The Most Remarkable Emergency Landing Of All Time | Mayday: Air Disaster

thank you violent turbulence rocks Garuda Flight 421 where did this come from the shaking was so violent I almost lost control of the plane terrified passengers just want the nightmare to end sad I was scared extremely scared instead the White Knuckle ride gets much worse engine went flamed out an injured two frame doctor you're an extreme dire circumstances when you have a dual engine flame out the 56-ton jet is falling from the sky forgive our sins let us have the strength to save our passengers I felt that death was really upon us we were about to face our face and so we prayed a Boeing 737 cruises high above the islands of Indonesia [Music] of Garuda Indonesia 421 is about halfway through a short domestic flight we were at 28 000 feet on the way to addisu chipto airport in yojakarta Captain Abdul rozak is a senior pilot with Indonesia's National Airline how does the weather look in yogic is Harry gunawan but there might be a bit of rain I had flown several times with Harry gunawan so it was nothing new we knew each other quite well [Music] today the cabin crew is responsible for 54 passengers Adam can I offer you a drink yes I'll have tea please know has been a Garuda flight attendant for 16 years everything was normal like we offered food and drinks for the passengers we checked the cabin and we chatted foreign is a senior government official on her way to an important meeting because of work I fly often and I have done so since the 70s I really love flying the flight is a 60-minute trip from mataram on the resort island of lombok to yoyakata on the main island of java January is the rainy season when the weather is unpredictable let's avoid that South say heading 300. Patrol Garuda 421 request heading 3-0 to avoid some weather up ahead through the 4-2-1 confirmed heading three zero zero by direct Bravo Alpha NDB after clearing weather Air Traffic Control authorizes a slight course correction to steer the plane around some looming clouds [Music] the weather was just like any other afternoon there was no turbulence we could see from the cabin that it was bright outside it was very normal but soon more large storm clouds appear in their path what do you think I could see the green yellow and red on the radar and he knew that the safest route would be towards the green I think we just Veer a little to the left into that green Gap should be fine the weather ahead could make for a bumpy ride as a precaution the passengers are advised to fasten their seat belts times before flight level 190 through the four two one you are clear to 190. the Garuda flight is now set to begin its approach so controllers clear them to descend foreign but moments later the weather is suddenly much worse where did this come from well we're in it now let's drop it then I had directed the plane towards the green but as soon as I entered the cloud everything went red this was a massive supercell it encompassed a large amount of area that the pilots were forced to navigate in I was extremely surprised we'd already entered the cloud so like it or not we had to go through the storm the sudden turbulence is far worse than anyone in the cabin was expecting we started to feel the plane shaking violently and some people started to scream [Music] sound the turbulence made walking impossible the trays were flying around I was afraid I'd fall on somewhere [Music] the shaking was so violent I almost lost control of the plane the captain spots a serious problem yes sir I want to do a drop they're suddenly losing engine power increasing thrust keep your eyes on them sir moments later the crisis gets even worse both engines have flamed out the combustion process extinguished you're in your extreme dire circumstances when you have a dual engine flame out the plane now has no thrust at all inside they've lost primary electricity all systems switch to backup power all of a sudden the emergency lights came on I was shocked to see that Captain rozak struggles to keep the plane steady as the altitude starts to drop immediately yelled for the Emergency checklist perform engines procedure engine start switches to flight and just our switches to flight start lever to cut off you take both start levers for both the number one and the number two engine and put them back in the Run position and then you wait to see if the engines light off 30 seconds the restock procedure demands patience the timing we timed it for 30 seconds as is the protocol and waited for them to light up [Music] I thought I probably wouldn't see my husband or children again I was praying for God to help me because I wasn't ready to die by now the engines should have restarted but both of them are still dead try it again okay let's go engine start switches to flight engine start switches to fly the plane is now dropping a thousand feet every 15 seconds that's an extreme emergency you have very little options and your immediate action is required nothing for the second time the Garuda Pilots try and fail to restart their crippled engines now only minutes from hitting the ground