Troubling Answers From The Most Important Investigations | MEGA MARATHON | Mayday: Air Disaster

[Music] [Music] june the 12th 1972 one of the newest members of american airlines fleet is in detroit michigan [Music] john paige flight 96 a brand new dc10 is getting ready for takeoff captain bryce mccormick and co-pilot paige whitney have been in the plane for hours back there so when we're in flight if you can get a chance just to look at that detroit is just a stopover on a flight from la to buffalo and then to new york you ready to try one page all right sir [Music] mccormick has flown the plane out from california but whitney is going to fly the next leg [Music] both men want as much time at the controls as possible neither one of them has more than 75 hours flying the dc-10 few pilots have more there simply aren't enough of the planes in the air in 1972 the dc-10 had just been introduced [Music] the plane is the latest advance to passenger jets its style and its size set it apart from other airliners the mcdonnell douglas corporation has spent more than a billion dollars developing it in the late 60s there was a race going among the three major manufacturers of jetliners uh mcdonnell douglas boeing and lockheed to see who could get the first jumbo out so they got really busy on getting this ec10 in to production as fast as they could and one of the things that they could not suffer were many delays based on some problem with the design american airlines is one of the first companies to buy the plane [Applause] flight 96 is one of those planes just the fifth dc-10 ever built cydia smith has just been trained to be the chief flight attendant on the dc-10 i was excited because it was the one of the first jumbos that we had and i was going to have the opportunity to fly number one which is what i always wanted to do on a big jet [Music] okay you got it and on the wheel i got you v1 rotate [Music] just after seven in the evening flight 96 lifts off from detroit airport [Music] just minutes after takeoff the plane is rising easily through 3 500 meters over windsor ontario canada i was sitting in my seat and the captain had turned off the fasten seat belt sign and i was making my way to the galley and i had to go sort of downhill because we were climbing to go to the galley to turn on the coffee [Music] when i when i punched the coffee and i moved over to one side that's when it happened [Music] i remember falling over because the plane was going was like this but all of a sudden it just went like this i saw ceiling compartments fall and i saw things coming out of pockets and everything and i thought to myself oh boy it felt like the last day of my life in the cockpit the crew is fighting for control of their jet the throttles which control the three engines have snapped to idle the plane loses almost all its thrust the huge jet begins slowing down the plane immediately took a huge drop and the next thing that happened was i was hit in the face with with a piece of the plane my husband was frantically trying to find a stewardess to give me something to put a pressure on my face to stop the bleeding mccormick takes over control of the plane [Music] he and whitney wrestle the jet level [Music] but flight 96 has been badly damaged no i've got full rudder [Music] the here on the tail which controls the direction of the jet is jammed to the right that's forcing the plane to swing dramatically in that direction while mccormick fights to turn his damaged plane back to detroit cydia smith is shocked to see a gaping hole in the floor of the main passenger cabin people were asking me you know what to do and i knew that i didn't know what to tell them smith has been able to account for all of her passengers but flight attendant sandra mcconnell is missing and finally i saw her come out of one of the bathrooms mcconnell has to cross the hole in the floor to move to safety and almost every step she took the floor kept collapsing the crew brings up power to the engines on the wings but the third engine on the tail stubbornly refuses to respond senator this is american airlines flight 96 we got an emergency american 9 6 roger type of emergency we've got a jammed rudder we need to get down and make an approach along with his engine and his rudder mccormick is also having trouble controlling the elevators on the tail of the plane they help him move the massive plane up and down they're slow to respond but he can move them [Music] the situation isn't completely hopeless i think it's going to fly for the right [Music] without complete control of the elevators and with a rudder that's frozen to the right mccormick has to use his engines to turn the plane by increasing the thrust on one side of the plane he can change direction but it won't be fast i have no rudder control whatsoever so our turns are gonna have to be very slow and cautious of the passengers move as far away from the hole in the back as possible but apart from the cut to loretta kaminsky so far there are no other serious injuries [Music] [Music] bryce mccormick's dc10 is badly damaged the lives of everyone on board now depend entirely on his ability to land a plane that can barely fly with explosive suddenness a short flight from detroit to buffalo has become the most challenging flight of captain bryce mccormick's career he's down an engine and he can't move his brother [Music] as he heads back to detroit mccormick begins to slow his plane down so it can land safely but when he does his plane begins falling dangerously fast ideally mccormick should be descending at 700 feet a minute but now he's falling more than twice that fast [Music] mccormick will crash well short of the runway he increases power to his engines to slow his fall 700. mccormick has slowed the plane's descent to 700 feet per minute but to do that he's had to increase his forward air speed which means he'll be landing far faster than usual for the first time since the beginning of the crisis mccormick talks to the passengers ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking we've had a small problem but the plane is under control now and we're heading back to detroit for an emergency landing price mccormick was as calm as if he were welcoming you on the plane as the plane nears the airport flight attendants ask passengers to remove their shoes and any sharp pieces of jewelry they had to take off their shoes and glasses we collected everything in a blanket less than half an hour after leaving the badly damaged dc-10 struggles back to the detroit airport the few minutes that it took to get back to detroit were the longest minutes that i will ever remember spending on an airplane because we were sure that we were not going to survive captain bryce mccormick now needs to give the jet even more power to push the nose up for landing [Music] his plane is still drifting to the right and i traveling no runner to straighten it out when it hits [Music] the dc-10 with 67 people aboard roars toward the runway at almost 300 kilometers an hour [Music] the landing was the most frightening part of the entire flight when the plane hits the ground it begins veering hard to the right once the plane landed it seemed like we just went on forever i mean it was just forever one set of landing gear wheels runs off the runway and through the grass after a harrowing touchdown the plane eventually comes to a stop just 300 meters from the end of the runway okay engines off at your discretion shut them down every woman wanted to hug him and um he was just amazing because we it was just at that moment that we all realized that we were alive because of him that he literally had saved our lives [Music] if you take a look at something like this and you say well there's good flying and there's bad flying this is beyond good this is superlative this is using every instinct you have as an airman and all the all the capabilities you have to stay calm enough to get the situation assessed with the plane on the ground the crew has its first opportunity to inspect the damage the captain and i walked back when everybody was off we walked back to the um back and we just looked up and saw this hole and it was just so weird there's no indication that the jet hit something as the pilots first thought what has caused such damage to the airliner the hole was so enormous that if anyone had been sitting in the seats that were there they would have been sucked out immediately at that point they still felt it might have been a bomb but while the incident had happened with explosive suddenness no indication of a bomb is found [Music] as investigators begin their work they discover that not all of the dc-10 is at the detroit airport [Music] a coffin that the plane was carrying in its cargo hold is discovered 30 kilometers away from the detroit airport near windsor ontario canada [Music] investigators also find the plane's rear cargo door [Music] doors are not supposed to fall off airplanes especially since it wasn't rather new airplane you would not expect something like that to happen when they examined the cargo area of the plane they discovered that the very design of the door makes it a potential weak spot most doors on a jet open inward in fact the door is slightly larger than the frame it fits into as the pressure builds inside a jet this type of plug door is actually forced into the frame of the aircraft the design makes the door extremely safe but mcdonnell douglas designed the cargo door on the dc-10 to open outward that decision was made to increase the amount of storage space on the plane when it's closed hooks on the dc-10s door grab hold of a bar on the plane's door frame to make sure it's closed baggage handlers push down on a lever which drives locking pins through the hooks which hold them in place [Music] when investigators examine the cargo area of the plane they don't find any structural damage around the door when they study the locks on the cargo door itself they find that the latches are not completely closed [Music] and the pins that are supposed to make sure the door is locked are not in their locked position when we interrogated the cargo handler that closed the door uh it became immediately apparent that he used excessive force to close the door and in fact he said he had to use his knee to get the door handle to go flush investigators make a frightening discovery it's possible to close the lever on the outside of the door even if the hooks and locking pins are not in the closed position [Music] paul eddy is a journalist who investigated the history of the dc-10 what windsor showed is that you could actually pull the handle in order to buckle the top fixture so that the handle went home properly but the locking pins had not gone through the spools this means that baggage handlers can believe the door is closed when it's not [Music] not only can the outside lever be closed without the locks being fully engaged there's no way for the crew of the plane to know [Music] the faulty locking pins will still turn off the warning light even though they aren't in their proper position the door was a ticking time bomb [Music] as passenger jets climb the difference between the pressure inside the plane and the pressure outside the plane grows if a door isn't properly shut it will blow out with explosive force the problem on the american airlines flight began as the plane passed through 3 500 meters when the door blew the coffin in the cargo hold was sucked out when the air pressure inside the plane was released anything that wasn't firmly attached was pulled out of the airliner it's a really startling thing if you're not expecting it what you've got is a lot of air stuffed inside this pressure vessel that now wants to get out and the bigger the airplane is the more powerful the hurricane of air leaving the airplane is during that period of time by itself explosive decompression does not make a plane unflyable so why had captain mccormick experience such difficulties controlling his jet investigators take a closer look at the back of the