Hello - I am the author of the topic in your link. The link you posted no longer works, here is the new one

Luchtzak Aviation

For years I had wondered about what could have caused this tragedy, and this programme went quite a long way to provide the answers for me.

Comet, welcome to the site. I think I got the link from Google News strangely enough though it seems to be an aviation site that people post on? At any rate it appears that the link you posted leads to a restricted area of the site? Hope you'll continue to post when you can. I haven't seen that particular special because I've heard it's pretty disturbing to family members. This is the show that I think is a reenactment of the actual crash?

Barbara

Here is a review of the reenactment of swissair 111. It is part of a review for a couple of TV shows that were shown in NZ. Though I didn't see it I'm surprised that the 'entertainment system' wasn't mentioned in the review. It's like people pretend it didn't exist. The story cannot be told accurately without mentioning it. To me that is the most horrible thing of all that was present on that airplane. I have no doubt that without it my 16 yr. old daughter would be here today. Does anyone who viewed this know if it was even mentioned?

The investigation of Swissair Flight 111 took 4� years and US$40 (NZ$60) million and involved stretched law enforcement agencies including the Royal Mounted Police working in a massive hangar as they painstakingly sorted through the two million blasted-to-pieces bits of plane recovered from the sea.

It was the biggest aviation jigsaw puzzle in history with the findings resulting in a call for the banning of flammable material in aircraft, though the documentary worryingly stated that two thirds of planes still contain flammable material.

It seemed unbelievable that the pilots flying the Swissair plane smelt smoke but were duty bound to robotically follow procedure consulting their manuals while smoke billowed out of the cockpit.

Surely where there was smoke there had to be fire, but up till the last minutes the pilots in the "pan pan pan" mode which precedes Mayday were sounding calm and collected giving the impression to the air traffic controller that the situation was not as dire as it was.

As the now-retired air traffic controller told it, remembering his emotion as he watched the plane veer from its intended path: "It was probably one of the most hopeless feelings any individual could experience."

Who among us hearing his awful account did not reflect how glad we were not to have the awesome responsibility of his job and admire those who take it on.

This mayday plane crash experience was powerfully constructed and featured just one grieving relative of those who had perished.

As a result of the accident, the father of a beautiful and brilliant daughter had lost his marriage, turned his back on his successful business ventures and gone to run a small cafe in Nova Scotia close to the crash scene.

There he had found comfort in the "eternalness of the ocean" but beyond befriending the sea and declaring that he was in the right place for the wrong reasons, he could not explain his utterly bleak reaction to his loss.

The camera panned over a view of the cafe and the bleak buildings dotted on the foreshore of the small Nova Scotian outpost.

The picture told his story.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2790907a1869,00.html

Interesting thread on Pprune regarding this program.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115117&perpage=15&pagenumber=2

Comet, Not sure if you are still around but your link is working now. Thanks for redirecting us to the right place. Interesting discussion.

Barbara