Original subtitles

A scene of devastation

in a remote region of Venezuela

confirms the fate of a missing passenger jet.

West Caribbean Airways flight 708

has mysteriously dropped from the sky

while flying at over 30,000 feet.

It took off from Panama.

It's a Colombian operator.

There was 160 french citizens on board.

It's the biggest accident that has ever occurred

in Venezuelan territory.

Investigators hope

the crew's desperate last words...

West 708.

Do you have a problem on board?

...will help them pinpoint the cause of the crash.

Affirmative.

Tell them we've had a flameout on both engines.

But instead the mystery deepens.

It's a stall, captain.

It's a stall.

The pilots can't agree

on why the plane is falling.

Now it's up to investigators to figure it out.

Ladies and gentlemen,

we are starting our approach.

We lost both engines!

Put the mask over your nose.

Emergency descent.

Mayday, mayday.

Brace for impact!

I think I lost one.

Investigation starting...

He's gonna crash!

At Panama's Tocumen International Airport,

West Caribbean Airways flight 708

begins boarding two hours behind schedule.

It's past midnight.

The 152 passengers on this charter flight

are returning home to Martinique.

They've been visiting the Panama Canal.

Captain Omar Ospina has just flown in

with his crew from Colombia.

As he's behind schedule, he must turn the plane around quickly.

But there are more unexpected delays.

First officer David Muñoz informs the captain

that the flight is overbooked.

Even the jump seat in the cockpit is filled.

Let me deal with it.

Alejo, I need you on board

to do the announcements in Spanish and English.

Yes, sir.

Angela and Luisa can stay behind.

I'll let them know.

Two of the flight attendants

will stay in Panama

because there's not enough room on board.

Sir, we just got the final load sheet.

Checking the weight of the aircraft...

Take off from runway 21 left, sir.

3,050 meters.

...and the length of runway,

Captain Ospina calculates that he can safely get airborne.

Their flight path will take them through some heavy weather,

something crews are accustomed to during hurricane season.

Okay, we're ready for takeoff.

Request pushback clearance.

Ground, West Caribbean Airways 708

request pushback clearance, gate 28.

West Caribbean 708, cleared for pushback, gate 28.

Proceed to runway 21 left.

West Caribbean 708 runway 21 left

cleared for takeoff.

V-1.

Rotate.

At 1:00 in the morning,

flight 708 begins the journey to Martinique.

They took off from Panama Airport,

Tocumen Airport,

with a heavy load for a long flight for that aircraft.

The flight should take three hours.

They climb up to 31,000 feet,

their initial assigned flight level.

They have filed a flight plan

with a final cruise level of 3-3-0--

33,000 feet.

The crew is flying an MD-80.

The plane is easily recognizable by its two rear-mounted engines.

The MD-80 aircraft is a very good aircraft.

It's a model that was derived from the DC-9.

They made it longer, more fuel efficient

and more modern instrumentation and avionics.

Anti-ice on, please.

As altitude increases and temperature drops,

they activate the plane's anti-ice system.

Half an hour into the flight, while cruising at 31,000 feet,

the weather ahead is turning nasty.

A low-intensity hurricane moving in from the Atlantic

is whipping up winds across the region.

Request deviation left.

Barranquilla, West 708, request deviation

to the left to avoid formation.

West Caribbean 708 cleared to deviate left.

In the kind of weather they were flying,

it's common for pilots to deviate from their initial route

to avoid this bad weather.

It should get better soon.

40 minutes into the flight

the plane has burned through thousands of pounds of fuel,

allowing it to fly higher.

In order to reduce weight,

they had to climb to 31,000 feet,

wait until the weight goes down

and then do a step climb up to 33,000 feet.

Let's do 3-3-0.

3-3-0.

Barranquilla, West 708 request level 3-3-0.

708 cleared to level 3-3-0.

The captain now begins the climb

to their scheduled altitude of 33,000 feet.

Turn off engine anti-icing.

I can't accelerate.

The captain notices that the engines

don't seem to be responding.

I'm going to the bathroom.

The crew isn't overly concerned.

Almost a third of the way to Martinique,

West Caribbean flight 708 enters Venezuelan airspace.

Is there cake and coffee for everybody?

Or are we expected to share?

