Original subtitles

Beatours 28, you are clear for takeoff.

Eighty knots.

Stop!

Don't hammer the brakes. Don't hammer the brakes.

137 people are on board this British Airtours flight.

Within minutes, nearly half of them will be dead.

This should not really have happened.

Evacuate, evacuate!

The aircraft didn't even get airborne.

It didn't run off the runway.

And yet, still, 55 people were killed.

For investigators, it's a familiar routine:

Reconstructing the final moments inside the cabin,

analyzing the wreckage and the flight-data recorders.

In the end, they turn to a psychologist

to help them figure out how a survivable emergency

turned into one of British aviation's most horrific disasters.

Mayday, mayday.

It's just before 6:00 in the morning on August the 22nd, 1985.

Manchester's airport is coming to life.

The first flights of the day are being prepped for departure.

British Airtours Flight 28 is scheduled to take 131 passengers

from Manchester to the Greek Island of Corfu.

British Airtours is a division of British Airways,

specializing in low-cost flights to vacation destinations.

It's a chilly morning.

A slight breeze is blowing. Ideal flying weather.

Most of the passengers on this early-morning flight are travelling on vacation.

Lindsay Davies is heading to Greece with her boyfriend, Charlie Thickson.

Alright, let's go.

We'd been going out with each other for a year,

and that's one of the reasons we were so excited about it.

You know, it was our first holiday together.

Captain Peter Terrington is in command.

I was the senior training captain on the fleet.

First Officer Brian Love is being trained by Terrington.

He was going to perform a takeoff and landing...

...as part of his training.

- Alright, Captain? - Yep.

Uh, briefing then, Brian. Airfield emergencies.

You handling the aircraft. - Mm-hmm.

- What are the four things you're gonna stop for? - Fire, failure,

configuration warning, or you shouting stop. - Okay.

So you bring the thing to a stop and I'll take over the aircraft

and leave you to deal with the emergency. I'll deal with the ATC. Okay?

If you've talked about the possibility of emergency

and talked over what you will do, then if it actually happens,

it's easier to recall those... items.

Okay, Brian, start 2.

Starting 2.

Oil pressure rising. - Okay, go on.

Twenty-four, 25, 26,

27, 28, 29.

One-twenty-nine plus two on board, Captain.

All strapped in. Doors are closed and automatic.

Thank you, Arthur.

The crew is flying a Boeing 737.

It takes just four minutes

for the plane to reach the foot of the runway.

Beatours 28, you are clear for takeoff.

The 737 has 3,000 metres to get to takeoff speed.

The engines are pushed to high power.

I was sitting by the window, looking out of the window.

Everything was normal. The plane was going quite fast.

- Eighty knots. - Check.

Oh, my God.

We heard a dull thud,

which sounded as if it came from outside.

I was really keen to see what was going on outside, but couldn't see anything.

Captain Terrington needs to act fast.

Stop!

And... the immediate reaction was to stop.

We were quite a few knots below our decision speed,

so I very quickly closed the throttles and...

applied reverse thrust.

We could feel the aircraft slowing down,

and I thought we'd blown a tire, and I didn't know, so...

we just waited to hear.

Don't hammer the brakes. Don't hammer the brakes.

I thought the tire might've gone,

and would cause damage to the undercarriage if we braked too strongly.

Probably nothing. I wouldn't worry.

I just assumed that maybe a tire had burst,

so I wasn't really alarmed at that point.

My thought at that time was: Oh, okay,

we're gonna get off this plane and probably...

have to move all the luggage onto another plane and take off.

Soon, passengers on the left side of the plane see the real problem.

I could see orange flames inside the back of the engine.

And at that point, I thought:

It's obviously not a burst tire.

That wouldn't cause that. And this is perhaps something a bit more serious.

Let me by. I'm not staying there.

But at that point, I knew that I wanted to get off the plane,

and I wasn't happy at all.

I knew that there was a fire,

and I just wanted to get away from the fire.

Smoke is seeping into the cabin.

- Please sit down. - My nearest exit was at the back.

