Tuesday, October 6, 1998

Flight 111 investigators still struggling with black box

TORONTO (CP) - Weeks after recovering the flight-data

recorder from the wreckage of Swissair Flight 111, investigators

are still struggling to determine whether the black box has

information that will help them determine the cause of the crash

off Peggy's Cove.

Not only are the last six minutes missing from the flight and

voice recorders, but the data recorder was plagued with

anomalies before that, The Globe and Mail reported yesterday.

Investigators insist they will eventually determine the cause of

the crash that killed 229 people, but the digital record of the

critical minutes when the problems developed are so garbled, it

might offer little more than a pointer to the components or

wiring bundles where the problems began, the paper said.

"We are trying to ascertain what it is telling us," Vic Gerden,

the Transport Safety Board's lead investigator, said Sunday.

"Is it the avionics bay? Is it a (instrument) panel? Is it a wiring bundle?"

Gerden says they have not been able to narrow their focus on

the cause of the crash beyond the theory something electrical

was amiss and that probably - but not necessarily - was the

initial cause of the sequence of problems.

The investigators believe they must recover key components of

the wreckage that are 60 metres down and eight kilometres off

Peggy's Cove. And with winter fast approaching, recovering the wreckage has

become a race against time.

"We are going to require more of the airplane" brought up from the bottom, Gerden said.

So far only a few lengths of wiring from the more than 160

kilometres aboard the MD-11 have been recovered and those

show no signs of faults, the Globe reported.

"Nothing that tells us anything," said Gerden.

The flight-data recorder has 256 channels that keep track of

performance of the plane's systems as well as flight-control

inputs and the flight path.

Gerden has said divers have recovered more "heat-distressed"

bits of the cockpit, but he would not say what they are. He

would say it seems they suffered the consequences of high

temperatures, rather than to have been the likely source of the heat.

He has also said about six minutes before the crash, which was

about the time the pilots declared an emergency in their last

transmission to the air-traffic control tower, there was a

conversation on the cockpit-voice recorder.

He would not say whether they were commenting about

smoke, heat, or visibility or whether conditions were reaching

the stage where it would be difficult to fly the plane. ____________________________________________________________________

Friday,  September 4, 1998

MD-11s had wiring faults

By BRAD EVENSON & CHARLIE GILLIS -- Southam News

Swissair officials could not say yesterday whether the company

had corrected a problem identified two years ago in McDonnell

Douglas MD-11s - a problem that could have caused a crash

just like that of Flight 111.

The Swissair press office could not even confirm the company

had received a 1996 bulletin from the U.S. Federal Aviation

Administration outlining the potentially disastrous problem with MD-11s.

But company officials said they almost certainly would have

fixed the problem immediately after receiving such a warning.

The FAA bulletin, circulated to airlines worldwide, warned of a

wiring fault that could lead to fire and seriously impair the

pilot's ability to control the aircraft. A burnt electrical cable

found in the left aft console of a MD-11 is "likely to exist or

develop on other airplanes if the same type design," the bulletin stated.

If left uncorrected it could lead to a fire that would rob the

planes of rudder control and horizontal stability, the memo cautioned.

The warning was classified as a directive, meaning all U.S.

airlines were required to fix the problem on penalty of losing

their operating certificates.

It instructed the carriers to install a small guard over a control

cable to stop it from chafing against another wire and causing

an electrical short.

The warning could prove critical in the investigation of

Wednesday's crash: radio transmissions show the pilots of

Swissair Flight 111 were fighting for control of the plane in a

smoke-filled cockpit as they tried to make an emergency

landing in Halifax and appeared to be losing control as they

blinked off radar at 2,400 metres.

FAA directives are usually adopted by aviation administrations

around the world. While it's not mandatory for foreign carriers

to obey them, most do for fear of disaster, said FAA

spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere.

Swissair enjoys a reputation as one of the world's safest

airlines, with 19 fatality free years prior to Wednesday's crash.

Its fleet is maintained by a subsidiary which, according to one

safety expert, rebuilds its planes "like Swiss watches." __________________________________________________________________

Friday, September 4, 1998

By David Rodenhiser -- The Daily News

Facts about Swissair Flight 111 and the MD-11, which crashed off Peggy's Cove:

Pilot Urs Zimmermann, 50, and co-pilot Stefan Low, 36. The

two Swiss men had flown the same jet in the last few days and

reported no irregularities.

A McDonnell Douglas MD-11, the plane was put into service

in August 1991 and was overhauled last August and September.

It had been checked before take off.

The plane had completed some 6,400 flights and 35,000 flight hours.

The MD-11 is the successor to the DC10, and is the world's

only modern wide-cabin airliner powered by three engines.

A standard configuration MD-11 (as the Swissair jet was) can carry 285 people.

It is 61.2 metres long, with a range of 12,270 kilometres, and

cruising speed of 877 km-h. Empty, the plane weighs 132,270

kilograms. Maximum take-off weight is 273,290 kg.

Built in Long Beach, Calif., there are 178 MD-11s worldwide.

The first flew in 1990. Boeing plans to stop making MD-11s in 2000.

__________________________________________________________________

By Murray Brewster -- The Canadian Press

Making the so-called "black boxes" on jetliners battery powered

might be as simple as switching a couple of wires, says an

official with one of the device manufacturers.

"It's basically replacing one wire that powers the (cockpit voice

recorder) with another wire," said Greg Francois, manager of

data recorders with Allied Signals.88

"It could be as simple as modifying one wire. Personally, I

don't think it's very hard at all."

Both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight-data recorder on

Swissair Flight 111 quit working six minutes before the MD-11

crashed into the ocean off Nova Scotia on Sept. 2. All 229

people aboard were killed.

Investigators are looking into the theory a massive power

failure, the result of an electrical fire, brought down the aircraft.

The recorders are plugged into a jet's emergency power supply

that operates on an alternating current. Some systems on the

MD-11 rely on battery power in an emergency.

