All language subtitles for Mayday.S07E03.Blown.Apart.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

High above
the North Sea,

an aging propeller plane
tumbles from the sky.

The first headline
was sabotage.

Investigators consider
a string of possibilities.

It takes two years
to find the cause.

Unbelievable.

It's something
that's never been seen
in any previous investigation.

They looked at that
and said, "Man, oh, man,
how could that be?"

It would lead
to arrests half a world away.

And call into question
the safety of one of the world's
most important planes,

Air Force One.

It reached all the way
to the aviation that flies

around the President
of the United States.

4:30 p.m.,
September the 8th 1989.

Oh, hang on, hang on.

Knut Tveitm
and Finn Petter Berg are
flying a charter flight

from Oslo, Norway,

to the German city of Hamburg.

Partnair 394,
radar service terminated.

The plane
is about 100 kilometers
from the Danish Coast.

124 decimal 55 bye.
Partnair 394.

How was dinner?

Delicious.

Little pricey, but delicious.

The two friends have
flown around the world together,

including remote
areas of Africa.

They're highly experienced

and both are only months away
from retirement.

Copenhagen, good afternoon.

Partnair 394 maintaining
flight level 2-2-0.

Partnair 394, good afternoon.

Radar contact
Copenhagen control.

394.

The plane is flying
22,000 feet above the North Sea.

The aircraft they're flying
is a twin-prop,
Convair 340-580.

It's a popular plane
for short routes like this one.

The plane has been
chartered by the Norwegian
shipping company, Wilhelmsen.

All 50 passengers are winners
of a company lottery,

sending them on a free trip
to Hamburg to name a new ship.

One of the company's
best employees
is chosen to give a speech

at the christening
of the ship in Hamburg.

As the Convair
crosses the North Sea,
a Norwegian Air Force F-16

approaches the plane
on its way home.

Whoa! Look at that,
11 o'clock.

F-16.

Suddenly, the plane
experiences a violent shock.

The crew is caught by surprise.

The plane begins
rolling upside down.

Air traffic control
notices the Partnair 394

is off course
and falling from the sky.

Partnair 394,
Copenhagen control,
please report new flight level.

The crew is struggling
to save the plane and the lives
of everyone on board.

Please report new flight level.

Pull up, terrain.
Pull up, terrain. Pull up.

Please report new flight level.

Then it disappears.

It seems as though
the charter flight
has crashed into the sea.

Partnair 394 enroute
to Hamburg is off radar.

Rescue teams race
to the crash site,

nearly 20 kilometers
north of the Danish Coast.

They find only wreckage
and bodies.

All 55 people
who were on the flight are dead.

The shipping company
is devastated by the news.

Half the staff
from its head office
has been killed.

It's the biggest
airline disaster
in Norwegian history.

The nation is in shock.

Jan Ovind is a young reporter
for Norway's largest newspaper.

He's assigned
to cover this story.

One of the inspectors
in the Norwegian FAA

jumped to the conclusion
that it had to be sabotage.

And it was also stated
by one of the Danish
rescue team leaders,

who said that
they had no distress call,

it just fell out of the sky.

Which meant it had to be
a bomb or something.

And somebody draw
links to Lockerbie,
the year before.

In December 1988,

Pan Am Flight 103
exploded over
Lockerbie Scotland.

The evidence in that case
is pointing conclusively
to a bomb.

Norwegian journalists
uncover an intriguing fact

about the Partnair plane.

Our prime minister
at the time,

Gro Harlem Brundtland,

she used the plane
on her campaign trip

to the North of Norway,

and I guess she used it
for two or three days.

And that was just two
or three days
before it crashed.

The nation wonders,

could the tragedy have been
a botched assassination attempt?

The first headline was
sabotage on the
whole front page.

A bomb would explain
the plane's sudden plunge
from the sky.

Had the 55 people on board
been the innocent victims
of a murderer?

Investigators looking into
the mysterious downing

of a passenger jet over
the North Sea are facing
a stunning possibility

that the plane
was deliberately sabotaged.

I want
maintenance logs...

The Norwegian Accident
Investigation Board recruits

an Air Force investigator,
Finn Heimdal, to join the team.

It will be a severe test
of his investigative skills.

It's good to be here.

I started many, many years ago
with the Air Force.

And, of course,
I saw some investigations

mishandled terribly,
and I thought it can be done
better than that.

