Original subtitles

Every time you board a plane,

you put your trust in the pilots.

And every time pilots enter the cockpit,

they put their trust in computers.

It's a complicated relationship between man and machine.

And when it doesn't work perfectly,

disaster can strike in an instant.

We're going to turn over!

We didn't know if we were gonna live or die.

Autopilot!

Life and death decisions have to be made in a moment.

Confusion can kill passengers and crew.

Flying in today's world is a very complex task.

The pilot's always the last line of defense.

When the worst happens,

the question is

who's flying the plane?

Mayday, mayday.

It's just after 8:30 in the morning,

in Sanford, Florida.

These student pilots walk out to ground school.

Their topic today, a Cirrus SR20.

This is one of the newer models. We can tell

just from looking at it

because of the lights on the wing-tips.

They're called recognition lights, or recogs.

Every year dozens of students enroll

at the Delta Connection Academy,

hoping to eventually become pilots with major airlines.

Their lives, and one day the lives of the passengers they fly

depend on their deep understanding of their airplane.

From this side right here,

you can see the propeller governor.

The majority of our students

come to us with zero or very little flight time.

We want to run someone through our entire program

and end up placing them

with one of the regional carriers.

The wing-tips here are called corner wing-tips.

They help to reduce the induced drag.

These flight students are getting started on smaller aircraft.

In the years to come, they will move

into large commercial jets

boasting the latest in technology.

When you go back to the Wright Brothers,

they had no automation

and everything was by muscle power,

other than a small internal combustion engine.

Everything that they did, when they moved the wings,

the elevators and the rudders, they did manually.

But in the last hundred years,

technology has revolutionized flying.

Pilots share the cockpit

with automated computer systems

that control virtually every aspect of flight.

It can do everything now

up to and including land the airplane.

Everything is set

so that the autopilots and automation systems

are tools for the pilot to use, but they're not a replacement.

It's a critical lesson

for student pilots to learn.

Safe flight is a balance

between automation and training.

If a pilot makes a mistake,

or if an instrument malfunctions,

these flying computers can turn into lethal machines

that can't be controlled.

Lima, Peru.

October 2, 1996.

Aeroperu Flight 603 prepares for take off

for Santiago, Chile.

The plane is a four-year-old Boeing 757,

a highly sophisticated jet

known for its reliability and safety.

The 757 is flown

by two of the national airline's best pilots.

Captain Eric Schreiber,

and First Officer David Fernandez.

There are 61 passengers and nine crew members on board.

The jet is among a new generation

of computer-controlled aircraft

in which pilots are trained

to rely on a central data system

that is designed to reduce errors,

both mechanical and human.

Gear up.

Tonight, though, within minutes of take-off,

the flight begins to go horribly wrong.

The altimeters are stuck.

The altimeter indicates

how high the aircraft is flying over the ground.

It reads zero, but the plane is clearly airborne.

This is really new. Keep V2 plus ten.

The 757 is equipped with three altimeters.

One for the pilot,

one for the co-pilot and one for backup.

All three seem to be dead.

As the two men try to solve the first problem,

they lose another crucial instrument.

The air speed indicator.

The speed.

Eh?

The speed.

What's going on? We're not climbing.

No, I am climbing, but the speed.

Hold it. Maintain speed.

Bewildered by the host of confusing warnings,

Captain Schreiber decides to land.

Lima tower, Aeroperu 603.

We are in an emergency.

Aeroperu 603, Lima.

We are declaring an emergency.

We have no basic instruments, no altimeter,

no air speed indicator. Declaring emergency.

To add to their problems,

Schreiber and Fernandez are flying at night over water,

with no visual reference points.

Not being able to trust their instruments,

the pilots are flying blind.

The airplane was controllable.

But you first have to diagnose what's wrong.

And It's very easy from 20-20 hindsight

sitting here in a chair on a nice sunny day

to say, "This is what he should have done."

But, in the cold dark night

with bells and whistles going off, uh,

it's very difficult to analyze

conflicting information that you're getting.

Unable to trust their instruments,

the pilots have to depend on information

from the ground.

Can you give us the air speed please,

if you have us on the radar?

Yes. Affirmative. As of ten seconds,

it seems that you're climbing at level 6000

at two-two miles south,

on heading 1-9-5.

Okay, we have that.

We are on heading 1-9-0

and we have 7000 feet on the altimeter.

Yes, correct. You are now reaching 7000.