they're running out of options after the engines it wouldn't start a second time I knew we still had our auxiliary power unit the Apu uh the Apu is a jet fuel powered generator that provides electrical power for the aircraft the Apu may be their only hope start Apu sorry for you but as they try to start it strippy strikes when he tried to turn on the standby generator everything shut down okay we make holistic Marty is like electricity was gone flight instruments gone everything went dark I had no tools to fly the plane controllers are stunned to see Flight 421 vanish from radar Garuda 4-2-1 do you read me 421 is report your position we were still within the severe turbulence we had tried everything in the book so my co-pilot grabbed the mic and yelled mayday mayday mayday but controllers can't hear the desperate call the route of 4-2-1 do you read me please report your position [Music] they've lost all contact with the stricken plane I heard mayday mayday then I overheard they were saying no power no power is that the thoughts when I realized the plane had no working engine everything was off no power no radio what do we have we're just the instruments only they would have the standby attitude indicator or Horizon the standby airspeed indicator and a magnetic compass we're in God's hands now Pilots pray for help please forgive our sins and let us have the strength to save our passengers I felt that death was really upon us we were about to face Our Fate and so we prayed I was scared extremely scared I said some prayers I asked God to help us I prayed my last rights and begged for God's forgiveness I kept praying and praying that's all I could do the 56 ton jet with no power is falling fast but the pilots aren't giving up let's see if we can find ourselves in their porch the airplane would be gliding it would be losing altitude but the airplane continues to fly whether the engines are running or not I actually couldn't see the standby instruments they were so small so I had to rely on my co-pilot um current speed please two three five you need to lose speed it would be very challenging to try to land a 737 without power and without any type of assistance Flight 421 finally escapes the storm okay let's figure out where we are but the captain's task still seems impossible Landing a plane with no engines and no electronic guidance I didn't even know where we were because my instruments were dead we pass it sir the nearest airport is now behind them and they're too low to Circle back they've missed their last chance for a controlled Landing we have to land somewhere let's see what we've got the plane weighs 56 tons you can imagine how fast we were descending we had to decide in seconds where we could land the plane dropping lower and lower the crew of Garuda 4-2-1 scrambles to find somewhere to land negative too risky Landing in the rice paddy you could have cartwheel the airplane uh it it could have made the airplane break in several pieces as well with his plane falling fast and no other option in sight Captain rozak decides to do something few Pilots have ever tried okay the river then it's our best chance yes sir tell me what to do no gear no flaps watch my speed the solo river is narrow and twisting ditching a 737 on it won't be easy but I believe the plane would suffer less from the impact and we'd have a better chance of surviving but there's another obstacle Bridge can we go under it sir no no I wanted to pass under the bridge but I could make out that there were concrete pillars underneath it yeah three thousand feet Captain rozak makes a split second decision let's circle around and put it down over there turning looping back could give them a longer stretch of river to land on but they're running out of time in order to turn the aircraft relies on its hydraulic system and the Hydraulics need engine power a large amount of force is required without Hydraulics it would be the equivalent of trying to drive your car without power steering assistance Bank angle sir look I see I see I see keep turning oh we don't pick the river turn out my co-pilot shouted out because he felt the turn was too sharp but I told him we have no choice if we don't do this we will not make it to the river for the first time I saw a river a bridge and rice fields but I was confused there was no Runway speed 170 sir that'll do as they line up with the river first officer gunawan notices another problem there's another Bridge altitudes 250. Bridge can't be more than 80 feet we're good it turns out I had to land the plane between two Bridges 150. Landing principal Landing Bridge for landing race for landing everyone breaks for landing okay okay okay here we go nice [Music] from the beginning I had left it all to God I had no more fear I had hopes that I could survive this and that the passengers would be saved Flight 421 hits the water at almost 200 miles an hour oh okay [Music] the cabin of Flight 421 has been demolished [Music] when the plane finally stopped after the emergency landing I was very relieved and grateful foreign I wondered if there was blood on my feet [Music] it turned out