Investigators hear
from several witnesses

who lend support to the idea
that the plane was sabotaged.

A young man
claims to have heard
a cannon-like sound

coming from the crash site
off the Danish Coast.

It may have been the explosion
that brought down
the Partnair plane.

Searchers scour the surface
of the sea

for floating debris
and for victims of the crash.

Eventually,
all but five bodies are found.

They're taken to Denmark
for autopsies.

Those examinations reveal
that some of the victims

have small,
puncture-like wounds.

This supports the notion
that a bomb brought down
Partnair Flight 394.

An autopsy on the
First Officer also uncovers
something unusual.

A complete, unbroken toothpick
is discovered in his stomach.

That was a odd finding really
because it was pointed
at both ends

and how can you swallow
a toothpick like that?

So he must have been exposed
to a very shocking experience.

Please report new flight level.

But investigators
can't confirm that a bomb
brought down the plane.

They'll need to know more
about the final moments
of Flight 394.

Partnair 394 enroute
to Hamburg is off radar.

Nine separate
radar stations
tracked its final seconds.

They could provide
valuable clues.

The most intriguing readings
come from a military
radar station in Sweden.

Operators there tracked
the Partnair flight
as it crossed the North Sea.

Let's start at 14:36.

The military
radar has detected
something unexpected.

There is another object
in the same airspace
as the plane.

It is not another airplane.

It appears as Flight 394
started to plummet
from 22,000 feet.

Any idea what it is?

We simply didn't know
what it was from the beginning.

We had no idea
what it could have been.

It took more than half an hour,
something like 38 minutes

and the question was,
what is light enough
to fall that slowly,

and then solid enough
to give radar returns like that?

Whatever the mysterious object was,

it now lies
at the bottom of the sea.

A month after the crash,
investigators are busy
recovering sunken wreckage.

They've plotted the position
of the wreckage
on the ocean floor

using side scan sonar.

It sends out sound waves
that are reflected back
when they encounter objects.

The sonar equipment has painted

a remarkably accurate picture
of the underwater wreckage.

It helps investigators
see that the plane parts

have settled over
a two kilometer-wide area.

It's an important piece
of evidence.

It was evident that the aircraft
had come apart in the air.

It hadn't hit the sea
in one piece.

That was for sure.

The midair break-up
suggests a bomb
brought down the plane.

But it will take weeks
to prove this.

In the meantime,
investigators hope the plane's
black boxes will provide

more immediate insight
into the crash.

The plane's voice recorder
and eventually
it's data recorder

are recovered from the seabed,

and sent to labs for analysis.

Both boxes were damaged
in the crash.

Investigators hope the damage
to the boxes
didn't affect the data.

Now let's see what we got.

The voice recorder
may have picked up

a conversation
between the pilots

that can explain
what happened on board.

Avionics CVR?

On, as required.

Auto feather system?

Armed and two green...

The device usually
records the final minutes
of a flight.

But this CVR has done
the opposite.

Engaged Beta lights off.

Power.

It recorded
the start of the flight

but then mysteriously
stopped recording
just before the plane took off.

Well, it had recorded
the conversation on the ground,

but as soon as the engines
were up shifted the normal RPM
for takeoff,

it ceased operations.

So that was
a disappointment to us.

But the malfunctioning
CVR did pick up an intriguing
exchange between the two pilots.

How's the weather in Hamburg?

It's clear skies.
Good visibility.

Hope it stays that way.

The CVR does tell
investigators that Flight 394
began with an unusual problem.

Partnair was in financial
dire straits, and we found out
that just a few hours

before the plane took off,

the Norwegian aviation
authorities sent out a telex

to tell all the airports
in Norway to don't let
a Partnair plane take-off

because they owe a lot of money
in non-paid charges and fees.

They won't release us
for takeoff until we pay
the catering bill.

How much you got on ya?

Seriously?

God!

Probably enough actually.

Wow.

I'll take care of it then.

The First Officer
was forced to leave the cockpit

to pay the caterers
for on board meals.

Investigators check
maintenance records

to find out why the CVR

only recorded the crew's
conversation while they
were on the ground.

They discovered
that the plane's cockpit

voice recorder had been modified
more than 10 years earlier.

Modified to switch
to primary AC?

Beta lights out.

It was altered
so that when the engines

were given full power
for take-off...

Your power.

...the CVR would automatically
switch from the plane's
batteries to its generator.