I didn't want to go to the back because the smoke was coming in there.

So I decided in my mind that I was gonna go through the front.

I said to Charlie: Come on, we're going!

And that's when I started going towards the front of the plane.

Stopping. 28 Mike, we're abandoning takeoff.

Looks like we've got a fire on #1.

- Looks like there's a lot of fire. - Thank you.

Plane on fire, runway 24.

From where he's sitting,

Captain Terrington can't see how bad the fire is. He needs advice from the tower.

Do we have to get the passengers off?

I would do, by the starboard side.

Terrington decides to pull off the runway.

Evacuate to the starboard side, please.

Fire drill, engine #1.

Shutting down 2.

Evacuate! Evacuate! Please stay calm.

Before the flight crew leaves the cockpit,

they must complete a 15-step checklist.

- Parking brake. - Set.

- Speed-brake lever. - Down.

But time is running out.

We had, uh, an evacuation checklist,

but it was four pages long,

and the last item was to get the passengers off.

Engine and APU fire-warning switches.

This didn't cover my... problem at all.

On the 737, there are four cabin doors.

The two in the back are covered in flames and smoke,

leaving only two for 137 people.

Then a mechanical problem eliminates one of those.

Well, Arthur was opening one right.

And he was really banging, he was really trying to open it; it was really hard to open.

The back of the cabin is filling with smoke.

It's making breathing difficult.

Passengers rush forward.

It just seemed to go on forever before they started evacuating.

And that's when I thought: I'm not gonna get off.

It's gonna blow up with all of us on it.

Engine and APU fire-warning switches.

Right now, all 137 people on board are alive.

But with every second, their odds of surviving are decreasing.

Flight 28...

...is becoming a death trap.

The jammed door on the right side of British Airtours Flight 28

leaves the crew no choice.

They must get the passengers out from the side of the plane that's burning.

As soon as we opened the door, the fire service were already arrived,

shooting foam up the slide; it came into the galley floor.

We wanted to start evacuating passengers, but...

there was a bit of a bottleneck and nobody was coming forward.

The aisle is quite narrow where the galley is,

and they were pushing forward.

And I could see this boy that was really sort of pushed against the wall.

He couldn't get out, so I pulled him by his T-shirt, had a yellow T-shirt on,

and he sort of tumbled forward, and after that everybody sort of just tumbled in behind him.

And we just directed them down the slide.

Jump. Jump.

Jump.

In training, they tell you to bring people to the door,

and you tell them to, um, jump.

Jump.

Desperate to get people off the plane quickly,

the purser returns to the jammed door.

After several attempts, he manages to force it open.

The only time I turned around was to make sure that Charlie was following me.

See you out there.

One thing I did see when I looked back

was people going to the front, towards the front of the plane,

where the seats are, and pushing the seats forward,

folding them down as they went along.

So people were trying to rush forward from the back.

The chute was open,

and people were just jumping out straight onto the chute.

As I got to the bottom, didn't look back at all,

just wanting to get off.

Dozens of passengers have made it off the plane,

but there are still many more inside.

It was smouldering, and it was black, thick black smoke.

And Charlie had said that after you'd gone, this black smoke came down,

he said, and everybody was screaming and panicking.

He said people are gonna die in there.

Standby power switch.

Captain Peter Terrington and his first officer Brian Love

are still aboard the burning airplane.

And they still haven't completed the steps required to evacuate.

There was four tons of fuel coming out of that aircraft... wing tank.

Ready to go, Brian? Go, Brian.

I could see quite a lot of flames.

Completing the checklist would put their lives at risk.

We did as many items as we could,

and then we both went out of the flight-deck window.

There are no more passengers at the exits.

So Joanna Toff decides to see if anyone else is left in the cabin.

And the smoke was... you could touch it, it was so thick.

And you could taste... It was awful.

Go!

There was a young girl just a bit further down in the cabin.

But she was really disorientated.

I mean, I suppose we all were, really.

We just didn't have any idea what was going on.

I just brought her down to the slide. She was taken off then.

