Local News

Report stops short of casting blame for crash

3/28/03
By CHUCK SCHULTZ

NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- After spending about $40�million and 4 years, Canadian investigators believe the crash of a Swiss airliner that killed 229 people was caused by sparks from faulty wiring igniting flammable insulation above the cockpit, crippling the plane's electrical system.

Flames spread so quickly that pilots had no chance of saving the decade-old aircraft before it plunged into the chilly Atlantic Ocean about six miles south of Peggy's Cove, concluded a 338-page report released Thursday by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. It stopped short of blaming any single factor for the deadly fire on Sept. 2, 1998, that brought down Swissair Flight 111 within an hour after the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, took off for Switzerland from New York.

However, the report strongly suggests a hastily installed entertainment system available to some passengers was probably at least partly to blame for starting the fire, perhaps by overloading the aircraft's inadequate electrical wiring.

Santa Barbara Aerospace, under authority designated by the Federal Aviation Administration, was responsible for certifying that the interactive entertainment system had been installed according to FAA safety standards. The company, once among the South Coast's largest employers, moved its operations from Goleta to San Bernardino about three months after Flight 111 crashed, then declared bankruptcy and went out of business in 1999.

Designed by Interactive Flight Technologies of Phoenix, the pioneering gaming system was put into the ill-fated plane and about a dozen other Swissair MD-11s by SR Technics of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1997 and 1998. The add-on electronics were integrated into the airplanes' wiring system by Hollingsead International. Computer components and touch-screens, installed at each seat in the first-class and business sections of those planes, enabled passengers to watch pay-per-view movies, shop online, play video games and even gamble electronically.

The Flight 111 investigation was the most extensive into an air disaster ever in Canadian history. About 2 million pieces of the shattered aircraft were retrieved, some as small as a silver dollar, and 150 miles of electrical wire inspected.

Wire damage believed to be part of the initial ignition was found on one of the wires that supplied power to the in-flight entertainment network. However, "it's important to emphasize here that it is unlikely that this entertainment system power supply wire was the only wire involved" in the ignition, the chief investigator, Vic Gerden, cautioned at a news conference Thursday morning.

"We strongly suspect," he added, "that at least one other wire was involved, either an aircraft wire, or another entertainment system wire."

Mr. Gerden stressed the accident would never have happened had it not been for insulation blankets made out of metalized polyethylene terephthalate, which he said were "readily ignitable" from sparks created by power passing through bad wiring.

"Without the presence of this and other flammable material, this accident would not have happened," he said.

Since the crash, the FAA has ordered that the metalized insulation blankets be removed from all aircraft registered in the United States.

Swissair, which is now bankrupt, removed the interactive gaming system from all its aircraft soon after the crash.

Santa Barbara Aerospace spokesmen could not be reached for comment, but an attorney handling lawsuits against the now-defunct company has strongly denied that the crash resulted from the entertainment system, or Santa Barbara Aerospace's actions in certifying its design and installation.

"Factually, Santa Barbara Aerospace has nothing to do with the (midair electrical) failure, nor does the entertainment system," insisted Martin Rose, a partner in the Rose-Walker law firm of Dallas, Texas.

"Whatever started that fire wasn't the entertainment system," he added during phone interviews with the News-Press last month. "The (FAA) testing found nothing in that system's design or installation that could result in a safety issue."

Many family members of the victims have said they believe the gaming system was at fault for the crash, and that U.S. regulators should never have sanctioned it.

The voluminous and highly technical report made nine safety recommendations involving testing for insulation materials and electrical systems, and improving the flight cockpit and data recording system. Canadian investigators previously made 14 recommendations that led to the removal of flammable insulation material from aircraft and improved fire reaction measures for pilots.

Relatives of passengers killed in the crash said the FAA and other regulators should implement the remaining recommendations immediately.

"There are problems, serious problems, with the wiring of aircraft," said Miles Gerety of Redding, Conn., whose brother, Pierce, was killed. "I wonder if the FAA will make the airlines spend the money."

http://news.newspress.com/topsports/032803crash.htm?now=79412&tref=1

Mark believes that the final report really doesn't leave all that much room for doubt when it comes to naming the IFEN as the probable ignition source, particularly if you consider the TSB's mandate.