plane's cabin and learn that the very design of the dc-10 makes it vulnerable when the cargo door blew off there was so much pressure on the floor of the cabin that it collapsed into the cargo compartment below when it did the floor ripped into some of the planes critical control systems when it collapsed the floor it took the cables that control number two engine and it took most of the cables or impeded most of the cables that had to do with the flight controls in the back i think it's going to fly [Music] it left mccormick just enough control to keep his plane level [Music] the remarkable flying of bryce mccormick had saved the lives of everyone on board flight 96 [Music] but there was a problem with one of the newest and most expensive planes flying over north america in the windsor incident there was an obvious flawed and that's where the ntsb said look here is really the smoking gun the ability to close that thing without having all those locks engaged let's make sure we change this system right now every dc-10 operator needs to know this i want everything checked chuck miller is the head of the ntsb's aviation safety bureau it's his responsibility to point out problems with the new dc-10 and propose solutions [Music] he helps write the fixes he thinks mcdonnell douglas needs to make to keep the plane [Music] safe he was a very very professional man and he had his his investigators had enormous respect for him chuck didn't sit back in the office chuck was always on the scene for chuck miller fixing the dc-10 is a matter of professional pride for mcdonnell douglas the near accident over windsor has enormous implications their billion dollar gamble came close to tumbling from the sky if anything else goes wrong the company itself could be at stake [Music] march the 3rd 1974 a perfect spring-like day in paris [Music] it's been almost two years since a dc-10 came close to crashing near windsor ontario [Music] now more than 50 of the new planes are flying around the world [Music] one of them plane 29 is owned by turkish airlines normally the last leg of this trip from turkey to england wouldn't be very crowded but today the dc-10 is filling up fast [Music] people are squeezing into seats throughout the plane a strike at a british airline has passengers scrambling for any flight back to london wendy wheel is one of many last minute additions to the flight a model she's returning home after a shoot in spain we've been married for 18 months and we were about to start a family i believe the secret of her success for modeling was not just that she was very attractive girl and good model material but she was genuinely liked by all the photographers because she had such a pleasing lovely light personality with all the new passengers boarding the flight is a little behind schedule and it's not only the crew who are waiting at the back of the plane is baggage handler mohamed mahmudi with all the new passengers he's not sure if there are any more bags to load [Music] not expecting any other luggage mahmudi locks the rear cargo door [Music] the dc-10 is set to go just after 12 30 in the afternoon thy flight 981 lifts off into the skies above paris [Music] london is less than an hour away price control this is tango hotel yankee 981 we're at 6-0 requesting clearance to flight level two three zero [Music] as it flies away from the airport the dc-10 continues to gain altitude [Music] 2700 meters [Music] 3000 meters 300 meters the huge jet shutters and banks to the left [Music] just 16 seconds after the start of the crisis the crew struggles to save their crippled jet the nose is pitching down the plane picking up speed bring it up i can't bring it up she doesn't respond passengers at the back of the plane witness a horrifying scene two rows of seats have simply disappeared through a huge hole in the floor passengers can see the sky over france [Applause] the crew discovers that they have no hydraulic power with which to control the plane [Music] without it they can't move their rudder or elevators even without its most basic controls the plane begins to level out but it's fallen too far looks like we're going to hit the ground the dc-10 is traveling almost 800 kilometers an hour the flight from paris to london never even makes it to the english channel just nine minutes after taking off turkish airways flight 981 becomes the worst plane crash of all time in london the flight is listed as delayed the news of the crash comes out i slowly to the ticket office kiosk and i s asked what has happened to the flight and instantly the look on the gentleman's face behind the counter told me something was wrong instantly there's barely anything left here that's recognizable as being a part of an aircraft i looked on the television and i just thought well i just hope she's dead because i just saw the carnage of the forest insomnies and it was like looking at the first world war trench movie flight 981 carrying 346 passengers virtually disintegrates on impact there are no survivors it was just a scene of absolute utter devastation and the the litter of personal possessions electric wires bits of metal bits of bodies just strewn everywhere i mean you couldn't walk you couldn't walk anywhere without the danger you're going to stand on a part of a human being [Music] i still have nightmares about this even though it's 33 years ago investigators for the french accident investigation bureau are quickly on the scene my first job was to evaluate the scope of the wreckage and to begin the first invitation on the spot at first i was unable to know what has happened i was just seeing that a terrible crash has occurred and that it will be a very hard work for the investigators despite the enormous force of the crash the black boxes made of three layers of hardened steel and insulation survived their contents could provide valuable clues about the crash most the speculation was that it must have been a bomb because you know you've got a almost brand new very powerful airplane flying in clear blue sky and it gets to twelve thousand feet and falls out of it investigators are called to a field 15 kilometers from the crash site [Music] they find a piece of fuselage and two rows of seats from the dc-10 [Music] somehow they fell free of the airliner before the rest of the plane smashed into the forest when investigators arrive the bodies of the passengers who were in the seats have already been removed when relatives of those who died in the crash arrive in france they're directed to a small church in the town of san luis one of the saddest sites i've ever seen is in this church [Music] they laid out on tables everything they'd found you know clothing possessions teddy bears rings watches um and then relatives who wanted to were allowed to come and walk around these trestle tables with all this stuff like that [Music] they produced a little packet with my wife's wedding ring and rings engagement ring it was all pretty battered up so you could imagine the thoughts that went through my mind [Music] since the accident involves an american plane the ntsb's chuck miller joins the investigation for the second time in two years he's dealing with a problem with the dc-10 i don't believe that miller suspected for one moment that the door hadn't been fixed after windsor but it becomes clear that the piece of fuselage found in france is in fact the plane's rear cargo door it seems like a repeat of the windsor accident miller is left with a haunting question why hadn't the problem been fixed when he saw the door of course saw that it had it hadn't been done the fix hadn't been made and that's when i think his anger became very very strong indeed miller takes an unusual step although the official investigation is just beginning he gives journalist paul eddie an important tip i said if you've got any ideas what made the door come off he said yeah if i were you i'd go and look at a place called windsor ontario hello i'm chuck miller miller shares his suspicions with the french investigators you please pass these around these were taken on june 12 1972 right after the incident we have asked for the report on the windsor accident and our american colleagues were also volunteers to give us a lot of details now we had an american airlines flight from detroit to buffalo have its cargo door blow off and he has been very frank and i'll explain what he was thinking of the windsor accident after all the work done during the american airlines investigation had something been overlooked was there another problem with mcdonnell douglas's enormous plane with the information from chuck miller french investigators take a closer look at the plane's cargo door they make a shocking discovery there is no new problem it's just like the american airlines case all over again the latches that are supposed to hold the cargo door closed aren't locked and since two rows of seats were sucked out of the dc-10 over paris it's clear that the floor on the plane collapsed just as it had in windsor in fact when investigators listen to the cockpit voice recorder they find that the turkish flight crew had even less control of their plane than the crew of american airlines flight 96 we need to get down and make an approach i think it's going to fly over windsor bryce mccormick was able to recover his plane and land it but in paris all the hydraulic systems were destroyed the hydraulic fluid helps crews move the rudder and elevators on the tail not being able to control them meant the crew couldn't keep their plane in the sky the basic problem was the paris flight was much heavier in terms of the number of people on board the the floor when it collapsed collapsed with such a tremendous amount of pressure that it literally severed all the cables and controlled the back they had no hope after that point you and each of you solemnly swear to testimony shortly after the crash of turkish airlines flight 981 chuck miller is back in the united states our first witness this morning is mr c.o miller director of the bureau of aviation safety of the ntsb this time he's facing questions from american senators potentially catastrophic design defects a special hearing begins to find out how a problem that was identified in 1972 could bring another plane down two years later and of course our understanding up to this time they all had been what you've got to now discover is why wasn't that door fixed why would a major venerable mighty american corporation deliberately do something like this less than a month after the near crash over windsor the ntsb had made two very specific recommendations miller and his investigators recommended that a change be made to the locking mechanism engage the lever they wanted to make sure that it was physically impossible for baggage handlers to close the lever without the locking pins being in place they also suggested that vents be put into the floors of all dc-10s [Music] this would rapidly allow the pressurized cabin air to equalize without collapsing the floor but in the two years since the accident neither one of these recommendations was implemented [Music] there is a fundamental problem at the heart of aviation safety and that has been in the united states for a very long time and that is that it's the job of the ntsb to discover what's happened uh and to come up with recommendations as to how to prevent it happening again but it has absolutely no authority to implement them the ntsb does not have regulatory authority they have to turn to the faa as they did and say we want these things done and that's where the system went wrong if the faa the federal aviation administration issues an air worthiness directive planes are pulled out of service until the proper fix is made but as serious as the problems on the dc-10 were no air-worthiness directive was ever issued a so-called gentleman's agreement between the head of the faa and the head of mcdonnell douglas stopped it from happening the gentleman's agreement is the root cause of paris there is no question that if an air worthiness