As the storm intensifies,

first officer Muñoz worries about icing.

-Do I turn it on, captain? -Do we have ice?

Put 'em on.

Soon the turbulence gets worse.

Man, that is a lot of nasty weather.

Put the fasten seatbelt sign on.

Please stay in your seat.

I'm dimming the lights so the passengers don't stand up.

Should we go down to level 3-1-0?

Do it.

Maiquetia, Whisky-Charlie.

The Maiquetia Air Traffic Control Station

in Venezuela isn't equipped with radar.

Request descent to level 3-1-0.

The controller depends on pilots

to tell him where they are.

3-1-0.

Captain Ospina turns off the autopilot...

Give me 3-1-0.

...and the plane starts heading back down

to 31,000 feet.

The turbulence is getting even heavier...

...and then suddenly the stick shaker goes off.

It's the most serious warning that a crew can get.

The captain's control column starts to vibrate,

warning him the plane is flying dangerously slow.

At close to 31,000 feet, the plane suddenly drops.

It's a stall, captain!

It's a stall!

The plane is falling fast.

The crew has only seconds to figure out why.

West 708, level down to level 2-4-0.

Descending to 2-4-0.

Do you have a problem on board?

Affirmative.

Tell him we've had a flameout on both engines.

We've had a flameout on both engines.

Confirm?

We've had a flameout on both engines!

Roger.

Confirm radial and distance from Punto Cabello if possible.

The controller needs to know where they are.

Negative! Negative!

We are at 14,000 feet.

We're about 14,000.

And going down. The plane is uncontrollable.

Keep your heads down. Stay down.

Keep your heads down.

Confirm people on board,

intention and distance from NAVAID if it's possible.

152 people on board.

The plane is uncontrollable.

In just 30 seconds the plane falls 9,000 feet.

I understand 152 people on board.

Affirmative.

Acknowledge.

Confirm at what level you are crossing at this time

Whisky-Charlie.-Whisky.

Whisky-Charlie.-whisky 708,

confirm position if possible.

Whisky-Charlie.-whisky 708, confirm position if possible.

While flying over six miles above the earth,

West Caribbean 708 mysteriously drops from the sky.

Air traffic control in Venezuela doesn't know its location

or if anyone has survived.

The morning after West Caribbean flight 708

goes missing, Venezuelan villagers report

that a plane has crashed on a remote farm.

Colonel Lorllys Ramos is the lead air crash investigator

for the Venezuelan government.

She has never handled a crash this big.

She's shocked by what she sees.

All 160 people on board,

most of them french citizens from Martinique, have died.

It was a real shock for us

because it was our first really big accident.

And it had the highest number of deaths

for any crash in Venezuela.

We felt a lot of pressure because of that.

The scope of the investigation is daunting.

Lorllys Ramos knows that the plane that has crashed

is one of the safest planes in the world.

There are more than 3,000 such planes flying every day.

Investigating a crash

where an aircraft so popular as the MD-80

is a great responsibility

because of the effects it could have on the rest of the fleet.

The Colombian, Venezuelan

and french press from Martinique

all descend on the site demanding answers.

The plane has crashed in a lawless area

next to the Colombian border.

Kidnappings are common.

The Venezuelan army informs investigators

that it can only protect them during daylight hours.

We don't have a lot of time.

Let's get everything documented...

Certainly our team,

including myself,

wasn't prepared for the emergency we faced.

This accident was complex.

And it was very difficult

to quickly figure out what had happened.

After the victims have been removed,

the investigators' first goal is to determine

how much of the plane landed intact at the crash site.

If it's all there, they can rule out a mid-air break-up.

We could observe the four corners

of the aircraft:

The tail, a part of the cockpit and some remains of the wings.

And this suggested that there were no explosions

or a collision that produced the accident.

Investigators question

the Maiquetia air traffic controller.

They told me that they had a flameout

on both their engines.

Do you have a problem on board?

Tell him we've had a flameout on both engines.

When we learned that the crew

had reported a flameout in both engines,

we immediately focused on the function

of the airplane's engines.

Yeah, I'm just getting up to speed now.

Joe Sedor is a senior investigator

at the NTSB in Washington

specializing in foreign assignments.

And as soon as we're notified of an accident,

we contact the manufacturer

of both the airframe and the engine.

