Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 15, Episode 8 - Fatal Focus - full transcript
After a short flight from the Indonesian capital, Garuda Flight 200 hits the ground in Yogyakarta so hard it bounces violently before careening off the end of the runway. Of the 133 people on board, 21 are killed. Investigators are under immediate pressure to find out what went wrong. After a series of dead ends, they make an astonishing find about how the plane was configured for landing. And when they analyze the cockpit voice recorder, they reach a startling conclusion.
Dramatic video captures a scene of chaos
You got this trail of people
coming away of the airplane
It was raw, unedited
A crash survivor records the desperate escape
from the wreckage of Garuda Flight 200
Huge explosions going off,
big plumes of black smoke
What send the Indonesian Airliner
careening of the runway?
You don't deal in speculation,
we want facts.
There was intense pressure to deliver.
Investigators must accept a shocking explanation
for the crash.
It is very hard to understand
Go around captain, go around
I've never heard anything like this
Air Crash Investigation
S15E08
This is a true story
It is based on official reports
and eyewitness accounts
It is early morning
on the Indonesian island of Java.
Garuda 200, cleared for descend,
Runway 09
Surface wind is calm, visibility is 8 km
A Boeing 737 flies high over head.
Copy that 09
Wind is calm, visibility 8 km.
27,000 ft
The crew of Garuda Flight 200
is getting ready to land.
You can go ahead
and proceed with the landing checklist
Landing lights ON
Approach frequency is check.
Indonesia is made up of 18,300 islands
so, air travel is incredibly important
Garuda is critical
to the aviation infra structure.
Fasten seat-belts light is ON
There are a 133 passengers in the cabin
They are nearing the end of a short flight
from the Indonesian Capital of Jakarta
265 miles South East
to the city of Jogjakarta
Most of the passengers are Indonesian
but there is also
a group of Australian journalists
They are covering a State visit
by Australia's foreign minister
who is travelling
on another plane
The relationship between Australia and Indonesia
are often strained
So, whenever a minister, a head of State
visits that country,
there is a heightened interest from the media
and so we had a large media contingent following
Kyle Quinlan is also headed to Jogjakarta
He is an air-force security officer,
part of the foreign minister's security team
I was working for 34 VOP squadron
That are guys who look after his
security for the Prime Minister,
the head of the government
and stuff like that
We had to travel internally on civilian aircraft
The plane is about 15 minutes from touch down.
The speed is 320 knots
Okay, when we are cleared,
we approach runway 9, course 088
Captain Muhammad Marwoto Komar
has been for Garuda for 21 years
Approach flaps 40,
Auto-break 2
with the airspeed approx 141 knots on landing.
Parking's end to the left
As they near the airport,
he briefs first officer Gagam Saman Rohmana
on the final steps needed,
to get their plane on the ground
Understood,
approach briefing complete
This was a typical routine for these pilots
The captain was very experienced
the copilot a little bit less experienced
but certainly just another day at the office
A short flight, easy
Enough slack and it is time to get back headed
For Quinlan, the flight is been a welcome break
from a hectic schedule
We just come from a 16 hours shift
the night before
We had about 3 hours sleep
So we get back and relax and enjoy this time
before we get on the ground
and before we have to work
The plane is less than 15 miles from the airport.
Whoa, strong wind
They hit some slight turbulence.
What will challenge you in tropical attitude,
close to the equator?
It is the fact that the weather there
has a greater exchanging of heat
and therefore, you get more wild winds
And you got to be on your toes as a pilot
Garuda 200, you are cleared to approach Runway 09
Let me know when you have the runway in sight
The bumpy ride doesn't alarm
the experienced captain
Flaps 1°
He continues with the landing approach
and calls for the flaps to be extended.
Flaps increase the wing's surface area
adding the crucial extra lift
needed at slower speeds
Gear down
They are now less than 3,000 ft above the runway.
Flaps 15°
You are in the position of taking this big bird
and putting it into a slow enough airspeed
with enough configurational flaps
and landing gear and so on
that you are a little bit vulnerable
As the plane descends,
Quinlan begins to feel uneasy
His air-force training tells him
something is not right
When you travel an aircraft so frequent
you become aware of your surroundings
and for me it was when we just
looking out the window and thinking
We are not supposed to be at this height
Something is odd
Quinlan cannot shake the feeling
the plane is dropping to fast
When I realized really bad was going to happen
I turned to my boss and I said
We are going in
OKAY then
What can you do?
You are stuck there
There is nothing that you can do
except for tighten up your seat-belts and hang on
hopefully we make it, you know
Copilot:
Go around, captain, go around
We landed and we bounced
It is chaos as the plane bounces a second time
And I just remember thinking:
Hang on, Hang on
Then, a third impact
and the plane isn't stopping
It was gliding on the belly,
I can hear the wings, the engine, everything
Then, probably the biggest impact
I have ever had in my life
Emergency crews race towards the crash site
but the 737 has careened off the runway
into a swampy rice-field.