directive had been issued as it should have been after windsor paris would not have happened it was an entirely avoidable accident mcdonnell douglas assured the faa that it would fix the problem voluntarily an airworthiness directive would cast a shadow on the still fledgling dc-10 the last thing in the world you want is for the public or any of the airlines who are going to be operating these airplanes to think oh maybe there's some flaws in this bird and so an air worthiness directive especially one that requires you to go back and re-engineer something is a really horrific thought for a manufacturer mcdonnell douglas did make changes to the way the cargo door was built [Music] a peephole was cut in the bottom of the door so baggage handlers could see if the locking pins had engaged several warning signs were also attached to the plane's door the company also made other changes to the dc-10 these included increasing the length of the locking pins and attaching a plate to the inside of the door this plate would make it physically impossible to push down the lever if the door wasn't properly locked [Music] but each of the proposed fixes had its own problem many baggage handlers didn't know what the small window in the door was for and the baggage handler in paris read and spoke three languages but not english the only language in which the warning signs were written [Music] the support plate that was supposed to be installed in the door was never attached to the jet that crashed in paris [Music] papers confirming the completion of the work are also uncovered but no matter what the paper trail says the fix was never made again the problem is you don't have an independent faa inspector coming along to set to look and see and then put his stamp on it because it wasn't an air worthless director in the years following the turkish airlines crash an enormous flurry of lawsuits are filed in california the tragic story of the dc-10 has one more surprise in store it's 1974 and an unprecedented series of lawsuits are being filed against mcdonnell douglas the families of those who died near paris want someone held responsible as time went by i learned more and more about what actually happened and realized that it was not an accident as we would call an accident it was totally avoidable my goal was to expose these people [Music] in the weeks leading up to the trial lawyers who are involved in the case have access to the entire history of the dc-10s development they're not the only ones who pour through the evidence so does journalist paul eddy we were determined to get to those documents and that testimony somebody gave us a key to the depository where the documents were and so at night we would go in and then had a huge accumulated pile of documents to go through in order to find out what they've been up to reading through the immense pile of paper eddie makes an incredible discovery a memo written by don applegate the director of product engineering for convair the company who'd built the cargo door for mcdonnell douglas [Music] i think the point where we knew we got them was the applegate memorandum that specifically pre-warned this this would happen the memo is a damning indictment of the cargo doors that were being made for the dc-10 and the lack of venting in the cabin floors it warns that it's only a matter of time before there's a major disaster involving the doors the airplane demonstrated an inherent susceptibility to catastrophic failure when exposed to explosive decompression of the cargo compartment the memo written just weeks after the near disaster in windsor recommends that immediate changes be made to the dc-10 cargo door you know you've got you know you've gone because you know they knew during the court case another chilling find is made not only did mcdonnell douglas know about the problem after windsor they knew during the development of the dc-10 [Music] four years before the paris crash two years before windsor the cargo door failed during a pressure test the company knew there was a problem but the fundamental design of the door stayed the same [Music] i could not believe the large corporation like donald douglas at the time could do such a thing could risk our lives ordinary people's lives for the sake of money well in aviation it's called tombstone technology in other words we always have the balance of money and unfortunately over the years it has been true more times than not that we have had to wait until we had enough people die in an accident to say you know we really are going to have to spend the money over here the applegate memo and other information that comes out during the court case leads to one of the biggest settlements in the history of aviation [Music] mcdonnell douglas paid over 80 million dollars in damages after the paris crash foolproof changes were finally made to the dc-10 cargo door [Music] and this time nothing was left to chance [Music] the faa issued an airworthiness directive that ensured the doors would never again open in mid-air and it worked after paris there wasn't another serious incident involving the cargo doors on a dc-10 but the plane's history and an intensely competitive industry did have an impact mcdonnell douglas sold far fewer commercial dc-10s than it had once hoped for most of the pilots that i know who have flown the dc-10 over the years really love the old bird she's probably a little more clunky than the 747 in terms of her heaviness of flight controls but it's still a lovely bird to fly that's fine but you can't disassociate either the either the airplane or the company from the awful reputation that the crash left eventually mcdonnell douglas itself disappears the company was bought by boeing in 1996 in the forest outside paris a monument now stands honoring those who were killed on flight 981 a permanent reminder of one of the most disturbing crashes in the history of aviation you never forget [Music] i've gone on to leader my life for 30 odd years but i've never forgotten people to this day think it was an accident and it wasn't [Music] thank you good afternoon sir good afternoon may i see your boarding pass please sir [Music] just down the aisle on the right sir enjoy your point thank you boarding pass 81 passengers board southern airways flight 242 a dc-9 bound for atlanta georgia many of them are military personnel from nearby bases [Music] captain bill mckenzie and first officer lyman keel have been shuttling passengers across the american south all day who's got the land and not me just the captain ignition sir pilots regularly exchange tasks on long days like this one first officer lyman keel will be handling this leg of the flight he's an experienced navy pilot who's been with southern airways for four years before their last takeoff the crew was handed a weather report for the airports along their route looks like you guys got a good one [Music] the dc-9 was introduced in 1965 to fly frequent short flights both of its engines are mounted to the rear fuselage rather than the wings it was designed for takeoff on shorter runways we had a 13 landing day which was a lot of small stops you know about 20 or 30 minute legs in between and it was sort of the tour of the south skies have been smooth all afternoon but the weather's worsening the flight crew is prepared for turbulence it was raining in huntsville and they said oh it's going to be some bad weather don't serve so we did not serve from huntsville to atlanta which is a very short route and we were delighted not to be serving i was a little surprised that we took off when we did i really thought we'd tax out to the end of the runway and hold for a while because the weather looked so bad but we taxed it out and immediately took off at 3 54 p.m the dc-9 takes off into a hard rain the short hop to atlanta should take just 25 minutes as southern airways 242 flies away from huntsville the national weather service tracks weather that's far worse than the pilots expect tornadoes are touching down all across the south the weather in the southeast in the united states can be very treacherous high humidities high temperatures are a prescription for thunderstorms and so with all of that kind of moisture in the air and the high convective heating you're going to have very large thunderstorms that are associated with heavy rains hail icing conditions and extreme winds and of course tornadoes that will be spawned from that kind of action huntsville air traffic control has some concerns about the gathering storm southern airways 242 i'm painting a line of weather which appears to be moderate to possibly heavy precipitation starting about five miles ahead okay uh we're in the rain right now uh it doesn't look much heavier than what we're in right now does it it's not a solid mass but it appears to be a little bit heavier than what you're in right now in 1977 most airliners are equipped with the bendix weather radar pilots are trained to avoid regions that appear bright where there's light there's bad weather i can't read that it just looks like rain bill what do you think there's a hole there's a hole right there that's all i see the pilots spot a dark area on their radar a passageway through the storm they plan to navigate between towering thunderheads over 14 000 meters coming over we had pretty good radar i believe right straight ahead there the next few miles is probably the best way we can go but as they head towards the storm system they get an ominous report from memphis air traffic control attention all aircraft segment tennessee southern louisiana sigmat is short for significant meteorological information a warning to pilots the dangerous weather is in the region here we go hold them cowboy pilots don't want to be within 50 miles of a lot of those types of thunderstorms for the very reason that the airplane may not be able to handle it and or the pilots may not be able to control the airplane flying into that kind of activity mackenzie and keel take a harder look at their weather radar it looks heavy nothing's going through that mysteriously the gap the pilots thought they'd spotted no longer seems to exist that's a hole isn't it it's not showing a hole is it the storm suddenly gets much worse never heard such loud hail in my life and in beating on the you know sides of the airplane was extremely deafening the hail was probably the loudest noise i've ever heard it sounded like i was in a metal barrel with someone throwing rocks at me please keep your seat belts fastened we should be out of this shortly hail the size of baseballs hammers the dc-9 breaking the plane's windshield the pilots of southern 242 had to raise their voices audibly to be heard above the unholy tattoo of this hail which was buckshotting the airplane these pilots had never been through anything like this before in their lives which way would cross here or go out i don't know how we get through here bill i know you're just gonna have to go out yeah right across that man all clear left approximately right now i think we can cut across there mckenzie and keel desperately seek an escape route from the storm but as they do the emergency escalates the plane loses all electrical power without power keel must keep the aircraft level without an artificial horizon now the pilots are left to look back out the window and try and orient the airplane with the horizon but surrounded by thick cloud a horizon is difficult to find it's almost impossible for lyman keel to get his bearings southern 242 what's your speed atlanta air traffic control tries to make contact with southern airways they receive no response southern 242 atlanta what's your speed after i realized that we had a disaster in progress or something was wrong i got up and started briefing my passengers the flight attendants were very quick in uh giving us emergency landing instructions there was not very much time for anyone to start panicking after 36 seconds in the dark power returns the instruments come alive and the radio begins working again air traffic control finally gets through