it was just water I said thank God I survived alhamdulillah I began the evacuation process I helped the passengers who were near me at the front of the plane [Music] thank you God let's check on the passengers from the emergency exit passengers can Wade safely to shore Texas I was the last person to leave the plane of the 60 passengers and crew on board all but one make it out alive I'm very surprised there was only one fatality it's a sure miracle that more people did not perish in the accident [Music] despite the skillful Landing the site of a 737 ditched in an Indonesian river is disturbing [Music] Crews remove wreckage from the solo River the nation looks for answers How could a state-of-the-art airplane simply shut down in mid-air [Music] the job of figuring out what brought down Garuda Flight 421 Falls to a team of Indonesian investigators their first priority is to recover the plane's black boxes it will reveal all the information we need all of the engine behavior all of the pilot Communications so we really really need this black box while they wait for word on the flight recorders investigators speak to Captain rozak thank you for coming Captain they want to learn more about the pilot behind this Landing thank you he has 14 000 hours of flying time but getting here was not easy growing up poor he sold vegetables in the streets of Jakarta his family unable to afford school so my only chance for an education was to win a scholarship there were thousands of people who applied to the National flight school and I was lucky enough to be one of the 56 students who graduated in my year Captain rozak quickly Rose through the ranks at Garuda [Music] I was extremely happy to join the biggest airline in Indonesia it was a dream come true [Music] so can you tell me exactly what happened I've never experienced an engine flame out before I thought these engines could handle anything my first big question is what caused the engines to flame out she moved initially why couldn't you relight them we tried maybe they had the fault it didn't make sense the downed Boeing plane was equipped with two cfm-56 engines one of the most advanced turbo fan designs in the world the power plant draws in cold air with a large fan at the inlet a series of blades then compressed some of the air before it's mixed with fuel and ignited in the burner combustion spins turbines in the core that drive the engine and push hot exhaust gases out of the rear nozzle at high speed so there's probably four to six thousand cfm-56 in use at the moment it's a very reliable engine and has a very good history let's take a look at the occurrence manual but as investigators learn even the best engine isn't foolproof there were some cases with similar aircraft where the engine flamed out in 1988 taka flight 110 got caught in a violent thunderstorm flying from Belize to New Orleans both engines on the brand new 737 flamed out the pilot managed to make an emergency landing on a grass-covered levee discover that in response to the near disaster with the attacker flight the manufacturer redesigned the engine a new design changed the shape of the spinner and increased the distance between the fan motor and the splitter to better deflect moisture from the core they found that the Dome shape worked better for both ice and hail so why did this redesigned engine Now fail see it doesn't make any sense I was surprised that the Dual engine flame mods occurred to the engine that has been modified for a precipitation Engineers run a series of tests on the two engines they're looking for any defect that might explain the mid-air failure [Music] we find nothing no mechanical faults of any kind everything seems to be good my opinion was that the engine including the modification was working as a design so my question was what caused the engines flame out at the crash site a new development brings hope of finding some answers divers have recovered the aircraft's flight data recorder let's take a look at this investigators focus on the engine performance numbers check out the fuel flow right here the data shows that when the plane entered the storm fuel consumption shot up but despite the higher fuel flow engine speed remained constant and yet the engine rotation Remains the Same and does not increase it tells investigators that the engines were working hard battling against the heavy rainstorm fuel flow would go up because of the ingested water because it increased air density and then suddenly the engines died what changed the plane's engines were specifically designed to handle large volumes of water investigators see nothing in the data to explain why they suddenly cut out what went wrong is still a mystery but just as one lead fails to pan out another turns up Searchers pull the cockpit voice recorder from the mud of the solo River [Music] so let's hear what was happening inside the cockpit you go ahead say at the start of the recording the audio quality is good [Applause] but soon noise from the pounding storm makes it almost impossible to decipher sounds in the cockpit can you isolate the voices investigators can no longer