Original subtitles

We've lost engine number two.

High above the Mediterranean,

two pilots struggle with a stalled engine.

Engine relight. Negative.

Stop. Stop! Engine one is flamed out.

45 miles from land, the pilot's make a difficult decision.

Prepare to ditch.

Oh, my God, be merciful.

Passengers are forced to make life or death decisions on their own.

Do not inflate your vests!

The accident will tear families apart,

set in motion a massive rescue effort at sea,

and trigger a multi-national investigation

to discover why both engines on one of the world's

most popular planes stopped in mid-flight.

August the 6th, 2005, Bari, Italy, an ancient port town on the Adriatic Sea,

where the past meets the present.

Just north of this historic city,

Bari International Airport serves ten major airlines

and more than one and a half million passengers each year.

One of those carriers is Tunisia's Tuninter Airlines.

Captain Chafik Gharbi is a pilot with Tuninter.

Today, he's in command of Flight 1153.

The 45-year-old Tunisian is a military-trained pilot

with a flawless flight record.

Gharbi's co-pilot is 28-year-old Ali Kebaier.

- How much fuel are we running? - 400 kilograms.

- 2700 total? - Yes.

Captain Gharbi and his co-pilot flew from Tunis to Bari this morning

to collect 34 Italian passengers.

Now they're going to fly them to Djerba, a Tunisian resort island.

Among the passengers is 31-year-old police officer Lucas Squicciarini.

His girlfriend, Paola, is traveling with him.

Our first choice wasn't Djerba,

It was Cape Verde.

The thing with Cape Verde is that it was a period of terrorist activities.

The flight would have left from either Rome or Milan.

Since there are two large airports,

Paola was afraid that there would be an attack,

so we chose not to go to Cape Verde.

It was my first trip with Paola,

we met the previous winter,

we had plans to marry the following year.

To tighten your belt,

pull on the loose end of the strap.

To release your seatbelt, lift the upper portion of the buckle.

Ladies and gentlemen, your life vests are located beneath your seats.

To inflate the vest, pull firmly on the red cord,

only when you are leaving the aircraft.

If you need to refill the vest, blow into the mouthpiece.

TS-LBB Flight 1153, permission for take-off granted.

Roger that, clear for take-off.

Final prep for departure.

The crew is flying a French-made ATR-72.

The small turbo prop is perfect for short flights.

It doesn't need a lot of maintenance or guzzle a lot of fuel.

Just after 2:30 in the afternoon, the plane takes off.

Forty-nine minutes after take-off,

Flight 1153 is 400 miles away

from its destination, Djerba.

So we started chatting with other passengers.

We were all excited.

We talked about the vacation.

Like Luca and Paola, Barbara Baldacci is on her way to Djerba

for a vacation with her fiance, Francesco.

Barbara was 23 years old.

She was on the verge of realizing her lifelong dream of graduating in Biology.

After writing her final exam, she decided to take this vacation

with her fiance, Francesco.

Then, 75 miles from the nearest land and 23,000 feet above the sea...

- the plane's right engine stops working. -

We've lost engine number two.

Let's get to 17,000 feet.

TUI 1153 request 170.

Captain Gharbi begins an emergency descent.

Descending 170.

When you have a single engine flameout,

you would descend down to a lower altitude.

The air is thicker, the propeller is more efficient.

Under current conditions, the ATR-72 can best fly on one engine

at an altitude of 17,000 feet.

Power lever, flight idle. Start button.

The crew struggles to restart the right engine.

Negative.

Check.

But then, less than two minutes after, the first engine quits...

Stop, Stop! Engine number one has flamed out!

...both of the plane's engines have stopped.

The engine shut off.

Our first thought was of a terrorist attack,

since there were so many at the time.

We tried to figure out what was happening,

so we looked towards the cockpit to see if someone was trying to sabotage the plane.

The plane is now falling to the sea at 800 feet per minute.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

TUI 1153, we have lost both engines.

Request immediate landing at Palermo.

The crew still hopes to reach an airport.

But they have 70 miles of ocean to cross before they're over land.

Crews are trained for almost anything.

There's a checklist for them to follow to solve most problems,

including what to do when both engines die.

Both engines flameout checklist.

Fuel supply, check.

The pilots don't know why their engines have stopped.

