Original subtitles

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS)

NARRATOR: Military families in Kentucky

prepare to welcome home loved ones from overseas.

JOHN HERRLING: The plan was to have a reception for them

and then those soldiers would be reunited with their families and friends.

NARRATOR: At the same time, at a small Canadian airport.

(RATTLING)

(ALARM BEEPING)

(EXPLOSIONS)

- (SHATTERS) - (SIREN WAILING)

McNAIR: Weckage all over the place.

There was massive destruction.

Nobody could have survived this.

NARRATOR: 256 people are dead.

It's one of the worst aviation accidents of all time.

WESLEY WARK: Anytime a crash of this sort would occur,

immediate suspicions would be raised.

NARRATOR: Answers will be hard to come by.

It does not advance safety to get the wrong cause of an accident.

NARRATOR: As two radically different scenarios for the crash emerge.

PILOT: Mayday. Mayday.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)

(AIRPLANE DRONING)

NARRATOR: Arrow Air flight 12-85 is nearing the end

of a ten thousand kilometer journey from Egypt to the United States.

The DC-8 is on its way to Fort Campbell, Kentucky

via Germany and Newfoundland.

Onboard are eight crewmembers and 248 passengers.

Most of them are US soldiers with the famed 101st Airborne Division,

the Screaming Eagles.

HERRLING: That division fought through World War II,

through D-Day and the battle of Normandy,

dropped in behind the German lines.

It has really marked its place in history.

I think everybody, uh, who serves in that division

has a special loyalty and, and a special, uh, feeling

about the division and being part of it.

They had been in the Sinai for five and a half months,

so I'm sure they were anxious to get back to friends and family

and to enjoy the holidays.

NARRATOR: To bring the soldiers home,

the military has hired the charter carrier Arrow Air.

It was not unusual to do that back in the '70s and, and '80s

where the government would contract with a civilian airlines

to transport troops in and out of the country.

NARRATOR: At 5:30 in the morning,

the Douglas DC-8 lands at Gander International Airport

on the eastern edge of Newfoundland, Canada.

(AIRPLANE DRONING)

They had to refuel in Gander before they could complete the flight

into Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Okay, guys, I'd like to be refueled, checked, and wheels up in ninety minutes.

Roger that.

NARRATOR: Captain John Griffin has been an Arrow Air pilot for four years.

He's also a flight instructor for the airline.

First officer John Connelly will be at the controls

when flight 12-85 leaves Gander.

Mike Fowler, the flight engineer,

monitors the aircraft's mechanical systems.

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING)

Okay, you want to give her the once-over?

While the pilots run through a series of pre-flight checklists,

the flight engineer steps out to inspect the plane's exterior.

He'll look for any damage to the fuselage or engines

and check for buildups of ice on the plane.

The soldiers wait inside the airport.

Some shop for souvenirs at the gift shop.

Anything?

Okay. Roger that.

Alright, 15,538 gallons,

1,100 pounds.

Passengers and cargo unchanged.

Weight's confirmed.

Okay.

We're good to go.

That puts us here.

Rotation is 144 knots.

Yeah, that looks good.

NARRATOR: On the airspeed indicator is a marker or bug.

It reminds the crew of the exact speed they must hit

in order to get the plane off the ground.

CONNELLY: Bug's set on the right.

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN: Copy that.

NARRATOR: With the refueling and pre-flight checks complete,

the 248 soldiers get back on board.

HERRLING: I think it was probably a very joyous mood

because, uh, when they landed in Gander,

I know some of them went in

and used the telephones to call Fort Campbell

and call their families and say they were in Gander

and they'd be home in a few hours.

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN: Gander tower...

(OVER RADIO) Big A 9-5-0.

We've completed refueling and pre-flight checks.

Requesting taxi to runway 3-1.

Uh, Big A 9-5-0, wind's at 2-9-0 at four knots.

Takeoff now runway 2-2.

NARRATOR: A last minute change puts Arrow Air

on a different runway than originally planned.