Some have suggested black boxes, which keep track of the

plane's operations, be battery powered to give investigators

more information.

"We have six minutes here that we'll never know thanks to the

fact that we've never independently powered these devices,"

said John Nance, an aviation analyst in Tacoma, Wash., with

35 years' experience as a commercial pilot.

"It's time to do it."

Francois said the rewiring process in most cases would not be a

complicated or expensive procedure, although it would depend

on the age of the aircraft and the recorders. But he questions

whether it's necessary to have both devices backed up with batteries.

Cockpit conversations would be of the most use to investigators, Francois said.

"The (flight-data recorder) is a highly distributed system on

modern airplanes," he said.

"The recorder itself is really just a dumb box that gets a digital

data stream." It is useful only as long as there is data to input,

said Francois. In the case of a massive power failure, the device

would have nothing to record anyway.

___________________________________________________________________

Saturday, September 5, 1998

WASHINGTON (CP-staff) - A crew disoriented by toxic

fumes fed by a fire caused by faulty wiring might be the cause

of the Swissair Flight 111 crash, a former senior investigator for

the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday.

The lack of fire on the water, relatively small fuel slick and

witness accounts of groaning and sputtering engines before the

crash suggests the MD-11 might have run out of fuel after a

disoriented crew failed to notice how little remained in the jet's

tanks, said Vernon Grose.

"Wiring will be the No. 1 suspect," said Grose, who

investigated at least a dozen jetliner crashes as head of the

NTSB's "Go-Team" of major accidents. A 1996 U.S. Federal

Aviation Authority bulletin warned of a wiring fault that could

lead to fire and seriously impair the pilot's ability to control the aircraft.

But in Halifax yesterday, Swissair spokesman Hans Klaus said

guards had been installed in the company's fleet of 18 MD-11s.

"There is an upgrade that was made," Klaus said. "It was done

since a long time on every plane of the Swissair fleet."

John Nance, an aviation analyst and author in Tacoma, Wash.,

where Boeing manufactures most of its aircraft, said it would

be fair to extrapolate based on what's known now that the crew

were incapacitated before the plane hit the water.

"Pilots don't give up," Nance said. "Either they were

incapacitated by some toxicological agent or they could no

longer control the aircraft."

Grose said: "It will be very important to listen to the tapes of

the voice cockpit recorder to see if the pilots' speech was slurred."

Those tapes were still beneath the ocean surface on the as-yet

unlocated cockpit voice recorder. But Vic Gerden, the lead

Canadian investigator in Halifax, said a reading of the transcript

of the flight crew's conversations with air traffic controllers

suggested they were dealing with the situation in a professional manner.

The transcript suggested the crew realized they were in an

emergency but were reacting calmly, the Canadian investigator

said yesterday afternoon. But Nance said there was clearly

some sudden unforseen deterioration in the condition of the

pilots or aircraft.

"If this was an uncontrollable situation, this crew would have

headed directly for the airport. There would be no turning away

from the airport to dump fuel."

Nance said the Swissair crew turned the MD-11 southwest and

stabilized their flight pattern while dumping fuel - a standard

procedure to reduce risk of fire before making an emergency landing.

"Suddenly there is a course reversal of 180 degrees straight

toward Halifax airport," Nance said. "Things began to

deteriorate and deteriorate very fast, more than likely an

uncontrolled descent into the water."

"There may have been a fire below decks that masqueraded as

being under control, that was quickly out of control."

Judging from the wreckage and remains recovered so far, there

was little sign of a fuel-fed fire or explosion on board, the U.S.

experts said.

There was no fire either on the surface of the ocean near

Peggy's Cove, where the Swissair plane went down. In

contrast, there was a ring of flames around the crash site off

Long Island, N.Y., when TWA Flight 800 crashed two years ago.

The absence of these factors suggests an electrical fire that

might have had its flames in a concealed place and generated

smoke that confused the crew to the point where they might

have dumped too much fuel, Grose said. The Swissair pilot told

air traffic controllers minutes before the crash Wednesday night

smoke was filling the cockpit.

"There might have been so much smoke in the cockpit that the

pilot might have been disabled by toxic fumes and couldn't tell

how little fuel he had in the aircraft," said Grose.

"No fire on the water, along with the gasping, sputtering engines

tells me he had nothing in the tanks."

Witnesses who heard the jet before it plummeted into the ocean

said the three engines were not making the usual high-pitched

screech of jet engines when the aircraft passed over the Nova Scotia shore.

"It sounded terrible," said Edie Boyle. "It was just droning."

"The motors were going, but it was the worst-sounding deep

groan that I've ever heard," said another witness, Claudia

Zinck-Gilroy.

________________________________________________________________________

the Swissair incident, but a flight engineer might have also

ended up as "a third person being blinded'' by the smoke.

Robert Vandel, director of technology projects with the

Virginia-based Flight Safety Foundation, said economics never

played a part in the move to two-person cockpits a decade ago.

Automation drove the industry to eliminate the third crewmember.

The industry believes automation is superior to having human

beings solely responsible for safety, he said. "In many cases,

automatics will identify a problem long before a crew will know

anything about it,'' he said.

____________________________________________________________________

Friday, September 25, 1998

Regulators, airlines, and aircraft manufacturers have long had

misgivings about a controversial wiring insulation used aboard

Swissair's doomed MD-11 jet that crashed off Peggy's Cove on

Sept. 2, documents show.

Letters and internal reports obtained by The Canadian Press

suggest the safety of aromatic polyimide insulation has been

repeatedly questioned by the industry since at least 1973, when

it failed aboard an L-1011 aircraft.

The insulation, known by its DuPont trade name Kapton, was

banned from many U.S. military aircraft more than a decade

ago, but is still used aboard commercial airliners, including

many MD-11s.

