A 747 cargo flight takes off from Amsterdam.
It climbs over the densely populated city.
Suddenly, a powerful jolt rocks the aircraft.
8 minutes later, the Jumbo ploughs into a crowded apartment block.
How did a routine flight turn into Holland’s worst air crash?
Now, using advanced computer simulations,
we reveal what really downed El Al flight 1862.
Disasters don’t just happen.
They’re a chain of critical events.
Unravel the clues
and countdown those final seconds from disaster.
SECONDS FROM DISASTER SEASON 2.5 AMSTERDAM AIR CRASH SUBTITLE BY CHOCHANCUUDUC
Europe.
Holland.
Amsterdam.
15 kilometers from the city center,
Schiphol, one of the world’s busiest airports.
More than 600 aircraft take off or land here everyday.
Sunday, October 4th, 1992.
2:40pm.
An aircraft enthusiast takes this footage of an Israeli El Al 747 cargo plane
arriving from New York.
The Jumbo will load up and refuel
before flying to Tel Aviv in Israel as flight El Al 1862.
3 pm.
Loading begins, supervised by Jerry Plettenberg,
El Al’s operations officer.
Today’s cargo includes consumer products,
but some boxes are labeled “dangerous goods”.
Jerry has a good idea what’s inside.
On El Al cargo flights,
he’s seen a huge range of military hardware.
Apache helicopters, radar equipment, aircraft wings, missiles, jet engines for F16, F15,...
All these weapons supply the Israeli military
which is locked in a 45-year-old conflict with Palestinian militants.
The ongoing crisis makes El Al a top target for Arab terrorists.
7 years ago,
gunmen opened fire on El Al check-in queues in Rome and Vienna,
killing 19 people.
The airline stays on permanent alert for more attacks.
Armed security guards keep a close watch on all its planes and personnel.
And before loading, all freight passes through a pressure chamber
to detonate any bombs planted by terrorists.
5:20pm.
Flight 1862 is passed security checks.
Now the crew arrive for their pre-flight inspection.
The 747 is 13 years old,
but it still has at least 5 years of useful service before retirement.
59-year-old Captain Yitzhak Fuchs is in command.
Like many El Al pilots,
Fuchs is a combat hardened veteran of the Israeli Air Force.
He’s got 25000 pilot hours under his belt.
Flying alongside Fuchs
are Flight Engineer Gedalya Sofer and co-pilot Arnon Ohad,
the rookie of the crew.
Just 32, he’s been flying Jumbos for less than a year.
Flight 1862’s takeoff will be supervised by air traffic controller
Henriette van Opijnen.
It was wonderful flying weather. You can see to the end of the world.
All the flight paths in and out of Schiphol
passover densely populated areas of Amsterdam.
Under one of them,
lies the Bijlmer suburb, 13 kilometers to the east.
At its heart, the sprawling roeneveen apartment block.
It’s home to almost 2000 people.
Among them, Marlene Truideman, a nurse, and Guillermo, her son.
Everyday, planes would come over. You’ve got used to that after a while.
Guillermo was celebrated 17th birthday in five days' time.
He’s a typical teenager into pop music and martial arts movies,
but today he’s been to church with his mother.
The Truideman’s home is on the fifth floor of the Groeneveen block.
Marlene and her husband, Stanley,
are originally from Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America.
Graciella, their 14-year-old daughter,
is a popular girl who’s doing well at school.
Always laughing, always happy, and constant words for everyone.
6 pm.
On runway 1 at Schiphol,
Captain Fuchs powers up the 747’s 4 Pratt & Whitney engines.
El Al 1862, ready for taxi.
He hands over to his young co-pilot, Arnon Ohad,
to give him more flying experience on the 747.
6 minutes after takeoff,
El Al 1862 heads East, over Amsterdam suburbs.
6:27 pm and 30 seconds.
The engines are still a full thrust, as the Jumbo climbs to 6500 feet.
Everything is running like clockwork.
The crew settle in for the flight to Tel Aviv.
In less than 5 hours, they’ll be back on home soil, with their families.
Suddenly, a terrifying jolt rocks the plane.
It starts to lose altitude and rolls violently to the right.
Veteran pilot Captain Fuchs grabs the controls.
He battles to stabilize the Jumbo.
If he fails, the aircraft would spiral out of control.
El Al 1862, Mayday, Mayday! We have an emergency!
After 30 seconds,
Captain Fuchs manages to wrestle the Jumbo back to steady flights.
Flight Engineer Sofer desperately scans his control panels
to try to find out what’s wrong.
