Original subtitles

In heavy wind and blinding rain,

the crew of a passenger jet struggles to land.

Put it down! Put it down!

A Terrifying crash-landing

leads to a desperate fight to survive.

The only thing that matters to me

now is to get my daughter Emilie and protect her as we blow up.

Daddy! Emilie! Emilie!

We just knew that there were

so many passengers in that plane that had not gotten out.

Open the door! Open the dooor!

This is a true story based on Air Traffic Control

recordings, official reports and interviews with those involved.

Tuesday August 2, 2005.

Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Two hundred and ninety-seven passengers are boarding

Air France flight 358 bound for Toronto.

Uh, far aisle, left hand side.

Philippe LaCaille is traveling with his wife

and two of his four children.

They're stuck at the back of the enormous jet -

and they're not sitting together.

Emilie.

It just happened

that we were separated, uh, from Emilie.

They had three seats together, so we were in the middle section

and Emilie was actually sitting a couple of seats ahead of us

on the right side, so close to the right wing of the plane.

For Eddie Ho, flight 358 is

the continuation of a trip that began in Johannesberg.

I'm an international student in Canada

at Queen's University,

and every summer I go back to South Africa.

Ho isn't traveling light.

I was carrying, uh, everything that I had...

my books to my clothing to tuition money for the year.

Computer laptops...

This is also another leg

in a long journey for Joann Cordary-Bundock,

who's returning from a trip to Thailand.

I rerouted myself in the last two days before the flight

from Bangkok through Paris to come directly to Toronto.

As the passengers continue to board,

the flight crew get settled in to the Air Bus A-340.

The Captain is 57-year-old Alain Rosaye.

He's been with Air France for more than 20 years.

His co-pilot is 43-year-old Frederic Naud.

Do you want to start, or shall I?

Uh, why don't you fly first and then I'll take

over for landing in Toronto... I'll check the weather.

On this flight,

the two men decide that Captain Rosaye will handle

the take-off in Paris

and co-pilot Naud will land in Toronto.

Destination, Toronto Pearson.

Crews often split the duties -

so that co-pilots can get more experience.

Rosaye and Knaud are joined by one other person in the cockpit.

Hello, I'm Miles Trochesset.

Welcome aboard.

Miles Trochesset is the son

of an Air France employee.

He's allowed to ride in the cockpit's jump seat for free.

I just want to let you know I've done this before.

I promise I'll be quiet.

This Air France plane is

one of the safest in the world.

Since the A-340s first went into service in 1993,

they've had an excellent safety record.

Air France, three five eight.

Runway two seven left cleared for takeoff.

Cleared for take off Air France three five eight.

Have a good afternoon gentlemen.

Just a few minutes before two in the afternoon,

Flight 358 powers into the sky above Paris.

Toronto may be several thousand kilometres away,

but the friends and family of those on board flight 358

are already making plans to meet the plane when it arrives.

Hello? Audrey, I won't forget.

I'll make sure to pick up mom and dad.

No, I won't forget the two brats either. I'll get them all.

Well we usually make arrangements before we go

to France to be picked up.

It's easier because we've lots of luggage you know

and we bring back stuff from France.

So it just happened that Julien, our son, was going to spend

the summer in Toronto and was available to pick us up.

Sis, I'll give you a call as soon as they get in.

Don't worry, I've got it covered. Okay? Alright.

Talk to you soon. Bye.

Centre. We have a humidex advisory, an extreme heat

alert for Toronto as well a thunderstorm warning in effect

for Toronto.

A regular flight from Paris to Toronto

takes about eight hours.

As Air France 358 closes in on Canada,

there is little to separate this trip from any other.

I found that their service was amazing.

The food was great.

They had very good, uh, flight attendants.

There were lots of exchange students from France.

You know like teenagers coming to Canada

for their first time, usually their first flight.

And, uh, they were very loud.

There was a beautiful day on the flight over

and the sun was shining and it was just blue skies

and white clouds and just a lovely day.

The autopilot does most of the work

for captain Alain Rosaye and his co-pilot, Frederic Naud.

Just as the two men had planned,

Naud is now in control of the plane.

We have a new weather report.

The two men get regular

updates on the weather conditions in Toronto.

Overcast and raining with a chance of thunderstorms.

Temperature in the low 20s.

At Toronto's International Airport,

the thunderstorms are already rolling through.