to mckenzie and keel maintain one five thousand if you understand maintain one five thousand southern 242. southern airways flight 242 has been instructed to fly at 4 600 meters but the plane has fallen to almost 4 200 meters [Music] we're trying to get it up there while i was looking out at the front of the left engine i could see the hail continuing to put more and more dents into the cowling around the engine and into the cone in the center of the engine and the engine was starting to make sounds like it was quitting [Music] okay 242 we just got our windshield busted we'll try to get it back up to 15. we're at 14. southern 242 say you're at 14 now left engine won't spool my lift into you say you lost an engine and uh busted a windshield yes sir oh my god the other engine's going to got the other engine going too southern 242 say again standby [Music] we lost both engines both engines are now out this dc-9 is a glider and it's falling at 56 feet per second they're at 14 000 feet they don't adjusts his course to navigate his plane out of the storm captain mckenzie must restart the engines or they'll be forced to make an emergency landing without engines southern airways flight 242 is plummeting from the sky there's also another dire consequence of the engine failure normally the engines generate electricity for the instruments radios and hydraulics when the engines quit all of these systems fail apu deployed the apu the auxiliary power unit is a backup power generator it will provide electricity to the plane but it will take more than two minutes for it to power up once they had finished their instructions and there was simply a waiting period before we landed we turned to each other and said that we would all get through this together and we held hands for a moment when the second engine quit i wasn't aware of what was going on around me i was so focused on trying to figure out a way to save myself i knew that sometimes the tail breaks off in an accident and i felt the further back i could get the better there we go after two minutes without systems the auxiliary power unit finally kicks in the pilots may not have engines but at least they now have power we lost both engines how about getting rebecca to the nearest place captain mckenzie needs directions to an airport the flight can only stay airborne for another six minutes dorbin's air force base is 32 kilometers away it has a runway that's long enough for a dc-9 it also has full emergency services southern 242 roger turn right heading 1-0-0 we'll be vectors for a straight-in approach to dominance uh runway 1-1 the soviet weather bill apart lyman keel knows dobbins air force base intimately he trained there and it's now his home base as a navy reserve pilot he's landed there frequently is the only advantage this crew has [Music] less than 16 kilometers away lies the town of new hope georgia sadie hurst sees no signs of an advancing storm it was absolutely beautiful day the children were playing outside they were riding their bicycles up and down the driveway hello hey you my husband worked in atlanta and he kept his radio on the huntsville radio station and he called me and he said honey we've got some bad weather coming in he said you need to get the kids in [Music] boys come on in now nasty weather's coming come in now all right flashlights and batteries stephen [Music] ordinarily tornadoes come with bad weather you know dark clouds and rain and hail but we didn't see any of that southern airways 242 finally breaks through the storm clouds into clear skies the plane descends steadily through 2100 meters get those engines started once the engines failed the workload in the cockpit increased substantially in this particular instance the first officer was the quote pilot flying he was the one that was actually manipulating the flight controls and maneuvering the airplane the captain on the other hand was now running checklist and trying to troubleshoot listen uh we lost both engines and uh i can't uh tell you the implications of this uh we only got two engines and how far is dobbins now southern 242 uh 19 miles do you have one engine running now negative no engines i didn't know what was wrong but i could tell something was wrong i went and opened the cockpit door simply to tell them we're ready for whatever just don't stall this thing out no i won't bill what's going on not now kathy sit down you could tell they were afraid i understood that they were afraid just for the sound of their voice so i understood that there was something very dangerous going on but i had no idea what down to only 1400 meters the plane is still 27 kilometers from dorby's air force base ask him if there's anything between here and dobbins what ask him if there is anything between here and dobbins uh is there an airport between our position and dobbins southern 242 uh no sir closest airport is dobbins first officer lyman keel doesn't think he can get the dc-9 as far as dorby's air force base he's lost too much altitude i doubt we're going to make it but we're trying everything to get something started uh roger well there is cartersville you're about 10 miles south of cartersville 15 miles west of darvin's needs a closer airport cartersville seems like a good choice we'll take a vector or that yes we'll have to go there can you give us a vector to cartersville all right turn left heading 360. we'll be directly a direct vector to cartersville air traffic controllers in atlanta see no other options they direct flight 242 to cartersville airport as the pilots seek out an airport the flight attendants still don't know what type of landing to prepare for they wouldn't talk to me when i looked in the door the whole windshield was cracked so what do we do i think we've lost both the engines i thought so okay kathy have you briefed all your passengers mm-hmm [Music] i realized i was an emergency situation and i felt like i was going to die but i decided i would do everything i could to try to help my chances i had previously collected some blankets and pillows and had gotten my leather jacket off the overhead rack and i arranged those and make a nest as much as i could for myself with tornadoes in the forecast the community of new hope is braced for a different type of danger after a couple hours of playing outside my mother called us in to to come in because there was bad weather coming our way we came into the house and mother had told us about what was going on and she said that we need to get downstairs to prepare for the for the bad weather it was coming [Music] southern airways flight 242 has lost too much altitude the pilots come to the frightening conclusion that at the rate they're falling they can't make it to cartersville they must prepare to land now i'm picking out a clear field billy you have to find me a highway let's get the next clear open field no build see a highway over there no cars right there is that straight no we'll have to take it [Music] lymon keel decides to bring the plane down onto a rural highway georgia state highway 92. captain bill mckenzie radios atlanta air traffic control with the bad news we're putting it on the highway we're down to nothing the clock runs out on southern airways 242 [Music] with no engines first officer lyman keel lines up the aircraft for an emergency landing on the highway that runs through new hope georgia in the last minute we did a steep left bank in which we were able to see the pine trees that were very close to the aircraft [Music] flaps they're down to 50. oh god bill i hope we can do it without training on how to land a dc-9 with no engines first officer lyman keel's attempt is entirely improvised lyman q is a young man who has just come back from the proving ground of southeast asia where he was a naval aviator he learned the niceties of landing on a rolling pitching aircraft carrier in the south china sea in the middle of the night what he was confronted with right now was even a greater test the greatest test he had ever confronted in his life as an airman i'm gonna land right over that guy there's a car ahead i got it i got it now i got it brace for impact the southern airways flight touches down on state highway 92. when the aircraft touched down the first touchdown was very very nice it was smooth it seemed like it was going to work and everything was going to turn out okay and then it immediately bounced back up the air and slammed down each bump that we made seem to be harder and louder than the previous one the plane smashes into new hope before the plane completely stopped moving there was fire blowing through the cabin i felt my face burning even though i tried to cover it with my leather jacket we heard this tremendous noise large sections of southern airways 242 litter the entire length of new hope come on i got my seat belt loose after uh uh a few tries and turned toward the rear of the airplane and i saw a spot of light i got up and ran for that light i could not believe i was alive i just could not believe it where i found myself after we woke up sort of indescribable i was sitting by the front entry door we have a coat closet that was adjacent to it and the back wall that the jump seat strapped to all three of those walls had collapsed and rolled into like a little triangle ball area and there was just enough room for me inside and i could see a crack of light and i thought i'm going through that crack of light come hell or hot water in the very next instant as if i just blinked my eyes instead of seeing the carpet between my feet i suddenly was looking at blue sky above me i realized i was lying flat on my back in the dirt everything to the left of me was flaming wreckage i didn't even recognize it as being the plane that i had just been thrown out of i thought it was maybe a house that we had hit stewardess sandy pearl also escapes safely she's able to help others [Music] survivors flee the flaming wreckage [Music] when i got to the top of the basement steps to close the door i saw a red reflection like fire in the door that's when i saw what was happening [Music] i saw smoke and fire [Music] and the people that were coming toward me they weren't screaming they weren't yelling they were quiet everything was on fire and i could see people running toward a house [Music] i need to use your phone [Music] i wanted to call the local people or a southern or somebody and say we've just landed somewhere and we need help just became a blur they just kept coming [Music] you helped her i got back to the kitchen and i was just circled by people they knew they were in a house and i guess they felt safe and they needed somebody to help them i was still frantic i was still trying to move as quickly as possible and do as much as i could at the time [Music] and i'll remember the day i died just staring there at the trees burning and pine trees burning and pieces of aircraft it's it was so unreal never seen anything like it and never want to see anything like that again [Music] 72 people including pilots lyman keel and bill mckenzie die in the crash of southern airways flight 242 investigators would soon uncover a tragic series of miscues and coincidences that caused the plane to crash southern flight 242 crashed after the dc-9 jet lost power in both engines the plane had just flown through a violent hail storm on a flight from huntsville alabama to atlanta i saw the plane as it came veering down hit the treetops we thought it was a tornado first vehicles people that was in this grocery store yard and vehicles it actually hit them a family of seven is killed instantly when the plane hit their car they were just leaving the store about the time that the flight tried to land on the highway and then of course the i think they hit the gas pumps and they exploded and everything around was on fire and actually they were in the car and perished during the during the explosion and fire investigators from the national transportation safety board arrive within hours of the accident this is the second major blow to southern airways safety