Original subtitles

The crew of a passenger jet

search in vain for their airport.

Look carefully.

Rain is making it impossible to see.

Not in sight. Missed approach.

Go around!

More than 2-hundred passengers are onboard.

As I turned around, a huge fireball came out.

Investigators search for clues.

Could a vital missing piece of equipment be

responsible for the crash?

I think the best way to describe that

would have been irresponsible.

I know a lot of people

could have walked off that plane that night.

Nothing will change my views on that.

Nimitz Hill, Guam.

Once the site of fierce American offensives during

World War Two, for over fifty years there has been peace here.

Now the hill is peaceful, invaded by hunters

and the normal quiet is broken by the roar of jumbo

jets as they fly overhead.

Every night commercial pilots must fly over this tall

rocky outcrop and land at Guam's Agana International Airport.

Flights come from airports all across Asia.

Just past midnight, on August 6th, 1997, Korean Airlines

flight 801 is on its way to Guam from Seoul, South Korea.

42-year-old Captain Park Yong-Chol is at the controls.

A former Korea air force pilot,

Park has been flying 747s for more than 6 years.

Just a few months ago, he received a flight safety

award from the president of Korean Air for successfully

handling a 747 engine failure at low altitude.

Park is supposed to be flying to the United Arab Emirates

tonight but a scheduling change has put him

in command of this shorter flight to Guam.

In the cabin, Korean, Japanese and Western tourists

are heading for Guam's pristine beaches.

Guam is a US territory run under US law.

The island is tiny, fewer than 6-hundred square kilometers

but there's enough sand to keep people coming.

24-year-old Sean Burke and his girlfriend

Wendy Bunten are planning to make the most of Guam's beaches.

They're flying in from San Diego for a vacation.

Sean and Wendy were going to Guam to do some

scuba diving, reef driving and at the same time they were

gonna visit her brother who was in the navy over there.

He was a navy doctor.

Flight 801 is taking Barry Small back to work.

He is returning to Guam from New Zealand for another 6-month

contract as a helicopter pilot.

But he does it with a heavy heart.

The night before I left my father had a heart attack

and I had to CPR him until the ambulance arrived

and decided to cancel the contract so I could help him

but he was insistent that you must carry on with your job.

The flight is still a couple of hours from Guam

when the calm evening is brutally interrupted.

Watch the speed. It could be severe turbulence.

Make an announcement to have everyone

in their seats with seatbelts on.

Ladies and gentlemen,

this is your first office speaking.

Even an experienced flyer

like Barry Small is surprised.

There was no lead up to this turbulence and anybody that

wasn't strapped down was going to be airborne, that's for sure.

The lockers were rattling

and anything in those lockers was bound to break.

It was a horrendous shudder.

It's heavy turbulence but the crew ride it out.

Eventually the flight returns to normal.

We're through it. Let the passengers know.

Ladies and gentlemen,

this is your first officer speaking.

We have cleared the turbulent area.

But it's left some of the passengers shaken.

Shhh. It's okay Rika. We'll be there soon.

Ma'am, if you don't mind

I'm gonna move this duty free up here for you.

The cabin crew cleans up

and the passengers settle in for the rest of the trip.

Because of the twelve hour stopover in Seoul

and no change of clothes, it was getting rather

uncomfortable in a tropical environment and I took my

shoes off just to relax a little bit and feel more comfortable.

Captain Park and his crew begin looking ahead.

They know there's more unsettled weather coming.

Rain has been hitting Guam on and off all day.

In fact, August is the heart of the island's rainy season.

Small showers can pop up, making visibility unpredictable.

In that particular part of the world

they have what's called a top hat thunderstorm.

That is a very small thunderstorm that

builds up all times of the day and it's very short lived.

So it wouldn't hamper the pilot's ability to actually

conduct the approach.

It's gonna just obscure his view for some period of time

while they're transiting through it.