9,900 feet, takeoff to the south, we're good.

Copy that, Gander. Runway 2-2.

(JET ENGINES RUMBLING)

MAN (OVER RADIO): Big A 9-5-0, you are cleared for takeoff.

Merry Christmas.

Roger that, Gander tower. And a Merry Christmas to you too.

(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)

NARRATOR: The DC-8 accelerates to takeoff speed.

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN: 80 knots.

CONNELLY: Check.

(JET ENGINES WHINING)

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN: V1.

Rotate.

NARRATOR: Arrow Air 12-85 lifts off

from Gander Airport at 6:46 a.m.

But just seconds later.

(BEEPING)

Ah, she's flying like a pig.

(RATTLING)

CONNELLY: Positive rate?

Negative.

Ugh!

HERRLING: I'm sure for the last few seconds

those soldiers knew that there was a serious problem in hand.

(RATTLING)

(ALARMS BEEPING)

Watch your altitude! Pull up.

Come on. Airspeed!

Airspeed!

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN: Watch the trees.

- (CLATTERING) - (PEOPLE SCREAMING)

(SCREAMING)

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

Yes, uh, Arrow 1-2-8-5 is down, just off runway 2-2.

Estimate 2,000 to 4,000 feet.

NARRATOR: At the small airport in Gander, Newfoundland,

emergency crews race to the crash site.

It's a field of wreckage, bodies, and personal effects.

Thousands of liters of jet fuel are feeding a massive blaze.

BADCOCK: It didn't look like aircraft.

It was just... Probably a 30-foot high burning mass of metal.

And fuel and everything.

Hey, any survivors?

NARRATOR: Canadian Air Force Captain Tom Badcock is one of the first on the scene.

BADCOCK: As an air force officer, of course, I had been to numerous crashes

but this was nothing, uh, like I had ever seen in my life before.

And to see the devastation and to see my, basically, comrades

lying on the ground in pieces was...

Words couldn't, can't describe it.

Many of them had bought T-shirts saying

"I survived Gander, Newfoundland."

We found that particularly emotional.

NARRATOR: After hours of frantic searching through the charred wreckage,

everyone's worst fears are realized.

The crash has claimed the lives of all 256 people onboard.

The search for the cause of the disaster is already underway,

but it will lead to controversy

and ultimately to the demise of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board.

NARRATOR: For the US military,

the crash of flight 12-85 in Gander, Newfoundland

is a historic loss.

HERRLING: If you take a look at the history

of the 101st Airborne Division air assault,

even in World War II,

that division never lost so many people in such a short period of time

as they did on December the 12th in 1985 in Gander.

NARRATOR: The Canadian military sets up a security perimeter

around the crash site.

BADCOCK: We controlled all access, uh, to and from the site.

The RCMP asked me if I would identify an object

which they thought to be strange.

BADCOCK: Never seen a casing like this before.

BADCOCK: And he said, does this have any kind of a chemical or nuclear connotation

and I said, no, I have no idea what it is.

NARRATOR: The find raises suspicion about what was on the flight.

WARK: It certainly is possible that Arrow Air could have been carrying things

either that it shouldn't have been carrying

or that weren't on any kind of cargo manifest.

NARRATOR: David McNair is an investigator with the Canadian Aviation Safety Board.

McNAIR: There were aircraft parts everywhere,

and you immediately became aware that it was gonna be hard

to find things that you needed to find.

NARRATOR: McNair is joined by colleague Peter Boag.

They arrive hours after the crash to a scene of complete devastation.

McNAIR: The sights and smells, it's always unpleasant.

But you just have to. You have to do it. That's part of your job.

NARRATOR: The terrible scale of the crash quickly makes headlines around the world.

It will have a tremendous impact on this division.

This is not only a sad day for the 101st Airborne

but a sad day for the nation.

RONALD REAGAN: Most of the young men and women we mourn

were returning to spend the holidays with their families.

You do not grieve alone.

- We grieve as a nation together. - (SHATTERS)

As together we say goodbye to those who died

in the service of their country.