And that modification
was not working
on this aircraft.

Neither pilot realized
that as the engines
were revved up for take-off,

power to the CVR
was actually cut off.

Anytime you get key
investigation components

such as the cockpit
voice recorder

and Flight Data Recorder
that don't work correctly,

it brings into question
the thoroughness
of the maintenance

and also the continued
safe operation of the airplanes.

The malfunctioning
voice recorder
and the unpaid catering bill

lead investigators to look
more closely at the history
of the airplane,

and the company that owned it,
Partnair Airlines.

Partnair operated a fleet
of mostly older planes

that flew to Northern
European destinations.

The Convair that crashed
into the North Sea

was one of the airline's
most recent acquisitions.

But the plane itself
was 36 years old.

It had a complicated history
of both ownership,
and modifications.

The biggest change
was to the plane's engines.

The really important
modification was upgrading
the engines to turbine engines.

On prop planes
the propeller moves
air backwards,

propelling the plane forward.

Early prop planes
used piston engines
to turn the propeller.

But turbine engines,
which use a series of fans,

not pistons, to compress air,
generate substantially
more power.

Heimdal learns that in 1960,
the plane's original
piston engines were removed

and powerful new turbo-props
were bolted to the wings.

It's a modification
that provides more power
but could pose a risk.

When there was
a tremendous increase
of horsepower,

installed in the turbine
engines.

I was wondering what that
was doing to the structure
of the aircraft.

Heimdal has been
placed in charge of analyzing
the plane's engines.

He wants to know
if the turbine engines

could have torn
the aging plane apart.

I started
asking the question,

how can an aircraft fly itself
to pieces in mid-air.

The plane's Flight
Data Recorders should
tell investigators

about the operation
of the engines
in the moments before the crash.

The recorder from this flight
is a primitive analog model.

It used a metal
foil strip that rotated
and some marking pens

actually scratched on the metal
surface on the piece of metal.

The antiquated data
recorder proves to be another
frustration for investigators.

It didn't record
many of the parameters
it was supposed to.

But more mysteriously,
the needle seems
to have recorded

certain signals twice.

The double line confounds
experts who analyze the device.

We had no experience
with anything like that.

We contacted several experts,
but none had experience
with this before.

Yeah, I've never seen
that before.

The flight data
doesn't offer investigators

any immediate revelations
about the crash.

Heimdal now wonders
if the very fact

that the recorder
was malfunctioning
could be a clue in itself.

He decides to send
the Flight Data Recorder

back to the American company
that made it
for further analysis.

Investigators painstakingly
reconstruct the Partnair plane.

The Norwegian team
recovered the airplane
with assistance

from the local authorities,
the Danish authorities
I believe,

and decided
to reconstruct the airplane.

A reconstruction is like
putting together a puzzle
that helps investigators

focus the investigation
on areas that need
to be looked at

and perhaps prioritize
the investigation.

As the fuselage
takes shape,
the reconstructed plane

provides investigators
with some stunning evidence.

The only thing
that would destroy

the aircraft at cruising level
would be an explosion.

So some of the parts looked
maybe a bit suspicious.

Suspicious for what's on them.

There were rumors that
it was found explosives at,
in the Partnair plane.

There are traces of a powerful
military explosive.

The amount is small,
but the press gets wind of it.

The explosive residue could be
from a bomb on board the plane,

or from another source.

A NATO war exercise
called "Operation Sharp Spear"

was taking place that same day
near the flight path
of Flight 394.

One of the pilots I talked to,
and he said,
"I guess it might have been

"the so-called cold rocket,
test rocket might have

"gone through one of the wings

"or the fuselage."

Many people now wonder
if an errant warhead

played a role
in bringing down the plane.

Pull Up. Terrain.
Pull Up. Terrain.

Pull Up...

But when the explosive
residue is analyzed,

it's found not to have been
from a bomb or a warhead.

There simply isn't enough
of it on the plane.

There was a small sign
of explosives,
but that was a very low level

and looked more like
a contamination
than anything else.

Many battles
have been fought
off the Danish Coast.

The sea is littered
with old munitions.

Investigators believe the plane

picked up some explosive residue
while lying on the ocean floor.

Explosives are ruled out
as a cause of this crash.

Metallurgist, Terry Heaslip,
has been brought in.

He examines the plane's
reconstructed tail and makes
a startling observation.

Pieces of the plane's skin
show evidence of damage
from over-heating.