Getting the vehicles to the site won't be easy
When you have got a crash
that occurs in the middle of an airport,
where there is plenty of access is one thing
But when it is out off the airport site
in this particular case in a rice paddy,
with very limited access
it gets almost exponentially more difficult.
Many passengers are badly injured
and fire is spreading fast.
Kyle Quinlan realizes
that there is no time to wait for rescue
Once we pulled up,
so many people couldn't do any
I needed to do something and help these people out
Inside the burning fuselage of Garuda Flight 200,
Kyle Quinlan struggles to get out
Fire is blocking the nearest exits
The whole plane is just glowing heat
coming from the rods of the aircraft
If the fuel-tanks ignite, the plane could explode
but fire fighters can't reach the crash
Anytime you got the possibility of fuel
You need fire suppression right there right now
because you got massive flames of 1800°
You got a lethal situation
Quinlan still can't get out
I turned to the left
grabbed the emergency exit
with another Indonesian guy
and cracked the emergency exit.
Passengers scramble out of the door
They each other
I got to get you out of here, now
Quinlan's sergeant Michael Haton is too badly hurt
to get off the plane without help
He was unconscious and
falling in and out of consciousness
So, I got him out
jumped off the left wingtip
into a rice-paddy
He sank knee-deep in water
About 100 meter away from the aircraft
my boss and I carried him there
I could see his injuries
They are not life threatening
I said: look!
I keep you right here, I'm coming back for you
I'm coming back
Off I went
I went back to the plane
Free lance camera-man Wayan Sukardo
also makes his way off the plane
He soon begins capturing
dramatic images of the aftermath.
We got the camera man
grasping for breath
we got him staggering around
away from the aeroplane filming as he went
And you got this trail of people
coming away from the aeroplane
It was raw, unedited
And it was a real sense of being there.
The fire and the intensity
it was a thing was huge explosions going off
Big plumes with black smoke
How the aircraft was burning
It was phenomenal, never seen anything like this
Back on board the plane,
Quinlan helps more passengers escape the cabin
that is fast becoming an inferno
A lot of people where not in the condition
to do anything
I am in the condition where I can assist
When I assist, I do the best I can and help
The scene was one of chaos
On one hand, you got a lot of officials,
not knowing what to do
On the other side,
you got passengers almost looking after themselves
and rescuing each other
coming away from the wreck
You got emergency services
who can't get to the aeroplane
because of the terrain,
because of the ditches and the rice paddies
It really was chaotic
Of the 140 passengers and crew on board,
21 people have been killed
Clearly, you knew
that people were not going to survive this
It is almost a miracle that somebody did survive
Sukardo keeps rolling
as crash survivors including Kyle Quinlan and
Michael Hattan arrive at a nearby hospital
Air-force, Air-force
Dozens of stretchers and
It was just a big shock for me, so many people
Within hours, Sukardo's dramatic footage
is broadcast around the world.
The public response to that footage
was overwhelming
Millions and millions of hits on YouTube
Television-stations around the globe picked it up
and it was repeated continuously
for days after the crash
At the crash-site, investigators from Indonesia's
National Transportation Safety Committee
or NTSC, faced the enormous task
of piecing together what went wrong.
Aircraft debris is spread
all along the plane's deadly trajectory
from the runway
to where it came to rest in the rice field.
An airplane is basically an aluminium egg-shell
It is incredibly strong
when it it used the way it's designed to be used
but when you skid it off the runway at high speed
it is not going to stay together.
Allen Stray of the Australian Transport
Safety Bureau joins the investigation
We have to establish:
Where did it touch down
were there any runway marks, did it bounce,
did it skid?
What are the distinguishing features
on the runway that may help us
build a picture of what was happening
at the time of the accident.
Stray knows that the relatives of the dead
are already demanding answers.
Because there were so many international people
on board this aircraft
some of whom had died,
there was intense pressure to deliver
Investigators search for clues to explain
why Garuda Flight 200 bounced
off the runway and crashed
It looks like it hit pretty hard
They discover gauges
and shattered pieces of landing gear on the runway
clear signs that the plane
slammed down with unusual force.
The nose wheel digging in and fracturing
was indicative of a very hard G force
on that impact.
It is also clear
that the plane hit the runway more than once
More skid marks here
The idea of walking the site
is to establish a sequence of the events
First impact here
Be very careful
not to disturb any perusal evidence
So, 1, 2, 3
They are off the end of the runway
There was a lot of questioning
try to establish
Why did the aircraft bounce?
The location of the first skid mark
gives investigators a crucial lead.
How far are we away
from the threshold of the runway?
860 meter
That is more than a third of the runway
It landed long, it didn't touch down
until a long way into the runway
The distance of the touchdown from the threshold
raise serious questions in the
minds of the investigators.
So, he comes in long, he hits hard and bounce.
Let's gather as much weather data as we can.
I am very keen to establish
Was there a weather situation
a wind or a down-draft, a strong tailwind?
Stray suspects wind-sheer
might explain what he sees.
