Original subtitles

The plane came flying out

of the bottom of the cloud

at 4,000 feet per minute.

Pull up! Pull up!

Nuremberg Air Service Flight One Zero Eight

breaks apart while the pilots attempt to land

at Dusseldorf Airport in Germany.

All passengers and crew are killed.

Because of the size of the accident site,

we used a grid to identify the positions

of every part of the wreckage.

Investigators reconstruct the plane

to determine what happened.

There must be a thousand pieces in here.

Over here.

They uncover evidence of a one-in-a-million

failure that should not have brought the plane down.

The pilots had no chance to control the aircraft

in a proper way.

I think under these circumstances,

there was nothing they could have done.

Mayday, Mayday.

Pull up.

It's an hour before sunrise

at Hanover Airport in West Germany.

Nuremberg Air Service Flight One Zero Eight

prepares for the first flight of the day.

In the cockpit is 36-year-old Captain Ralf Borsdorf.

How is the weather looking?

...and 28-year-old First Officer Sibylle Heilmann.

They each have twenty-five-hundred

flying hours.

It should be clear sailing.

Both of them would be fairly typical of what you would see

at commuter operations, people starting their careers

and getting ready to move up.

The weather forecast predicts calm skies

with only a slim chance of thunderstorms

near their destination.

It might get a bit rough on landing

because of some turbulence and a chance of thunderstorm,

but it's unlikely. Just 10%.

Sounds good.

A 10% chance of thundershowers,

it's 10% chance.

You want to know about it but it's not something

you're going to put too much thought into.

Before Flight One Zero Eight can depart,

snow and ice that accumulated overnight are removed.

This flight was a full flight.

It had 19 passengers on board,

all of those being business people.

It's a 40-minute flight from Hanover

to Dusseldorf, a major business hub on the Rhine River.

- We started the route in 1987,

about six months before this flight.

We had very weak train connections between

the East and Western parts of Germany.

So from the very, very beginning we had full airplanes.

Flight One Zero Eight leaves Hanover at 7:15 AM,

15 minutes behind schedule.

Flaps.

Retracted.

The pilots are flying a Fairchild Swearingen

Metroliner III.

It's a powerful turboprop plane designed for short,

commuter flights.

The Metro airliner is a perfect scaled down airliner.

It hauls people fast, fuel efficiently,

all the creature comforts of a bigger airline.

From the very beginning, I was impressed by the airplane.

It was extremely well designed,

it was flexible, it was fast, it had good pressurization.

So everything a pilot likes, the airplane had.

It takes 10 minutes for Flight One Zero Eight

to reach its cruising altitude of 14,000 feet.

It will stay at that altitude for only 15 minutes.

Well, no rest for the wicked.

Pull out the descent checklist, will ya?

Regional flying is generally an hour and a half or less, um,

leading to increased workload

for the time that you are in the air.

Check the radar.

The captain notices some weather on the radar.

A thunderstorm could be rolling in after all.

Maybe.

It doesn't look particularly bad.

I'll check the ATIS.

Düsseldorf Airport...

ATIS continuously broadcasts updated

weather conditions at the destination airport.

...gusting 2-4, visibility, 10.

Sky condition, broken clouds at 1,500 feet.

Nothing about a thunderstorm. We should be fine.

Okay, we'll continue with the approach.

Their expectation was that the weather was getting better

and that any thundershowers hadn't really materialized.

Good morning, this is your captain speaking.

We have begun our descent into Dusseldorf.

Please ensure your seatbelts are fastened.

We should be landing in about minutes.

30 miles from the airport...

Dusseldorf, good morning, requesting descend to 3,000

NFD One Zero Eight.

First Officer Heilmann contacts the Dusseldorf

Approach Controller for landing instructions.

NFD One Zero Eight, good morning to you.

You are cleared to 3,000 feet,

and currently number three to land.

Copy, descend to 3,000 number three to land.

When ATC gives us a indication of where we are

in the order for landing, it helps us set up.

It helps us get ready. It helps us know

when you're going to start putting flaps and gear down.

Three minutes later

Localizer alive.

Flight One Zero Eight lines up

with the runway's centerline.

Established on the localizer.

The First Officer checks on the weather.

It looks like a thunderstorm has moved right in front of us.

It might be trouble.

Thunderstorms have to be treated with respect.

I mean, they can produce hail.

They can produce downdrafts, tailwinds overpowering

what the airplane is capable of doing.

