Swissair Flight 111
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| Swissair Flight 111 | |
|---|---|
| align="center" colspan="2" class="hiddenStructure
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!align="center" bgcolor="#ffcc99" colspan="4"|Summary
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!align="right" valign="top"|Date
|align="left" valign="top"|September 2 1998
|-
!align="right" valign="top"|Type
|align="left" valign="top"|In-flight Airliner fire
|-
!align="right" valign="top" |Site
|align="left" valign="top" |Atlantic Ocean near St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
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!align="right" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|Fatalities
|align="left" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|229
|-
!align="right" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|Injuries
|align="left" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|0
|-
!bgcolor="#ffcc99" colspan="4"|Aircraft
|-
! align="right" valign="top" |Aircraft type
| align="left" valign="top" width=100% |McDonnell Douglas MD-11
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! align="right" valign="top" |Operator
| align="left" valign="top" |Swissair
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! align="right" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|Tail number
| align="left" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|HB-IWF
|-
! align="right" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|Passengers
| align="left" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|215
|-
! align="right" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|Crew
| align="left" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|14
|-
! align="right" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|Survivors
| align="left" valign="top" class="hiddenStructure"|0
|}
Swissair Flight 111 (SR-111, SWR-111) was a Swissair McDonnell Douglas MD-11 on a scheduled airline flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, United States to Cointrin International Airport in Geneva, Switzerland. This flight was also a codeshare flight with Delta Air Lines. On September 2, 1998, the aircraft used for the flight, registered HB-IWF, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax International Airport at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia. The crash site was 8 km from shore, roughly equidistant between the tiny fishing and tourist communities of Peggys Cove and Bayswater. All 229 people on board were killed. The flight departed JFK at 8:18 p.m. (EDT) with 215 passengers and 14 crew en route to Geneva. At about 9:10 p.m., cruising at 33,000 feet (about 10,060 m), the flight crew smelled smoke in the cockpit. Fifteen minutes later, the smoke was visible and a number of systems were failing. The flight crew announced a "pan-pan" and requested a diversion to Boston's Logan International Airport, but was instead directed to the closer Halifax International Airport in Enfield, Nova Scotia, 56 nautical miles (104 km) away. At 9:24 p.m., the crew declared an emergency while circling away from the airport to lose altitude and dump fuel in preparation for an emergency landing — contact with the aircraft was lost one minute later and it struck the ocean at 9:31 p.m., according to readings from seismographic recorders in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Recovery and investigation
 Flight recorders were quickly retrieved (FDR on September 6 and CVR on September 11, 1998) and 78 recovered bodies were identified. However, both the FDR and CVR stopped recording approximately 6 minutes before impact. By October 1998, the cause of the crash was generally believed to be due to faulty wiring in the cockpit, after the entertainment system in the plane started to overheat. Certain groups issued Aviation Safety Recommendations. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board (TSB) released its preliminary report August 30, 2000, but the [final report] was not completed until 2003. The final phase of wreckage recovery by dredging ended in December 1999 with around 2 million pieces of the aircraft and its contents recovered, 98 percent of the aircraft was retrieved from the 50- to 60-metre-deep water. The investigation identified the cause of the crash as originating in a fire in the right side cockpit overhead controls. Arcing from wiring of the in-flight entertainment network did not trip the circuit breakers but ignited flammable covering on insulation blankets and quickly spread across other flammable materials. The crew did not recognize that a fire had started and were not warned by instruments, and reacting to an uncertain problem, the crew's ability to control the aircraft was soon overcome as the rapid spread of the fire led to the failure of key display systems. After the displays in the cockpit failed, the pilot was steering the plane blindly, as he had no light by which to see his controls. As a result the plane swerved off course and headed back out into the Atlantic. Recovered fragments of the plane show that the heat inside the cockpit as the displays failed was so great that the ceiling started to melt. The speed at which the plane hit the water was so great that everyone on board died nearly instantly, because upon impact with the water the nose of the plane slowed down considerably. In less than a second the tail of the plane (now moving much faster than the nose) would have reached the nose of the plane, compacting the plane and killing all on board. The TSB has concluded that even if they had been aware of the nature of the problem the rate of spread of the fire would have precluded a safe landing at Halifax even if an approach had begun as soon as the 'pan pan' was declared. The TSB made nine recommendations relating to changes in aircraft materials, electrical systems and flight data capture (both flight recorders failed, along with main power, six minutes before impact). General recommendations were also made regarding improvements in checklists, and in fire-detection and fire-fighting equipment. The lack of flight recorder data for the last six minutes of the flight added significant complexity to the investigation, and was a major factor in its duration. The Transportation Safety Board team had to reconstruct the last six minutes of flight entirely from the physical evidence. The plane was broken into millions of small pieces by the impact, making this process time-consuming and tedious. The investigation became the longest (5 years) and most expensive (57 million CAD) transport accident investigation in Canadian history. Legacy
Two memorials to the victims have been established by the government of Nova Scotia. One is located east of the crash site at The Whalesback, a promontory 1 km north of Peggys Cove. The second memorial is a more private but much larger commemoration located west of the crash site near Bayswater Beach Provincial Park on the Aspotogan Peninsula. Here, the unidentified remains of the victims are interred. In September 1999 Swissair and Boeing offered the families of the passengers full compensatory damages. This was rejected in favor of a $19.8 billion suit against Swissair and DuPont, the supplier of Mylar insulation sheathing. The claim was rejected in a US federal court in February 2002. A number of famous or notable people died in this accident, including Joseph LaMotta, son of former boxing world champion Jake LaMotta, and Jonathan Mann, a well-known former head of the WHO's AIDS program. A number of works of art, including a piece by Pablo Picasso, were lost in the crash. After the crash, the flight route designator for Swissair's New York-Geneva route was changed to Flight 139. Since the crash there have been many television documentaries on Flight 111, including episodes of disaster shows like History Channel's Disasters Of the Century and National Geographic's Air Crash Investigation. See alsoExternal links
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