record in 1970 flight 932 carrying the marshall university football team crashed in west virginia everyone on board was killed there are always many questions that investigators have to find answers to the two primary questions that needed to be answered by the board were what were the weather conditions and what caused both engines on a two-engine airplane to flame out that resulted in the pilots having to make an emergency landing on a highway in a small town the storm that flight 242 flew into was a monster why had a crew so familiar with weather in the south flown headfirst into it that's a whole isn't it it's not showing at all is it investigators listen to the cockpit voice recorder for any clues about the decisions made by the crew as they were entering the thunderstorm that's a hole isn't it it's not showing a hole is it they learned that the pilots relied heavily on their weather radar as they approached the storm but it appears to have deceived them all clear left rock smelling right now i think we can cut across there one of the limitations of the radar that the crew of flight 242 was using is signal attenuation that is that the beam that is projected from the radar unit out to look at the weather and return is diffused so that the picture that is depicted in the cockpit that the crew is looking at may not be accurate weather radar sends out radio waves those waves bounce off storm clouds ahead and return to the aircraft but if precipitation is extremely intense the radio waves can be deflected away the radar unit might then interpret the lack of returning waves as a clear path ahead those inaccuracies are hard to decipher and if the crew is depending solely or very intently on the radar to guide them through the precipitation they may be making decisions that aren't based on accurate information the storm that entangles southern airways 242 is one of the worst to hit the united states in three years the crew didn't encounter a tornado but it was battered by torrential rain and heavy hail which way or go out i don't know how we get through here bill what keel and mackenzie read as a clear area ahead was in fact the heaviest part of the storm they flew straight for it the other engine's going to got the other engine going too southern 242 say again by we lost both engines [Music] once inside the storm the dc-9s engines failed but a turbofan engine is designed to ingest huge amounts of rain and even hail precipitation alone should not have shut them down investigators study what's left of the dc-9s engines for clues they need to know if some mechanical failure caused both engines to fail inside the storm well initially i was puzzled as to how the engines could be involved in the cause of this accident but i was very anxious to get there to see the engines myself to find out if there was any sort of visible failure in the engines pratt and whitney the manufacturer of the engines assigns al weaver to advise the ntsb investigation the engines are moved to atlanta airport for a closer inspection and when they lifted the engines up in the vertical direction in the hangar i could hear the tinkling in pieces fell out through the front of the engine onto the floor i reached over and picked up those pieces and i recognized them immediately as part of the high compressor blading deep with inside the engine al weaver discovers that the pieces that fell from the engine were broken blades from the compressor jet engines need pressurized air for combustion two separate compressors inside the engine are made up of dozens of steel blades the rapidly spinning blades force air to the back of the engine the pressurized air is ignited in the combustion chamber creating thrust weaver notices that the compressor blades from flight 242 are badly bent or fatigued the way they're bent tells him they were damaged in the air not when the plane hit the ground and we know that that fatigue and the type of fatigue that we could observe with our eye is caused by the repetitive surging of the engine over and over a surge occurs when the airflow through an engine gets interrupted pressure builds up between the compressors instead of behind them without the back pressure air from the combustion chamber moves to the front of the engine the engine briefly loses power next investigators need to find out if the repetitive surging was caused by the engines inhaling massive amounts of rain when an engine ingests rain it has to convert it into a gas before it can pump it out as exhaust that process uses energy and slows down the engines investigators conclude that with so much rain to convert the engines couldn't maintain enough power to run the generators that's what caused the first power outage but it doesn't explain why the engines failed completely al weaver wants to know if the sheer volume of rain the engines were forced to ingest could have caused their failure the same engine model that powered southern airways 242 is run with up to 14 water to air okay engines are three-quarters throttle [Music] let's begin investigators ultimately throw monsoon level reins against the engine they run it from idle up to full throttle okay that's it shut it down the rain was not enough to cause the kind of surge that tore the engines on flight 242 to pieces thanks very much gentlemen and the engine operated normally no abnormalities so our judgment was we could not conceive of a rainstorm that would put more water in so we knew we were going in the wrong direction with more water the water ingestion test points investigators to another suspect that's a hole isn't it it's not showing a hole is it hail people who survived the crash described seeing hail the size of baseballs it was powerful enough to break the plane's three and a half centimeter thick windshield al weaver discovers significant hail damage on both of the plane's engine cowlings starting at the front of the engine we noted that the inlet cowl and the center body that streamlines the airflow going into the engine which are parts of the aircraft structure and made out of aluminum were all dented from both engines and that led us to suspect that the existence of the hail might have been a significant contributor weaver knows that it would take a powerful force to damage the hard metal compressor blades we knew from the examination mechanically of the engines that the hail itself did not cause any damage to the engine it only dented the outside of the covering over the engine heavy precipitation and a damaged cowling could have interrupted the engine's airflow and caused a surge but one surge shouldn't tear an engine apart [Music] weaver suspects that massive pieces of hail may have clogged a vital outlet in the plane's engines the bleed valves when pressure builds between the two compressors bleed valves should open automatically to release that pressure and clear the surge if the bleed valves were blocked the engines would have continued to surge over and over again once the engine began to surge the action that the pilot should have taken was to pull the throttles back to clear the surge al weaver turns to the cockpit voice recorder and discovers that the circumstances may have caused the crew to do the exact opposite [Music] maintain one five thousand southern 242. we're trying to get it up there weaver learns that the crew was asked to climb while in the heart of the storm maintain one five thousand if you understand me maintain one 5 000 southern 242. in order to climb the captain had to increase thrust to his engines which would have made matters worse but if the surge was not cleared and allowed to continue then the engine would simply break itself internally we're trying to get it up there advancing the throttles would only worsen the situation with its bleed cavities blocked by hail pressure built up inside the engines bending the compressor blades until they shattered left engine won't spool our lift engine just cut out and once the blades broke in the compressor then the engine has no hope of ever working again investigators now understand how the pilots misread the storm and how their engines failed as a result of it but they don't know why the pilots weren't warned that there was such a severe storm in their path [Music] who's got the landing and not me as the pilots prepared to depart huntsville they did have a weather report from southern airways but the information was already hours old looks like you guys got a good one southern airways dispatch did not have updated information they didn't subscribe to the national weather services update system they did have a subscription to a service that required them to dial up and receive the information when the dispatcher called the phone number to get the updated information it was busy and never pursued it and was not able to provide any kind of update information to the crew of 242. southern airways 242 i'm painting a line of weather which appears to be moderate to possibly heavy precipitation starting about five miles ahead could huntsville have provided better weather information absolutely but in the course of doing their job they provided localized weather information about an intense thunderstorm or rain shower that was moving over the airport they were only responsible really for about 40 nautical miles what the crew of flight 242 was looking at was well beyond 40 miles with little information on the storm and having misread their weather radar bill mckenzie and lyman keel flew blindly into massive thunderheads the heavy rain and hail crippled their engines the crew decided that their only option was an emergency landing to the nearest place southern 242 roger turn right heading one zero zero will be vectors for a straight in approach to diamonds uh runway one one [Music] when investigators analyze the flight path of southern airways 242 they discover one more deadly oversight [Music] from the time the crew realized that they had no engine power until the time a touchdown was about nine minutes so in looking at the critical decision making they had about seven minutes of solid critical decision making before they were committed to that emergency landing on the highway to a clear area after the engines failed the pilots made a 180 degree turn towards the west looking for an escape from the storm that takes them directly away from dorbin's air force base the turn takes the pilots out of the hailstorm but leaves them further away from a runway they also lose minutes of valuable flying time only once the pilots escape the hailstorm do they turn again towards dorban's uh is there an airport between our position and dobbins southern 242 uh no sir closest airport is dobbins had they maintained that course to dobbins rather than make the turns or try to find another airport they probably would have had a better success rate and definitely a better survival rate southern 242 roger turn right heading one zero zero will be vectors for a straight in approach to diamonds uh runway one one by the time mckenzie received the instructions southern airways 242 had been flying away from dorbin's for too long the plane was simply too far and flying too low to make it there but there was one last missed opportunity to save flight 242 investigators learned that just as mackenzie and keel were directed towards dorbyn's air force base they were right above another runway cornelius moore airport i thought we would land at cornelius moore airport because i was familiar with that airport i had flown many times in our airplane back and forth between decatur and atlanta investigators learned that cornelius moore was just out of range of radar at atlanta approach control they didn't know it existed they could not direct southern airways 242 there because they couldn't see it on their screens when i learned that the controllers in atlanta didn't know about the cornelius moore airport in cartersville i was upset because we went within i think three or four miles of that airport had a 4 000 foot runway and even though some of the controllers thought it was