Seconds later, another crisis.
The instruments reveal that both engines on the right wing are out of action.
It’s a pilot’s nightmare.
Captain Fuchs must get back to Schiphol for an emergency landing, fast.
He tells co-pilot Ohad he needs the airport’s longest runway.
We request runway 27 for landing.
Air traffic control clears the Jumbo for a journey back to Schiphol.
That case heading 360, 360 the heading.
Roger.
The return route to runway 27
will take the Jumbo over the Bijlmer suburb,
where the Truideman family lives.
They and thousands of others in the crippled jet’s flight path
are completely unaware of the drama unfolding above them.
El Al 1862, a fully-loaded 747 cargo plane
is badly damaged and rapidly losing height.
El Al 1862, Mayday! Mayday! We have an emergency!
6:30pm.
Fire crews race in the position at Schiphol airport,
where the Jumbo is due to arrive in less than 10 minutes.
The 747 must make a descending turn over Amsterdam
to reach the correct altitude and lineup for runway 27.
Its final approach would take over the Groeneveen apartment complex,
where the Truideman family lives.
Marlene and Stanley decide to visit a friend nearby.
They tell the children, Guillermo and Graciella, they’ll be back soon.
6:33 pm and 35 seconds.
Air traffic controller Henk ter Braake clears the stricken Jumbo
to land at runway 27.
Okay, you have around 13 miles to go to touchdown. Speed is all yours.
The 747 is 2 minutes from the Bijlmer suburb.
Marlene and Stanley are halfway to their friend’s apartment.
It’s a typical Sunday evening,
many people are at home with their families.
It was very relaxed outside,
you could hear the children playing,
you could see the people on the walkways.
At this moment,
as Captain Fuchs lifts the nose to slow the Jumbo for landing,
the roll to the right returns.
He jams the rudder further to the left, but now the plane barely response.
Co-pilot Ohad alerts Schiphol.
Controlling problem!
Controlling problem as well.
The news send a chill through ter Braake.
He immediately contacts his colleague, Henriette van Opijnen.
Henk summarized to me by telephone and said
he’s now in deep, deep trouble.
90 seconds later,
Fuchs still battles to control the roll, but it’s getting worse.
And now, the Jumbo is losing height fast.
It’s just seconds from the Bijlmar suburbs.
Here, unaware of the looming danger,
Marlene and Stanley near the their friend’s apartment.
Teenagers Guillermo and Graciella relax at home.
Four floors up, at the other end of the Groeneveen block,
31-year-old Andre Bos hears the approaching rumble of jet engines.
You can’t destroy the noise, it’s getting louder, all the time.
And eventually, it starts to roar.
Suddenly, the roll accelerates to an extreme 90-degree angle,
and the Jumbo spirals towards the Bijlmer.
Raise the flaps, lower the gear!
Going down, going down…
The roll of the jet is now deafening.
Andre grabs the phone to call the emergency services.
Seconds later, a nightmare unfolds just meters from his home.
I look to the landing gear as it flew straight pass my balcony.
Marlene and Stanley reach their friend’s apartment.
In his tenth-floor apartment,
36-year-old bank worker Rinus de Haan is about to eat dinner.
A screech from his pet cat brings him to his balcony.
He’s paralyzed by what he sees:
the Jumbo is heading straight for his apartment block.
I saw my life go by a flash from my child to that moment.
I thought ‘It’s over’.
6:35 pm and 42 seconds,
El Al 1862 smashes into the sixth floor of the 11-story apartment block.
I heard a huge noise. It was a zipped door slam closed, like a bang.
The impact knocks Rinus unconscious.
Burning aviation fuel rains down onto dozens of apartments.
The sound of the crash
came from the direction of Marlene and Stanley’s home,
where they left their children just minutes ago.
The couple race back, gripped by fear.
What terrible disaster has struck their neighborhood?
And are Guillermo and Graciella in danger?
El Al 1862, a 747 freighter laden with cargo,
smashes into the sixth floor of an apartment block in Amsterdam.
6:35pm and 47 seconds.
Air traffic controller Henk ter Braake
realizes the signal from the Jumbo has stopped.
Up in the control tower,
Henriette van Opijnen can see why.
A column of flame and smoke reveals the Jumbo has crashed.
Marlene and Stanley Truideman race for home.
Suddenly, through the trees, they see a towering wall of flame.
Stan said to me ‘Marlene, it's our flat!’.
I said ‘No, that’s impossible!’.
He said ‘Marlene, our children! Our chidren!’.