Which means that it was flexing.

And you know, you take
a coat hanger and you go
like that, back and forth,

you hold it close to where
it's going to break,
and you'll burn your hand

because you develop
heat where you're
doing the fatiguing.

It's the same thing
on an airplane.

The evidence
is pointing to a problem
with the plane's tail.

Investigators are keen to look
at a massive generator

recovered from the rear
of the aircraft.

The Auxiliary Power Unit
is housed inside
the Convair's rear fin.

It's a back-up power generator,
that's usually only used

while the plane
is on the ground.

Heimdal inspects the device
and discovers

that some melted plastic parts
from the plane's cabin

have found their way inside
the APU's turbine.

It gives him an important
new piece of information

about what was happening
on the plane
at the moment it failed.

Meaning that the cabin
had failed when
the APU was still operating.

The APU should not
have been running
while the plane was in the air.

The fact that it was
means the APU could be
behind this crash.

Investigators try to learn more
about what happened
on the day of the crash.

They interview the mechanic
who inspected the plane
that morning.

He reports that,
one of the plane's two main
generators wasn't working,

and that he wasn't able
to repair it.

Regulations demand
that the plane have
two sources of power

before it's allowed to take off.

The First Officer comes up
with a solution

that will allow
the flight to leave.

He tells the airline
that he will use
the Auxiliary Power Unit

throughout the flight
as a substitute for the
malfunctioning main generator.

Okay. I want you
to write this in the log book,

"Released for flight
with APU generator operative."

We'll use the APU to power
to the left side AC system.

APU is coming on.

Beta lights off.

Your power.

During his inspection
of the APU, Heimdal makes
an important discovery.

When I saw the part
I saw, it was not an aircraft
standard part at all.

It was made in a very primitive
way by a piece of iron
and welding it together

in a substandard way.

He notices that
one of the mounts attaching
the APU to the plane is broken.

The unit contains
a rapidly spinning turbine
that generates electricity.

If it wasn't properly held
in place, it could have
caused this crash.

Investigators need to know
if the broken APU
caused the crash.

They'll soon discover
that it's just a piece of
a much more troubling puzzle.

Investigators have discovered
that Partnair Flight 394 was
flying with a broken APU mount.

Metallurgist, Terry Heaslip,
performs extensive testing

on the failed part.

My initial reaction was
that the welding was bad,

was probably inappropriate.

Heaslip wants to know
when the strut broke.

If it happened during
the plane's last flight,
it could explain the accident.

I could see the impact markings
and the progression
markings on it

that showed that it did not fail
in a single overload

during this last
accident flight.

The way
the broken mount is worn down

also tells Heaslip
that the mount
holding the APU in place

didn't break
on the day of the accident.

It was broken long before
Flight 394 took off.

Investigators now need to know
what effect the broken mount
had on the flight.

40,000 RPMs.

Do a lot of damage.

The APU is a large
gyroscope,

that's having a tremendous
amount of energy in it

when it's rotating,
and if that energy is

transmitted to the surroundings,
the fuselage, the structure,

it could impact the whole
vibration pattern in the tail.

Investigators want to know if anyone
had felt vibrations

on this particular plane.

Interviews with people
who flew on it
provide some answers.

Listen, we appreciate
your coming in.

Thanks a lot.

Now, you said you felt
some rumbling on the plane?

Is that right?

One person stated
that the plane that crashed
vibrated far more

than the two other Convairs
owned by the company.

Did anything seem unusual
in the plane?

But others failed
to mention the vibrations.

Had a good flight?

It's a
puzzling situation.

Investigators know the APU mount
was broken before the flight.

But they still don't know
if it even played a role
in the crash

or whether it would have
affected the plane's tail.

Then the reconstruction
begins to clear things up.

Heimdal discovers that two doors
from the plane's tail
have not been found.

When we reassembled
the parts from the tail,

we saw that the rudder
had been torn apart

in two major pieces
and some parts were missing.

In particular, the doors between
the fin and rudder were missing.

The shroud doors
are two small doors located on
the vertical fin of the plane.

They provide mechanics
with access to weights
inside the fin

that control
the rudder's movement.

Heimdal makes a dramatic find
about the doors themselves.

They were constructed with
an aluminum honeycomb liner.

From his days in the Air Force,

Heimdal knows
they have a unique property.

