The Disaster Of American Airlines Flight 965 | Mayday S2 EP5 | Wonder

[Music] [Applause] [Music] we are in an emergency american 965 leaving 2-3 in 1995 only days before christmas an american airlines boeing 757 is on its final approach to carly colombia cali approach american 965 the pilots are calm and relaxed they don't know they've made a terrible mistake they've strayed more than 10 miles of course and no longer have a clue where they are [Music] in complete darkness the jet carrying 163 passengers and crew is heading into mortal danger i think we knew that something imminent was was around the corner flight 965 crashed into a 9 000 foot mountain the crash reverberated throughout the aviation industry how could one of the most technologically advanced aircraft in the world equipped with a state-of-the-art navigational system and flown by some of the most skilled pilots crash into the side of a mountain [Music] [Music] on december the 20th 1995 american airlines flight 965 is preparing to depart miami international airport but uh well its destination is kali colombia flight 965 is scheduled to leave at 4 40 pm but has already been delayed for 30 minutes at the gate to allow for connecting passengers [Music] only just made it in miami if they tell us that we have to rush because the plane gonna when they're gonna leave to cali very soon definitely we were very happy because we know we're going to fly that night so you made it just in time i'm going to leave it go from new jersey to miami we almost missed the flight mercedes ramirez along with her mother and father managed to get on the flight at the last minute we were on standby so we weren't sure if our names were going to be called off to actually get on that flight we heard our names and we were excited because he's like yes we got on the flight but it's very old america flight 965 finally leaves the gate at 5 14 pm 34 minutes late but the problems aren't over yet as they taxi towards the runway the tower informs them of yet another delay american 965 standby heavy seasonal traffic clogs the runways and they're forced to wait another hour and 20 minutes on the tarmac ready that's all there is to it finally two hours late flight 965 is cleared for takeoff fly the runway heading clear for takeoff merry christmas clear for takeoff 2-7 right american 965 you do a great job good night captain nicholas tafuri aged 57 is in charge of flight 965. he's one of american airlines premier pilots with more than thirteen thousand hours of flying experience over two thousand of them in the seven five seven he'd flown to khali only six days earlier two zero zero the heading climb to sixteen six american 965. at the controls is first officer donnie r williams age 39. although he's been flying for american for nine years flight 965 is his first trip to carly it's the holiday season and the plane is filled with passengers starting their christmas celebrations [Music] everybody on that plane was either going back home for the christmas holidays to visit their family so i think everybody was just happy and excited to go back the day of the flight december the 20th is a very special day for passenger mercedes ramirez mercedes is a university student from missouri it's her 21st birthday and this trip is a gift from her parents usually we spent christmas in kansas city at home but they wanted to do something special and we had never spent the holidays with our family in columbia so it was a big deal for us since we flew standby i couldn't sit with both my mom and my dad all in one row so my mother and i were seated next to each other i was by the window she was in the middle and then there was a passenger who was about my age who was in the aisle seat and then my father was in another row behind us and so nothing out of the ordinary at all just a normal flight nineteen-year-old mauricio reyes is sitting beside mercedes mother reyes is a student at the university of michigan [Music] gonzalo de san and his wife nancy and their two children michelle and gonzalo jr are seated nearby we were very excited because the first time you know we're going with my family to pass you know christmas over there in cali we wanted to see our families members and our brothers sisters you know to see our city again [Music] two hours and 45 minutes into the flight the plane is cruising at an altitude of 37 000 feet and on a pre-programmed flight path heading towards carly's airport 36 miles they're flying a boeing 757 a state-of-the-art airplane equipped with highly sophisticated computer systems [Music] when programmed with the appropriate data the onboard computer known as the flight management system can control the aircraft from takeoff to landing it can be a pilot's best friend or in the case of flight 965 their worst nightmare [Music] an awkward moment an hour before their scheduled arrival in kali makes mercedes ramirez change seats my mother had been talking to the college student who was next to her and i think she was trying to kind of set me up with him because she kept on saying oh my daughter's in college and my daughter's this and my daughter's that so i was very embarrassed so i got up from my seat and moved to the road behind us and i sat with my father the seemingly trivial decision will prove to be her [Music] lifesaver [Music] it's a clear moonless night with visibility more than six miles and that's just how it works but captain tafori is now getting concerned