Original subtitles

3000.

We're not getting any oxygen.

We have the terrain alarm.

We are in an emergency.

What's the worst that could happen on an airplane?

Maybe this.

There's not enough oxygen to survive up here.

A freezing wind of hurricane force

is roaring through the cabin.

- Aloha 243! - The flight crew call "Mayday"...

but nobody hears.

And the airplane is headed for a mountain.

It sounds like a nightmare.

For everyone aboard Aloha Airlines Flight 243

this is no nightmare...

It's reality.

Aloha 243, you still up?

When crash detectives discover what happened,

their verdict shakes the airline business.

This accident changed aviation history.

Some people choose to trespass in that narrow space

between life and death.

It's a scary place to be.

Surfers get there...

by chasing killer waves.

Just occasionally, fate puts ordinary people

not just thrill seekers into that same deadly zone

where life hangs by a thread.

On the afternoon of April 28th, 1988, it will happen...

in the sky over Hawaii.

At 1 p.m., Aloha Airlines Flight 243

is preparing to depart.

A Boeing 737 is on the tarmac at Hilo Airport

on Hawaii's Big Island,

the southern most of the Hawaii chain.

Flight 243 will be just a 35-minute hop to Honolulu

on the island of Oahu.

Serving the islands means that Aloha works its airplanes hard.

They make short flights but plenty of them.

This airplane has been shuttling between the islands

since early morning. It'll be its ninth flight today.

For the flight crew, it's a routine they've followed for many years.

Aloha 243...

Roger.

Captain Bob Schornstheimer has been flying for 11 years

with Aloha Airlines.

His first officer Mimi Tompkins is hoping for promotion

to captain after almost nine years with Aloha.

Did you hear any more about uh...?

Each of the flight attendants has a long service record too -

but none so long as Clarabelle Lansing -

known to everyone as just "CB".

Well Mr. Kiner, welcome!

Always good to see you CB.

You've fixed some good weather for us.

Absolutely! That's the only way...

She's been flying for 37 years,

since before the days of the first jet airliner.

- Let me help you with this. - Oh, yeah.

CB is the boss in the cabin - First flight attendant.

Michelle Honda, a 14-year veteran, is number 2.

Jane Sato Tomita has served 19 years.

This is one of the most experienced crews you'll find

in an airplane that's been criss-crossing Hawaii's islands safely,

for 19 years.

Circuit breakers?

It's made more than 89,000 flights.

On this day, only one other 737 in the entire world

beats that record.

Checked!

Passengers have no reason to doubt they're in safe hands.

Until one passenger - Gayle Yamamoto -

sees something that makes her pause.

But what is it she's concerned about?

And how worried should she be?

Do I say something?

Patricia Aubrey lives in Hilo,

but has an appointment today in Honolulu.

At first she opts for the very front of the airplane, in row 1.

But, somehow, she feels uneasy and decides to move further back.

She chooses a free seat in row 17.

At 1:25, Flight 243 is ready for take off.

This airplane often rattles and shakes on take off and landing.

But it's something the crew - and regular passengers -

have grown used to.

What's there to worry about?

Aloha Departure, this is Aloha 243

climbing through 3000.

Roger. Climbing to flight level...

Though he's the captain, Bob Schornstheimer has chosen

to take charge of radio links with air traffic control.

It's Mimi Tompkins who will fly the plane to Honolulu.

Most of the flight time is taken up in climbing

to their cruising altitude.

It'll take 20 minutes to climb to 7,300 metres.

For many passengers, soaring high over the Pacific

is all part of the daily routine.

People like salesman Howard Kitaoka, in row 5.

He makes this trip often.

When you've seen the view a hundred times...

35 minutes is precious time to catch up on paperwork.

The flight's so short that the attendants serve drinks

while they're still climbing.

They can move around.

But the passengers are still strapped in.

It's 1:45.

20 minutes into the flight,

the aircraft is at cruising height.

Aloha Centre, Aloha 243 leveling off at 2-4-0.

The crew relax.

Say where's that National Weather Service Weather Station out here?

Is that in the old tower?

In perfect flying weather,

everything is following the familiar pattern...

- What was that? - We have to get it down!

We've lost pressure...

I saw a brilliant flash of light and boom.

Everything was going...

was being sucked out of the plane.