This is thin aluminum foil,
as you know,

and it has the good
reflective properties for radar

and it's very light.

The military use it
to disturb radar signals.
They call it chaff.

Investigators now realize that
the unidentified object

picked up by Swedish radar
was probably a piece
of one of the shroud doors.

But when we connected
the missing doors in the
honeycomb with the radar data,

we knew that it had happened
up at cruising altitude.

Because the slow falling object
had come from very high level,
cruising altitude practically.

Investigators conclude
that the tail

began to break apart
at 22,000 feet before it
plummeted from the sky.

But why had the doors
fallen off in mid-flight?

Whatever caused the shroud doors
to tear off likely caused
the crash.

Investigators know that
the rudders counterweights

are located
just inside the shroud doors.

If a rudder moves too violently
from side to side,
the weights do as well.

We found enough pieces
to show that they were
just pounding these doors.

And the first real components
that came off

were the honeycomb
in those doors.

Investigators conclude
that around the time
of the accident,

something caused the rudder
to swing violently
back and forth.

But they still don't know what.

The APU with the broken
front shock mount
on its own running in flight

would not cause the aircraft
to come apart and the tail
to come apart.

There had to be extra factors
there for that to occur.

Investigators continue
searching for those
"extra factors" .

Then Partnair Airlines
proposes one.

They point to the F-16
that passed over the plane

just minutes before the plane
veered off course.

Whoa! Look at that,
11 o'clock.

F-16.

Partnair claims
the military jet
was flying faster

than it should have been.

They also believe that
it came much closer

to the flight
than officially reported.

Partnair, they contacted
a Swedish investigator,

and he came out with the answer
that the F-16 could probably

have gone through
the sound barrier

as it passed just over
the Partnair plane.

When a fighter jet
or any other plane,
breaks the sound barrier,

you have this pressure wave,
and their theory was that

this pressure wave
just got the plane
to disintegrate in the air.

But the Norwegian
F-16 pilot testifies that he was
more than a 1000 feet

above the Convair
when he passed it.

Investigators calculate
just how close the F-16
would have had to be

in order to seriously disturb
Flight 394.

They determine that
for the F-16's pressure wave

to have affected the Convair,
it would have had to fly

within a few meters
of the plane.

There's no evidence
the two planes
were ever that close.

Okay, good work.

Ninety percent
of the plane's wreckage

has been recovered
from the sea.

But investigators
still don't know

what caused the Convair's tail
to come off in mid-air.

During the course
of the investigation,

Finn Heimdal is given
a promotion.

But he has no idea
how to solve the puzzle
that haunts his nation.

They asked me to be in charge

of the rest of the hardware
investigation.

I was standing
in a heap of a wrecked parts

and thinking I'll never
get an end of this.

Investigators get a break when the faulty
Flight Data Recorder

is analyzed
in the United States.

The manufacturer has asked
its top expert

to come out of retirement
and examine the device.

The manufacturer,
Fairchild, referred us
to a previous employee...

and we found him
in California.

The expert tells
investigators that the needle
that was supposed to be

recording the plane's altitude
was shaking so much,

that it was leaving
another mark on the foil.

But then he goes
one step further.

The FDR has a capacity
to record for hundreds of hours.

By un-spooling
the metal foil completely,

he sees that the FDR
has been vibrating
severely for months.

We saw that this had happened

something like 360 operations
hour before the accident.

I had never seen an abnormality
like that before,

and it took us a while
to figure out
what was going on here.

It now seems
the APU wasn't the only thing
vibrating on this plane.

Investigators decide to chart
the history of the vibrations
chronologically.

They notice an unusual change
in the pattern of vibrations.

Two months before the crash,
the vibration suddenly stopped
for a number of weeks.

Virtually no vibrations
for 16 flights.

It was increasing
intensity and frequency

up to the summer of '89

and then the pattern changed.

After getting better,
the pattern of vibrations

got worse again,
right up until the crash.

What happened here?

Investigators now need
to find out what changed
on the plane

during the two-week period
when the vibrations stopped.

Why was it out of service?

Where was the work done?

The airline tells
investigators that during
that time,

the plane was receiving
a major overhaul
in Western Canada.

Thank you.

We'll be in touch.

The work was done
by the plane's previous owner,

a Canadian company
that specializes
in servicing Convairs.

During the various
test fights there,

the FDR recorded almost no
excessive vibrations.

