Original subtitles

Just minutes from Strasbourg Airport... - Merde!

...an Airbus A320 slams into a mountaintop.

Delta Alpha, your position?

There are survivors.

And I panicked because I'm going to burn.

But they are still in grave danger.

It's bitterly cold,

and what they don't realize is that no one knows where they are.

They could be anywhere in there.

We can expect this in the jungle or the rainforest,

but not in a...

highly populated area.

Before investigators can begin searching

for what caused the crash of Air Inter Flight 148...

...they must first find the plane.

Mayday, mayday.

January the 20th, 1992.

Air Inter Flight 148 has departed from Lyon, France.

124.95, thank you.

Captain Christian Hecquet...

and First Officer Joel Cherubin are experienced pilots

with over 12,000 hours of flying time between them.

The flight is a short hop between Lyon, in central France,

and the city of Strasbourg, in the mountainous Alsace region.

The French airline Air Inter caters mostly to business travellers

and prides itself on being timely.

Crews are motivated to avoid delays,

as former Air Inter pilot Gerard Arnoux explains.

We were famous for our very short turnaround.

And the faster we flew,

the better wages we got.

Have we been flying for 35 minutes yet?

Forty-one minutes.

The crew is flying an Airbus A320,

one of the most technologically advanced commercial airplanes in the world.

Even before takeoff,

the pilots programmed the autopilot to land

on a specific runway in Strasbourg.

The cockpit of the A320 is also very different from other planes.

Instead of analog gauges,

the pilots look mostly at digital displays.

Strasbourg, good evening.

Runway in use: 05.

Transition level: 50.

040, at 18 knots,

visibility: 10 kilometres.

A recording from Strasbourg Airport

informs the crew of a change in plan.

Due to high winds and poor winter weather,

they'll have to land on an alternate runway...

05 in service.

...not the one programmed into the autopilot.

05? What sort of wind are they giving us?

Eighteen knots.

Eighteen knots.

Captain Hecquet doesn't like the idea of changing runways.

No chance.

He was hoping to use Runway 23,

an approach that provides the autopilot with a precise navigational fix.

The new runway, Runway 05,

is surrounded by mountainous terrain

that can interrupt radio signals sent to the autopilot.

You know, if we go with the Runway 05 procedure, we...

Well, no. Ahem.

Captain Hecquet suggests a compromise.

I'm putting back Runway 23.

Otherwise, I couldn't make the ILS interception.

He'll program the autopilot to fly towards Runway 23.

But near the airport,

the captain will take over the controls

and make a visual landing on Runway 05.

You're taking 23, then?

Yes!

Agreed.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are commencing our descent.

We ask you to please...

Nicolas Skourias is a university graduate student.

It was a... quiet day.

I was, uh...

expecting to go to see my girlfriend in Strasbourg.

So I was very happy.

Roger 854, proceed to GTQ. Air level: 140. Contact Reims.

Delta Alpha, Strasbourg.

Uh, yes, we intend to proceed to do an ILS on Runway 23,

uh, then an indirect for Runway 05 after that.

The Strasbourg controller considers the captain's plan.

Delta Alpha.

He warns that there will likely be a delay due to heavy traffic.

Given that we're going to have three takeoffs on 05,

you risk waiting in a stack at 5,000 feet.

We're not going to mess about like that, descending at full speed.

If they had warned us in advance! Cripes!

Delta Alpha, Strasbourg.

I hear you. Aware of the captain's frustration,

the controller offers assistance.

If you want, I can take you with the radar to lead you to ANDLO at 5,000.

ANDLO is a navigational point on the approach to Runway 05.

It helps pilots align the plane for landing.

Yeah, that's good.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, then, turn left to heading 230 degrees.

148, turn left to heading...

230 degrees.

There you are. That will save you some time.

Since Runway 05 doesn't allow for a full autopilot approach,

the captain must calculate the angle of descent on his own.

That makes...

3.3 degrees.

3.3 degrees is a normal flight angle

that provides a good slope for landing.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are continuing our descent...

The flight from Lyon to Strasbourg was quite short.

I think 50 or 45 minutes,

nothing special.

It was, uh, very natural and very ordinary.

Thank you.

Turn left, steer 90.

Zero-niner degrees, Delta Alpha.

The controller talks Flight 148 through the last turn

to align the plane with the runway,

now 25 kilometres away.

Then First Officer Cherubin notices the plane is slightly off course.

You are headed inside.

You're inside there.

You should've started with 070.

Yeah.

