Original subtitles

(narrator): A horror story unfolds at 4,000 feet.

- There were actual flames coming up

through the cockpit floor. (grunts)

We were starting to be burned.

- Fire is consuming Pilgrim Airlines Flight 458.

- This airplane was a death trap.

- It was time to fight for your life.

- The pilots have just seconds

to get their plane on the ground.

- All I could see were trees.

- Hold on!

- It wasn't going to be a smooth landing.

(crashing)

- 11 of the 12 people on board make it out alive.

But the fire destroys any evidence of its origin.

- The whole plane's incinerated.

- A surviving pilot gives NTSB investigators

the break they need.

- The first time I hit the switch,

I saw the smoke

coming from the base of the control column.

- That was a very, very large statement

to an investigator.

(theme music)

(computer): Mayday, Mayday.

(alarm blaring) Pull up!

(indistinct radio chatter)

(soft music)

(narrator): There are 10 passengers

on board Pilgrim Airlines Flight 458.

(pilot): Folks,

we'll be getting airborne shortly,

so please make sure

your seatbelts are fastened at this time.

All set.

- Nicely done.

(narrator): Just after three in the afternoon,

the Twin Otter starts down the runway.

- 60 knots.

- 60 knots.

- Flight 458 lifts off from Groton, Connecticut.

The flight is a short hop to Boston,

just 87 miles to the north.

- Positive rate.

- Flaps up.

- Flaps up.

- 36-year-old Thomas Prinster is the captain flying today.

He's been with the airline for three years.

- Tom was loved by all.

He would show us how to fly that airplane,

what you don't wanna do, what you do wanna do.

Um, he was just a real pleasure to fly with.

- Temperatures and pressure is in the green.

Looking good.

Pilgrim 458 now passing through 1,000 feet.

(radio): Pilgrim 458, roger that,

passing 1,000.

(narrator): 27-year-old First Officer Lyle Hogg

has only been with the airline for a few months.

- Before I went to Pilgrim Airlines,

I had about 1,500 hours.

Um, in my time at Pilgrim prior to this,

I'd flown approximately 400 hours.

- The pilots are flying a De Havilland Dash 6,

Twin Otter, a turboprop airplane

that's popular with regional airlines.

- It was a twin-engine turboprop

used on local flights for the most part.

A very popular airplane in its day.

It helped lead the regional airline revolution

that was going on at the time,

and it was used all over the world.

- Pilgrim 458, climb 4,000.

Report Norwich V-O-R.

- The flight to Boston lasts only 40 minutes.

There's no flight attendant on board.

One of the passengers on today's flight

is US Air flight engineer Harry Polychron.

He's flying to Boston for the start of his shift.

- My flight out of Boston the next day

was early in the morning,

so my plan was to arrive on Sunday night,

get a hotel room,

so I would be all set and ready to go.

- Paul Hainsworth is a business consultant

who is catching a connecting flight in Boston.

- Once we started the takeoff

and started going up into the air,

I literally just tipped my head over,

closed my eyes and started dozing.

I was tired.

- The plane reaches its cruising altitude

of 4,000 feet.

- The weather was a typical February day

in New England.

There was clouds at about 3,000 feet,

with some freezing drizzle, freezing rain.

(radio): Pilgrim 458, how's the ride?

- Smooth right now.

(narrator): With the outside temperature

nearing minus 3 degrees Celsius,

the precipitation is freezing

and creating a layer of ice on the windshield.

- We're picking up some ice.

- On the windshield,

it's similar to frost on a windshield of a car,

sort of rough looking and difficult to see through.

- How do the wings look?

- No ice. - Alright,

let's see if we'll be able to clear this windshield.

- You got it.

- The pilots want to make sure

they'll be able to de-ice their windshield

when it's time to land.

- We would test the windshield de-icing

just to make sure it was working.

We wouldn't continually operate the pump

all the way to your destination,

so you wouldn't use up too much of the alcohol.

You'd save it for when you needed it,

which would be on approach and landing at the next airport.

(ominous music)

- Not getting anything on my side.

- I noticed very little fluid on my side of the windshield

when I first activated the switch.

- Anything on your side?

- Some. Not a whole lot.

- The second time,

I held the switch in the on position

for a little bit longer

so we could get a good indication

of the de-icing fluid affecting the windshield.

- Still nothing.