Even as they try to return to the airport,

the havoc in the cockpit gets worse.

Systems warn that they are over speed.

Over speed.

They're flying too fast.

Extend the speed brakes.

Now the stall warning sounds.

- And then... Too low terrain.

- What's happening? - "Too low terrain"?

We have the terrain alarm. We have the terrain alarm.

The Ground Proximity alarm warns them

that they're flying dangerously low.

...an indicator of flight level of 10,000 over the sea.

Too low terrain.

There is no checklist for

if you have these seven or eight warnings going off,

which they did, and they couldn't shut them off.

Altitude is 9700.

- Ninety-seven hundred? - Yes, correct.

Do you have any visual reference?

Ninety-seven hundred?

But it is indicating too low terrain.

Are you sure you have us on the radar at 50 miles?

The crew is bombarded with conflicting warnings.

They have no idea which of them to believe.

Suddenly they realize the horrible truth.

We're hitting water! Pull it up!

They're flying just meters above the water.

We're going to turn over!

Aeroperu 603, Lima.

There are no survivors from Flight 603,

all because something caused

the on-board computers to go haywire.

Searching through the Pacific waters,

investigators manage to find the data recorders.

It was clear to us

that they were really experiencing a problem

with air speed and altitude.

On the 757,

devices called Pitot-Static tubes measure

the air speed and altitude.

They are small external sensors which relay that information

to the plane's computerized systems.

Deep underwater,

tape is discovered covering the plane's sensors.

How the tape got there leads investigators

back to the maintenance crew at Lima airport.

Just before Aeroperu 603 lifted off from Lima,

maintenance workers had cleaned the jet.

A worker had covered the static ports with tape

to protect them.

This is standard procedure.

But when the maintenance was complete,

the worker forgot to remove the tape.

It was a small oversight with tragic results.

The inspector who was supposed

to quality-check his work did not do it.

And the supervisor out on the line that night

was not there, he was sick.

And there was a regular mechanic

who was filling that role, he did not see it.

In this case, the Captain did the pre-flight.

They do a walk-around looking for just that kind of thing.

The Captain did the pre-flight that night

and he did not detect it either.

Yes, correct. You're now reaching 7000.

The blocked tubes also explain

why the air-traffic controllers told the crew

they were flying at 7000 feet.

The information on the plane's height isn't

calculated by radar on the ground,

but by the plane's on-board systems.

From 7000 feet,

the plane began to slowly descend,

but the on-board systems couldn't detect it.

And the air-traffic controller had no way to know

the altitude indicated on his system was wrong.

Blindsided by bewildering readings from their instruments,

the crew was completely lost.

They had no idea where they were,

how high they were flying or how fast they were going.

We're hitting water! Pull it up!

Climb! Climb, Aeroperu 603. If you need to, pull up!

Aeroperu was a deadly lesson

about how dependent pilots have become

on their automated flight systems,

and how helpless they can be when the systems are crippled.

Student pilots need to understand

the complex technology

at the heart of their airplanes.

When something goes wrong,

they need to know who's in control,

because even an experienced pilot can

rely too heavily on his systems.

And when he does,

disaster can be just seconds away.

All right, gentlemen. What we're going to do today is

practice rejected take-offs in preparation for the V1 cuts.

It'll be engine fire, engine failure

or loss of directional control.

At the Delta Connection flight school

in Sanford, Florida,

students are facing the worst

in the safety of a simulator.

No pilot can graduate unless they can deal

with problems they may never have to face in the real world.

The course that I teach, we typically,

they work as a crew. They'll go 26 hours in the simulator,

thirteen hours in each seat.

Simulation can now introduce problems

that are hard to introduce in the air.

Doing it with simulation allows it to be repeated.

And then if you are ever faced with the emergency,

it becomes almost a matter of routine.

All right, Connection 500, you're cleared for take-off.

Clear for take-off. Runway four. Connection 500.

Right after takeoff,

the students are faced with an emergency.

We've got a "Left engine oil pressure."

When you get one of those warnings,

don't just punch it out. Go ahead and acknowledge it

so both pilots are in the loop, you're both on the same page.

All right. We got a "Left engine oil pressure".

I'll take flight controls, you run the, uh, reference.

I have flight controls.

They run through the drill again and again,

because surviving in the air depends

on getting it right in the simulator.

In an actual cockpit, even a small inconvenience can

escalate into a desperate struggle

to save the airplane.