"Because of Kapton's notch sensitivity and other minus factors

such as springiness, delamination, difficulty in stripping, and

cost, we will strongly object to any proposed use of this wire on

future TWA aircraft," TWA's director of electronics

engineering wrote the Boeing Co. on June 30, 1977.

The U.S. navy first took measures to limit the use of aromatic

polyimide tape in its aircraft in the 1980s after it was found to

break down under the extremes of heat and humidity found at sea.

Wire-and-cable experts likened that to a canary in a coal mine.

A 1982 U.S. air force memo said Kapton's "top coat is

susceptible to chafing ... and its insulating material can absorb water."

FAA tests "demonstrated that the ability of an aircraft wire to

resist wet arc-tracking and possible flash-over is highly

dependent on the composition of the wire insulation."

McDonnell-Douglas, since taken over by Boeing, began using a

combination of Kapton and Teflon known as TKT. But the

polymer insulation remained in 727s and older MD-11s. - CP

_____________________________________________________________________

The Daily News

Thursday, October 1, 1998

By Stephen Thorne -- The Canadian Press

EASTERN PASSAGE - A Swiss pilot and his co-pilot

probably abandoned the cockpit, lost consciousness, or died

before their MD-11 passenger jet plummeted into the Atlantic

Ocean, says an aviation expert.

Evidence collected from the site where Swissair Flight 111 went

down suggests there was no one at the controls of the

wide-bodied jet shortly before it crashed Sept. 2, said Vernon

Grose, a one-time presidential appointee who says he's spoken

to people close to the probe.

"It may be that the crew expired before they hit," Grose said

yesterday from Arlington, Va. "They may have abandoned the

cockpit just due to the fire there and set it up as best they could."

Deepsea divers coming off a gruelling month salvaging the

downed jet described melted electrical equipment and other

evidence the plane's cockpit was an "undesirable place to be" in

the minutes before it crashed.

"Some of that circuitry has gone through a lot of testing to

make sure it will not do this - it will not get hot, it will not melt

down - and it was really stressed by heat," said Leading

Seaman Gavin Wort, a navy diver.

"Circuits had been melted. Wires were melted. Obviously, if

that's anywhere near a human being up in the air, that's not

going to be a desirable place to be."

Wort and fellow divers have spent the last month off Peggy's

Cove recovering remains of the plane's 229 passengers and

crew along with key evidence. The pilots' bodies have not been

identified, said a spokeswoman.

Investigators believe the plane succumbed to massive electrical

failures. Swiss pilot Urs Zimmermann reported cockpit smoke

about 18 minutes before the jet disappeared from airport

radars. Cockpit voice recordings indicate the smoke first

appeared three minutes before they radioed the problem.

The plane's black boxes stopped working six minutes before the crash.

Canadian authorities said they have not recovered enough

material to back Grose's theory and cautioned some pieces that

appear to be burned are not.

"We've got some parts with definite heat stress on them, and

they come from the cockpit area - there's no doubt about that,"

said Jim Harris, a spokesman for the Transportation Safety

Board of Canada.

"There's not enough of those pieces to develop any sort of hypothesis."

But Grose, who served on the U.S. National Transportation

Safety Board and was a consultant to several inquiries, said the

cockpit crew might not have donned masks quickly enough to

avoid toxic smoke.

"The smoke may have gotten to them physiologically," said

Grose. "They could have burned to death or they could have

just passed out."

Some evidence indicates melted materials dripped on to cockpit seats.

"Rather than just burn to death, they might have set it up as

best they could do with an autopilot and got out of there," said Grose.

"It's a frightening thing, to say the least."

Recovery efforts have continued since the crash. Heavier lift

equipment is expected to take over the operation soon.

Divers described a surreal underwater world of jagged, twisted

metal stacked five metres high and dotted with human remains.

Their lifelines, which run along the ocean bottom and up to the

surface 19 storeys above were constantly getting snagged in

wreckage, threatening their every movement.

"It's a scramble down there," said Leading Seaman Scott

Murphy, 30, of Witless Bay, Nfld. "You get as much as you

can in as short a period of time as you can."

The plane is in "millions and millions" of pieces, some as small

as a pie plate and most concentrated in a 70-by-30-metre area.

Little was recognizable, nor was it in any sensible order as

divers worked madly to make the most of their maximum 28

minutes at the bottom. Each dive required a slow ascent and

nearly three hours in a decompression chamber.

Investigators and manufacturer's representatives watched every

dive, directing divers to sites of specific interest.

"They seemed to have a keen eye for the burnt wires and

circuit boards, anything that could give them some sort of idea

as to what happened," said Wort.

Diving operations in the search zone were scaled back

yesterday in preparation of heavy-lift operations. U.S.S.

Grapple and HMCS Halifax returned to port this morning.

HMCS Halifax, which handled duties as on-scene commander,

has turned those duties over to HMCS Anticosti. Anticosti

continues to conduct video sweeps of the area using

remote-control submersibles.

Canadian divers are on standby at the fleet diving unit near

Shearwater. Investigators are considering using a heavy-lifting

barge, the Saipem 7000, to pick debris off the ocean floor.

__________________________________________________________________

Wednesday, September 23, 1998

Engine controllers might have kept working after black boxes cut out

By RICHARD DOOLEY -- The Daily News

Transportation Safety Board investigators are hoping navy

divers will surface with any number of "magic bullets" that

could solve the riddle of Swissair Flight 111.

The Boeing MD-11 crashed into the ocean off Peggy's Cove on

Sept. 2, killing all 229 people on board. Canadian and U.S.

navy divers have been involved in a massive recovery operation

off the coast to retrieve victim remains and key aircraft components.

The plane crashed shortly after the flight crew reported smelling

smoke in the cockpit. The pilot had declared an emergency and

was trying to make an emergency landing at Halifax

International Airport when the plane went down.

Investigators are looking for computer memory chips in the

plane's three jet engines. The engine controllers, as they are

called, could tell investigators what happened during the final

six minutes the flight-data recorder and cockpit-voice recorder

did not function.