- At least that much. - Ahem.

The controller also notices that the plane is off course.

Air Inter Delta Alpha.

It has missed aligning itself with ANDLO,

the runway's electronic guidepost.

Delta Alpha, you're passing to the right of ANDLO.

Nevertheless, he authorizes the landing.

Authorized for final approach, 05.

Delta Alpha.

The captain initiates the landing sequence.

- Flaps towards 2. - Flaps towards 2.

Flaps at 2.

Gear down.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to land in a few minutes.

Hecquet notices that the plane is travelling too fast,

so he extends the speed brakes.

They disrupt airflow over the wing,

which helps create more drag to slow the plane.

We have to watch our descent.

The approach axis... The first officer is more concerned

with their horizontal position in relation to the runway.

- It was 60. Check it out. - Oui, oui.

But before the crew can adjust their course...

Merde!

Delta Alpha, your position?

Air Inter Delta Alpha, Strasbourg.

The crash is catastrophic.

The A320 has flown into the side of a mountain.

Delta Alpha, your position?

Flight 148 is no longer on radar...

...nor responding to radio contact.

An emergency is declared at Strasbourg Airport.

This is the last hit we got. They were flying 20 kilometres away from the airport.

Officials need to pinpoint the crash site.

But it's not as easy as it might seem.

The airport's radar is not recorded.

There has been no signal from the plane's emergency beacon.

And, surprisingly,

no one has reported seeing a plane go down.

It could be anywhere in here.

The proposed search area covers more than 20 square kilometres

of dense forest just outside Strasbourg.

Nicolas Skourias survives the crash of Air Inter Flight 148

with only minor injuries.

I took off my, uh, seatbelt. I get up.

I tried to find my, uh, suitcase, uh...

in the lockers,

but, uh...

there wasn't any lockers.

I realized that I was alive; it was a crash.

I saw fire in front of me and I panicked,

because I say to myself: I'm going to burn.

I went to the back of the plane, what remained of the plane...

I found some other survivors.

Come on!

It's gonna blow!

I was afraid of the explosion. I was a panic.

With the smell of leaking jet fuel in the air,

the survivors move away from the burning plane.

We stayed together,

waiting for the first aid.

But the wait will be longer than anyone might expect.

The first reaction that we have after the crash was:

Okay, in half an hour,

one hour...

most and worst,

okay, the rescue team will be here.

And it wasn't here.

One hour after the crash,

rescuers still have no idea where the wreckage lies.

Skourias and the others now face a new ordeal:

Surviving sub-zero temperatures in a dark and isolated forest.

Two-and-a-half hours after Flight 148 disappeared from radar

near Strasbourg Airport...

...the missing plane has still not been located.

Amidst growing tension,

the French aviation bureau, the BEA,

sends in its lead investigator, Jean Paries.

I immediately called my two main investigators,

and we organized the go team.

And we got prepared to rush to the site

as soon as this site was located somewhere.

The delay feels like an eternity.

A bit surprisingly long.

We can expect this in the jungle or the rainforest,

but not exactly in a...

highly dense populated area like the Strasbourg area.

With no help in sight,

Skourias returns to the wreckage to look for more survivors.

I think that some people that die, uh,

could have survived if the first aid... had come sooner.

Nearly 1,000 people search for the missing plane.

But three hours after the crash, there's still no sign of it.

Frustrated, Skourias goes looking for help.

He stumbles into a TV crew trying to find the crash.

But with no wreckage in sight, they react with skepticism.

They didn't expect...

...uh, survivors from an airplane crash.

Hey! Hey, you have to believe me!

They didn't believe that I was one of... the survivors,

but believe me, I was,

because my face was black, uh,

due to the smoke,

the kerosene and so on.

Come on!

The journalists follow him back to the crash site...

...where they discover eight other survivors.

Finally, the first rescuers arrive.

The crash site is located near the top of the 2,500-foot Mont Ste. Odile...

...19 kilometres from the runway.

They found us...

after four hours and 30 minutes.

So it was a mess.

I was very, very disappointed

that at 20 kilometres from Strasbourg and, uh...

they couldn't find us.

A total of 87 passengers and crew have died,

including the pilot and co-pilot.

The survivors begin to tell their stories,

but no one reports anything that might explain why the plane crashed.

I don't know what happened.

We were landing, I lost all consciousness. We must've hit the trees.

Bob MacIntosh, an American NTSB investigator, arrives at the crash site.

The BEA of France, uh,

recognized the international attention would be on this accident.

