Original subtitles

Good morning, Nigerian 2120. Cleared for takeoff 34 left.

- -What's that?

A mysterious sound.

So as soon as this aircraft took off...

We've got four low pressure lights.

There was basically no surviving.

The air brake thing just broke.

-Smoke. -I'll take a look.

They think they've got a hydraulic problem.

You've lost all hydraulics.

A confounding series of failures.

We're declaring an emergency.

We are having flight control problems.

Roger, roger. I thought you were Saudi 738.

Now they have to grapple with this blaze.

There's smoke in the back. Real bad.

A raging inferno.

This thing would have been like a torch.

It's pandemonium inside the cabin.

No! No! No! Don't!

Bodies were falling out of the aircraft.

There it is! It's two miles out!

Christ, I have no control!

And he had no idea what would ensue

when he lowered that landing gear.

261 people...

Landing gear down.

...on the brink of disaster.

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!

Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The birthplace of the prophet Mohammed.

This is the holiest city in all of Islam.

Making the journey to Mecca is a sacred duty

in the life of every Muslim.

The Hajj is the world's largest pilgrimage.

This week more than one and a half million people

will take part in the ritual.

50 miles away,

one of the largest airports in the world

is the gateway to Mecca for pilgrims traveling by air.

Jeddah airport has a terminal built exclusively

for the annual Hajj.

A terminal that can handle 80,000 passengers at a time.

Today, in blistering desert heat,

Nigeria airways flight 2120 prepares

to take a group of Nigerian pilgrims home.

For most westerners,

a Hajj flight would seem almost surreal.

These are very poor pilgrims from villages in Nigeria.

They've never been on a plane for the most part.

The whole cultural difference is amazing.

I mean, there's stories told about some of these pilgrims

getting into the airplanes

and actually trying to light their barbecues

to cook meals on the flights,

not realizing that, of course, you can't do that.

The 247 passengers are on board a dc-8

that will be heading west across Africa to Sokoto, Nigeria.

It's a charter flight operated by Canadian airline Nationair.

The dc-8 was the primary aircraft for Nationair.

It was reliable, sturdy, and served us very well

in operations throughout the world.

Nationair was a scrappy, little start-up airline

based in Montreal.

And it started by taking people on vacations

to sunny destinations during the winter.

And it grew very rapidly.

And then it had this very unusual

offshore charter business,

which is what brought them to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

By offering unconventional flights

that most other airlines would never consider,

Nationair is giving its competition

a run for their money.

Sir, you have to take your seat, please.

Captain William Allan

is a former Canadian air force pilot.

He has more than 20 years of flying experience.

First officer Kent Davidge will be at the controls today,

piloting flight 2120 out of Jeddah.

Let's close her up and get out of here.

Starting four.

You've got number four way up here.

Okay, starting one.

Victor Fehr...

I'll turn on the aircon.

...is the engineer on today's flight.

There are two other Nationair employees on the plane...

Lead mechanic Jean-Paul Philippe...

...and project manager Aldo Tettamanti.

Mr. Tettamanti was sent to Jeddah

by our planning department

to primarily provide logistical administrative support.

Flight 2120 must taxi three miles

across the sprawling airfield to get to its takeoff position.

Flight controls.

Check.

It's a long way around.

Yup.

Good morning, Nigerian 2120. Cleared for takeoff 34 left.

At 8:26 a.m.,

it's already 86 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

Runway's clear.

All engines.

Okay, you have control.

I have control.

Stable.

Brakes released.

Set max thrust.

Max thrust.

Davidge powers the dc-8 down the runway.

So, early in the takeoff roll...

They hear a loud sound in the cockpit.

And the flight engineer says...

What's that?

The instruments show no indication of trouble.

They continue to accelerate.

80 knots.

90 knots now.

90 knots, check.

It's sort of a shimmy.

Like if you're riding on one of those thingamajigs.

V-one.

V-one is the speed at which pilots can no longer

safely abandon their takeoff.