Rain, wind and lightning are hammering the runways.

The lightning has already forced airport

authorities to declare a Red Alert.

It means that the chance of

being struck by lightning is so great,

that ground crews are not allowed to work on the planes.

Just as flight 358 closes in on Toronto,

it's put into a holding pattern.

The weather isn't getting any better.

Air France 358,

there's going to be a little delay.

Air France 358. Roger on delay.

Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking.

I'm sorry to inform you that there'll be a short delay.

There's some weather conditions above Toronto,

and we're just going to give it a couple of minutes to clear up.

I was very surprised

when I heard the Captain's announcement that we were

gonna be delayed in landing for about twenty five or thirty

minutes because of thunderstorms over Toronto.

While they're not in the storm yet,

the crew enters their holding pattern, north east of Toronto.

Their alternate airport

is almost 300 kilometres away in Ottawa.

At the moment, the plane has a little over 7500 kilograms

of fuel in its tanks - more than enough to get them there.

Typically, a pilot will think about the economic

impact of diverting to an alternate airport.

While that is not a primary decision maker,

it is an alternate decision maker as far

if they have to divert how are the folks gonna be

transported from that alternate airport back to the destination

airport that the airplane was originally going to.

Flying almost 300 passengers to Ottawa would

be a logistical nightmare.

But the crew can't circle for too long

with the fuel they have.

If the delay continues, they'll have no choice but to divert.

Air France, Toronto arrival.

Your hold is now cancelled.

You are cleared for a WASIE 2 arrival. Maintain 5,000 feet.

Air France 358. Roger on cancellation of holds.

Cleared for WASIE 2 arrival and maintain 5,000.

Today the delay isn't long at all.

Although the storm continues to thunder down near the airport,

the crew is put into their landing sequence.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking.

Just wanted to let you know we're

beginning our descent into Toronto at this time.

We should be on the ground at about 4 pm local time.

Usually, when they say forty five minutes you know

it's to be nice, usually it's like an hour, hour and a half.

This time, it was like twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes later they said, Ok, well now we are going

to go down, and prepare, you know for the landing.

With co-pilot Frederic Naud at the controls,

the plane begins its descent into the storm.

Air France 358, reducing speed to one nine zero.

Naud isn't prepared for what he's about to face.

The storm has a savage surprise in store

for everyone on board flight 358.

A brutal summer storm is battering Toronto.

Winds and lightning are hammering the airport,

making it tense for incoming planes.

After a short hold, Air France flight 358,

with 297 passengers aboard

begins descending into the storm.

Flaps two. Flaps two. F speed.

Gear down. Landing gear down.

Spoilers armed. Four green. Landing gear down.

Spoilers armed. Four green.

It'll be fine. Don't worry.

It immediately turned into very dark skies

and dark clouds and a little bit bumpy and choppy.

And the weather outside was definitely

within a thunderstorm.

But really and truly to me it was just a typical, uh,

stormy landing, nothing out of the ordinary.

In the main cabin, though, not everyone is so sure.

The plane was getting very bumpy.

There was a lot of turbulence.

We were surrounded basically by heavy rain

and this was completely not expected.

I didn't expect that.

Air France 358, slow your final approach speed.

Co-pilot Frederic Naud has the plane in position.

He's moments from landing.

Air France 358. Roger.

Flaps to full. Flaps to full.

It was going darker and darker.

We were like in the middle of hundred and hundreds

of lightnings every second we had lightnings all around us.

So people were getting nervous, quite nervous.

I was getting nervous.

Ahead of the Air France airbus,

two other planes have just touched down on the same

runway that flight 358 is heading for.

Air France 358, this is Toronto tower.

Toronto tower, Air France 358, go ahead.

You are cleared to land runway two-four left.

Be advised that preceding aircraft report that braking

action is poor and they estimate the surface winds near the

runway as two hundred and ninety degrees at 15 to 20 knots.

Braking poor, fifteen knots, gusts to twenty.

Air France 358, thank you.

The crew is being sent to runway 24L,

which will allow them to land into the wind.

It also happens to be the closest

runway to the city's biggest freeway,

which is gearing up to handle the evening rush hour traffic.

Facing unpredictable winds and a wet runway,

the crew prepare for the landing.

Select auto brakes to medium.

Medium is set.

The final approach to landing was hellish.

Lightnings were all over, uh, turbulences were enormous.