Even though it was a domestic accident,

he invited a group of international accident investigators, uh,

to come and participate.

Jean Paries. Welcome to the team.

The first priority for investigators

is to retrieve the plane's black boxes.

We have not removed the recorders yet.

With the boxes trapped in the burning tail section,

any delay could prove costly.

We were very anxious about...

the state of the tape inside.

Will it be possible to use it?

Will we get the critical information we need?

In France,

aviation accidents are also investigated by the justice system.

Paries and his team are not allowed access to the site

until judicial officials secure the black boxes.

I had a visual picture of the Gendarmes Aériennes,

the transport police, standing around,

keeping us away from the wreckage for a while.

And were very suspicious of these international observers...

- Maybe we should wait. - ...even taking photographs,

which was somewhat surprising to us.

In a previous crash, the crash of Air France Flight 296 in 1988,

investigators waited 10 days before turning the black boxes over to police.

Rumours persisted that these boxes had been tampered with.

This time, police are keeping investigators at bay.

I can recall seeing the glowing embers,

and seeing the flight recorder sitting there and, uh...

not being able to intervene and say,

"Get that thing cooled down as soon as you can."

After midnight, the boxes are retrieved from the plane and sent for analysis.

Investigators can only hope it's not too late.

They were extremely hot.

They looked damaged, they looked burned.

In the light of day,

investigators get some of their first clues from the crash site itself.

They discover why the plane's emergency locator beacon didn't send a signal.

It was actually destroyed by the impact.

The beacon is located inside the cockpit

and is designed to start working after a crash.

Its failure suggests an unusually forceful impact with the ground.

We had this first feeling...

the descent was abnormally steep.

Investigators examine the engines

to see if they may have stalled before impact.

If you find the blades curved and a lot of wood, uh...

...sucked inside the engines,

then you understand that the engines were working properly.

And that's exactly what they find.

The plane clearly had power,

yet it plowed steeply into a mountainside

without ever sending out a distress signal.

Investigators are puzzled.

They hope that the box which recorded the plane's flight data

will help them solve the mystery.

Those particular recorders...

had the best survival record of any recorders.

They were the top-of-the-line as far as survivability is concerned.

The black box is designed to survive temperatures

up to 1100° Celsius for half an hour.

The tape recorder inside is protected by a capsule filled with water.

When the recorder heats up, the water turns to steam,

absorbing the energy,

and actually vents out through a little hole in the crash enclosure.

But when the flight-data recorder is opened,

investigators make a troubling discovery.

DFDR was totally damaged,

impossible to read anything from it.

It was subjected to heat beyond the 30 minutes.

The recorder was just never designed

to withstand that kind of sustained heat.

And so we were very, uh, disappointed.

There's now only one hope

for recovering the plane's flight data,

a device called a Quick Access Recorder, or QAR.

Maintenance workers use the QAR to access the plane's computers,

but it also records some flight data.

Unlike the black boxes, the QAR is stored near the cockpit.

The Quick Access Recorders are not protected at all.

They're up in the front end of the aircraft,

typically in the electronics bay.

They're generally destroyed just from the impact damage.

Investigators are encouraged to discover that in this case,

the QAR has survived.

But on closer examination,

their optimism turns to frustration.

The last 20 centimetres of the tape were burned and, uh...

stretched,

and were damaged to the point that we could not use them into a machine.

We couldn't read it.

Investigators are desperate to retrieve the data,

so they take a chance on an experimental technique.

Known as the "garnet technique,"

a light is shone through a mineral lens made of garnet.

You use a garnet stone to visualize the magnetic pulses

that are actually recorded on the tape.

The special lens helps the technicians

differentiate between the positive and negative magnetic pulses,

which translate as binary digits, or bits.

There's 768 bits per second,

so that's a lot of ones and zeros.

You have to be very precise in moving the tape

under the lens or the garnet

to make sure you don't miss a bit

or read the same bit twice, you know?

So it's difficult.

Analyzing the data is even more painstaking.

It took about a day to read a second of...

recording.

Any additional second recovered could reveal something that would make a difference.

The effort to retrieve all the QAR data could take a month or more.

In the meantime,

the focus of the investigation shifts to the cockpit voice recorder.

It was positioned just above the other black box.

The cockpit voice recorder, which was just inches away, but outside of the ashes,

had air passing over it... and survived.

...Runway 23. Otherwise...

The recording reveals the captain's anxiety early on in the flight.

- You're taking 23, then? - Yes!

Investigators know that landing on Runway 05

requires what's called a non-precision approach.

