low after impact it was too late to recover but what was the cause of the faulty readings so many conflicting alarms pointed to something extraordinary going wrong nobody knew what whatever happened not we didn't have any idea or anything until we recover the fuselage and so the masking tape along the fuselage critical air holes had been covered with masking tape you can see the pictures of the masking tape covering the static boards readings like atmospheric air pressure and wind speed depend on the free flow of air through static ports the air feed was erroneous because of the masking tape covering the static boards and everything will run static ports allow instruments to accurately calculate the pressure outside the plane because atmospheric pressure varies with height it can be used to calculate altitude the ports also gather information about airspeed reports explain the cabin getting confusing air speed and altitude readings but why had these critical ports been blocked [Music] they find the unwitting Saboteur amongst the maintenance crew we started investigating it and we knew the story it was ordered by the operation the maintenance Chief to clean the fuselage and they told him to take masking tape and cover the static poles at both sides of the aircraft so back here what what he did but she didn't know nothing about the technical part tragically he had no idea how important these air vents were to the safety of all on board you've never low-paid worker had no idea of the danger someone should have spotted his mistake he has to joined the whole side of the fuselage would shine it and just went home and the head of the paint shop didn't check it nobody took it off I was shocked I couldn't understand quite something like that could happen yeah something so silly that a piece of masking tape can kill 70 people 70 people the tape he used was the same color as the plane invisible at any distance but critical lessons have been learned from this tragedy now they they have special covers for static ports they never used masking tape after the election if you were to use tape it would be such a color that you could not miss it they're bright red and say remove before flight the arrow Peru crash shows how even in the hands of experienced Pilots faulty cockpit information can be [Music] can be good faulty readings of course the San Francisco crash go everyone investigators consider whether like the Peru crash decades earlier false AirSpeed readings caused flight 214 to approach San Francisco too low too slow bad information will give you bad decision making so they obviously are interested in were all of the avionics on board the aircraft working as they should be the safety board plot the plane's actual speed and altitude with the readings recovered from the flight data recorder if there is a discrepancy the mystery will be solved as they check each reading Point by point they find a perfect match whatever the reason the plane crashed into the sea wall of San Francisco the instruments couldn't be blamed they were working perfectly [Music] Asiana is different from Arrow Peru because they had correct indications it's not that their instruments were malfunctioning or that they had bad data the discovery only deepens the mystery if the pilots had accurate AirSpeed and altitude readings how could they mess up their approach so badly if everything's working properly the crew has accurate information on their flight instruments then the question is how did they not detect the airplanes decreasing air speed and that places the investigation squarely into the realm of investigating human error [Music] safety board investigators need to establish the precise point at which the pilots realized the plane was too low return to the cockpit voice recordings clear to land they began to realize it probably about 10-15 seconds but began to act unfortunately too late and it takes time to spool these engines up even when you have given it full throttle and the amount of time that you would have needed that decision should have happened perhaps 30 seconds to a minute to have the ability to go around they were way below where they should have been and they didn't recognize it until it was too late why was the order to pull up given so late Bill Bramble talks to the pilots and uncovers a fatal confusion over the lines of responsibility when we talked to the instructor Captain he said that he assumed that the flying pilot would initiate to go around when needed and the pilot flying he said that it was his understanding that the higher status Captain was the one to initiate the go around neither pilot took control fatal situation in any cockpit but then the pilot throws a curveball he explains that in his opinion neither he nor his co-pilot should have had to worry about AirSpeed at all the landing speed was being controlled by Auto throttle Auto throttle works much like the cruise control of a car [Music] the plane's onboard computer monitors AirSpeed and automatically adjusts engine thrust to maintain the correct speed it looks like something had gone wrong with the automated system Bramble was well aware that automated Landings have gone tragically wrong in the past summer 2011. Canadian first Air flight 6560 is coming to the end of its two-hour Journey flying from Yellowknife airport to Resolute Bay it's an extremely remote part of Northern Canada the tiny population only about 200 people [Music] we chartered the flights to bring in food and groceries for the hotel operations we fly our staff in and out same as you'd go to a corner store and buy what you need and bring in when you need it among the 11 passengers on board this small craft