He was screaming.
Stanley freezes, but Marlene runs to the burning apartment block.
She finds the staircase and races for the fifth floor.
I was only thinking ‘I need to find my children,
I need to find my children’.
But the exact point where her home used to be,
she’s facing an abyss: a burning hole.
I couldn’t believe that my house was gone.
I stood there and thought ‘No, I’m dreaming’.
It certainly occurs to Marlene that her children,
16-year-old Guillermo and 14-year-old Graciella
may have heard the plane coming and escaped.
She starts her frantic search for them.
On the tenth floor, bank worker Rinus de Haan regains consciousness.
He staggers to his front door.
To his horror, it won’t budge.
Shockwaves from the crash have shifted the frame,
and jammed the door shut.
Rinus realizes he survived the crash,
but now he could burn to death.
There’s no way out, not even his cat can jump from the tenth floor.
I thought ‘This is the end’.
I thought ‘If I come out, it will be a miracle’.
Andre Bus’s apartment, 200 meters away, escapes the impact.
Now, he rushes to the crash site to see if he can help.
What you see is the enormous hot of the fire.
You see flames come out of every house.
Andre knows there could be hundreds trapped or injured,
and many could die before firefighters arrive.
With no thought for his own safety,
he smashes open doors which had jammed door lock.
Entering some apartments would be suicide,
there are too many flames.
But in others,
he rescues people who’ve been overcome by smoke.
Stunned local people rushed to the scene.
Marlene Truideman desperately questions everyone near the crash site:
have they seen her two children Guillermo and Graciella?
Still trapped in his tenth floor apartment,
Rinus de Haan feels the temperature soaring,
as the blaze rages outside.
At that moment, it was 58 degrees Celsius already in my house.
I was sweating.
Rinus fears he’s got just minutes to live.
But he can do nothing except pray that he and his cat will be rescued.
Just when he thinks he’s about to pass out, neighbors break in.
They rush him from the inferno in the nick of time.
6:40pm.
Less than 5 minutes after the crash,
the first of 16 fire engines from across Amsterdam arrives at the scene.
Brave local people like Andre Bos
have already pulled many survivors from the crash zone.
Now, firefighters take over the rescue operation and tackle the inferno.
News crews capture the scene, as paramedics start to treat the injured.
50 minutes after the crash, Marlene still searches for her children.
But no one has seen them.
The terrible truth starts to sink in.
She said goodbye to Guillermo and Graciella less than an hour ago,
and promised to be back soon.
Now, all hope have seen them alive again is fading.
At that moment, I felt as if I was dead myself.
I felt as if I have died inside.
Why did this happen? Why did my children have to go?
News of the disaster spreads around the world.
As many as two hundred may be dead tonight
after the worst air disaster ever in the Netherlands.
Dawn reveals a gaping hole in the building.
The crash destroys 31 apartments on 11 floors.
The official death toll is 43, including Captain Fuchs and his crew.
The Netherlands Aviation Safety Board quickly mobilizes 80 investigators.
Frans Erhart is the senior member of the team.
He’s a former fighter pilot
with 20 years experience as an accident investigator.
But now he’s facing his worst nightmare.
You hope it’ll never happen.
But then it does happen.
A large plane in the middle of a residential area with many victims.
What triggered Holland’s worst air disaster?
And why did the 747 fly steadily for 8 minutes after the mayday,
only to nosedive without warning into a crowded apartment block?
Now, by rewinding the events of that fateful day,
and by going deep into the investigation,
we can reveal what really happened to El Al 1862.
Advanced computer simulation
will take us where no camera can go,
into the heart of the disaster zone.
Erhart checks recording from air traffic control at Schiphol.
They reveal that co-pilot Ohad
reported losing power in both engines on the right wing.
Number 3 and number 4 engine inoperative.
Investigators know that two engines failing at the same time
is almost unheard-of.
The team begins to suspect,
a more sinister reason for the loss of the Israeli jet.
We thought from the beginning El Al was possibly targeted by terrorists.
The investigators fear the flight 1862 was downed
by a terrorist bomb or even a ground-to-air missile.
And they have a second mystery to solve:
if the Jumbo was hit by a missile,
why did it stay airborne for a full 8 minutes
before dropping out of the sky?
To see if the terrorism theory stands up,
investigators need to find the Jumbo’s engines,
and its blackboxes,
which record technical flight data and cockpit conversations.
But it’s a daunting task:
even if they survived the crash
and the 800-degrees-Celsius inferno,
they now lie buried under a mountain of rubble.