Rotate.

Positive rate.

Gear up.

Nigerian 2120 airborne.

29.

Flight 2120 is now climbing through 1,500 feet.

The plane has been in the air for 90 seconds.

We've got four low pressure lights.

What have we got?

You've got four low pressure lights.

Yeah.

We might be losing pressurization.

Pressurization is uncontrolled.

The instruments indicate that

the plane isn't pressurizing properly.

But in the cabin, nothing seems wrong.

Level off.

Okay.

Nationair 2120,

we'd like to just level off at 2,000 feet, if that's okay?

We're having a slight pressurization problem.

In the tower, the controller has his hands full.

An odd coincidence is creating confusion.

Another plane is reporting the exact same problem.

Say call sign.

The controller thought he was talking to one aircraft

with a pressurization problem,

when, in fact, there were two aircrafts

reporting pressurization problems simultaneously.

I'd just like to level off at 2,000 feet.

I've got a spoiler light.

Wing spoilers reduce lift when planes are landing.

Since the crew hasn't deployed them,

the light points to yet another malfunction.

Gear unsafe light!

You can descend to 3,000 feet.

The controller believes he's talking to

the other distressed plane... A Saudi Arabian aircraft.

Fly heading 160.

Nationair is flying at 2,400 feet.

Descending to 3,000 doesn't make sense.

There's so much confusion going on

between the tower and these two aircraft.

They're making a bad situation even worse.

Allan thinks the controller wants him to climb.

Heading 130,

and understand you want us up to 3,000 feet.

That's affirmative. Fly heading 160, heading 160.

We're losing hydraulics here.

The loss of hydraulics has significant implications

in controlling the aircraft.

Okay, 160.

And we're losing our hydraulics here.

You revert to what is called manual control,

and it's already difficult with hydraulic assist,

but manual control is even more difficult.

We're gonna need to come back to Jeddah to land.

Flight 2120 is eight miles from the airport

and flying away from it.

Roger, understand you're going to land in Jeddah.

To get back on the ground,

the crew will have to make a wide left turn.

It will take them further away from the airport,

before bringing them back over the city,

to line up with a runway.

In the cabin, the first signs of trouble.

Smoke, I smell smoke.

-Where? -Back there.

I'll take a look.

The Nationair mechanic is about to discover

the terrifying truth

behind flight 2120's mysterious mechanical failures.

Amid growing confusion in the cockpit,

the pilots of flight 2120 still don't know

that there's smoke in the cabin.

All they're dealing with

is just all the alarm bells going off

to indicate that equipment is failing left, right and center.

But mechanic Jean-Paul Philippe realizes

they're in serious trouble.

An onboard fire has the potential

to consume the entire aircraft in seconds.

The air brake thing just broke.

We've got a flap slot light.

Less than three minutes after takeoff,

passengers begin to notice something's wrong.

Okay, sir, we have a problem.

We're leveling here right at the moment.

Level off right now.

Right now! Level off!

We're level three.

The controller still believes

he's talking to another plane.

Yeah, I will give you further instructions.

Descend right now to 3,000 feet.

Jeddah airport is now 12 miles away.

With the heaviest smoke at the back of the plane,

passengers rush forward, desperate for air.

Okay, leveling at 3,000 feet,

and if you could give us a heading back toward the runway?

We're declaring an emergency.

We'll advise you of the problem.

We're declaring an emergency at this time.

Roger, confirm you would like to be runway 16.

Uh, no, 34 would be better.

We're gonna need time to get ready for the landing.

So we have confusion between the two planes

and the tower.

We have, unbeknownst to the pilot

and the crew in the cockpit,

smoke billowing into the passengers' seat area.

There's smoke in the back. Real bad.

Yeah, we're heading back.

We've got a hydraulic problem, okay.

This is the first indication that the pilot has

of anything going on in the back of the plane.

Should I tell the passengers?