Just past one in the morning,

Korean Air flight 801 makes initial radio contact

with Kurt Mayo, the radar controller at Guam's airport.

Guam Center, Korea 801 leaving

level four one zero for two thousand, six hundred.

Korean Air 801, roger.

The crew aren't the only ones preparing to land.

After more than three hours of flying through the night,

the passengers get ready for the airport.

I saw the lights of Guam and I knew exactly where

the aircraft was because I'd been there many times before.

Captain Park has navigated Nimitz Hill 9

times before, but this time there's a major difference.

At airports around the world,

pilots land with the help of a glide slope,

an electronic system that helps planes safely touch down.

If pilots follow the directions given by the glide slope,

it guides them to the foot of the runway.

The glide slope beacon at Guam Airport has been

removed for extensive maintenance.

Without the airport transmitter,

Park's glide slope indicator in the cockpit is useless.

Landing without a glide slope is rare, but it does happen.

In Guam, the transmitter is scheduled to be

out of service for more than two months.

But impaired navigation is only part of the problem.

Captain Park is fighting exhaustion.

They make us classic guys work to the maximum.

Probably this way hotel expenses are saved on cabin crews

and they maximize flight hours. Really sleepy.

Now, as the plane approaches Guam,

clouds and rain block their way.

Captain, Guam condition is no good.

It's raining a lot.

It's been several hours since Captain Park

and his crew left Seoul.

Now the rain is making the late flight more difficult.

Tired and fighting the weather,

the captain begins the final approach to the airport.

August 6th 1997. It's close to one thirty in the morning.

On Korean Airlines flight 801, a tired captain is

preparing to land at Agana Airport on the island of Guam.

In the cabin, 2-hundred and 37 passengers are getting

ready to begin their holidays, or get back to work.

The flight, other than the turbulence,

was totally normal.

We had our meals and it was just

a totally normal flight in every way.

As the jet approaches Guam, an erratic storm

pushes rain and clouds between the plane and the airport.

It's hard to see.

The captain wants to make a small change

in course to avoid the worst of the weather.

Request 20 mile deviation to the left

as we are descending.

Guam Center, Korea 801 request deviation

one zero miles left of track.

Korean Air 801, roger.

Veering around cloud cover, Captain Park Yong-Chol

struggles to get a clear view of his approach.

And finally he sees what he's been looking for.

It's Guam. Guam. Good.

Today the weather radar helped us a lot.

Korean Air 801 cleared for ILS runway six left approach.

Glide slope unusable.

Air traffic controller Kurt Mayo reminds the crew

that the airport's glide slope equipment is out of service.

It would normally help them find the runway,

but since it's under repair it isn't sending out any signals.

Then, with the crew in the middle

of their landing sequence, something unexpected happens.

The glide slope appears to come to life.

Is the glide slope working? The glide slope?

Yes. Yes it's working. Why is it working?

It's a confusing moment.

Unsure what's happening,

the crew continue to prepare for their landing.

Six D check. Gear down.

Check. Approaching 1400.

Since today's glide slope condition is not good,

we need to maintain one thousand four hundred forty.

Please set it. Set.

At 40 minutes after one in the morning,

Guam controller Kurt Mayo once again

makes contact with the crew.

Korean Air 801,

contact the Agana tower one one eight point one.

He passes the plane on to the airport tower

and says goodbye in Korean.

Ahn nyung hee ga sea yo. Soo ga ha sip is yo.

One eighteen one.

It's the last time he'll ever

talk to the crew of the jetliner.

The guy working here probably was

a GI in Korea before.

Agana Tower, Korean Air 801 to intercept

the localizer six left.

Korean Air 801 heavy

Agana Tower runway six, cleared to land.

Korean 801 roger, cleared to land six left.

Flaps thirty. Flaps thirty.

As the plane descends, clouds and rain close in again.

They've lost sight of the airport.

Look carefully.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're preparing for landing

at Agana International Airport in Guam.