The Captain decides to maneuver around the storm.

The problem was the big thunderstorm

in the approach sector of Dusseldorf.

They shouldn't fly through thunderstorms.

In the Dusseldorf Control Center...

NFD One Zero Eight,

please switch to tower control, frequency,

1-1-8.3-0.

The approach controller hands over

Flight One Zero Eight to the tower.

NFD One Zero Eight, confirm switch

to tower control, frequency 1-1-8.3-0, bye.

Moments later, Flight One Zero Eight

disappears from radar.

Seven miles northeast of Dusseldorf Airport,

a maintenance worker at a sewage treatment plant

hears the sound of an approaching airplane.

Flight One Zero Eight breaks out of the clouds

in a steep dive.

Five hundred...

four hundred...

three hundred...

Pull up!

The plane pulls up just in time.

The plane came flying out

of the bottom of the cloud at 4,000 feet per minute.

The G-force, it would have taken to overcome that,

to pull the airplane nose back up, it was violent.

The sound of the engines

recedes into the distance.

That flight would have been sheer terror,

sheer terror for people in the back,

sheer terror up front.

You went from having a visual reference to thinking

you're good, to all of a sudden,

you're back in the cloud again.

A minute later, the plane returns.

This time, Flight One Zero Eight spirals out of control...

...and breaks up.

No. No, no!

It's a horrifying sight.

I can't imagine what the person watching that

would be thinking.

Two minutes before dawn,

Flight One Zero Eight slams into an open field

on the banks of the Ruhr River.

The wreckage is scattered over a wide area.

First responders make their way to the crash site.

All 19 passengers and both pilots are dead.

The Metroliner itself is broken into thousands of pieces.

You're seeing that parts are distributed throughout the area.

You'll start collecting all the parts,

mapping where they are

and trying to put this puzzle back together again.

Investigators from Germany's Air Accident

Investigation Unit, or F-U-S

begin mapping the wreckage of Flight One Zero Eight

to determine what caused the accident.

The first step was to identify the positions

of every part of the wreckage.

And because of the size of the accident site,

we used a grid, and we were able to get the information

where every piece was at the accident site.

Much of the plane, along with its black boxes,

are badly damaged.

The recorders in this aircraft aren't the new digital type

of recorders which record 300, 400 parameters.

This was the old foil style recorders.

You had altitude, airspeed, you had heading,

some information, you had G loads,

you didn't have the data we have today by a long shot.

The black boxes and the debris

are sent to a warehouse where investigators

begin their analysis.

Once the parts are recovered, taken to a facility,

you can then clean where the fractures,

where the separations are.

You can look at where a part broke apart.

The wings, the engines,

the tail sections separated from the aircraft.

Investigators try to confirm witness' statements

that the plane broke up before it crashed.

This piece looks compressed,

like it came from a high energy impact.

But this piece is intact.

What that indicates is that this intact piece of

wreckage did not go to the accident site

with the rest of the airplane.

For sure an in-flight break up.

The team is now convinced

that Flight One Zero Eight broke up

before hitting the ground.

The question is what led to that?

Is there any evidence of a pre-existing failure

that would have led to the accident?

Hey, can you bring that piece over to the table?

Did a design flaw or some kind of failure

create a fatigue crack,

causing the wings to break off before impact?

Even though the airplane is fairly new,

you don't rule out anything.

Was there a flaw in manufacturing?

Was there a hole drilled where it shouldn't have been drilled?

Was there some other issue that would cause a crack

to start growing very early in the aircraft's life?

This doesn't look like a fatigue crack at all.

It can only mean one thing.

Overload fracture.

Yeah.

Overload fractures can occur

'cause the airplane's exceeded speed limits,

uh, flight control inputs are severe,

uh, severe turb-turbulence can cause overload

and sometimes you have a combination

of all three coming together.

Hey, can you get the lights?

What pushed this plane

past its structural limits?

Investigators examine

the plane's flight path for clues.

Nothing unusual here.

The flight path from departure en route to arrival

for landing seemed normal.

What happened to this part, the end of the flight?

Oh! Look at that.

They discover that the pilots flew

an erratic flight path before the plane crashed.

That would certainly cause a structural overload.

Agreed.

The crew was on approach

and now suddenly goes through some very tight maneuvers.

And you piece that together with the wreckage you found

and where it was found and that gives you

a much better idea of what led to the accident.

Investigators speak to the controller who oversaw

the approach of Flight One Zero Eight

to determine what might have caused the unusual flight path.

