Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in
aviation, is just what was on board South African Airways Flight 295. A cargo fire spread quickly
throughout a Boeing 747 in the middle of the night over the Indian Ocean, many miles from any kind
of Land or Airport. Officially, the cause of the fire was understood to be undetermined
by investigators from both South Africa and the international aviation community. However
there certainly are theories as to what the plane was carrying that could result in such a fire.
A fire which ultimately killed 159 people.
In this video we will examine the
timeline of events of that night and also discuss the possibilities of
what cargo could have caused the fire. Discussion of this South African Airways incident
will naturally have to briefly touch up on the political situation in South Africa at the time
in order to have a better understand of what some South Africans believe was on that plane.
-intro-
South African Airways Flight 295 departed
Taipei on the Island of Taiwan in East Asia at 2:43pm on November 27th, 1987, on a flight
to Johannesburg. Flight 295 was supposed to depart nearly an hour and a half prior but due
to adverse weather, the flight was delayed. It’s a long flight even for a Boeing 747, as such
the plane was expected to make a stopover on the Island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. It’s one
of a few islands off the coast of Madagascar.
There were 159 people on the plane that
day, 140 passengers and 19 crew members, including a split flight crew who were working
in shifts. They Boeing 747 they were flying was a particular subvariant of the older 200 model
of the plane. Officially designated as the Boeing 747-200M (mixed) the plane is a combination
of both a passenger and cargo aircraft. There was a reduced passenger capacity on
this plane with a significant amount of the main deck of the fuselage dedicated
to being a large cargo compartment.
This compartment would function like that of
an actual cargo plane. A large door would open on the fuselage and pallets of cargo could
be loaded in. Because of this combination of passengers and cargo this aircraft is often
referred to as “the combi”. South African Airways affectionately named this plane Helderberg,
named after a mountain in Western Cape, although its official registration was ZS-SAS.
There were five flight crew members on board. By the time of the unfolding crisis, the
main crew had returned to their posts. 49-year-old Captain Dawid Uys (David Ice) was at
the flight controls, joined on the flight deck by his 36-year-old First Officer David Atwell and
45-year-old Flight Engineer Giuseppe Bellagarda. The relief crew consisted of a First Officer,
Geoffrey Birchall age 37 and Flight Engineer Alan Daniel aged 34 who were by the time of the
accident, outside of the flight deck. The five pilots were accompanied by fourteen flight
attendants scattered throughout the cabin.
South African Airways planes at the time needed to
deviate around some countries due to the ongoing political situation. South Africa was
under heavy sanctions around this time. For a significant portion of the 20th
century from the 1940s up until the 1990s, South Africa was ruled by a racist white minority
government. This era of South African history is commonly referred to as “Apartheid”.
Government policy had segregated South Africa down racial boundaries. The system
restricted non-whites from access to amenities, restricted on where they could live and work among
countless other pieces of racist legislation, the effects are still felt in the
country to this day. Massive protests, demonstrations and riots had recently broken out
across the country in the mid to late 1980s.
One place where segregation was not imposed was
on aircraft, though there were very few black people in the country who could afford to fly, the
airline and airports of South Africa were seen as international places and weren’t segregated.
The Apartheid government was supported by its international allies including some
European nations. While most countries in Africa did not support the government and
this international opposition therefore banned South African Airlines, a property of the South
African State from flying over their airspace. This resulted in routes where SAA planes needed to
fly around the majority of the African Continent, possibly the most extreme example of this
was their route out of Tel-Aviv which made stopovers in Rome and Lisbon before heading to
Johannesburg. Flight 295 was able to make the long trip from Taipei but only with a stopover
in Mauritius, one of only a few African nations who allow the airline into their airspace.
These extra details on the South African Government at the time are needed for
additional context around a possible theory of what was in flight 295’s
cargo. We’ll come back to this later.
It was now nine hours into the flight
being the late evening of September 27th. The time approaching midnight. Flight 295
had been in a communication dead zone for some time as it flew across the Indian Ocean.
Their last communications before contacting controllers in Mauritius was with Cocos Island,
an outlying settlement belonging to Australia. Everything appeared to be normal, and everything
was for the majority of the Indian Ocean crossing. Flight 295 initially made a routine
contact with Mauritius at 10:30pm but transmissions went quite for over an
hour as the plane cruised on autopilot.
It is not known exactly when the in-flight fire
first started on flight 295. But the calm flight deck atmosphere was abruptly interrupted at
around 11:42pm when the fire alarm for the main deck cargo compartment sounded. This moment
was captured on the cockpit voice recording. It would take the flight crew roughly
six minutes to make the first call to ATC in Mauritius regarding the fire.
