Original subtitles

SPEAKER 1: Ladies and gentlemen, we are starting our approach.

SPEAKER 2: We lost both engines!

SPEAKER 3: Don't be alarmed, emergency detected.

SPEAKER 4: Mayday! Mayday!

SPEAKER 5: Brace for impact!

SPEAKER 6: I think I lost one.

SPEAKER 7: Investigations start--

SPEAKER 8: It's gonna crash!

NARRATOR: Modern airliners are among the most complex and

reliable machines in the world.

Their safety record is high, and dangerous incidents are rare.

But when they do happen, aviation authorities

commit to finding the cause.

It's rarely easy.

This is the story of one such investigation.

When a 747 suffered a devastating explosion

at high altitude, the crew and passengers

faced an unprecedented crisis, and

one family's grief helped authorities

uncover the full truth.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: Lee kind of died for nothing.

You know, you've got to find out why he died,

and you've just got to make sure that it never happens again.

NARRATOR: Hawaii is a natural stop for any flight

across the Pacific.

On this morning, a United 747 was

undergoing routine inspection for a trip

to Auckland, New Zealand.

But as flight 811 prepared for takeoff,

everyone's guard is up.

Just a few months earlier, a terrorist bomb had brought down

a 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

LAURA BRENTLINGER: We were in the aftermath of Lockerbie,

and I had instructed the crew to be particularly aware,

because it was a through flight from Los Angeles

going through to New Zealand.

So in my pre-flight briefing, I'd

asked them to make sure that they checked any baggage that

looked suspicious or anything, because we

wanted to be extra cautious.

NARRATOR: Flight 811 was heavily loaded.

337 passengers packed cargo holds and a full fuel load.

The doors closed on time, and the plane left the gate

just before 2:00 in the morning, for

a routine eight-hour flight.

LINDA BAHNA: Well, we were going to New Zealand on vacation,

someplace that we had really thought was interesting,

and somebody had told us how beautiful it was.

So this was kind of a dream come true.

BRUCE LAMPERT: I was seated in what's called the upper deck.

I hadn't had a vacation in five years,

and I took all my MileagePlus points from United Airlines,

and I purchased a business-class ticket to Auckland, New

Zealand, and Sydney, Australia.

I was going to finally make that dream vacation

I'd always wanted--

to get to Australia and lay on a beach

somewhere, and forget about airplanes,

forget about accidents, and get this

out of my mind for a while.

NARRATOR: On the flight deck captain,

Dave Cronin was hugely experienced, just

two months short of retirement.

Rotate.

DAVID CRONIN: I flew almost 35 years with United.

I've got over 30,000 hours of flight time

and just about everything military as well as civilian.

My co-pilot, our first officer, was Al Slader.

And I'd known Al at that time for probably 20 years.

And the second officer, Mark Thomas--

was the first time I had flown with him,

but we got along real well.

Tell them we can handle 33 if it's available.

OK.

NARRATOR: The pilots wanted to climb

to 33,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean to avoid turbulence.

OK, it looks like 196 put us direct--

DAVID CRONIN: We did notice that there were thunderstorms

100 miles south, right on course, which was rather

unusual for that time of night.

So I left the seatbelt sign on.

NARRATOR: Captain Cronin's decision

to keep people fastened in their seats would save many lives.

LAURA BRENTLINGER: We were still climbing out,

and the seatbelt sign was still on,

and just basically, getting ready to serve beverages,

and then to tuck everyone in for the evening,

because it was going to be a long flight down

to New Zealand.

OK, tell them we're going to detour over to left.

Center, United 811, heavy.

We're going to be detouring.

Some weather here.

It'll be to the left of course.

NARRATOR: 100 miles from Honolulu, as flight 811

climbed through 23,000 feet, a huge malfunction

was about to occur.

There was now a big air pressure difference between the inside

and the outside of the aircraft.

Suddenly, passengers sitting just above and behind the cargo

door heard a noise.

LINDA BAHNA: Then, it was kind of a grinding noise.

I heard, like, a thud.

The hell?

In the next nanosecond, it was pure,

unadulterated pandemonium.

We lost number three.

Going down.

It looks like we've lost number three engine,

and we're descending rapidly.

Coming back.