There is just no way that I can express to you

how tragic that was with the loss of so many people

in, in that one plane crash.

WARK: The Americans were, were really suffering

in terms of military losses just two years prior

to the, uh, the crash of the Arrow Air flight.

The United States had lost a large number of soldiers

in a suicide truck bombing in, in Beirut.

So the losses in a sense were mounting

and although the numbers these days might not strike us as extraordinary,

they certainly were extraordinary at, at the time.

It wasn't just some assortment of soldiers, a large number of them

from one of the leading American military units in the American army.

You know, all of this raised, if you like, the symbolic stakes

quite apart from the casualty toll of the loss of life that occurred.

NARRATOR: Investigators immediately interview

the Gander ground crew and get some intriguing information.

Morning.

Did you see the flight engineer inspect the aircraft?

But they did not de-ice the wings before taking off?

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING)

Yeah, we picked up a little bit of ice coming in.

We're good to go.

Okay. Thank you.

McNAIR: Well, we were concerned about icing

because the re-fueler witness indicated

that they had picked up some ice on the approach.

NARRATOR: They turn to meteorological reports

for the early hours of December the 12th.

BADCOCK: In early morning, it was very, very icy.

And it had been severe freezing rain.

They flew in during the time that the forecast was for icing.

NARRATOR: McNair and Boag wonder if the crew of flight 12-85

may have made a serious error by not de-icing.

They check to see what other planes flying out of Gander did that morning.

There were two other takeoffs this morning.

One de-iced, one didn't.

McNAIR: And we noted that one, one Boeing 737 that departed

had picked up quite a bit of ice on its departure

and that was an indicator to us that the probability of ice accretion

or ice gathering on the aircraft was quite high.

NARRATOR: But the other aircraft, a British Aerospace VC-10,

had been on the ground for 50 minutes and did not de-ice.

It got off the ground safely.

McNAIR: And they took off within two hours of each other.

NARRATOR: Ice cannot have been the only factor in this crash.

Big A 9-5-0, winds 2-9-0, add four knots.

Takeoff now, runway 2-2.

NARRATOR: In search of other factors,

they consider the last minute runway change.

Copy that, Gander. Runway 2-2.

McNAIR: Not the runway they were expecting.

NARRATOR: But they quickly conclude that the alternate runway

could not have had any bearing on this crash.

McNAIR: Runway 2-2 is the longest runway at Gander,

so in fact it gave them the best margin for performance.

NARRATOR: Investigators examine and document the crash site,

trying to determine the trajectory of the plane as it went down.

BADCOCK: This was a very heavily wooded area

and as it got closer to the ground,

it started clipping the trees.

(AIRPLANE DRONING)

(ALARMS BEEPING)

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

And we're gonna need pictures of the treetops as well

and we're gonna need aerial shots.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)

NARRATOR: But what they need most of all

is the information from the plane's two black boxes.

They could hold the key to understanding what doomed flight 12-85.

But as soon as they're recovered, McNair sees a potential problem.

We were disappointed to see it was such an old recorder,

an old foil recorder,

as they really just don't give enough information to the investigators.

Well, send them off to Ottawa, and we'll see what we've got.

NARRATOR: The older design of FDR

engraves data on a slow moving roll of stainless steel foil.

Though the foil is fire resistant, it can record only four flight parameters,

such as airspeed and altitude.

The newer digital flight recorders can record hundreds of parameters.

All they can do is send the black boxes

to the National Research Council's Flight Recorder Playback Center

and hope for the best.

Then, with the investigation only hours old...

- (RINIGING) - ...it takes a drastic turn.

An overseas US consulate receives word

from someone claiming responsibility for the crash.

The caller says it was the work of Islamic Jihad,

a branch of Hezbollah.

If you had to think about any one terrorist group

operating in the Middle East at this time which had an in, an intent

as well as a capacity to target American military personnel,

that was Hezbollah.

(EXPLODES)

NARRATOR: The call opens the possibility

that a terrorist bomb brought down Flight 12-85.