Given the initial information of a dual engine flameout,

this caused us to start getting

as much information about the engines as possible.

No sign of fire inside the engine.

Lorllys had her hands full with this accident.

It was a remote location.

There was four countries involved,

and she didn't have a big staff.

Let's see what we can find out

about the weather they flew through.

Colonel Ramos knows that severe storms

can kill a plane's jet engines.

In 1977 a DC-9 with similarly mounted rear engines

experienced a flameout while flying through a thunderstorm.

Both engines were disabled.

The plane fell 17,000 feet,

slammed to the ground and erupted in flames.

Investigators suspect that the engines of flight 708

may have flamed out

either from heavy rain entering them

or due to turbulent winds.

One way to think of an engine flameout

is when you have a pilot light go out on your furnace at home.

The engine is working properly

with combustion going on internally,

and then the flame stops

and the engine quits.

If both engines flamed out,

it would explain why the plane fell from the sky in one piece.

But colonel Ramos knows

that her best chance of finding out

exactly what happened to the engines

lies with the plane's two black boxes.

They could hold critical flight and voice data.

But retrieving that data gets complicated

by political concerns.

The other difficulty with this investigation

was the international aspect.

This was a Colombia operator that took off from Panama,

was overflying Venezuela

and crashed on their soil.

So from the Venezuelan standpoint

they had very little connection with the actual flight

or the passengers on the aircraft.

The Venezuelan government,

deeply mistrustful of the United States,

has the final say on who will examine the black boxes.

Since this is a United States manufactured aircraft,

we offered our facility to them

to download both the FDR and CVR.

But they requested that they be downloaded

at the french facility of the BEA,

our counterparts in Paris.

The black boxes are sent to France

for expert analysis.

The French Aviation authorities

participated in the accident investigation

because all the passengers were french citizens

that lived in Martinique.

In the meantime, investigators pursue

another possible cause of engine failure:

Contaminated fuel.

They track down the fuel truck that filled the plane in Panama.

It was important to test the fuel

because it was a possible cause for why the engines had failed.

We asked the Panamanian authorities

to test the fuel for contaminants,

but the results they obtained were negative.

Hi. I hope I can be of some help.

Joe Sedor arrives from Washington

with two engine experts.

Once we arrived on scene, that was one of the first things

that we wanted to look at was the engines.

So my engine investigator

and the Pratt and Whitney investigator

went to each engine and examined them thoroughly.

What they find is surprising.

Both engines exhibited indications

of high-speed rotation at impact.

That is to say that the evidence indicated

that both engines were operating at a very high power.

The investigators give

the engines a clean bill of health.

When we obtained the analysts' results

for the engines, we realized that they worked perfectly.

You have a problem on board?

Affirmative.

Tell him we've had a flameout on both engines.

We've had a flameout on both engines.

It sure looks like those blades were turning

when the plane hit the ground.

And that the flameout reported by the crew

never happened.

The main suspect in the crash

of one of the most popular planes on earth is ruled out.

Investigators need another lead.

It made us want to get that FDR and CVR data

as quickly as possible.

The team is now counting on

the plane's two black boxes

to shed light on the cause of the crash.

They travel to France, where one of the boxes has been opened.

When they listen to the plane's cockpit voice recorder,

investigators are surprised by what they hear.

It's a stall, captain! It's a stall!

After listening to the

cockpit voice recordings,

we realized that the plane had entered a stall.

How did this plane stall at over 30,000 feet

with two working engines?

To create the lift needed to fly,

a plane depends on a very fast-moving stream of air

over the wings.

An airplane stall is when the lift over the wings

is reduced to the point that the lift

cannot support the weight of the aircraft in the air.

It's unusual for planes to stall

at such a high altitude.

Investigators hope the plane's second black box

will reveal why that happened.

When we opened the flight data recorder,

even though it was really damaged,

the conditions inside were good, and that was a huge relief.

But for some reason,

much of what's on the recorder sounds like gibberish.

Unfortunately some of the data was not usable.

And it was some very important data points

that were not available,

such as elevator position, rudder position, heading,

and the most important parameters,

engine pressure ratios.

It's a disappointing loss for Sedor.

We need those engine parameters.

