Why Did Flight 574 Disappear From The Radar? | Lost In Space | Mayday: Air Disaster

[Music] january the first two 2007 surabaya indonesia it's new year's day there are celebrations throughout the country [Music] surabaya's airport is bustling [Music] and not just because of the holidays [Music] indonesia is experiencing a boom of budget airlines many people are taking advantage of the cheaper fares for the average indonesian it meant that the explosion of low-cost carriers made it much more possible to actually get on a plane and fly one of those new airlines is adam air [Music] good afternoon departure this is adam 574 was successful because it provided a fresh image to the industry and they came in with you know bright colors the airplanes were painted in fantastic orange the crew was in a flashy uniform you know they had everything right going for them captain referee widodo has been flying with adam air for six months today he's in command of flight 574 a short domestic flight his co-pilot yoga susanto has been with the airline for almost a year and a half before the discount travel boom many passengers wouldn't have been able to afford this flight more and more people were able to fly could afford the tickets and they didn't care too much about the services offered simply because they just were intent on getting from point a to point b as cheaply as possible [Music] there are 96 passengers and six crew members on today's flight [Music] controllers at the airport are busy juggling planes i get about 74 v1 rotate [Music] today's flight is a routine two-hour hop from surabaya on the island of java to monado on the island of sulawesi almost 1700 kilometers northeast [Music] it's the beginning of the rainy season weather is unpredictable forecasters are expecting fierce storms captain wadodo is aware that there may be bad weather ahead [Music] turn right direct to fandom and climb to flight level 330. roger turn right direct to fandom and climb to flight level three three zero atom five seven four minutes after takeoff the crew turns on the autopilot the flight computer will fly the plane and navigate it along a pre-planned route to monado [Music] [Music] now passing flight level two to zero climbing to flight level three three zero roger adam five seven four track direct two dealer confirmed tracking director diola atom 574 22 000 feet below air traffic controllers track the flight's progress on radar and confirm that it's on course the plane is beginning to experience some turbulence [Music] less than half an hour into the flight air traffic controllers notice something out of the ordinary where's head of direct to my god he's flying north flight 574 has flown off course and is now heading into a violent storm [Music] air traffic controllers don't know why yes on board the plane the pilots try to understand how far they have drifted off course the irs 28 is the difference and try to fix the problem with the computerized system that handles navigation [Music] i have your attention this is your captain speaking we are about to experience some turbulence but all the passengers returned to their seats controllers on the ground try to get flight 574 back on course giving them directions to their next assigned waypoint called diode 574 maintain 350 direct two diola confirm flight level 350 direct diola atom 574 but to get there flight 574 must pass through a severe storm 137 kilometer an hour winds beat on the plane's hull it's pounded by hail and rain the weather is making it hard to see the crew is not just concerned with the weather they're still also trying to understand the problem with the plane's navigation system this is messed up getting lost over the ocean is everyone's worry because when you lose your navigational instruments or you lose trust of your navigation instruments what do you do co-pilot susanto consults the aircraft's handbook it's starting to fly like a bamboo ship captain widodo doesn't know where he is he needs directions confirm our position 574 confirm our position please roger out of 574 position is one two five miles mike hilo sierra crossing radial 307. mikey kilo sierra the weather micro sierras isn't good the storm is growing worse this is crazy we're going to get lost if it stays like this captain widodo wants to take over navigation of the plane from the flight computer okay put the ir as an attitude but suddenly a warning the autopilot has disengaged completely then many of susanto's computerized instruments go blank the crew doesn't notice that their plane is rolling over flight 574 is banking at a dangerous angle to enter this if it rolls too far over it could send the plane and the 102 people on board into a fatal downward spiral [Music] okay put it back another one put it back or not again captain widodo wants to re-engage the flight computer's navigation system [Applause] the plane is still rolling and now its nose has started to point downward another alarm tells the pilots that they are entering a steep descent don't turn it is stuff item 574 you jump control five seven four you jump control item five seven four radar service terminated please contact you jump control at one two eight decimal one inexplicably flight 574 has disappeared news of adam air flight 574's disappearance spreads quickly the indonesian government starts mobilizing search and rescue teams to find it first air marshal eddie suento will coordinate the search and rescue on the 1st of january 2007 i received a verbal notification from the vice assistant operation head of air force that adamer had not landed in manado indonesia's national transportation safety committee or ntsc is also notified [Music] the ntsc is responsible for finding out what went wrong in any plane crash france venus is in charge of investigating adam air 574 the first steps that we take when there was an accident or serious incident we will find all the resources that we have and get the team together before we dispatch to the area [Music] working with air traffic control the searchers try to pinpoint the last recorded location of flight 574 [Music] i received the report that adam air was lost from the radar the plane was last detected by radar as it was crossing the sea about halfway through its intended journey okay so right around here but the plane could have flown hundreds of kilometers after that signal was received it's impossible to pinpoint the exact location when the aircraft went missing it was a bit of a shock for everybody because in this day and age nobody expects an aircraft to go missing without a specific location searchers try to figure out how large an area to scan since they know how much fuel was on board investigators can calculate