Tensions were really high in the world at that time and when an aircraft

fully loaded with, with American soldiers crashes...

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

...there's always questions that come up.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)

NARRATOR: McNair sends portions of the wreckage

to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police forensics lab

to be tested for bomb residue.

The team searches for evidence that flight 12-85 exploded

before it hit the ground.

They look for any fallen debris between the runway and the point of impact.

If the aircraft had exploded before it hit the trees,

one would expect something would come off the aircraft

and we would have found it.

We didn't find anything, nothing at all.

So we knew with confidence that the aircraft hit the trees,

the first impact, intact.

NARRATOR: It's a similar story when the test results

from the RCMP come back.

They find no trace of bomb residue.

And both US and Canadian officials suggest Islamic Jihad's claim of responsibility

could be false.

One of the things that obviously benefits terrorist organizations

is to spread the claim, uh, for operational responsibility

very, very broadly

to kind of boost the reputation of their organization,

again to instill greater fear,

so it's difficult to separate fact from fiction.

NARRATOR: With terrorism looking less likely,

investigators continue to focus on the performance of the aircraft.

35 feet, six inches. Four and a half degree declination.

McNAIR: The airplane had struck some trees

about half a mile from the end of the runway

and we could see a distinct pattern in the trees.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

NARRATOR: Using photographs from the crash site...

investigators plot the height of 378 trees to determine the DC-8's exact position

as it went down.

The airplane was right wing low

with a nose high attitude relative to the trees.

Through photogrammetry, we determined

that in fact the aircraft was way above the stall angle of the aircraft.

So the aircraft was clearly stalled in a high rate of descent.

NARRATOR: The plane's radical nose-up position

prevented it from getting the lift needed to keep it in the air.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

Investigators can't explain why the plane was flying

at such an extreme angle.

One clue about what the pilots were doing comes from a piece of cockpit wreckage,

the airspeed indicator.

- Look here. - MAN: Mm-hmm.

McNAIR: There is the bug at...

NARRATOR: It shows that the crew set a takeoff speed of 144 knots...

McNAIR: I'm seeing 165.

NARRATOR: ...and that the plane reached an airspeed of at least 165 knots.

(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)

CONNELLY: Bug's set on the right.

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN (OFF SCREEN): Copy that.

NARRATOR: Investigators hope that a much more detailed picture

of the pilots' last moments will emerge from the cockpit voice recorder.

But they're in for a disappointment.

(FLUTTERING)

It doesn't sound like it recorded anything from the cockpit.

NARRATOR: The cockpit recorder wasn't functioning properly.

It didn't record any of the crew's conversations.

With the absence of cockpit voice recorder,

we don't know exactly what the crew was doing or what they were facing.

NARRATOR: Their hopes now rest with the flight data recorder.

McNAIR: Even this rudimentary recorder would have caught

some indication to show what speeds they rotated at,

what warning lights if any were they seeing,

what was their reaction.

All these things are extremely valuable.

NARRATOR: But it turns out to be only marginally more useful

than the cockpit voice recorder.

McNAIR: The recorder for the Arrow Air accident was extremely limited.

We were able to determine first of all speed,

a little bit of altitude, and heading of the aircraft.

There was no indication on there of engine power,

bank angle, uh, pitch angle.

NARRATOR: The flight data recorder tells investigators

that Arrow Air 12-85 began its takeoff roll

and increased to a speed of 167 knots.

Liftoff occurred 51 seconds from the start of the roll.

Two seconds later, the speed began to decrease.

(ALARMS BEEPING)

Come on. Airspeed!

Airspeed!

(ALARMS BEEPING)

McNAIR: Speed dropped off very quickly

and so we knew that the aircraft was below normal flying speed.

We got that much from the recorder.

It tells us almost nothing.

NARRATOR: But a closer look at the flight data does reveal

a potentially valuable clue.

The distance needed to get to takeoff speed

was longer than the pilots had planned for.

McNAIR: We looked at the acceleration distances

and it took a little bit longer than we... than expected.