about their arrival time in khali brief one hour sign in and you can't move that up at all because it's an faa thing faa regulations require a minimum number of hours on the ground before the cabin crew can fly again the plane and its crew are scheduled to leave colombia the following morning but the unexpected delays in miami means the plane may be late into carly and not able to leave on time tomorrow when you want decent uh let me know a few minutes early in case there's a language problem okay sure any further delays will jeopardize their return flight the next day well see we got the 136 miles to the vor and 32 000 feet to lose and slow down to boots so oh might as well get started if they land within the next 25 minutes they'll beat the deadline all right sir and if you'd uh keep the speed up on the decent it'd help us too okay okay okay going to lead gonzalo de sans children quarrel over the window seat not knowing that the consequences will be dire and i remember i told him before kali when the when the plane started lost altitude so we're going to see the valley the city very nice with a lot of lights on it because usually by december by christmas time they decorate you know the mountains with different colors lights and everything then they start to fight for the windowside and i was fighting with my brother gonzalito we were fighting for the window okay gonzalito let your sister have a chance by the window and i'm like oh i wanna i wanna see i wanna see the lights i wanna see the airport and he got mad okay we'll see with your cause good boy give me chill take a look at the lights let's go city [Music] we have begun our descent for landing at cali it's a lovely evening as we'd expected this lovely evening is about to end in 30 seconds the pilots will make the first of a series of mistakes which will result in the death of nearly everyone on board american airlines flight 965 is on its final descent roughly 63 miles from kali [Music] kali's arrogant airport is situated at the end of a long valley on both sides of the valley are towering mountain ranges that stretch to almost 14 000 feet it's a formidable site what are these nuts done no thank you you want your water you want to wait until we get on the ground about your water no i'll wait for the ground to guide the plane on its proper pre-programmed flight path the aircraft must pass over a series of waypoints these are generally radio beacons at fixed positions along the route the plane's computer picks up the signal from these beacons one after the other and guides it safely to the destination [Music] flight 965 is now approaching the waypoint called tallua [Music] talua is a radio beacon at the head of the valley which leads to kali after passing to lua they should fly down the valley and pass over the final waypoint called roseau then they fly past the airport turn right and land from the south she did really well cali approach american 965 american 906.5 good evening go ahead buenos noches in your american 965 carly air traffic controller nelson rivera will oversee the final approach of flight 965 but he has a problem insurgents opposed to the colombian government have blown up the radar installation rivera has no way of knowing where planes are until they radio their position their distance dme from kali without radar the air traffic controller must rely on the flight crew to provide the aircraft's distance to the runway the dme is 6'3 the dme is the distance measuring equipment in the boeing cockpit uh descend and maintain 1 5 000 feet altimeter okay understood clear direct to cali vr uh report to lua it's a misunderstanding captain tafori thinks he's being told to fly direct to kali and forget all about talua but the controller needs him to report when he passes to lua so that he knows where the plane is to me the word directly means that he was authorized to go directly to cali that there was no delay therefore he had to inform us of his position in tallua because we don't have radar i needed him to inform me of that exact location punches direct to kali in his computer since the plane no longer has to pass over them all the way points between his present position and kali will now be erased including tallua the one he's now approaching direct cali for you in there okay thank you uh flight attendants please prepare for landing thank you and i remember they they gave us the order to to put the the back of the seat straight i remember that and everybody was they're not so happy because we were very close to the city 11 minutes before their estimated time of arrival sir the wind is gone air traffic control asks the flight crew if they'd like to land on runway one nine you wanna shoot the one nine speed instead of their planned approach to runway one yeah we'll have to scramble to get down we can do it uh yes sir we'll need a lower altitude right away though roger the american 965 is cleared to vor dme okay the pilots are pleased runway one nine is a straight in approach from the north they won't have to lose precious time by circling the airport but there isn't much time they need to start getting the plane down quickly williams deploys the speed brakes the brakes are flaps on the top of the wings when they're raised they reduce lift and increase the plane's rate of descent approach runway one-niner number one arrival this split-second decision to land on runway nine sets off a chain of events that will end in disaster arrival