The engine pressure numbers would tell investigators

how much power the engines were generating.

They would paint a picture of how the airplane was flying

in its final minutes.

In Washington the NTSB offers to help.

Sophisticated software may be able to recapture

some of the lost data.

We wanted to work with what data we had

to recover any engine data that we could.

Meanwhile, investigators

look for other clues about what may have caused the stall.

That's quite a storm, probably very heavy rain.

They discover that the plane flew

through freezing, wet weather capable of causing ice to form.

Ice on the wings can cause a plane to stall.

When ice accumulates on an airplane,

it will have increased drag

and increased weight and decreased lift.

The MD-80 is equipped with an anti-icing system.

When turned on it blows hot air from the engines onto the wings,

preventing ice from forming.

Let's see what they did about the ice.

Put on the fasten seatbelt sign.

Man, that is a lot of nasty weather.

As the plane rose to 33,000 feet,

Captain Ospina made an unusual decision.

Turn off engine anti-icing.

A short while later First Officer Muñoz

wants to know if the anti-icing system should be turned back on.

Should I turn it on, captain?

Do we have ice?

Pilots generally

examine the outside metal windowsill

to see whether ice is forming there.

Put 'em on.

It appears the captain saw ice.

Since they were flying through cold and wet conditions,

investigators don't know why the crew

didn't simply turn on the anti-icing system

and leave it on.

With the weather conditions they had,

they should have been using the anti-ice systems

during the entire flight.

Investigators wonder if the crew made an error

that allowed ice to build up on the plane's wings,

causing it to stall and fall from the sky.

Promising new evidence

in the crash of West Caribbean flight 708

may help the investigative team

to zero in on the cause of the disaster.

The NTSB has managed to recover missing data

about the MD-80's engines.

This was very important for us

because it allowed us to understand the operation

of the engine throughout the flight.

If there had been ice on the wings,

the engines would have had to work harder

to overcome the friction it creates.

The engine power numbers would have gone up.

Look at this.

Engine power wasn't going up, it was actually going down.

Therefore that showed

that there was no ice on the airframe.

Ice didn't cause the stall.

So what did?

Investigators must determine why the engines

weren't providing the power needed

to keep the MD-80 in the air.

The airline's troubled history of safety violations

gives investigators a possible lead.

It had been cited for flying overweight planes.

Colombian authorities used to bring the aircraft

to a scale they have at Bogota Airport

and compare against the manifest.

And on some occasions they found that the aircraft was heavier

than what was reported.

Did flight 708 stall in mid-air

because it was too heavy?

During our visit to Panama,

we observed that West Caribbean

didn't have very rigorous control

over the checking of passengers' luggage and their weight.

If a plane is too heavy,

it may not be able to fly at higher altitudes

where the air is less dense.

Pilots need to make these calculations carefully.

The pilot knows at what altitude

he can fly by studying the aircraft's performance tables

and inputting the plane's weight and the temperature.

What investigators don't know

is whether Captain Ospina did the math correctly.

Stand by.

They now try to calculate whether flight 708

was too heavy to avoid stalling at 33,000 feet.

So we went back and looked

at the number of passengers on board,

the number of crew on board

and the weight of the aircraft itself along with the baggage.

They already tested the plane

at its reported weight of 148,000 pounds.

Alright, let's add a few thousand pounds:

Heavier luggage, mis-weighed cargo.

Uh, let's try 155,000 pounds.

Investigators now make the calculations

for a plane that's grossly overweight.

They're in for a surprise.

And even with a heavier aircraft at takeoff,

the aircraft could maintain level flight at 3-3-0.

It's a setback for the investigation.

We're missing something.

Let's go back to the beginning.

After much research,

investigators still can't figure out

what caused the plane to stall.

Thanks.

The answer has to do with

how a plane distributes power.

When it's turned on,

the anti-icing system draws energy from the engines,

reducing power for thrust.

This decrease in thrust

can affect the performance of the airplane

depending on the weight and the altitude.

So the performance study showed

that the airplane was perfectly safe to fly at 33,000 feet

with the anti-ice off.

Anti-ice on, please.

However, it could only fly as high as 31,900 feet

with the anti-ice on.

It was the anti-icing.

It robbed them of the power they needed.

They shouldn't have gone higher than 31-9.