Please return your seats to the upright position,

fasten your seatbelts and prepare for landing.

Set 560 feet. Set.

As the plane flies closer to the ground,

the crew expects they'll see the airport any second.

But the rain makes it hard to see anything.

Isn't the glide slope working? Wiper on!

Then a computerized voice fills the cockpit.

Five hundred.

It's the Ground Proximity Warning System,

which tells the crew they're just 5-hundred feet

in the air, but they still can't see the runway.

I'd done this flight many,

many times before and when I estimated we were about

thirty seconds from landing, I bent down to put my shoes on.

Two hundred.

The plane is now just 2-hundred feet

above the ground but still the crew can't see the runway.

They're quickly running out of time.

Let's make a missed approach.

Not in sight.

Not in sight. Missed approach. Go around.

Go around! Flaps.

One hundred. Fifty. Forty. Thirty. Twenty.

I had no idea, thought it was still just a normal

landing and the aircraft went on and was decelerating

quicker than normal, but nothing to really alarm me.

Things were getting pretty serious then.

The aircraft was starting to break apart.

I forced myself up to look and there was just bottles,

bags, everything you can imagine was coming out.

The only way I can really describe it is

like about a thousand 737s landing all at once.

On a wooded hillside in Guam,

the shattered plane finally grinds to a halt.

I was too scared to undo my seatbelt at that stage

'cause I was waiting for the next bounce to go

over another ravine or whatever was going to happen next.

Miraculously,

11-year-old Rika Matsuda has survived

and is virtually unhurt, but her mother is trapped and injured.

Momma, momma. Hello - Help!

Barry Small is also injured

and terrified that fire is sweeping through the plane.

The fire started in the front

and proceeded from the front to the back towards me.

There was no floor light or anything like that

but the fire was so intense

there was no problems to see where I was going.

Momma, momma.

If help doesn't arrive soon, those who survived

the initial crash may be trapped inside the cabin.

Korean Air 801 heavy tower, how do you hear?

Everyone in the cockpit has been killed.

But airport authorities still have no idea what's

happened aboard flight 801.

Hurt by the crash and desperate to escape the ruined plane,

Barry Small stumbles towards an opening in the cabin.

I got back these six seats

and then there was about a six foot drop down to the ground.

The undercarriage had gone completely.

I came across an obstacle that I had to cross because it

was the only path that wasn't burning.

Go! Get over it!

Momma! Rika.

Rika's mother tells her daughter

to get out of the burning plane.

Go. Go, go now. Get out of here! Go! Now go, go!

You must go. Go! You must go. Go now! Go!

The fire is spreading quickly.

As passengers struggle to deal with the disaster,

rescue workers don't even know the plane's gone down.

The fire engulfed both the Asian gentleman

and myself to the extent that it burnt my arms, and my watch got

that hot it was melting into my flesh and I had to flick it off.

Minutes earlier, Kurt Mayo had passed

the passenger jet on to the local tower controllers.

Now he learns that it hasn't landed yet.

Approach Agana, did Korean Air

come back to you? No.

I cleared him to land and I don't know where he's at.

He didn't land?

Negative. Oh my god!

Within minutes,

Guam Fire Chief Chuck Sanchez is en route.

I was thinking my god, the 747, where is it at?

Is it on the island? Is it on sea? What is the plan here?

We both fell off the side of the container

and the Asian gentleman disappeared into the jungle.

So I rolled over onto my back

and I managed to crawl with my elbows.

There was still a little bit of skin on my elbows left.

Small has a badly broken right leg.

He crawls away from the wreckage.

Many more people remain trapped inside.

Lying there, it just sounded like a battlefield.

It was just like a movie.

Things were exploding short of me, going over top of me.

Things were landing beside us on fire. It was just indescribable.

There is only one way for emergency

crews to get down to the wreck site - along a single

access road that runs beside Nimitz Hill.

As they race to the accident scene,

rescue workers discover a major obstacle.