will report v-o-r thank you sir reporter i've got to give you a tallua first of all you want to go right to cal or to lua i thought he said the razor won't arrive yeah he did we got time to pull that out events begin to unravel very quickly in the cockpit the pilots have to locate the new charts for the approach to 1 9 enter the new route into the computer and still fly the plane and roso yeah there it is see that comes off tallulah they're getting totally confused the controller keeps asking them to report when they've passed to lure but having erased it from their computer they have no idea where it is captain tafuri asks the tower if they can forget tallua and fly directly to roseau their last waypoint before the runway can american airlines 965 go director and then do the russo arrival sir affirmative take the rosso one and runway one-niner if you win this calm all right rosa the rose one two one nine thank you america 965. report to lua at 21 miles and 5000 feet okay report the controller is still asking them to report passing the tallua beacon without radar he doesn't realize that they're already past it and are speeding down the valley towards the airport captain tafuri now makes another fateful decision having decided that they're going to head for the rosa waypoint instead he punches r into his computer the computer database responds by offering a list of more than 10 waypoints to choose from all beginning with r normally the nearest one roso would be at the top of the list but tonight it's not captain tafori doesn't notice and pushes the execute button at over 300 miles per hour and descending at a rate of approximately 1300 feet per minute flight 965 begins to veer off on a new and deadly course [Music] i never imagined that they were deflecting the route in addition to losing altitude because i didn't have radar in the cockpit of flight 965 the pilots are completely unaware of what they've done they're busy studying charts as their plane crosses the mountains into unknown territory for more than a minute american airlines flight 965 has been turning off its proper course and into the mountains captain tafuri and first officer williams suddenly noticed that their aircraft is taking them somewhere that they don't want to go let's go right to tallua first of all okay yeah where are we headed uh 17 7. captain tafori is floundering in the pitch darkness if he could only find the tallua waypoint he could get his bearings he switches from one computer system to another and then manually enters the radio frequency for the tallua beacon okay i'm getting it 17-7 just doesn't seem right on mine i don't know why left turn so you want to left turn back around to ulq nah hell no let's press on to where we're um press unaware though hopelessly lost and less than two minutes from impact tafuri decides to press on with his doomed approach let's go to cali first of all okay we're [ __ ] up here didn't we yeah go direct clo how do we get [ __ ] up here come to the right right now come to the right right now the pilots don't know it but when the plane veered off course it crossed over the mountains they're now in another valley parallel with the one they should be flying down passengers are completely unaware that in less than 60 seconds the aircraft traveling more than 210 miles an hour is going to crash is that [ __ ] tallulah i'm not getting for some reason see i can't okay no no talu is [ __ ] up okay yeah but i can put it in the box if you don't want to let's just go to the extended center line of uh which is roseau roseau why don't you just go direct to roseau though all right okay let's i'm gonna put that over to you they decide to give up on tallua and make straight for the airport they don't realize that there's now a wall of mountains between them and carly altitude 9000 feet roger decent snow the plane's ground proximity warning system is telling them they're about to crash five this is cali approach can you hear me he never answered again i could feel that we were just violently just going up and i felt like i was in a roller coaster ride or something and the turbulence was absolutely horrible and by that time people were screaming and everybody knew on the flight that something was very [Music] wrong i reached over and i grabbed my father's hand and i put my head in my lap in my mind i just kept on thinking come on just straighten it out straighten [Music] these were the last words on the cockpit voice recorder [Music] can you hear me at 9 42 p.m on its final approach to runway 1-9 can you hear me american airlines flight 965 seemingly vanishes without a trace american 965 this is cali approach can you hear me [Music] i never experienced anything like this before this was the first time that i lost a plane and the crew was not responding it is very difficult to grasp the moment when i looked outside from the control tower i could see from there the sky i started to look for the plan the night was cleared and i thought i could see the plane coming but in this case i never saw the plane moments after the plane's scheduled arrival airport monitors indicate a seven minute delay friends and family wait with anticipation for the arrival of their loved ones [Music] as the revised arrival time comes and goes rumors begin to circulate throughout the terminal that air traffic control has lost contact with flight 965 in an instant joy turns to shock as cries that the plane has crashed spread throughout