- Something's not right. I'm gonna stop trying.

- Quite soon after that,

there was an odor in the cockpit.

It was alcohol-like.

It wasn't an emergency at that time, yet.

But we were beginning our thought process as far as,

"Okay, what are we gonna do to deal with this issue?"

(sniffles) - I smell smoke.

- Yup.

- Around the same time, we also realized

there was an acrid type smell.

The first thought that I had was,

Tom had been a smoker

and the ashtray in the cockpit was in the lower center yoke.

We looked towards the floor where the ashtray was,

and it was not smoke coming from the ashtray.

- In the cabin,

Harry Polychron senses something's not right.

- I had my head buried in the paperwork

and then, I got that whiff of alcohol.

(sniffles)

- As a flight engineer,

Polychron knows the smell

could indicate something serious.

- Alcohol was not something

you normally smell on an airplane flight.

- It's coming from down there.

- The pilots now see wisps of smoke

entering the cockpit.

(coughing)

- We did see, initially,

some very light white-type smoke.

Before we could even talk about that

or react to that,

the smoke started to become thick,

very quickly.

- Both pilots realize something is on fire

and it's getting worse.

- Fires are terrible things to have on an aircraft,

you can't just pull off

to the side of the road with a fire.

You have to do something immediately.

- Quonset, Pilgrim 458.

We need a direct to Providence, this is an emergency.

(coughing)

- The captain wants to land at the nearest airport,

Providence, Rhode Island, just 12 miles to the right.

- A turn to Providence was kind of a no-brainer,

'cause we knew exactly where we were

and knew exactly where Providence was.

- Pilgrim 458, was that you calling?

- Directly to Providence, please.

This is an emergency. There is a fire on board.

- Pilgrim 458, roger.

Understand.

Uh...

...turn right, heading of one five zero

for vectors to Providence.

- Okay, let's get on the ground.

(coughing) - Right turn.

One five zero.

I'll look for the runway.

(narrator): With a fire burning somewhere inside the airplane,

the pilots have very little time to get back on the ground.

- I'm pushing. I'm pushing.

- But the smoke is making it

difficult to see inside the cockpit.

The clouds and ice-covered windshield

make it nearly impossible to see outside.

- We gotta get under these damned clouds!

- We needed to get on the ground as fast as we could.

And so the turn was quite abrupt

and the descent was quite steep.

- Pilgrim 458, how many people on board?

- Controllers begin to prepare

for an emergency landing in Providence.

- We've got 10 people on board.

- Lyle responded that there were 10.

He was thinking of the passengers.

He didn't include Tom and himself.

- It's getting worse.

(coughing)

- Where the hell is it coming from?

- It was blinding. It was choking.

They couldn't see each other.

They couldn't see out the windscreen.

They couldn't see their instruments.

They were in the clouds.

(passengers coughing)

- The smoke from the cockpit makes its way through the cabin.

(coughing)

- As soon as the black smoke started in the cabin,

it became more and more difficult

to see and breathe.

- I immediately grabbed the bottom of my sweater,

pulled it up, spat into it,

and put it over my nose and mouth

and started to use that, you know, as a filter.

- The pilots are also struggling to breathe.

Since the Twin Otter is not pressurized,

they're able to open their windows

to get fresh air.

- Because I was having a hard time

seeing Tom at that point,

I opened the window on my side of the aircraft.

(dramatic music)

- But windows in the cabin don't open

and the passengers are suffocating.

- "How am I gonna get air?"

It was time to fight for your life.

(coughing)

(grunts with effort)

The passengers and crew:

of Pilgrim Airlines Flight 458

are in the fight of their lives.

- I did have that tennis racket.

Boom, bash out a window.

(wind howling)

(passengers coughing)

It drew the smoke out, and then, I proceeded forward.

I did it a couple more times to other windows

on the right side of the airplane.

(banging) (grunts in effort)

(coughing)

- I was absolutely in awe as to what he was doing.

(passengers coughing)

- We'll all be fine!

The smoke is starting to clear!

- And I thought, "My God,

this is just an amazing piece of good news,

not only for me,

but for everybody else on the plane."

(wind howling)

- In addition to the thick smoke,

the pilots are now confronted by fire

coming up through the floor.

- Ah!

- I thought, "Let me try to get to the fire extinguisher."