Tell me about the night of the crash.

Uh, there was thunderstorm activity from about 7:40

until just after 8 AM.

Mmhm.

Did your other flights run into any trouble?

They reported moderate icing and turbulence,

but everyone else landed without incident.

Okay.

No go-arounds? No missed approaches?

- No. - Okay.

Uh, but, about six miles out,

a 737 got hit by lightning.

Dusseldorf approach, Lufthansa 1-3-5-4,

we just experienced a lightning strike at 3,000 feet,

six miles final. No immediate issues.

Lufthansa 1-3-4-5, Dusseldorf approach, roger.

Let me know if you require further assistance.

Typically when we're concerned about thunderstorms

in the airport vicinity,

it's not much about the lightning

it's more about the winds and the wind shears

that can be powerful enough to push the airplane

into the ground.

Since airplanes are made of aluminum,

which conducts electricity, most lightning strikes

flow over the skin of the fuselage

and safely exit through the tail.

I remember one occurrence of flying,

the aircraft got hit by lightning.

There was a sudden flash outside the fuselage.

You could hear it and the airplane kept on going.

And there was no associated damage to the aircraft

and we continued on.

Did you report the lightning strike to Flight One Zero Eight?

Yes.

NFD One Zero Eight, the preceding landing

experienced a lightning strike about miles final.

Dusseldorf approach, we copy and are looking outside,

NFD One Zero Eight.

For flight crews, it is not abnormal,

to deal with thunderstorms

and to deal with the probability of some lightning.

This flight was very, very usual.

Okay.

Great. Thank you for your time.

If it wasn't the weather that caused the pilots

to push the plane past its structural limit,

what did?

Will Flight One Zero Eight's black boxes

provide clues as to why the plane broke up mid-flight?

It's not looking good.

How so?

The flight data recording and the cockpit voice recording

both stop two minutes before the plane crashed,

at the exact same time that the plane

started flying erratically.

A total power failure?

The CVR and FDR get their power from two separate sources.

So the fact that both these recorders stopped

at the same time indicates whatever happened

affected both electrical systems not just the one.

The Metroliner's electrical system

is powered by two generators.

In the event of a power failure two batteries

act as a back-up system.

But...

if it was a total power failure

that means the back-up system failed as well.

How is that even possible?

From the perspective and the explanations

coming from the manufacturer,

the possibility of a total electrical loss was very low.

But during the course of the investigation,

we understood more and more that it could be that

the flight crew had a total electrical loss.

Investigators consider the effects

of a total power failure.

They would have lost most of their instruments.

Well, except their vertical speed indicator, the altitude,

and the third attitude indicator.

Our Metroliners have been installed with a third

independent artificial horizon.

It used bleed air coming from the engine,

and as long as the engine was running,

the artificial horizon was working as well,

totally independent from electricity.

The standby non-electrical

artificial horizon could have been used by the crew

to help keep the aircraft level and straight.

And then the complexity of this accident gets into,

why didn't the crew effectively use that standby?

But even with the limited instruments,

who's to say they could have even seen them.

Oh, good point.

The lights that illuminated the instruments

might not have been working. Huh.

You need those instruments and if you can't see them,

then you don't know if you're up or down.

You're flying blind at this point.

To confirm the unlikely finding

of a total electrical failure,

the team examines light bulbs

from Flight One Zero Eight's instrument panel.

If the light bulb was on when the plane hit the ground,

the hot and pliable filament inside would be stretched.

But if the light was off,

the cold, brittle filament would break upon impact.

All these filaments are broken.

The outcome was that we found no bulb

which was under electrical power during the impact

of the aircraft.

Investigators now have conclusive evidence

of a sudden, total power failure.

But what could have caused it?

The controller did tell us that another plane

got struck by lightning.

Maybe this one did too.

A lightning strike outside of the aircraft

could lead to a problem with the electrical system

inside of the aircraft.

If the electrical field of a lightning strike is very,

very high, it could be induced into the aircraft.

Investigators search for evidence of

lightning striking the fuselage of Flight One Zero Eight.

There must be a thousand pieces in here.

It's a painstaking process.

Lightning could have struck anywhere.

Lightning marks on the skin,

they look like a circle.

You'll see the paint burned.

You may see some localized melting of the metal

in that particular area.

Over here.

What do you got?

I found it.

Huh...

Once you've found a piece of metal with a lightning strike

its like okay, where does it go in the airplane?