Like this and like this
Wind-sheer can produce
violent up-drafts and downdrafts
that are impossible to fly through.
Close to the ground, it can be deadly.
Especially in the age of climate change
we got more and more violent winds,
gust fronts, down-draft and things of this nature
and sometimes micro bursts.
Investigators check with tower controllers
to find out
what kind of weather the pilots were facing
as they descended towards the airport.
Surface winds were completely calm.
The weather data shows
there were strong winds at high altitudes,
but the winds near the runway were calm.
There is no sign of the kind of downdrafts
that could force a plane to the ground
That wind tapered right off
and there was ample time for the crew
to establish the aircraft
in a stabilized approach from 1000 ft
Indonesian police launch
a criminal investigation into the accident.
They bring the captain in for questioning.
For crash investigators,
the move has unfortunate consequences.
I really have nothing more to say,
I'm sorry
In cases where the investigation
becomes criminalized
in particular where that happens early on
if we have police involved or law is involved
We did everything by the book
that can intimidate people
and it can lead to them
not coorporating effectively with investigators
With the flight crew under criminal suspicion,
and reluctant to talk
investigators must look for other leads.
Downloading the plane's black
boxes or flight recorders,
is now a top priority.
Investigators quickly recover
them from the wreckage
and send them for analysis.
The flight-recorders are vitally important
It is important to get as much information
from them, early information
so that it may direct
the thrust of the investigation
Without that data, we're screwed
Meanwhile, investigators
focus their attention on the crash site.
Every detail is a possible clue.
What I want to know is
Why he didn't stop at the end of this runway?
The investigation was initially concerned
about the touchdown point
and the remaining distance on the runway
Is that the runway map?
They wonder, if after coming in long
the plane simply didn't have enough runway left
to stop safely
Even with a 2 or 3 mile runway,
you got a finite patch of concrete
on which to land an airplane
It touched down here, 860 meter from the threshold
That gives him just over 1300 meters to stop
The runway in Jogjakarta is shorter than
the runways at many other international airports.
But even though the pilots touched down late,
Stray calculates
they still had enough room to stop their plane.
He had more than enough runway.
The length of the runway was completely adequate
for a Boeing 737 landing.
Investigators need to dig deeper
We need to know why this plane
didn't slow down once it was on the ground.
I want to take a close look at everything.
They begin a painstaking analysis
of the major mechanical systems on the 737
especially those designed to help the plane
slow down and stop on landing:
Brakes, spoilers, and thrust reversers.
Was there a mechanical failure,
looking at the performance of the aircraft
Was it physically possible for the aircraft
to stop?
The careful analysis of the mechanical systems
provides a potential breakthrough
I think we got something here.
A review of the maintenance log
for Garuda Flight 200
turns up an intriguing lead.
There had been a right up
on a couple of occasions
of a thrust reverser failure,
of one thrust reverser
The thrust reversers redirect
the engine exhaust forward
to help the plane slow down on the runway
You got to remember: It is not just a matter
of kissing the wheels onto the ground
It is a matter of
dissipating a tremendous amount of kinetic energy
How ?
Well, you do it
with the friction between the tyres and the runway
hopefully using any skid
you do it with reverse thrust
Stop it!
the thrust reverser
Investigators wonder
if a malfunctioning thrust-reverser
explains why the crew couldn't stop
before they ran out of runway.
At the end of day,
you still have to dissipate all that energy
and if you don't have enough room to do it,
you are off the end
But it is another dead end
According to the maintenance records,
the faulty thrust reverser was repaired
before Flight 200 took off.
OKAY, they fixed it
That had been rectified prior to
this flight departing from Jakarta
There was no paperwork evidence of a failure.
Investigators are going to need another lead.
We don't deal in speculations, we want facts
The facts so far are limited.
The 737 careened into a rice field
after slamming to the ground
almost a third of the way down the runway.
The question is:
Why?
Was the plane configured properly?
Perhaps there was something
wrong with the wing-flaps,
pilots rely on for landing.
The flap system on a modern jetliner
like a 737 create greater lift
that means that we can approach
and take off from an airport
with a much lower and safer airspeed.
The team scrutinizes the mechanical rods
or screw-jacks that move the flaps.
We needed to look at the flaps setting
What flap setting can we establish
from the wreckage?
We measured the screw jack-extension
to establish what the flap setting was.
What they find is astonishing
It is like the flaps were all the way up
The screw-jacks show
a flap-setting of just 5°
not nearly enough for a safe landing.
We just could not believe that the aircraft
would have landed with only 5°.
To provide enough lift on landing,
the flaps are usually extended step by step
from 0° all the way to 40°
as the plane slows and descends towards the runway
It is hard to overstate the value
of the flap-systems on a modern jetliner.
Investigators aren't sure
how the flaps ended up with only 5°
The flap mechanism was damaged in the crash
and may have moved on impact.
To be certain of how the flaps were set
they need to know what is on the flight recorders.
We need that data from the black boxes.
Some of that data is proving elusive.