The plane’s been broken into so many pieces during the crash,
but we didn’t know where to start!
Early the next morning,
search teams start to sift through the mountain of wreckage.
Investigators know they may face a long waits for clues.
Then, an unexpected development.
An off-duty policeman reveals that he saw flight 1862
as it climbs through Amsterdam’s air space.
What he tells the investigators gives them an electrifying new lead.
Investigators have no concrete leads to explain
why El Al 1862 crashed into an apartment block in Amsterdam.
Then, Jan Kaspers, a detective with the Amsterdam police,
tells them an extraordinary story.
On the evening of the disaster,
he and an old friend were enjoying a yacht trip on Gooimeer lake,
10 kilometers East of Amsterdam.
Their boat was moored
right beneath El Al 1862’s flight path from Schiphol airport.
At 6:27pm.
They're preparing dinner.
Suddenly, they hear a loud bang.
Kaspers rushes onto the deck.
In the sky, he sees the 747. Beneath it, two objects are falling away.
At first I thought they were parachutes.
And just as they were touched tree tops,
I realize that they might be, uh, airplane engines.
It’s a startling revelation.
Air crash investigator Frans Erhart immediately orders a team of divers
to search Gooimeer lake.
Recovering the engines could solve the mystery.
It’s now clear to investigators
that the two right jet engines didn’t simply fail.
They sheared, completely.
Unable to see the engines from the cockpit,
the crew had no idea what had happened.
Now, there’s a new mystery facing the team.
What could rip two 5-ton engines of a 747 simultaneously?
The case for a terrorist ground-to-air missile or bomb now looks compelling.
To prove this theory,
investigators must recover the engines from the bottom of Gooimeer lake,
and examine them for clues.
Against all the odds,
after just a few hours of searching,
a diver gets a lucky break.
He spots some massive chunk of aircraft debris.
The team quickly identifies it as the outer engine from the 747’s right wing.
And there’s another key find on land near the lake:
pieces from a 10-meter stretch of the same wing’s leading edge.
It’s the team’s first chance to find out why the engines fell off.
They rushed the wreckage to their labs.
Scientists swap the engine and the chunks of wing
for traces of the chemicals used in explosives.
They examine the metal surfaces
for the tell-tale micro pitting caused by blast fragments.
It takes two days.
The analysis draws a complete blank.
Investigators can find no evidence of an explosion,
or any other clues to why the engine broke away.
It’s a dead end.
Now, the investigators’ only chance to solve the mystery
is to find the 747’s inner engine
in the hope that it holds the key,
or to locate one of the plane’s black box flight recorders at the crash site.
The Dutch Navy joins the search for the inner engine.
It deploys two specialized salvage vessels,
Sonar and more divers.
But after 2 more days, they find nothing.
The investigators are worried.
With every passing hour, crucial evidence is slipping away.
The water would start corroding the parts.
Because of that, we’re working to find it as soon as possible.
The news is equally bleak at the crash site.
Search teams can find no trace of either of the 747’s critical black boxes.
To make things worse, there’s another setback.
Within 24 hours of the crash,
the Mayor of Amsterdam ordered diggers and bulldozers to clear the site.
He’s on a huge public pressure
to recover bodies as quickly as possible.
Erhart and his team are powerless.
Their only option is to follow the debris to its new home,
at Amsterdam garbage dump.
It seems a hopeless task.
Then, after 3 days,
Erhart is in his Amsterdam office when he gets a call.
It’s good news.
One of his team has found the 747's flight data recorder.
We were very happy.
At last, we can take a step forward in our investigation.
This black box records all the aircraft’s critical technical data.
It could prove the breakthrough they so desperately need.
But when they open it, it’s a terrible letdown:
the tape inside is broken in four places,
and data from the plane’s critical final 2.5 minutes is indecipherable.
They send a recorder to specialists in Washington D.C. in the USA.
It’s a long shot, but it’s the only hope.
11 days after the crash,
the investigation team is at rock-bottom.
But just as investigators are beginning to despair,
they hit the jackpot.
A diver finds the inner engine, half-buried by mud.
It’s still attached to the mounting that fixed it to the wing.
Erhart and the team are excited but cautious.
What if this engine prove as unenlightening as the first?
It’s batted and dented,
but they can see no obvious evidence that it was hit by a missile.
And when they run the battery of tests for explosives on this engine,
once again, they find nothing.
Investigators reach a turning point:
they rule out that terrorist attack as the cause of the disaster.