too short it sure would have been better than that highway we landed on i was very very angry there's such a feudal reaction you know it was such a waste of life that i was sad the ntsb investigation concludes that the catastrophic failure of the turbofan engines and the failure to convey sufficient information on the storm to the pilots are the causes of the crash of southern airways 242 the ntsb acts immediately it issues a recommendation that whether radar systems aboard planes and in air traffic control centers be upgraded to better portray weather systems in today's commercial aircraft pilots have available to them color weather radar it's radar that will depict in various color bands the intensity of the precipitation the crash of southern airways 242 also leads to a better understanding of how engines should be managed in heavy precipitation we once again reaffirmed to the pilots the importance not to allow the engine to continue operation in continual surging if there is a surge condition for any reason you should clear the surge because if you didn't clear the surge and allowed it to operate it would break eventually in every air crash investigators tried to determine whether or not the accident was survivable when you look at the survivability in an aircraft accident you can definitively say that the design of the seat contributed to the survival factors aspects but the statistics that bear out whether sitting in the front of the airplane is safer the middle of the airplane is safer or the back of the airplane is safer don't exist in this particular instance a surviving passenger don foster was quick thinking he put a leather jacket over his head and used a pillow as a buffer between the seat in front of him and his face that probably saved his life from the standpoint that it minimized any injuries he would have suffered in fact the ntsb believes that if flight attendants had distributed blankets and pillows to the passengers there would have been fewer injuries as a result of the crash we learned from every airplane crash we learned from this one we learned that the communication broke down within the faa within southern airways even within the cockpit of that dc-9 what we didn't ultimately learn though is the most important lesson and that is awesome respect for mother nature and what mother nature can do 30 years have passed since southern airways 242 crashed through the small community of new hope georgia every 10 years since the crash survivors of the tragedy gather at a church in new hope they remember those that were lost and help one another cope with the tragedy it's one of the longest running survivors group of its kind i want to welcome you to this service today in remembering april the 4th 1977 when the southern airways flight 242 crashed here in the new hope community earl d johnson [Music] lyman keel jr william wade mckenzie [Music] earl c griffin jr [Music] after the crash i had a hard time understanding how i managed to survive and after a couple of months i quit worrying about it i felt like i had a second shot at it i felt like that family was more important having fun was more important [Music] [Applause] [Music] it took a pretty deep toll on our family my mother and my father especially they lost two of their children and all their grandchildren all at one time [Music] and i can still to this day i can smell the odors and i can hear the sounds and i can see those people so many things will bring back those smallest memories and every time it's triggered the emotions come back you don't want them to you don't ask for them but you can't stop them i believe it's important for the survivors to get together so that they can share their experiences know that there are other people that went through the same feelings that they did [Music] i mean i've had a great life because of this in a way that makes no sense but it's changed me for the better i think i've done better had a better life because of how i grew from that [Music] may this service do honor to these dear loved ones and may it bring comfort and peace to we who remain [Music] early morning june the 23rd 1985 a 747 flies across the atlantic ocean nine and a half kilometers above the water the jumbo jet is nicknamed kaneshka after an indian emperor and air india promises passengers it will be a palace in the sky indian hospitality is something that the culture prides itself on and you do experience that when you fly here india the colors are rich and warm inside it's your gateway to india on its way from canada the plane is heading to london england before continuing on to new delhi it's been in the air for four and a half hours captain hanse narendra is a veteran air india pilot satwinder binder is a captain too who's serving as first officer on the flight as the plane nears land binder talks with the flight's purser [Music] yes sir do me a small favor at the back of the plane seat 54 a boy is sitting there he just wanted to have a look in the cockpit can i send them now after about 15 to 20 minutes [Music] there are 329 people on board including passengers and crew many of them are flying to india to visit family or friends [Music] vishnu pada is traveling to india with his two daughters their mother lata is already waiting for them there we had decided that it would be the ideal year to take an extended vacation in india as a family six minutes after eight in the morning co-pilot binder makes radio contact with air traffic control in ireland shane rick here india 182 good morning [Music] station calling shannon go ahead again please thomas lane and michael quinn are working at the shannon control center [Music] air india 182 is five one north one five west at level three one zero estimate fire at 0.735 air india 182 shannon roger cleared for london flight level 3-1-0 here in india 182 is clear to london maintain 3-1-0 do you want to come up front now yeah okay let's go it's a light morning at shannon control they're dealing with just three planes but something peculiar has happened the signals are also enveloped the signals on radar merged saw that it was totally impossible to read the call signs and flight levels of any of the three aircraft the air india 747 is flying at 31 000 feet a twa jet is several thousand feet above it and a cp flight is two thousand feet higher all are traveling east because the planes are stacked on top of each other the signals have merged on the controller's two-dimensional screen tom moved the checkerboard on radar and separated the signals [Music] two of the planes reappear on the radar but the air india flight has vanished their india is not showing up hold on a minute air india 182 do you read air india 1a2 this is shannon do you read over it's 8 14 in the morning i had a good feeling to this day i don't know why i picked up the phone yes it's michael quinn at shannon we have a plane off radar normally a distress call to search and rescue isn't made until a plane has been out of contact for more than 20 minutes the air india flight has been missing less than 60 seconds several ships in the area begin searching for signs of the plane its last known position is some 290 kilometers southwest of cork just two hours after the plane disappears a canadian-owned cargo ship in the area confirms the worst the first pieces of wreckage are discovered uninflated life rafts are spotted bobbing in the cold atlantic then bodies are seen [Music] it's quickly clear that no one has survived [Music] in india lata pada is waiting for her husband and two children to arrive when she hears the news from her brother he sat me down and told me that you know something terrible had happened i was just [Music] in total shock and you know part of me was trying to digest the information and part of me was trying to imagine if indeed the worst had happened how i was going to continue my life without them dozens of bodies arrive in cork many more will follow now investigators are faced with the enormous task of finding out how they died and what had caused the crash of air india flight 182 [Music] 130 000 people live in the city of cork tucked into the southern coast of ireland it's long been a vital seaport [Music] on june the 23rd 1985 a gruesome cargo begins arriving at the city's docks just hours after air india flight 182 crashes into the sea bodies and wreckage are brought in by boat dr cumin doyle is a pathologist at the cork regional hospital the first bodies arrived at 4 45 pm on that sunday afternoon and at 12 midnight we had 130 bodies doyle and his team will examine the bodies to see if they can find any signs of what caused the crash it's an enormous undertaking for everybody involved the hospital personnel the the police the navy the army and pathologists like ourselves but we just had to get on and do the job there are so many autopsies to perform the doyle moves the work into the building's gym we had three police people working on each body photographer a ballistics expert and a forensic odontologist that is a person who examines the teeth the face for identification purposes in just four days autopsies are performed on 132 victims all parts of the body were examined externally in detail and every every detail was noted down we were looking of course for the causes of the fatalities doyle makes a telling discovery almost all the victims died in the air only two of the bodies showed signs of drowning which indicated that the others were were not breeding when they hit the water there's something else that's common to many of the victims a large number have had their clothes torn off now that was important because if they had no clothes or little closes indicated that they had fallen from 31 000 feet or so where this accident occurred some of the bodies also have signs of so-called flail injuries these are breaks specific to bones in the hips shoulders and other joints hs kola is the lead investigator into the air india disaster the flail injuries tell him the passengers weren't in the plane when it hit the ocean they are caused by tumbling violent motion of the body in air and that is the pattern of the injuries when a passenger is thrown out of the aircraft at high altitude the autopsies show that somehow the plane had been ripped apart high above the water passengers were thrown into the sky long before the plane crashed based on the injuries we could only say that the plane had broken up at 31 000 feet we couldn't say what the cause of the breakup was the biggest challenge in this accident was that we had no physical evidence available to us in this accident in terms of wreckage in terms of passengers crew or in terms of eyewitnesses in this accident we had nothing the most important job of the investigators is to try to find the plane's black boxes the two devices record cockpit conversation and other technical information about the flight of the plane the recorders have radio beacons which send out a signal at a designated frequency but it's still a huge task the boxes are more than sixty five hundred feet below the surface and the radio signals last just thirty days saleem jiwa is a journalist who has investigated the air india disaster the search for the black boxes was urgent and and three countries participated in it england ireland and india but even with such a massive response early efforts are frustrated 42 kilohertz it's too high it can't be there investigators are picking up radio signals but they're at the wrong frequency [Music] as the search continues hs kola and his team study the maintenance history of the plane they want to know if an undetected floor had caused the jet to come apart in flight they uncover a potentially important piece of information the air india jet was flying with five engines a 747 normally has four engines but it can carry more the plane was designed so that it could transport a malfunctioning engine beneath its wings ground crews can mount the engine to a bracket on the plane it's exactly what happened to the air india jet there was an extra engine that a previous flight