Australian technicians have been unable
to download the CVR:
It is a huge blow.
If you don't have access to the CVR
for whatever reason,
then, it is very difficult to understand
what went on in the cockpit.
Desperate to hear what is on the device,
investigators send it to the U.S. manufacturer
hoping experts there can recover the recording.
So, steps were taken to hand-carry
the recorder to the factory,
so that the data can be downloaded
Crash investigators are having better luck
with the 2nd black box, the FDR
They have managed to download
all of its stored information
We were able to get information
about the flap-settings,
the speed on the approach,
the thrust reverser deployment
the dynamics of the approach and landing itself.
The data reveals the 737
was coming in for its landing blazingly fast
Flight 200 hit the ground at over 250 mph.
More than a 100 mph faster than normal
This is a ridiculous amount of speed
to approach an airport with the attempt of landing
The speed that impact is so fast,
it bounces twice
before skidding in to the rice fields.
The speed of the aircraft
on short final and on touchdown
was so excessive
there was no way it was going to stop.
But why did the pilots touchdown on the runway
at such a catastrophically high speed?
Hold up the data for the flaps, please
The flaps were set for 5°...
...never more than 5°
The data confirms what the screw-jacks
suggested to investigators.
The flaps on Flight 200's wings
were in a bizarre position,
one that is never used during landing
It is not operational procedure
to land with flaps 5
unless there is a jammed flap.
and it cannot be extended
Investigators are left
with an alarming possibility
That the plane crashed because
the pilots touched down
without performing one of the most critical steps
needed for any landing
An airplane that has been in an accident
because of over-running the runway
that had a flap setting of only 5 in a 737
is very disturbing.
Why the crew failed to set their flaps properly
remains a troubling question.
Meanwhile, media reports erode
public confidence in Garuda Indonesia Airways
The accident affected negatively
Garuda's reputation,
but they had
had other problems in the past.
In 2002, Garuda Flight 421 was forced
to ditch in a small river
after both engines flamed out.
And in 1997,
Garuda Flight 152 slammed into a ravine
killing all 234 people on board
Garuda's record at that stage was just
a series of accidents and incidents
with large numbers of people losing their lives.
In the wake of this latest disaster,
Garuda is banned from landing
at any airport in the EU.
The fate of Indonesia's National airline
could be at stake
if investigators cannot figure out what went wrong
on-board Garuda Flight 200.
Finally
After a painstaking data recovery process,
investigators can finally listen to the CVR
from Garuda Flight 200
Fortunately, the recorder
went to the laboratories,
a tenacious breed
and they do not give up easily
But will the sounds, captured in the cockpit,
shed light on the decisions and actions
of the flight crew?
Let's hear it
when we are cleared,
we approach runway 09, course 088
Investigators listen
as the crew discusses their plans for landing
What you do
is listening for the atmosphere
and the tone, the ambiance of you like,
in the cockpit
Approach flaps 40
The airspeed approx. 141 knots on landing
Parking to the left
Now they know they need 40° to land,
but they only get 5°
What is going on?
Approach briefing complete
At first, there is no sign the crew is worried.
The captain certainly doesn't sound stressed
Then, the first hint,
that something is going wrong
It looks like I cannot hit the glide slope.
The plane is too high
for this distance from the airport
I better get down a little faster.
To land smoothly,
planes need to loose enough speed and altitude
to descend gradually
and meet the runway at a shallow angle.
Flight 200 is much too high
he is a bit behind,
but it shouldn't be a problem yet
Stray compares the descend to Flight 200
with the flight path they should have been flying.
It is not unusual to be a little behind
in terms of slowing down
and especially in terms of descending
and sometimes, you find yourself high and fast
and you got to make a decision
He definitively has some work to do
if he hopes to get on track
I said speed, flaps 15°
Flaps 5°
The captain is calling for flaps 15°
Why is he saying:
'Flaps 5°' ?
Flaps 15°
Something is very wrong in this cockpit.
Check speed flaps 15°
The captain repeatedly tells the first officer
to increase the flaps to 15°
But the first officer never moves them past 5°
Flaps 15°
It is like they are not even in the same cockpit.
Landing demands precise crew coordination.
but as they speed towards the runway
the captain and his first officer
seemed to be ignoring each other.
There is a lot of evidence,
that this crew was not thinking it through
they weren't situationally aware...
...they were not communicating.
First things first:
Why did the first officer ignored the captain
and leave the plane in flaps 5°
It is very perplexing
If you got professional pilots,
we can make mistakes
but usually, that is why we got 2 people up there
one catches the other
Investigators suspect the high speed at landing
explains the fist officer's decision
NOT to increase the flaps-setting
Way to fast for flaps 15°
Flaps can be damaged by excessive drag
And when the captain calls for flaps 15°
the plane is speeding at over 250 knots.
