Why Did Flight 185 Fall Out Of The Sky? | #CivilAviationDay | FULL EPISODE | Mayday: Air Disaster

[Music] we'll be serving lunch shortly good afternoon ladies and gentlemen this is your captain my name is zooey ming on the flight deck this afternoon with me is first officer duncan ward we'd like to welcome you aboard and we are now climbing through 19 000 feet silk air flight 185 is climbing to its cruising altitude the boeing 737 is carrying 97 passengers and seven crew from jakarta indonesia to the airline's home base singapore the flight should take about 80 minutes heading north over the rainforests of sumatra to singapore's changi international airport we'll be cruising today at 35 000 feet sue ming was an experienced singapore air force pilot he'd been in the aerobatic team he was always listed as an above average pilot today's first officer is 23 year old duncan ward the new zealand-born pilot has been flying with silk air for a little more than a year duncan initially found flying at the age of about 14 suddenly had a purpose in life i think that's the best way to describe it he came from another operator already type rated on the boeing 737 and when i conducted his induction training to silky i recognised that he was a well above average pilot as well despite his young age i'll get back to you just before i descended to singapore with an updated weather forecast thank you the twin engine jet is the newest addition to the silk air fleet a boeing 737 300 series it went into service just nine months ago the time the 737 was probably the most widely used transport in the world duncan reckoned that he was the luckiest guy in the world because whereas some people might go to the office in a ferrari he went to the office in a 737 so he loved it silk air 185 maintaining three five zero silk 185 maintain three five zero clear direct to party we'll call silk air 185 the flight to uh jakarta and back was a standard route everything was absolutely normal absolutely routine [Music] on flights as smooth as this one it's common for pilots to get up and stretch their legs come back for a while finish your lunch i am some water [Music] 30 minutes after takeoff jakarta air traffic control makes its last scheduled radio call to flight 185. silke 185 maintain 350 at party contact singapore one three four point four kilcare 185 roger 134 before party the crew is reminded to check in next with singapore air traffic control singapore air traffic control did not expect to hear from the aircraft for another five to six minutes so it was in a virtual no man's land as far as communications are concerned moments later while still cruising at 000 feet the plane banks sharply and begins to dive cabin crew were probably serving lunch at the time with carts in the aisles it would have been horrific the aircraft would have been inverted anything unsecured would have ended up in the ceiling what happens to all of the people who might be standing up to the people who are not buckled in it doesn't bear careful examination it's too horrible at jakarta air traffic control silcare 185 has vanished from radar the controller has heard no mayday call he tries to get a message to the missing flight with the help of another pilot indonesia 238 jakarta go ahead indonesia 238. please relate to silke 185 to contact singapore 134.4 roger indonesia 238 but the 737 is already submerged beneath the murky waters of indonesia's musee river halfway between jakarta and singapore local villagers report the crash they're telling stories about the aircraft coming very fast from from an altitude along the river people search for survivors but find only small bits of debris a 50-ton aircraft carrying 104 people has all but disappeared news of the silk air crash is met with shock in singapore home to almost half the passengers there is very little hope that anyone has survived [Music] twenty-four hours later indonesian investigator santozo syogo takes charge of the team from the national transportation safety committee empty those bags put it with the other bags for processing what we did is to go to the crash site observe and then record and preserve anything that we can use for the later investigation or small debris the scale of the disaster soon becomes evident there are no survivors all 104 passengers and crew have been killed including veteran pilot captain sue weiming and his first officer duncan ward it was just completely bewilderment as to how it might have happened in that situation you go into a complete state of shock i didn't really know what to believe the ntsc calls in navy divers and support ships to help with the recovery effort the debris is at the bottom of the river if i can describe it it's a murky water mud than the clay most of the debris was in the clay at the silk air crash site there are no bodies to mourn over searchers have found hardly any human remains at all it was just something that as a father was so horrendous that it just has an enormous psychological effect on you the 737 is the most popular commercial airliner in the world five new 300 series jets roll off the boeing assembly line every month having one fall from the sky on a calm clear day without any indication of trouble sends a chill through the entire industry investigators are under intense pressure to figure out what went wrong following the crash of silk air 185 indonesian investigator santoso syogo faces the biggest challenge of his career fortunately he won't have to face it alone because the 737 is american made us air accident investigator greg feith joins the investigation he's one of the ntsb's top investigators sentosa with more than 17 years of experience and thanks for coming so soon ah glad to help i know you guys are stretched pretty thin initially when we were working with the indonesians they had never done any kind of wreckage recovery like this before we in the states had had a lot of experience with a variety of different accidents investigators initially suspect some catastrophic mechanical failure but don't know which part could be to blame tough to get a debris pattern it's