That means pilots receive electronic guidance

only on their horizontal position:

left and right.

They get no guidance when it comes to altitude.

The non-precision approach is significantly less accurate.

It's not really difficult, but they are less comfortable.

05?

What sort of wind are they giving us?

The non-precision approach increases the demands on the pilots.

Investigators can also hear that the captain had concerns

about landing on Runway 05.

Forty-eight, Delta Alpha, you are number one for VOR/DME, Runway 05.

Runway 05, 05.

Ten nautical. That won't work.

That's a lot of distress over a non-precision approach.

Wondering what can cause such distress,

investigators research pilot training at Air Inter.

They find that most pilots did not have extensive training

making non-precision landings in the new A320.

I think we should've had double the training

compared to an older plane.

Investigators ask the airline for detailed records

on the pilot's history of runway approaches.

They're intrigued by what they discover.

Captain Hecquet had landed at Strasbourg countless times,

but he had never landed an A320 there

using a non-precision approach.

We're not going to mess around like that descending at full speed.

Clearly the captain was uneasy

about having to execute a landing he had never made before.

I think the captain was worried about making it in,

in a minimum amount of time, in the minimum amount of delay.

Have we been flying for 35 minutes yet?

And the co-pilot was worried about not getting in trouble by offending the captain.

At least that much.

More research into the pilot's work history offers yet another revelation.

While the two pilots had flown more than 12,000 hours between them,

they were both still relatively new to the highly advanced A320.

It's 05 in service.

The aviation community misunderstood...

the magnitude of changes brought by the new Airbus A320.

The captain had only 162 hours in the A320.

And the co-pilot, even less.

Just 61 hours.

Behind this accident scenario,

there is an issue of confidence...

...of the crew in themselves,

in the aircraft.

Eighteen knots.

No chance.

They were not prepared, really, to fly in, uh, this kind of condition.

If they had warned us in advance. Cripes!

Investigators conclude that the crew's training was insufficient.

But that alone does not explain the crash.

Merde!

Investigators search for other factors in the crash of Flight 148.

They review the conversations between the crew and air-traffic controllers.

If you want, I can give you radar headings and take you to ANDLO at 5,000.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

The radar vector makes flying easier.

The captain was happy because it was reducing his workload.

Turn left, steer 90.

With the controller's assistance,

this landing should've been very simple.

But when investigators reconstruct the plane's trajectory

using radar information from various stations around the airport,

they discover a shocking error.

The 090 heading started here.

Zero-niner-zero degrees, Delta Alpha.

But it won't take them to ANDLO.

The last radar vector the controller gave was incorrect.

It sent them... - Thank you.

...closer to the mountain.

They were off course...

because of following the heading they got from the radar vectoring.

They found themselves in this under-shoot situation.

- You're inside there. You should've started with 070. - Yeah.

Investigators are also troubled by the controller's choice of words

when he warned the pilots, incorrectly,

that they were headed to the right.

Delta Alpha, you're passing to the right of ANDLO.

From the pilots' perspective,

the plane was on the left side of the runway, not the right.

It could only add to their confusion.

It was very poor guidance,

because he didn't employ the usual terminology.

Investigators recommend that controllers use only compass points

when giving directions,

never the words "right" and "left."

The controller's mistakes clearly brought the plane closer to the mountain.

Turn left, steer 90.

Zero-niner... But once again,

investigators feel they don't have the whole story.

It's not something totally abnormal to start a descent from this situation.

Flaps towards 2.

Flaps towards 2.

It's not what you're expected to do every day,

but it's not outside the tolerance of...

the concept of this approach.

Gear down.

When investigators study the plane's reconstructed flight path,

they discover something more alarming than the plane's horizontal misdirection.

As it circled the mountain,

the plane inexplicably entered a dangerously steep and rapid descent.

Perhaps 2.5 times, uh, the normal rate of descent.

That's lethal at that altitude.

Without the steep descent,

they would've cleared the mountain.

If the vertical, uh...

trajectory had been correct,

they would have no problem at all.

Finding the cause of that sudden descent

is now key to understanding why 87 people died

in one of the most advanced passenger planes on Earth.

Authorized for final approach, 05.

The descent was initiated at 18:19:38.

That...

Delta Alpha.

...is the point of no return.

By studying Flight 148's trajectory,

investigators determine that the rapid descent began 60 seconds before the crash.

There is no indication on tape that the descent was deliberate.

How it happened and why the crew didn't notice is a mystery.