The fireman was telling me to come on out.

And I'm thinking: Well, I'm not finished, you know, we've not finished yet.

When Toff re-enters the cabin...

...the thick smoke makes it as hard to see as it is to breathe.

It was really dark and quiet. I've never seen anything like it.

And I could see the light from the door anyway by then,

so I knew where the door was.

The smoke forces Toff to abandon her search.

Just minutes after pulling off the runway,

British Airtours Flight 28 has been consumed by fire.

We got out of the flight deck, which was relatively intact.

And when we turned round, on the ground,

we saw a complete wreck of an aircraft.

And it had happened in a matter of seconds.

It was... uh, dreadful.

Fifty-four people are dead.

Another would die in hospital.

There was nothing wrong, really, with us,

we thought; nothing physical wrong with us.

But our lives changed, you know, just in those few hours.

I couldn't breathe. I was virtually out the door and I couldn't breathe then.

The smoke was coming in,

and everybody just stood up and ran... ran out.

It was just a mad panic getting out.

When the smoke came, you just couldn't see anything at all, couldn't see anybody.

It takes 125 firefighters

more than two hours to put out the fire.

News of the disaster soon spreads around the world.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher flies to Manchester to visit the scene.

When we get a terrible air crash of this kind,

everyone is appalled and shocked.

Every single aspect of this accident will be thoroughly investigated.

It has to be.

This is the fourth major commercial air disaster of the year.

In June of 1985, an Air India jet exploded over the Atlantic Ocean.

329 people were killed.

Weeks later, 137 people died

when a Delta Airlines flight crashed at Dallas-Forth Worth Airport.

And just 10 days before the Manchester crash,

the deadliest single-aircraft accident in history.

Japan Airlines Flight 123,

a fully loaded 747,

slammed into a mountain,

killing 520 people.

British Airtours Flight 28 adds 55 new victims to the list of casualties.

1985 in now the deadliest year in the history of commercial aviation.

The flying public is getting nervous.

Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch sends a team to Manchester

to unravel the events that led to the catastrophe.

Among them, Stephen Moss.

He'll be inspecting the plane's engines.

This should not really have happened.

The aircraft didn't even get airborne,

it didn't run off the runway,

and yet still, 55 people were killed.

Chris Protheroe is also on the team.

His focus is on the fire.

We were aware, from initial reports,

that the fire had entered the aircraft very rapidly

as the aircraft came to a halt,

and that, um, was a focus... for me.

It doesn't take too long for Stephen Moss to figure out

where the trouble started.

He sees damage to the plane that was not caused by fire.

The first thing we noticed clearly was the hole in the underside of the wing.

And right next to it was a gaping hole in the side of the engine.

Seems that one led to the other.

To get a plane loaded with passengers off the ground,

you need to generate massive thrust.

That power is created when air travels through the front of the engine

to a series of compressor fans.

It's then ignited,

and the exhaust pushes the plane forward.

Something had clearly gone very wrong

with Flight 28's left engine.

Investigators look for clues on the runway and in the cabin,

hoping to discover why so many people died.

Entering the cabin for the first time,

there was a... as with all aircraft fires,

there's an overwhelming and pungent smell:

Burning plastic, burnt fuel.

Burning material had dropped down onto seats,

so the aisles were filled up with...

with the remains of overhead lockers.

A scene of...

of devastation.

The damage in the cabin is revealing.

It's almost completely charred up high...

...but is relatively intact down low.

It was clear there had not been a flashover in this particular case.

A flashover occurs when the gasses in an enclosed space

become so hot that they ignite,

incinerating everything around them.

The way Flight 28's cabin is charred

tells Protheroe about the nature of the fire.

Many of the seat squab cushions,

even things like... the emergency evacuation cards,

which are just plastic-laminated cards,

were pretty much undamaged.

You could've wiped them off and put them on another aircraft,

and nobody would've known they'd been in this accident.

Whereas at the upper levels in the fuselage,

there was a great deal of heat damage,

and this is not a characteristic of a flashover.