Much too fast
to safely extend the flaps any further
The plane is moving so quickly,
that wind drag could tear the flaps right off
the wings if the flaps are extended past 5°
I can very well understand why the 1st officer
did not comply on going to flaps 15°
they are grossly over speeding flaps 5°
The first officer was exactly right
in not putting them down
Alright, they were moving too fast
to deploy the flaps
But why didn’t the first officer say so,
tell the captain to slow down
One of the issues was that he didn’t communicate
He has reasoning for
not responding to those commands
He didn’t communicate that to the captain
When you take
a pristine Monday morning quarterback look at this
regardless of airline, regardless of culture
it is very clear that the copilot should have said
Captain: I got the airplane
But what it tells me here is
that this copilot did not feel that
he could speak up, one way or another.
Even more bizarre:
Why didn't the captain react to the loud alarms,
sounding in the cockpit,
just moments before the first impact.
Go around, captain
Go around!
The landing checklist completed, right?
It is a tough one to ignore
There is nothing subtle about it
The ground proximity warning is a clear signal
to a pilot that he is flying dangerously low
There were 15 ground proximity alerts and warnings
during that final stage of the approach
But a crew member he is
there should be instant action
Instead of aborting the landing
the captain does something
that baffles investigators.
Go around captain!
Go around!
Landing checklist completed, right?
He asks the first officer
if the landing checklist is complete.
Landing checklist?
I have never heard anything like this.
When the copilot called for the captain
to go around
and the captain responded:
landing checklist complete?
It was just something that we could not understand
I was appalled,
this was industry's worst practice
for crew resource management
apart of ignoring 15 warnings,
ignoring two pleas by a copilot to go around
and landing 79 knots too fast
This was atrocious
For investigators, the question remains:
Why did the crew continue with a landing
that was clearly heading for disaster?
Personnel files revealed both Garuda pilots
are fully licensed and certified.
The captain in particular
has many years of experience.
but his dangerously fast landing attempt
and the poor communication in the cockpit
lead investigators to question
the quality of the crew's training.
So, there was a much deeper look
at what training had been provided to the crew.
☮ Weak situational awareness and coordination
☮ Poor communication
☮ Unstabilized approaches.
A review of training records for the entire
airline uncovers a disturbing detail.
This is not the first Garuda crew
to have problems with a routine landing.
We know that in 2001
an analysis had been conducted
and there was a number of instances of
unstabilized approaches or
fast approaches by crews.
The finding shines new light
on what happened in Jogjakarta.
Investigators may finally be zeroing in
on the cause of the Garuda 200 disaster.
Play that last bit again for me, please
They believe Garuda's poor training record
helps explain the deadly landing in Jogjakarta.
High quality training for pilots
is absolutely critical
especially when they face a crisis.
It is one of the few things that can help
a pilot avoid a strange psychological phenomena,
known as fixation.
Fixation is
when we are focused on completing a task
to the exclusion of other things
that may be going around us
When you see people ignoring all
the warnings of the systems
and the bells, and the airspeed
and everything else here
you got people who are fixated.
Nothing was getting through to this guy
They theorize that the captain was so fixated
on descending to the proper altitude
that he didn't notice his speed.
and even when the alarms sounded,
he failed to realize
that his plane was in grave danger.
It is hard to imagine
how somebody could get to that point
but we have a lot of flaws
and a part of the flaw in the case
of a pilot fixating on a runway
is that he or she can blank out
the rest of the advice, the GPWS, everything.
Training helps combat fixation
by reinforcing standard procedures,
designed to ensure pilots can break the spell
and take in the information they need
PULL UP
Go around captain, go around
Go around
The landing checklist is complete, right?
Better training might also
have helped the first officer
overcome his reluctance to
correct the captain's mistake.
Without question, if the captain
wasn't going to respond by going around,
which is what he should have done instantly
in hearing Whoop Whoop 'PULL UP'
the copilot should have said:
'I've got it', and done the same thing.
Digging further into the
airline's operations
investigators discover another factor
that could help explain the disastrous landing:
Fuel Efficiency Incentive
Garuda recently introduced a policy,
that rewards pilots...
...for saving fuel!
In this case, it was a bonus,
that would be applied
if they minimized the fuel they used.
Aborting a landing and going around
burns more fuel.
but the captain denies he was trying to save fuel
at the expense of his passengers safety.
He did not at any time say to excuse his actions
by blaming the company's policy
We learned in the 80's
that we had to get inside the pilot's head
We had to figure out what the state of mind was,
whether he survived or not
In this particular case,
the state of mind had to be so bizarre
in terms of the fixation
of getting this airplane on the ground
that it is hard to understand
how any professional airman could get there.
In 2008, captain Marwoto Komar faced charges
and was found guilty of negligence.
but the conviction was overturned on appeal
when the Indonesian High Court ruled
that prosecutors failed to
convincingly proved their case
The public reaction was one of horror
to this crash.
Particularly is that details came out about
what the pilot had been doing
The fact that he had ignored 15 warnings.
He ignored two pleas to go around by the copilot
He was approx. 80 knots too fast on touchdown
These elements just betrayed this
as a cowboy operation
In their final report,
investigators urge the airline
to scrap the fuel incentive policy
It is just not a good idea
to introduce this game that may compromise safety
in order to safe costs.