Here's what's happened:

An explosive decompression has torn away

35 square metres of fuselage.

We were in a tremendous blast of wind.

The wind blast was unbelievable.

A mass of things just went out the plane.

You know, hair was up here.

Everybody was in their seat.

Except the stewardesses.

I saw the stewardess get smashed down in the...

in the aisle. I could see her hair blowing

and I could see blood, but-- That's all I could see of her.

Jane Sato Tomita has been struck by debris at row 2.

Michelle Honda has been thrown to the floor at row 15.

There's no sign at all of CB Lansing.

I can't hear you!

Only seconds have passed since the explosion.

The wind noise makes it impossible

for the flight crew to communicate.

- I can't hear you! - We've lost pressure!

Now, for the first time,

they gain a sense of what's happened.

Visible over a mound of tangled debris,

there's blue sky where the airplane roof used to be.

The first five rows are now completely exposed to the sky,

on both sides of the plane.

The initial threat, of being sucked out, is past,

since the airplane is now completely depressurized.

But passengers are still in danger.

My seat mate was flopping out outside the aircraft,

cause at that point, it was just the floor,

and no walls or ceiling, and so I grabbed him.

The cold and oxygen deprivation

are both potentially deadly.

Just imagine the scene up there:

the top of the airplane broken off;

the passengers don't have any ability to get supplemental oxygen

because the critical tubing that feeds that oxygen is now gone.

And at 24,000 feet with very little to breathe up there,

the passengers become incapacitated.

That's called hypoxia.

If you stay up at that altitude for any prolonged period of time,

you become more and more physically disabled.

With the top of the airplane gone,

you now have 300-mile an hour winds blowing into that cabin,

that's three times hurricane force winds.

Those people were dressed for Hawaii in the springtime,

not -50 degree temperatures.

Any period of time at 24,000 feet

and those people will die.

High above the Pacific Ocean

an extraordinary drama is unfolding...

An explosion at 7,300 metres

aboard a Boeing 737 bound for the Hawaiian island of Oahu,

tears 35 square metres of fuselage from the airplane,

exposing passengers to the sky.

The cabin is depressurized with no emergency oxygen supply.

Unless they rapidly reach a lower altitude

where they can breathe again, the passengers will die.

Captain Bob Schornstheimer takes over command of the aircraft

from first officer Mimi Tompkins.

He begins an emergency descent,

dropping 1200 metres per minute.

Its speed now increasing to more than 500 kilometres an hour.

As the aircraft hurtles down, passengers face a new terror.

Wreckage blocks their view of the cockpit,

and when the airplane split apart,

the nose dropped down by around one metre.

The plane is held together by just the narrow floor beams.

The floor was buckling up,

and you could tell the plane was bending in the middle.

Michelle Honda can't go forward far enough

to see whether the pilots are alive or dead.

She tries to make contact via the intercom.

Can anyone hear me?

The wires are severed.

As she struggles forward to try to reach the cockpit,

she gets asked the one question she can't answer.

Do we have a pilot!!

I don't know!

Do we have a pilot?

I do not know!

Can you fly a plane?

The terror of those on board can only be imagined

as she asks the one question no airplane passenger wants to hear.

Can you fly a plane?

Michelle Honda was coming up and cupping her hands

and yelling in everyone's ear individually,

"Can you fly a plane?"

It's like, what? You know! Get out of here!

Is the... Is the pilot gone, too?

You know because you couldn't tell if there was anybody up there.

Do you know how to fly a plane?

No!

First officer Mimi Tompkins tries to alert

air traffic control at Honolulu.

Recordings from the cockpit voice recorder,

the black box, analyzed later by accident investigators

provide a dramatic record of exactly what took place.

The nearest place where they can try to land

is the island of Maui.

Kahului Airport lies between two volcanic mountains.

Between them and safety lies a 3,000-metre high summit.

To fly from the location of the explosion,

to the safety of Kahului Airport,

the pilot needs to carefully maneuver

avoiding this high ground.

Can the fragile aircraft survive the stresses of turning?

Or, if they ever reach the airport of landing?

And how can those on board survive?

Jane Sato Tomita is barely conscious.

Howard Kitaoka clutches her hand...

The only faint sign of life is once,

when Jane squeezes back.

I'm not exactly sure if she was conscious,

but I did manage to squeeze her hand,

and she responded by squeezing my hand.