are his two granddaughters sisters six-year-old Cheyenne echolug a seven-year-old Gabriel pelkey they're returning from a summer visit with their dad their mom is at the airport waiting for them to land they come in whenever we have planes coming in or they want to come up and visit so three four times a year oh they love flying Cheyenne was a go-getter and not afraid of anything should climb Great Heights fall and get back up and Gabrielle the older one was more quiet and studious they got along very very well also on board his geology student Nicole Williamson who was on her way to start a new job in Resolute Bay [Music] thank you [Music] and the cockpit is Captain Blair Rutherford he's been with first air for more than 15 years a veteran with almost 13 000 hours of flight time it's right it's his co-pilot first officer David Hare was already clocked up almost 5 000 hours of flight time today the visibility is very poor safe to land by sight so they engage autopilot to guide them in the instrument Landing system or ILS uses ground-based radio beacons to guide the plane to the runway [Music] localizer live slope life the ILS is an important tool for Pilots to be able to help land in very very bad weather where you can't see the runways both the captain and his co-pilot have no reason to worry they have used the ILS Landing system many times in the past gear down gear down through his autopilot where he needs to be and where the plane is going to link up with the ILS and that had been set properly it was the first officer who began to recognize by looking at all the other data through the instruments that something was wrong to the right a little all right co-pilot's hair is concerned but Captain Blair Rutherford is unfazed therefore deflection it's captured 10-3 is the localizer you still believe the aircraft was in autopilot and that the autopilot was performing the way it was supposed to and was going to get him to the right place but the GPS reading warns they're off course it's not captured GPS is off to the right have we done something wrong happy as the autopilot hasn't locked onto the ILS standard procedure would be okay get the airplane up above the ground and and figure out where why things are wrong we'll continue the approach Captain Rutherford puts his faith in the autopilot and initiates the landing procedure ignoring further warnings from his co-pilot we have fought deflection on GPS we should go left no aren't we too far to the right has objections continue to fall on deaf ears to just uh put your head down and continue to do something like that odds are you're going to end up with a uh a catastrophic ending with the craft sinking lower hair gets increasingly anxious Blair I I don't like this [Music] syncreate alarm adds to hair's fears the autopilot is taking them dangerously closer to Terrain when you get a sink rate alarm it says that the airplane is descending at a rate faster than the system believes is safe second warning to abort Landing the minimum's alarm means that if you don't see the runway you must immediately initiate a go around Captain doesn't relent until it's too late [Music] the aircraft had landed on top of the hill and spread over about a quarter mile of debris just two of the adults narrowly survive a middle-aged man Robin Wiley and the young student Nicole Williamson out of the rubble a child emerges seven-year-old Gabrielle pelkey she has only minor injuries well she was laying there not crying or anything share a gash about three inches on her forehead otherwise she was good tough little girl but her sister is not so lucky Cheyenne Echo look has perished terrible reality Dawns on Gabrielle the first thing she said was [Music] it's going to be tough being an only child she realized she had lost her sister so it was bad it has a deep lasting effects you know it's not a day goes by without us talking or thinking of her the small community of resolute Bay is left in shock how could such a horrific tragedy have happened Pilots learn to trust technology could autopilot really have let them down with help of radar data from the airport investigators are able to reconstruct the plane's actual flight path it to the readings that the co-pilot was giving he had been right all along for some reason the autopilot took them tragically offline so why was Captain Rutherford so confident they were on course Rutherford was taking readings directly from his compass after testing investigators Discover it is 17 degrees out the compass was wrongly showing the plane on course for the airport [Music] they were actually on course until the last moments they were making a turn and they were doing it using the autopilot in the ILS part of the problem was Data coming from the instrumentation the compass was inaccurate it was broken the first officer recognized that they were off course he didn't not necessarily understand that the compass was broken but he knew that he was not set up for the appropriate Landing he said that to the captain the captain ignored him but it doesn't explain why the autopilot went wrong autopilot should have guided them to the runway using the ILS Beacon but instead they veered off to the right this is exactly what the co-pilot feared was happening but autopilot doesn't rely on the faulty compass The Wider the autopilot drift off course by reconstructing the planes second by second activity the investigators discover a critical change to the autopilot [Music] when the pilot moved forward and did something to basically move the Yoke of the airplane which then disconnected the autopilot without alerting the pilot to that in fact it happened the plane was still moving but it wasn't