how far the plane could have flown since it was last detected if this is their last radar they didn't have enough fuel to fly any further than this more than 3 000 people are sent out to look for the plane the indonesians are joined by a u.s navy vessel but the area they have to search is the size of ireland the teams don't even know whether to look on land or on water and as long as there was no definitive word hope remained 12 hours pass without any confirmed sightings and then friends and relatives hopes are raised with news that survivors have been found [Music] a new report came in saying that they had found the adam air wreckage in the mountainous area of palawali rescue teams hurry to the island of sulawesi hoping to return survivors to their families they also hope to discover what went wrong on board the plane when news broke that some people might have survived the crash the already incredibly stressed and emotional families of the survivors thought whoa maybe there is a chance maybe my wife cousin husband brother has survived [Music] but when the first officials get there they find that these survivors are not from the flight at all so they were fairy survivors [Music] not airplane survivors there from a ship that sank in another storm near where flight 574 is thought to have crashed now the rescue teams are back to square one it let people's hopes up and people flocked to makassar and they were finding ways how to get to the crash site i don't need to find out it's not there for family members it's a bitter disappointment we were ashamed because the information was already spread all over before we verified it our government was embarrassed that we publicized that information it's been a week since the crash [Music] with each passing day the chance of finding any survivors grows smaller there was still no clear picture of exactly where the plane had crashed and how it had gone down and why it had gone down venus needs to locate the wreckage as soon as possible most of all he needs the two black boxes that record conversations in the cockpit and flight data there are beacons attached to the boxes but they only have a 30-day battery life [Music] nine days after the crash of adam air flight 574 a fisherman finds what he thinks might be part of an airplane 300 meters off the coast of sulawesi the piece is taken to an indonesian air force base for analysis france wieners quickly identifies that it is part of a right elevator he examines it to see if it belongs to adam air flight 574 we checked with the seri numbers we checked with the part numbers the numbers match so we are definitely sure that it is from the aircraft the finding confirms that flight 574 crashed at sea the team can now narrow down its search to the area where the elevator was found [Music] since the accident involves an american-made plane the u.s national transportation safety board joins the investigation and they send structural engineer clint crookshanks to indonesia we started working with the ntsc do to look at radar data air traffic transmissions weather data trying to bring all that information together to to find the airplane the water that investigators plan to search for wreckage is 6500 feet deep much too deep to send down divers it was quite deep water deeper than uh than we're normally used to recovering airplanes from the indonesian government wants adam air to pay for the salvage operation investigators meet with representatives of the airline it is going to be expensive we need to hire contractors to go down that far adam ayer felt that its responsibility only went so far the government and most of public opinion believe that adamer's responsibility was actually almost total because they were the owners of the airline the airline refuses to pay for the salvage triggering a lengthy negotiation this is not good news for france wieners unless someone puts up the money to search the seabed for wreckage the mystery of flight 574 will not be solved it is also a blow to the families of the victims the families obviously wanted to know what had happened to their loved ones and they did want the government and anime to combine to get the flight data recorders out of the water as the investigation stalls public anger grows people were becoming more and more critical of adam air and the way it was being run but then after seven months of negotiating this is good news thank you adam air agrees to help pay for the salvage [Music] phoenix international an american company specializing in deep water salvage starts the operation on august the 24th but the time they've lost has had a serious consequence [Music] although they have a fix on the location of the crash the locator beacons attached to the black boxes have gone dead if the black boxes are not found it will be a mystery until today without the beacon finding two small boxes among the wreckage will be a huge challenge [Music] to make matters worse adam air has only put up enough money for one week of searching so it was like go out there if you don't find anything in seven days you're done after locating debris with sonar an unmanned remote-controlled submarine is sent down to look for the black boxes [Music] all right how are we doing we dove on one location first we got to that gps location there was nothing there pull up quadrant three so we sat down and decided we'd do a grid search about that point and so we did a very methodical search okay three degrees all right slow slow [Music] we're coming up on something we started picking up small lightweight pieces of airplane wreckage things like life vests seat trays light bits of metal oh my god this is it investigators get their first look at the wreckage this plane is ripped apart the state of the wreckage illustrates just how violent this plane crash was the little pieces of wreckage didn't tell us anything about the cause of the crash they did tell us however that the airplane hit the water at a very high rate of speed this was the most fragmented airplane that i have ever seen only two days into the operation crookshank spots something all right stop rotate back five degrees i noticed on the left side of the video screen something that appeared to be orange and i instructed the rov operator to take a closer look at it that's it that's that's it okay once we got over there we realized that yeah that's this in fact was the fdr the plane's flight data recorder has been found all right good work joe let's get this up we were very excited that we had seen and recovered one of the boxes investigators soon find the cockpit voice recorder nearby that's it [Music] their week is up the salvage operation is over investigators now hope that they have all the