A pipeline has been ripped out of the ground by the crash

and thrown across the road.

There's no way around it.

Having heard about the crash, the island's

Governor, Carl Gutierrez, has joined the rescue team.

Engine company 7, get this thing out of the way.

You guys, get the medic kits and come with me.

We reached the closest point of approach to the

crash site which was up the hill and probably about another

hundred and fifty yards downhill I go gentlemen, turn on whatever

lights you got to guide us down this path and let's do it.

We started running and just listening to the screams

so that we could guide ourselves because there was just

nothing but overgrowth on the side of the road.

At one point I stopped him.

I go governor sir,

I need you to make some serious decisions in this operation.

I don't think I want you to move further.

I'd like for you to stay on this side and, you know,

I don't want you to get hurt.

Let us do this job and he goes no, I want to help you guys.

At the site of the crash,

flames are devouring the wreckage.

Hampered by his broken leg,

Small can only look on as people cry out for help.

I lay on that bank for the whole night.

During that time hearing people call out in a foreign

language which initially sounded like good healthy

calls for help, then turned to screams as the fire got

more intense and after a period of time the fire even grew

worse and the screams faded away.

Finally, almost an hour after the accident,

Sanchez's crew reaches the site.

I split them up into two rescue and search units.

I need half of you guys to start from the tail end

and I need the other half to start from the front

end of this plane and let's meet in the middle and,

you know, let's do what we can to help the survivors.

Momma!

Guam's Governor Carl Gutierrez sees Rika Matsuda

all alone and crying out for her mother.

Don't cry little angel. Everything will be okay.

I did not dare let her go.

It's something that I almost, like there was a bond

between me and that young little girl and I found out later she

was eleven but she looked really smaller than eleven years old.

Fire Chief Chuck Sanchez finds

Barry Small in the sword grass.

Take my jacket.

He gave me his fire jacket and put it

under my head to comfort me.

Yeah go. I'm all right. Let's go.

Later on he was very distressed that he

had to come back and get it back 'cause he was getting burnt

dragging people and bodies out of the aircraft.

We were cutting trees to use for splints.

We were taking off our protective gear

to cover the survivors.

It's clear to rescue personnel that for many

they have arrived too late.

But Sanchez isn't giving up.

He sends a team to search further into the wreckage.

Group two start at the tail and work forward. Go.

What I heard was this large explosion right where

they were at, and I go did we lose our people?

A Boeing 747 has crashed on a rugged

hillside in Guam just a few miles short of the airport.

There were 2-hundred and 54 people on board.

Rescue workers comb through the wreckage

when an explosion rips through the remains of the plane.

There was no radio transmission at all.

We lost all transmission. Then finally somebody came out.

Sir, we're okay. We survived the explosion.

Everybody's accounted for.

It's not until the dawn finally comes that

rescue workers can see the extent of the damage.

The plane has spilled down the mountain

and broken into several large pieces.

Only 26 people survive the disaster.

Friends and family are desperate for any news.

Many bodies are badly burned.

Although most of the passengers are Korean, Sean Burke

and his girlfriend Wendy Bunten are among a few

Americans on the flight.

Thousands of kilometers away,

news of the crash reaches Sean's parents.

When she hears about the crash,

Sean Burke's stepmother doesn't know if Sean is alive or dead.

He could have been burned in the crash.

He could be unconscious in a local hospital there

and we just wanted to go over and bring him back.

So I mean 'cause that kept going through our minds, that he

possibly could be laying on the hillside.

Since Guam is an American territory,

the responsibility for investigating the crash

falls to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Greg Feith is the lead investigator.

When he arrives on the site, he has to contend with more

than just the carnage of the plane crash.

Grieving family members surround the scene, making it

especially difficult for investigators to work.

As an accident investigator you

have to keep your emotions in check.

It's like being a doctor in an ER room.

You have, you see this devastation,

you see this tragedy unfolding in front of you.