It was behind my seat. It was close to the floor.

(screams)

- But with intense heat coming through the floor,

Hogg can't grab it. (groans in pain)

- Ah!

- That's when we were starting to be burned.

The initial reaction is not feeling the pain.

The initial reaction is, you know,

"We've got to get this airplane on the ground quickly."

- Still 11 miles from Providence and unable to see,

the pilots know they don't have enough time

to get their burning airplane to the airport.

- We were in an emergency descent

pointing towards Providence,

but not knowing if we could get there.

(passengers coughing)

- Off duty flight engineer Harry Polychron

makes his way to the cockpit to let the pilots know

about the situation in the cabin.

- It was hard to stand.

It pitched up, pitched down,

pitched left, pitched right,

it was a wild ride

and you got thrown around up there.

When I poked my head into the cockpit,

it was engulfed in smoke.

(coughing)

(wind howling)

They couldn't see the instruments

and they couldn't see outside. So how they managed

to keep that plane right side up amazes me.

I just wanted to let them know that the passengers were okay

and just, "Keep it up, guys, you're doing a great job."

I said...

- You guys keep flying.

We have everything under control in the back.

- My intentions were just to keep those guys inspired

to keep doing what they were doing,

which was heroic.

- The flames are spreading from the cockpit into the cabin.

The pilots are running out of time

to save their plane.

(banging)

(tense music)

- It was an extraordinarily painful, frightening,

deadly set of circumstances getting worse every second.

(coughing)

- The pilots can't see each other,

and with the windows open can't hear each other either.

- I needed to make sure that Tom was, in fact,

still flying the aircraft.

And that's when I rested my hand on the yoke

to follow along with his movements.

- Captain Prinster maintains a rapid descent.

But he has no idea where he's going to land.

- I initially did not see an adequate landing site.

We were still in the clouds.

(tense music)

- The passengers start to prepare for the inevitable.

- I sat up very straight in the chair,

and took the seat belt, and ensured

that it was going across my hip bones,

and not my stomach,

and tightened it as tight as I possibly could.

- 15,000 feet from the ground,

the heat from the fire has grown so intense

that the pilots' headsets are beginning to melt.

(coughing)

(wind howling)

(Hogg): I needed to get that rubber headset off.

- These circumstances were absolutely extreme.

At that point, it was very clear to the pilots

that this airplane was a death trap.

- The flight should be nearing the airport

in Providence.

- Pilgrim 458, you can proceed direct to Providence V-O-R.

- Without headsets,

the pilots are no longer able to communicate with the ground.

- One of the pilots was gripping the yoke so hard,

his thumb was on top of a button that activates the microphone.

And the result of that

was the air traffic controllers heard this roar.

(wind howling) - Pilgrim 458...

Pilgrim 458, do you copy? I'm not reading you.

- 1,000 feet above the ground,

the Twin Otter breaks through the clouds.

(wind howling)

- Out of my window, all I could see were trees.

Tom was making a turn.

I couldn't see him, but I could feel him

making a turn to the left.

(tense music)

- The pilots need to land

before the fire reaches the highly flammable fuel

located in the belly of the aircraft,

directly below the passengers.

(dramatic music)

(sniffles)

- I was wondering, at this point,

were we gonna be able to get the plane on the ground?

Or was it gonna explode in midair?

- Get ready!

(frantic music)

- Oh, God!

Ah!

- Looking out the window, I no longer saw all trees,

I saw the shores of this frozen reservoir

and my immediate thought was, "Hey, we're gonna make it."

- The pilots have spotted the Scituate Reservoir

near Providence Rhode Island,

a frozen body of water that covers five square miles.

- It was a wide open, flat area.

There were no trees, there was no nothing.

There was just ice. It was a gift.

- The pilots aim their burning plane

towards the reservoir.

- The next thing was just to get that thing on the ground

as fast as we could

and get out of the aircraft.

It never crossed our minds,

was the ice gonna hold the airplane or not?

(dramatic music)

(narrator): In the cabin of Pilgrim Airlines Flight 458,

passengers can see

they're heading for an emergency landing.

- I looked out the window

and I saw impact was imminent.

I wanted to go strap in but the seat was on fire,

so I braced myself against the bulkhead.

- Flight 458

is moments from slamming onto a frozen lake.

(frantic music) - Hold on!

