An MD-11 speeds toward a runway in Japan
Pilot: Yee-haw
Ride him Cowboy!
Clearly it was a wild ride on apporach
A challenging landing becomes a disaster
There's a crash on 34 Left and there's a fire
A catarstrophe caught on tape
There's a security camera video
observing the crash sequence
But even more shocking,
He hits the runway hard enough to bounce
It's not the first time this has happened
The industry thought that, that the problem had been dealt with
We're missing something here
People were surprised when Narita happened
Investigators need to figure out why this deadly problem has struck again
MAYDAY AIR DISASTER FedEx Express Flight 80
FedEx flight 14 is on final approach to Newark International Airport
Be advice service wind 250 degrees at 5 knots
The boeing MD-11 is a stretch version of a DC-10
ideal for hauling cargo
Flight 14 is seconds from the Newark Runway
A landing that would have major repercussion for years to come
The flap down which about 50 feet of the ground was perfectly normal
Now the plane is dropping too quickly
It hits hard and bounces
Catastrophe strikes as the right wing hits the ground
Amazingly, no one is killed
We're very elated...
Very early on to find out that the people on board of the aircraft
escaped with very very minor injuries
A violent crash at one of the busiest airports in the United States...
Could easily have led to a fatal tragedy
It demands a full investigation
The NTSB's Bob Benson leads the team
The design quirk of MD-11 immediately grabs his attention
To save on fuel
Engineers gave the jet an unusually small tail,
that produces drag
During the investigation,
It become apparent to us
that the MD-11 had a design feature
that made it somewhat more difficult to land
The plane small tail surface makes the MD-11 tend to pitch up
The solution is to fly faster
To increase air flow over the tail
The MD-11 lands faster than any other airliners on earth
To lift the tail and push the nose down,
it needs to come in at more than 175 miles an hour
Only a fighter jet hits the ground faster
And short final with a high approach speed events...
are somewhat compressed
So...
Good reaction time, good reflexes are important
Benson eventually concludes that...
pilot error is to blame for the fiery crash at Newark
The wing was rocking a little bit more than it should have
and it bounced the first landing
The pilot then pushed the nose down
making the second impact even worse
This was a very-very hard touchdown
second time around
Destroying the landing gear on that side of the aircraft
So, it's a very quick combination of
minor error that was kind of snowball
into an accident
In his final report on the crash at Newark,
Benson calls for the better pilot training
The result,
An improved technique for recovering from bounce landings
MD-11 pilots learn how to use their throttle
to bring the plane back to the ground gently
Add little power to maintain landing altitude
and a bit of power and then just
gently led the thing come back down to the runway
The airline industry moves on from the Newark crash
Confident that an important lesson has been learnt
Almost twelve years later
Nippon cargo 37 runway 34 left clear to land
The MD-11 is still a popular workhorse for a flying cargo
FedEx relies on the plane to hold millions of ton of freigh
in and out of the crucial hubs, like Tokyo Narita Airport
One of the busiest airports in the world
Flying cargo went from being kind of the lower rung
of the aviation professional ladder
and you would to be at the top,
because it was dependable, it was good it paid the sink
Uh, plus the other benefit
Well, the pressure always to be as suficient as possible
The freigh seldom complained itself
Narita Tower FedEx 80, 13 miles for 34 left
Fifty-four year old Cavin Mousley is the captain on FedEx flight 80
His first officer is fourty-nine year old Antony Pino
The two veteran pilots are second in line to land at Narita
FedEx 80 Narita tower runway 34 left continue approach
FedEx 80 roger
Within at last 200 miles or so before you're gonna land,
Pilot would start thinking about what the conditions are,
recheck the weather
Start paying attention to what was happening to other traffic
After an overnight flight from Ghuangzou China,
The crew is less than 10 minutes from touching down,
on Narita's main runway
Today first officer Pino is flying the plane
while the captain monitors the instruments
Alright, let's begin the before landing checklist
Got it
Landing lights,
On
FedEx 80 service wind is 320 at 28 knots
Seven minute from landing the controler gives the crew an update,
about the wind condition on the runway
Okay, copy that
The pilots are in the midst of their approach
a crucial time in any flight
The crew must perform dozen of steps to loose altitude,
and drop about 400 miles an hour of air speed
before they touchdown
It's a very busy time in the cockpit
Pilots got a zillion things going through his head
His eyeballs are all over the place
making sure that those landings are going fine
On this flight the pilots have additional challenge to content with,
Powerful winds
Any thought on landing speed?