The next thing I knew, I found myself on the stairwell,

hanging on to the rungs, and I immediately knew it

was an explosive decompression.

NARRATOR: The cargo door had torn off

and ripped a large section of the plane with it.

The pressurized air inside had blasted

out with explosive force.

I immediately thought of Lockerbie.

We actually thought it was a bomb that went off.

BRUCE LAMPERT: It was hell on earth.

Everything on the airplane that wasn't

fastened down, tied down, or secured became airborne.

The noise was incredible.

BOB BAHNA: Everything in front of us was gone.

Where we were sitting, we were about 6 inches from the hole,

so there was nothing in front of us or to the side of us.

The whole side of the plane was gone.

Actually, our feet were dangling on the hole.

And my first thought-- we weren't going to make it.

You know, I just didn't think there was any hope.

NARRATOR: With the pressurized air blown out,

the lack of oxygen at 23,000 feet

was now suffocating the passengers and the crew.

It felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach

and knocked the wind out of me.

And I remember trying to catch my breath, and couldn't.

You're supposed to wrap those oxygen masks

and put them on, except the oxygen masks in that cabin--

they were ripped out of the ceiling, and they

weren't-- they weren't there.

And I remember thinking to myself,

this is what it feels like to suffocate.

United know, 811 heavy.

We're doing an emergency descent.

NARRATOR: The pilots could tell from their instruments

that the number-three engine was failing,

but they couldn't tell the full extent of the damage.

Their priority was to get the plane down to a level where

they could breathe normally.

Put your mask on, Dave.

NARRATOR: But the pilots didn't know

that the explosion had destroyed the entire oxygen supply.

Can't get any oxygen.

We're not getting any oxygen!

Are you getting any?

I can't get any either.

NARRATOR: With the plane heading steeply down

and no word from the cockpit, the cabin

crew were thinking the worst.

I remember thinking that the cockpit, which

is up in the upper deck, had probably

blown off the airplane, too.

Because as far up as we could see, there was nothing there.

Now, we're doing this nose dive.

My next thought was, oh my god, we're just going straight down.

We're going to crash into the sea.

NARRATOR: With the airplane ruptured,

severe damage to the right wing and engines, and its crew

forcing it down to an emergency descent,

the problems on flight 811 had only just begun.

Two minutes after suffering a devastating explosion,

flight 811 was still in a steep emergency descent,

passing rapidly through 15,000 feet to reach breathable air.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): United 811 heavy, say your altitude now.

Believe me, 15.

United 811, heavy, we're out of 15.5.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): United 811, roger.

I think we blew a door or something.

Tell the flight attendant to get prepared for an evacuation.

NARRATOR: The crew finally began to level

out at a safer altitude.

But they now faced a barrage of problems.

The most immediate was the disintegration

of the number-three engine nearest to the explosion.

We don't have any fire indications?

I-- I don't have anything.

OK, we lost number three.

Let's shut it down.

There's no N-1.

Yeah, OK.

Ready for number-three shutdown checklist.

Before you shut down number three, the generator went off.

Looks all right to try it now.

Well, that stopped the vibration anyway.

Feel jettison procedure.

Main boost pumps.

Center, United 811.

We need the equipment standing by.

Company notified, please.

We got a control problem.

Center-wing, left-right valves, on.

Start dumping the fuel.

I am dumping.

One stewardess was seriously injured by falling debris.

As Laura Brentlinger helped her, the full gravity

of this situation suddenly became clear.

As I'm holding her in my arms, I looked up,

and as I looked up, that was the first time

I saw this tremendous hole on the side

of the aircraft that was just a void, and seats were missing.

And I immediately knew that we had lost passengers.

NARRATOR: Five rows of seats had been

blown out in the decompression, killing nine passengers.

On the flight deck, the crew had turned the stricken plane back

to Honolulu, but with 80 miles still to go,

the crisis now got far worse.

We got a hell of a control problem here.

I got almost full rudder on this thing.

Are you dumping as fast as you can?

I'm dumping everything.

We got a problem with number-four engine?

Yeah.

NARRATOR: Debris from the explosion that also

damaged the number-four engine.

If it failed completely, the implications would be severe.

If you are on two engines and you weigh 700,000 pounds,

that is a big deal.

Simply because with that kind of weight,

two engines are not going to keep you in the air.