You could feel the pilot fight with the plane to keep

the plane in line with the runway to land.

And had a heck of a time to keep it lined up.

I know my son next to me was getting very nervous.

And I was nervous to see my daughter actually far from us.

I cinched up my seatbelt tighter than it was,

expecting a very hard landing and the pilot was gonna

stick it on the runway or we were maybe gonna do a touch

and go and he was gonna give it power and go around, because

I knew that it was not going to be just a normal landing.

Landing. Auto-pilot, auto-thrust. Off.

At two minutes after four o'clock,

Air France flight 358 roars over the beginning of the runway.

This landing was more intense

and harder than any time I've ever landed in another aircraft.

It was a very difficult landing.

And everyone started clapping and even the lady sitting

next to me, I remember this very clearly.

She said, You know, wow, that was an amazing landing.

And as soon as she finished that sentence,

then all Hell broke loose.

We started just,

the plane started violently going up and down.

And it felt like we were going a hundred miles an hour

down a road filled with potholes that were about three feet deep.

Shit! Shit!

Immediately you could see this orange aura,

and for me it's a picture I shall never forget.

My daughter was sitting ahead of us on the right of the plane

and at that time she turned her head towards us,

you know with very wide eyes, you know, looking at us.

And her face was surrounded by this enormous aura,

this orange aura of fire.

Then, moments after touching down, still traveling

at 146 kilometres per hour, Flight 358 runs out of room.

At that point,

I believed we were all going to die.

It was obvious that no one can survive this kind of thing.

I thought this was it.

The next thing I remember is that an announcement came.

Ladies and Gentlemen everything's okay.

We've stopped now.

Well, no kidding, of course we've stopped now.

But I could tell that everything was not okay

because I could immediately smell jet fuel.

As the smell of jet fuel fills the cabin...

Fire! Fire!

...panic quickly spreads.

Get out! Fire! Fire! Get out!

Everybody was expecting the plane to blow up.

It was obvious.

Smoke and flames are spreading quickly.

Now it's a desperate struggle to escape.

You heard shouting from the back

that there was a fire, fire.

Then people started really getting panicked.

If they don't get out -

they have just seconds to live.

We know that about two minutes into a fire in many

cases the environment becomes untenable.

So ninety seconds is a good rule that we

use in trying to get people out to make sure

they have as much time and safety as possible.

Two hundred and ninety-seven passengers

are desperate to leave the plane.

Emilie! Emilie! Daddy!

The only thing that matters to me now is

get my daughter Emily who's sitting like two seats ahead.

Get her, get her under me, and protect her as we blow up.

Go! Go, go, go!

Am I going to try and get my luggage, my laptop.

Then I thought to myself.

What if I would die trying to get my laptop?

I just said, ok I've got to get out. I've got to get out.

Flight 358 has eight possible emergency exits.

But seconds after the crash, most of them aren't opened.

People were crawling over the seats.

They were pushing each other.

There was basically all for yourself.

Hey! Stay calm please.

Open the door! Open the door!

I could see the air attendant there

struggling with the fact that should I or should I not

open this door because the fire was raging just in front of it.

If the fuel tanks rupture and we have a lot of fuel

that gets out either on to the ground.

Well then there's enough heat that would cause

the airplane skin to melt in a couple of minutes.

At the front of the plane,

thick smoke is pouring in through one of the open doors.

Joann Cordary-Bundock races to the other side of the plane.

The gentleman in front of me had his bag with him

and he was kind of fumbling around with that

and trying to take that down the slide.

And he was a rather large man

and the slide did not deploy the entire way.

So I kind of baled off the slide above of him and hit the ground.

Eddie Ho has found an exit too. But there's no slide.

And people, there were pushing me forward.

I couldn't even control myself and I was like no, I don't want

to jump as well, because it was like five meters down at least.

Is he okay? I don't know.

Is he okay? I don't know.

In the cockpit,

Captain Rosaye has been badly injured

when his seat was ripped off the floor by the force of the crash.

As precious seconds tick by, the flight attendant

near the LaCailles manages to open the exit door.

Even though passengers are confronted with the flames

and smoke of the burning engine, they jump out of the plane.

So I pushed them down,

my wife went down, I went down...

Run, run! This way! Run!

We just ran up as fast as we could through torn metal

and thorns and like through whatever was

left on the ground where the plane was.