Let's add 10 knots
Make it 164 knots
They need to come in faster than usual
To combat the gusty condition
If you have gust then you have to figure out that...
it would affect and change the lift charecteristic of the airplane...
as well as the speed of the airplane
Landing gear
Gear down,
Four green
Clear to land 34 left
Stable
You're really working if hear the pilot flying
on a really gusty windy day
The plane is dropping 13 feet per second
It would be on the ground in less than five seconds
Without warning,
the MD-11 is upside down in flames
There's a crash in 34 left and there's a fire
Fire crews race to the runway,
where a masive blaze has engulfed the cockpit of FedEx flight 80
It's the biggest air disaster that Tokyo airport has ever seen
Air traffic controllers must now redirect incoming flights...
away from the burning debris
It takes almost half an hour for firefighers to douse the flames surrounding the cockpit
by the time rescuers get inside,
it's too late for the pilots
Two people are dead
And another MD-11 lies burning at the side of the runway
The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the accident site...
was the pieces of the aircraft was scattered across a wide area
This is the first fatal accident in Narita airport 31 years history
Masaru Chiba of the Japan Transport Safety Board,
takes charge of the investigation
When we saw the accident site,
more than half of the aircraft had been completely burned
So I was lost at first to decide,
where we could start the investigation
The aviation world needs to know,
why this MD-11 landing went so wrong
Have the lessons from Newark been forgotten?
Or this is an entirely new problem
Two people are dead
And the remains of the MD-11 cargo plane...
lies smouldering at Narita airport
Investigators examine the runway,
searching for clues that might reveal how this landing...
went so wrong
I was trying to figure out where the plane first touchdown
There were very clear traces form the tires
Therefore the initial contact with the ground,
was the place where there're clear tire marks
Look at all there rubbers
This is where they first touchdowned
The marks reveal where the plane first slam onto the runway
The second contact was with the nose gear
And we found pieces of the front wheel near the area where're hit
They also show the plane hit the runway more than once
And this is where they finally came down
extremely hard
By the looks of it
The third area that the plane touchdowned,
had a lot of spilled fuel
and a big portion of the aircraft remains
So we concluded that there were three contact zones
where the aircraft hit the ground
Investigators catch an early brake
That'd extremely rare for plane crash to be caught on video
It's happened here
An airport surveillence camera confirms Chiba's theory
about the violent landing
Flight 80 bounced twice
before finally slamming into the runway
and flipping over in flames
I also saw the pictures from the surveillence cameras
I was convinced that the aircraft hit three times
I've never seen such a terrible accident before
The similarities between this accident and the crash of flight 14 at Newark
are very disturbing
Investigators face immediate pressure to figure out exactly who or what
is to blame this time
It's been ten years since the last accident involving an MD-11
And when Narita occured, it was clear that
the problem of this type of MD-11 accident
ended up unsolved
Investigators interview the tower controllers
to learn more about the moment leading up to the crash
They hear that pilots landing ahead of flight 80
reported very turbulance conditions on approach to the runway
Narita Tower, be advice there's some wind shear on final
just below ten thousand
The accident happened right after a cold front had passed
so it was very windy
The pilot of the previous flight,
actually reported they experienced wind shear,
during their flight
Wind shear is the term pilots use to describe dangerously shifting winds
That's a really rapid change in direction of velocity of wind,
and it can really affect the flying characteristic of the airplane
Strong wind shear can push a plane violently up or down
causing it to loose lift
Near a runway it can be fatal
In 1995 Delta Airline flight 191
hit wind shear while landing at Dallas Forth Worth Airport
137 people were killed in the crash
After that accident, airports install Doppler radar
which can detect wind shears on runways
and warn pilots when landing might be dangerous
Controllers at Narita were relying on that technology
as FedEx flight 80 came in for its landing
Runway 34 Left Wind Shear on final
Could be a bumpy one
All are good
The controller tells investigators he warned the FedEx crew
to be on guard for wind shear
What investigators need now is more detailed wind analysis
from sensors around the airport
But collecting the data would take some time
They have to wait to find out just how dangerous the wind conditions were
during flight 80 fatal landing
Meanwhile, a recovery team has made a major breakthrough
They've pulled the black boxes from the scorched wreckage