Yeah, just tell them we'll be returning to Jeddah.

They think they've got a hydraulic problem.

Now they have to grapple with this blaze

that is spreading through the rear of the aircraft.

Things are rapidly spinning out of control.

Okay, let's get squared away

and see what we've got here, please.

In the cabin,

it's becoming almost impossible to breathe.

And Jeddah is still 11 miles away.

We've lost all hydraulics.

The odds on making it back to the airport

are getting slimmer.

Damn it! I've got no ailerons!

Davidge can't steer the plane with no hydraulics.

Hang on, I've got it.

Captain Allan struggles

with his control column.

But it, too, could fail at any moment.

Let's get lined up before things get any worse.

Okay, so we're at 2,000 feet now declaring an emergency.

We are having flight control problems.

Roger, roger. I thought you were Saudi 738.

Only now does the controller realize

that the troubled aircraft is the Nationair flight.

Turn left right now heading 080.

Expect runway 34 left.

By this time it's pandemonium inside the cabin.

The passengers are being engulfed by flames.

And bodies are starting to fall from the aircraft fuselage.

The plane is right over Jeddah,

a city of two million people.

The bodies were falling out of the aircraft

11 miles from the airport.

Okay, sir, we're having trouble turning.

We are having flight control problems.

We will try to turn left,

but we are having flight control problems.

And the situation,

it would have made certainly controlling the aircraft

for an approach and landing very, very difficult.

How much further?

10 miles.

1,700 feet.

Choking for air,

some passengers try to open the doors.

At this speed, it's impossible.

No! No!

Jeddah 2120, cleared to land runway 34 left.

Okay, we're coming straight in.

We'll land on the left.

Require emergency vehicles immediately.

We have a fire. We will be ground evacuating.

Jeddah 2120, clear to land any runway. Clear to land.

There it is! It's two miles out!

Alright.

Let's get on the ground.

I've lost elevators.

Christ, I have no control!

Landing gear down.

Saudi air 738.

Nigeria airlines is down just short of runway 34 center.

The fiery explosion

and sudden impact with the ground

has all but obliterated flight 2120.

A trail of blackened debris stained the desert

half a mile short of Jeddah's main airport.

Little was left of the dc-8...

Such was the force of the impact.

247 passengers and 14 crew members are dead.

This is the worst accident ever for a Canadian airline...

And the deadliest crash of a dc-8 in history.

One day after the crash,

a team of Canadian investigators arrives in Jeddah.

They'll be joining the official Saudi investigation.

They now must figure out how a dc-8 bound for Nigeria...

Nigerian 2120, airborne 29.

...ended up in pieces

just 10 minutes after taking off.

Has anything been removed?

We'd heard that there'd been an onboard fire,

but really little more than that,

beyond the fact that all the 261 souls on board

had perished in the accident.

Bill Taylor is

the transportation safety board of Canada's technical expert.

My first view of the crash site

was one of astonishment, really, at the spread of the debris,

the severity of the breakup.

Usually there's some indication

of recognizable parts of the aircraft.

But there was virtually nothing to identify it as an aircraft.

I can't even tell what most of this is.

It was critical for us to know what happened

as quickly as possible,

because we're carrying millions of people all over the world.

And so we wanted to know if we had a problem.

Do we have a problem with our operation,

our equipment, our aircraft?

The thing that impacts you

is when you're dealing with 247 passengers and 14 crew,

all dead.

That's... That gets your attention.

And the fact that something as big as a dc-8

is now lying there in a zillion pieces, all burned.

Yeah, it has an effect.

I was responsible for performing a site survey

which identified the location of the major parts of the wreckage.

And searching for evidence of the source of the onboard fire.

By mapping the spread of the debris,

the investigators begin to get a picture

of what happened to the dc-8 at the moment of impact.

The fuel sprayed out in a v-shape,

and instantaneous fire over that area.

Obviously, what had happened,

as the aircraft hit the ground with a severe down motion,

it ruptured all of the fuel tanks.