going in the direction that the pilot anticipated without realizing the pilot had unintentionally turned off the autopilot's navigational control its direction was now under manual control though no one knew it you're operating your cruise control in your automobile and you touch the brake your cruise control is off you have to do something in order to put it back on but they hadn't realized it had switched off surrounded by thick fog and with a faulty compass Rutherford had no idea they were fatally drifting towards the hillside you can have the airplane in a mode you don't expect this is not the first time that a mode confusion because of bumping a yoke has occurred unfortunately the results in these cases have been tragic full error failing to realize automation was off fatal const [Music] ant did a similar issue caused the unexpected disaster in San Francisco autopilot had been responsible for the approach speed and yet the plane slowed and lost critical altitude they were relying on the auto throttles to keep them at the appropriate speed so we needed to know whether the auto flight system was functioning as designed or if there was some sort of malfunction on Modern planes like this Boeing 777 so-called Black Box should give the investigators vital Clues the flight data recorder on a new airplane like this could give you hundreds perhaps even thousands of parameters telling about the performance of the aircraft was everything operating the way it was supposed to could there be anomalies all of that will come back and be read out from the flight data recorder the data reveals that shortly before the unexpected drop in speed Captain can cook did something unusual flag 20. what's 20. on the final moments of approach Cancun activates something called flight level change putting the plane on a pre-programmed altitude just as the plane should be descending it started to rise it was a mistake to select flight level change when their intent was to descend to the runway the pilot flying quickly realized and he took steps to disengage the automatic control and revert it to manual control setting the plane to manual put the plane on a path to disaster when a pilot drops the speed manually two critical functions disengage the flight level program and the automatic speed control can cook didn't realize but the approach is now entirely under his control he did not realize that it would cause the auto throttle to remain essentially off with the throttles in under manual control what was meant to be a temporary override has left the auto throttle permanently off learning Japanese complete clear to learn plane gradually loses speed and drops in altitude but they don't realize what's happening [Music] Pilot's expectation was that the auto throttle system was going to maintain commanded speed he wasn't expecting to have to monitor the plane speed so took too long to react with slowing down the flying pilot had a lot of confidence in the auto throttle system it's highly reliable and that would lead him to spend less effort monitoring the airspeed because he believed the auto throttle system was controlling it nothing was happening if they would have known that they needed to use the throttle these Pilots would have been able to do it but they didn't expect that they needed to do it that was the problem this was all based on human error human error had been the cause of fatal confusion for pilots in three air crashes Vero Peru an elementary mistake made by maintenance crew had led to wildly inaccurate AirSpeed and altitude readings slew of false alarms the first air crash in Canada there was navigation confusion after an accidental knock Switched Off the autopilot despite warnings from his colleague the captain was convinced the autopilot would still bring them safely into land this fundamental error was repeated in the Asiana flight over San Francisco with the pilot putting total faith in the automation without realizing he turned the auto throttle off [Music] the Asiana and the first air accident share in common this idea that the crews misunderstood what the automation was doing one of the biggest challenges facing Aviation today is the over Reliance on automation automation is brilliant for reducing certain kinds of errors but it leaves us Less on our guard for things certain things going wrong and then when they occur we don't notice the solution to this problem is a difficult one that the industry's still grappling with recommendations was to improve the training process to make sure that the pilots were fully understanding of the way the systems work and what is necessary to guarantee that they will operate the way as designed tragedies have driven critical improvements to air safety from measures to prevent the static ports being left accidentally covered to improve training of Pilots to understand better how their automated systems work and to be aware of what can go wrong the industry continues to learn from Aviation incidents to help prevent these errors from ever happening again [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: hazards and catastrophes

Views: 741,545

Keywords: science documentary, full documentary, full documentaries, documentary, ultimate science documentary, catastrophe documentary, aircrash confidential, Aircrash Confidential Ep 1, airplanes, instrumental error, air crash, plane crashes, plane catastrophes, human in danger, plane instruments explained, plane instruments, airplane technology, technology, flight, travel plane, pilot plane crash, pilot airplane, mayday, mayday pilot error

Id: 7IGed-4VSaM

Length: 49min 51sec (2991 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 20 2022