all under water without knowing how the wreckage is distributed it's hard to know where to start we need the recorders one of our primary concerns was trying to get the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder because that was really going to help in establishing the course of of the investigation what directions what elements that we really needed to focus our energies on it's okay 185 maintain three five zero at party contact singapore one three four point four silker one eight five roger one thirty four four the plane's black boxes the electronic recording devices capture every sound in the cockpit and provide a detailed picture of how the plane was flying and the cvr and the fdr will record all the way till impact without them the investigation is crippled but for the divers on the moosie river the search is proving difficult the visibility in the water was basically six inches in front of your face they had to swim down and feel on the bottom in the mud what they thought were pieces grab them and bring them to the surface we didn't know if we were gonna get the cvr and or the fdr if the black boxes are embedded deep in the mud they may be beyond reach silk air flight trainer peter macmillan joins the team he has knowledge of the airline and personal experience working with both pilots i was basically sent there as a conduit between the investigation and silk air to explain any silk air procedures to investigators to understand flight 185 sudden dive he studies indonesian radar returns that show the plane's flight path the aircraft's transponder identifies it on the radar screens and it could also show the height of the aircraft and it could actually with some calculation determine the speed of the aircraft macmillan calculates that the flight time from take-off to the last recorded radar return was just under 36 minutes good luck take a look at this [Music] the first 35 minutes are completely normal but the last 30 seconds of the radar plot paint a terrifying picture the aircraft disappeared from radar returns when it went below twenty thousand feet but when the aircraft left thirty five thousand feet to below twenty thousand feet it gave an approximate rate of descent of over thirty thousand feet per minute the maximum rate of descent is normally in the order of five six seven thousand feet per minute so this was a descent of great magnitude investigators determined that in the seconds before impact the plane was traveling faster than the speed of sound investigators are desperate to recover the black boxes they intensify the music river salvage effort we brought in heavy assets which was this ocean-sized dredge 20-25 foot bucket that was able to scoop very large mounds of mud out of the moosie river but the river is vast almost a kilometer wide even with the dredger the black boxes may never be found [Music] they could be anywhere [Music] see i'll go here glass i think we found something important but it's not in the river it's on land on land where about four kilometers east of the river we've got debris east of the river they may have their first solid lead witnesses said that they saw parts or things fluttering down that landed in the jungle aircraft debris litters a site in the sumatran rainforest just east of where flight 185 hit the muzi river this is part of the horizontal stabilizer be sure to get the gps coordinates we did in fact find that the horizontal stabilizers of the airplane the two small stabilizers on the back had come off in flight the fragments are from control surfaces on the plane's tail section small elevators on the very back edge of the tail help pitch the plane up and down we're 4.5 kilometers east of the main crash site the distance tells them that these fragments were among the first to break off a key finding if parts of the tail broke away at cruising altitude that might explain the sudden dive what's more it may point to a larger problem because of the history of the 737 we were concerned about the horizontal stabilizers having separated from the rest of the aircraft in flight though the 737 is generally regarded as a safe airplane it has a disturbing chapter in its history a dangerous malfunction known as rudder hard over rather hard over means there is a rather kick to the one side of the aircraft so the the aircraft will have an unusual attitude the rudder would actually move all by itself without being commanded by the captain or the first officer through the rudder pedals in 1991 nearly seven years before the silk air crash a united airlines 737 on approach to colorado springs took a sudden roll to the right it hit the ground seconds later killing everyone on board three years later it happened again 132 people died when a us air 737 crashed near pittsburgh both accidents were caused by the same type of rudder malfunction that was a big concern because all the sudden now you have the airplane doing things that the crew isn't anticipating okay wrap it up investigators fear that the deadly rudder phenomenon may have struck again if the rudder had failed and it had gone hard over as we had seen in these other events that would have exposed it to higher aerodynamic loads and would have separated from the aircraft even more disturbing the rudder problem was supposed to have been solved boeing engineers came up with a fix before construction even began on the 737 that crashed in indonesia for the accident aircraft boeing already modified the clutter so the question is why would this airplane have had an experience like that given the fact that it had the modifications to the rudder it is now crucial that the team figure out exactly when flight 185's tail section broke off did it detach at 35 000 feet throwing the plane into a dive or did something else cause the rapid descent causing the tail to break off on the way down we had to examine the wreckage see how these stabilizers came off and then put that storyline together on day five of the investigation there's a major breakthrough divers have found a key piece of the investigative puzzle in the mud at the bottom of the muzi river the