It should be a no-brainer, keeping track of the altitude.

The cockpit altimeter gives pilots

a constant readout of their altitude.

The altimeter is a very precise instrument;

they've become very reliable, they're accurate to within five or 10 feet.

Ignoring it would be a major error in flying protocol.

Flaps towards 2.

The recording reveals just one single remark from the crew

about their descent.

We have to watch our descent.

It occurred 16 seconds before the crash.

The captain had just extended the speed brakes.

The aircraft was accelerating abnormally.

The captain started to realize there was something wrong with the descent rate.

But the first officer changed the subject.

The approach axis. We're hitting the axis a half-point off.

There.

It was 60. Check it out.

He refocused...

the captain's attention on the lateral situation...

...rather than the vertical situation,

which was the main problem, of course.

And they both failed to recognize the situation.

I think they were planning...

they were gonna break out of the clouds so they'd be able to see the runway,

and they wouldn't need to do the full instrument approach.

It was 60. Check it...

But the plane never left the clouds.

There's an old adage in aviation:

Rocks have been known to hide out in those clouds.

Merde!

It now seems clear that the crew was not monitoring their altitude closely enough.

But a bigger mystery remains.

We can only guess why... What caused that deadly descent?

After months of work, investigators may finally have the answer.

All the available flight data from the damaged Quick Access Recorder

has been recovered.

We were very anxious to be able to read as much as we could.

The data confirms that just before the crash,

the plane was speeding toward the ground at an extremely high rate:

3,300 feet per minute.

It also confirms that the angle of descent was dangerously steep.

Much greater than the 3.3 degrees selected by the captain.

3.3... degrees.

That's quite a difference.

Investigators now wonder: Did the autopilot malfunction?

Did it somehow fail to obey the captain's safe descent angle

and send the plane into a deadly nosedive?

But what state was it in before the accident?

Unfortunately, the flight-control unit which houses the autopilot

is too badly damaged to provide any definitive answers.

We could never demonstrate that this FCU on this aircraft,

during this flight, uh...

functioned properly or not.

But then, when he returns to studying the flight data,

Paries discovers something that may finally reveal the cause of the crash.

He notices a similarity between two key numbers:

The plane's vertical speed, 3,300 feet per minute;

and the intended flight-path angle, 3.3 degrees.

Coincidence?

Paries uses a flight simulator to test a new theory.

Can you show me a descent of 3,300 feet per minute?

He believes that the similarity is no mere coincidence.

On the autopilot, there are two descent modes:

Flight-path angle and vertical speed.

But they are both displayed on the same window.

So 3,300 is abbreviated to 33.

Now, show me a flight angle of -3.3 degrees.

And the problem on this aircraft...

...was the two values were visible on the same window

and controlled by the same knob.

3.3... degrees.

- 3.3 degrees.

Paries strongly suspects

that the confusing display tripped up Captain Hecquet.

So... it wouldn't be hard to make that mistake, would it?

The confusion is quite easy between the two modes,

if you don't do it carefully.

If the captain failed to push the mode-selector knob,

then entering 33 would not have initiated

a safe 3.3-degree angle of descent.

Instead, it would've put the plane into a deadly rate of descent

of 3,300 feet per minute.

Two months after the crash,

another Air Inter plane enters a dangerously steep descent for the same reason.

The crew only discovered the problem when they... broke out of the clouds.

Those pilots also confused the plane's flight-path angle

with its vertical speed.

They were lucky enough to have a much higher cloud base

so they could correct the problem.

Further research reveals an industry-wide problem with the A320.

Many people confused these modes, especially during training.

And many of them fell in the trap even after the training.

Eager to test his new theory,

Jean Paries programs a simulator with all the known data from Flight 148.

He then inputs the same rate of descent

he believes the Air Inter pilots selected.

If Paries is correct,

the simulation will end with the plane hitting the mountain.

But it doesn't.

We're missing something.

Strangely, this didn't lead to a crash.

Every approach would overfly this obstacle

by a significant margin.

Have we factored in the wind?

We started to work on other, alternate hypotheses.

Let's try again... but initiate the turn sooner.

But nothing was really, uh, credible.

No matter how hard he tries,

Paries cannot simulate the crash.

Unable to explain why, he turns to the plane's manufacturer for help.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. After much research,

an Airbus designer comes to Paries with an explanation

about a little-known element of the autopilot's design.

In emergency situations where the A320 needs to change direction quickly,

the autopilot is programmed to reverse the plane's direction at twice the normal rate.