We concluded that the aircraft

was flown too high for its weight

and the weather conditions it faced.

Put 'em on.

The airspeed started to decelerate

when the flight crew turned on the anti-ice system.

This reduced the thrust of the engine.

Investigators conclude the reduction in thrust

led the plane to stall.

Sir, we just got the final load sheet.

They now assume that when Captain Ospina

calculated his maximum cruise altitude,

he failed to factor in the need for anti-icing.

There are many factors

you have to take into account when planning,

and apparently, they did not do it in this case.

But if low thrust led to a stall,

why didn't the crew notice?

Part of the answer is that while the problem was developing,

they weren't flying the plane.

They had their autopilot on.

The autopilot should not let a plane stall.

Investigators wonder why this particular autopilot

let that happen.

While researching the autopilot on the MD-80,

investigators discover a bulletin

from the plane's manufacturer.

It was sent to the airline three years earlier.

"Under some conditions

airspeed could decay to stall warning

before the autopilot disconnects."

In the bulletin issued by Boeing

it described another incident with an autopilot

that was almost the exact same

as what had happened with West Caribbean .

The bulletin warned crews

that if they set the autopilot

to maintain the plane's altitude,

they should keep a close eye on their airspeed.

The operation bulletin warned

that with the autopilot on and at altitude

that a similar situation could occur

where the aircraft could maintain altitude

and airspeed could decrease

if the pilots were not monitoring the airspeed.

So in order to maintain altitude

as the speed goes down

the aircraft starts to pitch up, nose up attitude,

increasing the angle of attack

to have a better lift.

But that has a problem because you cannot exceed certain angle

because you can enter a stall condition.

In this case the autopilot led the aircraft

into a condition that caused an excessive angle of attack.

That generated the stall.

As important as the bulletin was,

there's no evidence that it ever reached West Caribbean pilots.

Investigators now have a deeper understanding

of the events causing the stall.

The crew wasn't monitoring their instruments,

believing that the autopilot

would maintain the correct speed.

They were wrong.

It was at this moment that the captain began to notice

that something wasn't right.

I can't accelerate.

I'm going to the bathroom.

They were aware that they had a problem,

but they didn't know why.

The captain decided to descend to an altitude

where the engines would perform better.

And descending to 31,000 feet was the right choice.

That's why he disconnected the autopilot

to begin the descent.

Give me 3-1-0.

The plane is very close to stalling.

But the crew is just seconds away

from overcoming the problem.

If he would have attained 31,000 feet during that descent,

the speed would have gone up

and he would have recovered the lift.

And after leveling off

there would have been no problem at all.

They almost made it.

But the captain was oblivious to his biggest threat.

The plane is still traveling slowly

with its nose raised at a dangerously high angle.

That's when the crew experienced some bad luck.

The weather they were flying through was turbulent.

Winds were intense and the plane was vulnerable.

Our study showed that it would only take

a 20-mile-an-hour updraft to push the aircraft into a stall.

Investigators conclude that the plane was hit

with a ferocious updraft that lifted the plane's nose

just enough to put it into a stall--

a crisis the crew then mishandled.

There was very little

communication between them.

The captain thought he was having a flameout

in both engines.

Tell him we've had a flameout, both engines.

We have...

We have a flameout on both our engines.

The captain was not telling the first officer

what to do.

The captain was only fixating,

or, if you will, have tunnel vision, on the engines,

which is a very big problem in this situation.

As the investigation into the crash of flight 708

nears completion, only one mystery remains unsolved.

It's a stall.

Muñoz seems to know what was happening.

Why did the crew fail to recover from a stall

that they'd been trained to overcome?

To get out of a stall

a pilot should increase thrust and pitch over,

that is, push forward on the control column.

But as the recovered flight data shows,

that's not what Captain Ospina did.

There is no indication

that the pilot pushed forward on the control column

to reduce the angle of attack and to increase speed.

He's pulling back on the control column.

At that point it was impossible

to recover from the stall.

The captain should have pushed forward.

The question remains: Why didn't he?

Investigators get their first clue

when they re-examine the engine data

at the precise moment of the stall.

That's what distracted the captain.

At the time that the airplane stalled,

we also saw that both engines rolled back at the same time.

This most likely confused the pilots.