You're going to come down.

NARRATOR: Although their number-four engine was failing,

the pilots pushed it along with the remaining

engines to full power--

a setting they should not run up for more than four minutes.

But the nearest land was 15 minutes away.

I look out the window on the right-hand side,

and I see flames, big flames.

And I know what flames in engine means.

It's not good.

NARRATOR: The pilots were unaware

that the number-four engine was now on fire.

You've got 250 knots now.

That's good.

7,000--

Yeah, we're getting more rumble.

Watch your heading.

Watch your heading.

You want to go direct Honolulu.

OK.

I'm going to go downstairs and see what the hell is going on.

Yeah.

Go ahead and run down and see what's happening.

LAURA BRENTLINGER: I saw the flight engineer

descend down the stairwell.

And when I saw him, my relief was, oh my god, they're alive.

And there was a huge sense of relief for me.

He saw the hole, turned as white as a sheet,

and I screamed to him, dear god, please get us down.

We've got a fire out there.

Oh, yeah, we got a fire in number four.

Go through the procedure.

Shut down the engine.

We're not going to be able to hold this altitude on two.

We got a fire on the right side.

We're on two engines now.

The whole right side-- it's just gone from about the one

right back to-- it's just open.

You're just looking outside.

What do you mean?

It looks like a bomb.

Fuselage?

Yeah, the fuselage.

It's just-- it's just open.

OK, it looks like we got a bomb that

went off on the right side.

The whole right side is gone.

Yeah, from-- from about the one right back to--

Anybody--?

Some people are probably gone.

I don't know.

I knew that we had lost people.

I didn't know how many.

In fact, I didn't know until the next day how many were lost.

But you know, it's a terrible thing

when you're a captain of an airplane

and you lose passengers.

NARRATOR: Lee Campbell, flying home to New Zealand,

was sitting in row 10 just in front of the cargo door.

I woke up with such a start, because I'd seen Lee standing

by the bed, just with a gray jacket over his arm

and a small smile on his face.

Of course, as I woke up, it faded slowly, uh--

And then, we woke up in the morning, and we discussed this.

I said, oh, it was strange in the night,

but it's such a vivid dream.

Lee was standing there.

And then, the radio came on, and the first item of news

is that there'd been problem with a United aircraft.

And I said, that was Lee.

It's Lee, and my blood just ran cold.

I knew he was dead, from that moment.

Center, do you read?

We evidently had a bomb or something.

A big section of the right sidebar of the airplane

is missing.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): Unite 811, heavy, roger.

I wouldn't go any faster than I had to, because that hole--

I mean, I wouldn't get it over 250 knots,

because that's a big--

OK, what's-- what's our stall speed?

I wouldn't go below 240.

Yeah.

I don't know if we're going to make this.

We didn't know that we were going to make it back,

so we were actually preparing to ditch that airplane

at night in the Pacific Ocean, which

has never been done before.

NARRATOR: In the cabin, the crew prepared for the worst.

LAURA BRENTLINGER: My training kicked in,

and I got up from my jump seat and started

instructing the crew.

We have to prepare the cabin.

We have to prepare for a ditching,

which I thought was inevitable.

You're running around getting life vests on,

and I do remember thinking, I'm not

sure this is going to matter.

Because when we hit the water, you know,

I just imagine planes getting split apart.

I knew that if we hit the water,

it'd be tantamount to hitting the ground,

and there would be very few, if any, survivors.

So my mind went to--

the thing that meant something to me, and at that point

in my life, it was my son.

NARRATOR: Believing they were going to die,

one of the passengers took these photographs.

For 15 minutes, the plane steadily lost altitude.

Then, at 4,000 feet, there was a glimmer of hope.

After an imponderable time, I remember one of the passengers

began to point out one of the windows on the right side.

And everybody looked, and we looked to this little window

from wherever we were, and we could see a point of light,

and another point of light, and another point.

Pretty soon, you could make out of coastline.

OK, I've got lights over here.

OK.

OK.

We're at 4.

We're 21 miles out.

We're in good shape.

NARRATOR: At Honolulu Airport, an emergency was declared.

All other aircraft were diverted,

and the rescue services prepared for the crash landing

of a fully loaded airliner.

Hey, you want to give me some speeds?

Yeah.