And we just held hands.

That simple squeeze of the hand,

at a time like that, is very...

very emotional.

Aloha 243...

Do you read me?

Mimi Tompkins is not getting through

to Honolulu Air Traffic control.

So she switches to the frequency for the tower

at Maui's Kahului Airport.

Maui tower.

Aloha 243.

Maui tower. Aloha 243.

Aircraft calling tower. Say again?

Aloha 243.

We're inbound for landing.

At 1:48,

three minutes after the explosion,

the crew make their first voice contact with the ground.

...depressurized!

Declaring an emergency!

Aloha 243. Say your position.

We're just, ah, to the east of Makena Point.

Descending out of 11,000.

Request clearance into Maui for landing.

Request the emergency equipment.

Airport fire station?

We have an Aloha 737 five minutes out.

Approximately 20 miles, clear to runway 0-2.

Decompression problems.

Pilot is declaring an emergency!

Thank you Maui tower!

In the station! In the station!

Attention in the station.

We have an in-flight emergency.

We have a 737,

five minutes out, 20 miles, runway 2.

It has decompression problems at this time.

Runway 2! Runway 2!

Aloha 243.

Okay, the equipment is on the field.

It's on the way.

At 3,000 metres flying west of the mountain,

the pilot slows the aircraft,

and as gently as possible,

begins the right-hand turn towards Kahului.

Passengers sense that someone must be in control of the aircraft.

I've had some training as a pilot.

And we were at wings level.

It wasn't in a dive or a roll, it was wings level.

At that moment I thought, "We have a chance."

Meanwhile, those on the ground are unsure

about what kind of crisis they're facing.

It's a small airport.

An airliner in trouble will test the fire crew's experience.

For the air controller,

it's hard to hear the airplane at all.

Just to verify again, you're breaking up,

your call sign is 243? Is that correct?

Or 244?

Aloha 243! Aloha 243!

Aloha 243.

Plan straight ahead for runway 0-2.

I'll keep you advised of any wind change.

Four minutes after the explosion.

At this lower altitude, they're able to remove their oxygen masks.

With their speed having dropped to a little over

380 kilometers an hour,

the wind noise decreases just enough for them to hear one another.

Do you want me to call for anything else?

No.

Aloha 243.

It looks like we've lost a door.

We have a hole in the left side of the aircraft.

= But the tower can't hear this new information.

They've lost contact with the aircraft.

Their transmissions aren't being picked up.

Aloha 243.

You still up?

Is this a radio malfunction? Or something worse?

Aloha 243?

Hearing nothing from the stricken aircraft,

the controller fears the worst.

Aloha 243.

Aloha 243? Are you still up?

Aloha 243, if you're still here, please ident!

Affirmative!

Aloha 243, Roger.

I've got your idents straight away.

Cleared to land. Wind 0-4-0 at 20 knots.

Communication is restored,

but the crew's ordeal is far from over.

Cabin.

Do you hear?

Now, Mimi Tompkins tries to contact the cabin by intercom,

but there's no response.

Well, the crew really doesn't know what's going on behind them.

The airplane is still flying...

The captain has to now maintain his focus on flying that airplane,

but he doesn't know what real damage exists behind him.

Tell them we'll need a distance to evacuate...

Right.

Maui Tower, Aloha 243! Can you hear me on tower frequency?

Aloha 243, I hear you loud and clear. Go ahead.

We're going to need assistance.

We can't communicate with the flight attendants.

We'll need assistance with the passengers when we land.

Okay. You're going to need an ambulance, is that correct?

Affirmative.

During the descent,

passengers experience moments of pure terror.

The plane kept vibrating and shaking,

and the luggage racks were falling in

and there was electrical wires flying around and zapping

and, uh, you know, pretty much pandemonium,

but it looked like the plane was ripping in half.

And suddenly there's a new problem for the flight crew to handle.

It feels like manual reversion!!

What?

The flight controls feel like manual reversion!

It feels to the pilot as though hydraulic systems

like power steering in an automobile have now failed.

The airframe is under great stress.

They need to land as soon as possible.

Can we maintain altitude okay?

There are so many thoughts that go through your head.

Like, one of my thoughts was,

uh man, don't put this thing in the water.

I mean you've got people around, you've got hurt, unconscious.