The only clue they're getting is a low fuel feed warning.

A low pressure warning light tells a pilot

that there's low fuel pressure going to the engine.

Now that could be a mechanical problem

or that could be a contamination problem.

The crew follows the steps laid out by the manufacturer

to relight their dead engines.

Fuel supply, check.

Power level flight idle. Start button.

Engine relight.

Negative.

Get Chokri.

The captain asks the cabin crew

to bring the on-board engineer Chokri Harbaoui to the cockpit.

Palermo approach,

this is TUI 1153, we have lost both engines.

Request immediate landing.

The closest airport is in Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily.

TUI 1153 Palermo.

Affirmative you are clear for landing.

Palermo approach, what is our distance to the airport?

Your distance to Palermo is now 48 nautical miles.

An ATR-72 will fall from the sky at a predictable rate.

One foot down for every 16 feet forward.

Forty-eight nautical miles is further than the plane can glide.

I don't think we're gonna make it.

If they can't restart their engines soon,

they'll be forced to ditch in the sea.

Ditching at sea is a very difficult decision to make,

because it's the hardest thing to do.

You have the swells, waves, wind.

Is anybody gonna see you?

How long can the plane float for?

Landing a passenger plane on water is extremely dangerous.

In 1996, an Ethiopian Airlines pilot was forced to bring his 767 down on the Indian Ocean.

The ditching was recorded by a tourist on a nearby beach.

Fifty people survived, but 125 people died.

The crew of this small plane doesn't usually include an engineer.

When there is one on-board, he usually travels in the cabin.

I remembered this person looked at the stewardess

and shook his head as if saying 'no'.

After the second engine had shut off.

That gesture showed there was nothing left to do.

The crew of Flight 1153 has tried all it can.

They're running out of time and options.

Flight Engineer, Chokri Harbaoui, has joined in the struggle

to get Flight 1153's engines started.

- You've run the checklist? - Yes.

The Captain hopes the engineer will know something

that isn't covered by the checklist.

Attempt to restart the engines.

Right engine first.

Fuel supply, check. Engine two start power button, on.

Engine relight, negative.

Palermo approach, TUI 1153.

- Any closer airport where we can land? - Negative, 1153.

Palermo Airport is the closest airport to your position.

We're not gonna make it.

Prepare to ditch.

Oh, my God, be merciful.

No one said anything.

I noticed something wasn't right because the two engines shut off .

More than once, I tried to get the stewardess' attention

asking what I should do.

If I had to put on the life jacket,

If I had to stand, if I should take off my shoes?

I got no answer.

She was in shock and started to cry.

The senior flight attendant does give the passengers direction.

The captain has decided to land the plane at sea.

I'll let you imagine the panic on-board.

People were screaming and crying.

Please stay calm and follow your crew's instructions.

There were people in the front seats

that had a baby girl, she had been playing and was so excited.

To now see the panic in her mother's face made me feel so sad.

TUI 1153,

what is your fuel load?

Cockpit fuel quantity 1800 kilograms.

Captain Gharbi's fuel gauge shows that he has plenty of fuel.

But for some reason, neither engine will restart.

Just ten minutes after the trouble began,

the plane is 7000 feet above the ocean and falling.

Outside it's completely silent, but in the cabin, there's panic.

Please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened.

My first instinct was to undo my seatbelt, to prevent getting trapped

when we hit the water.

I didn't want to be trapped in my seat and go down in a horrible way.

But secondly, I put on my life jacket, and quickly blew it up.

I did this to soften the blow of the impact.

Do not inflate your vests until you've left the plane!

A plane ditching at sea will more than likely fill with water.

That's why safety procedures call for passengers

to only inflate their life vests once they've cleared the plane.

Otherwise, they could become trapped inside the flooded fuselage and drown.

In the Ethiopian Airline's crash,

many passengers ignored this advice,

and drowned after surviving the initial impact.

Negative.

The dead engines aren't the only problem confronting the crew.

Many of their instruments get their power from the engines.

Without the engines, some vital gauges are dead.

On a two-engine flameout,

you go on your standby instruments.

Which is you have an attitude indicator,

you have an altimeter.

Fuel supply, check.

The crew continues to try to restart their engines,

but it's become clear that they've run out of time.

They're not doing anything.

Confirm distance, please.

Your distance is now 20 miles.