The main wreckage sprawls across

a stretch of desert 1,300 feet long and 650 feet wide.

A body was found 11 miles back from the crash site.

So the crash site actually starts 11 miles back.

So it's like 12 miles of things falling out of the airplane

and people falling out of the airplane.

We did see that whole sections of seats

were melted and charred,

and obviously had people in them when they fell.

And everybody was, uh...

Very bad injuries.

Let's just leave it at that.

The most important question for investigators

is where did the fire start?

But with so much of the plane so badly burned,

it will be hard to plot the progress of the fire.

They need to distinguish between pieces that burned in the air

from those that caught fire on the ground.

Damage from an in-flight fire

is usually considerably greater than ground fire

because of the extra heat developed from the air flow,

giving the blow torch effect.

And the effect on the metal is to heat it to the point

where it's almost molten,

whereas in a post-crash fire, it's an even coating,

and any material that melts drips straight down.

The wreckage from the front of the plane

shows the least amount of fire damage.

Remnants from the center fuselage

are the most severely burned.

This indicates that the fire likely began

in the plane's midsection.

The center fuel cell had been penetrated by the fire,

because there was one part of that wall

that you could see a clear burn-through pattern

in the wall.

We found that the tail section of the airplane

was covered with molten aluminum,

indicating that the air stream

had brought parts of the melting airplane back.

It's clear the fire grew hot enough

to melt the fuselage before the plane hit the ground.

But how the fire started is still a mystery.

Let's get all these pieces back to the hangar.

The Saudi government provides a hangar

for the investigators to conduct a more in-depth analysis

of the wreckage.

The lead investigator on the case

is the transportation safety board of Canada's Ron Coleman.

The Saudis didn't have the expertise on the ground,

or in the area,

and hadn't done any major accident investigations

that I was aware of.

And also, they didn't have any engineering lab capability,

and we did.

So they opted to let us do that work for them.

Let's put together what we can.

We knew that parts of the airplane had melted,

and part of the cabin had burned away

underneath the passengers.

We know that aluminum melts at 1,100 degrees Celsius,

approximately.

So this thing would have been like a torch.

Before investigators can reach any conclusions

about what caused the crash,

Nationair puts forward a theory of its own.

Early on, Nationair claimed

that a foreign object, a hunk of metal,

had been on the tarmac at Jeddah.

Nationair makes that claim

after learning remnants of blown tires were found on the runway .

However, the Saudi aviation authorities said

there was no evidence of any foreign object on the tarmac

at any time before or after the crash.

Canadian investigators

now face two very different,

but equally disturbing, possibilities.

Either Nationair is rushing to judgment

about why one of its planes went down,

or the Saudi aviation authority is attempting a cover-up.

Examining the remains of flight 2120's landing gear,

investigators discover that the wheels

may have had something to do with the crash.

One of the left wheel rims shows clear signs

of having been scraped along the runway.

This is the number two wheel that was recovered

from the accident site.

You can see here the area where the wheel was ground down.

You can imagine the kind of heat

that that would generate running along the runway scraping off.

At the crash site,

Bill Taylor makes a chance discovery.

It adds an unexpected new layer to the investigation.

I noticed a piece of paper

blowing across the site.

Picked it up, and I could see there was handwritten notes

on this paper.

And it turned out to be part of

the a-flight inspection checklist.

And it was the actual page that recorded tire pressures.

Hey.

The maintenance checklist shows

that the tires were inflated to normal pressure.

What is not normal is that there are two different colors of ink,

with a second entry written over the first.

It was apparent that the numbers had been changed

at some point.

It didn't look right.

We recommended that we send it to the RCMP

for them to look at it and see if it had been altered,

the document, because there is a law in the aviation industry

that no document shall be altered.

And this one looked suspect.

The plane's flight data recorder

and the cockpit voice recorder have been recovered.

Though it's far from certain whether any data has survived

the intense heat and heavy impact.