The report also calls for improved pilot training.
We can't change their behaviour,
it already happened
But what we can do is to try to change
those conditions and influence to their behaviour
so that we can try to prevent this
from happening again
In the aftermath of the Garuda 200 disaster
the airline overhauled
its training and safety protocols.
The European ban on Garuda
was lifted 2 years after the crash.
and today,
it is a safer airline than it has ever been.
The impact this crash had on Garuda
was a watershed
They completely went through
the operations department, the flights-department
They've changed everything about the airline.
It went from a pariah in the industry
to a well respected airline today.
But for the survivors of Garuda airways Flight 200
difficult memories remain.
To me, three days before it with me
the adrenaline, everything in your body
everything is rising and then
we get back home and that settles sort of thing
I just backed down in a heap
In recognition of his heroism,
Quinlan is honoured with one
of Australia's highest awards:
The bravery medal
I always blessed that I can still walk,
I can help people
and I tried people, the best I could
You always want to do more, though
That's the thing
A lot of people lost their lives that day
Amazing remarkable people
They will never be forgotten,
but I hope never to see that again.
Subtitles
Rein Croonen
You got this trail of people
coming away of the airplane
It was raw, unedited
A crash survivor records the desperate escape
from the wreckage of Garuda Flight 200
Huge explosions going off,
big plumes of black smoke
What send the Indonesian Airliner
careening of the runway?
You don't deal in speculation,
we want facts.
There was intense pressure to deliver.
Investigators must accept a shocking explanation
for the crash.
It is very hard to understand
Go around captain, go around
I've never heard anything like this
Air Crash Investigation
S15E08
This is a true story
It is based on official reports
and eyewitness accounts
It is early morning
on the Indonesian island of Java.
Garuda 200, cleared for descend,
Runway 09
Surface wind is calm, visibility is 8 km
A Boeing 737 flies high over head.
Copy that 09
Wind is calm, visibility 8 km.
27,000 ft
The crew of Garuda Flight 200
is getting ready to land.
You can go ahead
and proceed with the landing checklist
Landing lights ON
Approach frequency is check.
Indonesia is made up of 18,300 islands
so, air travel is incredibly important
Garuda is critical
to the aviation infra structure.
Fasten seat-belts light is ON
There are a 133 passengers in the cabin
They are nearing the end of a short flight
from the Indonesian Capital of Jakarta
265 miles South East
to the city of Jogjakarta
Most of the passengers are Indonesian
but there is also
a group of Australian journalists
They are covering a State visit
by Australia's foreign minister
who is travelling
on another plane
The relationship between Australia and Indonesia
are often strained
So, whenever a minister, a head of State
visits that country,
there is a heightened interest from the media
and so we had a large media contingent following
Kyle Quinlan is also headed to Jogjakarta
He is an air-force security officer,
part of the foreign minister's security team
I was working for 34 VOP squadron
That are guys who look after his
security for the Prime Minister,
the head of the government
and stuff like that
We had to travel internally on civilian aircraft
The plane is about 15 minutes from touch down.
The speed is 320 knots
Okay, when we are cleared,
we approach runway 9, course 088
Captain Muhammad Marwoto Komar
has been for Garuda for 21 years
Approach flaps 40,
Auto-break 2
with the airspeed approx 141 knots on landing.
Parking's end to the left
As they near the airport,
he briefs first officer Gagam Saman Rohmana
on the final steps needed,
to get their plane on the ground
Understood,
approach briefing complete
This was a typical routine for these pilots
The captain was very experienced
the copilot a little bit less experienced
but certainly just another day at the office
A short flight, easy
Enough slack and it is time to get back headed
For Quinlan, the flight is been a welcome break
from a hectic schedule
We just come from a 16 hours shift
the night before
We had about 3 hours sleep
So we get back and relax and enjoy this time
before we get on the ground
and before we have to work
The plane is less than 15 miles from the airport.
Whoa, strong wind
They hit some slight turbulence.
What will challenge you in tropical attitude,
close to the equator?
It is the fact that the weather there
has a greater exchanging of heat
and therefore, you get more wild winds
And you got to be on your toes as a pilot
Garuda 200, you are cleared to approach Runway 09
Let me know when you have the runway in sight
The bumpy ride doesn't alarm
the experienced captain
Flaps 1°
He continues with the landing approach
and calls for the flaps to be extended.
Flaps increase the wing's surface area
adding the crucial extra lift
needed at slower speeds
Gear down
They are now less than 3,000 ft above the runway.
Flaps 15°
You are in the position of taking this big bird
and putting it into a slow enough airspeed
with enough configurational flaps
and landing gear and so on
that you are a little bit vulnerable
As the plane descends,
Quinlan begins to feel uneasy
His air-force training tells him
something is not right
When you travel an aircraft so frequent
you become aware of your surroundings
and for me it was when we just
looking out the window and thinking
We are not supposed to be at this height
Something is odd
Quinlan cannot shake the feeling
the plane is dropping to fast
When I realized really bad was going to happen
I turned to my boss and I said
We are going in
OKAY then
What can you do?
