swissair crash recording part 1

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Air traffic control tapes of Swissair Flight 111 have finally been released after a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The ATC tapes, released by the Canadian Press, have not been made public since the 1998 crash that killed 229 people.

The tapes contain hours of recording including the final dramatic 12 minutes of the flight before the aircraft plunged at high speed into St. Margaret's Bay, N.S., near Halifax.

"Swissair one eleven is declaring pan pan pan we have smoke in the cockpit," one pilot said.

"Pan pan pan" means there is an emergency on board the aircraft, but that there is no immediate danger.

Later, another said, "We are declaring emergency now" (this can be heard on part four of the audio link to the right).

They were told they could commence the fuel dump, discussed altitude and the approach to Halifax airport with air traffic controllers. They were asked to advise when it was complete.

There was one last garbled "hello," then presumably electrical failure cut off communications. About six minutes after the last transmission, everyone was dead.

The MD-11 aircraft left New York for Geneva on Sept. 2, 1998.

The aircraft smashed into the dark water off Peggy's Cove at 10:31 p.m. Atlantic Time at an estimated 550 kilometres an hour, killing everyone onboard and shattering the plane into literally millions of tiny fragments.

The impact of the jet hitting the water made seismographic needles in Moncton and Halifax flutter as if an earthquake had struck.

Vic Gerden, chief investigator into the crash, said families of the victims have not yet heard the audio although they were briefed extensively at the time of the disaster.

"I don't recall them having the opportunity to listen to the tapes,'' Gerden, who retired last year, told the Canadian Press from Winnipeg.

Some family member predicted the tapes would be hard to hear, even after so many years.

"These things bring an event back to people, the family members, who've put a lot of time and distance between the crash ... and their losses,'' Miles Gerety, who lost his brother Pierce in the crash, told the Canadian Press from his home in Redding, Conn. "I think it would be hard to hear.''

After the crash, the Transportation Safety Board refused to release the ATC audio, saying it contained personal information.

John Reid, then Canada's information commissioner, initially supported the refusal. "In my view, the voices, along with the tonal and emotive characteristics, constitute personal information of three air traffic controllers and the two pilots,'' he ruled in 1999.

Reid eventually reversed on his decision after he received complaints about the board's refusal to release audio from four other air disasters.

He fought the board and Nav Canada all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled the transmissions should be released to the public.

The ruling brings Canada in line with countries that have allowed ATC recordings to be available for years.

*If anyone wants teh transcripts you should get in touch with me directly.

Channel: Travel & Events
Uploaded: May 24, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Author: moetorious

Length: 00:07:55
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Tags: swissair crash peggys cove pan mayday smoke passengers cockpit ATC air traffic control transcript.

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Video Comments:
crazystuffproduction (November 18, 2008 at 12:50 pm)
google map it
whisperer49 (November 14, 2008 at 10:50 pm)
I would agree with that. In this case(some time since I watched doco on this one) the crew did not display enough urgency in getting the plane back on the ground. And that is what should happen at the first hint of a fire. The plane was over water so should have started dumping fuel immediately. The Swiss Air guy was doing all sorts of manouvres out over the sea whilst the plane was blazing away, getting approval to dump.
whisperer49 (November 14, 2008 at 10:38 pm)
What about the Saudia Airlines L1011 returned to Riyadh on fire and everyone on board cooked on the ground because they couldn't get the doors open? They found 14 bodies on the flight deck.
milnusthegnome (November 9, 2008 at 10:05 am)
it was the pilots faults. they turned off the fan system which caused the smoke to percolate the entire cabin which resulted in electrical malfunctions which resulted in R.I.P
avis1108 (November 11, 2008 at 4:44 pm)
I don't know where you got that misinformation from. Turning off the fans is the right procedure for cabin/cockpit smoke removal.

Also, the accident of flight 111 was not caused by smoke and also not caused by the pilots.

The accident was caused by a short circuit, resulting in a fire which spread out caused by bad insulating material, and so damaged important conductions of instruments. This caused a loss of orientation which resulted in the crash.
inkyguy (November 11, 2008 at 5:01 pm)
That is ridiculous. The fire was caused by electrical arcing and then uncontrolled fire fueled by flammable material in the plane. Even while the pilots' "by the book" procedures were in hindsight perhaps the wrong tactic, immediate attempts to land in Halifax would have failed. The pilots are beyond reproach in this situation.
joeymuffarco69 (November 13, 2008 at 6:28 pm)
ur supposed to turn off fans when u have a fire or smoke in the cockpit. any pilot knows that.
Xtreem111 (November 17, 2008 at 11:50 am)
i agree...fans spread the smoke to other compartments and they also feed the fire with oxygen witch sustains them.
Fusha0 (November 18, 2008 at 5:57 pm)
The thing was: the smoke was IN THE COCKPIT, not IN THE CABIN. No fans were used.
BlackhawkO8 (November 7, 2008 at 11:19 am)
You know why the made an investigation? Because you learn from your faults, and if you don't know, what the fault was, you can't learn from it. They found out, that the problem was an deflagrable material in the cockpit. Thanks to this expensive investigation, they found out that this material was actually deflagrable so this material could be removed from other airplanes, and therefore maybe saved hunderts of others.