You hear about all of the sad stories, especially

when there are kids and innocent people involved

and as an accident investigator you have to keep those

emotions in check because you have to remain objective.

You have to remain emotionless

to be able to do your job effectively.

And we had a whole building

full of people just like us.

They were all grieving and crying out.

It was just horrible.

One of the first things we did was we went out on site

and we did what we call a site survey.

We had to really get an understanding of what

we were dealing with as far as the wreckage

and how we were going to conduct the on-scene investigation.

During the preliminary investigation, Feith finds

that large sections of the plane are almost completely intact.

The airplane landed relatively under control.

That is that the pilot basically landed

the airplane into the trees and into that terrain.

Unfortunately, it was three miles from the airport.

Investigators find a number of items that

survived the crash and the fire that followed.

Including the landing chart the crew was using as it

approached Guam airport.

Investigators also find Captain Park's travel bag,

and in it discover a small plastic pill container.

Captain Park had been prescribed a variety of drugs

including pills containing Benzodiazepine,

a class of drugs often used as a sedative.

The pills and tissue samples from Captain Park's

remains are sent for analysis.

The landing chart becomes part of a growing pile of evidence.

Using information from the jet's flight data recorder,

investigators recreate the plane's flight path.

The relatively gentle slope of its descent supports

Feith's belief that the jet all but landed on the hillside.

But the flight path shouldn't look like this.

Korean Air 801 cleared for ILS runway six left approach.

Glide slope unusable. Korean 801 roger.

Cleared for ILS runway six left.

The crew had been told that the glide

slope at the airport wasn't working.

It meant that the captain had to take more manual

control of his plane.

It's now up to the pilot to fly an established

procedure called a step-down where

he starts at an altitude of say two thousand feet.

When he gets to a particular point located by what

they call DME or Distance Measuring Equipment,

he then starts a descent to another prescribed altitude.

If the crew was following the step-down

procedure, its flight path would resemble a set of stairs.

But after the first step,

the plane enters a long slow descent.

If you don't hit those step-downs, and those

altitudes are prescribed to give you terrain clearance,

if you don't fly that as depicted on the approach chart,

you run the risk of flying into an obstruction or high terrain.

The plane's cockpit voice recorder has also

been recovered from the debris.

Feith and his team begin to analyze it,

hoping to better understand what happened in the cockpit.

Set five hundred sixty feet.

On two separate occasions, Captain Park

gave orders to descend long before he was supposed to.

But there are other clues on the tape as well.

The cockpit voice recorder provided us,

the investigators, quite a bit of information.

One of the key elements that we found was that the flight

crew appeared to be tired.

Very sleepy.

This was a chartered flight so it would have

put them on what we call back side of the clock flying.

That is, they would be normally flying during the day.

They are now flying at night and typically your body says

you should be asleep when it's dark outside.

The sedatives could have made

a difficult situation even worse,

but when the lab results come back they're conclusive.

While he had the pills with him,

there are no traces of them in Captain Park's system.

When lead investigator Greg Feith

returns to the cockpit voice recorder,

he focuses on the captain's discussion of the glide slope.

Is the glide slope working? The glide slope?

Yes. Yes it's working. Why is it working?

He started to see the glide slope needle move a little

bit and started to question the other crew members as to

whether or not the glide slope was actually working or not.

It's early in the morning.

After a long flight Captain Park is tired.

Perhaps confused and distracted

by the unexpected readings on his glide slope.

It became very apparent listening to the cockpit

voice recorder that in fact he got fixated.

But Feith still doesn't understand why

Park's glide slope appeared to be working.

Was there a problem on this plane, or is the equipment

susceptible to problems that could affect other jets as well?

To find out, he brings in

navigation expert Nelson Spohnheimer.

I spent some time looking at the transcript

trying to determine what the navigation issues were,

why a good airplane was in the wrong place and to investigate

the apparent confusion on the part of the crew who thought

that the glide slope was working at least part of the time.