February 19th, 1985.

China Airlines Flight 006 is tumbling through the sky.

No response, Captain!

Air speed 80 knots and falling!

One of the engines has failed.

No response!

Their instruments seem to be making no sense.

People just popped up like popcorn, hitting the cabin.

We didn't know if we were gonna live or die.

The 747 falls

more than ten kilometers in two minutes.

The pilots can barely keep it airborne.

You know this airplane is totally out of control. It is going to crash.

The jet nose-dives towards the Pacific Ocean.

Then, just moments away from impact,

the crew regains control of the plane.

Oakland Center.

Dynasty 006. We are declaring an emergency.

Dynasty 006, Oakland Center. You are now cleared.

You are free to descend at pilot's discretion.

After surviving a tremendous fall,

Captain Min-Yuan Ho makes a smooth textbook landing.

I thought he was a hero. He saved our lives.

We thought he was a hero and everything was fine.

Two dozen passengers have suffered minor injuries.

One crewmember is hospitalized and soon released.

But the 747 looks like it's been through a war zone.

Parts of the entire tailplane

at the end were ripped off

as though a tornado had come through,

or a crane had been in and ripped pieces out of it.

Investigators soon realize the damage

to the plane wasn't the cause of the problems,

but had actually occurred during the plane's wild plunge.

They pore through maintenance records

and flight logs to try to determine the cause

of the near fatal incident.

Inside the plane,

investigators find a worn valve.

It led directly to the failure of the jet's fourth engine.

But this shouldn't have caused

the plane to fall through the sky.

Engine four, flamed out.

The loss of thrust on a four-engine airplane is

a minor event.

It's an event, you have to take care of it,

but the airplane will fly on three engines

with no difficulty.

I do not think I was fatigued.

The Captain tells investigators that,

while the crew was dealing with the faulty engine,

he left the autopilot in control of the plane.

But on this 747,

the autopilot does not control the rudder.

Autopilots are set to maintain stable flight.

If something goes wrong, the system tries to respond.

With more engine power on the left wing,

the China Airlines jet began turning right.

The autopilot reacted by using the plane's ailerons

to try to keep the 747 flying straight.

But the ailerons weren't up to the job.

The jet kept turning.

In order to keep it from turning to the right,

the proper thing to do would have been to step on the rudder.

Now it's possible that he'd forgotten

that the autopilot didn't use the rudder.

He may have been assuming all along

that the autopilot was just flying the airplane

the way a human being would have

which it wasn't.

Focused on his malfunctioning engine,

Captain Ho left the autopilot in control.

But without the help of the rudder,

the ailerons were losing their battle

to keep the plane level.

The gentle turn got steeper.

The airplane started to lose speed and, in the end,

it was really that little error of airmanship,

the failure to step on that left rudder pedal,

that triggered everything else.

We're banking right, Captain. Air speed 230.

Facing mounting problems,

the captain finally takes complete control

of his aircraft.

We're banking right, Captain.

I'm disengaging autopilot.

When the autopilot snaps off,

his situation only gets worse.

Without the ailerons to control the jet's bank,

the plane flips over.

It plunges into thick clouds

and Captain Ho is unable to get his bearings.

The crew has no visual reference point.

They have no idea which way is up.

They are totally dependent on their attitude indicators,

but they don't think they're working properly.

I've lost ADI!

The ADIs have malfunctioned!

It's going out of limits!

But the instruments had not malfunctioned.

They told the crew an unbelievable truth.

They were falling towards the Pacific Ocean.

They simply didn't believe what they were seeing,

and they thought they had lost their attitude instruments.

They hadn't lost their attitude instruments.

The airplane was, in fact,

embarking on an aerobatic manoeuvre.

You could see the stewardesses,

all the people who didn't have their seatbelts on,

they were flying.

It's only when the plane finally breaks free of the clouds

that Captain Ho is able to regain control of his plane...

I can see the horizon!

...because he now has a visual reference.

By the time Captain Ho takes full control,

it was almost too late.

The near fatal dive highlights

the need for pilots to avoid

relying too much on their computers.

So, what automation has done, in a sense, is

taken pilots and taken them

from being hands-on, kind of, controllers of the machine

to monitors of what the automation is

doing to the machine.

You really are just sitting there with your arms folded,

and this goes on for hour after hour after hour,

and, understandably, people become stupefied.

But whatever mistakes the flight crew made,

they did succeed in their ultimate task.