What's in the proximity of this?

Is it next to the electronics?

Is it next to hydraulics?

Where is this lightning strike occurring?

The only way to determine

where the mystery piece comes from is to reconstruct

sections of the airplane.

No.

At the time of this accident uh, reconstructions

were fairly typical,

mainly because we didn't have as much data as we have now.

So reconstructing it made sense.

I think I've got it.

Investigators match the piece of the plane

to the left side of the fuselage,

forward of the wing.

This is where the lightning struck.

But could a lightning strike in front of the left wing

actually cause a total electrical failure?

There are power system lines running right behind

where the lightning struck.

It can't be a coincidence.

Is it possible that that lightning strike

entered the electrical wires on the other side

and therefore led to the loss of electrical power?

So that would have been the real focus

of the investigation at this point.

(narraamine what remains of

Flight One Zero Eight's electrical wiring in search of

evidence that the lightning strike jumped from the fuselage

to the electrical system.

You would look for the insulation material

on the outside's been burned away.

Is there melting inside the wires,

evidence that somehow electrical energy

got through the insulation barrier into the wiring,

uh, and then started actually melting the wires locally.

How odd.

There's no signs of arcing.

We checked the wiring.

We checked the electronic components

available from the wreckage for some indication

for electrical overload.

Flight Investigator Find any lightning damage to the wiring?

Not yet.

It's very possible once the lightning

gets into the fuselage you may not see

any direct impact in that area.

It flows into the aircraft and so even wiring

that's close by may appear to be unaffected.

But now this high energy is gone into the airplane

and the question is where does it go?

Maybe I can find something in here.

After we found no evidence for damage

in the wiring based on the lightning strike,

we had to do a deeper investigation

within the systems. And that means

we had to look for damages in the avionic components.

The team now focuses on even smaller components of

the electrical system: the diodes.

Let's check this out.

A diode is an electrical component that allows current

to flow in one direction only,

preventing reverse current flow that could damage circuits

or create malfunctions.

If the diode is working properly,

there should be resistance to high current flow

in one direction and not the other.

Only 15 ohms. Almost nothing.

Now the reverse.

Also 15 ohms.

But investigators discover low resistance

to current flow in both directions.

It's shorted.

The outcome of our investigation of the diodes

was that all diodes, um, were open in both directions.

That means the diodes were shorted.

The question now was why.

We decided to take these to a manufacturer and ask them,

uh, to do a deeper investigation.

Results are in.

To better understand why the diodes shorted,

they examine test results provided by the manufacturer.

Oh. That's interesting.

It looks like cracks in the center of the diode.

Once you've see that a diode has failed

then you can do tests and research on a good diode

to see how much energy it would take

basically to fry that diode.

Voltage tests are done to determine if the cracks

in the diodes were the result of

a lightning strike or something else.

A thousand volts.

Investigators learn that when more than 1,000 volts

are applied to a working diode, it will crack.

A lightning bolt can carry hundreds of millions of volts,

more than enough energy to crack the diode.

It must have been lightning.

The damage of the diodes,

uh, only can be produced by high voltage.

Could it be possible that high voltage would be produced

within the aircraft?

And the answer was no.

It could be only produced by the lightning strike.

Basically, the lightning hit the aircraft,

flowed through the system.

It impacted the diodes which fried them, cracked them,

took them offline and that shut down

the electrical systems on the aircraft.

The odds of lightning taking out an entire electrical system

are next to impossible.

And yet, that's what happened.

But this doesn't explain why the crew

flew into the thunderstorm in the first place.

Okay.

The primary rule is if you see a thunderstorm

no matter what its size you avoid it.

You go around, you divert, you hold,

you do whatever you can.

You do not want to fly through a thunderstorm.

examine Nuremberg Air Service'ss

Flight Operations Manual to understand why the pilots of

Flight One Zero Eight ended up in a thunderstorm.

I don't get it. It clearly states,

"flights in or near thunderstorms

should be absolutely avoided".

So why didn't they do the sensible thing

and go around the storm?

At that time they had several possibilities.

One possibility was just to prepare if they would fly

through the thunderstorm, what could happen,

what they have to do, what they have to prepare.

Another possibility could have been just to divert

to another airport.

Let's have a listen to what the pilots were saying

about the storm.

Check the radar.

A thunderstorm could be rolling in after all.

Halfway through the flight,

the crew learns there's adverse weather ahead.