Boats. I see boats.

Choosing to ditch near a ship or a vessel

is not written in any checklists.

It's just good airmanship, because the rescue can start immediately

and it increases your chances of survival.

Palermo approach, this is TUI 1153.

We can't make it to the airport.

We see two boats on the left side.

We're going there.

If you can, please call.

Captain Gharbi turns his plane towards the boats.

Can you send helicopters or something similar?

Fast, fast, fast.

Emergency!

All marine units, aircraft in distress 20 nautical miles off Palermo.

Even before the plane hits the water, rescuers are on their way.

I had very little information.

We didn't know the nature of the crash or anything about the plane.

Auto-press, dump.

Although it's a rare maneuver, there is also a checklist

for ditching a plane in the water.

Before ditching, the crew ensures all landing gear is retracted,

to help the plane land more smoothly.

Landing gear lever, up.

When pilots ditch, they want their airplane as streamlined as possible

so that it glides across the water when it hits.

Pilots must not only monitor the systems on the plane,

they also have to assess conditions at sea.

They don't want to hit a wave head on.

If you hit perpendicular to the waves or swells with the aircraft,

it's like hitting concrete.

The plane will break up.

Passengers can see what's coming.

I was hanging on tight

to the seat in front of me and through the window,

I could see the impact was imminent.

The crew is 700 feet above the sea.

You're with me Ali, huh? Careful.

Chokri, ready?

- Ready. - Here we go.

There is no other God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger.

In the name of God merciful, merciful.

At a speed of 145 miles an hour, the plane collides with the sea.

I lost consciousness.

I woke up in the water. I was two or three meters under water.

I came up to the surface wearing only my pants.

I had lost my life jacket and clothes on impact.

I got to the surface and grabbed on to a bag.

Paola!

I was in shock.

I was surrounded by everything.

My thoughts were constantly with Paola.

I thought I was going to die because I was spitting blood.

I felt my lungs filling with blood.

Captain Gharbi survives but has been seriously injured.

Co-Pilot Ali Kebaier has also survived,

but flight engineer Chokri Harbaoui is killed.

No one aboard the nearby boats

saw Flight 1153 crash into the sea.

The plane has broken into three pieces.

The tail section and much of the fuselage sink to the bottom of the sea.

But the largest section containing the two wings stays afloat.

It becomes a makeshift life raft for the survivors.

But not all of the passengers have survived.

Many haven't made it out of the plane and to the surface,

A fleet of rescue personnel are en route,

including Admiral Vincenzo Pace of the Italian Coast Guard.

Rescuers must travel 26 miles through heavy seas to get to the crash site.

The sky was very visible, but the water was agitated.

This caused some problems to the recovery mission.

Helicopter pilot, Stefano Burigana, is one of the first to arrive at the scene.

The approach control asked us if we were aware of a ditched aircraft

out of the coast of Palermo, and if we were able to help them

to locate the airplane.

When we approached the airplane,

we could see the wings floating.

There were several people in the water around the aircraft all floating,

and everybody with their jacket inflated.

Burigana spots Luca Squicciarini floating away from the main wreckage.

There was one man, without his jacket and he was the farthest from the airplane.

I decided to go over him and throw one of our life jacket to him.

The Coast Guard arrives and begins pulling survivors from the sea.

The actions of the people in the water made us very agile.

Because of what they were doing, we ourselves did not panic.

We had the calm collaboration of all these people,

because despite what happened they knew help was coming and they would be rescued.

Within the hour, the crash site is teeming with rescuers.

They search for survivors from the water and from the air.

23 people are pulled from the Mediterranean Sea,

but 16 have died in the crash, including Paola Di Ciaola.

My relatives told me a couple of days later,

while I was still at the hospital.

I had no reaction.

Paola was gone.

I reacted when I got home.

When I got home and went to the cemetery, I realized what was happening.

That's where I got really down.

Barbara Baldacci and her fiance Francesco are also killed.

It seemed impossible

that this terrible tragedy would happen,

because Barbara and Francesco were great swimmers.

They used to go underwater without any problems.

How is it possible that many on that plane saved themselves and they didn't?

I was stunned and incredulous.

It's quite likely that none of those who died

ever had a chance to swim to safety.

Their serious injuries would have prevented them

from escaping after the plane hit the water.