150 is going to be your two engine.

Use a 160.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): United 811, I need souls on board,

if you have it.

OK, souls on board.

160 is the minimum.

Stand by, United 811, heavy.

I don't know how many is on board.

200 and-- I don't have the paperwork in front of me here.

Uh, we're too busy right now.

200 and something.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): OK.

NARRATOR: Six minutes from the airport, the crew

now had to slow the overweight plane for landing.

But the effect of this was unknown.

What's going to happen when I start coming out

with flaps and landing gear?

We're either going to land on the airport in the water

or downtown Honolulu.

OK, inboards are coming to ten.

How do the controls feel?

All right, so far.

NARRATOR: But the flaps were damaged

and could not fully extend.

This meant that flight 811 would have to land dangerously fast.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): United 811, heavy.

Do you have the airport in sight?

It's over here to the right, Captain.

OK.

OK, we have the airport.

United 811, heavy.

SPEAKER (ON RADIO): 811 is clear to land, eight left.

Equipment standing by.

Wind at 05012.

Clear to land.

Eight left, United 811, heavy.

NARRATOR: As the unstable 747 lined up for landing,

the pilots knew they would only have one attempt.

But even if they got it on the runway,

the nagging question remained.

Would the stress of impact cause the damaged and overweight

aircraft to disintegrate?

Severely damaged, with an unstable airframe,

losing altitude, and on only two engines,

flight 811 began its final approach to Honolulu airport.

Two-engine approach.

Two-engine approach.

We still had no idea how far off the ground we were,

if we were going to make it to Honolulu or not.

But that seemed like an appropriate time,

if we're somewhere around land, that we're probably going

to try and land somewhere to get the passengers

in their brace positions.

So that's when we started yelling for them

to get down to brace positions.

Every molecule in my body combined to express,

get this damn airplane on the ground.

How are we doing on the hydraulics?

Hydraulics are good.

We got brakes?

Normal hydraulics.

So we got brakes.

But, uh-- you're only going to have reversing on one and one.

Though I thought maybe there was a chance that we were going

to actually be able to attempt to land,

the thought came to my mind.

What happens now?

Do we-- on impact, do we explode?

Do we fall out this huge hole?

NARRATOR: Despite dumping fuel, the aircraft was

still critically overweight.

192.

NARRATOR: But without full flaps to keep it in the air,

it had to approach fast.

1,000 down.

NARRATOR: The danger was that the undercarriage would shear

off and the plane break up.

A dot and a half high.

190.

185.

A little slow.

A little slow, Dave.

It's below what we want.

Coming up on the glide slope.

OK.

Let's try the gear.

NARRATOR: No one knew if the explosion

damaged the landing gear.

I remember Laura saying to me that she didn't

hear the landing gear go down.

And it was loud.

You know, it was still loud.

And I didn't hear the landing gear go down.

So that's another thought--

maybe they can't get the landing gear down.

Maybe it's not down.

You got the gear down.

We're clear to land, and everything's taken

care of, as far as we know.

195.

Half a dot high.

Looking-- looking good.

192.

195.

Coming off in the power.

100 feet.

50 feet.

Center thhe trim.

Center the trim.

30.

10.

Zero.

We're on.

Gear's holding.

LEONARD JENKINS: We landed.

It felt fast.

And that was my next concern-- is that we weren't going

to stop at the end of the runway,

that we were just going to keep going.

And all of a sudden, we were slowing down, slowing down.

And I said, oh my god, we've landed.

We're on the ground.

And the people started applauding.

DAVID CRONIN: Probably the best landing I've ever made.

When we finally stopped on the runway,

we deployed all 10 chutes, and the flight attendants

evacuated all the passengers.

LEONARD JENKINS: It's amazing how fast everyone went.

My understanding is, like, less than 45 seconds, 330 people

were off the airplane.

BRUCE LAMPERT: We were probably 20 feet off the ground,

and I would have stepped out of the airplane without a slide.

I wanted to get off so bad.

Fortunately, there was a slide.

I stepped into the abyss, fell into the slide,

flew down to the bottom of the thing,

and then you hit, feet running.

LAURA BRENTLINGER: The slide kind of kicked me up and flew

me up into the air, and my thought was, oh my god,

I'm going to survive this whole thing,

and I'm going to get wiped out here on the evacuation.

