Report into Swissair crash off N.S. faces delay

Canadian Press
Updated: Thurs. Jul. 11 2002 5:13 AM ET

The fourth anniversary of the Swissair Flight 111 crash will come and go in two months without a final report into the disaster that claimed 229 lives.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada had expected to release its report this year but spokesman Jim Harris said Wednesday the final document won't be ready until early in 2003.

The Boeing MD-11 plunged into St. Margarets Bay, N.S., on Sept.2, 1998, killing all passengers and crew and shattering the jet.

The crash probe is believed to be the most complex and expensive in Canadian history. As of Wednesday, investigation and recovery costs totalled more than $54.8 million.

Harris said that given the nature of the crash, the length of the investigation isn't unusual.

"In this particular case ...the flight recorders stopped six minutes before impact, which means that all of that data was not captured, so that meant that all of the information that we would have normally had is not there, so therefore that makes the job much ...harder," he said.

"Secondly, the aircraft, when it did strike the ocean, is in millions of pieces that made it much more difficult to recover and ...once you did recover it, find out what exactly happened."

Fire damage on some of the wreckage compounded the problem, he said.

Harris noted it took recovery crews almost 15 months to bring the wreckage up from the ocean floor. Crews eventually salvaged 98 per cent of the aircraft by weight.

"You have an awful lot of wreckage which you then have to go through and that all just takes time," Harris said. "It had to be gone through because we didn't have the data from the flight recorder."

Even as investigators have been preparing a draft final report, the probe has continued. But Harris couldn't say if the board has made any recent investigative breakthroughs.

The plane went down 16 minutes after pilot Urs Zimmermann reported smoke in the cockpit.

Wiring has long been a key suspect in sparking a fire that led to a massive electrical failure. But for years, investigators have been trying to determine whether charred wiring found in the wreckage ignited the fire or was burned by another source.

Burnt pieces of both the plane's general purpose wiring and wires leading to a controversial inflight entertainment system later banned by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration were found in the wreckage.

While Harris couldn't say if investigators have come to a conclusion about wiring's role in the disaster, he said it's unlikely just one culprit will be named as the cause.

"It's always a combination of events ...that lead up to an accident like this," he said.

He noted the board has released a number of safety recommendations and advisories over the past four years as the probe has progressed. They have included calls for more stringent testing of electrical wiring used in aircraft, inspection of cockpit wiring on all MD-11s and independent power sources for flight recorders.

In 1999, after investigators determined that metallized Mylar insulation on the plane helped to spread the fire, the FAA ordered U.S.-registered airlines to replace the material within four years.

Harris said a draft final document, written by investigators, is almost complete. After the safety board approves it, it will be confidentially reviewed by key players -- from manufacturers to Swissair itself -- whose products or operations are mentioned.

He said those parties will be able to comment on and correct any factual errors but won't influence investigators' findings on the cause of the crash.

Harris said that after investigators analyse the comments, a final draft report will be prepared.

"It goes back to the board for final approval and then it becomes a public document."