The one big thing they did right is they saved the airplane.

And, in principle, that's all you ever need to do right.

You need to save the airplane

and you need to save the passengers.

And that's what they did.

Student pilots practice

emergencies again and again to ensure

that, when disaster strikes, they handle it correctly.

Automation is an enormous aid to long-distance flying.

But if a crew doesn't fully understand

how their plane works,

they can quickly get into a situation

from which they cannot escape.

Autopilot engaged.

Autopilot engaged.

Ten years after the China Airlines mishap,

another crew is baffled by a more complicated autopilot,

and fails to take control until it's too late.

March 1994, Siberia.

Search parties comb through the wreckage

of Russian International Airlines Flight 593.

All 75 people on board are dead.

The plane was one of the newest in the fleet,

a European-built Airbus A310.

Listening to the cockpit voices,

investigators are shocked by what they hear.

- I am turning it left! - Okay, get out!

Get it to the left! The ground is right there!

Children's voices in the cockpit.

They are stunned when they realize

these children had operated the flight controls.

The children were the son and daughter

of the pilot in command, Captain Yaroslav Kudrinsky.

Investigators begin to piece together

an almost unbelievable story.

On the evening of March 22nd, 1994,

Flight 593 begins

its scheduled ten-hour journey to Hong Kong.

Several hours into the jet's flight,

the aircraft is cruising on autopilot.

On board are two children

taking their first international flight,

Yana and Eldar Kudrinsky.

A family friend and fellow pilot brings

the children in to see their father.

- Hi, Dad. - This is First Officer Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov.

It's the beginning of a deadly chain of events.

What do you think of our new airplane?

It's very nice.

It's amazing.

Flight 593 is now over 2000 miles east of Moscow,

near the middle of Siberia.

Secure in the knowledge that the autopilot is

flying the plane,

Captain Kudrinsky allows his children to sit

in the pilot's seat and hold the controls.

Unlike the China Airlines 747,

the more sophisticated autopilot on this jet can control

every part of the plane, including the rudder.

Eldar's small pressure on the controls actually turns off

part of the autopilot.

Eldar is now manually controlling

the jet's ailerons.

Imperceptibly at first, the plane begins to bank.

No one in the cockpit responds

to the gradual change in direction.

And the very design of the plane hides the fact

that the jet is on the brink of disaster.

Yes, it is.

Another peculiarity of the plane

is that it has no alarm signaling the disengaging

of the autopilot in the list channel,

while our Russian planes have

an alarm sounding in such an event.

The Autopilot is still controlling

the plane's other functions.

Only the ailerons are in Eldar's hands.

But it's enough to affect the plane's flight.

Moments later, the Airbus is banking at 45 degrees.

The force of the turn pushes everyone into their seats.

Guys!

The increased G-force makes it difficult

to reach the controls.

Okay, hold it. Hold the control column.

Eldar is the only one with both hands on the controls.

The speed of the turn is pushing him back in his seat.

- The other way! - Turn it to the left.

I am turning it left!

Okay, get out!

But Eldar can't leave.

His body feels twice its normal weight.

Suddenly, an alarm sounds.

The autopilot is shutting down.

When the jet reaches such an extreme position,

the autopilot is designed to completely disengage.

It's a safety feature,

to put the pilot back in complete control.

But in this case, a teenager is in the captain's seat.

The plane begins to dive towards the ground.

Get it to the left! There's the ground!

The plane dives at an incredible speed,

plunging over 200 meters per second.

For the passengers, it's like having

an elevator suddenly fall out from under them.

Get out. Get out.

Captain Kudrinsky fights his way

back to the pilot's seat.

But it's too late to save Flight 593.

As in the China Airlines incident

almost a decade before,

the Russian crew was confused by their automation.

But in this case, they couldn't regain control

until it was too late.

The accident began, not with a mechanical problem,

but with a simple decision made by a very experienced pilot.

I've never heard of anything like that

before or since.

It was very unprofessional on the part of the captain.

The First Officer also bears some responsibility

for not raising major objections immediately.

To allow someone unqualified to sit in the seat

of a commercial airliner is unthinkable.

The crew's mistake was compounded because they didn't

fully understand their computerized systems.

We've gone into a zone. A holding pattern.

Ten years later,

another experienced pilot gets confused by his instruments.

And this time, the situation is complicated

by a common sensation pilots are trained to ignore.

Paul Mauro is an instructor

at the Delta Connection Academy in Florida.