Because it just really threw me.

And I landed and scraped up my legs

pretty badly, and landed on my feet.

And it wasn't until that moment that I had the sense of,

I'm here, I'm OK, I'm on the ground.

DAVID CRONIN: When we got all our switches off,

I ran through the airplane, made sure there

wasn't no one else on the airplane, came up to the door--

one left--

and went down the slide.

And I came around the front, and I

saw that humongous hole in the side,

and I just couldn't believe it.

By the grace of god, we made it.

And it was an awesome experience.

I would never want to go through that again.

LINDA BAHNA: It was crazy.

It was wild.

It was scary, all at the same time,

I just thought that that was the end, that we were going to die.

I mean, that was my first thought--

that this is the end.

NARRATOR: But for the families of the nine people

who were killed, the ordeal was just beginning.

Kevin and Susan Campbell's son, Lee, had been flying home.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: About 3:00 in the afternoon,

I think they said that there was no New Zealanders involved.

But we just knew that it was Lee.

And then, about, I suppose, 1/4 of an hour later,

we got a phone call from Chicago.

And they just said that they regret

to inform us that our son was missing, presumed dead.

And I guess about another hour after that,

a policeman arrived at the door.

And he took one look at us, and he says,

I can see that you've had the news.

So it was just--

just an awful, awful day.

And it certainly didn't get much better for a long, long time.

NARRATOR: Although Lee's body had not been recovered,

the Campbells flew straight to the wrecked aircraft

in Honolulu.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: Your initial feeling is that you want to be

as close to the spot where your relative died,

and that was the aircraft.

So we had to immediately go and see the aircraft.

SUSAN CAMPBELL: The damage inside was horrific.

Just a total mess.

And the hole in the side of the aircraft

was much bigger than I had thought it would be,

even though we had seen television newsreel reports.

And it was so sad to get in and actually

see where Lee's seat had been.

The legs of the seat were still there.

There was a good bit of fuselage beside him, and still a window.

NARRATOR: But the Campbells' desire

to find the cause of Lee's death inevitably

brought them face-to-face with dreadful details.

They took us to the medical examiner's office as well.

Because they had found body parts and that sort of thing.

So they didn't actually show us the body parts,

but they showed us bits and pieces that they

had recovered from the engines.

And we got the medical examiner's report

on what they had recovered.

So you know, we really would have preferred that it was Lee

that went through the engine, because it would

have been an immediate death.

Because it was a four-minute fall down to the ocean,

and we know that the people could have been

alive as they were falling.

And when you think about that, that's just horrific.

NARRATOR: As it became clear that their son's body would

never be found, the Campbells' need

to find the cause of the accident that killed him

grew stronger.

Lee kind of died for nothing.

You know, you've got to find out why he died,

and you've just got to make sure that it never happens again.

NARRATOR: Susan and Kevin Campbell traveled to America

to begin researching possible causes

of the disaster on flight 811.

With the cargo door at the bottom of the ocean,

no one had any hard evidence.

MAN: The engines number 3 and 4--

NARRATOR: Two months after the accident on flight 811,

the NTSB held preliminary hearings,

and the Campbells were there.

But they soon grew frustrated.

The NTSB would not complete its report for months.

The Campbells wanted answers now.

--the probable cause of this accident

was the sudden opening--

We certainly weren't going to leave it to the NTSB

to come up with the findings.

We were going to follow through.

And when the hearings ended, they

had said that we could take whatever

we wanted off the press table.

And Susan walked up to the top table and yelled out,

there's a really good set up here.

So I grabbed a box and loaded in all of the documents

that we could find up there.

Kevin's the most honest of people I know.

But here he was, taking something

that we hadn't specifically been told we could take.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: And we're heading out the door

just as the NTSB were arriving back in with the trolley

to pick up all their documents.

So we were out the door and into a taxi and gone.

SUSAN CAMPBELL: So we quickly realized we'd got a really good

set of papers, with a lot of things that hadn't

been released to the public.

We were able to really start our investigation

in earnest at that stage.

NARRATOR: With the NTSB investigation

ongoing, suddenly, the Campbells had an insider's view.

Documents revealed that other cargo doors opened inward,

so the plane's internal pressure helped

jam the door into its frame.