We packaged them and transported them

back to the Canadian lab for analysis.

Tire tracks on the runway

offer some intriguing clues

about what happened to flight 2120.

Left main landing gear had been leaving marks,

rubber marks, to begin with.

So this is the outer left wheel.

These continued for some distance.

And then we could see where the inboard front tire

of the left landing gear had lost its tire.

In other words, the tire had blown

and the wheel had come down into contact with the runway.

From rubber marks on the runway, Taylor concludes

that the aircraft blew two adjacent tires,

both from the left main landing gear.

What's that?

It's an important discovery.

But they still don't know why the tires burst,

nor how that could have led to the catastrophic fire.

Let's spread it out, see what's what.

Investigators next examine pieces of tire

found on the runway.

They're looking for any signs of a defect, or heavy tire wear.

Visual examination found that

the tires had sufficient tread to continue in service.

They were worn, but still pretty good shape.

The discovery supports Nationair's claim.

It's possible that the dc-8 did, in fact,

hit something on the runway that caused a puncture.

Press releases at the time

provided by the president of the company

stated that the cause of the tire failure

was debris on the runway.

Even with two blown tires...

Positive rate.

...flight 2120 got airborne.

The connection between the blown tires

and the calamity that consumed the plane still isn't clear.

Okay, let's get squared away

and see what we've got here, please.

In Ottawa, the transportation safety board

has salvaged the cockpit voice recording.

But instead of solving the mystery, it only adds to it.

What's that?

We've got a flat tire, you figure?

The voice recorder confirms that

the crew suspected they had a blown tire.

You're not leaning on the brakes, eh?

The pilot flying is the only one

that has his feet on the rudder pedals on a takeoff.

The rudder pedals are also the brake pedals.

No, I'm not.

I got my feet on the bottom of the rudder.

It can happen from time to time

that you touch the brakes either for directional control

or inadvertently.

And I assume that that's what the captain thought,

that he might have inadvertently touched the brake pedal.

It's common for pilots

to take off with blown tires .

It's considered less dangerous

than aborting a takeoff at high speeds.

Tire failures at the time

were not an uncommon event, nor are they today.

You takeoff successfully, continue en route,

and land at destination without adverse consequences.

Okay, we're leveling at 3,000 feet,

and if you could give us a heading back toward the runway?

The Nationair crew

finally does declare an emergency.

We're declaring an emergency.

We'll advise you of the problem.

We're declaring an emergency at this time.

It's then that the air traffic controller

realizes his mistake.

Roger, roger. I thought you were Saudi 738.

There was another flight coming inbound

that was having problems,

and the air traffic controller thought that

he was talking to the other aircraft.

Roger, confirm you would like to...

Investigators wonder if that confusion

contributed to the disaster

by delaying the dc-8's return to Jeddah.

Uh, no, 34 would be better.

We're gonna need time to get ready for the landing.

But after studying

air traffic communication transcripts

and analyzing the flight path,

they determine that the mix-up did not add any time

to the return journey.

As it turns out, this didn't have any effect

on the eventual crashing of the aircraft.

The question remains...

Could a blown tire have somehow led to an intense fire

that took down a commercial aircraft in 10 minutes?

At the royal Canadian mounted police forensics lab,

technicians have analyzed the Nationair maintenance log.

Tests reveal two layers of ink on the log entries.

The readings for the tire pressure

were written over.

And the actual readings that were underneath

showed 20 to 30 psi below the required levels

to operate the plane and tires safely.

So the only conclusion that you could make from that

is that the entries were falsified.

Tell me what the plan was for the tires.

With this troubling new information,

investigators now turn their attention to the mechanics

who last worked on the plane.

They learn that four days before the crash,

at a stop in Ghana, Africa,

mechanics wanted to change the tires.

The tread was beginning to wear, and the pressure was low.

The investigative team wants to learn more

about how Nationair managed day-to-day maintenance.