In this accident, most of the survivors were seated in the rear of the plane,

most of those who died, up front.

Those sections, along with some valuable clues are now at the bottom of the sea.

The one section that didn't sink

is towed to the port in Palermo and taken to a nearby hangar.

A team of agents from Italy's National Flight Safety Agency, the ANSV,

begin looking for leads.

Their job, find out why Flight 1153's engines stopped in mid-flight.

We need to collect as much evidence as possible

in order to fulfill two main answers,

what happened and why had it happened?

They are led by Chief ANSV Investigator, Vincenzo Pennetta.

I arrived in Palermo the day after the accident,

on the 7th, very early in the morning.

A flight test engineer by training,

Pennetta has led several air crash investigations.

The engines and central fuselage of Tuninter Flight 1153 have been recovered.

The rest of the plane lies somewhere off the Sicilian coast.

The main challenge of investigation

was the fact that the flood recorder and the cockpit voice recorder

and also the front fuselage were 1500 meters under the sea.

While the Italian Navy conducts a deep-water search

for the rest of the wreck and the crucial black boxes,

Italian investigators are given some assistance

by the plane's European manufacturer.

ATR's Giuseppe Caldarelli is here to find out if there's a flaw with the company's plane.

Any time there is an accident and also one people die, for me, is a big accident.

Worldwide, hundreds of ATR 72s cross the skies each day.

Those aircraft have very sound structure and robust systems,

and are very cost-efficient.

Together, Pennetta and Caldarelli set out to find out why both engines

on such an advanced airplane died in mid-flight...

TUI 1153, we have lost both engines.

...before it happens again.

Captain Gharbi how are you?

I'm getting better, thank you.

Investigators want to know what happened in the cockpit

of Tuninter Flight 1153 when the engines died.

Without the cockpit voice recorder,

they must rely on the recollections of surviving passengers and crewmembers.

The main cause of double engine flameout could be a lack of fuel.

But according to Captain Chafik Gharbi,

lack of fuel was not the problem.

What were your fuel readings?

The Fuel Quantity Indicator said 1800 kilograms of fuel.

What is your fuel load?

Cockpit fuel quantity 1800 kilograms.

Fuel supply, check.

Was there any warning that you were low on fuel?

There was definitely no low fuel warning.

Just a... low-feed pressure light.

The absence of a low fuel warning

and the presence of a low feed pressure warning is a major clue.

This set of alarms usually indicates that there is a problem

in feeding the engine with fuel.

Since the plane's gauges indicated that there was fuel on-board

that did not get to the engines,

ATR's Giuseppe Caldarelli looks for flaws in the fallen plane's fuel delivery system.

Four years earlier, an Airbus operated by Air Transat

developed a leak in the fuel line that feeds the plane's right engine.

Over time, the plane leaked all of its fuel

and both engines failed.

The pilots were forced to glide their plane to an emergency landing.

That incident has a lot of similarities to the Tuninter crash.

Giuseppe Caldarelli's team looks for breaks or blockages

in the fuel lines and evidence that the fuel pumps malfunctioned

and stopped fuel flow to the engines.

While Caldarelli waits for technicians to complete tests on pumps and lines,

Pennetta decides to start a new line of inquiry.

He explores the possibility that the fuel that was on-board was somehow contaminated.

Fuel contamination can derive from four or five different sources.

Kerosene-based jet fuel is very delicate.

If stored or transferred improperly, it can be polluted with water,

sand, or fungus, even sticky residue from the hoses of refueling tankers.

Any of these could prevent the fuel from

properly igniting and could have caused the engines to shut down.

How much fuel are you adding?

400 kilograms.

The plane last took on fuel in Bari.

Samples from the tanker that supplied it are taken for testing.

Pennetta needs to prove that one of these contaminants

got into Flight 1153's fuel, prevented combustion

and caused both engines to fail.

Sediments can be transferred

from the tanker truck to the aircraft.

So the fuel feeder can be clogged

and so the engine can have some problem.

Technicians remove the truck's fuel filters

to look for evidence of contamination.

Hoses and couplings are swabbed for sticky residue

or colonies of microorganisms and submitted for testing

at an Italian Air Force laboratory.

The fuel is filtered for minute particles suspended in the fluid,

and carefully examined for impurities.