the terminal [Music] locals living near the town of burga north of kali report hearing a massive explosion [Music] rescue teams race to the town which lies near the base of a local mountain range that stretches as high as ten thousand feet [Applause] [Music] it's now three am almost 6 hours after the crash the first elements of the search and rescue team are trekking up the side of el deluvio mountain [Music] there are no roads it's completely cut [Music] off in the midst of tons of twisted and torn metal lies 21 year old mercedes ramirez her last memory prior to impact is grabbing her father's hand and the deafening sound from the back of the plane of the tail section striking trees the next memory i have is the next day it's daylight i wake up and it's i see the sunlight around me and i don't know where i am and what's around me looks like a like a landfill like a trash dump and so as i'm laying there i'm thinking where in the world am i mercedes is critically injured with severe internal injuries and a shattered leg help anybody out there help me 19 year old college student mauricio reyes also survives the impact and responds to mercedes cry for help can you move um i can try i'm not sure my leg has been passported okay okay hold on hold on okay help me please okay the only way for me to get out was having to drag myself over people and i remember this lady who i had to drag myself over and i'll i'll never forget her looking back i think oh my goodness that was someone's mom or that was someone's sister or someone's wife but at that time she was just an object that i needed to get over to get out can you move can you stand up i think my leg is broken okay we'll try watch me okay okay two three and when he lifted me was when the first time i actually felt pain it just felt like an electrical current going up up and down my leg so he laid me back down and then he went off to to try to find help okay okay just stay here okay okay okay okay is anybody out there while i was laying there more of the thoughts that were coming into my mind was why me why did this happen to me at first light the colombian air force starts searching for the crash site they were unable to leave earlier because they had no night vision equipment [Music] on the ground rescue teams which had been climbing throughout the night are approaching the summit of el deluvio [Music] when i wake up i start to feel the pain in my back then when i hear the sound of the helicopters i realize something happened i started not to feel panic help me someone please help me daddy i'm here michelle gonzalo de sans six-year-old daughter michelle still strapped in her seat answers her father's desperate call for help so i realized that my daughter was alive too then i started to crawl to try to look for my where the voice of my daughter coming from michelle please i'm coming where are you dusan struggles to crawl through the broken and twisted cabin to reach his daughter but she's pinned beneath the wreckage [Music] when the plane crashed my legs i had my seatbelt on and i i guess the crash was so deep that my legs like speared into the ground i try to move myself but my legs hurt they hurt really bad i couldn't pick myself up okay michelle i'm going to get get some water for you soon and bring it back okay then i tried to crawl more to try to get out despite a severe back injury dusan manages to crawl towards a small open section of the fuselage i saw a hole behind me and i said inside me say god help me to get out from here help us over here help us when i get up of the fuselage of the plane i remember my son talk to me [Music] gonzalito and he he said father father help me despite a desperate search gonzalo dusan is unable to locate his son amongst the wreckage realizing there's no way to get off the mountain by foot the survivors of flight 965 are still unsure if they will ever make it the temperatures have fallen dramatically and without protective clothing they could die of exposure in a matter of hours stay awake for papa okay okay since first light the colombian air force has been searching for the crash site without success with each passing minute the four survivors all gravely injured take one step closer to death [Music] shortly after daybreak the crew of a blackhawk chopper spots the crash site i could see the helicopters perfectly from where i was at and even though i could see them perfectly i didn't know if they could if they could see me when when i saw the helicopter very close to the trees to the top of the trees i started to move in the blanket i started moving the blanket then so i say oh they saw they saw me they saw me they saw me they're coming for us [Music] more than eight hours after impact and after enduring life-threatening injuries and near-freezing temperatures the survivors of flight 965 are about to be rescued people finally know that we're here and they're finally here to to rescue us after so many hours of being stuck on that side of that mountain so seeing them was one of the greatest things ever they came and they draw a rock and the people start to descend and you know i was so happy because i feel they know that they they're gonna help us the first thing i told him my son is alive my son is alive i don't know where he is help me to find him please help me to find her and my daughter is alive i told her she's inside she's inside the fuselage as the rescue team divided up one went into the fuselage to