There is a publicly available Cockpit Voice Recording, however the recording
was severely damaged by the crash. Once found by investigators, it had spent over
a year on the ocean floor and had deteriorated considerably. The voice recording also proved
to be disappointing in finding out exactly what transpired on the flight deck as the following
crisis unfolded. The majority of what was recorded simply depicted the calm cockpit atmosphere
along with the casual pilot banter prior to the initial alert of a fire. Only around
one minute of the recording at the very end revealed the details as the events unfolded.
This is that excerpt of the recording…
-cvr, last minute of cvr-
-Pause-
Here at this moment, this was the crew’s
first notification of something wrong. A fire alarm had sounded for the main deck cargo.
The plane was less than one hour away from their stopover in Mauritius but still hundreds
of kilometers away. Despite its distance, it is still flight 295’s closest airport.
Smoke detection in the cargo compartment had been recently refitted due to several noted defects in
the aircraft’s maintenance log. These however had been rectified and proved to be functioning by the
sounds as heard on the cockpit voice recording.
-cvr-
-pause-
The tone you are about to hear is the 800Hz test
tone for the cockpit voice recorder, it is followed by a warbling in the audio
signal which the accident report suggests that “the audio input and test signal wiring
were being affected by the fire.”
Investigators listening to the cvr deduced that
up to 80 electrical systems had been affected as evident by the popping of multiple
circuit breakers on the recording. Among these systems affects was
the cockpit voice recorder.
There was around a five-minute time frame
from the voice recording ending and the initial communication with Mauritius Air
Traffic Control regarding their situation. It is believed in this time; the fire
was inspected and even attempts made to fight the fire. This was supported by recovered
evidence including multiple fire extinguishers which showed signs of usage including
burns and fragments of scorched material.
We should now turn our attention towards
the fire and just where it came from.
The obvious possibility that premeditation in
the form of sabotage was always on the minds of many South Africans at the time, however according
to the accident report… “It is virtually certain that there was no Sabotage. There
was no explosion in the aircraft, and the presence of a pressure or time activated
incendiary device was extremely unlikely.” The fire started within the cargo itself.
Stored within the main cargo compartment were six pallets of freight, there was space for a
seventh pallet which was unused on this occasion. This cargo was inspected by a
Ground Handling agent in Taipei before the plane left for South Africa. It
was noted that there was no suspicious cargo, this has not prevented some from believing
there may have been dangerous cargo on board.
Investigators when looking over the salvaged
wreckage observed significant fire damage on the pallet at the front of the cargo
compartment on the right side of the airplane. It was concluded that this pallet was where
the fire started. So what did it contain?
The cargo in the main deck cargo included,
medical supplies, textiles, sporting equipment, tools, electrical components and electronic parts.
These last two being of keen interest as this is what was stored in the fire origin pallet.
When it was more closely examined, it was determined that the plane was carrying
computer components and batteries in this particular pallet. One theory suggests that
flammable batteries perhaps lithium-ion batteries may have started the fire. These components
happened to be packed into polystyrene packaging, it is believed that perhaps a fire
started in this pallet and came in contact with the packaging fueling a fire.
Lithium batteries were a new thing in the 1980s and we know that from more recent incidents
that these batteries when improperly stored on an aircraft can lead to a deadly fire. The most
notable case of this in recent times being an incident involving a UPS cargo plane out of Dubai
in 2010. In that incident the fire consumed the pilot’s ability to fly the plane which then
crashed into the desert outside of Dubai.
Whether or not these batteries either
exploded or spontaneously combusted can not be ruled out but to say for certain that
it was the cause of the fire would be nothing more than speculation and should be treated
with as much suspicion where appropriate.
The other hypothesis which is believed
by a significant number of South Africans is that the plane was carrying cargo
that was not listed on the manifest.
Media in South Africa speculated that the South
African Government was using South African Airways and its status as a passenger airline
and as state-owned carrier to import dangerous goods secretly. The country was under a firearms
embargo. To keep up its on going military effort in the region especially with Angola, many
believe that flight 295 was carrying weapons, ammunition and some even believe the
plane was carrying rockets and missiles.
These kinds of conspiracy theories were fueled
further following the replacing of South Africa’s Apartheid government. In 1996, Nelson Mandela’s
ANC led Government established The Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate
atrocities committed by the South African Government during Apartheid. Among the cases
was flight 295. The commission concluded that nothing listed in the cargo manifest could have
ignited a fire, suggesting the cargo responsible was not listed on the manifest. This conclusion
was controversial. But was backed up by chemical experts who examined fragments of the fuselage
which showed fire damage from exceedingly high temperatures which they suggest could not
have come from a battery or electrical fire.
Because the cause of the fire cannot
be certainly determined at this time, the official investigation does not come to any
conclusion as to what caused the fire to start. The source of flight 295’s fire
remains undetermined to this day.