The data on the recorder could explain what happened in the last few moment
of the MD-11 landing
Unless that data has been destroyed by fire
These are a lot more damage that I thought that be
I hope they can get something out of these
It was heavily damaged
It was exposed to extremely high heat
Let's get them packing
we wanted to be absulutely sure we would get the data
So we assigned the investigator to take the recorder to the United States
The black boxes are on the next flight to Washington DC
Where NTSB experts would try to recover the critical data
While investigators wait for news from Washington,
they consider another possibility
that flight 80 was thrown off balance
by the load it was carrying
What if,
the cargo shifted at the last minute
Several things that can affect the cargo of an aircraft
during takeoff or landing,
one of those things that pilots always fear,
is the shifting cargo
Flight 80 was carrying more than 50 tons of cargo
FedEx delivery large and small
Loading cargo is an exact science
Distributing weight in a way that doesn't unbalance the aircraft
That is specially true
and they're already temperamental MD-11
The fasteners that hold the cargo in place,
have survived the fire
There's no evidence they failed
They look fine
Let's check out the others
As far as I could tell from the remains of the cargo,
There's no evidence of the cargo shifting
Either to the front of the plane,
or to the back of the plane
But if the cargo didn't shift,
what caused flight 80 to crash on landing,
killing to pilots
Masharu Chiba studies doppler radar record,
of wind speed on runway 34
Any sign of wind shear in the moment before the crash,
could be the lead he's been waiting for
But its another dead end
No wind shear on the runway 34 left when they're touching down
After examining data of the air currents,
before and after the accident,
it seems very unlikely that wind shear,
could have caused this accident
While investigators in Japan struggle for a solid lead,
there's a better news from Washington
NTSB techniciants have recovered the sound,
captured by flight 80's damaged cockpit voice recorder
They excpect to soon recover the flight data as well
Flight recorders are very robust instruments
they're designed to withstand in an incredible amount of G-force and heat
Uh, Mr. Mischencek
Welcome aboard
Nice to meet you
My name is Masaru Chiba
Because the plane is american made,
Paul Miscencik of the National Transportation Safety Board,
joins the team in Japan
We have the expertise that can contribute to the Japanese investigation,
as far as procedures, uh what type of regulations as the crew find under,
and we could do an awful lot of the follow up investigator activities
here in the United States which is what we did
Okay, this way please
Flight 80 cockpit recording is now in the hand of investigators
But will it tell them why the pilots
couldn't get their plane safely on the ground
Let's hear the entire approach from...,
from first contact with Narita at 6.41
Pilot: Narita Tower FedEx 80
13 miles for 34 Left
Tower: FedEx 80 Narita Tower Runway 34 Left continue approach
FedEx 80 Roger
Alright, let's begin the before landing checklist
Go it
So far so good
The after Narita is textbook
Landing gear
Gear down
Winds are 320
Maximum at 34 knots
Stop for a second
Winds..,
320
Maximum 34
It's right in their face
The recording reveals the crew was flying...
into a strong headwind
But it isn't dangerous enough to explain the crash
Okay, let's go on
One thousand
Yee-haw!
Ride him, Cowboy!
Don't let the airplane fly you
you fly the airplane
And on a gusty blustery day,
That's in fact what you have to do
Five hundreds
Despite the bumpy ride,
the pilots don't seem very concerned
Clear to land 34 left
Stable
Stable approach is one of the call way out steps
more more carriers have put in their operation spesification
that you call out because generally,
that's pretty well understood thing,
if you're stable, you can land
One minute from the runway,
and they're joking
It seems like there's nothing wrong
From the recording, we can tell that they were really relaxed
and teasing each other
I think what happened was the air currents were so rough
that it felt like they were in a rodeo,
riding an untamed horse like cowboys
Then,
An automated voice from the altimeter
gives the investigations an important clue
fifty, fourty, thirty
twenty, ten
That last part again, please
Fifty, forty, thirty
twenty, ten
It should slow down
Fifty
Forty
Thirty
Twenty
Ten
The pilot in making an approach
he can judge his rate of descent
by the cadence of those callouts
Like normally you'll have 100 feet
fifty
Thirty
and as you get down to ten feet,
They'll even slow down a little bit more
Twenty, ten
If it's calling very quickly,
you're going...
you're sinking too rapidly
The recording tells investigators the plane's descent
didn't slow down when it should have
but instead continue dropping at a rapid rate
it explains the hard landing,
but not the crash
Another critical question remains
Why didn't the pilot slow the descent?