You are stuck there
There is nothing that you can do
except for tighten up your seat-belts and hang on
hopefully we make it, you know
Copilot:
Go around, captain, go around
We landed and we bounced
It is chaos as the plane bounces a second time
And I just remember thinking:
Hang on, Hang on
Then, a third impact
and the plane isn't stopping
It was gliding on the belly,
I can hear the wings, the engine, everything
Then, probably the biggest impact
I have ever had in my life
Emergency crews race towards the crash site
but the 737 has careened off the runway
into a swampy rice-field.
Getting the vehicles to the site won't be easy
When you have got a crash
that occurs in the middle of an airport,
where there is plenty of access is one thing
But when it is out off the airport site
in this particular case in a rice paddy,
with very limited access
it gets almost exponentially more difficult.
Many passengers are badly injured
and fire is spreading fast.
Kyle Quinlan realizes
that there is no time to wait for rescue
Once we pulled up,
so many people couldn't do any
I needed to do something and help these people out
Inside the burning fuselage of Garuda Flight 200,
Kyle Quinlan struggles to get out
Fire is blocking the nearest exits
The whole plane is just glowing heat
coming from the rods of the aircraft
If the fuel-tanks ignite, the plane could explode
but fire fighters can't reach the crash
Anytime you got the possibility of fuel
You need fire suppression right there right now
because you got massive flames of 1800°
You got a lethal situation
Quinlan still can't get out
I turned to the left
grabbed the emergency exit
with another Indonesian guy
and cracked the emergency exit.
Passengers scramble out of the door
They each other
I got to get you out of here, now
Quinlan's sergeant Michael Haton is too badly hurt
to get off the plane without help
He was unconscious and
falling in and out of consciousness
So, I got him out
jumped off the left wingtip
into a rice-paddy
He sank knee-deep in water
About 100 meter away from the aircraft
my boss and I carried him there
I could see his injuries
They are not life threatening
I said: look!
I keep you right here, I'm coming back for you
I'm coming back
Off I went
I went back to the plane
Free lance camera-man Wayan Sukardo
also makes his way off the plane
He soon begins capturing
dramatic images of the aftermath.
We got the camera man
grasping for breath
we got him staggering around
away from the aeroplane filming as he went
And you got this trail of people
coming away from the aeroplane
It was raw, unedited
And it was a real sense of being there.
The fire and the intensity
it was a thing was huge explosions going off
Big plumes with black smoke
How the aircraft was burning
It was phenomenal, never seen anything like this
Back on board the plane,
Quinlan helps more passengers escape the cabin
that is fast becoming an inferno
A lot of people where not in the condition
to do anything
I am in the condition where I can assist
When I assist, I do the best I can and help
The scene was one of chaos
On one hand, you got a lot of officials,
not knowing what to do
On the other side,
you got passengers almost looking after themselves
and rescuing each other
coming away from the wreck
You got emergency services
who can't get to the aeroplane
because of the terrain,
because of the ditches and the rice paddies
It really was chaotic
Of the 140 passengers and crew on board,
21 people have been killed
Clearly, you knew
that people were not going to survive this
It is almost a miracle that somebody did survive
Sukardo keeps rolling
as crash survivors including Kyle Quinlan and
Michael Hattan arrive at a nearby hospital
Air-force, Air-force
Dozens of stretchers and
It was just a big shock for me, so many people
Within hours, Sukardo's dramatic footage
is broadcast around the world.
The public response to that footage
was overwhelming
Millions and millions of hits on YouTube
Television-stations around the globe picked it up
and it was repeated continuously
for days after the crash
At the crash-site, investigators from Indonesia's
National Transportation Safety Committee
or NTSC, faced the enormous task
of piecing together what went wrong.
Aircraft debris is spread
all along the plane's deadly trajectory
from the runway
to where it came to rest in the rice field.
An airplane is basically an aluminium egg-shell
It is incredibly strong
when it it used the way it's designed to be used
but when you skid it off the runway at high speed
it is not going to stay together.
Allen Stray of the Australian Transport
Safety Bureau joins the investigation
We have to establish:
Where did it touch down
were there any runway marks, did it bounce,
did it skid?
What are the distinguishing features
on the runway that may help us
build a picture of what was happening
at the time of the accident.
Stray knows that the relatives of the dead
are already demanding answers.
Because there were so many international people
on board this aircraft
some of whom had died,
there was intense pressure to deliver
Investigators search for clues to explain
why Garuda Flight 200 bounced
off the runway and crashed
It looks like it hit pretty hard
They discover gauges
and shattered pieces of landing gear on the runway
clear signs that the plane
slammed down with unusual force.
The nose wheel digging in and fracturing
was indicative of a very hard G force
on that impact.