The fire in the cabin had been severe,

but should not have been catastrophic.

This leaves investigators with two questions:

Why did so many people die,

and what caused the fire?

The answer to the second question

may be outside the plane, lying on the runway.

Investigators find a large piece of dome-shaped metal along the plane's path.

Stephen Moss can see it's from a piece of the engine called a combustor can.

It looked like there'd been a separation of the can

from the front end, from the back end.

The combustion chamber of the 737's jet engines

contains nine combustor cans.

It's where fuel and air are mixed and ignited,

so each can needs to withstand intense heat.

Moss suspects the fractured can somehow blew apart and destroyed the plane's left engine.

It had struck an under-wing fuel-tank access panel

and put a sizeable hole in that,

which directly led to the release of a vast quantity of fuel.

Proving the piece of the combustion can penetrated the wing is easy.

It fits neatly into the hole in the wing.

This was clearly, if you like, the root cause of the accident.

The engine on the plane is a Pratt and Whitney JT-8D.

For Moss, that's of grave concern.

At the time, it was probably the most widely used jet engine

on commercial air transport in the world.

And it was obviously pretty urgent that we try and find the cause of this one

in order to prevent other aircraft having the same problem.

There are tens of thousands of combustor cans in service

around the world.

One of them erupted in Manchester.

Stephen Moss needs to find out why it failed...

...and fast.

Investigators looking into the deadly fire

on board British Airtours Flight 28

study the plane's maintenance log.

They discover the combustor can that ruptured had previously been repaired.

We needed to look at that repair and, uh,

and how effective it was.

During a routine inspection a year and a half earlier,

mechanics had found small cracks in some of the combustor cans.

It was certainly not uncommon to find, uh, fatigue cracks,

um, in the... in the cans.

They're operating in a high-temperature environment.

The manuals give various schemes for repairing these cracks.

Investigators find mechanics repaired the cracks

according to a procedure laid out in the engine-repair manual.

They welded them closed.

But the crack on can #9 was unusually long.

The overhaul manual, um,

did not give any limit on the length of crack that could be repaired,

and it was a longer crack than had been experienced before;

it was still repaired.

After the repaired cans were put back in the engine,

mechanics had no way of knowing the weld didn't effectively seal the crack.

That's because the cans can't be inspected

while the engine is on the plane.

Since the repair, there were 11 reports of slow acceleration

from the engine that exploded in Manchester.

A damaged combustor can could've been a reason for the problem.

But troubleshooting guides available to mechanics in Manchester

didn't list that as a potential cause.

Instead, Pratt & Whitney offered other ways to fix the acceleration problem.

It didn't seem to ring any great alarm bells with them, if you like.

They'd seen it before,

and it had never turned out to be anything serious.

So mechanics in Manchester made minor adjustments

to fix the plane's idle speed and kept the plane in operation.

Cockpit voice recordings reveal that the crew of Flight 28 was aware

there was a problem with slow acceleration.

Slow acceleration on the #1 engine day before yesterday.

- I was on the flight, yes, sir. - And they signed off on it.

But the log entry led Captain Terrington to believe

that the problem had been fixed.

A comment in the tech log,

uh, for... for the flight before the last one...

...that the engine was slow in accelerating.

It wasn't apparent as a serious problem.

Because the engineers had done some work,

and the aircraft had been flying the previous day with no problems.

The idle-speed adjustments didn't fix the real problem:

The cracked combustor can.

And it reached the breaking point on Flight 28.

Stopping. 28 Mike, we are abandoning takeoff.

Evacuate! Evacuate!

Please stay calm and don't panic.

If the airline had, uh, inspected the cans,

I think there is no doubt they would've seen a problem.

Investigators now know the origins of the Manchester disaster.

The welded crack in combustor can #9 gave way

as Flight 28 sped down the runway.

The front of the can was ejected from the engine

and put a hole in the underside of the left wing.

That led to a huge fuel leak onto the damaged engine, which caused the fire.

Engine fires are not uncommon.

The body of a 737 is insulated with fire-retardant material to protect the cabin.