The truck's filters are also inspected for residue or sediment from the tanks.

Meanwhile, in Palermo,

Caldarelli and his technicians have completed tests

on Flight 1153's fuel lines and pumps.

The tests are thorough.

The result's conclusive.

The fuel feed line were okay, were no leak.

If the fuel delivery system was working,

and the two pilots remember having ample fuel...

The Fuel Quantity Indicator said 1800 kilograms of fuel.

...then why had the engines failed?

When test results from the the Bari fuel tanker come in,

they too are conclusive.

The fuel filters, hose couplings and tanker fuel

at Bari Airport are clean.

So fuel contamination as a source

of double engine flameout was then excluded.

At this point, the investigators still don't know

what caused the downing of Tuninter Flight 1153.

But something has been eating at Pennetta.

If the plane was filled with fuel

and since the fuel is stored in the plane's wings,

why did the wing section float?

The floating of the wing

indicates that the weight of the wing was not so high.

We have been told by ATR that if the amount of fuel

that was supposed to be into the wing,

around the 2000 kilograms, were on the fuel tanks,

the wings maybe would not have been able to float.

Pennetta suspects the plane didn't have as much fuel as the pilots thought,

but he doesn't know how that could be.

Two weeks into the investigation,

Pennetta gets an important lead in the case.

After two weeks of the event, we received some technical documentation

from the aircraft operator.

According to the logs,

Captain Gharbi flew the same aircraft the day before the accident.

After that flight, he reported a problem with his fuel gauge.

When he left the aircraft the day before, he reported

that the right display float indicator was out of service,

so it needs to be replaced.

The Fuel Quantity Indicator or FQI,

is a gas gauge that tells pilots how much fuel is left on-board.

The lights on the FQI were malfunctioning

and Captain Gharbi made a note of this in the maintenance log.

We were able to see that the Fuel Quantity Indicator

was changed the day before the event.

The maintenance log raises the possibility that the FQI

that the mechanic installed was not the right one for the plane.

It doesn't seem to have the right model number.

Tuninter flies two models of ATR aircraft.

The ATR-42 and the larger ATR-72.

The Fuel Quantity Indicators for each plane look identical,

except for a different model number at the top of each unit.

The ATR-72 should have model number 2500,

but according to the logs, mechanics installed a unit

with the model number 2250 instead.

Tuninter's maintenance logs offer a valuable clue.

But for Pennetta, there's no definitive proof

that the wrong Fuel Quantity Indicator was installed on the plane.

It could have been a mismatch

in that aircraft documentation, so we need to prove that.

There is only one way to know for certain

whether Flight 1153 had the right Fuel Quantity Indicator.

Go find it at the bottom of the sea.

We need of course, to recover the wreckage from the aircraft to see,

physically see,

what was the Fuel Quantity Indicator installed on the aircraft.

Not until three weeks after the crash

do investigators recover wreckage from the sea.

The data from the plane's black boxes confirms what the pilots have been saying.

There was no warning of low fuel,

so there appeared to be enough fuel to make the flight.

The black boxes can't solve this mystery.

Investigators hope that the tail and front section can.

They are hauled aboard a naval vessel from the sea.

The moment the cockpit is hauled in, Pennetta is there.

There's only one thing he wants to see inside.

So when the wreckage was recovered from under the sea and put on a ship deck,

I realized that, as a matter of fact,

the Fuel Quantity Indicator for an ATR-42 was installed.

It was like we found the smoking gun.

The wrong FQI was installed on Flight 1153.

Pennetta finally has the break he's been looking for.

The ATR's Fuel Quantity Indicator collects data from sensors

in the fuel tanks and calculates how much fuel is in the tanks.

But since the fuel tanks on the 42 and the 72 are a different size,

Fuel Quantity Indicators can't be swapped between them.

Technicians conduct refueling tests with the wrong FQI installed on an ATR-72...

and the results are chilling.

The results show that, if you install an

FQI type, say 42 on an ATR-72 aircraft,

if I have no fuel, into the aircraft in the fuel tanks, zero fuel,

then Fuel Quantity Indicator show me 1800 kilograms.

Precisely the amount of fuel that the Captain reported having

when his engines flamed out.

Cockpit fuel quantity, 1800 kilograms.

