Mysterious smell a month before
crash not pinpointed

By RICHARD DOOLEY -- The
Daily News

A report of mysterious smells in the
cabin of a Swissair jet less than a month before it
crashed off Peggy's Cove, killing all 229 people aboard,
was investigated shortly after the accident.
News
that a crew member aboard the Boeing MD-11 reported an
odour during a flight from Zurich to Hong Kong on Aug.
10, 1998 is to be published tomorrow in the Swiss
magazine Facts.

Swissair spokesman Urs Peter Naef
told The Associated Press no problems were found with
the plane and the report was never
published.

On Sept. 2, the same plane took off from New York en
route to Geneva. Early in the flight the pilots
reported a strange smell and smoke in the
cockpit.

Flight 111 plunged into the Atlantic about 10 kilometres
southwest of Peggy's Cove as it prepared for an emergency
landing at Halifax International Airport.

After
the crash, the August report was sent to
Transportation Safety Board investigators, Naef said.

"It
has been part of the investigation since the early
days," confirmed board spokesman Jim
Harris.

"It's one of the literally hundreds of kilograms of
records we have on that plane," he said.

Harris
did not say if the information provided investigators
with new insight into the cause of the
crash.

Investigators have not pinpointed the cause of the fire in the
cockpit, but attention is focused on electrical wiring
flaws.

TSB scientists are doing a series of experiments to
duplicate burn damage found on cockpit wires recovered from
the crash site.

"We are trying to determine if
the damage we are seeing on the recovered wiring was
caused internally or externally," said
Harris.

Crew members from the Hong Kong flight were flown to
Halifax for questioning by the safety board, Swissair
spokeswoman Beatrice Tschanz told The Canadian
Press.

The crew were made to smell different odours,
including those of burning wires, but there was nothing
conclusive and the report was shelved, she
said.

Harris said that while the report on the earlier smell
in the MD-11 is significant, it's only part of the
total investigation.

"We looked at it
diligently, along with all the maintenance reports," said
Harris.

The TSB is planning to resume recovery operations at
the crash site this month. About 90 per cent of the
plane has been recovered.

"As long as we can
physically get it, the operation will continue," said
Harris.

The board is considering using a suction dredge to
vacuum the remaining debris from the ocean
floor.

Swissair faces claims totalling $16 billion US from
families of American victims, who are suing on grounds of
gross negligence. The company said it has reached
out-of-court settlements with relatives of five victims in
France.

A pre-trial conference in Philadelphia Friday will
sort out procedural technicalities of the suits
against Swissair and other defendants, the airline
said.

Other defendants include Boeing, which owns the company
that built the plane; Delta Air Lines, which had a
ticket-sharing deal with Swissair; and Inflight Technologies,
which provided the plane's electronic entertainment
system.

More follow-up on that article regarding the odd smell reported by a pilot who flew the 'accident' plane prior to the crash of sr111:

By RICHARD
DOOLEY -- The Daily News

Within days of the crash
of a Swissair jet off the Nova Scotia coast,
Canadian investigators were questioning crew members who
had flown earlier on the plane about odd
smells.
Transportation Safety Board spokesman Jim Harris said the
investigation even flew a Swissair chief steward from Europe to
Halifax to test his nose in a series of burn
tests.

The man was the chief steward aboard the same MD-11
when it flew Aug. 10, 1998 from Zurich to Hong Kong. A
strange odour was noticed in the cabin during the flight,
prompting the steward to file an official report.

A
Swissair official said the source of the smell was not
discovered, and no problems were found with the
plane.

On Sept. 2, before the aircraft crashed near Peggy's
Cove during a New York-Geneva flight, the pilot had
reported an odour in the cockpit.

Investigators
have not been able to link the earlier odour to the
crash.

"We put him (the steward) through a series of smell
tests, but he couldn't find anything similar," said
Harris.

The board also sent a questionnaire to about 500 crew
members who had worked on the same
aircraft.

Harris said the results of that part of the
investigation are not conclusive, but will form part of the
board's analysis of the cause of the crash.

The
cause of the crash is still unknown, but investigators
suspect an electrical system fire. The forward section of
the plane is being reconstructed in a hangar at CFB
Shearwater to help investigators pinpoint the origin of the
fire.

I wonder if this smell reported by a crew that had flown on the accident aircraft just prior to the tragedy was related in anyway to what happened during the Swissair crash. I noticed in one article about swissair 111 an expert said that the wire(s) involved in the tragedy was likely already compromised prior to the crash and probably deteriorating over time. Though TSB tests were inconclusive when the crew members from that flight were asked to go through different odors, I wonder if this was the first overt warning sign that there was a serious problem on that jet with the wiring. I guess the question is moot as we will probably never have that answer. It was important IMO to have the answer to that question because if you look at smoke/odor events on different aircraft that seem to occur several times a week, very often it seems that they are put back into service without having any real answers to why a crew smelled/saw smoke on a jet.