Bill Taylor is joined by operations expert Larry Vance.

What we did was look at all the operational issues.

And we looked at human factors...

Basically, everything that had to do with

the operation of the aircraft.

You're not going to believe what I just found.

Taylor uncovers evidence

that the tire change was never carried out.

A fax from the Nationair project manager in Jeddah

ordered it stopped so the plane could stay on schedule.

They had a facsimile come in

from the project manager...

Forget it. They want us to get going.

...saying that some of their passengers were being

given off to other carriers,

which put some pressure on them

to abandon their plan to change the wheels.

It was felt it would have caused a greater delay.

So the fax came in and said,

"stop the tire change. We're way behind.

We may lose the contract. Load everybody up and get back".

And so they did. They stopped the work.

Because Nationair is "go, go, go, go",

nobody wants to deal with anything

that could delay the departure.

Rather than top-up the tires,

a mechanic altered the log

to make it seem like the tire pressure was fine.

There's no indication that they ever added pressure

to the tires to actually inflate them to that.

The just simply made the books look right.

Three days later,

the plane landed in Jeddah with the same under-inflated tires.

At 5:00 a.m. The following morning,

the crew arrived for pre-flight checks.

20 minutes before takeoff, lead mechanic Jean-Paul Philippe

finally decided to get the tires topped up.

He had waited for quite a long time.

I believe the passengers were on board,

and the baggage was on board.

Basically, the flight was ready to leave

when he finally decided it was the right thing to do

to try and get nitrogen.

All the tanks are empty.

Aircraft tires are inflated with nitrogen, not air.

Nitrogen does not expand as much as air.

It's also less flammable.

He actually made an attempt to find nitrogen

to top the tires up.

Listen, I just... I just need to top-up two tires.

That's it.

Philippe asked another airline to help.

I just need to top-up two tires.

They had nitrogen bottles, but they were empty.

That didn't go very well.

It was reported to us

that the project manager just simply said, "forget it.

"We're not going to get nitrogen.

We're gonna go without topping-up the tires".

And away they went.

He's not a commercial pilot or a trained mechanic.

Investigators now conclude

that the project manager's lack of experience

was a critical factor in the accident.

He was making operational-type decisions

on behalf of...or instead of... Some of the people

who should have been making the decisions themselves,

and putting a stop to things

like allowing the aircraft to fly with under-inflated tires.

Oh, let me guess. We got to go.

It was something new,

and was to have actually assisted us

in being better prepared and operating more effectively.

In hindsight, the irony is, the reverse actually happened,

that additional pressure was put on the crews.

Any decision to take off with an unworthy airplane,

or tires that were low,

ultimately should have been communicated to the captain,

because the captain is the person that's responsible

for the safety of the airplane and the crew.

But that didn't happen.

No one in the cockpit was likely aware

the tires were under-inflated before takeoff.

I don't think that this flight engineer

would find it significant

to see the values on the tire pressures were changed,

as that is not an unusual occurrence on a journey log.

Incorrect values are entered, and they're changed or fixed.

Before it crashed claiming 261 lives,

the same plane took off and landed seven times

with the under-inflated tires.

Records show that the plane's loaded weight

was about the same for each flight.

So why did the tires blow on July 11th at Jeddah?

How long is that taxiway anyway?

Investigators suspect the answer relates

to the sheer size of the airport

combined with extreme desert temperatures.

It was something like 11 minutes of taxiing

with several turns.

So it was a long taxi

before they even started the takeoff run.

They taxied for five kilometers.

The tires must have been burning up on the tarmac.

The dc-8's main landing gear consists of

a left and right bogie, each with four wheels.

Uniform tire pressure is important.

It ensures the weight of the plane is distributed evenly

between all eight wheels.

When you have an under-inflated tire,

that total weight then is distributed

over the remaining wheels.

It would be felt on the axle-mate

of the low pressure tire.

We calculated, using our weight and balance figures,

that the pressure for that day would have been 183 psi.