Until they can answer that question,
investigators would never know the full story
behind the crash of FedEx flight 80
While they prepare the FedEx 80 flight data for analysist,
investigators in Tokyo follow a new lead
Let's see what these can tell us
A second security camera captured a series of photographs
during the deadly touchdown
The camera was set to record four images per second
with luck, one of them might reveal
why the landing went so wrong
When we looked at the photographs,
we could tell very clearly how the aircraft
came into the runway
A surveillance photos were more helpful and accurate
than interviewing hundreds of witnesses
thirty feet off the ground
Looks like he straight and level
stable
Twenty feet,
and still stable
We want the airplane pointing down the runway
when you touchdown and you want the wings as level as you can have them
That's what you're looking to accomplish
Everything looks fine
but in a split second,
he hits the runway hard enough to bounce
The photos captured in detail what happened on runway 34 left
but shed little light on why it happened
We're missing something here
They turn to the information from the flight data recorder
Alright,
What's the data tell us
They hope it would reveal what the pilots did
during the final moments of the landing
forty feet
thirty feet
straight
It's practically level
He should be nose up here
Thirty feet from the ground,
the pilot should pull the nose up a few degrees
to slow the descent and help the plane float to the ground
It's called flaring the plane
Starting to pull back on the control column
to start to flare of the airplane
to start to arrest its decent
so that you have one continual motion of power coming out from the airplane
Twenty five feet from the ground
but the pilot still hadn't done that
He started to flare here
but it's only two seconds from touchdown
He's too late
The pilots finally start to flare at twenty feet
so late they're still pulling up when they slam into the ground
That explains why they're dropping so fast
A properly timed flare helps insure a smooth landing
by delaying the flare, the pilots were descending much more quickly
than they should have been
They began the flare at twenty feet
That's when things started going wrong
Two seconds from touchdown
He's already behind the game
Let's see how he got there
So it was a high sink rate
We're wondering why a pilot would allow that to happen
One thousand
In search of an answer,
investigators scrutinize an earlier part of the flight
The last thousand feet of the landing
This is where things start to get hairy
Right up,
Left down
Right up
Left up
Yee-haw!
Ride him cowboy!
They were working hard to adjust for the changing headwinds
and raising and sinking of the airplane
with the turbulance it was associated with that
stable
If you have a really strong headwind
on the airplane blowing right on
right down to runway toward the airplane
and that wind suddenly diminishes greatly
the airplane has a tendency to feel like it's falling out from under
It's lost some of that airflow that's going over the wing
The MD-11 is heading for the runway at almost 200 miles an hour
and dropping at thirteen feet per second
Pino has his handful trying to keep his plane properly positioned for landing
one hundred
Just when they need power,
the engines go to iddle
Fifty
At fifty feet,
the situation gets much worse
The MD-11 auto throttles are designed to go to iddle
automatically at fifty feet
The system works well on calm days
But this time the decrease in power
makes the plane drop even faster
When the had a high sink rate,
they needed power right at fifty feet
and they didn't apply it
Because of the powerful winds,
Pino should have added more thrust
to keep the landing on track
Pino reacts less than a second too late
He pulls the nose up
to begin his flare
but the plane is falling too fast
In windy gusty conditions,
it's incumbent on a pilot,
to guard his throttles and...
to override the auto-throttles
to make sure that he has
the adequate power component
to control his rate descent to the runway
Just like in the Newark accident,
flight 80 hits the runway while dropping twice as fast as recommended
They both botched the flare
they both hit hard
Speaking Japanse
If a pilot is late with his flare,
just like Isaac Newton says,
every action has reaction
If you're gonna hit the wrong way, you're gonna bounce back off the wrong way
This is what happened in a several of these MD-11s
where the one wing would shear off
and the other wing would fly up over the top
and turned the airplane inverted
Investigators in Japan both Mousley and Pino
receive the bounce recovery training that Benson recommended
after the Newark accident
Looks like they had the proper training
So, how did they get the landing so wrong?