"That could be very, very useful," said Transportation Safety

Board spokesman Dana Doiron.

Doiron explained, because the engine controllers are powered

directly from the engines themselves, they might still contain

data up to the point of impact. The controllers normally supply

data to service technicians who plug them into a service computer.

Investigators speculate increasing electrical problems crippled

the aircraft as it was flying from New York to Geneva.

Components in the avionic bay of the aircraft, a large

compartment located directly under the cockpit that is the

plane's main electrical switchboard, would also be valuable to

the investigation, said Doiron.

"That is what the teams are looking for now," he said.

Investigators refer to these components as "targets of priority."

Divers have been asked to bring up any parts of the aircraft that

appear burned and to look for "targets of opportunity." Those

might include wiring components and items that might help identify victims.

Remotely operated submersibles are being lowered on the

debris field from by Canadian Coast Guard and navy ships to

videotape debris, but also to make the recovery operation a

little safer for divers working from the USS Grapple and the

Canadian diving tenders Granby and Sechelt.

The submersibles are being used during the night to move

debris around and remove underwater hazards. Divers have

snagged umbilical lines and ripped suits and gloves on the razor-sharp debris.

The submersibles have also exposed human remains under the debris. More than

900 kilograms of remains were recovered over the last few days.

Navy salvage experts are looking for ways of bringing up more

pieces of the plane all at once.

"We have to be careful when we do that because if lose them,

we have to go back down and find them again," said Canadian

Forces spokesman Capt. Andre Berdais.

Investigators are also keeping an eye on the weather.

Underwater currents and tides keep the debris field in constant motion.

A storm could magnify the effect and spread the debris outside

the 70-metre by 30-metre main wreckage site.

"There are a couple of tropical storms we are keeping an eye on," said Doiron.

____________________________________________________________

Wednesday, September 23, 1998

Investigators probing the crash of Swissair Flight 111 are

holding out hope a third black box might carry information lost

when two others fell silent in the flight's final six minutes.

The quick-access recorder, an optional device for maintenance

purposes, might have continued operating after the flight-data

and cockpit-voice recorders quit as the MD-11 descended

below 10,000 feet on Sept. 2, officials said.

The device, known as the QAR, has yet to be found. The box

doesn't monitor as many systems as the critical flight-data

recorder. It also doesn't have a locator beacon and it isn't crash-proof.

But investigators say it might still contain valuable data that

could help them explain the deaths of 229 passengers and crew

about 18 minutes after pilot Urs Zimmermann reported smoke

in the cockpit.

"It is a possibility," said Dana Doiron of the Transportation

Safety Board of Canada. "Like all other pieces, it's the luck of

the game how it survived the crash.

"But also, the individual components inside - the memory and

the tape - wouldn't necessarily be destroyed. It's a matter of

taking the magnetic tape and cleaning it and trying to retrieve

data from it."

Investigators suspect electrical problems led to the progressive

failure of systems on the wide-body aircraft before it finally

crashed near Peggy's Cove.

Other monitoring systems could also answer questions. Among

them are three digital engine controls, or small computers, and

avionics circuit boards with memory chips that can retain

information after the power quits.

Investigators also want to focus on cockpit devices and any

systems the flight-data recorder suggested had problems.

There is more than 260 kilometres of electrical wire aboard an

MD-11. – CP

_____________________________________________________________________

Friday, September 18, 1998

By RICHARD DOOLEY -- The Daily News

Wreckage from Swissair Flight 111 is so mangled and

fragmented even aviation experts are having trouble identifying

pieces of the jet.

"We are slowly identifying pieces of the wreckage, but even the

manufacturers representatives are having trouble identifying

individual pieces of the plane," said Vic Gerden, chief

investigator for the Transportation Safety Board.

The Swissair jet, a three-engined, wide-bodied Boeing MD-11,

crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia near Peggy's Cove Sept.

2, killing all 229 people on board. The plane was attempting to

make an emergency landing at Halifax International Airport

after the pilot and co-pilot detected smoke in the cockpit.

Investigators are using remoteoperated, submersible camera

platforms to videotape pieces of wreckage for identification.

But the plane is so badly destroyed in many cases searchers

must zoom in on the serial numbers of parts to try to identify them.

"A typical piece of wreckage is about a metre or less," said

Gerden, showing a piece of wreckage identified as part of the

housing around the main landing gear of the airplane. The piece

is no larger than a child's car seat.

The search is concentrated on a debris field narrowed to a

70-metre-by-30-metre section of seabed.

Underwater video footage of the debris field shows rubble piled

upon rubble in a tangled mass of wreckage and human remains

in about 60 metres of water.

Sonar targets interpreted as larger intact pieces of fuselage have

proven to be piles of debris spread along the seafloor. Gerden

said that alone is giving investigators some leads.

"The size of the pieces indicates the violence of the initial

impact," he said. Searchers have made underwater camera

contact and sonar contact with what investigators hope might

be one of the jet's engines.

Information from the engine's on-board computer may yield

some clues to why the jet took its fatal plunge into the sea.

Investigators also want to get a look at the plane's avionics,or

electronic controls, to prove or disprove the theory electrical

faults disabled the jet.

"The recovery of the avionics is potentially important," said

Gerden. Computer chips in the avionics may give some clues to

flight information and how the plane was handling before it crashed.

But finding specific pieces might be a slow process. Divers

move carefully through the dark underwater carnage. Suits are

easily ripped on the jagged pieces of metal.

Divers plan their dives by viewing the area using the

underwater video cameras.

Meanwhile, analysis of the cockpit voice recorder recovered

last week shows the crew discussed a burning smell about 31/2

minutes before they made a trouble call to air-traffic control in

Moncton reporting smoke in the cockpit. The pilot and co-pilot

had begun trouble-shooting to determine the source of the smell

when they made their trouble call, and a 11/2 minutes later they

donned oxygen masks as they followed a normal checklist to

By RICHARD DOOLEY -- The Daily News

The debris spread across the floor of Shearwater's Hangar B is telling a story.