4,300 feet...

...100 knots.

6,300 feet...

...144 knots.

They should be lifting off now.

NARRATOR: Investigators discover that liftoff occurred

some four seconds later,

or more than a thousand feet further than it should have.

8,000 feet...

167 knots.

An extra 1,000 feet to get off the ground.

Why'd it take them so long?

V1.

Rotate.

They used the full power,

and we would expect them to rotate a little earlier,

takeoff a little earlier.

NARRATOR: The longer than normal take-off supports the original theory

that ice on the wings played a role in the crash.

But investigators know that can't be the whole story.

McNAIR: Icing itself is not necessarily the only thing that happened.

Accidents don't just usually have one item.

They have several items.

NARRATOR: Determined to find out what else besides ice

on the wings contributed to the crash,

the CASB turns its attention to the plane's flaps.

For the DC-8, the optimal flap setting for takeoff is 18 degrees.

Looks like the flaps were extended.

McNAIR: With detailed work,

we could say with some reasonable certainty

where the flaps were,

which we believe were in the normal takeoff position.

NARRATOR: They wonder if ice, combined with malfunctioning engines,

caused the plane to stall.

The engines are sent to the CASB in Ottawa for a full inspection.

Each engine was recovered on site and immediately you could tell that,

there was rotational damage on all the engines.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

NARRATOR: Wood debris is found deep inside all four of the turbines.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)

A lot of tree debris means the engine was running when it hit the trees.

(ALARMS BEEPING)

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

NARRATOR: Evidence shows the DC-8 was properly configured for takeoff

and that there was nothing wrong with the engines.

So why was flight 12-85 slow to get off the ground?

Investigators focus in on the weight of the aircraft.

It's 101,000 pounds for fuel,

passengers and cargo unchanged.

They had predicted that, uh, each passenger

and baggage would weigh a 175 pounds.

NARRATOR: That average weight, 170 pounds,

matches the estimated weight for male passengers

set out in the Arrow Air guidelines.

As a pilot, having flown many military people around,

this didn't seem to ring true,

so we immediately looked at that aspect of the investigation.

Good morning. I have a rec form for some personnel files.

NARRATOR: Following his hunch, McNair soon makes a crucial discovery.

Regular commercial flight has an extra folks.

It has men, women, children,

so then the average doesn't work out as much.

NARRATOR: But this was no ordinary commercial flight.

All 256 passengers were adults,

almost all of them large men.

McNAIR: We actually looked at the, the medical records of the passengers

in terms of getting their actual weight during their last medical.

In my own case, I normally weigh 175.

But when I've got all my gear on or I'm bringing it onboard an aircraft...

I'm... I'm bringing onboard 200 pounds or more.

McNAIR: We estimated that the more realistic weight

would have been 220 pounds per passenger.

That includes the passenger, everything they were carrying,

and, uh, and the equipment they had.

NARRATOR: With the new estimates, he calculates the weight of the passengers

at more than 54,000 pounds.

That's 12,000 pounds heavier

than the weight recorded on the load sheet.

It's not even close.

NARRATOR: But this plane had been flying with that weight all night,

taking off from Cairo, then from Cologne without any problems.

The ice picked up in Gander may have made the difference.

McNAIR: You can take off at a heavier than normal weight

and if there are no other factors at play you can get away with it.

If you have something else like ice, you have a serious problem.

NARRATOR: Investigators now strongly suspect

that it was a combination of ice and extra weight

that prevented the DC-8 from staying in the air.

Okay. This has to be it.

Ice and weight.

McNAIR: We had a lot of scientific basis

to say that the aircraft should have flown but did not.

Why didn't it fly, and we had two powerful reasons.

One was weight. The other was even probably more powerful,

is a small amount of ice contamination on the aircraft.

NARRATOR: But they can only theorize.

No one in Gander saw ice on the wings.

It's impossible to know how much there was.

That's one problem.

McNair and Boag now must confront another.