free michelle another scoured the site for gonzalo dussan jr gonzalo is found hanging in the branch of a nearby tree he's been suspended in the air above the crash site for more than eight hours his condition is grave [Music] mauricio reyes is the first to be airlifted off the mountain but low cloud cover grounds the chopper and delays the removal of the remaining survivors [Music] volunteers decided to take a calculated risk they fashioned a makeshift stretcher out of a piece of the wreckage and began to evacuate michelle off the mountain by foot shortly after michelle dussan left the crash site the weather clears and the remaining survivors are airlifted to a base camp halfway down the mountain and then to hospital for emergency medical treatment more than 13 hours after the crash of flight 965 michelle dusan is the last survivor to emerge from the jungle of el deluvio alive surgeons attempt to save the life of her brother gonzalo junior but he dies on the operating table for massive internal injuries i don't think that there is any medical explanation or scientific explanation there is no explanation that out of 159 people that were strong and like tough that me a little girl a six-year-old girl could survive out of so many people that were so much stronger than me i just thank god so much of the 163 passengers and crew on board flight 965 only four survived the crash experts will later label the accident a non-survivable event all of the survivors were seated within two rows of one another just above the wing huge girders carrying the wings make this the strongest part of the plane despite this mercedes ramirez lost both her parents on her 21st birthday december 20th 1995 my life changed forever and has never been the same ever since [Music] there was a 160 people on that flight who the moment that plane hit that mountain all their hopes and dreams were instantly lost but for some reason i've been given a second chance at life and so i'm going to try to make the best of it the successful evacuation of the survivors led to the gruesome task of recovering the bodies of the 159 souls who perished on the slopes of mount deluvio investigators now descend on the crash site to try to find out how one of the most sophisticated airliners equipped with state-of-the-art technology could veer off course and crash more than 35 miles from the airport the investigation was led by aeronautica seville colombia's equivalent of the faa [Music] assisting the colombians were investigators from the u.s national transportation safety board including dave ivey the wreckage and debris report indicated that the airplane actually impacted the eastern side of the mountain as it was trying to proceed back west to get into the valley and the main body of the wreckage cleared the mountain top or the ridge i should say and landed over on the western side which is inside the valley area [Music] also following the investigation was dave simmon an airline captain who knew the carly approach well in the days that followed the crash the industry was shocked they were shocked because they didn't know how could a sophisticated airplane like the 757 flown by a well-respected international carrier like american airlines with well-trained crews get so far off course nobody could figure out how did it happen why did it happen sabotage and mechanical malfunction was soon ruled out [Music] attention began to focus on the action of the flight crew [Music] the discovery of the black boxes enabled the investigators to follow the final moments of american airlines flight 965 there is never one single item that or error that typically brings an airplane down there's an error chain and a chain is made up of many links the airplane was in route to as they were approaching from a distance out the controller offered them a straight in landing are you able to approach runway would you like to shoot the 1-9 straight in uh yeah we'll have to scramble to get down we can do it when they first accepted the approach the first officer remarked that we do need to get down in a hurry in order to accomplish this uh yes sir we'll need a lower altitude right away though at the time the crew accepted the approach to runway one nine they were too high too fast and too close in to safely make this approach to lose altitude the first officer deploys the speed brakes this action will come back to haunt the flight crew in the final segment of the flight the fact that they accepted that runway put the crew in a rushed and hurried manner maybe a tallua first of all you want to go right to cal or to tallua i thought he said the razor won't arrive yeah he did we got time to pull that out the flight crew now needs to study the approach charts and reprogram the computer meanwhile the airplane is moving at more than five miles per minute and when you start to rush and you can't prepare in an adequate amount of time then additional errors start to occur because they're rushed and in a hurry and scrambling they then make a dangerous request can american airlines uh 965 go direct to roswell and then arrival sir one and runway one-niner when the controller said affirmative take the roseau one he meant use the rose one arrival procedure although the crew thought he meant to go direct to roseau that's not a good idea because to proceed direct to roseau is the last point just before the runway and roseau is the last point before landing not the first point that you should