Once the fire gets inside the airplane,

all of the furnishings are much like the furnishings

in your house and there are foams and materials that,

when they catch on fire, produce toxic gases and that's

really the most important lethal aspect of the fire.

Basically you just had to jump.

So what I did was you know I prayed quickly

and closed my eyes and jumped.

Emergency workers are able to reach the burning

jet just 52 seconds after it crashes.

But with the threat of an explosion,

it's dangerous to get too close.

It was very difficult to see anything

due to the rain that was coming down.

There was a lot of smoke engulfing the plane,

some fire that was still ongoing.

As well as you could see that parts of the plane had

broken off, some of the wheels that

were at the side of the roadway, as well as portions

of the plane's wings that had broken off.

Philippe LaCaille and his family

struggle up the hill the plane has just ploughed down.

And, at that point, the plane blew up. Once. Twice.

Three times so you could feel

and hear this enormous explosion actually taking place.

On the first one I looked at the first one

because I just couldn't believe my eyes because I could see

pieces of luggage, things flying up in the air.

And of course, at that time I figured, my God,

it could have been us.

We had a perfect view of the airplane.

And see this black smoke coming out of the side of the airplane.

And the yellow and the orange

and the red flames, shooting out.

We were fine but we just knew that there were

so many passengers in that plane that had not gotten out.

August 2, 2005.

Air France flight 358 has crashed

off its runway in Toronto.

Flames are tearing at the fuselage.

Smoke is pouring from the ruined jet.

Dazed passengers are stumbling from the plane.

The passengers that were coming up were very rain

soaked and muddy from coming up the hill.

There were several individuals that,

once they got up there, were crying and a bit

emotional as well as looking around for other passengers,

or family or friends that may have been with them at the time.

About 35 min.

ago a plane run of a runway at Toronto Pearson Airport.

Footage of the crash

quickly appears on local TV stations.

Philippe LaCaille's daughter Audrey is one of the many

people shocked by the pictures.

She turned on the TV and here we go,

there was the Air France crash right here,

live in front of her burning, exploding in front of her eyes.

250 people on board we've have not had any reason

to make a statement yet as to anybody has survived or escaped.

Philippe LaCaille's son Julien is

waiting for his father at the airport.

He has no idea what has just happened

to the Air France flight.

What? What do you mean where am I?

I'm at the airport waiting for mom and dad like... what? What!?

So Julien didn't know anything and he was

there at the airport and she says, 'Well you know what?

I think you're going to have to wait a long time,

cause their plane just crashed.'

One of the busiest highways

in North America borders the airport.

Just before rush hour,

it's packed with thousands of vehicles.

Drivers slow down,

captivated by the terrifying sight of the burning plane.

Some of the passengers who have escaped the plane stumble

dazed and shaken right onto the edge of the highway.

Passing motorists stop to take them to the airport.

At this point,

there was only about twenty five or thirty people with me at

the airport and here you're also thinking, is this all there is?

As people are brought in, airport employees

struggle to account for all the passengers and crew.

They were totally disorganized.

There's no announcements being made.

There's nothing of any kind of organization.

And you're in this little crowded area with all

the irate passengers, waiting to be processed.

Some people even said, 'You know,

the first disaster was the plane crash.

And the second disaster is exactly how it

was handled afterwards.

Relatives wait desperately for any news.

Julien LaCaille is just one of many who fears the worst.

For a least an hour and a half

they thought we were dead.

That's a shame because of course we panicked,

we were scared to death.

But the families that were waiting for the passengers,

they were even more scared because it lasted much longer.

They really believed deep down

that their family members were dead.

Finally, hours after the crash,

passengers who have waiting family members are reunited.

Julien. Julien!

We finally met up with Julien, it

was eleven o'clock that night.

It was, you know. God.

We're so lucky, we're so lucky we're alive.

It's hard to explain,

but it's like you're given a second chance.

You know, here's my son you know maybe I didn't tell him

I loved him when I left for France.

It was a very nice moment. A very deep moment.

It's just one of dozens of reunions.

It takes hours to confirm, but by early evening,

Air France and the local airport authorities can make

the incredible announcement.

Remarkably, every single passenger

and all the members of the crew of Flight 358 have

managed to escape the burning wreckage of their plane.

The next day, smoke and charred wreckage are all that

remain of Air France flight 358.