- It was a matter of get this airplane on the ground

as absolutely as fast as we could.

Um, you know, it wasn't going to be a smooth landing.

- Brace for impact!

- All of a sudden, there's the most enormous bang.

(crashing)

(grunting)

(passengers screaming)

(crashing)

- Paul Hainsworth and Harry Polychron

are knocked unconscious.

The plane breaks up

as it skids across the ice for 500 feet.

(fire crackling)

- When I woke up, the plane had stopped,

and everything was very quiet.

(grunts in pain)

- The pilots have managed to maneuver

their burning airplane onto the ice-covered lake.

Now, they must make sure everyone gets off the airplane

before it's completely consumed by fire.

- Here we are

in this white, frozen tundra, if you will.

And, 'What do we do now?"

(somber music)

- I just released my seatbelt

and jumped up and hit the plane door

and attempted to open it, which I was unable to do,

because the fuselage had compressed.

I glanced

and I saw a split in the fuselage

right behind the doorway.

I made the decision

that I was gonna kick that area of the fuselage

and make a hole in it, so that we can escape.

- This way.

There's a hole back here. You can get out this way.

- Hainsworth knows passengers must get out quickly.

- I still had the concern

that the plane could imminently explode.

I jumped out first,

and I then started to assist other people.

- At the front of the plane,

Harry Polychron is badly injured.

(grunts in pain)

- I was filled with adrenaline and shock.

I had dislocated my shoulder. I had injured my knee.

I had a burned leg.

My very first instinct

was to get out of that airplane right now.

And I started to proceed to the back of the airplane.

I heard a young woman say, "Somebody please help me."

- Come on! This way to the back.

We can get out here. Come on.

Are you okay? Come on. Ah!

- I grabbed the young lady,

I pulled her to the back of the airplane

and as far as I knew, I was the last one out.

(groaning in pain)

- Can you make it?

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think I can make it.

- There was no checklist to be read

and no procedures to follow at that point.

- Let's get out of here. (Prinster): Yeah.

(groaning)

- Both pilots and 9 of the 10 passengers

make it off the plane and head for the shore.

Minutes later the Twin Otter is completely consumed by fire.

- I think it's one in a hundred million

that I'm still here.

And I'm very grateful to the pilot,

the co-pilot, and also the other pilot,

that was a passenger on the plane,

for their actions that were,

quite frankly, beyond remarkable.

- One passenger is dead,

the result of severe smoke inhalation.

All of the surviving passengers

are taken to hospital with serious injuries.

Both pilots are badly burned.

- Lyle was burned over 25 % of his body.

And the captain was burned over 7/10 of his body,

much of it third degree.

- Volunteers immediately begin removing

vital pieces of wreckage from the lake

so they can be studied more closely by investigators.

- Tonight, we have a clean-up operation.

We have a portable electric generator

out there with lights.

We're going to mop up the fuel oil

and wait until the FAA comes.

- It's obvious that the plane was destroyed by fire.

But it's not obvious what caused it.

- Knowing that there's a fire on board

isn't just enough.

You need to understand exactly what happened,

how it happened, when it happened,

and how the crew were able

to fly the airplane with a fire on board.

- Both pilots are too injured to provide a statement,

so investigators turn to the controllers

for more insight. - What did they tell you?

- Just that they had a fire on board

and needed to make an emergency landing.

- And when did they call that in?

- The call came in at 3:29,

so less than 20 minutes after take-off.

- What would cause an in-flight fire?

You're looking for a flammable source,

you're looking for an ignition source.

- Okay.

It's gonna be hard to find anything useful in any of this.

- Investigators examine Flight 458's cockpit gauges,

hoping to find clues about the cause of the fire.

- After a post-crash fire,

those instruments are often so badly damaged

that they take extensive work to get more.

And sometimes we get nothing from the instruments

because we just can't make any sense out of what they say.

- Wait a minute...

- The plane's clock is still legible,

stopped by the impact of the crash.

- 3:44.

Whatever happened, it happened fast.

- Less than 5 minutes

after the pilots report the emergency,

they slam onto the frozen reservoir.

(crashing)

This tells investigators

that the situation escalated rapidly.

(mysterious music)

- Engine fire?

(narrator): Pilgrim Air Flight 458

wasn't equipped with a Cockpit Voice Recorder

or Flight Data Recorder.