Spohnheimer sends a team of investigators to Guam.

They fly over the island trying to determine whether radio

signals from a nearby military base could have acted on

the plane, making it seem like the glide slope was working.

Glide slope receivers can respond to non glide

slope signals, particularly

when the intended glide slope signal is absent.

If there are spurious signals on the channel

and they contain the right information, they can cause

intermittent movements of the glide slope needle.

Set five hundred sixty feet.

But the signals wouldn't be sustained.

Like a light switch turning quickly on and off,

the glide slope indicator would give periodic

indications that it was working, but not for long.

My conclusion was that spurious signals,

whether they be from other transmitters or failed

ground equipment such as personal walkie-talkies

could not cause a sustained warning flag movement.

If the glide slope was not fully operating,

why did Park believe it was?

And even if he did believe it was working,

why did he crash into Nimitz Hill?

Isn't the glide slope working? Wiper on.

As investigators continue to try to piece

together the causes of the crash, Barry Small is

trying to understand why he and 25 others survived.

I went to touch my shoes, we hit the ground

and I was accidentally in the perfect crash

position by some sort of miracle.

An airline engineering apprentice

and helicopter pilot, Small understands airplanes.

I do firmly believe there are some changes that could

be made to the aircraft.

Small believes that the way crossbars are built

into aircraft seats caused one of his legs to break.

But luck saved his other leg.

My right leg went forward and crashed into the bar

in front of the seat and broke and my left leg was saved

by my carry-on bag stopping my leg going forward into that bar.

Still able to walk on his one good leg,

Small escapes while others remain trapped inside.

Since she's young,

Rika Matsuda's legs are shorter than a normal adult.

Sitting normally, her legs

wouldn't have been pressed against the crossbar

on impact, so she was able to escape the plane.

Go, go now. Get out of here!

While her mother died.

Small is also convinced that the flames that first spread

through the cabin of Korean Air Flight 801 were preventable.

They estimate that those top lockers had over four

hundred and sixty-two litres of burnable alcohol on board.

Had the plane been full,

it could be at least twice that amount.

During the crash, Small believes that the

duty-free alcohol mixed with oxygen in the plane's ceiling.

The combination ignited with deadly results.

It's a fire he thinks could have been prevented.

Why have this risk, alcohol and oxygen?

I thought, you know, for aircraft is about safety

and this is just a blatant breaking of the rules

of safety as far as I'm concerned.

As he continues to recover from the accident,

Small is determined to prevent what had happened to him

from happening to others.

He decides to push for changes on how seats are made,

and how duty-free alcohol is stored.

For NTSB investigator Greg Feith,

the biggest question still remains.

How did an experienced pilot,

one recently honoured by his company for his safety record,

crash his plane 5-kilometers short of the airport?

As the investigation continues,

he discovers that the landing chart the crew was using

was more than six months old and out of date.

It's an indication that the crew could have been better

prepared for the landing.

When he reviews the training

practices for Korean Airlines, Feith uncovers more

gaps in the information that the crew received.

We found that the Korean Airlines flight crew had

all of their training based on airports with approaches

where the DME was always co-located at the airport.

DME is distance measuring equipment,

electronic beacons that tell pilots where

they are in relation to the airport.

Often the final beacon is found at the foot of the runway.

That was not the case in Guam.

The airport was in fact 5-kilometers further on.

Two hundred.

Struggling to see through the rain Park was

unable to find the airport.

Distracted by the unexpected glide slope reading Park

used the final beacon as a guide expecting it to take him

right to the runway.

Let's make a missed approach.

Not in sight.

Not in sight. Missed approach.

Go around.

Go around. Flaps! Flaps.

It's clear that flight 801 flew

an approach about three miles premature.

In other words, the descent was about three miles early.

It was a normal approach otherwise,

just to the wrong location.