make out what the pilots are saying they were unable to filter the exterior noise out to listen to the conversation of the pilots because it was that severe it was super super loud when we listen to the CVR it's really hard to understand [Laughter] stop rewind try again then in the last seconds of the recording a non-human voice can be heard saying Terrain it's a ground proximity warning investigators have stumbled across a huge clue no that's right it can't be at 18 000 feet the onboard computer detected something solid below the plane something as solid as terrain I was surprised first there was no Terrain in the area there's no amount of rain in the world can trigger that warning [Music] what was happening Indonesian investigators struggle to understand why a Terrain warning sounded aboard Garuda 4-2-1 when the aircraft was still at 18 000 feet amid the wreckage the plane's nose cone or Ray Dome provides a critical clue come see this for a sec it was beat up pretty bad it almost looked like someone had gone out with a ball peen hammer and took aggression out on the radome of the aircraft look at these I'd never seen this before there's only one thing this could be hail it's now clear that the violent storm the crew encountered contained enough hail to damage the nose and to trigger the ground proximity warning dies of tennis balls which is enormous and detrimental to the aircraft part of the engine's recent modifications had specifically to do with hail the engine is designed to handle 10 grams per meter cubed a fairly large amount of precipitation investigators Wonder did the massive storm throw more rain and hail than that at flight 421's engines they take the sound of the rain and hail hitting the Garuda cockpit at the moment the engines flamed out and compare it with cockpit recordings of other flights hit by severe storms all these numbers match up the comparison shows that the Garuda flight flew into precipitation heavier than any storm ever recorded the loudness of the storm along with the engine's performance data tells investigators how much rain and hail the 737 likely encountered that's insane and base of our tests we conclude that the amount of ice was more than 18 grams per cubic meters these engines were well in excess of the manufacturers tested criteria it was almost double the amount of precipitation water and hail ingested into the engine investigators have compiled convincing data on what caused the Dual engine flame mount but to be absolutely sure they want to put their analysis to the test engine's power on foreign how much water was actually ingested and if the engine would continue running so they win and sprayed to the inlet of the engine the manufacturer's recommended amount and the engine ran perfectly bringing it up now they took the engine and increased the water uh flow into the inlet of the engine to what was calibrated that they had experienced during the flight true I think we have our answers here why the engines died the engine test leaves no doubt that was a big aha moment for them because adding the ice to the water caused the engine to finally stop a violent storm combining heavy rain and giant hail extinguished both engines on Flight 421 but the investigation isn't over there's another mystery still to solve why did Flight 421 fly into such a severe storm in the first place why were the 737's advanced navigation systems let's avoid that sir not enough to help the crew steer clear of dangerous weather investigators review the satellite weather data from the day of the crash let me let's take a look at this radar map okay so your track [Music] took you straight into the worst part of the storm why did Captain rozak choose such a dangerous room plane's weather radar should have helped them find a way around the storm why would you enter the storm why not detour I think we just Veer a little to the left into that green Gap should be fine Pilots were the oppression that they had an opening that went all the way through the weather the radar showed green we should have been safe why would your radar indicate a safe Passage I don't know but suddenly everything changed it seems the radar didn't pick up the danger ahead where did this come from the alley that they were trying to go down closed up on them and uh was not the good flight path that they were hoping for investigators need to know why stop it so this they consult a radar expert it's where they entered the storm and learned that Pilots can face the dangers of something called radar shadowing radar shadowing is uh the Radar's inability to identify other weather that could be in front of you that you're trying to avoid radar shadow radar Shadows occur when precipitation is so severe radio waves can't penetrate the Skies Ahead a shadow appears on the pilot screen as a dark Gap so it would be deceiving that you were flying into some good weather and in reality you would you were entering into another severe storm the Garuda plane's dangerous flight path finally makes sense so what you're saying is they sought refuge on the radar shadow crew didn't realize they were flying into whether