The Airbus A340 is a sophisticated,

highly engineered plane with a glowing safety record.

What had gone so terribly wrong?

Canada's Transportation Safety Board quickly begins

investigating the accident.

Landing. Auto-pilot, auto-thrust off.

Rain and lightning had been battling

the airport all afternoon.

Was it simply bad weather that caused this crash?

Put it down! Put it down!

Neither the pilot,

nor the co-pilot have spoken publicly about the crash.

We have to evacuate now!

Citing lawsuits that were filed soon after,

Air France has kept all of its employees who

were on the plane from speaking to the media.

Is he okay? I don't know.

Is he okay? I don't know.

But former Air France trainer Herve LaBarthe

has spoken to Captain Rosaye.

We spoke, let me think for half an hour.

He told me, and this is the crucial point,

that he asked control.

More specifically he informed control that he had reached

the point where he would have to consider diverting.

What he told me is that control informed him that they

would soon open the runway.

There was of course a lot of lightning, rain and turbulence.

And turbulence can have a devastating effect.

Instruments become more difficult to read.

The aircraft is harder to handle.

Investigators discover that as the crew

struggled for control in the cockpit,

on the ground delicate instruments used to measure

the wind at the runway were destroyed by lightning.

With the ground equipment destroyed,

they were relying on their on-board

systems for information about wind conditions.

The on-board equipment only gives them

the actual wind direction

and speed on the nose of the aircraft at that exact time.

It does not predict ahead of the aircraft.

So the pilots really have no way of knowing

what lies ahead of them.

But two planes had touched down just

minutes before the Air France flight - on the same runway.

The crews of those planes did their best to inform

air traffic control of the tricky conditions.

Air France 358, this is Toronto tower.

Toronto tower, Air France 358, go ahead.

You are cleared to land runway two-four left.

Be advised that preceding aircraft report that braking

action is poor and they estimate the surface winds near the

runway as two hundred and ninety degrees at 15 to 20 knots.

Braking poor, fifteen knots, gusts to twenty. Roger.

Twenty knot winds are strong - but are well

within the allowable range for landing an A340.

But when investigators study radar images of the airport,

they discover quite a different story.

As flight 358 landed, a sharp line of rain

moved across the runway from north to south.

It was driven by a sudden gust of wind of up to 33 knots.

The crew of the Air France jet had to deal with conditions

that were much worse than they were expecting.

Landing. Auto-pilot. Auto-thrust. Off.

Thirty-three knots is the demonstrated maximum

crossing wind for an A340, and that would be on a dry runway.

So when you say thirty-three knots - at 90 degrees -

you're encroaching on the limits of the aircraft.

Closely studying the airport,

investigators uncover another piece of the puzzle.

Maintenance issues - and the storm itself - were forcing

Air Traffic controllers to use runway 24L for landings.

It is the shortest runway at the airport - almost 650 metres

shorter than some of the others.

Blinded by rain, driven by unexpected winds,

and landing on the shortest runway at the airport,

flight 358 was in a dangerous position.

Over the previous four hours

they had been made aware of the terrible storms and red alerts.

And that was for me, my biggest concern.

Were they perhaps over tired?

Were they lax, victims of routine?

In any case, it's obvious

they hadn't gauged the extent of the danger.

It's evident that the flight crew didn't perceive

the information that they were getting from these various

sources as being threatening.

Therefore they attempted to make a landing.

But even in bad conditions -

even on a short runway -

the crew had 3000 meters in which to land their plane.

It should have been enough.

To find out why it wasn't, investigators turn to the past.

In 1999, an eerily similar accident

took place in Little Rock, Arkansas.

CO-PILOT: We're off course.

No, I can't see it. CO-PILOT: Way off.

Struggling with unpredictable weather,

the crew of an American Airlines jet landed their plane -

only to have it skid off the runway.

Eleven people were killed.

Greg Feith helped investigate that crash.

One of the first things that

I thought about was déjà vu.

Having the first bits of information

about the Air France accident it reminded me

so much of the American Airlines accident.

In the Little Rock crash,

Feith discovered that the crew had made a critical mistake

which contributed significantly to the accident.

They hadn't followed all of the check list procedures

and they didn't have the ground spoilers armed, which basically

degrades the efficiency of lift on the wings and settles

the airplane heavily on the main wheels

so that breaking action is more effective.