It's pretty clear from the RCMP investigation

that one of the tires was 155 psi.

That's 28 pounds per square inch

below the safe level.

Added to that, the effects of a long taxi run

on a scorchingly hot taxiway.

During taxi there's an opportune time

for tires to heat,

and particularly tires that are under-inflated

to heat up, flex, and so on.

When you get over-deflection,

or excessive bending, in that area, it generates heat.

If you generated enough heat,

the nylon begins to melt and pulls apart.

The tire blows.

- -What's that?

The first tire to burst was not the low one,

but the one right beside it.

90 knots now.

The under-inflated tire blew next.

The wheel rim hit the runway.

And when that started to drag and wear down the runway,

it got super hot.

Hot enough to ignite the rubber tires.

The crew took the fire into the air with them,

and it quickly consumed the plane.

So as soon as this aircraft took off

and they retracted the landing gear,

there was basically no surviving.

Gear up.

The fire was going to spread.

There's smoke in the back. Real bad.

They were gonna crash.

Yeah, just tell them we'll be returning to Jeddah.

It's all over 10 seconds after they lift off.

When the aircraft got airborne, positive rate, gear up,

and the gear went into the wheel wells on fire.

Unfortunately, the dc-8 did not have

any heat or fire indication

to tell the crew that they had a problem

with the landing gear in the wheel well area.

The fire begins on this tire.

Investigators now know where the fire started,

and why it spread so quickly.

The left wheel well burns first.

Using the remnants of tire

and perhaps hydraulic fluid as the fuel,

this fire continued to burn in the wheel well.

We might be losing pressurization.

Pressurization is uncontrolled.

Next, this bundle of wires...

The wiring for the spoiler light.

I've got a spoiler light.

The fire's spreading fast.

It's reached here... The main hydraulic line.

We're losing hydraulics here.

By now, the fire's reached the very top

of the wheel well.

It's eating through the emergency wheel brake.

The air brake thing just broke.

Then the fire hits the right wheel well

and this bundle of wires.

It shorts out the flap slot light.

We have electrical wires,

we have hydraulic fluid... All highly flammable.

We've got a flap slot light.

And you've got the air rushing at you at 240 knots.

Now the fire breaches the wheel well,

making its way up towards the cabin...

Burning through the aileron controls

on the first officer's side.

Damn it! I've got no ailerons!

Clearly, a fire in the wheel well

is a very dangerous thing,

because of what's in the wheel well.

This is the way the airplanes have been designed,

and they function fairly well

until something like this happens, and we find out...

Oh, perhaps that wasn't a very good place to put this.

Once it's burned through the main fuel tank here,

it's all over.

He had no idea as to what would ensue

when he lowered that landing gear.

Landing gear down.

The fire had compromised the structure

to the point where

when this action of lowering the gear took place,

it destroyed the airframe.

The official accident report

issued almost two years after the crash

found the dc-8 was unfit to fly .

I don't believe that

the people who were making the decisions

had in their heads that this was a hazardous thing

that they were doing.

The report lists several causes for the crash,

including the lack of fire prevention equipment

in the wheel wells,

and the decision to release the plane with under-inflated tires.

The mechanics working on this aircraft

were not fully aware of the hazards involved

in low tire pressures.

A number of critical changes came about

after this accident...

Smoke, fire and temperature sensors in the wheel wells

are now mandatory on all modern aircraft.

Most critically, all crews are trained

on the importance of properly inflated tires.

Forget it.

They want us to get going.

The accident was a major factor

in the collapse of Nationair in 1993.

The accident, I think,

was probably the beginning of the end.

Our emphasis of production over protection

really identified the main weakness in the company.

Oh, let me guess. Look, we got to go.

You can only pressure your people

to cut corners so many times,

and put pressure on them to keep to schedule so many times,

and put dollars ahead of safety so many times

before something will go terribly wrong

like it did in this Nationair crash.