severe enough to knock out their engines but there's still one unanswered question the hailstorm killed the engines but what killed the 737's power supply the plane lost its electrical supply which means there was no power left on board at all we were very concerned and needed to find out why this happened investigators know that Garuda Flight 421 somehow lost all electrical power if they hadn't lost power they could have restarted the engines once they were outside the store what happened but they still don't understand how that happened thanks for coming captain please have a seat investigators hope Captain rozak can remember some overlooked detail I just have a few more questions Now take us through exactly what happened after the engines flamed out soon as the engines died we followed the relay procedure engine start switches the flights they followed procedure to the penny when the engines didn't re-light they tried to start the auxiliary power unit to restore electricity to the entire plane and then what happened disaster start Apu sorry for you [Music] we've lost all power unfortunately after two attempts to restart the engines and trying to start the Apu it depleted the battery heavy duty aircraft batteries almost never die mid-flight so why did this one the captain doesn't have the answer but he does provide one very important clue is there anything else that you can remember the battery voltage was low 22 volts even before we initiated the restart sequence it seemed odd but we didn't have time to think about it [Music] when I was interviewing Captain rozak he mentioned the battery capacity was just 22 volts when he tried to revive the engines 22 is within the limit but it's the lowest value so it's considered to be weak a fully charged battery and a 737 has 24 volts are you sure it's 22 not 24. 22 volts I remember another two volts might have made the difference in getting the engine started or it's getting the Apu started four weeks after the crash searches pull what could be the last piece of the investigative puzzle from the solo River the battery from Flight 421 of its 20 cells shows signs of damage from before the crash evidence that seems consistent with the captain's observations we found the cell condition was one of the most damage and she has reduced the battery capability quite significant but how significant was the damage was the battery too weak to restart a flamed out engine investigators stage a test to find out let's start watering ice up to 18 grams per cubic meter they replicate the flight conditions and follow the exact procedure the pilots used trying to restart their engines okay initiate we start engine procedure [Music] 28 29 30. okay first attempt failed battery to 20 volts key precipitation ready and uh let's see what happens to the battery in a second attempt all right so we'll start timing once again and we're going try it again engine start switches to flights it just switches to flight don't leave us to idle start levers to idle 30 seconds [Music] 28 29 30. battery has dropped to 12 volts making it practically useless and now try to stop the restart procedure completely drained their faulty battery it was not capable to support the engine restart in emergency conditions finally investigators understand all the contributing factors that knocked Flight 421 from the sky I think we just Veer a little to the left of that green Gap Shadow effect on the radar leads the crew to mistake the worst of the storm for a clear path the storm hits them with hail so severe the engines play Mount procedure efforts to re-light the engines drain valuable power from a damaged battery without power with their plane dropping fast Far From Any airport it was only Captain rozak's incredible airmanship that prevented a total disaster yeah in their official report investigators recommend better radar training for flight Crews to help them navigate extreme weather they also call for new procedures for flying in heavy rain and hail with the cfm-56 engine such as increasing the throttle setting when entering a storm in recognition of their heroism Captain Abdul rozak and first officer Harry gunawan receive congratulations from the Indonesian president it's the biggest honor I will ever receive in my life beyond the public recognition the crew has received enduring gratitude he saved so many lives on board the plane for that I salute captain rozak [Music] we felt the two of them were chosen by God to bring us to safety on the river they were our heroes foreign [Music]

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

Views: 601,631

Keywords: Garuda Indonesia Flight 421, Indonesia, Mayday episodes, Mayday: Air Disaster, aircraft incidents, aircraft maintenance errors, airplanecrashes documentary, aviation disasters, aviation investigation, emergency landing, flight disasters reenactment, full episode, investigative search, near-miss landing, pilots, real-life drama, safety procedures, skilled pilots, tragic accidents, transportation safety, turbulence

Id: DP2P_RK8C_w

Length: 42min 32sec (2552 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023