The mangled metal, plastic, and wiring set inside a grid pattern

on the floor representing a passenger jet is all that remains of

Swissair Flight 111.

The New York-to-Geneva-bound flight crashed off Peggy's

Cove on Sept. 2, killing all 229 passengers and crew on board.

The typical piece is no more than a metre in diameter. There

are some larger pieces of debris. An aft section of the fuselage

is about 10 metres long and the left, main landing gear are the

largest pieces pulled off the ocean bottom about 10 kilometres

southwest of Peggy's Cove.

"This is a very time-consuming process," said Jim Foot, a

Transportation Safety Board investigator examining wreckage.

"Even identifying individual pieces is difficult unless you get a

large piece like the landing gear."

Investigators pore over wreckage looking for bits of serial

numbers or anything that can tell them where it came from on the aircraft.

Boeing representatives are helping the Transportation Safety

Board identify the debris.

"They've been providing us with invaluable assistance," said Foot.

The investigators have been able to determine a few things

from the wreckage they've seen.

The plane's landing gear was retracted at the time of the crash.

Besides some heat-damaged wreckage, positively identified as

from the cockpit area, other small bits of wreckage appear to

have sustained heat damage. Investigators aren't sure what area

of the plane the debris is from. There have been significant

amounts of cockpit debris or sections of the aircraft's avionics,

or electrical, system.

Analysis of the wreckage and the underwater debris field should

tell investigators the angle at which the plane struck the water.

"The main debris is in an area about 70 metres across," said

Foot. "Consider we are talking about a (60-metre) long aircraft

with a (51-metre) wing span contained in a small area."

Comparisons are inevitably drawn with the explosion of TWA

Flight 800 over Long Island, N.Y. That air disaster killed 230

people and scattered debris over a wide area of ocean.

Investigators there partially reconstructed the fuselage of the plane.

No such reconstruction is being planned for Swissair Flight 111.

Foot said 3-D reconstruction is expensive and not always

necessary to find the cause.

"This is not like the TWA accident where you had an in-flight

separation and investigators had to do a 3-D reconstruction to

find the where, the why, and what happened," said Foot.

Swissair Flight 111 investigators have several ideas already of

what happened to the aircraft as it was approaching Halifax

International Airport for an emergency landing after the pilots

reported smelling smoke in the cockpit.

The plane was crippled by electrical problems and investigators

want a look at electronic components or any components

containing computer memory chips.

An engine controller, from one of the three jet engines, was

sent to the jet engine manufacturer Pratt and Whitney. The

controller might contain electronic data that will give

investigators a clue to the cause of the crash.

Diving operations continue in the search zone.

_____________________________________________________________

Thursday, September 17, 1998

Swissair wreckage appears to be in piles of rubble on ocean floor

By RICHARD DOOLEY -- The Daily News

Swissair Flight 111 shattered like glass hitting cement when it

crashed into the ocean off Peggy's Cove, contradicting earlier

reports of several large sections.

"The divers are telling me the wreckage looks like a Coke bottle

dropped on a cement floor," said Canadian Forces spokesman

Capt. Andre Berdais. "There is nothing recognizable as an aircraft there."

Cmdr. Greg Aikins of HMCS Halifax, a naval frigate collecting

debris concurred.

"The aircraft is literally shattered on the bottom," Aikins said.

"Thus far there are no big pieces except for big things like landing gear."

The federal Transportation Safety Board had said the plane

was in five large sections on the rocky ocean floor of St.

Margaret's Bay. One of the sections detected by sonar was

thought to be a piece of fuselage containing bodies.

The largest piece lifted yesterday aboard USS Grapple, a U.S.

navy salvage ship, was about the size of a pool table.

Asked about the five pieces of fuselage originally thought to

exist, Aikins said: "That is clearly not the case."

Sidescan sonar sweeps of the debris field had picked up five

large sections of what searchers hoped were fuselage. Sweeps

with higher resolution sonar and remotely operated underwater

cameras now show the large sections might be just piles of rubble.

"The large pieces may be just an illusion," said Transportation

Safety Board spokesman Jim Harris.

Navy and police divers are picking up the tempo in collecting

human remains and debris from the search zone about 10

kilometres southwest of Peggy's Cove.

"Our main priority remains the retrieval of human remains,"

said Berdais. A massive recovery operation has been in effect

since the fatal jet crash Sept. 2.

Berdais said divers have moving faster because a lot of human

remains are entangled in the piles of debris.

"If we find something that we are specifically asked to bring up,

we bring it up as we find it," said Berdais.

Investigators are especially interested in recovering the wiring

and cockpit area of the jet, Transportation Safety Board

spokesman Dana Doiron said.

Searchers are concentrating on completing detailed mapping of

the ocean floor and using laser-equipped sonar to get an

accurate picture of the debris fields.

"We are looking at probable areas where there might be

wreckage and trying to prove or disprove it is there," said

Harris. "We are still trying to get a handle on what is down there."

Both the flight-data recorder and the cockpit-voice recorder

stopped working six minutes before the plane crashed. The

flight-data recorder did pick up a series of progressive faults in

the plane's electrical systems.

By Dean Beeby -- The Canadian Press

The Swissair disaster is the third airline accident in Atlantic

Canada in the last year in which a satellite-based rescue system

could not be used to direct search crews to the precise location of a crash.

The Boeing MD-11 airliner that crashed Sept. 2 near Peggy's

Cove, killing all 229 aboard, carried a rescue beacon in its tail

section designed to emit an emergency signal automatically in a crash.

But the device, known as an emergency locator transmitter or

ELT, was not intended to work under water, said Emil Srehner,

a Swissair maintenance official in Zurich.

"It was really designed for an accident on ground," Srehner said

in an interview. "It's not designed for water."