Investigators still don't understand how a fire outside the plane

spread into the cabin as quickly as it did.

Fire inspector Chris Protheroe finds part of the answer

from viewing photographs of the plane as it sped down the runway.

It was clear from these photographs

there was a very dynamic phase to the fire whilst the aircraft was at speed on the runway,

which produced this energetic,

turbulent, sort of blow-torching type of fire, visually anyway,

trailing behind the aircraft.

A press photo from the day of the crash leads Protheroe to a new theory.

The photographs of the aircraft that appeared in the press

showed the left thrust reverser deployed.

The general impression that one got visually from that photograph

was that the thrust reversers had effectively blow-torched fire

against the side of the fuselage.

And that, if you like...

...was the explanation as to why the fire had penetrated so quickly.

That photograph and the implications of it, actually,

um... therefore loomed quite large.

Stop!

There are several ways to bring a speeding jetliner to a halt.

One is with the brakes.

Don't hammer the brakes.

Another is with the engine's thrust reversers.

Thrust reversers redirect the exhaust from the jet engine forwards.

This helps slow the plane down.

It looked as though the thrust reversers had simply blown this big fire

on the left of the aircraft against the...

directly onto the side of the aircraft,

directly onto the rear fuselage.

That would explain why the fire destroyed the cabin so quickly.

It now seems possible that Captain Terrington made the fire worse

by trying to slow his plane down.

But Protheroe has two good reasons to doubt his theory.

One is the location where charring from the burning exhaust gas,

or efflux, was found.

The efflux impinges on the fuselage further up,

closer to the roof... the crown skins of the aircraft.

So actually...

the penetration that we had low down did not fit with that.

And the other reason is:

By the time the thrust reversers were deployed,

the left engine had already exploded.

But to act as a blowtorch, the engine would've needed considerable exhaust.

We did calculations to confirm that the residual thrust from that engine

would not have had the energy to have this effect.

That confirmed that, uh,

the thrust reversers couldn't actually have played any role,

or significant role anyway, in the fire's severity.

Clearly, something other than the thrusters

had caused the fire to spread so quickly.

Protheroe looks more closely at the data.

After examining weather reports from the day of the accident, he finds the answer.

The wind was the main factor that determined the severity of the fire,

in terms of its attack on the outside of the aircraft,

how rapidly it penetrated the aircraft,

and it also affected the conditions inside the cabin.

Believing he had blown a tire,

Captain Terrington made a fateful decision.

Stopping. 28 Mike, we are abandoning takeoff.

Well, when we heard the thud,

then we closed the throttles.

It was my assumption that we were going to turn off the runway,

clear the runway, ask Air Traffic for an engineer to come out and check the tires.

Like a highway, an airport runway has a series of exits.

Captain Terrington chose one called Link Delta.

We got a fire on #1.

When we got the additional information of a fire warning,

the brain was already programmed to carry out the, uh...

the stop.

The crew had been aware that they had a fire,

but didn't really appreciate at the time

the nature of the fire, the severity of the fire.

So they had turned off the runway.

Captain Terrington turned his plane to the right and brought it to a stop.

He couldn't have realized that doing so would make the problem far worse.

There was a crosswind,

a slight crosswind from the left side of the aircraft,

that was carrying the fire that was burning from the fuel

that was pooled underneath the left wing.

It carried that fire aft, rearwards,

and to over and under the rear fuselage,

in between the wing and the tail plane.

The wind wrapped the fire around the back of the plane...

...and into the cabin.

If there'd been no wind at all,

I think the situation would've been very much more benign.

Investigators have discovered how the fire started...

and the conditions that caused it to penetrate the cabin.

Now investigator Ed Trimble must solve the biggest mystery

surrounding the Manchester accident.

Here we had an aircraft which had aborted the takeoff...

...for good reason, had, uh...

...taxied off and stopped in a taxiway...

...in an expeditious manner, and yet...

...55 people had lost their lives.

So there was a big question as to...

precisely why that had occurred.