His job is to put students

in extremely uncomfortable situations

and then get them to land safely.

Upset recovery is where we take a student, or any pilot,

and we try to get them the ability to recover

their aircraft from an unusual attitude or an upset,

such as wake turbulence, wind shear, unintentional stall.

We're going to do a low-level pass

and bring her right down to the edge of the runway

and then, just about halfway down,

we're going to break up and demonstrate

how quickly we can get the aircraft

into a nose-high situation.

At that point we're experiencing,

in that first portion of the pull up,

we're experiencing the max G load in that turn.

We're hitting just about six, six and a half Gs for that pull.

At six Gs you're experiencing six times your body weight.

I weigh 200 pounds. So six times that,

at that point I feel like I weigh 1200 pounds to my body.

It feels like I'm being squeezed completely,

all over my entire body. It feels like my face is

kind of peeling down over you.

And it's just a... once you get used to it, it's kind of fun.

In a tightly-controlled situation,

with an instructor in the next seat,

a student pilot learns to cope with intense physical sensations

that can disorient and confuse.

Pilots have to overcome these sensations

and even ignore them.

Trusting what your body is telling you can

have deadly results.

January 3rd , 2004.

A Flash Airlines charter flight is preparing to depart

from the popular tourist resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

One hundred and forty-eight people are on board.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

On behalf of Captain Khedr and his entire crew,

we welcome you on board Flash Airlines

Boeing 737-300.

The captain is 53-year-old Khedr Abdullah,

a former officer in the Egyptian Air Force.

He has over 7000 hours flying experience.

Clouds and sky clear.

In the darkness before dawn,

Captain Khedr and his crew execute

a smooth take-off.

Flying manually, they haven't yet engaged

the plane's autopilot.

But while still climbing,

the flight plan is already beginning to fall apart.

Turning right, sir.

- What? - Aircraft is turning right.

Turning right? How turning right?

Overbank!

Autopilot!

Autopilot's in command.

Autopilot! Autopilot!

No autopilot, commander.

No, God!

In the morning light,

investigators find no one has survived the horrific accident.

The plane had just taken off

and it looked very strange

why this accident happened so quickly after take-off.

French and American investigators join

Egyptian authorities in the search.

It takes two weeks just to find and recover

the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.

Investigators explore dozens of possibilities,

including the idea the crash was caused by vertigo.

Vertigo is a physiological condition

and it's based on the inner ear.

Over a dark ocean,

without a defined visual horizon,

no ground lights,

the pilot may not be able to perceive visually

whether he was flying up, down, left or right.

And if the fluid in his inner ear was moving,

or he tilted his head,

that may induce a sensation,

a physiological sensation,

that may cause the pilot to believe

the airplane is flying straight and level

when it's actually turning.

Roger when ready. Inshallah.

Left turn to establish 306.

Sharm VOR.

As the plane banked over the Red Sea,

it slowly began going off course.

But the pilot says nothing.

It seems that he's unaware

of the changes to his flight path.

It is actually a very high work-load situation.

And when there are no visual cues outside

because it's a moonless night,

and you're over featureless territory

with no lights in it,

you, really, as a professional pilot, should

be totally aware of the fact that this is a situation

in which you could get disorientated.

Precisely what the captain perceived is unknown.

What is known is that his control wheel slowly inched

towards the right.

Turning right, sir.

- What? - Aircraft is turning right.

How turning right?

In this particular instance,

not only are you trying to fly the airplane

and understand situationally what's happening,

but you're going through the mental gymnastics

because your expectations are one way.

Meanwhile, you have the first officer,

who's telling him something that's totally different.

Even with all the conflicting information

he was getting, investigators discover

that Captain Khedr almost recovered control of his plane.

It is interesting that the recovery starts

as the airplane turns towards the coastline.

The lights on the shore would have given the pilot

a clear and unmistakable view of the aircraft's attitude.

This is the moment that the disorientation disappears

and this is the moment that the recovery begins.

Sadly there isn't enough time to save the aircraft.

The tragic fact remains

that Captain Khedr had all the information he needed

to save the plane right in front of him.

The thing that is important when you're experiencing

spatial disorientation or vertigo is

to put absolute implicit trust in your instruments,

that they are telling you the truth.

And that whatever your sensation is, is

a limitation of human beings. Trust the instruments.

It's a lesson that's hammered home every day

at the Delta Connection Academy.