This healthy pattern continued
on several passenger flights

once the overhaul was done
and the plane returned
to Norway.

Investigators review
the maintenance records.

Heimdal finds that
during the overhaul,

mechanics found signs of wear
on one of the four bolts

that connect the vertical fin
to the plane's tail.

These four bolts
are the only things holding
the tail to the fuselage.

During the overhaul
of the Convair in July of 1989,

a mechanic replaced
one of the four bolts.

The information
from the Flight Data Recorder

reveals that the vibrations
in the tail stopped right after

that one bolt was replaced.

Incredibly,
investigators are able to
recover all four of the bolts

which were holding
the tail in place.

Terry Heaslip thoroughly
analyzes the bolts.

He makes a final
stunning discovery.

The three bolts
that weren't replaced
were not approved parts.

We did metallurgical testing,
and we did mechanical testing.

And by doing
all of these analyses,

we worked out that
the three of the assemblies
were not up the scratch.

They were bogus assemblies.

His analysis shows
that the faulty bolts
were incorrectly

heat-treated
when they were made.

As a result, they are only
sixty percent as strong as
they should have been.

Investigators finally know
why the tail was vibrating
for months.

- You got something for me?
- Mm-hmm.

Three of the bolts
holding it in place
were too weak.

They just weren't hard enough.

Unbelievable.

Three bolts holding
the tail to the rest
of the plane

were not authentic parts.

They were well-disguised fakes.

The week bolts mean
investigators now must answer
a critical question.

Why didn't the tail come off

in the previous 16 flights
where it vibrated excessively?

Why this last flight?

Investigators already know that on the day
of the accident flight,

a power generator wasn't working
and that the pilots improvised
a solution.

Okay, I want you
to write this in the logbook,
"Released for flight

"with APU generator operative."

We'll use the APU to power
the left side AC system.

APU is coming on.

The pilots didn't
realize that the APU mount
was broken,

and the motor
was vibrating considerably.

Their decision to run it
throughout the flight
made a bad situation worse.

The reason why things got bad
on this particular flight
is that the APU

was literally floating on
two mounts instead of three.

This,
along with the faulty bolts,

created even more vibrations
in the tail of the plane.

And when you get
the two of them shaking,
if they ever get into sync,

what we call resonance
with each other, disaster.

The investigators
conclude that the vibrations
in the tail

and the vibrations from the APU
could have combined
into a lethal force.

Now, this is what we got
from the guys at MIT.

Technically, the vibrations
could have torn the plane apart.

If the two loose items
start to vibrate
in the same frequency,

now you're going to get,
or a multiple
of that frequency,

you get what's called
coupled harmonics.

And the one vibration is feeding
the other one there,
feeding each other

and making each other
worse and worse.

The most famous
example of coupled
harmonics occurred

on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
in Washington state in 1940.

The newly-built steel
and concrete bridge

began swaying lengthwise,
and then a cross-wind
started dipping it

left to right.

The two vibrations moving
in different directions
combined to create a violent

twisting motion
that tore the bridge apart.

Investigators calculate that the same effect
tore apart Flight 394.

And we said, my gosh,
that's exactly the phenomenon
we have here.

This lethal
combination of vibrations

caused the tail to sway
back and forth so violently

that the rudder
jammed to the left.

This forced the plane
into a left turn so abrupt

that it increased airflow

over the right wing,
creating greater lift and
causing the aircraft to roll.

The plane recovered briefly,
but the rudder jams
to the left again,

and the shroud doors explode.

It rolls a second time,
the tail begins to disintegrate.

After that, the crew
didn't have a hope.

Investigators conclude that it was
the three bogus bolts

that initiated
the Partnair crash.

I looked at that
and said, "Man, oh, man,
how could that be?"

In a crucial component,
a crucial fitting like that
in the tail.

I couldn't believe it.

The report on
Partnair Flight 394,

sends shock waves throughout
the aviation industry.

It's the first time
that a fatal plane crash

has been linked
to unapproved spare parts.

It raises
a frightening question.

How many of the parts
being put into planes
around the world are bogus?

The Partnair crash,
that was the seminal event

that started people
actually having

to recognize the unapproved
parts problem
and the fact that the worldwide

inventories of aircraft parts,
in fact, were contaminated.

There are six million
moving parts on a 747 alone.

The spare parts business
is a 45 billion dollar industry.

And at the time of the crash,
that industry
was largely unregulated.