Spoilers are only one of several ways

pilots of passenger jets stop their massive planes.

Reverse thrusters are used to redirect the engine power

forward as the plane lands.

And sophisticated brakes help slow the jets down.

To rule out any mechanical fault, all three systems

are examined by investigators of the Air France crash.

One of the brakes on flight 358 was destroyed in the fire.

But the seven other sets of brakes

are all tested after the accident.

All of them are working properly.

Flaps two. Flaps two. F speed.

Investigators in Toronto also discover that -

unlike in the Little Rock crash -

this time the spoilers had deployed properly.

Landing gear down. Spoilers armed. Four green.

And, when the engines are examined,

the reverse thrusters are deployed.

No obvious mechanical fault can be found.

As the investigation continues,

a French newspaper prints a bombshell.

Le Figaro publishes a story

claiming that the thrust reversers -

which use the jet's engines to slow it down -

were not turned on until the plane

had been on the runway for more than 12 seconds.

As for Captain Rosaye, he confirmed the newspaper report.

His explanation, was that his co-pilot had tensed up

and was having difficulty controlling

the lateral movements of the plane.

No doubt because of the strong cross winds

and because the runway was so slippery,

his hand was clamped tightly on the throttle release lever,

which prevented the captain from reaching it himself.

So the reverse thrusters could not be activated.

Shortly after the newspaper story appears,

investigators publish their initial report.

It confirms La Figaro's version of events.

Canada's Transportation Safety Board reveals that,

while the thrusters were found

in their on position at the crash site,

they had not been deployed as soon as the plane landed.

In fact, it took 17 seconds

before they reached maximum power.

The delay was a question raised in the report

and I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to why there was

such a delay, or what was the cause of it.

I just know that pilots, as a rule, want to get those

reversers in as quickly as possible for maximum stopping.

The investigators reveal other confusing

facts about the last few seconds of Flight 358.

When it came over the start of the runway,

it was twice as high as it should have been.

And when it did land, it was nearly halfway down the runway.

Put it down! Put it down!

In these stormy conditions,

the crew didn't have enough time to stop.

Once they found that the airplane had floated

down the runway, the pilot has to make the decision whether

we stay on the ground and try to salvage this bad situation

or we abort the landing, power up, pull up and go around,

get our stuff together and then come back for a second landing.

But decisions in a cockpit are joint decisions.

The captain and the first officer work together.

If the captain sees that landing will be difficult

he must open throttle

and go through abort landing procedures.

That's his duty.

And of course, the co-pilot

is also allowed to be the first to act.

But the captain's duty

is to avoid at all cost a lengthy touchdown.

That is clear.

By the time the plane touched down,

it had only 1500 metres to stop.

And when it DID land, critical seconds were lost

when the reverse thrusters weren't engaged.

Would it have made a difference to immediately

activate the reverse thrusters?

Of course it would.

Since reverse function reaches

its peak efficiency at high speed,

that is the exact moment of touchdown,

that's what reverse is there for.

It's all a matter of aerodynamic braking.

The other problem is that the wheels touched

ground in the middle of the runway,

and reverse or no reverse, at that point it was already

too late, as was pointed out by the head of the inquiry.

That being said, if the reverse thrusters

had been activated immediately,

the plane would have come to a stop more quickly.

In heavy storms, the margin for error is razor thin.

On this rain-filled afternoon, sudden wind, a long landing and

a short runway sealed the fate of everyone on board flight 358.

What concerns some in the aviation industry isn't

this particular flight, but the reality that over runs

are far too common - they happen all around the world.

And safety procedures that could stop them are not in place.

In August 2005, Air France

flight 358 crashed off the end of a runway in Toronto.

It was a horrifying incident,

yet amazingly, everyone survived.

But flight 358 wasn't the only jet

to go off the end of a runway in 2005.

Worldwide, there were 37 other runway overruns.

And the causes of all these accidents

were remarkably similar.

There are a number of causal factors that occur

again and again in runway over run accidents.

These would be the weather conditions

The state of the runway surface.

It can be wet, be icy, it can have snow on it.

Speed in excess of normal approach speed for the aircraft,

that does not bleed off as the aircraft attempts to land.

And these factors occur again and again

in runway over run accidents.

Unlike the crash at Toronto,

some over runs are deadly.

This Southwest Airlines flight in Chicago slid off

its runway several months after the Air France crash.