Some of their own colleagues on the CASB are raising doubts about the findings.

NARRATOR: One of those with questions is board member

and aviation expert Les Filotas.

FILOTAS: Well, as soon as I started looking at the draft report,

I skimmed some of it and went to the part

that was my technical specialty, the flight data recorder part

and as soon as I looked at it,

I said there's something really wrong here.

NARRATOR: Filotas immediately wonders how the aircraft could lose thrust

and crash so quickly after takeoff.

FILOTAS: I did rough calculations,

and it just showed that to get that kind of deceleration

you'd have to lose not one, two, or three engines but all four,

and that was just a... a startling thing to see right away.

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN: Watch your altitude. Pull up.

CONNELLY: Come on. Airspeed!

Airspeed!

(ALARM BEEPING)

FILOTAS: They said the aircraft was,

I believe the exact phrase was, destroyed by a fuel-fed fire.

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

The early reports, everybody who was around there

mentioned the massive explosion and the mushroom cloud.

CECIL MACKIE: Seen this thing coming, come across the front of the truck,

and it was like a flame on the bottom, eh.

Two truckers on the highway

were almost under the flight path when the Arrow Air aircraft passed over,

and they both said they saw fire on the right hand side.

NARRATOR: US Army officials deny, there was any un-reported

or classified cargo onboard Arrow Air 12-85.

But Filotas has reason to doubt that claim.

FILOTAS: When the troops' equipment was loaded onboard,

there were some of these big boxes.

What could have been on there and we couldn't get any answer.

There was no cargo manifest

and, uh, it was another contentious question

that was never settled.

WARK: Not much attention clearly was paid to security procedures

and, you know, this was a different time admittedly

but still I think the lack of security at Cairo

at the airport as the soldiers came onboard

the Arrow Air flight for their return journey,

Uh, I think anybody would have to regard it as shocking,

even for their time, and it's the kind of thing

that would never be allowed to happen today.

NARRATOR: Filotas joins those speculating that Arrow Air flight 12-85

was the victim of a terrorist plot.

WARK: Was it Hezbollah?

Did it have any kind of European connections?

And the big question, always in the back of American governmental

and security authorities' minds is...

is there a, is there a Cold War dimension to this?

Are the Soviets involved?

JUDGE (OFF SCREEN): The testimony you're about to give

will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?

I do.

NARRATOR: Some now wonder if Arrow Air 12-85 was at the center

of the biggest global scandal of the time,

the US plot to illicitly provide Iran with arms

in exchange for American hostages.

WARK: Arrow Air was indeed one of,

one of the airlines that, that assisted a covert operation

that was being mounted at the time out of the Reagan White House

by a famous individual by the name of Colonel Ollie North.

And the Iran Contra business was very tangled

and a very peculiar covert operation.

It was not a thin tiny layer of ice on the wings.

NARRATOR: Filotas points to photographic evidence to prove his case.

(CAMER SHUTTER CLICKS)

FILOTAS: My colleague made a trip out to Gander

and went to the RCMP photo lab there

where they had literally thousands that they took on the crash site.

Many photos that seemed to indicate

that, um, there was some kind of an explosion onboard.

It's just like if you took a piece of aluminum foil

and poked your finger in it.

It would curl out from the inside to the outside

and would be obvious from which side you put your finger through.

NARRATOR: Filotas becomes even more suspicious

when he learns that an independent investigator hired by Arrow Air

had explored the possibility of an onboard explosion.

FILOTAS: He carefully looked at everything and found that on the number three engine,

that's the inboard engine on the right hand side,

some of the inlet guide veins, three of them, consecutive ones,

had sort of a dent in the leading edge.

And one of them had some red paint on it.

NARRATOR: That investigator concluded that there could have been

a mid-air explosion...

(EXPLODED)

...and that the damage and the paint markings

inside the engine could have been caused

by debris exploding outward from the main fuselage.

Another key piece of information for Filotas

comes from the post-mortem examination of some of the 256 victims.

Autopsies indicate that there were extremely high levels

of carbon monoxide in their blood.