Mary Schiavo is the former
Inspector General

of the Department
of Transportation,

the agency that oversees
the FAA.

No one knew
how large the problem was.

They knew it was a problem
because of a crash.

But how big was the
problem in the United States?
So we set out to measure it.

We started by auditing
the FAA's own parts bins

and the FAA's own parts bins
contained 39 percent
bogus parts.

What we found is if the parts
had come from parts broker,

which was a huge percentage
of the parts supply industry,

95 percent of them
were not authentic.

The FAA would soon
find bogus parts on
an airplane widely considered

to be the most secure
plane on Earth.

There are 5,000 parts brokers
in the United States,
many of them in the Miami area.

Parts brokers
had no regulation whatsoever.

You had a telephone and a fax,
you were a parts broker.

Overnight, you could be
in the parts brokerage business,

and you could get them
anywhere you chose.

You could get them
from junkyards.

You could get 'em
from scrap facilities.

You could get 'em
from old planes.

You could get 'em from crashes.

You could get 'em from people
who were willing to manufacture

and don't care about the law.

Spare parts
for airplanes are expensive.

A single bolt, like the one
holding on the Partnair flight's

vertical fin
can cost up to $250.

A bogus one can cost
as little as $30.

Which makes it a bargain.

And when you have situations
like you have today

and airlines
are bottom-line driven,

and you've got eight
or ten major airlines

in the United States,
for example, that are
on the verge of bankruptcy,

they're looking to cut costs.

The FAA launches
a major investigation

into illegal parts,
and uses sting operations
to uncover unscrupulous dealers.

Investigators uncover
a black market industry

that makes thousands of worn
and inferior parts
look brand new.

These are really
good counterfeits.

It's very difficult to tell.

At the time
of the Partnair accident,
there were checks and balances

in the system
that were supposed
to keep bogus parts

from getting on major airlines.

For instance, each spare part
needs someone's signature
to verify its authenticity.

It has to have
some documentation

that states that it's airworthy.

It has to have
a maintenance release

by some certificated entity.

But investigators
discover that in addition
to a huge market in spare parts,

there's also a burgeoning market
for counterfeit FAA tags.

We'd execute search warrants
and find that people

had printed stacks of fake
yellow tags,

and in many cases,
they'd sign with a name

of an actual inspector,
but they'd just
forge the signature.

The tag in this business
is worth more than
the part.

At first investigators
believe the problem
is mostly with smaller airlines.

Smaller operators
and repair stations
are usually the people

who are most vulnerable
to this after-market
broker parts problem.

They're shocked
when they discover
that bogus parts have been found

on what is supposed to be
the most tightly controlled
plane in the world,

Air Force One.

It reached all the way
to what many people considered

literally the highest levels
of aviation.

The aviation that flies around
the President
of the United States.

Supposedly in an air-tight
supply chain,

we had bogus parts cases
that touched those aircraft.

The FAA responds
quickly. More than
a 100 dealers are arrested.

With every conviction,
we were able to raise
the level of awareness,

not only of the problem,
but of the severe consequences.

If you want to risk
somebody's life.

And I actually think
that the most

important thing that we did
was get criminal convictions.

As a result
of their investigation,
the FAA institutes

a much more rigorous system
for documenting airplane parts.

They threaten airlines
with criminal charges

if they knowingly
accept bogus parts.

Things are different today,
because we have a whole body
of regulations,

much more than we had
in the '80s and '90s even,
to address the problem.

You have to get
the mechanic who's actually
got the wrench

in his hand
to a point of sophistication

where he's knowledgeable enough

to smell a bad part.

To smell a bad piece of paper,
and it is possible to do.

The new regulations
achieved their goal.

In the two decades
following the crash
of Partnair 394,

there wasn't
a single fatal accident
attributed to bogus parts.

Years after the Partnair crash,

Finn Heimdal became the head
of the Norwegian Accident
Investigation Board.

Jimmy, my friend.

It was a major puzzle

that an aircraft,
for no obvious reason,

could more or less
disintegrate in mid-air.

His report
into the accident resulted
in major changes

that likely saved lives.

That's a positive thing.

But the negative,
of course, is the tragedy,

the personal tragedy
for many people.

One of the
smallest parts

on a Norwegian charter plane,
failed in 1989.

Because investigators found
the cause of that accident,

passengers around the world
are safer.

Less likely to be on a plane
that's fitted with bogus parts.