Maybe.

It doesn't look particularly bad.

I'll check the ATIS.

The crew checks Dusseldorf

airport's weather service.

...information Bravo at zero seven zero...

But there's no indication of a thunderstorm.

Once they got the ATIS, their expectation bias

was that the weather was getting better.

...broken clouds at 1,500 feet.

Nothing about a thunderstorm. We should be fine.

The Captain considers the information

and makes his decision.

Okay, we'll continue with the approach.

They just assume best case scenario

and don't do a proper briefing.

As professional pilots, we always brief each other

based off the worst conditions. You never know if that 10%

probability of thunderstorms actually happens.

And if it does happen and it's too late,

you don't have time to brief it.

NFD One Zero Eight...

11 minutes later,

the situation becomes more critical.

...the preceding landing experienced a lightning strike

about six miles final.

If I were the crew and I were on approach

and proceeding traffic in front of me

were to get struck by lightning, at that point

I would initiate a missed approach,

go around and hold somewhere and figure out

what we're going to do because the weather

at that point is moving on to the approach path

and you need to take that pretty seriously.

But that's not what the pilots do.

Dusseldorf approach, we copy and are looking outside,

NFD One Zero Eight.

Hey, did you hear what happened to Walter last weekend?

Yeah, I'm not surprised.

Hold on.

They should to be talking about deviating or a go around here

not someone's weekend.

They should have been deciding where they were going

to go and what they were going to do

instead of going down this rabbit hole.

But they just thought the other person is comfortable with it

and we'll continue going,

if they're comfortable, I'm comfortable.

Investigators continue listening to the CVR

as the pilots prepare for landing.

- You're left of the centerline. - What?

You're left of the centerline. You need to turn right.

The captain started deviating to the left,

apparently without telling the first officer of his plan.

I don't want to go in there. I'm trying to get around it.

We're too close to the runway. You can't change course now.

It sounds like the Captain

is trying to deviate around the storm.

And the First Officer isn't on the same page.

It's a bad idea to try and re-intercept the approach

when you're already unstabilized.

It's just a bad idea. You just do a go-around.

Huh.

Okay, I hear you.

Again, no discussion of their options.

Oh...

There's some tension in the cockpit.

There's some issue between

the Captain and the First Officer.

We don't know exactly what it was but...

clearly this was not conducive to the crew working together

to determine what was the best course of action.

So, now the Captain turns the plane

directly into the thunderstorm.

- Hold on tight, here it comes. - Um-hm.

Neither crew knew what the other one was doing.

They hadn't briefed for the, uh, weather.

They didn't have the plane set up for flying around

in the vicinity of thunderstorms and they just kept going.

Why wasn't this crew on the same page?

The understanding of the investigation team

at that time was the communication

between both pilots was not in a way as it should be.

What'd you find?

Well...

Investigators examine personnel records

for insight into the pilots' working relationship.

The Captain had a total of 2,473 flight hours

but only 277 hours in the Metro III.

That's not a lot of experience on type.

No, it's not.

The FO had basically the same number of flight hours

but over 13 hundred hours in the Metro.

Investigators discover that the First Officer

had much more experience on the Metroliner

than the Captain.

With the crew having such an imbalance in the time,

the first officer is going to feel like they could be

the captain, that they got passed over for the upgrade.

They have more experience on the routes,

they have more experience on the plane,

more experience with the airline,

even in this case.

She probably didn't trust his handling of the aircraft.

That's never good in a cockpit.

Did the pilots' imbalance in experience

make it difficult for them to cope

with the lightning strike?

their descent here.making

Investigators examine how the pilots of

Flight One Zero Eight flew the plane

as they entered the thunderstorm.

And then, a minute before they lose power,

they start ascending again.

Why would that happen?

Let's hear what happens here.

Okay, glide alive.

Quarter flaps.

Selected.

Three minutes from the airport,

the Captain begins configuring the aircraft for landing.

And half flaps.

Half flaps, please.

As they descend towards the runway,

the Captain rushes his flap settings.

The plane is now climbing instead of descending.

The captain requested the next flap setting,

half flaps.

The airplane then ballooned up,

climbed in altitude 400 feet.

I'm not sure that was so good.

The Captain trims the plane's nose down

to counteract the increase in altitude.

In response to the 400-foot climb,

the Captain trims the airplane.

Rather than just putting a few bits of electric trim in,

he holds the electric trim,

pitching the nose down quite substantially.