The fatal descent on the runway 34 left
remains a mystery
Investigators dig into the background of the two pilots
who died on FedEx flight 80
FedEx doesn't hire a lot of people
that are new to the flying business
They just don't make the cut
Before working for FedEx,
Captain Mosley flew air force for the US Marine
only the best pilots are even considered for the job
As a surveillence pilot, he had flown more than 8000 hours
but captain Mosley had only recently returned to flying
sick leave
After an extended sick leave for a bad back
First Officer Pino
was hardly a rookie
Anthony Pino was a veteran of the first Gulf War
He served with the US Air Force for 23 years flying C-5 Transports
One of the largerst planes ever built
Nobody had anything bad to say about either of these pilots state
They trained well
They never failed the proficiency check
But investigators do find one significant detail
in first officer Pino's record
He had to be re-certified to land MD-11
on a simulator just six weeks before
Lots of hours
Not so many landings
We found out that he had
within the previous six months
very few actual landings
Lack of experiences in landing has led to tragedy in the past
Just a month earlier,
A Turkish airlines 737 was on approach to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
The pilot flying was an inexperienced trainee
He failed to recognize a critical change in throttle setting
brought on by a mulfunctioning altimeter
The plane lost power
and slammed into the ground
killing nine of the 135 peope aboard
At FedEx
Pino usually flew as a relieved pilot
taking the control only in the middle of long hour flights
It's a role that caused a very few landings
The pilot who was flying this airplane,
only had about 73 landings in the last two and half year
which averages out to about two and half landings a month
Two and half landings a month
That's not a lot of landing practice
The first bounce throws the airplane back in the air
He gets ten feet off the ground
and brings nose down
He hits the ground for the second time here
He continues to push his control forward
pushing down the nose
He's making things worse here
Second bounce sends them 16 feet back in the air
and the third touchdown is lethal
FIRE
Okay
A rusty first officer,
and a captain with a bad back
There must be more to it than that
Go ahead
Investigators return to the cockpit voice recording
And listen for other factors that might have come into play
Oh, we gotta get some real sleep
They hear a critical clue
A remark made 45 minutes before the chatarstropic landing
I am exhausted
Oh yeah, gonna sleep like a baby
Just keep an eye on me, would you?
Like something gets really quiet,
say something
Especially for close to flare
It was clear from listening to the crew that
they were tired during the approach
So they're tired after flying all night long
Let's find out just how tired they were
Research has shown that
fatigue can decerase performance
in ways similar to alchohol intoxication
Investigators learn that over the past ten days,
the two men flew thirty-eight and a half hours
travelled almost 11 thousand miles
and crossed eight time zones
their weeks start inaugurate
A fly to Narita
Then from Tokyo to Guanzhou China
To Malaysia
Then to the Philippines
Back to Guangzhou
And the final leg,
An overnight flight back to Narita
Because you've long-houl flown,
and now you've arrived in somewhere
at eight o'clock in the morning
and it feels like eight o'clock at night
to your body
So, how much sleeping did they do between flights?
We can usually dull the timeline,
and give us a better idea of...
how much sleep the pilots might have been able to obtain
and what their schedule was like
Investigators learn what they can about the two pilots' activities
in the days leading to the crash
They study their computer records
Contact friends and family
and interview hotel employees
about their comings and goings
The most important things that we wanna know are...
when were the pilots awake,
when were they working,
when were they sleeping and,
kinda what are general kinds of activities
were they engaged in
They even go through receipts and keycard informations
to help paint a detailed picture of when...
the pilots were most likely sleeping
Bramble discovers that in the past 24 hours,
Captain Mosley had no more than
4 hours and 38 mintues of straight sleep
First Officer Pino likely had even less
Just 3 hours and 17 minutes
Well, you'd like to see pilots receiving about eight hours of sleep,
in a consolidated fashion per night
That would allow them to be fully rested
and perform optimally
Neither one got close to eight hours straight
According to regulations,
there was enough rest time built into their schedule
but airlines can't dictate how pilots use that time
or force their pilots to sleep
Oh, we gotta get some real sleep
I am exhausted
Oh yeah
gonna sleep like a baby
These people were not...
hitting on all cylinders
Yee-haw!