accident happened on the 19th december and we discovered flight data recorder in the afternoon of the 24th one day before christmas i can't confirm it is the fdr slightly damaged but it doesn't look too bad it was kept in clean water just to preserve the information on it so it would so it would not deteriorate if the fdr recording has survived investigators should soon know exactly when flight 185's tail section began to break off it's up to the guys in washington now we sent the flight data recorder to our laboratories at the national transportation safety board because the indonesians didn't have a lab facility like that meanwhile salvage teams continue to sift through tons of mud pulled from the river in the hope that the second black box will soon turn up at the hangar the search is on for another missing piece of the plane i need to find the power control units called the pcu i got a photo of one here and that's what we're looking for the power control unit or pcu is the component proven to have caused rudder failure in previous 737 crashes one of the problems with the power control unit on the 737 was that through contamination or environmental conditions you could bind up parts of the the component no one knows if the critical component has been found if it has the pcu could give investigators a very important clue it's been 20 days since flight 185 disappeared into the musee river the dredging operation is being wound down there is nothing more they can collect from from the crest side so they decide to stop the dredging operation hope of finding the second black box is all but gone but at the hangar in palumbang that's what we're looking for thank you long hours spent combing through aircraft debris has finally paid off can you wheel that air compressor over here greg feith can finally examine flight 185's power control unit the critical component responsible for the previous rudder malfunctions if they had a rather hard over the opening up of rather pcu will indicate that they have experienced their rather hard over fife checks for any sign of contamination or corrosion the actuation looks good there was no corrosion inside the rather pcu this thing worked fine when the rudder pcr was recovered it was examined by engineers and investigators and found to be perfectly serviceable rudder failure did not bring down silk air flight 185 investigators conclude that the tail debris found on land was ripped away during the plane's supersonic plunge those stabilizers separated from the rest of the airplane at around 10 to 12 000 feet the aerodynamic forces basically took those flight control surfaces off the airplane but that didn't answer what prompted it the pilots themselves may have left clues about what went wrong at 35 000 feet but unless the missing cockpit voice recorder turns up soon those clues will be gone for good we are not very optimistic because of the the situations at that time are you there anything to report the cvr was found on the last day of dredging and it was found under 27 feet of mud under the bottom of the mercy river it was very fortunate the second recorder appears to be in good shape the cvr was then handed over to santososiogo and he and i then accompanied it to the ntsb in washington we had to get them back to the united states to be read out and we were just hoping that they were in a condition where they were going to give us what we needed with the second black box on its way to washington investigators may finally have the evidence they need to solve the mystery of silk air 185 three weeks into the investigation santoso sayogo travels to the ntsb headquarters to deliver the silk air cvr when i arrived in washington the flight data recorder already been read out a printout of flight 185's flight data recorder shows air speed altitude direction and dozens of other parameters but there's a problem what happened here they told me that the flight data recorder was stopped in the air for the first 34 minutes and 14 seconds all the flight parameters are normal then suddenly nothing no data at all they were a cruising altitude with autopilot on [Music] the fdr ceased recording approximately one minute before the aircraft commences final descent investigators are baffled why would the flight data recorder on a newly built 737 suddenly stop during a routine flight in clear calm weather and why just moments later did the plane plummet to earth the mystery only grows deeper than you are when the team looks for answers on the cockpit voice recorder good afternoon ladies and gentlemen this is your captain my name is zooey ming on the flight deck this afternoon with me is first officer duncan ward we'd like to welcome you aboard and we are now climbing it's just a normal flight um the crew were communicating as they normally do and with the cabin crew there appeared to be nothing untoward at all i'm back for a while finishing lunch i am crew never expressed any problem with the aircraft it was normal communications as best we could tell it's a wonder the last noise that we heard on the cvo recording was the snap of a sue's shoulder harness hit the floor after that the cockpit voice recorder stopped that's it just like the fdr the cvr stops abruptly but not at the same time the cockpit voice recorder went dead six minutes sooner that's almost impossible the flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorders are extremely right reliable instruments powerful is happening very rarely on the 737 both recorders are located in the rear of the plane they both draw power from the main electrical system there was nothing to suggest that they should have stopped recording until the airplane went into into the water so the question was why did they stop did something happen in the air to the electrical system that caused the power to shut off there must be an explanation maybe a short circuit find out what you can in a maintenance hangar technicians aboard a 737 run tests on the plane's cockpit voice recorder okay ready one two three overload are we set up please they overload the recorder's electrical circuit to see