An international satellite system picked up the beacon in the

general area of Peggy's Cove, but the battery-driven signal was

too weak for rescue aircraft to home in precisely on the transmissions.

"The ELT itself was somewhat damaged or partially

submerged," said Maj. Michel Brisebois, head of the rescue

co-ordination centre in Halifax. "Our airplanes weren't capable

of homing in on it."

Initial search a large area

As a result, the initial search area encompassed a

36-kilometre-wide swath of land and sea around Flight 111's

last-known radar position off Peggy's Cove, when the aircraft

was still about 300 metres off the ground, Brisebois said.

Compounding the problem was the accidental triggering of

another rescue beacon on a pleasure craft near Digby that was

being put away for the winter.

"It confused the whole issue because we thought that that signal

was part of the (Swissair) ELT and within a few hours we

found out it was a different one," Brisebois said.

15 minutes to confirm crash

Last Dec. 16, rescue workers spent almost 15 minutes

confirming an Air Canada regional jet had crashed in thick fog

at Fredericton airport. None of the 42 people aboard was killed,

but several passengers suffered injuries when the aircraft

plowed into trees.

Federal regulations dating from the 1970s did not require the jet

to carry a rescue beacon that might have helped confirm the

crash and identify its precise location. Transport Canada

officials have since begun a review of regulations.

And on May 18, a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft with 10 people aboard

crashed-landed in a bog near Clarenville, Nfld. No one died but

several suffered severe injuries.

The aircraft did not carry a beacon to direct search-and-rescue

crews because it had been removed for servicing, as allowed by

federal regulations. Transport Canada officials are also

reviewing this regulation.

The Swissair device, standard in the industry, is based on older

technology Canadian search-and-rescue officials have long

lobbied against. They are pressing for a new beacon, used in

the marine sector, that provides a more precise location, down

to within 100 metres.

The new beacons cost about 10 times the $200-to-$300 price

tag for the older technology.

_____________________________________________________________

Wednesday, September 9, 1998

By Stephen Thorne -- The Canadian Press

The pilot of doomed Swissair Flight 111 may have sealed his

own fate and that of 228 others aboard by resetting a circuit

breaker as his troubled jet descended below 10,000 feet, say

aviation experts.

Pilot Urs Zimmermann might only have been following

procedure as he brought his Boeing MD-11 down to an altitude

that allowed him to open a window to clear cockpit smoke, say

wire-and-cable experts. But what he likely didn't know might

have killed him.

The wiring aboard Zimmermann's plane was laden with

aromatic polyimide tape insulation, or Kapton, a widely used

aviation product the U.S. military banned 11 years ago because

it's prone to breakdown and can promote electrical arcing.

Edward Block said in an interview from Washington, D.C. that

emergency checklists often recommend testing circuits by

resetting circuit breakers once enough cockpit smoke has cleared.

Detailed air-traffic-control transcripts released yesterday suggest

Zimmermann and co-pilot Stephan Loew were following a

checklist as they tried to overcome the difficulties they faced.

Block was the U.S. Defence Department's wire-and-cable

crash off Long Island, N.Y.

He said many airline pilots are unaware of problems specific to

Kapton that could spell disaster if flight crews follow normal

procedure once a circuit breaker is tripped.

"Your tendency would be to reset that circuit breaker to see

what happens and, in so doing, you've sealed your fate. It's just

the beginning of the end." Investigators have said evidence in

the crash of Flight 111 off Peggy's Cove suggests an electrical

failure below 10,000 feet.

Early information from the flight-data recorder released

yesterday suggests systems aboard the MD-11 did not all fail at

once, said Vic Gerden, chief investigator for the Transportation

Safety Board of Canada.

Block said a pilot would typically isolate the source of the

smoke then, below 10,000 feet, help vent the air by opening the

cockpit window.

"Then you reset the circuit-breaker," said Block. "In so doing,

you've now sent a charge of electricity to a charred wire

insulation that is now going to actually ignite into what is called

a flash-over effect."

A flash-over, or arcing, refers to electricity escaping from a

wire like a bolt of lightning.

Patrick Price, a retired wiring technician who built Boeing's

arc-tracking laboratory in Seattle, called aromatic polyimide

tape insulation, or Kapton, "the most explosive wire that they

can put on an airplane right now.

"Every time you get into an airplane that's flying with Kapton

wiring, you are flying with a potential incendiary bomb that's

ready to go off at any time if the conditions are just right."

Wiring problems aboard MD-11s have been the subject of

several U.S. Federal Aviation Administration directives warning

of potentially hazardous configurations in the cockpit and in a

rear console for flight attendants.

Swissair president Jeffrey Katz has said his company complied

with all FAA directives. However, the directives did not say the

Kapton insulation should be changed.

______________________________________________________________

Thursday, September 10, 1998

By Stephen Thorne -- The Canadian Press

Boeing MD-11 aircraft, like the one that crashed off Peggy's

Cove last week killing all 229 aboard, are less reliable than their

low accident rate suggests, says a top consultant.

An analysis to be published in the next issue of Aviation

Quantitative Reports on Safety, a research newsletter, assesses

the wide-bodied jets that have had just two fatal crashes in

eight years since they have been built.

"Accidents are an insufficient criteria of safety," says Dr. Alex

Richman, a Halifax epidemiologist and former professor at

Dalhousie University who turned his expertise to airline safety

after his son was killed in a 1991 Los Angeles runway collision.

Richman's team assessed critical problems in 43 MD-11s and

300 757s that filed service difficulty reports in the United States

between 1991 and 1995.

During the five-year period, there were 167 safety-related

reports and recommendations filed on fewer than 50

U.S.-based MD-11s. There were only 144 filed on behalf of

more than 300 U.S.-based 757s.

Almost a quarter of the MD-11s - 23.3 per cent - took the

precautionary procedure of dumping fuel at least once,

compared with none of the 757s.