But the cargo door on the 747 opened outward,

allowing for more cargo space, but requiring

a more robust locking system to handle the pressure.

What they do is they build in multiple redundancies

to make sure the door is properly

latched and does not open.

And you build an end to a point that it's extremely improbable

that the door would ever open.

NARRATOR: So what went wrong with flight 811?

Kevin Campbell thought the problem lay in the design

of the locking mechanism.

To lock the cargo door on the 747,

electric motors rotate C-shaped latches

around pins in the door frame.

A handle then moves arms known as locking

sectors over the top of the C latches

to prevent them from reopening.

Campbell, an engineer by training,

built a model to approximate the Boeing design.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: Initially, the locking sectors

were made in aluminum.

And in 1975, Boeing realized that they weren't

strong enough, and they actually doubled up the aluminum

to make it double thickness.

But it still wasn't strong enough.

And a lot of the airlines didn't even

put the doublers on anyway.

NARRATOR: He thought the weakness of the aluminum

increased the risk of the door accidentally opening.

With the aluminum locking sectors,

if the C-locks tried to back-wind,

open electrically, it would just push the locking

sector out of the way.

It just simply wasn't up to the job that it was designed for.

NARRATOR: If Campbell was correct,

this could happen again, and more lives were at stake.

They redoubled their efforts to conduct their own investigation

into the flight that killed their son and eight others.

SUSAN CAMPBELL: We bought a car and set off in the United

States to see as many people who were involved

with the accident as possible.

We started at Seattle, down to Denver, across to Chicago,

through to Washington, DC, down to Kentucky, on to Miami,

and back across to San Diego, back up through San Francisco,

back to Seattle.

And that was just one trip.

NARRATOR: The Campbells soon discovered

a similar incident to flight 811 when cargo

doors had failed mid-flight.

In 1987, two years before flight 811,

a Pan Am 747 had been climbing out

of Heathrow when it had failed to pressurize at 20,000 feet.

The pilots had to turn back.

When it got back to Heathrow, they found that the door was

hanging open an inch and a half at the bottom,

and all of the locks were open.

When it got to the maintenance base,

they found that all of the locking sectors

were either bent or broken.

NARRATOR: Boeing blamed the failure

on mishandling of the door by the ground crew--

a common problem.

But Campbell thought it didn't explain this problem.

The door had been closed manually.

And what they said happened was that the guy

wound the C-locks closed--

98 turns of a speed wrench.

He closed the outer handle, and then wound it open again.

And to be in the position that they were found in when

the aircraft got back, he would have

had to wind them open 98 turns, and that's

just absolutely ridiculous.

NARRATOR: Were the doors really getting

mishandled by ground crew, weakening the latches?

Or was there a problem baked into the system?

Campbell suspected an electrical fault.

It had a fault in the S2 master latch lock switch

that should have turned off the power to the door

when the outer handle was closed.

NARRATOR: When the outer handle was closed,

the S2 master lock switch was meant

to disconnect the power supply and stop the C-latch motors

from turning.

So could this have failed, allowing

the motors to open the door?

Boeing asked the airlines to do a simple test.

Close the outer handle, then press

the switch to open the door.

It should remain closed, but in some cases,

the door tried to open.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: When they hit the switch, it actually worked.

Boeing thought, this is not going to work,

but it actually worked.

There was power to the door locks,

with the outer handle closed.

And the lock started to move, and it

started to force the locking sectors out of the way.

And a few days later, the airlines

started ringing in and saying it was damaging their planes.

So Boeing stopped the test, but it

meant that on those aircraft, the S2 switch had failed, which

is a silent failure, and all of those aircraft

were likely to have the same problem as 811.

They were just waiting for a short circuit

to open the doors.

NARRATOR: The Campbells now became convinced

that the accident on flight 811 began with a failure of the S2

switch.

Power remained on to the C-latch motors.

All it might take would be a short circuit

in an aging plane's wiring to start the motors up.

The aluminum locking sectors would be through waiting

to stop the latches turning, and the cargo door

could burst open.

The National Transportation Safety Board

determines that the probable cause of this accident

was the sudden--

NARRATOR: After waiting a year for the NTSB report,

Kevin and Susan Campbell expected

it to match their theory of what had led

to the accident on flight 811.