Whatever was inside this pallet, when the fire
here became hot enough it could have sparked a Flash fire which consumed the inside of
the cargo bay. This was also evidenced by the fact that the flooring of the cargo
compartment sustained minimal fire damage.
Regardless of what caused the fire to
start, by the time the crew were notified and were able to inspect what was going
on in the cargo section of the aircraft, the fire was already an uncontrollable inferno.
As mentioned, investigators found multiple fire extinguishers along with the wreckage which showed
distinctive signs of usage suggesting that either the flight attendants or perhaps a member
of flight crew attempted to fire the fire.
The flight crew contacted ATC at 11:48 at night… The following is the ATC
recording from Mauritius.
-atc recording-
The descent to a much lower altitude from the
cruising alt is a part of the pilot’s checklists. Flight level 140 is roughly 14,000 feet. This
would mean that those on board can safely breath the outside air. The checklist runs through
all the appropriate steps the crew must take in configuring their plane to fight the fire.
The inferno on flight 295 was getting worse.
-atc recording-
Many of the cockpit instruments had begun to fail.
Following the steps in the fire emergency checklists the captain had to follow one of the
more interesting steps which involved the opening of the passenger doors in flight. Once slowing to
a slow enough airspeed along with descending down to an appropriate altitude, where air pressure
differences are not as great, the doors of passenger planes can be opened. The difference in
air pressure will force the air inside the plane out, in theory taking the noxious smoke with
it. It should be noted there is no conclusive evidence to suggest the doors were actually
opened aside from an atc transmission from the flight which suggest that they were opened.
Several minutes have been cut from the recording here as there were no communications between
the plane and Mauritius during this time. The date had now changed as Midnight
had passed into November 28th. What is critical to note here before
we proceed with the ATC recording is that Captain Uys who was on frequency
here inadvertently transmitted inter cockpit conversations to the tower which gives us a
peak into the atmosphere on board the plane.
-atc recording-
The passenger cabin was pressurized with a higher air pressure than that of the cargo
bay. This should have kept the passengers safe and stopped any smoke from getting into the cabin.
The difference in pressure would have meant that air should flown from the passenger cabin into
the cargo stopping smoke from passing through. This was according to Boeing and their testing
of the plane for fire prevention certification.
But we do know that this was not the case on
flight 295. We know smoke spread throughout the plane and even to the cockpit. The pilots
began performing multiple checklists. One checklist that was performed is recommended
for after a fire had been extinguished. Within this checklist was a step which
involved turning on the recirculating fans in the passenger cabin. This allowed smoke and
noxious fumes which contained carbon monoxide to pass into the passenger cabin through the
ventilation. Autopsies from recovered bodies suggest that a number of passengers died from
smoke inhalation before the plane crashed.
South African Airways flight 295 made its
last radio transmission at 4 minutes past mid night. All radio transmissions from
Mauritius go unanswered from that point. Three minutes after its final communication,
the 747 crashed into the Indian Ocean.
It is believed that the controllability of the
aircraft was severely hindered by the fire. With lack of instruments at night the plane
could have simply drifted into the ocean, whether or not it was a controlled
crash into the ocean is up for debate however the accident report suggests that either
the pilots had become incapacitated or structural stress tor the plane apart in the air.
159 people were killed in the Helderberg Disaster. It became the deadliest air
disaster to involve South Africa. The wreckage remained undiscovered for a
whole year at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
It was concluded that the smoke detection
and firefighting capabilities of the 747 and especially the mixed variant were inadequate.
South African Airways ceased using the Mixed Variant of the 747. Many recommendations were made
following the investigation. Recommendations were made to Boeing to modify the 747, which included
the evaluation of the cockpit voice recorder so that it is not so prone to fire damage
and the addition of an auxiliary battery.
Boeing’s certification practices for fire
fighting on the plane were also criticized as their testing conditions drastically did
not fit that of an actual fire on board.
One unanswered question remains. If the South
African Government had something to hide, it would have been incredibly easy for them
to say that the wreckage was too far away and at depths that have previously never
been explored. They didn’t instead choosing to investigate the crash with international
assistance. Having sank to depths lower than that of the Titanic, marine life, never before
seen were discovered during the investigation.
A newer theory stemmed from the investigation of
another in-flight fire on board a Swissair plane. Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic following
a fire caused by an electrical arcing event. The theory goes that an electrical fault or
short circuit could have started a fire or ignited materials susceptible to fire. Regardless
there are still many more unanswered questions surrounding the Helderberg crash. Though the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission looked into the disaster, subsequent governments in South Africa
have not followed through in solving this mystery entirely. This only fueled speculations further. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for
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