Investigators conclude

at 23,000 feet above the Mediterranean,

the wrong fuel indicator led the crew to believe that they had ample fuel,

when their tanks were actually empty.

Engine relight, negative.

They're not doing anything.

The engines could not possibly have been restarted.

With hundreds of ATR-42s and ATR-72s still flying,

the implications are stark.

Could there be other planes flying with the wrong gauge?

The first safety recommendation was to mandate all operators that use

ATR-42 and 72

aircraft in their fleet,

to check whether the right Fuel Quantity Indicator was installed on the aircraft.

Pennetta and Caldarelli have uncovered the error

that caused both of Flight 1153's engines to quit in mid-air.

But the case isn't closed.

Standard flight procedures should have uncovered the error

before take-off and prevented the disaster.

Captain Gharbi's aircraft went in for repairs in Tunisia

the night before the crash.

The plane's FQI indicated 790 kilograms of fuel in the tank.

After the new Fuel Quantity Indicator was installed,

it showed that there was almost four times as much fuel on-board.

3100 kilograms.

The following morning, Captain Gharbi noticed that the fuel levels had gone up.

He assumed the fuel had been added.

But when fuel is added to an aircraft,

a refueling slip must be left in the cockpit.

Where is the refueling slip?

The pilot asked to the flight dispatcher, where was this refueling slip?

But the flight dispatcher was not able to find the refueling slip.

I will get to you when you get back from Djerba.

Roger that.

There was no refueling slip because the plane hadn't been refueled.

In spite of regulations, the Captain left without that vital piece of paper.

There are some standard regulations

requiring the pilot to take-off only when he is sure

about the quantity of fuel.

With the wrong Fuel Indicator on-board,

and less fuel than he believed,

Captain Gharbi makes it to Bari, Italy,

and tops up his plane for the next leg of the trip to Djerba.

- How much fuel are you adding? - 400 Kilograms.

- 2700 total? - Yes.

Believing he has 2700 kilograms of fuel on-board,

Captain Gharbi begins his flight to Djerba.

If the correct Fuel Quantity Indicator had been installed,

the Captain would have known that he had only 540 kilograms.

Not nearly enough to make the crossing.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

TUI 1153 requesting immediate landing at Palermo. We've lost both engines.

Pennetta's investigation comes to a close.

He draws up his final report.

His colleague, Giuseppe Caldarelli, voices a bold view.

Even with no fuel and dead engines,

Flight 1153 could have made it to land.

The aircraft was in a position that allowed to reach Palermo.

TUI 1153...

Caldarelli wonders if the pilots did everything they could have

to get the plane safely to Palermo.

Investigators get some unexpected answers by having seasoned pilots

fly the exact same fight with the exact same problems.

Okay, we are now in big trouble,

because the second engine has gone off.

Vincenzo Pennetta's investigation into the crash of Tuninter Flight 1153,

has uncovered the events that led up to the accident.

Now, he and Giuseppe Caldarelli need to resolve one question,

did mistakes made by the pilots cost people their lives?

We're not gonna make it.

Prepare to ditch.

Caldarelli and his team study the plane's specifications

and draw a surprising conclusion.

Flight 1153 could have been able to glide to Palermo.

According to manufacturer data,

an ATR is able to glide three miles for every 1000 feet of descent.

With the help of the tailwind that day,

Flight 1153 could have been able to glide 70 miles to Palermo,

The crew might have been able to make it.

Landing gear lever up.

So what had the pilots done wrong?

To answer that question, Pennetta and Caldarelli

recreate Flight 1153 in the flight simulator at the ATR facility in France.

Test pilots try to glide an ATR-72 for 70 miles from the altitude

at which Flight 1153 lost its second engine.

The simulation was requested to see the range of the aircraft

starting from the second engine out.

Double engine flameouts, you have to be very...

aware of the configuration of the aircraft

in order to keep as much as possible

the altitude and distance to fly before the crash.

Stop, Stop! Engine number one has flamed out.

With both engines out, the priority is to keep

the plane gliding as far as necessary.

To do that, pilots can change the angle of their windmilling propellers.

You have the maximum glide performance when you minimize the drag.

It's very important to think to feather the propeller in order to reduce the drag.

Feathering the props involves changing their angle against the wind.

The maneuver reduces drag.

