Here are 2 articles from the archives of the publication, 'Shipping Dock'

Swissair crash investigators find evidence of fire in wiring of airplane’s entertainment and gambling system
By John Newton Borden
WASHINGTON -- Don Phillips of the Washington Post reports in the newspaper’s Friday edition that Canadian crash investigators have found evidence of electrical and fire damage in the wiring of the in-flight entertainment and gambling system on Swissair Flight 111, which crashed off Nova Scotia last month.

"Sources close to the probe of the September 2 crash said all the insulation was burned off three of the four sets of wires coming from the sophisticated system," Phillips reports. He says the wires were above and behind the cockpit.

"There was clear evidence of electrical arcing, or sparks," he reports. "A preliminary invesitigation has raised concerns about the amount of heat that the cutting-edge electronics produces, as well as the manner in which it was connected to the aircraft’s main electrical power, the sources said."

The Post story says the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is already reviewing paperwork involved in earlier approvals of the entertainment system. The FAA inspected one Swissair MD-11 in Los Angeles that was similar to the one that crashed but found no problems, Phillips reports.

The systems consist of large processors and recorders above the forward part of the airplane’s cabin. Wires lead through the roof and bulkheads to flat color LCD displays at each seat. If they don’t want to gamble, passengers can touch the screens to choose movies or music or other features.

"Weeks or months may be required to determine whether the entertainment system was a crash cause," the Post story says. "However, the investigation may result in safety upgrades for the system, just as the crash already has resulted in a FAA announcement that aircraft heat and sound insulation has inadequate fire retardant capabilities and will have to be replaced on almost all jetliners over time."

Phillips quotes sources as saying damage to the area above the cockpit where the wiring for the entertainment system runs "was significant".

Noting that investigators still do not know why the airplane went down, the story adds that the only area showing heat or fire damage is the section above the cockpit and extending back over the front of the cabin.

"Sources said a clear heat and fire damage pattern is emerging, with no fire or heat damage noted in most parts of the aircraft so far," says the story. "The damage area begins in the instrument panel above the pilots’ heads, stretching back to the roof area over the front doors of the passenger cabin where the in-flight entertainment system is located. Pieces of plastic and other easily melted material located in the wall areas below the ceiling show no signs of heat."

Phillips, who is considered the most knowledgeable of all the reporters who regularly cover airline accidents, says the investigators at first were concerned about possible problems in the electronics bay under the cockpit, but debris from that area has shown no damage thus far.

The entertainment system was made by a Phoenix firm that recently was the target of a successful takeover battle. The Post reports the company was unable to sell other airlines the system and "in July said it will move into the retail dry cleaning business".

The Post story says the entertainment systems draw unusually high amounts of power and some must even have supplemental cooling. "Investigators also were concerned to learn that the system was attached to an electrical ‘bus’ that feeds electricity to key aircraft system, rather than to a bus designed for ‘nonessential’ systems such as cabin lighting," says the story.

As Phillips explains in the story: "The ‘nonessential’ bus is the first to be shut down by pilots during a checklist to search for the source of smoke in the cockpit. Investigators do not yet know if the Swissair crew cut power to any electrical bus, but they point out that many of the wires for nonessential systems run through the roof of the aircraft and are bundled with the flight entertainment wires. Therefore, power would still be flowing through an area of the aircraft that otherwise is devoid of electricxal power as part of the trouble-shooting effort."

Swissair shuts down entertainment system after crash
By Sarah Edmonds

TORONTO (Reuters) - Swissair will shut down the high-tech entertainment systems in the luxury cabins of its Boeing 747 and MD-11 jets after a probe into the cause of the September crash of one of its planes found heat-damaged wires connecting the systems, the company said Thursday.

Investigators have been looking into the possibility that faulty wiring resulting in a massive electrical failure may have caused Swissair Flight 111 to plunge into the Atlantic off Canada’s east coast, killing all 229 people aboard. Minutes before the crash, the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit.

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board, which has spent weeks sifting through the shattered remains of the aircraft for clues, said there is not yet enough evidence to determine if the wires themselves caused a fire or if they were charred in the course of "other events."

"We are in the process of assessing the type of damage that exists and what temperature (the wires) might have been exposed to," Vic Gerden, chief accident investigator for the Transportation Safety Board, said in a telephone interview.

"We don’t want to toss anything out prematurely but we are looking at many angles and this is just one of them," another safety board official said.

Swissair said it had voluntarily shut off the entertainment systems as a precautionary measure.

The systems, made by Phoenix, Arizona-based Interactive Flight Technologies Inc., allowed first-class and business-class passengers to watch movies, play electronic games and engage in interactive shopping, said Swissair spokesman Erwin Schaerer.

There are about 60 to 70 individual terminals on each Swissair Boeing 747 and MD-11 aircraft and the wires are laced through the ceiling in the area immediately in front of and behind a wall separating the cockpit from the cabin.

Economy-class passengers must watch the set in-flight movie or listen to the armrest audio system—standard entertainment systems which were not affected by the shutdown.

Investigators involved in what one safety board official called "one of the more complex if not the most complex airline crash investigations ever" are still trying to piece together the events that led to the disaster.

The plane’s "black box" voice and data recorders failed minutes before impact, leaving large gaps in the available information, and searchers have had to contend with rough weather and "challenging" seas in their search for debris.

Gerden said about 70 percent of the plane has been scooped up from its ocean-floor tomb 200 feet below the surface. A large scallop fishing boat was used this week to gather the last of the crash debris by dragging its heavy nets over an area roughly 40 meters by 80 meters.

The plane was smashed into small pieces by the force of the impact. Medical investigators were forced to identify human remains through a painstaking process involving dental records, X-rays and DNA-matching.

Swissair said that the entertainment system, certified by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has not been identified as a cause of the accident. It is used on 15 MD-11 and three Boeing 747 aircraft in the Swissair fleet. The company will keep the systems switched off pending further information from Canadian investigators.

The Transportation Safety Board said it believes that, based on current information available, the set-up of this particular entertainment system is unique to Swissair, a unit of SAir Group.

FAA officials said Thursday that preliminary checks showed no U.S. airline used the same type of entertainment system.

Spokesman Les Dorr said the FAA was alert in case any problems discovered had wider implications.

"If it appears there is a potential safety issue that might apply to other entertainment systems we would not hesitate to take action," Dorr told Reuters.

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