FILOTAS: So if they have combustion products in their lungs,

natural inference is that they must have breathed in

some combustion products before the crash.

NARRATOR: From all this evidence, Filotas and his colleagues

paint their own picture of the crash.

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

(RATTLING)

What the hell was that?

(ALARM BEEPING)

Smoke. Smoke in the cockpit. Smoke!

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

NARRATOR: But the lead investigators, McNair and Boag,

maintain that the sabotage theories are nothing more

than a sensationalist distraction.

McNAIR: We had no indication that terrorism was a player

but we did have a lot of indication

that there was an aircraft performance problem

and there were icing problems.

NARRATOR: McNair and Boag decide the only way to end all the speculation

is to scientifically prove their theory that ice combined with extra weight

is what brought down flight 12-85.

Okay, you want to give her the once-over?

NARRATOR: Before the mid-1980s,

little was known about the aerodynamic impact

of very thin ice accumulation.

The flight engineer who inspected the aircraft

was likely only looking for large buildups of ice

that would make the plane significantly heavier,

not thin coatings on top of the wings.

As part of the investigation,

we did a lot of research on the effects of ice on aircraft.

NARRATOR: Aerodynamic tests carried out in a wind tunnel

reveal that even a small amount of ice contamination

can significantly reduce wing lift.

Just a small amount, say the size of some sandpaper,

if that's the type of surface you have, it can seriously degrade a large aircraft.

That was a surprise to me.

NARRATOR: The team carries out further tests in a flight simulator.

We basically had to reprogram the simulator

to degrade the performance to simulate ice.

V1.

Rotate.

NARRATOR: Every attempt to fly the simulator

with the exact same parameters as flight 12-85

ends the same way...

...with a stall and a crash.

Okay. Let's run it again with 10,000 less pounds.

From the simulator trials, we realized with icing onboard,

which degraded the lift characteristics of the aircraft,

it was difficult to fly a normal profile

and... and you could easily lose control of the aircraft.

Ah, she's flying like a pig.

Positive rate?

Negative.

Full power.

NARRATOR: The pilots would have been able to see

that their plane wasn't climbing fast enough.

CAPTAIN GRIFFIN: Watch your altitude. Pull up.

Come on. Airspeed!

Airspeed!

Watch the trees!

(ALARMS BEEPING)

NARRATOR: First Officer Connelly pulled the nose back,

trying to get the plane in the air.

What he didn't realize is that he was sealing their fate.

The DC-8 was already on the verge of a stall.

Pulling the nose up only made things worse.

The aircraft's weight had been underestimated,

its lift compromised by ice on the wings.

A fatal combination.

(EXPLODED)

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

If you take one of the factors out,

if you take the ice out and have the same weight,

maybe you don't have the accident, if you take out the heavy weight

and still have the icing, maybe you won't have the accident.

But if you have them combined together, you have the accident.

NARRATOR: As for the suspicious paint markings found inside the engine,

McNair determines they came from a front-end loader

used to clear debris at the crash site.

As well, the extreme intensity of the fire

could have caused the abnormally high level

of carbon monoxide in the victims' blood.

Even the truckers' accounts of pre-impact flames can be explained.

If you have an airplane flying at high angle of attack

where it's in a stalled regime, typically, or often, you will have

flame coming from the engine because of compressor stall.

NARRATOR: As for the terrorists' capability

to pull off such a complex, brazen attack, there is significant doubt.

WARK: Could they have done it in terms of intent? Yes.

In terms of actually pulling that operation off in the circumstances?

You know, that seems to be low probability

but just at the edges of the margins of the possible.

McNAIR: There was a lot of controversy

uh, which we just basically had to deal with

in terms of keeping on with our job

because, uh, investigation is not an emotional issue,

it's a scientific issue.

So we basically had to stick with science.

We didn't see any evidence of any other kind of explosion.

We only saw the evidence of an explosion

caused by impact and the aircraft breaking up.