I didn't want to have to say, well,

I'm going to try to save this guy first,

or that guy first or whatever.

And don't put it in under water.

The crew fear that critical wiring and control cables

may have been severed.

Have any of the airplane's vital parts been damaged?

Let's try flying with the gear down!

All right. You've got it!

There are lights to indicate whether or not the landing gear

has safely deployed.

The main undercarriage has extended as normal.

But the light showing that the nose wheel has extended

doesn't come on.

The last thing the pilot wanted to see

especially with his airplane in the condition it was in

was that he didn't have a nose gear,

because when the plane touched down on the runway,

it would have broken the airplane apart,

therefore breaking probably the fuel tanks apart,

which could lead to a very dramatic fire and explosion.

A second attempt to extend the landing gear.

The nose gear light is still out.

But the radio link is so bad,

the tower is still trying to assimilate the crisis.

Aloha 243.

Just to verify, you do need an ambulance.

Is that correct?

They still don't understand! Affirmative!

Roger. How many do you think are injured?

We have no idea.

We can't communicate with our flight attendants.

Okay. We'll have the ambulance on the way

There's a possibility that we won't have a nose gear!

Now Bob Schornstheimer has to make a critical decision.

Should he wait for confirmation that the undercarriage is down?

Or land anyway?

The textbook in this case would tell the pilots to over fly the airfield

so that the air traffic controllers can look at the landing gear

and give them a report whether it's up or down.

The pilots would then have to maneuver the airplane

all the way around the airfield

come in for an approach and land.

But with an airplane which might break apart at any moment,

that's out of the question.

Tell him we've got problems, but we're going to land anyway,

even without a nose gear.

But they should be aware that we don't have a nose gear indication down.

Aloha 243. Wind now 0-5-0.

The emergency equipment is in place.

Okay. Be advised we have no nose gear.

We are landing with no nose gear!

Okay. If you need any other assistance, advise.

We'll need all the equipment you've got!

Maui is not an ideal place to head for

with a damaged airplane.

The island's exposed north shore lies directly in the path

of the trade winds.

I've done that landing, a lot of times,

and that particular approach corridor is very windy

because of the mountain on one side, a mountain on the other.

So, it's a very bumpy approach.

But, ah, that's basically all we had.

Get in a brace position! Brace yourself!

Brace yourself! Get down!

Any kind of inflight turbulence that would have put

great stresses on the front end of the airplane

and there's a high probability that the cockpit

would have separated from the rest of the fuselage.

Catastrophic loss of the airplane and loss of life.

With the airfield now in sight,

Bob Schornstheimer has more critical decisions to make.

He begins to slow the aircraft for landing.

Let's try flaps 15...

An airplane's flaps are sliding panels

at the back of the wings.

To increase lift at low speeds,

they need to be extended during takeoff and landing.

Is it easier to control with the flaps up?

Yeah.

Put them back to five.

Can you give me a Vspeed for a flaps five landing?

No two aircraft landings are the same.

Pilots have to factor in many things:

the wind speed and direction, passenger and fuel load,

and the length of the runway before them.

Do you want the flaps right down as we land?

What?

Do you want the flaps right down as we land?

Yeah, but after we've touched down.

Okay.

A complicated formula provides the 'Vref',

indicating the safe landing speed.

Even in a crisis like this,

pilots have to reach for the manual.

Extending the flaps fully will help act as a brake

once they touch down.

But to do it earlier could stress the airframe to breaking point.

What you have to remember is that the pilots weren't trained

to handle a situation like this.

With the top of their airplane missing,

they became test pilots.

The aerodynamic effects of the airplane

were drastically different than they were used to.

They really had to fly by the seat of their pants.

Aloha 243. Wind now 0-5-0 at 20.

Vref 40 plus 30 for flaps 1 through flaps 15.

What? Wait!

Ah...

Using her flight manual,

the first officer makes the complicated calculation

that will give their correct landing speed.

Right!

The safe speed for landing, taking into account

the length of Kahului's runway 2,

is calculated to be 152 knots, 282 kilometres an hour.

As the airplane slows, it becomes much harder to control.

And so the pilot has to make another crucial call.

Speeding up, to keep control,

means he'll hit the runway faster than he should.

He gambles that the higher speed landing

is still the best option.

Our approach speed I felt was hot,

I mean we were coming in hot.