He then adds even more nose-down trim.

We're still slightly high.

Okay, descending.

With all that trim the Captain has added,

the plane is in a nose heavy position

when the lightning strikes.

So now the Captain loses the ability to recover.

When the lightning strike happens,

he loses electrical power.

So he may have a lot more heavier flight controls

than he was prepared for.

And when the lightning strikes,

the instrument lighting fails,

making the instruments impossible to read.

There's no emergency procedure in the Metroliner manual,

uh, that tells you what to do

if all your batteries fall offline.

Uh, you're a test pilot, and at that point,

you use your pilot experience.

One of the things to do was for

the non-flying pilot to get a flashlight to illuminate

the standby instrument to help the flying pilot out.

The flashlights weren't found,

we don't know if they were on the aircraft or not.

The power failure cuts off their ability to see

and to communicate with each other.

They couldn't hear each other.

We've lost electrical power.

We have nothing!

You've got a crew that can't communicate

because you've lost the intercom system.

You've got a headset on,

and the Metro's a very noisy cockpit,

so you can't hear the other person

and what they're saying to you.

If they couldn't see their instruments

or hear one another,

could the pilots still fly their plane?

They have aileron and rudder controls

which aren't electrical.

The engines are still running.

The runway is about seven miles away.

They should have been able to use the controls

they did have to land the plane.

They still had control over the ailerons, over the rudder.

It was difficult, but technically still flyable.

But without the ability to see their instruments,

they'd have no way of knowing where they were.

Seconds later, Flight One Zero Eight

is diving towards the ground.

The pilots had no chance to control the aircraft

in a proper way because the light

for the third artificial horizon was not there

and they had no visual ground contact.

And I think under these circumstances

it's nearly impossible to control the aircraft.

Investigators finally understand

how a lightning strike caused a fatal crash.

- You're left of the centerline. - What?

It starts with a poorly functioning crew.

You're left of the centerline. You need to turn right.

I don't want to go in there. I'm trying to get around it.

We're too close to the runway. You can't change course now.

Okay, I hear you.

Instead of giving him the advice

or the two-crew mentality that we're not where we should be,

we shouldn't be here, the First Officer

chose to go the other route, which was shut down and

only make the minimum calls, which were deviation calls.

Half-flaps please.

The pilots decide to fly their nose heavy aircraft

into a thunderstorm.

A powerful lightning strike...

We've lost electrical power.

...causes a total power failure.

We have nothing!

And the disoriented crew...

- Where are we? - I can't tell.

...loses control of the plane.

Five hundred...

four hundred...

three hundred... Pull up!

Pull up! Pull up!

After you've been struck by lightning,

you've got winds that are gusting all over the place.

It starts to become a pretty violent situation pretty quick.

The combination of turbulence and the pilots' blind

actions lasting more than a minute,

sends the plane into extreme turns and banks.

Are we banking?

- Can't tell. - What's the airspeed?

Don't worry about the speed, just pull.

You think you can trust your senses, but you can't.

You don't know if you're banking to the left.

You don't know if you're banking to the right.

You can't tell if you've got your nose low or your nose high.

Uh, you can think you do. You can think you trust it.

At the end of the day, your gut instinct will be wrong.

The plane is so overloaded with the G-forces

in these turns...

it broke up.

Yeah.

Pull up! Pull up!

I'm trying.

You're looking at a G load that literally ripped

the engine pylon off the wing,

that literally broke the wings apart

on the strongest part of the airplane,

broke it like a toothpick.

It way exceeded what the aircraft manufacturer

ever designed that airplane to go through.

The main conclusion of the report by Germany's Air

Accident Investigation Unit is clear,

the crew flew into a thunderstorm

even though they could have flown around it.

You have two fairly experienced pilots

that they never ever should have been in that situation.

There were red flags throughout.

If anything can be learned from this one,

you gotta speak up on a two crew airplane.

You can't let the other person

take you to the scene of the crash.

In their recommendations,

the F-U-S reiterates the need for training and manuals

that clearly describe how to operate

in and near thunderstorms.

This is a very different crew than we see today

who are well-trained in cockpit resource management,

who work together as a crew.

And the systems changed for the better

and the airplanes are much better.

As for Nuremberg Air Service,

the company soon replaced the remaining Metroliners

in its fleet.

I made myself one of the last flights with the Metroliner.

I had some tears in my eyes

because I think it wasn't the aircraft's fault.

Subtitling: difuze