Investigators will need to work through

the most likely sources of an on-board fire.

- It makes investigation a little more difficult,

and takes a little longer to get it done.

It doesn't keep us from doing an investigation,

but it certainly adds to the amount of work

required to complete an investigation.

- They study what remains of the engines

to determine if they played a role in this accident.

- Both engines were running at the moment of impact.

- The best indication

that engines are running at impact

are you look for damage to the engine,

you look for twisting and bending the propellers,

look for direction of the bending

and the amount of bending of the propellers.

There were clear indications

that both engines were developing power

at the time of impact.

- The fact that the engines were running on impact

tells investigators

they were not the source of the fire.

- They all report the same thing:

smoke.

- The pilots are still too injured to talk,

but interviews with the passengers

provide the team with an important clue:

thick smoke from the cockpit poured into the cabin

(passengers coughing)

- If passengers say they saw smoke

any time during the flight,

it would be a focus of the investigation

because we would be interested

in the source of the smoke, the timing of the smoke.

- They study the plane's badly burned wreckage

for any evidence that could tell them exactly

where the fire began.

- Well, the fire had to start somewhere.

- We look for concentrations of heat,

which would give us an indication

where a fire began.

- The whole plane's incinerated.

- Yeah, but the cockpit floor here

suffered the most fire damage.

I'd guess that the fire started somewhere under the cockpit.

- The plane burned up

after it touched down on the ice.

It's impossible to pinpoint the precise origin of the fire.

- We could tell generally the area where it started,

but we needed to do more work to look at

potential flammable sources.

(mysterious music)

- Days after the accident,

the pilots are ready to make their statements.

- Pilots are most likely

the most experienced people on the airplane,

and they can tell you the events that occurred around them

at the time that this was going on.

All their sights, sounds and feelings

can make a difference in the investigation.

- Thanks for agreeing to do this.

Maybe you just wanna talk me through what you can remember.

- Towards the end of that week,

they asked if I would speak to the NTSB

and I agreed.

- We tried to de-ice the windshield

but weren't getting any fluid.

Almost immediately, I smelt alcohol,

and then, smoke.

And then, I saw the smoke.

Thin and white at first. (coughing)

It was coming from the base of the control column.

It didn't take long

before that smoke turned thick and black.

(coughing)

Soon, we couldn't breathe.

And we were starting to burn.

(soft music)

- Uh, how long between the de-icing

and the first signs of smoke?

(scoffs)

- It all happened real fast.

I don't know, maybe a minute?

Maybe less?

- And that's when you called in the emergency?

- Yeah,

and started to descend immediately after that.

- He hit the switch

to apply the de-icing fluid to his windshield

to clear some icing that he saw,

and then, very shortly thereafter,

he had what he described as

"white smoke with an alcohol smell."

That was a very, very large statement

to an investigator looking for a fire.

- Okay.

It all starts right here,

with the de-icing.

- The interview with the First Officer

provides the team with a focus for their investigation:

the airplane's de-icing system.

- We'd start looking in the wreckage

for evidence for that de-icing system,

and then begin

a parallel investigation with maintenance

to see if there was any kind of history of problems

with that system.

- The reservoir holds

one-and-a-half gallons of de-icing fluid.

A switch on the overhead console activates the 28-volt pump.

Flexible plastic tubing connects the pump

to the spray nozzles.

- It's a pretty basic system.

- The use of chemical de-icing in airplanes

had been used since the 20'.

So it was not an unknown or novel system

that they were using.

- Investigators search

for the surviving components of the de-icing system.

- If they had found the pump and the attachments,

it clearly would have shown to them

where the problem was.

- That's all that's left.

No sign of the pump.

The lines are all gone, melted.

- The only part of the de-icing system

that survived the fire

is a melted portion of the plastic reservoir.

- This tells us nothing.

(mysterious music)

- Focusing on the smell of alcohol

reported by the crew,

investigators study a sample of the de-icing fluid

used by Pilgrim Airlines

to determine just how flammable it is.

(sighs) - 87% isopropyl.

That's pretty flammable stuff.

- They are now fairly certain

that the de-icing fluid on Flight 458 ignited,

leading to a raging fire.

But they still don't know how.

- We really have not had any experience

with this type of system

causing a fire on board an airplane.

(mysterious music)

- They go over the First Officer's statement

for clues about how the fire started.