I don't know, don't ask me how many miles an hour it was cause I don't know,

but from other landings, we were coming in fairly hot.

Crash rescue teams prepare themselves

for a worst-case scenario.

At high speed and without the nose gear,

a crash landing followed by a catastrophic fuel fire

now seems inevitable.

Under these conditions, the lack of a nose gear

could have been a death sentence for everyone aboard this aircraft.

A Boeing 737 with 95 people on board

has suffered an explosive decompression

near the Hawaiian island of Maui.

It's still airborne but only just,

with 35 square metres of fuselage missing from the Aloha plane.

As they prepare for an emergency landing,

warning lights indicate that the forward landing gear

has not deployed.

If so, the airplane will most likely crash and burn.

In the 12 horrifying minutes since the explosion,

some passengers are convinced they're not going to make it alive.

I thought it was going to go in the water.

And, uh, I was eaten by sharks.

And then, we saw the mountain

and I didn't think we were going to make it over it.

I just knew we were going to crash into that mountain.

And then when we could tell,

we could see the airport and then, you know,

then I burned to death, because the plane blew up when we...

When we hit the runway.

Suddenly, the news the pilots have been praying for.

The gear is down!

Make a phone call with command, the gear is down!

Okay thanks.

Aloha 243, just for your information the gear appears down.

The gear appears down.

Want me to go to flaps 40? Help you?

No. On the ground.

The crew have had to make life or death decisions.

In the next few seconds,

they'll find out whether they're the right ones.

Michelle Honda cradles her injured colleague

as the critical moment approaches.

Passengers comfort one other,

in what may be their last moments alive.

A woman that was sitting next to me and her husband,

he was on the other side, in the next row up,

and she was next to me.

And they were reaching their hands out

and they were trying to touch fingers to say goodbye.

That was a really touching moment for me.

It was when I really knew I was going to die

because they were saying goodbye to each other.

What gave me the most comfort,

was knowing that my wife and my kids

knew what I felt.

That was great comfort.

I didn't need to tell them anything further,

"I love you", or, you know "I worry about you",

because I felt that I had already said that.

Though the forward undercarriage has extended,

the crew still can't be certain whether it is locked in place

or whether it'll collapse, on landing.

If it doesn't hold firm,

40,000 kilos of airplane

traveling at close to 320 kilometres an hour

will smash nose down onto the tarmac.

One reverse.

Okay.

Thrust reverser...

Aloha 243. Just shut it down where you are.

- Okay. - Everything's fine.

The gear did it.

The fire trucks are on the way.

- Okay. Shut it down - Shut it down?

Yeah.

Oh God!

In this extraordinary video, captured moments after landing,

the amount of damage the airplane suffered

is difficult to comprehend.

An emergency evacuation of passengers who escaped injury

has just been completed.

Some injured passengers have still to be helped from the plane.

How it flew for those 13 terrifying minutes

seems astonishing.

Captain Bob Schornstheimer is thanked by passengers who,

just minutes before, had expected to die.

The tension is released.

Oh, I just said, "Yes baby!"

That's all I said.

The pilot did a tremendous job.

Patricia Aubrey hugs her heroine: Michelle Honda.

I was crying and, of course everybody was traumatized.

Looking at the plane and looking at the people bleeding,

and I just...

I kept touching myself going, "I'm here.

I can't believe I'm still alive."

Her last-minute impulse to switch seats

saves her from injury, maybe from death.

Something was telling me not to sit there,

cause I didn't have a good reason to move, you know.

My guardian angel was tapping me on the shoulder

and telling me to move.

A final desperate headcount by Michelle Honda

confirms the crew's worst fears.

CB Lansing, the veteran of 37 years

flying for this airline is missing.

A sea search begins in the area of ocean

where the explosion took place.

Neither body, nor wreckage, are found.

Jane Sato Tomita has started to recover.

Seven passengers are seriously hurt.

The worst injury: a skull fracture.

But how have the rest survived?

At the moment of decompression...

it's just their seatbelts which made the difference

between life and death.

It just went poof, a loud noise

and the whole thing came apart and, uh...

I personally thought we were all gone,

and we were uh,

passengers all had our seatbelts fastened.

Or most of us evidently, or we would have lost a lot more.

But there is something else.

At the most critical moment,

Maui's notorious high winds died away.