Investigators learn that most of the dead were not found

in the worst-burned parts of the plane.

Autopsies will point to the real killer on Flight 28.

Of the 54 people who died in the cabin,

only six had suffered serious burns.

All the rest died from smoke inhalation.

It seems the smoke in the cabin was particularly lethal.

Survivors tell investigators that the smoke was unbearable.

The smoke was really black and... and it was...

it was almost touching you,

it was... it was... it was really weird.

And they said the effect of that was shocking.

That immediately you took one breath of the smoke,

you began to feel debilitated

and you knew that if you took another breath or two, you weren't going to make it.

At the time of the Manchester accident,

the effects of fire on an airplane had been well studied and understood.

But the effects of smoke were not.

To figure out what made the smoke so toxic,

Trimble decides to recreate the fire that burned on Flight 28.

We were trying to model not only the gases which were produced,

but also the kind of threat levels which were produced.

The smoke that filled the plane was from materials

burning inside the cabin.

The foam in the seats,

the wool in the carpets and the plastic overhead bins

all release poisonous fumes.

Those conditions are recreated by burning those same materials.

Trimble discovers the passengers on Flight 28 inhaled smoke

that contained a deadly blend of poisonous gases...

...including high levels of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.

Now he desperately needs to find out if there's any way

to protect airline passengers from that kind of smoke.

It would seem to me... pretty clear...

that unless we could protect people's respiratory systems

from the assault from such combustion gases...

...there was little that we could do to improve

survival chances from aircraft fires.

Over the course of five weeks,

investigators run dozens of tests,

experimenting with different filters.

They burn nearly a quarter ton of material

to create the necessary smoke.

Their dramatic conclusion:

It may have been possible to save passengers' lives.

There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that in these situations,

in an aircraft cabin, if it is being assaulted by combustion gases...

...your chances of survival are vastly improved

if you have, um... smoke-hood protection.

British Airtours Flight 28 had only enough smoke hoods for the crew.

They were never used.

Trimble's research indicates that smoke hoods for passengers could've saved lives.

There were hoods available,

both of the filter type and the breathable gas type,

which can provide a very high level of protection to people

in these circumstances.

Many of the passengers on Flight 28 would've survived

with a few more minutes of breathing time.

It was... it was in a blink of an eye, you know, from...

...from the time, you know, we stopped on the runway.

You know, just within a few minutes, it was all over, really.

A full Boeing 737 is designed to be evacuated in less than two minutes.

So even without additional time,

more of the passengers on Flight 28 should've been able to get off.

To discover why so many people never made it off the plane,

investigators turn to an unlikely source for the answer.

Jump, jump, jump!

By law, airplane manufacturers must prove their planes

can be evacuated quickly and safely.

When the 737 was introduced in the UK,

Boeing demonstrated that 130 people could get off the plane

in just 75 seconds.

All public-transport aircraft are certificated to the same criteria,

and that is that the total complement of passengers

must be capable of evacuating from the aircraft

using half the exits in the aircraft -

it's generally one side or the other -

within a maximum of 90 seconds.

But 90 seconds after Flight 28 came to a stop,

most of the passengers were still on board.

The reason why the evacuation in Manchester wasn't, uh...

achieved in 90 seconds

is because the conditions in a real fire evacuation

are completely different from the certification conditions.

The certification evacuation is conducted in clear conditions,

with no smoke that reduces vision and overwhelms passengers.

Within minutes of coming to a stop,

Flight 28 filled with thick, black smoke.

A soon as the smoke began to spill into the rear...

cabin and then flow forwards...

...essentially that induced immediate panic in those...

who were so affected by the smoke, because their respiration...

I mean, the typical comment was:

"I took one breath of smoke and I felt as though my lungs were solidifying."

You can imagine, under these conditions, that people...

have got to get away from the smoke.

And the people did this

by basically clamouring over the seats and other people in front of them.

In less than five minutes,

what should've been a survivable accident turned deadly.

To prevent future tragedies,

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority decides to learn more about people.

Helen Muir is a psychologist and a leading expert

on how airplane design can influence survival.