Brian Patrycia is one of dozens of students here who wants

to fly commercial passenger jets.

It's a goal that's still years away.

It should take me between five to six years

at a regional airline before I move onto the major airlines.

It's a typical journey.

Senior crewmembers for international carriers

often have thousands of hours of flying under their belt.

But each one of them started with none.

There's a very old saying that says,

"As soon as you feel like you are no longer learning

with aviation, get out of it,"

because it's gonna hurt you.

Training is ongoing.

Recurrent training is an integral part of safe flying.

The reason we have the safe level of flight that we do today is,

in a very large part, because of the adequacy

and completeness of the training.

Relying on your instruments,

trusting your automation is one

of the most fundamental lessons of flight training.

Insert the ignition key,

clear the propeller area, and then start the engine.

Every safe flight, from small planes to jumbo jets,

depends on pilot and plane working together.

But even if a jet's technology is crippled,

modern planes are so well built,

pilots can still bring them safely down.

August 24th, 2001.

Air Transat Flight 236 is

carrying 306 passengers and crew.

Bound for Portugal, the Airbus is in serious trouble

high above the Atlantic Ocean.

You could literally hear a pin drop.

The exterior... there was no sound in that plane, in that cabin at all.

The airplane is so silent

because it's run out of fuel.

A state-of-the-art jet is now a very heavy glider.

Functions we've lost, we have no more stabilizer.

- Blue and yellow hydraulic. - No ADR two and three,

no anti-skid, no reversers.

The technology that normally keeps planes flying has

deserted the crew.

The jet is 10 kilometers in the sky

without the most essential instruments.

Captain Robert Piche and Co-Pilot Dirk De Jager have

to find a way to get it safely back to Earth.

For the first four hours of their journey from Canada

to Portugal, the flight is unremarkable.

We're getting to our next checkpoint.

Every 30 minutes across the Atlantic,

the crew had checked their position

and their fuel consumption against their flight plan.

...two tons on the right, 11.2 tons on the left.

Despite the computerized systems,

some procedures like checking the fuel on board are

done by hand.

Fuel check complete. Level's normal for the distance flown.

All right.

But then, a small alarm breaks

the air of routine in the cockpit.

Look, we're getting a warning signal.

Oil temp low and oil pressure high on number two.

The computer display shows

that the oil temperature is low in engine number two.

But it also shows that the oil pressure is high.

Look in the QRH for more information.

A low oil temperature indication is normally indicative

of bad readings, a bad sensor.

Oil temperatures don't decrease, normally, they increase.

A low oil temperature would be of no concern.

The high oil pressure is a very strange indication.

Uh, it's... it's very rare.

In fact I've never actually heard of one.

The oil readings are so unusual,

the pilots believe they might indicate a computer error.

But Captain and First Officer keep monitoring the oil levels.

Thirty minutes after the first alarm goes off,

another warning sounds inside the Airbus.

"Fuel imbalance warning."

I haven't seen that before.

Follow all ECAM action. I have Air Traffic Control.

In the Airbus 330,

most of the fuel is contained in large tanks on the wings.

The computer had detected

that the fuel level on the right is significantly lower

than the level on the left.

The flight manual recommends

transferring fuel through a special cross feed valve.

Fuel will then flow from one tank to the other.

Once you begin the cross-feeding procedure

to correct the fuel imbalance,

restorative action should commence quite quickly.

In other words, the situation would

not continue to get worse.

Even though the crew is following proper procedures,

the situation does get worse.

The fuel quantity isn't rising in the tanks of the right wing.

- Check fuel quantity. - It's very low, hold on.

It's much less fuel than we should have. It looks like a fuel leak.

Check again.

The systems monitor hundreds and hundreds of sensors.

And, you know, they can be affected by...

you know, such mundane things as a little bit of frost or ice

on a sensor can... cause it to present bad data.

But, in fact, the reading is accurate.

There's a serious leak in one of the engines,

and Piche has been transferring

precious fuel into the leaking tank.

The fact is confirmed when Co-Pilot DeJager completes

another fuel check.

According to all the gauges,

all the tanks on the right wing are way below

the level they should be, according to the flight plan.

And... there's hardly anything in the other ones.

- What about the trim tank? - There's nothing there either.

With every passing second,

the leak drains the tanks of their remaining fuel

until, finally...

the jet is running on empty.

We're losing engine number two. I don't believe this.

Okay, maximum thrust on number one.