what it takes to get the breaker to pop let's run it again one two three overload during the test they discover that it's possible to overload the circuit and trigger the breaker but they discover something else when a power surge causes the circuit breaker to pop it makes quite a loud sound we can clearly hear the signature voice of the circuit breaker pop out when the test recordings are played back one two three overlook they discover that the cvr keeps recording for a split second after power cuts out one two three overlook just long enough to capture the sound of its own circuit breaker popping the cockpit microphone definitely picked up the sound the small noise has big implications now let's hear the end of the flight 185 recording i'm back for a while here's your lunch oh yeah some water [Music] again please reviewing the final seconds of the silk air recording they hear no last second snapping sound you don't hear it on the cockpit force recorder we we don't hear anything at all that told us that the electronic device did not fail from an overload where you get a surge in power that could have popped the circuit breaker two recorders on two separate circuits failed within minutes of each other and there's no evidence of any electrical fault pulling the breaker by hand makes almost no sound at all it leads investigators to an unsettling conclusion the only remaining possibility is that it was manually tripped someone in the cockpit disabled the recorders on purpose we couldn't find any physical evidence as to why those boxes would have failed from a component standpoint you know what this means i do i don't like it but i do it didn't pop because of an overload or a surge but in fact somebody would have manually manipulated the circuit breaker to shut down each of the boxes from recording it's against the laws of commercial aviation to tamper with the flight recorders investigators have a disturbing theory about why the recorders were disabled they use a boeing flight simulator to prove it okay let's input silk flight 185 we took the data that we were able to get from the radar information and we fed it into this motion simulator to try and understand better the flight path of the airplane during its spiraling descent into the musee river they fly a simulation to see what could cause a 737 to quickly drop from 35 000 feet to just below 20 000 silk cares last radar return trigger your damper failure please they simulate a sudden mechanical failure and watch to see if the flight will follow the deadly path of flight 185 not even close they test more than 20 different scenarios and they completed exercises with simulated rudder hard overs and your damper failures and various failures of other systems but under each of those conditions they are unable to meet the parameters as recorded on radar they find there's only one way to make a 737 drop as steeply and quickly as silk air 185 this time no failure sustained pilot input only the only possible trajectory that can match is by using pilot control it takes an extraordinary effort but by rolling the plane sharply to the right and accelerating to top speed the test pilot can match the silk air profile the only way that this airplane could maintain a nose-down attitude and a high-speed dive was if somebody had flown it into that position an air disaster that took the lives of 104 people is beginning to look like a deliberate act by a skilled pilot that changed the complexion of the investigation before they can make a final judgment on the cause of the crash investigators need physical proof they find it in the plane's tail section the salvage operation has retrieved almost 75 of the 737 including a key part from the tail that could confirm if flight 185 was in a commanded dive before it hit the water one of the telltale pieces of evidence that we found was the trim jack screw for the horizontal stabilizer the jack screw is a threaded rod connected to the horizontal stabilizer it rotates when pilots press a trim switch on their control column as it turns it moves the stabilizer up or down changing the pitch of the aircraft fife calculates the final pitch angle on the stabilizer based on the jack screw's last setting it's 2.5 units it was moved deliberately to nose down from level flight what we found was that the trim was full nose down trim the stabilizer trim would have been in the crew's position there was really no reason for it to move forward it confirms that while cruising at 35 000 feet one of the pilots initiated the plane's dive by moving the stabilizer down the silk air disaster has taken on a chilling new dimension evan byrne is a psychologist and human performance investigator for the ntsb it was becoming clear that the flight crew's performance could not be ruled out as a potential cause of the accident one of the two pilots likely crashed the plane on purpose killing everyone on board throughout our investigation we are looking at both pilots their professional background their personal background what activities they were performing in the days before the accident they looked at everything they examined everything in great detail i had great confidence in the ntsb i had great confidence in the technical investigators themselves i'm back for a while finish your lunch i am some water the last conversation on the cvr indicates that first officer ward was alone shortly before the plane went into a dive 185 five minutes later ward was still on headset 134.4 silker 185 roger 135 and two minutes after that the plane fell into a dive the key question who was at the controls [Music] tell me a bit about duncan the questions related to every aspect of duncan's state of mind and and psychology also trying to establish whether or not he had any possible motive for trying to sabotage the aircraft and did he seem at all depressed in recent weeks bern finds the duncan ward got on well with colleagues he had no debts and no history of depression his co-workers pilots that he flew with were all highly uh positive about his performance and skills in the cockpit he learns that su wei ming