In fact, they can find nothing wrong with the engine itself.
But when they examine its cowling,
the outer casing,
they quickly spot something odd: a dent,
and on it, smears of black paint.
Where did they come from?
They send the paint for analysis.
But they must still find out why the inner engine broke away in the first place.
Since the engine was still fixed to its mounting,
the separation must have occurred
at the point where it was fixed to the wing.
The team studies the 747’s engine attachment system.
4 fittings hold the engines to the wing.
At the heart of each is a 14 centimeter long hollow steel bolt
call the fuse pin.
The fuse pins are strong enough
to take the load of 5 ton jet engine at full thrust.
But in some circumstances, they’re actually designed to fail.
If an engine suffers a crisis like a mechanical seizure or bird strike,
it can vibrate violently.
If the vibrations get too severe, the engine might tear itself free,
destroying the wing with dire consequences.
To prevent this,
investigators know that all 747s have a damage limitation system.
When vibrations reach a critical point,
the fuse pins are engineered to snap,
allowing the engine to fall away harmlessly.
But there’s no sign of the inner engine suffers the crisis.
So the team must consider a chilling possibility.
Did something go terribly wrong
with the fuse pin system that led to catastrophe?
The team examines the mounting that fixed the inner engine to the wing.
They focus on what’s left of the two central fittings
which carried the bulk of the load.
The fuse pin they held are both missing.
But on one fitting, investigators spot something intriguing.
The top of the lug that held the fuse pin has snapped off.
Did this happen when the engine hit the lake, or earlier?
Metallurgists examine the break and make a dramatic discovery.
The stress markings are not typical of a violent impact.
They reveal that the lug snaps because it was overloaded.
They realize this can only have happened
if a fuse pin inside broke at one end.
This would transfer significant stresses and twisting forces
onto the lug of the other end, making it give way.
Fuse pins are designed to break at both ends
of the strain on the engine reaches a critical point.
Erhart believes that a partial failure can only mean one thing:
metal fatigue in a fuse pin.
It’s a startling new theory.
Could metal fatigue in the engine’s fuse pins be at the root of the disaster?
But Erhart knows the inner engine would only shear off
if both central fuse pins failed.
To prove their theory,
investigators will have to find the missing fuse pin
from the other central fitting.
The chances of finding such a tiny part in Gooimeer lake are remote.
Erhart’s only hope that a significant fragment was still attached to the wing
when the Jumbo crashed.
He deploys more than 20 workers to search the garbage dump
where the crash debris now lies.
No one holds out much hope.
The missing fuse pin was only 14 centimeters long,
and may have shattered on impact.
Looking for the essential parts of the wing mounting
was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
48 hours into the search, they have still found nothing.
Then, on day 3,
one of the team spots a piece of metal half-hidden by garbage.
It’s part of the missing central fitting from the inner engine.
And against all the odds, there’s a chunk of fuse pin still inside.
Investigators know it may be their last chance
to solve the mystery behind the disaster.
They begin scanning the fragments under an electron microscope
as soon as it arrives from the rubbish dump.
And they find their answer.
In the wall of the fuse pin, there’s a crack, 4 milimeters deep.
The patterns around the wall show all the classic signs of metal fatigue.
The flaw started along machining grooves in the hollow pin’s central bore.
It’s the breakthrough the team have worked so hard to reach.
They already know that metal fatigue
made one of the inner engine’s two critical central fuse pins fail.
Now, they have one indisputable evidence
that the other central fuse pin was also defected.
With every fight,
the microscopic cracks in the inner engine’s fuse pins got bigger and bigger.
On October 4th, 1992, they reached the critical point.
At 6500 feet, with the engines at full thrust, the faulty fuse pins fail.
But the investigation team still has to explain
why the 747’s outer engine came off as well.
It’s almost inconceivable
that two sets of fuse pins could fail at the same time.
Then they receive the test results on paint smears
found on the inner engine’s cowling.
The smears are an exact match for the paint
used on the central fan blade spinner of the outer engine.
They realized there’s only one possible explanation:
the inner engine was at full thrust as the plane climbs.
So when it shears off,
it doesn’t fall harmlessly away.
It shoots forward.
A split second later,
it falls back,
and by sheer chance,
strikes the outer engine, smashing it off the wing.
The impact also rips away a 10 meter stretch of the wing’s leading-edge.
Investigators now know that a freak accident
caused two engines to fall off flight 1862.
They alert the manufacturer, Boeing,
immediately instructs airlines operating the 1000 747s around the world
to inspect old fuse pins and replace any that a faulty.