Um, what's going on?

Try to transfer fuel from center tank and the trim tank.

Transferring. Fuel quantity is reaching zero.

This can't be.

We are not going to go completely dry on this airplane.

But, in fact, the Air Transat has run out of fuel

some 12000 meters over the Atlantic Ocean.

No fuel means no power to control the plane.

But the jet has one last trick up its sleeve,

one last source of power.

The crew deploys a rarely-used back-up system.

It's called a Ram air turbine. It will deploy

from underneath the fuselage near the wing fairing.

And it's... a small propeller

that deploys out the bottom of the fuselage

and it spins in the wind.

And that small propeller will provide very limited electrical

and hydraulic systems to run the aircraft.

In other words, although it's a glider,

at least it's a controllable glider.

When it took off, this Air Transat jet was

a state-of-the-art marvel.

Now it's falling from the sky,

and the crew has to hope this last piece of technology will

help them get down in one piece.

A passenger plane has run out of fuel.

The Air Transat jet is now an enormous glider

with more than 300 people on board.

They crew have diverted their flight

from its destination in Portugal.

The plane is now heading for a military air base

on the tiny island of Terceira in the Azores.

I saw flight attendants with life-jackets in their hand

running down the aisles.

Obviously, that was a sign of fear.

"What, you know, what was happening?" was

the first question that popped in my mind.

If Captain Robert Piche can't make it to the airport,

his only other option is the ocean.

But Piche doesn't want to risk it.

Planes aren't designed to survive landing on water.

In 1996, a Boeing 767 ran out of fuel

off the coast of East Africa.

Its last moments were caught on amateur video.

Of the 175 people on board the Ethiopian Airways jet,

only 50 survived.

Without vital controls,

Captain Piche and Co-Pilot Dirk DeJager have

to rely on each other like never before.

The thought that a commercial airliner's gonna

find itself out of fuel

with all the safeguards

and all the redundancies is hard to fathom.

This crew faced it together.

Slats out and locked.

The very design of the plane prevents it

from dropping like a stone.

Even without engines

the plane's forward momentum gives it some lift.

It's falling fast, but it's still flying.

Can you give me a landing speed, please?

No engine. No flaps.

Ideal approach speed is 170 knots. We're too fast.

Yes. But the runway is very long.

But at the end of the runway is a very steep cliff.

Using the power available from the Ram air turbine,

Captain Piche forces the plane to turn steeply,

trying to burn off some speed.

The plane was almost on a, like a 45 degree angle. I thought it was just gonna...

it was just gonna flip over

and just nose-dive straight down.

Everybody, I need you to brace.

Hang on.

The tires have blown!

Oh, my God!

After bursting eight tires,

the plane finally stops in the middle of the runway.

Everyone on board survives.

He got that plane down safely

and only blew out eight of the 12 tires.

And saved 300 people.

He saved 300 people's lives.

Piche and DeJager have flown their Airbus without power

further than any passenger jet in history.

News of their remarkable achievement spreads around the world.

You don't have time really to think about anything else

than taking care of the safety of your passenger, you know?

That's your main goal and since we didn't have any engine,

the other main goal was to make the landing safely.

So, at that time, I guess the experience came in.

Investigators discover that the leak on board the jet

had been set in motion when the right engine had been

replaced five days before the crash.

We have to realize that there was a small mistake made,

uh, in terms of changing the pump.

We installed it, uh...

but then some pipes, so to speak, were needed

to be connected to the pump, and there was a mismatch.

The small mistake had crippled

this highly-engineered machine.

But its very design left the pilots enough control

to steer the plane away from disaster.

Brett Rowe, private pilot.

At the Delta Connection Academy

in Sanford, Florida,

another student has earned his wings.

After 14 months of training, he's one step closer

to becoming a commercial pilot.

We don't take everybody here at the Academy.

We want people that are motivated,

that want to come, that have a passion for flying.

It's a career that you've got

to want deep inside to accomplish.

Otherwise you'll never make it through.

Accidents have reinforced the need

for pilots to understand the complicated relationship

between crew and computers.

The lives of countless people depend on it.

Pilots take the responsibility

for their passengers very, very, very seriously.

We're responsible from the time

that that passenger enters the airplane

until they leave at the destination.

The pilot's always the last line of defense.

Automated systems make

flying more predictable and dependable.

But it's the marriage of computers and crew

that ultimately makes flying one of the safest ways to travel.