had left behind that was mounted on the wing of the aircraft the extra engine creates substantial drag on the left side of the plane if the pilots don't properly compensate the plane will start turning in that direction and this hypothesis continued that there is possibility that this fifth engine might have caused the breakup of the wing in fact investigators discover that before the plane took off for london the flight engineer noticed problems with the way the engine was attached there's a small problem in the fifth engine i've asked them to fix it all right investigators also learned that some internal parts of the extra engine were taken out and stored in flight 182's cargo bay they are so enormous that pieces of the cargo door were removed to make the job easier some of the other parts of the engine went into the rear of the aircraft aircraft such as the 747 can handle this quite easily is routinely done but if the cargo door wasn't reassembled properly it could have led to an explosive decompression in 1974 a cargo door blew off a turkish airlines flight shortly after it took off from paris the sudden decompression crippled the plane it crashed moments later killing everyone on board kola must consider two theories either problems with the door or with the extra engine itself brought down the plane if either one had taken place there should be evidence on the plane's black boxes finding the recorders has become increasingly important almost two weeks after the search begins investigators get news that helps them pinpoint the location of the black boxes the signal will be higher so this 42 kilohertz could be it tell the boats to look again the piece of the black box which broadcasts the locator signal is made of ceramic if it's damaged the frequency of the signal can change it means the strange frequency ships detected earlier could be the right one both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are finally located but they're so deep it's difficult to bring them up the aircraft was at 6 000 feet below the sea and it was the depth that was sort of defeating a deep sea submersible is brought in but even with this specialized vehicle and with the location of the black is known it takes four attempts to bring the recorders to the surface lead investigator kola now has what he hopes are two vital pieces of the puzzle if there's any problem in that aircraft the crew will be talking about the problem they will not be silent about the problem but when he listens to the cockpit voice recorder cola hears nothing unusual after the last contact with air traffic control in shannon the voice recorder picks up the crew talking about customs seals it's paperwork that has to be completed before landing they want about 30 custom seals customs yeah custom seals to seal the bar before its arrival the conversation ends in mid-sentence that was it and then everything was of course silent the cockpit voice recorder indicated that there was no abnormality in the cockpit no no emergency every conversation was normal the plane's flight data recorder tells a similar story kohler pours through details about air india's speed altitude and dozens of other pieces of information [Music] the extra engine did cause the plane to bang slightly and the jets rudder was turned 11 degrees to the right but this was exactly what the crew needed to do to offset the drag created by the fifth engine we found that all parameters of the aircraft aircraft altitude aircraft heading aircraft bank attitude row latitude autopilot engaged everything was not working normally till the last point after analyzing both black boxes kohler can't find any evidence that the plane was in trouble before it suddenly disappeared from radar [Music] but the very lack of evidence does suggest something [Music] both recorders get their power from the plane's engines both stopped at exactly 14 minutes and one second after eight in the morning since the recorders stopped working at the same time the problem on the plane had to be catastrophic enough to sever the jets electronic system before the crew could react customs used to seal the bar before its arrival investigators are becoming convinced that there are only two possible explanations for the crash a devastating decompression or a bomb [Music] they study the wreckage that's been found floating on the surface of the ocean but it's just a small percentage of the entire plane and none of it is helpful to investigators it offers no clues to explain why the plane crashed we knew there was no fire we knew the aircraft was performing well everything was normal there was no cockpit emergency no warning we got elimination of all the things but we did not got the answer is what happened to go to the cause of the accident we had to go to the wreckage which was lying at the bottom of the sea but what parts of the plane should investigators focus on the black boxes were equipped with radio transmitters which made them easier to find but the debris field is deep underwater and enormous some 16 kilometers long and six kilometers across how do investigators identify the one clue that will help them unlock the mystery roy truman is an underwater salvage expert he's brought in to do something that's never been done before retrieve the ruined pieces of a jumbo jet from the bottom of the ocean in hundreds of thousands of pieces he needs to find the ones that will explain why the plane crashed up until that time we had only been used with recovering small aircraft here we're talking about a 747 which was huge and we had no idea of the size of the pieces and what we were going to find investigators know they can't bring the entire wreck to the surface it's so deep it takes hours to recover a single piece the submersible takes underwater video and still photos investigators use those to decide which pieces to bring to the surface it was a narrow corridor and at each end of the corridor it was very light wreckage all of the heavy stuff engines main aircraft structure was was in the middle of the wreckage field like searching for a needle in an underwater haystack investigators hope to discover the cause of the crash in a tangle of ruined metal but autumn is coming soon the weather will turn bad and they'll have to abandon their search the key to unlocking the disaster still lies somewhere at the bottom of the ocean investigators from india are scouring the ocean floor trying to find out why air india flight 182 fell from the sky as the work continues in ireland there's growing suspicion in canada that the air india crash was no accident as police and investigators sift through the list of passengers on the plane they find something peculiar many of the passengers who were on air india flight 182 began their day in vancouver they were using another plane to connect to flight 182 one of the passengers who bought a ticket for that plane never got on well the passenger we have never identified him per se but the ticket identified him as m singh it simply had an initial but not full name we believe that name to be was fictitious and that the person never intended to travel while he never boarded the plane m singh did check in next please on your way to toronto and i want my bag checked through to delhi sir i can't do that your reservation is only confirmed to toronto oh i am confirmed this is my ticket jeannie adams is a ticket agent working for canadian pacific mr sing you're on standby to deli i can't but then i have to pick up my bag i can't check your bags through to india if you are not confirmed but i am indeed confirmed wait i'll get my brother he'll tell you there are as many as 30 people waiting to check in adams doesn't have time to wait for the man's brother oh okay okay i'll check it through but you have to check with air india when you get to toronto even though singh doesn't have a ticket taking him to india his bag is checked straight through his luggage is loaded but no one notices that singh never boards the plane that leaves vancouver she broke the rules as they were she should not have allowed that to go through for new delhi interline but she was so bullied and so browbeaten by mr singh in front of everybody else that i think to her eternal sadness and and heartbreak um she gave in sings maroon bag didn't raise any concerns when it was loaded in vancouver since the air india flight was international when the bag arrived in toronto it faced a more strict series of inspections this is what it will sound like [Music] john de souza is a security officer for air india the day of the flight he demonstrated a portable explosives detector for baggage handlers in toronto chemicals in a match triggered the device as would chemicals used in some explosives okay the portable device was put to use because the x-ray machine which normally scans every piece of luggage had broken down the technology especially the x-ray technology were very uh very weak very in their infancy at that time and they it didn't work reliably and in in the case of the air india episode the technology went quite badly wrong which was one of the tragedies of this situation as security workers used the portable explosives wand on the bags everything seemed normal until they got to the maroon bag [Music] the bag did trigger the device but the sound it made was very different from the one workers heard during the demonstration the bag was passed and allowed on board the plane eventually flying towards england as air india flight 182 flies over the atlantic ocean carrying m singh's bag an explosion rips through tokyo's narita airport two baggage handlers are killed four people are injured a bomb has been hidden inside another piece of luggage that came from vancouver luggage that was bound for another air india jet and it was headed for the cargo hold when it exploded on the ground once it was put on the back was probably just thumped a little bit and it exploded as the two japanese baggage handlers were putting it on a conveyor belt just as on flight 182 one of the bags being moved in tokyo was checked in by a passenger who never boarded the flight there was no x-ray machines in use at vancouver airport there was nothing to stop that bag from flying to to tokyo there's a disturbing connection between the tokyo bombing and the air india flight the tickets for the men who checked both bags were bought on the same day by the same customer the single crash of air india flight 182 has suddenly become part of a much larger story with the apparent connection between the two incidents investigators in ireland are extremely interested in what police find in tokyo after the bombing forensic experts descend on japan's narita airport there are traces of evidence everywhere the narita bombing was was within a confined space so unlike the air india flight 182 situation where we had debris scattered over nine miles of under the ocean and pretty hard to retrieve we had the in a sense the good fortune of of a contained area where an explosive device went off pieces of metal and circuit boards are embedded in the walls explosive residue clings to parts of the container that housed the bomb amazingly japanese forensic experts were able to pick out tiny parts and fragments and all the analysis finally led japanese police to identify the vehicle that was used to carry the bomb experts even find serial numbers on pieces of the wreckage clues that show the bomb was hidden inside a specific stereo tuner made by sanyo all 2000 tuners that were ever made were shipped to a warehouse near vancouver british columbia from there they were sent to stores across the region one of those tuners carried the bomb that exploded at narita police have a difficult task trying to trace the sale of 2 000 tuners they could have been sold to anyone most of the stores that had received the tuner had been sold out for years but police get a break when they ask about the tuner at a store in duncan a tiny town on vancouver island the last unit had been sold just a few weeks ago they were able to figure out