But the traumatized residents of the Bijlmer
are desperate for the answer to another major mystery:
why the plane crashed?
A 747 should be perfectly capable of flying on two engines.
So what made flight 1862 suddenly nosedive
just minutes from an emergency landing at Schiphol airport?
Investigators study the section of wing recovered from Gooimeer lake.
It’s clear this damage would have reduced the plane’s lift.
They also realized that key flight controls
lost hydraulic power when the engines broke away.
But if this damage was severe enough to down the plane,
how did Captain Fuchs keep it flying steadily for another 8 minutes?
It’s a paradox.
Then, 18 days after the crash, the team gets some good news.
Experts in the U.S.A. have retrieved the information
from the damaged flight data recorder.
The technical readings it contains proved to be the final piece of the puzzle.
They’re revealing chilling details what finally downed flight 1862.
Investigators know that metal fatigue
caused one engine to shear off El Al 1862,
and smashed off a second engine.
The incidents also destroyed a section of the right wing’s leading edge,
and disabled key controls.
But the damage was clearly not severe enough
to down the plane immediately.
Why did it suddenly spiral out of control
a full eight minutes after the mayday call?
The team gathers in test pilot and aeronautical engineer Heert Tigchelaar
to find to answer.
He analyzes thousands of technical readings
from the 747s’ flight data recorder.
After 8 months of hard work,
Tigchelaar has a dramatic new insight into what happened to flight 1862.
For the first time,
he’s able to explain the complex relationship between the loss of the engines,
the mangled wing and the damaged control.
He discovers that although the crippled plane could still fly,
a crash was inevitable as soon as it tried to land.
The crew didn’t have a choice.
They could do nothing else.
They would doom to crash.
The flight data analysis finally reveals
why El Al 1862 nosedived without warning
after pilots kept the jet airborne for a full 8 minutes,
and how hundreds of people on the ground were left
seconds from disaster.
8 minutes to disaster.
Defected fuse pins holding the inner engine to the wing snap,
causing the plane to lose not one, but two engines.
This catastrophe
also damages a 10-meter stretch of the wing’s leading-edge,
causing a major disruption of air flow over it.
This reduces lift on the right hand side and makes the 747 roll to the right.
Captain Fuchs has also lost two hydraulic systems,
controlling key anti-roll devices.
He only manages to wrestle the Jumbo back to level flight
by pushing his remaining controls to the limit.
The flight data analysis
reveals that its current air speed of 280 knots is the key.
It’s just high enough to get sufficient lift out of the right wing
to keep them aloft.
39 seconds to go.
5 kilometers from the Bijlmar apartment complex,
now Captain Fuchs lifts the Jumbo’s nose
to slow the plane down for landing,
unaware that this routine procedure will have fatal consequences.
The flight data reveals that this change in angle,
worsens the disruption in air flow over the mangled right wing.
The result is a further loss of lift on this side of the plane,
and it starts to roll again.
Captain Fuchs struggles to pull the lever,
but his air speed has now dropped below 260 knots,
reducing lift even more.
This time, his damaged controls cannot save him.
30 seconds to disaster.
As the roll in lost of lift reached the critical point,
the 338-ton Jumbo plummets earthward.
El Al 1862 nosedives from 2500 feet.
Microscopic faults in two 14-centimeter long components
lead to the death of 43 people.
Rescue workers
found the bodies of 16-year-old Guillermo and 14-year-old Graciella
in the morning after the crash,
just meters from where their home once stood.
Medical experts believe they were killed instantly.
After the disaster,
the children’s parents, Marlene and Stanley,
move to another part of Amsterdam.
They couldn’t bear to live in the area where their children died.
It’s not easy to lose your child or your children.
But you can get strength from the good times you’ve had with them.
Memories from their birth to their death, no one can take away from me.
I know they are here.
I feel their presence, a good atmosphere.
The apartments in the crash site were demolished.
But their foundations remain.
Nearby is a permanent memorial to the victims.
But the disaster also leaves another legacy.
Boeing goes on to strengthen all 747 engine to wing attachments,
including fuse pins.
It also rolls out a more stringent inspection regime,
with new ultrasound testing to detect metal fatigue.
The changes brought about by the Schiphol crash
make every 747 flying today
a safer aircraft.
SECONDS FROM DISASTER S2.5 AMSTERDAM AIR CRASH Thank you for watching chochancuuDuc (hdvietnam)
Trivia: the background of the credits looks like part of "Terrified Over Tokyo".