The reaction of the autopilot would be much faster.

And these cases were typically when you were descending and, uh,

asking the autopilot to climb,

or climbing and asking the autopilot to descend.

We immediately went back to the data

at the very second to which...

the descent was commanded by the crew.

Gear down.

Paries discovers a tragic coincidence.

Sadly, we found at this very second,

there was turbulence.

There was an ascent.

It was very slight, but there it is.

The momentary turbulence

caused the plane to climb slightly.

And this led to a positive...

600-feet-per-minute vertical speed

for maybe half a second.

It was during that same half-second

that the crew commanded the plane to descend.

The autopilot read this as an emergency requiring a blazingly fast descent.

That could be it.

Investigators now contemplate a terrible thought:

Could a random gust of wind, hitting at exactly the wrong split second,

have been the difference between life and death?

Here it comes...

And we got a crash.

Paries's theory explains every aspect of the crash.

The crew's confusion with the autopilot display...

3.3... degrees.

...caused the plane to descend dangerously close to the mountain.

Turbulence and an obscure safety feature brought it even closer.

It was a fatal combination.

It's a fascinating lesson...

about the, uh, random dimension of accidents.

Half a second before, half a second later,

they wouldn't have the accident.

The discovery of a confusing cockpit display...

...has enormous implications for the entire industry.

The flight instrumentation of aircraft like the DC-10,

MD11s, the 74s and so on,

all the Boeing products and all the commuter products

that were using that avionics suite

had this vulnerability about it.

Investigators now face a daunting question

affecting aircraft safety around the world.

If the design of the autopilot interface isn't changed,

how many more people could die?

There's mounting evidence that the design of the autopilot interface on Airbus A320s

led the Air Inter pilots to accidentally dial in a dangerous rate of descent.

3.3... degrees.

We felt a need to start the industry to work on this.

The plane's manufacturer, Airbus, responds immediately.

The main change, which was very quickly made,

was to change the display window.

With the new design,

if a pilot selects a vertical speed of 3,300,

the entire four-digit number is displayed.

So... the confusion between an angle

and the vertical speed was no longer possible.

For investigators, only one mystery remains.

All Airbus A320 jets are designed to be equipped with a safety device

known as a Ground Proximity Warning System,

or GPWS.

Which is a downward-looking single-purpose radar

that tells you how high you are above the ground directly beneath the airplane.

And if it gets to be too low, it'll set off a warning.

Pull Up.

Terrain. Pull up.

But Captain Hecquet... - We have to watch our descent.

...never received a warning for one very simple reason:

His A320 didn't have that alarm.

Merde!

The first question, of course, was why...

the aircraft was not equipped.

So it's not part of the Minimum Equipment List?

The Air Inter management had decided...

they did not like the false warnings

that had been produced

by GPWS equipment.

Normally, most planes fly slower than 250 knots

when under 10,000 feet.

But we flew at 350 knots until the final approach.

So at those speeds, GPWS was always giving off false alarms.

This decision, while legal,

prevented the pilots from having one last line of defence

before crashing into the mountain.

It's impossible to imagine that the pilot wouldn't have pulled up

if he'd heard the alarm.

We should have a GPWS on commercial flights.

In any case, yes, that's...

a... an obvious conclusion.

The report will list these causes: Flight Deck Ergonomics...

Investigators conclude that there was no single cause

for the crash of Flight 148.

The tragedy involved in an ill-fated combination

of many different weaknesses in the airline industry.

We made... 35 or so recommendations,

including pilot training...

about the Ground Proximity Warning System and so on.

The recommendations lead to sweeping changes.

Pilots must now have more A320 training

before getting behind the controls.

One of the two pilots now need to have

at least 300 hours on the plane.

They estimated that 300 hours were enough.

Another change:

The design of a more heat-resistant black box.

The FAA did a test,

did some studies with the thermal characteristics of post-crash fires,

where it came up with a value of, uh,

260 degrees C for 10 hours.

Delta Alpha, your position?

Air Inter Delta Alpha, Strasbourg.

As a result of the Strasbourg crash,

the A320 is now a safer plane.

You can only get this...

change if there is what people perceive to be a good reason.

And sadly,

a good reason is still an accident.

But improved aviation technology is still no substitute

for well-trained, well-prepared pilots.

There's an old axiom in aviation, that you're taught early on:

Never let an airplane take you somewhere

that your brain hasn't visited at least five minutes ahead of time.

This is an excellent example of a flight crew

that didn't follow that particular axiom.

difuze