I was amazed to see the front of the fuselage missing.

What was so funny about the whole thing is that,

when it came in, it had no wind.

You know, I do believe if you did have that wind,

that aircraft wouldn't have made it.

It would have split in two. Two pieces.

And it's a miracle.

It's very much a miracle.

This is one of the most remarkable flying events in history.

No airplane has ever landed with this amount of damage.

The only thing that was holding the forward section, cockpit,

to the rest of the fuselage were the floor beams.

Basically, they were hanging by a thread.

From a close study of the fuselage,

crash investigators try to determine

how the airplane structure remained in one piece.

The critical factor proves to be the precise location of the explosion.

The thing that saved them was that,

because the damage was across the top of the airplane,

as the nose tried to bend down,

these members through here are in tension

and it kept them in line, it kept them straight.

So, even though it was almost ready to break off, uh,

the structure was still strong enough here to keep it together.

If this damage had been along the bottom,

and the nose is trying to bend down this way,

this structure would have been,

a similar structure would have been in compression

and it would have buckled and the nose would have certainly come off.

So it was fortunate that the damage was across the top.

How does the roof of a jet airliner simply blow away?

The US National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB,

is tasked with discovering what happened.

Investigators pull the airplane's records,

something like an automobile service history

and suspicion falls right away on the airplane itself.

The best evidence for what happened,

the missing fuselage section,

is now lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

But by carefully piecing together the clues they do have,

investigators hope to solve one of the most spectacular

accidents of all time.

In the 38 years since its launch in 1967,

more than 5,000 737s were sold.

Somewhere in the world, a 737 takes off every 5 seconds.

The accident airplane was number 152

off the production line, delivered in May 1969.

The airplane was designed for a 20-year service life and 75,000 flights.

This one had exceeded that number.

Though many were of short duration.

Its fuselage was under constant stress

because of pressurization.

The fuselage of the airplane is actually breathing,

it expands and contracts depending on altitude.

When it's on the ground it's in a contracted status,

when it's at altitude, 24,000 feet,

the fuselage expands.

So the airplane is constantly cycling, that's pressurization.

That will weaken the structure over a long period of time,

and given the history of this airplane,

being a very high-cycle airplane

that probably had something to do with weakening

the structure of the fuselage.

With thousands of 737s taking to the skies each day...

investigators need to be certain what made this one burst apart.

An Aloha Airlines Boeing 737

bursts apart in midair over Hawaii.

After 13 extraordinary minutes in the air,

it makes an emergency landing on the island of Maui.

Investigators need to discover what caused

this spectacular incident.

In Washington DC,

Jim Wildey is one of the NTSB team who worked the case.

His expertise as a metallurgist proves crucial.

I got a call, about two in the morning,

the middle of the night, from my boss

and there had been the accident in Hawaii.

They were putting the team together

and I hopped on a plane and went to Hawaii

He takes samples from the remaining fuselage

and back in the lab, discovers something

barely visible to the naked eye.

Hairline cracks, like this,

beside the holes where rivets had been.

Figuring out how those cracks came to be there

means going back to basics,

to the way the Boeing 737 was put together.

Airplanes are built from many separate panels.

Where they overlap, they're bonded together

by a powerful adhesive known as epoxy.

Rivets hold the panels tight together

while the epoxy sets hard.

On the Aloha airplane there's telltale discoloration

inside the overlapping joints.

Here is the vital clue.

You can see now this dark material is the epoxy

that was used to bond the two layers

of the lap joint together.

The white material you see here is corrosion damage

of the aluminum fuselage skin.

So, the original intent was,

the stress that's trying to pull one skin away from the other skin piece,

the stresses would go through the bonding

and not through the rivets.

Of course, as this thing becomes disbonded,

now the rivets, themselves, are loaded

and especially this top row of rivets

and this is the row of rivets we think that had the fatigue cracking in it,

that lead to the eventual opening of the roof structure

on the Aloha 737 airplane.

The files reveal that Boeing warned airlines

including Aloha of problems with some early 737s.

If the epoxy isn't applied at exactly the right temperature,

if the panels have moisture or dirt on them,

the bonding can fail.

In warnings and service bulletins,

some issued over 15 years earlier,

Boeing spells out the danger.

The Hawaii climate, with humid and salt-laden air,

helps corrosion to occur.