who bought the the stereo tuner which contained the bomb police obtain the same sort of tuner that was used to house the bomb on air india they conduct tests to see how big the bomb would have to be to create the sort of damage that was found in tokyo there was a progressive experimentation using using dynamite to find out the the extent of damage particular strands of dynamite would cause they match the size of the tuna fragments made after each explosion with the fragments that were found at narita they discover that just a few sticks of dynamite were likely used in the tokyo bomb but could just four sticks of dynamite really bring down a jet once they discover just how powerful the narita bomb was police place it into a fully loaded luggage container the devastation is enormous any decompression caused by an event or an explosive device in the luggage hole would be sufficient to cause catastrophic results for that aircraft you don't need much for sticks or dynamite can do the job the cramped quarters of a cargo hold amplify the power of a bomb tests conducted at penn state university show that the shock waves created from a bomb blast don't travel in just one direction but reverberate inside a luggage container building on each other vastly increasing the initial force of the explosion if a bomb had indeed exploded in the cargo hold of air india it would have caused enormous amounts of destruction it's the sort of damage that should have left its mark on the remains of flight 182 investigators have a growing suspicion that this plane was brought down by a bomb but they still have no proof so the investigators were not only looking for uh something that was broke and that might have caused the failure but they were looking for signs of what caused the explosions such as burning or solvent stains or possibly shrapnel in seats it meant a lot tighter scrutiny of every piece of wreckage we kept on analyzing each photograph is it giving any indication of an explosion is it giving an impact damage knowing his time is running out kola selects a few key pieces of the plane to bring to the surface bad weather forces him to leave the rest behind kola hopes the bits he does have can prove there was a bomb on board each piece that's brought up is carefully mapped to its original position on the jet one of the most promising sections brought up from the bottom is the floor of the front cargo bay when we recovered that item we found that it had holes which are of a very special nature penetration from inside to our side at a very high speed curling of the edges of that one and that was indicative of that perhaps this is the place where the explosion had occurred as many as 20 holes are found in each the metal is bent outward like the petals of a flower these are classic signs of something being blown out from the cargo bay on the side wall of the cargo bay investigators find more clues additional holes are discovered like the ones on the floor these also appear to have been blown out from the cargo hold a closer study of the ceiling of the cargo bay also indicates that the ribs connecting it to the fuselage were broken by being forced up [Music] investigators are convinced that the wreckage shows that a bomb had exploded in the forward cargo hold if the bomb had gone off in the front of the plane it would explain why the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder cut off so quickly like other 747s the electronics bay on the air india flight is located below the cockpit many of the important electrical systems on the plane run through here the forward luggage compartment is right beside it and so when the bomb went off the explosion would have taken out the computers completely and there would have been absolutely dead silence and that's precisely what happened investigators are convinced that air india flight 182 has been destroyed by a bomb [Music] this was no accident the crash of the passenger jet was a crime nobody nobody thought that such an evil plot of blowing two aircraft simultaneously would occur from vancouver exhaustive detective work creates a clear picture of what likely happened on board the air india jet in toronto m singh's bag is taken off the vancouver flight and moved onto the air india jet it's put into a luggage container that's eventually placed at the front of the jet right behind the plane's electronics bay as the plane sailed over the atlantic ocean the crew had no warning that a bomb was ticking down to disaster they want about 30 custom seals customs yeah custom seals to seal the bar before its arrival when the force of the blast hit the floor of the jet it pushed it violently upwards the thin fuselage would have been blown apart the air pressure inside the plane would have rushed out tearing passengers from the cabin and fatally crippling the jet the debris scattered over nine miles is an indication of how how rapidly and how uh how how fearsome this this whole decompression was but in this instance the aircraft completely didn't stand a chance of flight there was no way of continuing flight in this case as the jet fell towards the sea the forces put on the fuselage tore it apart it would have a tail torn off and the wings would start breaking and there's no way of sustaining flight after that it goes into gyrations once it goes into generations there was just massive structural failure after months of painstaking work investigators believe they have unraveled the cause of the air india crash they've proven a bomb brought the plane down it's now up to police to find the bombers but with so many deaths and so many more possible if the narita bomb had exploded in midair there's immediate interest in making passenger jets safer this was one of the biggest disaster in the indian aviation history and it could have been avoided if the procedures were in place as the hunt for the killers continues extraordinary steps are taken to tighten security and to see if jets can be made to withstand the force of a bomb it's may 1997 more than ten years after a terrorist bomb destroyed air india flight 182 an out of service 747 is about to take part in a remarkable test two bombs are placed in the front cargo bay two more are put in the back well the burning thorp test was actually intended to prove five years worth of research that we can protect an airplane using hardened luggage containers or hardened liners in the cargo hole the plane is also pressurized to simulate the conditions a jet would encounter at cruising altitude pressurization is the key to that kind of experiment the added energy that you have from the pressurization inside the airplane adds to the damage you can think of it as a balloon if you take a pin and you put it in a balloon that's uninflated you get just a simple hole size of the pin however if you blow that balloon up and you hit it with a pin it pops catastrophically when the bombs are detonated the result is devastating the force of the blast plus the pressure inside the jet to store the plane apart and that's the closest we can come to seeing what would have happened to a jet in flight the destructive power of bombs on jets is well known but what the tests at bruntingthorpe showed was that relatively simple measures can substantially minimize the damage caused by an explosion one of the bombs in the rear cargo hold was placed in a normal luggage container but the bombs in the front cargo hold were different one was placed in a specialized container strengthened with a material similar to that found in bulletproof vests the other was put in a normal container but placed beside walls that have been reinforced with a blast absorbing liner when the bombs explode the front of the plane is virtually untouched we had no breach of the airplane skin with the liner or with the hardened luggage containers but towards the rarity airplane or the tail where we didn't have any of the hardened materials it was a catastrophic failure for the airport the standard luggage container did nothing to minimize the blast both the protective lining in the front cargo bay and the hardened luggage container were able to absorb the force of the explosion it's only speculation would steps like these have saved air india very likely would they make the industry safer today absolutely despite the dramatic results of the tests in britain hardened luggage containers are not used by world's airlines while effective at stopping bombs they're extremely expensive the hardened containers are not in use now because it's just not economically feasible the containers cost the tens of thousands of dollars just to purchase and they're very fragile they're composite materials so if you run into this item to a forklift they're pretty much useless from that point forward there have been significant improvements made to the way that passenger luggage is screened at most international airports more sophisticated color x-ray systems using multiple scanning beams are now used but i am indeed confirmed wait i'll get my brother he'll tell you oh okay okay i'll check it through but you have to check with air india when you get to toronto [Music] and there are stricter regulations about luggage getting sent forward on connecting flights in the case of air india the most important thing of all was passenger baggage reconciliation this is the key to detecting an explosive device or a terrorist no plane leaves with baggage unattached to a specific passenger inside that plane and and that must be so [Music] seed is 10b i think one of the the most difficult piece of news for the families to accept was the many ways in which this tragedy could have been prevented i mean it was absolutely unforgivable that a bag could be interlined to another destination without a passenger accompanying it the quality of training that security guards at airports get also came under scrutiny during the years after the air india crash it's still an area of concern for some security experts there's a real failure to train security personnel and that failure is because you cannot pay rental cops subsistent wages to look after your security when you get on board an aircraft in the air india case police eventually trace the bombing to seek extremists living in canada they're fighting to have an independent sikh homeland created in india the man who confessed to assembling the bomb is sent to prison the man suspected of masterminding the plot is killed several years later while under arrest in india both men had deep ties to canada's west coast sikh community it's a connection that still bothers lata pada it was a deliberate act of terrorism and hurts even more that they were executed by canadians on canadian soil against canadians more than 20 years after the destruction of the air india flight the shock of the day is still fresh and many questions remain unanswered we still don't know who the two people were who checked in the bags apart from the basics of who made the bomb we don't know much about who else assisted them we don't know who picked up those tickets [Music] there's a vow of silence that has hindered the investigation this inquiry will be launched immediately in 2006 the canadian government launched an inquiry into the air india bombing another investigation of what happened and why the shocking death of so many is a continuing source of anger and disbelief [Music] no matter what the inquiry finds the sobering facts are the same 329 people killed in an instant there are memorials now in ireland and canada mourning the victims of the air india crash marking the day a terrorist bomb ripped through the lives of so many it's just so tragic about all our lives that we lead every day is an ordinary day in our lives but some days unexpectedly something completely totally unexpected shatters your life and that was one of those moments [Music] you

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

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Id: I5xBBMW0Cg0

Length: 146min 27sec (8787 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2022