clues they need to solve this accident the black box is the only source for the evidence that we have because we don't have the brackets we don't have the witnesses but the boxes have been lying on the bottom of the sea for almost eight months they could be damaged beyond repair they may not yield any information at all the black boxes from adam air flight 574 are taken to the national transportation safety board in washington dc investigators think the labs there are the best bet at salvaging any possible information if an fdr is found in salt water it needs to be washed in fresh water and then contained in water the entire time until it makes it to our lab salt and air together create a chemical reaction that results in rust the rust can damage the electronic components in the recorders keeping them submerged in fresh water delays that reaction the importance of having the data depends on the circumstances of the accident if you're able to recover wreckage in other parts to investigate then you don't necessarily need to rely on the data for this particular accident since the wreckage was going to stay at the bottom of the ocean it was essential that we had data from the recorders france wenis also makes the trip to the united states the fdr and the cpr when they were recovered from the bottom of the sea the cases were actually 50 to 60 damage we thought there might be an issue in in recovering the data it wasn't as damaged as many others we've seen so we were fairly confident if there was data recorded we would be able to get the data off technicians begin the painstaking process of retrieving the information the job is a multinational effort the australian transport safety bureau was requested to assist we have an excellent relationship with the ntsb folk and so our flight recorder specialist went to the united states and worked alongside the ntsb the electronic components containing the data are carefully removed and dried then the information is uploaded onto a computer as the delicate procedure of recovering the data from both recorders progresses investigators are aware that they have an additional concern as you can tell one problem that we ran up against in this investigation is the maintenance records indicated that the flight data recorder was written up as being inoperable in the weeks prior to the crash we were concerned with that in that if we found the fdr it may not have recorded anything investigators keep their fingers crossed [Music] we've got it all it's all there [Music] i was confident once we found out that we had 100 of the data that we would be able to solve this accident [Music] the two black boxes provide investigators with the first solid clues about why flight 574 fell from the sky good afternoon departure atom574 now passing flight level two two zero climbing to flight level three three zero roger five seven four track direct two dealer confirmed tracking directed diola at five seven conversation in the cockpit tells investigators that the crew knew that the plane's navigation system was sending them off course the irs 28 is the difference they're drifting and that they were preoccupied with fixing that problem that's just messed up [Music] where's adam direct to my god he's flying north to get from one waypoint to the next the flight computer always has to know the plane's exact location that information comes from a component called the irs or inertial reference system it tracks every adjustment to the plane's course to calculate its exact position it then feeds that information to the autopilot the autopilot needs to know where the aircraft is and where it needs to go now the autopilot takes those data from the irs in terms of height heading and speed but for the system to keep track of the plane's heading it has to know where the plane started the irs has to be calibrated before takeoff usually the crew will enter the coordinates of the gate as the starting point for the computer to track investigators wonder if the irs guided the plane off course because the wrong initial coordinates were entered [Music] we just got this they check this by looking at information from the flight data recorder the numbers are fine when they're on the ground yes the data confirms the irs was calibrated before adam air flight 574 took off this is where it begins but for some reason the irs began to send the plane off course almost as soon as the flight got in the air it just just gets worse and worse i have something else i'd like to show you some maintenance logs crookshanks and wieners look at the maintenance history of the irs system that was on board flight 574 as you can tell there's more than 100 write-ups here look at this same unit the same problem that's right the history shows that there had been numerous complaints about the plane's navigation system over the past three months again and again investigators wonder why the airline didn't fix the problem in the case of the irs of this aircraft that unit should have been taken out and sent to maintenance for calibration for repairs investigators discover that when pilots complained about a faulty irs unit the airline didn't fix it properly they would either swap it with a unit from another plane or often they would only do a basic cleaning of the malfunctioning unit they just pull up the connectors spray it with some lubricant cleaners then put it back on did some ground test and then just put ground test okay and the maintenance locked since the irs is such a vital piece of equipment this is contrary to all recommended repair policies investigators listened to the cockpit voice recorder hoping to discover how the malfunctioning irs contributed to the crash this is crazy you're going to get lost if it stays like this don't turn this this is our heading but nothing they hear leads them to believe that an irs malfunction alone could have caused the plane to crash if you have a failure in one system of the airplane it shouldn't cause an accident investigators now wonder if the severe storm flight 574 flew into somehow played a role in this crash this is messed up this is really messed up it's starting to fly like a bundle ship weather is a well-known cause of airline accidents it can wreak havoc with the airplane and disorient pilots in 1977 a southern airways dc-9 flew into a violent storm near new hope georgia our lift engine just cut out hail clogged the engines they tore themselves apart got the other engine going too the plane slammed into the small town and 72 people were killed you

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

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Id: lGxlXpx0Jew

Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021