But instead of grounding airplanes for a nose-to-tail examination,

Aloha has inspectors make occasional checks,

often at night, when those on duty are least alert.

Working under artificial light.

Those tiny cracks escape detection.

These cracks go unrepaired and now you have an airplane

that is a ticking time bomb.

There are other problems.

Boeing's service bulletins,

and what are called "airworthiness directives"

issued by the Federal Aviation Administration,

are often difficult to understand.

Airworthiness directives are very complex

and read like a legal document.

Aloha needed to have someone who could read that document

and interpret it into plain English for the mechanics,

the wrench turners. That never happened.

An airplane that has been worked so hard

serviced by mechanics who don't fully understand the briefings

is a recipe for disaster.

Investigators now believe they know why the airplane burst open.

But they don't yet know how.

I was flying back from Hawaii to Los Angeles

and while I was in the air I got a message that, uh,

that we needed to interview this passenger who had,

apparently, seen a crack

as she was getting on the accident flight.

You saw something as you got on this airplane,

which uh, you pointed out to your roommate...

Cynthia Johnson.

Yeah. Cynthia.

Uh, talk me through it.

What did you see?

What I saw was...

to the right of the door, where the paint was white...

Well, it was a crack,

it was like, not a hole exactly, but the metal on top

had come away from the metal below.

I was going to tell the flight attendant you know,

but they were busy...

We had to take our seats.

Well yeah, and you figured, they know what they're doing,

it's their airplane.

I didn't want to make a fuss or anything.

No, no. Absolutely.

The witness saw cracking in this area

and we found fatigue cracking back in here.

So, this is the line where the fatigue cracking joined up.

One piece came down this way and folded off

and the other piece went across the top and came off

to the right side.

But something still doesn't make sense.

Boeing designed the 737 and other of its aircraft,

so that this should never happen.

Every ten inches along the airplane are what are called

"tear straps" inside the fuselage to strengthen it.

If a tear begins, it should only reach the next strap,

before shooting off at a 90-degree angle.

Though there's a hole in the aircraft,

it acts like a safety valve.

The purpose of the tear strip is to confine any kind of rip

or tear in the fuselage skin to a 10-inch square basically.

If you allow it to propagate beyond this 10-inch square,

you could then compromise larger sections of the fuselage

and cause a blowout.

The 10-inch square allows a controlled decompression

and confines any structural damage to a very small area.

So why has the safety valve failed here?

The NTSB believe there were so many cracks in the fuselage

that they simply joined together,

running right through the tear straps.

The Aloha airplane was kind of unique in a couple of ways.

The way it was operated was with very short flights,

so you had large numbers of these pressurization cycles.

And stress was going on and off on these rivet locations.

And secondly, with the disbonding,

all this stress is now going through the rivets,

and that led to the linking up of these cracks,

and then the roof coming off of the airplane.

But is that the final answer on what happened to flight 243?

A new theory claims to shed fresh light

on those dramatic events.

Matt Austin is an engineer who lives in Honolulu.

The story of flight 243 both appalls and fascinates him.

I flew very regularly on Aloha airlines,

and I'd been on that plane about a week before

it actually lost the roof.

You could tell that something was loose in the airplane.

It's just like when you're in an old car and you hit a bump.

You can hear the rattles in it that you won't hear in a new aircraft.

In this case, when the aircraft landed,

there would be noises and rattles you wouldn't hear on a newer aircraft.

He begins his own investigation,

scrutinizing the 4,000 pages of evidence and photographs

gathered during the official inquiry.

I am an expert in explosion dynamics

and how pressure vessels explode,

what causes them to explode, which way the cracks run,

uh, as they're coming apart.

In the case of the Aloha accident,

the main focus from the aeronautical industry

was they were looking at it as an airplane structural failure,

whereas I analyzed it from the point of view

of a pressure vessel failure.

As he reviews the evidence, one question keeps recurring.

Why is CB Lansing sucked out of the aircraft,

and not her colleague Jane Sato Tomita?

Jane was further forward than CB at the crucial moment.

Jane was at row 2...

CB was at row 5.

The NTSB believes the roof separation began near row 3.

Passenger testimony gathered shortly after the incident

suggests that CB Lansing was sucked upwards

and to the left, but not forward.

I was on the aisle, on the right.