When airflow to the engines is disrupted,

it causes a rollback, reducing thrust.

Because of the updrafts in the area,

it most likely increased the angle of attack

of the engine inlet,

which then caused the engines to roll back.

With his engine power temporarily reduced,

the captain wrongly concluded that his engines had quit.

It's a stall!

The first officer yelled:

It's a stall, cappy, it's a stall.

There was no response from the captain.

This showed that the captain

was fixating most likely on the engines.

Unaware he had stalled,

the captain made things worse

by pulling back on his control column.

That kept the nose of the plane angled dangerously high.

Tell him we've had a flameout on both engines.

We've had a flameout on both engines.

The crew couldn't understand

the situation presented to them.

West 708, go down to level 2-4-0.

Do you have a problem on board?

We've had a flameout on both engines.

They had a heavy buffet from the stall.

They were looking at the engines which were rolled back,

and they were also communicating with the air traffic controller.

During that time there was not much troubleshooting going on

in the cockpit.

This was a very, very difficult time for the pilot.

It is very important

that the crews communicate in an effective way.

And in this case you don't hear

the two pilots communicating between themselves.

It was an almost silent cockpit

until the time just before the accident

when they realized they were in deep trouble.

But by that time it was already too late.

They were past the point of no return.

During that descent,

according to the flight data recorder,

they reached a rate of descent

an average of more than 12,000 feet per minute.

At that rate of descent, not only the G-force

will prevent them from any coordinated action,

the vibration in the aircraft would be a lot.

That's why when you hear the voice recorder,

you hear the voice trembling.

Negative! Negative!

- We are at 14,000 feet. - We're about 14,000.

We're going down. The plane is uncontrollable.

And that's because of high vibration in the aircraft.

For everyone on board,

the final plunge was a nightmare lasting almost three minutes.

Whisky-Charlie.-whisky...

When colonel Lorllys Ramos and her team

interview friends and family of the pilots

of West Caribbean flight 708...

How was he when he was at home?

...they uncover other longstanding issues

that may help explain the crew's behavior.

West Caribbean Airline

was going through a very critical financial status.

Because of West Caribbean's

economic struggles,

the crew members hadn't been paid for six months.

And this could have influenced the captain's concentration.

Investigators discover that Captain Ospina

was forced to take a second job moonlighting in a bar

in order to make ends meet for his family.

The level of stress

that the captain was under

because of his financial situation was huge.

Have we solved the fuel situation yet?

I think we're getting close, captain.

Before the accident

the crew was delayed in Colombia for hours

because the airline couldn't pay for their fuel.

That was their third of four flights that day.

The crew was under a lot of stress

because they were already late

and they didn't know if their flight would be canceled.

It's a stall, captain!

It's a stall!

Investigators also believe

that the 21-year-old first officer

should have voiced his opinions more clearly.

There was a considerable age difference

between the captain and the copilot,

and this might have intimidated the copilot

when he needed to speak up.

Do I turn it on, captain?

Do we have ice?

No matter how young

the copilots and the first officers are,

how old and experienced the captain is,

they have the right to preserve their life

if they see something that's going wrong.

It's a stall, captain!

It's a stall!

And they alert the captain and he does not react,

they should react by themselves.

The investigation's official report concludes

that there was an insufficient level of situational awareness

in both pilots.

Although the pilot's actions

are in question in this flight,

we also have to look at the operator.

Did the operator provide proper training?

We found that the training was insufficient,

that they did not receive proper CRM training,

and they did not receive proper stall training.

This accident happened

as a result of numerous factors

that aren't only attributable to the crew.

There were deplorable conditions in the operation of the airline.

And over time, these faults can lead to accidents.

- Negative! Negative! - We're at 14,000 feet.

-We're going down. -The plane is uncontrollable.

The report makes a long list of recommendations

to ensure that the tragedy of flight 708 never happens again.

We made recommendations

to the Colombian Aviation authorities

to improve pilot training.

Specifically, better training in crew communication

and having a better awareness

about the use of the plane's autopilot.

After this accident occurred,

the airline was grounded and it never operated again.

It went bankrupt and simply disappeared.

But West Caribbean Airways

did leave a valuable legacy--

better safety measures

for every other MD-80

taking to the skies today.