be targeting and this miscommunication really dealt with the pilot believing one thing and the air traffic controller believing another that was another link in my view that was part of the error chain where are we the crew looks at at their at their charts in front of them and they see the fixed roseau and it is identified by the letter r so they naturally put r into the computer thinking it will take them directly to roseau the computer offers a list of ours to choose from but unbeknownst to the pilots none of them is roso habit has shown and the system is designed to place the one that is closest to your airplane first and so here was an r that showed up first and he selected that a map display in front of the pilot shows the proposed course to the waypoint he selected it will take the plane left into the mountains according to american airlines procedure prior to executing an input such as this to select the r you confirm with the other pilot does this look correct to you five nine thousand feet this clearly was not done if it had been they would have seen a dotted line showing a provisional path from the nose of the airplane turning and going back to about their seven o'clock position captain tafuri hastily presses the execute button in aviation we call that fast fingered freddy when you don't confirm anything you're in a big hurry to punch something in the computer and you don't confirm where it's really going to take you yeah it's left left turn yeah i gotta identify that [ __ ] though unfortunately the crew does not know that r stands for another fix that is 132 miles away behind them at about their seven o'clock position and that's where the airplane starts to go to the flight crew of american airlines 965 has unwittingly directed their aircraft off its intended course and into mortal danger uh where are we the plane was simply doing what it was programmed to do in this case it's to fly to bogota 130 miles away more than a minute into the turn the pilots are unaware that the plane is flying away from kali and is heading dangerously off course the first officer is getting the charts out the captain's getting the charts out they're trying to tune radio one's flying the airplane no one's watching what happens and they assume that the automation is going to take care of them sometimes it will but in this case it didn't uh where are we we're going out to let's go right to tallua first of all okay yeah where are we headed uh 1707. ulq what's with the ulq what happened here there's an old saying in aviation never point an airplane someplace that your brain hasn't been five minutes earlier american knight cx-5 these things now uh what did you want sir distance dme in this case the airplane got in front of them it was flying what was selected and in fact it was flying in beyond the pilot's recognition of where it was supposed to be traveling the pilots had lost what's referred to as situational awareness left turn so you want to left turn backwards hell no let's press on press aware though that's a right once they became unsure of their position once they became confused and disoriented that's the time to click off the automation and to basically uh abandon the approach climb to the minimum safe altitude into and to go to california let's let's go to uh start to cali instead of abandoning the approach and gaining altitude flight 965 continued its deadly descent when the warning sounded that the plane was about to crash into the ground first officer williams disengaged the autopilot within one second but forgot to retract the speed brakes which had been deployed earlier [Music] according to the official report had they remembered to lower the speed brakes the plane could have cleared the mountain with room to spare this accident is known as a cfit accident which means control flight into terrain by that i mean the airplane was controlled by the crew and it was a perfectly normal functioning airplane and the crew flew the airplane into the mountain it's one of the leading causes of accidents of over the last hundred years and still is a problem both these pilots were experienced pilots flying the 757 for american airlines and both these pilots were good pilots and i think it's like anything else two good pilots were led astray by a problem that they were trying to figure out and at the time they failed to do the basic thing fly the airplane a court eventually ruled that the pilots of flight 965 had shown willful misconduct during the approach to carly airport survivor mercedes ramirez who lost both her parents continues to deal with the crash i think this was a classic textbook case of everything you should not do when flying a plane hopefully it's a wake-up call to pilots that no matter how many times you've flown to a city you just have to be alert and aware because every little move that you make you have the lives of people in your hands you

Channel: Wonder

Views: 1,547,465

Rating: 4.7728319 out of 5

Keywords: Wonder, wonder channel, survivial videos, survival stories, i shouldn't be alive, wonder i shouldn't be alive, outdoor channel, extreme documentary, air crash investigation, air crash investigation 2020, seconds from disaster, mayday, mayday plane crash, plane crash doc, plane crash documentary, plane crash disaster, plane crash investigation, American Airlines Flight 965, flight 965

Id: lEOgKams0jg

Length: 51min 42sec (3102 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021