So I look up from my magazine

and I see a pair of legs go up and out on the left.

Just back of first class.

From where I was...

if the nose was 12 this is at 11, yeah?

Forensic evidence suggests another possible scenario.

Michael Sweet, an ex-cop,

is now a specialist in blood spatter analysis.

By studying the blood stains at crime scenes,

he can help put a killer behind bars.

Or, free the innocent.

He examines official photographs of the 737 fuselage.

This is a large photograph of the left side

of the airplane.

Ah, the front would be at this location.

There's a, what we suspect to be a bloodstain pattern

on the... right beside the window, right here.

Could this bloodstain be where CB Lansing's head

impacted with the outside of the fuselage?

The analyst believes so.

Well the fact that there are bloodstains on the side of this airplane,

suggests to me that the blood source in this case

was momentarily trapped

when it came into contact with the side of the airplane.

If the flight attendant in this case,

was ejected outside of the gaping hole,

I would expect her to disappear almost immediately

and not leave any bloodstains on the side of the airplane.

This analysis suggests only that she was trapped...

but without explaining how or why.

Matt Austin believes he has the answer.

On April the 28th, 1988,

a Boeing 737 owned by Aloha Airlines in Hawaii,

suffers an explosive decompression in midair.

Amazingly it lands safely, with the loss of one crew member.

Investigators blame metal fatigue,

due to poor maintenance.

But a new and controversial theory has emerged,

challenging at least part of the chain of events.

What if a safety hole has opened up as it was designed to do

but directly above the flight attendant?

Matt Austin believes CB Lansing is sucked into the safety hole...

momentarily blocking it.

All of the air that's trying to escape has no place to go.

So it built up a huge pressure spike

and that's what blew the roof off the top of the airplane.

What he's describing is known as a fluid hammer.

In scientific terms, air is fluid as is water.

Here's a simple demonstration in a bathtub.

The water is in fact escaping through the drain.

As we move the drain plug back down toward the hole,

it will immediately slam shut and create a force,

which is a simple example of a fluid hammer.

He believes this phenomenon on a giant scale

caused the accident.

It's very tragic, but if we don't look at the forensic evidence that's left

then we won't understand exactly what caused

the explosive decompression

and possibly prevent a future occurrence.

The NTSB say the fluid hammer theory is valid scientifically,

but for them the evidence still points to something simpler.

A virtually simultaneous failure in the airplane's many weak spots.

The safety board's investigations are never really closed.

And we also would take into account any new information

that comes out.

I believe in the case of the Aloha accident

we have not changed our probable cause.

And we still are sticking with the probable cause

as we determined back in 1988.

Since the crucial physical evidence was never found,

what happened on board at the precise moment of explosion

will probably never be known.

Aloha Airlines management took most of the blame

for their poor maintenance regime.

The NTSB demanded that the Federal Aviation Administration

do a much better job enforcing maintenance standards.

Boeing had already improved their manufacturing process

to prevent the adhesive becoming so easily contaminated.

What happened on flight 243 made flying safer.

Soon after,

Congress passed the Aviation Safety Research Act.

This accident had a very profound effect

on the aviation industry and the way we look at aging airplanes, old aircraft.

We changed the way we monitor how they age,

the way we inspect them and of course,

now how we manufacture them. We use different processes.

This was a very critical accident for aviation history.

Those 13 terrifying minutes also left their impact

on the survivors of flight 243.

I had to go through a healing process,

I took fear of flying classes and, uh...

The old saying of "You fall off a horse,

and you get back on it" is very accurate,

but it's a lot tougher to actually do it.

Patricia Aubrey had to find a way of dealing

with the memories also.

Her way was to revisit the same piece of airspace

where the terror unfolded.

I would go flying with my psychologist.

You go through what they call desensitization,

where you confront your fear,

and you do it so many times

that you can do it without having a bad reaction.

Before that happened, if something bad happened to me,

I'd go, "I hate life."

But I don't hate life.

I can deal with it. Bring it on.

I'll take care of it. I'd much rather be alive.

There's one further legacy of that fateful day.

The ocean never did surrender the body of CB Lansing.

Instead, a memorial garden,

honoring the veteran flight attendant

was planted at Honolulu Airport beneath the big Hawaiian sky

where she spent the better part of her life.

And where it was so suddenly ended.

difuze