She's asked to study the behaviour of passengers on Flight 28

to figure out why so many died.

What we had to learn to do was to design the aircraft interior

so even if we had what we might say

was dysfunctional behaviour in totality,

we could accommodate the needs of individuals

in their desperate rush to get out.

Muir configures a cabin to duplicate Flight 28

and fills it with volunteers.

Then, to have them act as though the plane's on fire,

she offers money to the first ones off.

And that produced behaviour that was quite unbelievable.

People went over seats, they went round past each other, all sorts of things.

And indeed, when survivors from the actual Manchester accident came and saw the videos,

they said, "Yeah, that's how it was."

The evacuation of Flight 28 was slowed by the fact

that passengers became jammed in the bulkhead opening

separating the main cabin from the galley.

Jump down the slide.

Investigators discover the logjam was created

by the design of the Boeing 737.

The bulkhead opening was 22.5 inches wide,

just enough for one person to fit through.

But what they wanted to know was how much wider would they have to make it

for people not to get stopped and blocked.

We were trying to do as much as we could to recreate the situation

which had happened in Manchester, and then...

to systematically vary the aircraft interior

to see what changes would improve the situation for passengers.

Muir's tests showed the narrow bulkhead opening created bottlenecks

that flight attendants had to constantly clear.

Increasing the width to 30 inches greatly improved the movement of passengers.

But we showed, through repeat testing,

that if you changed the minimum gap from 20 to 30 inches,

you would dramatically improve the speed at which people could get out,

and you'd reduce the likelihood of people falling and slipping and so on.

As a result of Helen Muir's work,

a recommendation was made to increase the space between the bulkhead walls to 30 inches,

...and introduce strip lighting to help guide passengers to exits

even when they are blinded by smoke.

Muir also found a way to improve cabin safety without redesigning the cabin.

Please sit down.

She conducted research on the behaviour of the cabin crew in emergencies

and found that passengers get off a plane much faster with a highly assertive crew.

Mind your head!

- Come on, this way! - This way! Take it easy.

It's because we don't want people really making their own decisions.

We want people to do exactly what the cabin crew or the procedures state.

And we don't want people hesitating,

particularly at the door.

Helen Muir's research prompted manufacturers

to redesign cabins to make them safer.

But one safety feature remains controversial:

Smoke hoods.

Ed Trimble believes they should be mandatory on all commercial flights.

Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

Helen Muir is less convinced.

She's studied how smoke hoods affect passenger behaviour,

and is worried they would slow down the orderly evacuation of an airplane.

We know you've only got literally...

...1.5 to 2 minutes for everybody to get out.

What we don't want to have is something which is difficult to put on,

and so it slows people getting down.

The most important lesson of British Airtours Flight 28

is that seconds matter.

It's now universally accepted that it takes 90 seconds

from the first sign of fire before it becomes unsurvivable.

The passengers on Flight 28 lost valuable time

when the starboard-side door jammed.

The investigators determined that the slide mechanism deployed too early,

preventing the door from opening.

There was a flaw that led the slide container's lid to jam

if the door is opened too quickly.

After the Manchester accident,

Boeing quickly redesigned the system so that couldn't happen.

But the recommendations made by the AAIB weren't adopted quickly enough

to save lives six years later.

In 1991,

a Boeing 737 slammed into another plane on the runway in Los Angeles and caught fire.

Many of the 22 people who died were overcome by smoke before they could get out.

But in 2005, the crash of an Air France jet in Toronto

showed how much has changed since the Manchester accident.

All 309 people got off that plane in just 90 seconds.

No one died.

Some major changes to commercial airliners...

Ah! Alright, the door's open!

...came about because of a flight that never left the ground.

That's the only way I can resolve it,

with the death of 55 of my passengers.

The fact that...

...flying is now safer.

I can't imagine anybody, you know,

doesn't wish that it hadn't happened.

You know, despite what's been learned and despite...

maybe the subsequent lives that have been changed, you know,

you'd give anything for it not to have happened.

difuze