NARRATOR: McNair believes his conclusion carries an urgent warning

for the entire airline industry.

A lot of people have a hard time believing

that a little tiny bit of ice on, on a large wing

will have a big effect, but it does.

NARRATOR: After nearly three years of painstaking research and investigation,

the Canadian Aviation Safety Board is ready to release its report.

(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)

But what is supposed to provide answers and prevent similar accidents

instead ignites a storm of controversy.

The ice theory is flat out wrong.

NARRATOR: CASB investigators believe they have a convincing report

that explains the complex cause of the crash of Flight 12-85.

I was hoping that, as all investigators do,

when the final report came out

that in fact the safety message would be out there and would be accepted.

NARRATOR: But four of the nine members of the board

disagree with the report's conclusion.

This investigation appears to involve a cover-up.

It's impossible that ice would have been a factor.

Crash investigators are, you know, they're always under pressure

to come up with an answer sooner than they would like

and sometimes depending on the intensity of that pressure

can perhaps create crash investigations which are less than, than satisfactory.

NARRATOR: The dissenters take the unprecedented step

of releasing their own minority report,

citing an onboard explosion as the cause.

We had extremely difficult time in putting out our dissenting report.

We were given a very restricted time,

and then there was an attempt to suppress it.

I was asked the question outright, well, what do you want to do?

You want to try to save your job or you want to get the truth about this accident?

My answer was, well, I want to save my job by getting at the truth.

McNAIR: It was quite unusual to have a dissenting report

written with photographs.

I don't see merit in it.

I totally don't understand why it was issued in the first place.

Why would you come up with this?

What's the scientific basis for it? There is no science.

McNAIR: Okay, look. Paint transfer means nothing.

The crew blood samples means nothing.

The pedaling is meaningless.

Therefore you have no evidence of terrorism. This proves nothing.

WARK: In this particular case of course what we had was an extraordinary outcome,

uh, where you have a majority and a minority report

which are deeply divergent,

uh, and which raise very different kinds of pictures

about what the outcome of this crash would be.

HERRLING: I think it's very tough for families

and friends not to have final closure on something.

There was really no definitive answer...

to what caused that crash.

If I was a family member, I'd have questions too.

NARRATOR: But on March the 10th, 1989, while the controversy continues to swirl,

there's tragic evidence that McNair and Boag's message

has not been heard.

In Dryden, Ontario, in wintry conditions...

the crew of a Fokker F-28 elects not to de-ice.

Just seconds after takeoff...

the plane cannot achieve sufficient lift to stay airborne.

The accident was almost identical to Arrow Air 12-85.

(SCREAMING)

McNAIR: The airplane hit the tree canopy intact

and after that it exploded because of the fact it hit the ground

with a lot of fuel on board.

NARRATOR: The crash kills 24 of the 69 people onboard.

It was pretty clear from Dryden

that icing or snow may have been a factor in this as well.

NARRATOR: If only the investigators' warning had been heard,

the tragedy in Dryden may never have happened.

The fact that there was a lot of controversy around this investigation

was very unfortunate

because basically it took away from the safety message.

Aircraft like the DC-8 are very vulnerable to icing contamination.

That message was lost because of the, of the controversy and the bomb theory.

NARRATOR: But those who held firm to the bomb theory

stand by their actions.

It does not advance safety to get the wrong cause of an accident.

The real safety message is that you have to get at the truth

and the truth, truth and facts of this accident

were never finely established.

NARRATOR: The controversy over this investigation spelled the end

of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board.

It was scrapped and later replaced with a new, better-regulated agency.

McNAIR: We learned a lesson. It cost a lot of people their lives

and that lesson didn't get passed on to other people,

and other people lost their lives. That's the sad part for me.

(SLOW MUSIC PLAYS)

HERRLING: I know in my own case if I really didn't know all the answers

and I had lost someone in that, that terrible crash,

uh, I wouldn't be satisfied.

It's tough when you don't know and you've lost someone

that's near and dear to you.

I think we all want to know.

(SLOW MUSIC PLAYING)