A small child was killed in a car that was

driving on the nearby highway.

Many older airports,

in particular in big cities which have expanded

out toward the airport in the course of their growth,

are constrained in the area that they can use for over runs.

You have to consider what happens

when the runway is contaminated - snow, ice, standing water.

That will degrade the stopping performance of the airplane.

Add to that a tail wind component which was

existent at time the Air France landed.

That, in combination with the contaminated runway

can jeopardize the landing performance

and in fact probably increase it by fifty percent.

The International Civil Aviation Organization

recommends that every airport have a 300-metre safety zone

at the end of runways that handle international flights.

Canadian standards are a little less strict.

They call for a 60-metre over run area

and recommend another 90 metres on top of that.

Runway 24L meets the low end of those recommendations.

There was another runway over run

accident to the runway in Toronto, which was very

closely aligned with the runway that is there at the moment.

In 1978, when a DC9,

an Air Canada DC 9 rejected a takeoff and ran into the ravine.

Well the plane started to break

and then there was just nothing and we dropped over the edge.

There was about a fifty foot drop,

I guess, at the end of the runway.

We just went over the top.

Then there was a heck of a bang

and people and seats all over the place.

Two people died in the 1978 accident.

A coroner's inquest after the crash recommended

that the gully be filled in, but it never was.

It's a steep ravine,

it has about a fifty-foot drop-off

and when you take a large,

complicated and fragile piece of machinery like a commercial

aircraft and you drop it fifty feet, then it tends to break.

There is a possible solution to runway over runs.

But it's not being used in Toronto -

or many other international airports.

It's called EMAS - or Engineered Material Arresting Systems.

It's a form of artificial stone or artificial gravel

which has a certain depth.

And anybody who's ridden a bicycle into a gravel pit

knows that the bicycle stops very quickly

and it can be almost impossible to pedal it out.

And the same thing happens to airplanes.

Several airports in the U.S. use the system.

But most international airports do not.

It's very much more effective than friction braking

and it's certainly incomparably more effective

than thrust reverse and spoilers.

And any one of these systems, when properly engineered,

can stop a large airplane.

No matter what the runway surface conditions,

in a very short distance.

We have to evacuate now!

But one vital air safety guideline was met

when flight 358 crashed.

In spite of the smoke and the spreading fire,

the crew of the crippled plane made sure that all

the passengers escaped in just 90 seconds.

It's just a miracle that all of those people were

able to evacuate the airplane as quickly as they did

before the airplane was consumed.

The Air France flight was particularly noteworthy

that everybody got out essentially unscathed.

It was a noteworthy and it

was a very good evacuation from that perspective.

Captain Alain Rosaye

may never fly for Air France again.

His injuries required extensive

physical therapy after the crash.

At the time, he was less than three years from retirement.

Every morning Captain Rosaye relives the experience,

coming face to face with the flames, the noise, the crash.

And it made him sad to end his career on that note,

having destroyed his plane.

That's the worst possible fate for a pilot, the worst outcome.

The co-pilot, Frederic Naud,

is suspended for three months after the accident.

By early the next year, he is back on duty with Air France.

There are reports that, after he helped Captain Rosaye

out of the cockpit, he was the last person off the plane.

The passengers deal with the crash in their own ways.

I went through nightmares almost every single night.

Flashbacks during the day.

I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat and I questioned myself,

why am I here?

It's frightening to be in such a state, and...

it has taught me to be strong.

We really need to take seriously those safety commands

and evacuation information because you never know.

It was a perfect flight,

there's not any indications that anything can go wrong.

And it's right at the very last second that everything happens.

So, thank goodness I'm here to talk about it now.

Open the door! Open the door!

There's a lot of negative in the accident

and there's a lot of positive.

The negative is oh my God you know I'm going to die,

oh my God it's horrible.

Oh I have these nightmares and yes I'm traumatized

and my kids are traumatized.

However there are positives.

And the positives are, gee, I'm alive you know?

I have been given a second chance.

I have been given a second life.

And all of us, my wife and my children, myself,

we all experience the same positive

effects of the crash which is we have to give back.

We have to do something for others.

We have to extend our heart out,

our compassion to people who need it.

It's almost therapeutic for us, you know,

the more you do for others, the better you gonna feel.

So, for me, I figure if I can extend my heart

out to others, it's gonna help me as well.