Ride him cowboy!
The reaction times were little slower
You'd expect to see lapses in performance
and delays in response
A little fatigue that sits and that...
and that's the insidious part you know much faster
when your body is tired than you do
when your mind is tired
Fifty
Forty
Thirty
The difference between the time when Pino should have flared
and when he actually did
is minuscule
He was point seven seconds late
That fraction of a second cost two men their lives
Increased reaction time is kind of performance deficit...
that is associated with fatigue
So...,
That could explain the pilot's delayed flare
But bounce landings are common in commercial aviation
and rarely cause a crash
In fact the FedEx plane bounced during two of its previous sixty landings
Bouncing an aircraft is something that often happens
Bouncing is not rare
But even so, it doesn't usually cause a fiery crash
So what made this bounce landing so deadly?
though it looks like fatigue
could well have been a factor
Investigators suspect there's more to the story
Fire
Oh god
Can you run them all together now
The investigative team combines the sequnce of stills
captured on the runway
To create a revealing portrait of flight 80's deadly landing
It leads Masaru Chiba to a stark realization about the FedEx pilots
Looks like they ignored what they're taught about bounce recovery
In an MD-11 flight simulator,
A senior FedEx pilot demonstrates the standard procedure
for recovering from a bounce
Establish a 7 and a half degree nose-up attitude,
and increase thrust
Are you ready?
I think most pilots at that level are skilled enough
to effectively handle the bounce
So, if it's that easy,
Why did they do the opposite?
Flight data shows Pino did the opposite
of what he was trained to do
Instead of lifting the nose up after the first bounce,
he pushed his column forward
driving the nose of his plane into the ground
That mistake bounced the plane again
sixteen feet into the air
That was one of the things that we really try to...
reprimind around with what have caused pilot
who had bounce to push the nose over back down toward the runway
Twelve seconds later,
the plane is upside down and in flames
Fire
Oh God!
The MD-11 is a stretch version of DC-10
Investigators wonder if the extra length
could have been a factor in the crash
I wonder what the pilot could see from that cockpit
Investigators ask Boeing to create a simulation of
what the pilots would have seen from the cockpit
Here's where they flare
They go back in the air
right here
As the main landing gear bounces upward,
the plane pivots
so the nose doesn't actually go up at all
For the pilots in the cockpit,
it's a visual deception
They had no idea they had bounce
Here's where they see the runway again
but it's too late
You've got a longer amount of airplane in front of the wheels,
so you can get a false sense of where you are
in relationship to the ground because...
these jet aircraft land with the nose up
The discovery helps explain why Pino pushed his column forward
He likely belived his main landing gear was on the ground
You wanna get that nose down as quickly as you can
because you want that airplane firmly planted on the ground
This approach went very quickly from...
what was a challenging but...
relatively normal approach
to a disastrous situation in a very short span of time
There was really not one golden nugget
that said, Aha! this is what caused the accident
most cases it's a cumulative effect of a number of factors
Investigators now believe that a pilot suffering from fatigue
and battling strong winds
flared his plane a split second too late
bringing it into the runway too fast
The stretch design of the MD-11
prevented the pilot from realizing
he bounced the landing
leading him to the fatal mistake
of pushing down the nose
This accident began with a very small error
that response to that led to another error
and response to that worsened the situation
It was a snowball effect
the situation got worse and worse
In the wake of the accident,
investigators make several key recommendations
to prevent a similar catrastophe
They suggest that manufacturers install a light
in the MD-11 cockpit
to tell pilots if their wheels are on the ground
We learned that in a long aircraft,
it's hard to know whether the airplane is bouncing or not
So they install a system,
to let the pilots know if the plane is bounced
They also recommend that pilots be ready to override their auto-throttles
to maintain speed thorought the approach
And if the throttles are doing what you want them to do,
or you want them to do something else,
your hand is right there to...
apply whatever power you need
Most importantly,
They recommend that pilots be trained to go around
every time they bounce a landing
We've moved, more and more toward a mindset of...
look, let's go around and come back and...
do another time, let's dont take the chance
it's nonetheless tragic that it took the loss of an aircraft,
And more importantly the loss of the crew
to arrive at that kind of conclusion
ENGLISH SUBTITLE CREATED BY Si Mbaurekso