- He did say the system didn't work very well

when they tried to de-ice.

- The first time I hit the switch,

I got a tiny bit of fluid on my side.

So I tried a second time and got nothing.

- So what did you do?

- That's when I got the strong smell of alcohol,

so I stopped trying.

A few seconds later, we smelled the smoke.

- Investigators now need to figure out

what part of the de-icing system

could have led to the fire that brought down Flight 458.

(narrator): Investigators review

maintenance records of the destroyed airplane

for any previous issues

with the plane's windshield de-icing system.

- It had a history of leaking.

- Reports show that the plastic tubing

had a history of cracking and separating from the pump.

Pilgrim's mechanics fixed the problem

by trimming the cracked tubing

and re-attaching it to the pump with clamps.

- As the alcohol comes into contact

with this tubing from the inside,

it's changing the properties of the tubing

and it's causing it to harden and swell,

so at the connection points,

it's no longer maintaining a good contact.

- They dig further into the plane's history

to find anything that could explain

how the de-icing system led to an on-board fire.

- Yeah. Listen to this. A few months ago,

they discovered a leak on this plane.

Maintenance checked it out,

discovered the tubing was too short to reach the pump.

- They had trimmed

and reconnected the tubing so often,

that it didn't fit anymore.

- Every time mechanics trimmed the cracked tubing,

they made it progressively shorter,

until it couldn't reach the pump.

- Over time, you wouldn't have

enough hose left to attach it

and you would have to replace that piece of tubing.

- Hello.

It looks like the same thing happened on this plane

just three days before the accident.

A pretty major leak by the sounds of it.

- Pilots saw a leak during a stop in New Haven.

- They tried to re-attach the hose coming from the pump,

but they couldn't

because the tubing was too short.

They wrote it up

and a mechanic worked on it later that day.

- The mechanic repaired the damaged tubing,

reconnected and secured it,

then refilled the reservoir.

- The mechanic says he clamped the tubing to the pump,

and then signed off on the discrepancy

as "repaired".

Three days later, the plane goes up in flame

s as the pilots try to de-ice.

- Investigators suspect

the tubes carrying fluid to and from the pump

weren't properly secured

and detached from the pump after the repair.

- There's a good chance that that line wasn't

as long as it should have been

and probably was pulling on the pump,

and because of how it was attached,

it came off.

- Still nothing.

- The team believes a faulty repair

is the reason the de-icing system

malfunctioned on Flight 458.

But that still doesn't explain the fire.

- The NTSB,

in an effort to determine just what effect

that system could have had on a fire,

either starting it or contributing to it,

they took one of these reservoirs

and a pump into the laboratory

and hooked it up to a power supply

to see what it would do.

- Investigators need to determine

how much of the highly flammable fluid

would have pooled below the cockpit

if the tube did detach as they suspect.

- Okay, let's see what we get.

(mysterious music)

Even without activating the system,

it leaks when the tube isn't attached.

- They measure the amount of fluid

that leaks from the pump.

- The testing disclosed

that the pump would leak fluid

to the rate of about 90 milliliters a minute.

And over time,

that could actually drain the entire tank

of a gallon-and-a-half of fluid.

- The test shows

that if the tube from the pump had detached,

a large pool of flammable liquid

would have accumulated below the cockpit

even before the pilots tried to de-ice the windshield.

- Let's see what happens when the system is activated.

(gasps)

Seven feet.

(sighs) - Holy smokes that goes far.

- When Hogg tries to activate the windshield de-icing system,

the pump would have sprayed fluid

across a distance of seven feet

in the compartment below the cockpit.

- The consequences of that,

given what is down in that area,

are quite severe.

- The de-ice pump gets pretty hot

when it's operating.

The air from the bleed air duct is 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

The discharge from the silencer

sends heated air into the cockpit.

And the electric motor that drives the flaps

could also ignite the fluid.

- Investigators pinpoint several components

that could have ignited the spray

of highly flammable liquid.

- Investigators were never able to fully determine

what ignited the fluid

because there was so much down there.

It could have been the heat from the hydraulic pump.

It could have been the motor for the hydraulic pump.

It could have been any one of the components

on the airplane,

on the back of the instrument panel.

- Directly to Providence, please.

This is an emergency. There is a fire on board.