More than 37 per cent of the MD-11s shut down engines,

compared with 20 per cent of 757s. And more than 72 per cent

of MD-11s made unscheduled landings, compared with 51.3

per cent of 757s.

"There is little in these data to support the idea that the MD-11

is exceptionally safe," said Richman, whose methods and

results are widely accepted throughout the industry. "Accidents

are the tip of the iceberg."

Richman compared the wide-bodied MD-11s with the

narrow-bodied 757s because there are no other wide-bodied,

tri-engined jets to compare with the MD-11. Also, the two

aircraft are of similar vintage.

Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic off Peggy's Cove

on Sept. 2, the apparent result of an electrical fire. Swissair has

said the plane was well-maintained.

Richman said the number of safety reports on MD-11s is

particularly disturbing given the departures involved - 96,500

for the MD-11s compared with almost 2.2 million for the 757s,

or almost 23 times as many 757 takeoffs.

He also cited flying hours - 594,400 MD-11 hours compared

with 5.2 million for the 757. He calls the results troublesome:

Vibration was reported in 27.9 per cent of MD-11s and 7.7 per cent of 757s.

Warning lights came on at least once in 74.4 per cent of

MD-11s and only half of the 757s.

There were hydraulic malfunctions in 39.5 per cent of

MD-11s and only 14 per cent of 757s.

_____________________________________________________________

Tuesday, September 8, 1998

U.S. navy banned its use after poor performance

By Stephen Thorne -- The Canadian Press

Much of the electrical wiring aboard a plane that crashed into

the Atlantic Ocean was insulated with a highly volatile tape that

has been banned from use in U.S. navy planes, the

manufacturer confirmed yesterday.

All the general-purpose wiring aboard Swissair Flight 111 was

insulated with aromatic polyimide tape, also known by the trade

name Kapton, said Susan Bradley, a spokeswoman for the

Boeing Co. in Seattle, Wash.

"The Swissair airplane was exclusively Kapton for

general-purpose wiring," Bradley told The Canadian Press.

The cockpit smoke reported by pilot Urs Zimmermann before

he crashed was likely the result of an electrical fire that could

have shut down the plane's fuel supply, said Vernon Grose, a

Virginia consultant.

Grose, a wiring expert and former crash investigator, said

Zimmermann and co-pilot Stephan Loew might also have

blacked out before their transatlantic flight ended Wednesday in

waters off Peggy's Cove, killing all 229 aboard.

"There was a fire or arcing somewhere producing that smoke,"

Grose said in an interview. "The most likely culprit is electrical."

Aromatic polyimide tape insulation often becomes brittle, he said.

Hop, skip, jump down wire

"Under vibration, or shock, sometimes water or contamination -

spilled coffee or anything else - it will break over and when it

arcs, it arcs at about 5,000 degrees Kelvin, which would

vaporize anything in the area.

"Furthermore, the arc tracks," added Grose, a wiring specialist

who investigated the ValuJet Flight 592 crash in Florida in 1996.

"It will go hopping, skipping, jumping down a wire bundle.

When that happens, you can have all kinds of anomalies electrically."

Indeed, Flight 111's position beacon cut out below 10,000 feet,

leaving air-traffic controllers with only a blip to follow on their

radars and no altitude data. Witnesses reported seeing the plane

pass low overhead with her exterior lights out and cabin lights lit

up "like a hotel."

Grose said those same anomalies could also have affected

displays or fuel pumps as Flight 111 dumped fuel over St.

Margaret's Bay to lighten its landing load. Residents reported

sputtering or silence as it passed over.

"All that kind of audio testimony makes me believe he was in

fuel starvation," said Grose, noting there was no fire after the

jet hit the water even though its three engines were hot.

"If there was electrical failure of the pumps they could go right

on running, or if some of the guardian circuitry (designed to

prevent dumping the tanks empty) was gone, they could just

leave the aircraft dry."

He said Zimmermann and Loew could also have been blinded

by dense smoke and unable to read the instrument panel at all.

Wiring problems aboard MD-11s were the subject of two U.S.

Federal Aviation Administration directives, in 1996 and 1997.

They warned of potentially hazardous wiring in the cockpit and

in a rear console for flight attendants.

Swissair president Jeffrey Katz has said the company complied

with all directives. But the directives dealt with configurations, not materials.

Bradley said it was found in 1995 another combination of

insulation, Teflon and Kapton, was cheaper, lighter and met

safety standards.

Could break down in four years

"So they started transitioning," she said. "They went through

their Kapton stores and started introducing this TKT wiring so

some MD-11s have both kinds on board."

But not the particular aircraft piloted by Zimmermann, she said.

The U.S. navy banned aromatic polyimide tape insulation, or

Kapton, from its aircraft because of poor performance, Air

Safety Week, an industry newsletter, reported in yesterday's edition.

"Although the accident aircraft was only seven years old, this

type of wiring was observed to break down, creating conditions

for electrical arcing, in four years of service on some navy

aircraft," said the newsletter.

The fact aromatic polyimide tape insulation and older Poly-X

insulation remain aboard commercial aircraft highlights a

problem with the American regulator, said Grose.

"The FAA has not developed and maintained a competence on

wiring," he said. "They've acted as though once it's wired, it's

going to stay there.

"But it isn't that way and it does have a lot problems over time."

Grose, who recently completed a study of airport emergency

response for Transport Canada, also painted a disturbing

picture of Flight 111's last moments in the cockpit.

He said oxygen masks could have leaked and would not

necessarily have prevented Zimmermann and Loew from

blacking out, noting the flight data and cockpit voice recorders

should go a long way toward telling the story.

With only a partial air-traffic control tape to go on, the cockpit

voice recorder, particularly, should help investigators determine

whether there was "any physiological impact of smoke on the crew."

____________________________________________________________

Saturday, September 12, 1998

By RACHEL BOOMER with CP -- The Daily News

Hopes of finding exactly what caused the crash of Swissair

Flight 111 grew stronger yesterday when navy divers retrieved

the cockpit voice recorder.