was a married father of three school-age boys good afternoon ladies and gentlemen this is your captain at silk air the former air force top gun was on the fast track but as they learn from a former colleague ming's record was not spotless what was ming like to fly with he was known as a pilot who liked to push the envelope as far as increasing speed to try to complete flights faster than others i did hear reports from other pilots that they did try to cut corners at times by cutting sector times cruising at increased speed investigators learned that six months before the silk air disaster ming had made a fast swerving landing he flew in so fast that it made passengers sick [Music] i disagree the landing was fine the airline took disciplinary action when the company investigated surway ming was demoted from a line instructor pilot to an ordinary line captain investigators dig deeper we learned that the captain was under significant financial stress about the time of the accident the trouble stemmed from high-risk online securities trading over the last four years ming had lost more than a million dollars shortly before the accident for the second time in 1997 captain sue's trading privileges in the singapore stock market was suspended because of debts that he'd accumulated they learned that on the morning of the flight sue weiming had promised to repay the debt as soon as he got back to singapore but the date of the crash was important for another reason as well the silk air accident occurred on the 19th of december which was also a significant date in captain sue's air force career 18 years earlier to the day on december the 19th 1979 su-wei ming took off on an air force training mission with three other fighter pilots but he had to turn back during the course of that flight because of a mechanical problem with his airplane get his compatriots kept on going ming's squadron mates were all killed on that mission when their fighters slammed into a cloud-covered mountain at least two of the pilots on board would have been very close friends to captain sue one of two silk air pilots committed a brutal callus act safe to say that ward is not our guy though the evidence is circumstantial investigators are convinced su wei ming is the one responsible for the murder of 97 passengers and seven crew but how exactly did he manage to carry out such a horrendous crime [Music] no one can know for certain what happened aboard flight 185 but investigators have a likely scenario silk air 185 maintaining three five zero it has been six months since ming was demoted by the airline such a demotion to an up-and-coming singapore pilot would be a major blow to his morale so 185 maintain 350 clear director party the 1997 asian financial crisis has thrown the region's economies into turmoil the singapore stock market has taken a beating traders like ming are hurting the stresses in captain sue's financial background may have served as a distraction it may have affected his performance in other ways as well piloting a jet on the anniversary of the day he cheated death 18 years ago ming makes a fateful decision i'm back for a while finish your lunch i am some water if he was going back his right hand would have probably been within inches of the cockpit voice recorder circuit breaker it's not difficult to pull one of those leaving the cockpit without the other pilot being aware of it silk air 185 at party contact singapore one three four point four silver one eight five roger one thirty four four ming waits until after the last radio call before returning to the cockpit okay there's a problem in the galley he could easily have said to duck and lord the girls want to see you in the back there might be a leaky tap or something like that all the person remaining in the cockpit has to do is to lock the door if the circuit breaker the to the flight data recorder is pulled it illuminates a master caution there's one in front of each pilot so that's why he really couldn't do that while there's another pilot in the cockpit the cockpit voice recorder was no longer recording the flight data recorder was no longer recording ming wants no record of what he's about to do next the flight profile is one that tsuwei meng would have been quite familiar with because he'd been in the singapore air force less than a minute after disabling the fdr ming puts the 737 into a hard right role he places in an inverted dive approximately 80 degrees nose down and if you had to use considerable force on the control column to keep it there duncan ward now has no hope of saving the plane i know that he would have done whatever he could it's all over in less than a minute three years after the silk air disaster indonesia's national transportation safety committee releases a report that comes to a surprising conclusion we submit to the to the chairman but the chairman seems doesn't like what what we submitted the chairman of indonesia's ntsc overrules his investigators declaring in the report that the crash cannot be explained he argues that the cause can't be known because the final seconds of the flight were not recorded it was kind of shocking this was a political cover-up i think there's no other word for it in an unprecedented move the ntsb publicly contradicts the indonesian report i authored on behalf of the the ntsb a very long document explaining that this was an intentional act not an accident i don't think any sane investigator would find any other cause for the crash air accident investigators can only offer conclusions based on the evidence they have the silk air disaster is a reminder that sometimes evidence can point different people in different directions if you wish to do somebody a great harm you couldn't do much more than to kill one of their children [Music] and then try and cover up that fact and lie about it i know that duncan would have wanted the truth to come out you

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

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Id: No4vbRXfHP0

Length: 44min 1sec (2641 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 07 2021