I'd assumed that we would have a report come out that this was

an electrical malfunction, and were

staggered when they came out and said that the door had

been mishandled.

The report focused entirely on the fact

that the door lock must have been mishandled

by the ramp attendant.

That was disappointing.

And we felt that they must have been at a different hearing

from the one we were at.

NARRATOR: So how had the NTSB come to their conclusion?

There was other evidence that we had found

during our investigation of improper procedures

by the United mechanics and ramp people.

So we were convinced that there was--

we could use the word, "abuse," being done on the doors.

The doors were sort of abused and weren't

maintained very well.

We concluded that the probable cause was mechanical.

NARRATOR: The Campbells thought the NTSB report was simply

incomplete and incorrect.

What they said happened was, the door was closed.

The locks didn't fully close.

The doors partially closed, just hanging on the pins.

And then, they closed the outer handle,

but that just simply can't happen.

Because that part of the locking sector is still intact.

It just simply can't happen.

You can't close the outer handle, unless these are

in the fully locked position.

It's the only way that the outer handle will close.

And just closing this manually, you

can't exert enough force to actually damage this part

of the locking sector.

All it does is just backs up against there.

If the locks aren't fully closed,

it just simply backs up against them and goes no further.

NARRATOR: The Campbells didn't accept the NTSB findings

and kept digging.

After the Pan Am incident in 1987,

it turned out that Boeing had issued a directive

to the airlines on how to correct the weak aluminum

locking sectors.

RON SCHLEEDE: The directive that came out

was to replace the aluminum sectors with steel

sectors that could not be bent.

And there were additionally some interim requirements

for inspections to be performed until what

they call terminating action-- the steel

sectors were installed.

NARRATOR: The Federal Aviation Administration

required these improvements but gave the airlines

18 months to comply.

Within a year, Lee Campbell and eight others

would die on flight 811.

After the deaths, the FAA instantly

shortened the deadline for fixing the cargo door

from 18 months to just 30 days.

Still thinking the NTSB got it wrong,

the Campbells took their case to the press

and were invited to United Airlines.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: One of them actually

broke down, because they'd never had to meet next of kin before.

And Eddie ended up with the vice president of United

taking us around the maintenance facility.

And he had people running off in all directions

just to get the information that we wanted, questions answered.

We could go anywhere that we wanted.

And we just-- everything was laid on for us,

because at that stage, they realized

that we really did know what we were talking about.

NARRATOR: Other families of the victims added pressure.

The vital piece of evidence, flight 811's cargo door,

still laid 2 miles down in the Pacific Ocean.

With headlines driving up public interest,

the NTSB commissioned the US Navy to search for it.

100 miles south of Honolulu, a deep submersible

began to trawl the seabed.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: We went to Honolulu

and waited there while they had their attempts.

And they finally recovered the door

from 14,000 feet of water, which was the deepest

recovery ever at that time.

And we were phoned within an hour

of it coming out of the water.

NARRATOR: The recovered door came under intense scrutiny.

Then, in June 1991, another incident appeared to confirm

the Campbells' theory.

A four-year-old United 747 was sitting on the apron in New

York when the C-latch motor started up

and the door opened itself.

After recovery of the door was that in fact,

the actual pieces had--

NARRATOR: Finally, the NTSB publicly

issued a revised report that concurred

with the Campbells' version.

There was an inadvertent failure of either the switch

or the wiring that caused an uncommanded opening

of the door.

KEVIN CAMPBELL: It's nice that other people know that you're

right and had been all along, and that the support that they

had given you was vindicated.

NARRATOR: The Campbells spent thousands

of dollars of their own money on their campaign.

They were never interested in a financial settlement for Lee's

death, but they did persuade United

and Boeing to set up a university

scholarship in his name.

SUSAN CAMPBELL: I couldn't have lived

with myself if we had done no investigating ourselves.

It was just something we both felt we needed to do.

We didn't even discuss it.

We just knew that's what we would do.

Yeah.

NARRATOR: For some of the survivors of flight 811,

the cost has been heavy.

Each crew member handled it differently.

I know there are still two crew members that have never

set foot on an aircraft again.

It was very difficult for me.

I was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

You can't reason.

You can't think.

Making the slightest decision is very difficult.

You're just at a total loss.

So it was very difficult to cope with.