- Once the liquid ignites, it doesn't take long for fire

to spread throughout the airplane.

- Older aircraft are

less fire-resistant than newer aircraft

and if you have alcohol from a de-icing system

spreading through the airplane,

it would have been easier for it to have burnt

than probably the newer materials.

- They've been flying around in a time bomb all these years,

and no one thought this was a problem?

- I think it's surprising,

any time you find, particularly an aircraft

that's been in service for so long

with such a good history,

find something new

that you learn in an investigation.

- Investigators now consider one final question.

- How the hell did they even manage

to get this plane on the ground?

(somber music)

arrators

study the actions of the pilots of Pilgrim 458

as they responded to the emergency

unfolding on board.

(mysterious music)

- The first sign of black smoke, they call in the emergency.

Then immediately change course

for an emergency landing at Providence.

- He pushed the yoke forward

to make the airplane descend very quickly.

(coughs)

They were still in the clouds.

And the airplane was coming down rapidly.

(radio): Turn right,

heading of one five zero for vectors to Providence.

- Let's get on the ground.

(narrator): The pilots quickly began

a rapid descent from 4,000 feet,

while making a right turn towards Providence.

(coughing)

- All their focus was on getting the airplane down.

- At this point,

the cockpit is full of thick, black smoke and fire.

So what do these guys do?

They stick their heads out the window

and try and get below the clouds.

- In spite of being unable to see or breathe

and badly burned by fire,

the pilots fight to get the plane below the clouds.

- They were getting some severe burns

on their bodies. They never left their seats,

and the fact that they were doing everything they could

to control this airplane

and getting it down to land on that frozen lakebed

was amazing.

- Despite the pain and the terror,

these pilots stayed at their posts,

they kept flying the airplane.

They were determined to get it down safely

despite the agony they were confronting.

(dramatic music)

- They report breaking through the clouds

at 1,000 feet.

Quick left turn.

They're on the ground in seconds.

- The cardinal rule is, you know with a fire

is get the airplane on the ground

as fast as you can, and we did that.

It wasn't pretty, but we did that.

We got it on the ground and most everybody survived.

(crashing)

(dramatic music)

- Six minutes

to get below the clouds, find a place to land

and put it on the ground

in a burning airplane.

- The investigators commend both pilots

for their "prompt and heroic actions"

in response to the emergency.

- Here's an example of a crew, you know,

at the height of their skills and professionalism

saving the lives of themselves and the people aboard.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Let's get out of here. - Yeah.

- Lesser men would have given up.

They didn't give up.

They fought right to the end and, uh...

and that's why I'm here today.

(passengers coughing)

- Passengers also praise the actions

of off-duty flight engineer Harry Polychron

for helping to save lives.

- Without the actions of the passenger

sitting in front of me with a tennis racket

that broke out those windows,

I absolutely believe

other people would have died in that crash.

(coughing)

- The NTSB determines

that the fire on board Flight 458

was the result of the poor design

of the windshield de-icing system.

- I didn't know how flammable isopropyl alcohol was.

I think it took the industry by surprise

that it was so flammable and could result

in such a devastating fire so quickly.

- Investigators recommend

that the isopropyl alcohol system

on all Twin Otters be replaced

with an electrically heated windshield.

- The alcohol-de-icing systems went away

as a result of this accident

and I think a realization

that the hazards were just... were too high.

- But the enduring legacy of Flight 458

is the heroism and professionalism

of two pilots who overcame overwhelming odds

to get their plane and their passengers

safely to the ground.

- I don't consider myself a hero.

I consider that we did what we were trained to do

and did what we had to do that day

in order to survive.

- The two pilots received numerous honors

for their heroic actions.

Today, a memorial stands in a park

named after Prinster and Hogg in Scituate, Rhode Island,

near the location of their remarkable landing.

41 years later, the heroes of Flight 458

reflect on the hard lessons learned that day.

- I mean, you guys were just, uh, heroic in...

in your, uh, mental strength

to just stay with the task there.

Fortitude is the word.

(Hogg): I think your body takes over

and you just hang in there.

- It's nice when stuff really hits the fan,

you can really kind of shed everything away

and go for it.

And I think we all... we all had a little bit of that.

- Yeah, it's, uh... It was quite a day.

- Yeah. (chuckles)

(soft music)

(theme music)

Sous-titrage: difuze