a md-11 departs new york for geneva switzerland for swiss air with 229 people (215 passengers 12 flight attendants and the 2 pilots) on board that night under the command of captain ur zinaman and fo stefan lowe. the takeoff is normal and despite not communicating for the first 15 miuntes after take off which is unusal but not a problem. at 948pm the plane contacts moncton canada atc they make their first communication at flight level 330 nothing unusal yet. on swiss air in 1998 the airline had just introduced personal tvs which are new in 1998 (when the flight took place). at just after 1010pm the first sign of trouble the crew notitce an odd smoke like smell the crew think its an air conditioning issue and discuss with a flight attendant but don’t think its serious yet but they notice it as well but its not in the cabin but less than a minute the smells back so they decide to divert the flight requesting boston 300 miles behind them but the controller suggests halifax canada 66 miles dead ahead so they decide on halifax the crew call pan pan pan (one step below mayday). they are told to decend to flight level 310. it takes a minute to realise their position and head to halifax the pan was call at 1014pm. they are given another decent to 290 and hands them to halifax control and controller bill pickerel. the crew aren’t rushing their decent and theres no smoke in the cabin they predict 20 minutes to land. pickerel tells them 3000 feet but the pilots request 8000 to keep the cabin clear. the controller is worried about though they are too high but tells them to expect runway 06. the crew aren’t familiar with halifax so get the flight bag to find the charts. when the pilots are told 30 miles they are still way too high at over 20000 feet then they realise another problem they need to dump fuel so they make the decision to dump over the ocean which is a bigger risk to the plane if someone goes wrong (They could have over the airport) so they are sent over st margets bay the fo wants to avoid dumping fuel but the captain insists. they will be within 25 miles of the airoprt and only decend to 10000 feet. the crew than turn the cabin power off this is a critical thing as it will have an effect on the fire that will be a problem even though the cabins safe. at 1024pm the crisis gets much worse firstly the autopilot fails due to the instrumenets going crazy within 2 minutes everything pretty much fails even though they are given a block altitude and the fire enters the cockpit and the controller misses the emergency call which pickerill goes over today. at 1025pm the cvr fails the plane flies for 6 minutes still but crashes into the ocean killing everyone on board instantly the captain acctually gets up to fight the fire the controller still doesn’t know until the crash whats happening. the plane is in 3 million pieces infact and only one body is even intact. the investigation is difficult they know about the cockpit fire. the blackboxese don’t reveal much new other than the plane was under control till they failed 6 minutes before the crash. they finally find an arched wire to do with the entertaiment system in first class it confirms the fire was behind the cockpit. the cabin bus switch turning off meant it overheated the entertaiment and turned the fans that where keeping it out of the cockpit the fire. swissair disable the entertaiment system even though it was the direct cause. people are critical of the pilots focusing on the checklist not focusing on landing but that wasn’t the cause of the crash though but i disagree the flight was completly doomed at the start of the emergency. the investigation changes from the cause of the fire to what fueled it the flamable material. it is found that 1 minute before impact fo shut down the no 2 engine and there was no evidence people in the cabin about the problem. flamable material is eventually removed from most aircraft. swissair goes bankrupt 3 years after the crash due to the incident and 9/11.
next time a piece of tape kills 70 people.
Harrison’s world 