When you want to feather a propeller in flight,

you first have to reduce the power lever to idle

and put the condition lever back to feather position.

The crew did not feather their props when their engines quit.

The windmilling propellers created enormous drag.

If the crew of Flight 1153 had feathered their props,

they may have been able to glide further than they did.

Let's get to 1700 feet.

By the time Captain Gharbi's second engine flamed out,

he was just below 22,000 feet.

To further reduce drag at that altitude,

the plane should be slowed to 158 miles per hour,

the ATR-72's ideal gliding speed.

Surprisingly, to glide as far as possible,

a pilot doesn't want to fly as fast as possible.

The faster a plane flies, the more the airflow

pushes against it, creating resistance.

Every plane has an optimal speed to achieve the furthest glide.

The crew continued flying up to 55 miles an hour faster

than their optimal gliding speed.

That added to the drag on the plane and reduced the distance they could glide.

By feathering his props and reducing his speed,

a simulator pilot in France was able to get the plane as far as Palermo.

You're with me Ali, huh? Careful.

Flight 1153 hit the water 26 miles from shore.

Well short of what the plane was capable of achieving.

The simulation confirmed that the crew might have been able to make it to land.

It was theoretically possible to reach the coast,

but it was also very difficult to achieve that result.

Simulator pilots had one big advantage over the crew of Flight 1153.

They weren't in a life or death situation,

and they knew they had to glide instead.

Fuel supply, check.

But Captain Gharbi didn't know he was out of fuel.

He didn't think he'd need to glide to Palermo.

Gharbi focused on restarting the engines instead.

Feathering the props isn't part of that procedure.

If the captain had known he was out of fuel,

he might have acted to maximize glide instead.

Once he realized that his engines wouldn't start,

his focus was on trying to find a place to ditch the plane.

Captain Gharbi also had to contend with the lack of instruments

as well as radio interruptions.

Palermo TUI 1153 what is your fuel load?

Cockpit fuel quantity, 1800 kilograms.

Most importantly, Captain Gharbi had the lives of his 34 passengers to consider.

Of course, it's much easier to cope with

that kind of situation on the simulator.

Because if you do wrong, if you crash the aircraft,

you have the magic button, reset, everything is okay again,

and that's very different in the real life

with passengers behind and when it's your life.

Your distance is now 20 miles.

We're not gonna make it.

The simulation highlights the importance of proper training

to deal with unlikely situations,

such as a twin-engine flameout.

In aviation, is a very rare event.

Vincenzo Pennetta's report urges airlines

to train their pilots how to ditch without engine power.

Better pilot training is just one of 17 safety recommendations in the accident report.

Perhaps the most important, that ATR re-design the Fuel Quantity Indicator.

In order to prevent a Fuel Quantity Indicator

type 42 on a 72 aircraft and vice versa.

To prevent mechanics from installing the incorrect part,

Pennetta believes that the only answer is to design the FQIs

so that they only fit on the plane they're meant for.

Nine men face charges of criminal negligence for the downing of Flight 1153.

Including the Tuninter mechanic who installed the wrong FQI and Captain Gharbi.

I'll get it to you when you get back from Djerba.

Roger that.

There is no single cause of the accident.

This accident, like many other aircraft accident,

was determined by a series of actions,

a series of events, linked one to each other.

This is unheard of.

I would have accepted the engine breaking or a window shattering,

but to have people die because of lack of fuel?

We remember this to avoid other such tragedies,

so that when you board a plane, you don't have to endure anything.

Not even the simplest thing.

Because it is the simple things that can be avoided.

Tragic events like this should not happen.

Attempt to restart the engine.

The crash of Flight 1153 was caused by a series

of grave errors on the ground and in the air.

But the flight data recorder does show the crew's last move

before hitting the water was absolutely perfect.

Here we go.

According to available evidences,

the flight data recorder,

and also some statements listed by the crew that survived,

The aircraft touched the sea first with the rear part of the aircraft

at an attitude which is compatible

with the optimum pitch altitude of the aircraft.

Which is nine degrees.

Captain Gharbi raised the plane's nose up

to nine degrees at the last possible moment.

So, instead of plowing into the sea,

his plane glided along the surface of the water.

The maneuver likely saved lives by allowing more passengers

to escape the ruined aircraft.

His flying may have prevented this accident

from becoming an even greater tragedy.