We think that based on fatigue

and some of their training, that in fact

when the flight crew crashed the airplane, when the counter

got to zero they thought the airport should be there.

A fully loaded 747 weighs

more than 200-thousand kilograms.

Like an enormous ocean liner, it can't change course quickly.

One hundred. Fifty. Forty.

Blinded by rain and relying on their equipment,

the crew of Korean Air flight 801 thought

they were heading straight at the runway.

When they realized something was wrong, it was too late.

As the investigation continues,

Feith and his team make a startling discovery.

Equipment that would have given the crew more time to react

had been disabled... on purpose.

In August of 1997, the crash of Korean Air flight 801 took

the lives of more than 200 people.

The final accident investigation report is published

more than two years after the crash.

It lays blame on the Korean Airlines' training methods,

and the crew's over-reliance on the jet's automation.

But it also has sharp words reserved for the FAA,

the body that regulates air travel in the United States.

Because of an FAA decision, a critical piece of technology

that could have saved flight 801 was intentionally disabled.

The Minimum Safe Altitude Warning System, or M-SAW,

is a standard piece of equipment at major American airports.

But in Guam, the FAA had made a critical

alteration to the way it was used.

M-SAW uses radar to watch the planes

as they come into the airport.

If they're too low, a warning is given to air traffic

controllers, who can then relay it to the crew.

But in Guam, the system kept giving

nuisance readings to controllers.

The controllers kept getting these nuisance warnings.

They redesigned the software

and moved the limitations of the MSAW further away from the

airport where it afforded no one a level of protection.

Instead of watching the planes as they neared

the airport, the system in Guam now tracked them when they

were more than 80-kilometers away, over the ocean.

I think the best way to describe that would have

been and should be irresponsible

because you've taken this system that was designed

as a level of protection not only for the controller

but you've taken the protection away from the flying public.

For the passengers and crew of flight 801,

the lack of the MSAW system sealed their fate.

If the system had been working,

the crash could have been avoided.

Without it, the crew had no warning at all.

The two pilots didn't want to die. They had families.

No one wanted to die. We still do not blame them.

I guess the bottom line is

nobody wanted to be in that situation.

It was just something that happened.

For Barry Small, the years since the crash

of flight 801 have been emotional and frustrating.

The Civil Aviation Authority in his homeland of New Zealand

has acknowledged the potential danger

posed by duty free liquor on board.

But so far, no policies have been changed.

His desire to modify airplane seat design

has also been ignored.

I have taken several steps to put this idea

forward and in a lot of cases it's initially

met with enthusiasm but it eventually

ends up in the too hard basket and when I try to approach

seat design people there's no one wants to hear about it.

Sean Burke was never officially

identified as a victim of flight 801.

Wendy Bunten was positively identified but DNA samples

only proved that a white male was on the plane near her.

Bill and I never gave up hope

that Sean had survived the crash.

Even after we came home for I would say a year or two,

every time the phone rang,

every time somebody knocked on the door

we expected a phone message saying hi dad,

this is your son Sean.

Eventually, several years after the crash,

Barry Small was able to give Kathy Burke and her husband

some sense of finality and an enduring image of their son.

When we met him

and he wanted to tell us that in the twelve hour layover

in Seoul he was wandering around and finally heard two people

speaking English and he said they were so much

in love that he did not want to interrupt their conversation.

For Sean's father,

the deep sorrow of the crash will never completely leave.

For me, the grief of Sean's loss never ends.

Hasn't gotten better. Hasn't gotten worse. Just another day.

Ah for everybody else it's gone.

I expect people to move on but I'll be this way till

the day I'm with him again.

For Barry Small there is anger too,

but also incredible gratitude for surviving.

So many people have told me that I survived for a reason.

I've been searching for that reason for nine years now

and I truly believe

if someone would listen to my story about the oxygen and

alcohol and the improvement of the seats that I could justify

in my own mind that I don't need to feel guilty about surviving.