But Transportation Safety Board spokesman Jim Harris warns

it will probably take at least a day for the recorder's information

to be analysed - if it contains information.

"If the recorder works, it could be a very good piece of data for

us. If it doesn't work, we're back to where we were before we

found it," said Harris.

"It'll enable us to tell what happened, definitely, as long as it works."

Using side-scan sonar, the investigation team located the

cockpit voice recorder - one of two twelve-by-twelve

centimetre, so-called "black boxes" - Monday. Poor weather

conditions kept divers from retrieving it until yesterday at 6

p.m., when it was brought up in fresh water from the ocean

floor, a depth of about 60 metres.

Its companion, the flight data recorder, was discovered to have

stopped working as the plane descended past 10,000 feet, and

no data was available from the flight's last six minutes. Experts

at the transportation safety board's Ottawa engineering lab have

begun to flush out the salt water, dry the recorder, and prepare

it for playback.

The cockpit voice recorder tapes all sounds in the cockpit,

including conversations, engine noises, and any warning sounds

from cockpit instruments. When it's working properly, it

recycles its tape every 30 minutes. A time code is stamped on

the tape each time someone speaks, making it easy for

investigators to tell precisely what data it could be missing.

It's a hardy instrument, Harris said, but even if it stopped

working, the safety board can compare its malfunction time

with that of the flight data recorder and air-traffic control

transcripts. That could corroborate evidence gleaned from the

data recorder, which suggests a widespread electrical failure

might have caused the crash.

Transcripts from the voice recorder won't be released, Harris

said, since Canada carries tight restrictions on how its

information can be used and the conversations it records are

considered private. The Transportation Safety Board might

choose to release parts of the transcript in a final report.

Navy spokesman Cmdr. Kevin Carle said diving conditions

were good at the time. Working from the diving tender Granby,

divers will continue looking for wreckage and human remains today.

The discovery came the same day Swissair confirmed the plane

that crashed had recently suffered a short-circuit in a piece of

cockpit electrical circuitry. Also yesterday, Boeing went on the

offensive saying they have had no complaints about a insulating

tape called Kapton, disputing reports the volatile wire insulator

used on the aircraft played a part in the crash.

In New York, hundreds of United Nations officials gathered at

a memorial to mourn the death of nine workers killed in the crash.

Also yesterday, a Swissair plane heading to New York with 151

people on board was involved in a near-miss yesterday with a

KLM jumbo jet over Ireland. Swissair spokesman Erwin

Schaerer said a collision was avoided thanks to electronic warning devices.

_____________________________________________________________________

Friday, September 11, 1998

By RICHARD DOOLEY -- The Daily News

The five final minutes recorded by Swissair Flight 111's flight

data recorder showed the plane was besieged by a number of

worsening electrical problems that might have affected the

pilot's ability to control the aircraft.

"The flight-data-recorder team in Ottawa has determined that a

progressive number of parameters exhibited anomalies in the

five final minutes of the flight recording," said Transport Safety

Board chief investigator Vic Gerden.

The anomalies are fault codes picked up by the recorder's

on-board computer generated by various electrical systems in

the aircraft.

The aircraft's electrical system, called avionics, will now come

under scrutiny by the safety board as it tries to piece together

the plane's last moments.

Gerden said the sequence of fault codes picked up by the

flight-data recorder is being analysed by a team of experts to try

and pinpoint the cause of the faults and when they started.

"We have not yet had enough time to understand the

significance of the sequence and pattern of these fault codes

developing," Gerden said.

Electrical maintenance scrutinized

Investigators are looking at the maintenance history of the

airplane, especially the electronics work.

Gerden said it is too early to know if the plane had a history of

electronic problems.

Investigators are hoping the recovery of the cockpit voice

recorder might yield clues to electrical problems aboard the

Boeing made MD-11 as it plunged into the sea off Peggy's

Cove Sept. 2, killing all 229 on board.

It's likely transcripts of the voice recorder will not be made

public, Gerden said.

Divers have located the second of the so-called black boxes,

but rough weather in the search zone has prevented its recovery.

Sonar sweeps of the search area has turned up more wreckage,

lying in about 54 metres of water. An engine cowling and two

wheels have been spotted using side-scan sonar and remotely

operated video cameras.

Three large sections of fuselage will likely be the target of

diving and recovery operations today and tomorrow.

The lifting of the larger sections of the aircraft by the United

States diving ship U.S.S. Grapple will depend on the removal of

any human remains still inside.

Canadian navy Capt. Phil Webster said diving operations are

prepared to work around the clock.

"Our priority is still the recovery of human remains and the

voice recorder," he said.

Investigators have also been able to identify the last moments

of the aircraft as it was recorded on the air-traffic-control audiotapes.

Crash recorded by seismographs

The last radar contact of the aircraft made with its automatic

transponder was recorded at 9,700 feet at 10:26:04 p.m. as it

was travelling at around 445 kilometres an hour.

The final radar contact with no transponder was recorded five

minutes later at 10:31:07 p.m.

The flight-data recorder also failed to record the last six minutes

of the plane's flight. Gerden said the investigation team will try

and match the times of the recorder failure and the radar

transponder failure.

Investigators checked with Geological Survey of Canada, at the

Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, to see if

seismic equipment there recorded the impact of the plane

striking the ocean.

"They confirmed that the seismographs recorded a peak event

at 10:31:22 hours local time," Gerden said.

"That peak event was detected as coming from the direction of

Peggy's Cove." Gerden said that is a good indication of the

precise time the aircraft hit the water.

Gerden said a buoy anchored off a shoal near the search zone

at the mouth of St. Margaret's Bay was not struck by the

crashing jet as it descended as earlier theorized.

Sweeps of beaches have been expanded to include

Lawrencetown and Conrod's Beach on the Eastern Shore. The

main focus of the ground search will concentrate on the