It is also clear
that the plane hit the runway more than once
More skid marks here
The idea of walking the site
is to establish a sequence of the events
First impact here
Be very careful
not to disturb any perusal evidence
So, 1, 2, 3
They are off the end of the runway
There was a lot of questioning
try to establish
Why did the aircraft bounce?
The location of the first skid mark
gives investigators a crucial lead.
How far are we away
from the threshold of the runway?
860 meter
That is more than a third of the runway
It landed long, it didn't touch down
until a long way into the runway
The distance of the touchdown from the threshold
raise serious questions in the
minds of the investigators.
So, he comes in long, he hits hard and bounce.
Let's gather as much weather data as we can.
I am very keen to establish
Was there a weather situation
a wind or a down-draft, a strong tailwind?
Stray suspects wind-sheer
might explain what he sees.
Like this and like this
Wind-sheer can produce
violent up-drafts and downdrafts
that are impossible to fly through.
Close to the ground, it can be deadly.
Especially in the age of climate change
we got more and more violent winds,
gust fronts, down-draft and things of this nature
and sometimes micro bursts.
Investigators check with tower controllers
to find out
what kind of weather the pilots were facing
as they descended towards the airport.
Surface winds were completely calm.
The weather data shows
there were strong winds at high altitudes,
but the winds near the runway were calm.
There is no sign of the kind of downdrafts
that could force a plane to the ground
That wind tapered right off
and there was ample time for the crew
to establish the aircraft
in a stabilized approach from 1000 ft
Indonesian police launch
a criminal investigation into the accident.
They bring the captain in for questioning.
For crash investigators,
the move has unfortunate consequences.
I really have nothing more to say,
I'm sorry
In cases where the investigation
becomes criminalized
in particular where that happens early on
if we have police involved or law is involved
We did everything by the book
that can intimidate people
and it can lead to them
not coorporating effectively with investigators
With the flight crew under criminal suspicion,
and reluctant to talk
investigators must look for other leads.
Downloading the plane's black
boxes or flight recorders,
is now a top priority.
Investigators quickly recover
them from the wreckage
and send them for analysis.
The flight-recorders are vitally important
It is important to get as much information
from them, early information
so that it may direct
the thrust of the investigation
Without that data, we're screwed
Meanwhile, investigators
focus their attention on the crash site.
Every detail is a possible clue.
What I want to know is
Why he didn't stop at the end of this runway?
The investigation was initially concerned
about the touchdown point
and the remaining distance on the runway
Is that the runway map?
They wonder, if after coming in long
the plane simply didn't have enough runway left
to stop safely
Even with a 2 or 3 mile runway,
you got a finite patch of concrete
on which to land an airplane
It touched down here, 860 meter from the threshold
That gives him just over 1300 meters to stop
The runway in Jogjakarta is shorter than
the runways at many other international airports.
But even though the pilots touched down late,
Stray calculates
they still had enough room to stop their plane.
He had more than enough runway.
The length of the runway was completely adequate
for a Boeing 737 landing.
Investigators need to dig deeper
We need to know why this plane
didn't slow down once it was on the ground.
I want to take a close look at everything.
They begin a painstaking analysis
of the major mechanical systems on the 737
especially those designed to help the plane
slow down and stop on landing:
Brakes, spoilers, and thrust reversers.
Was there a mechanical failure,
looking at the performance of the aircraft
Was it physically possible for the aircraft
to stop?
The careful analysis of the mechanical systems
provides a potential breakthrough
I think we got something here.
A review of the maintenance log
for Garuda Flight 200
turns up an intriguing lead.
There had been a right up
on a couple of occasions
of a thrust reverser failure,
of one thrust reverser
The thrust reversers redirect
the engine exhaust forward
to help the plane slow down on the runway
You got to remember: It is not just a matter
of kissing the wheels onto the ground
It is a matter of
dissipating a tremendous amount of kinetic energy
How ?
Well, you do it
with the friction between the tyres and the runway
hopefully using any skid
you do it with reverse thrust
Stop it!
the thrust reverser
Investigators wonder
if a malfunctioning thrust-reverser
explains why the crew couldn't stop
before they ran out of runway.
At the end of day,
you still have to dissipate all that energy
and if you don't have enough room to do it,
you are off the end
But it is another dead end
According to the maintenance records,
the faulty thrust reverser was repaired
before Flight 200 took off.
OKAY, they fixed it
That had been rectified prior to
this flight departing from Jakarta
There was no paperwork evidence of a failure.
Investigators are going to need another lead.
We don't deal in speculations, we want facts
The facts so far are limited.
The 737 careened into a rice field
after slamming to the ground
almost a third of the way down the runway.
The question is:
Why?
Was the plane configured properly?
Perhaps there was something
wrong with the wing-flaps,
pilots rely on for landing.
The flap system on a modern jetliner
like a 737 create greater lift
that means that we can approach
and take off from an airport
with a much lower and safer airspeed.
The team scrutinizes the mechanical rods
or screw-jacks that move the flaps.
We needed to look at the flaps setting
What flap setting can we establish
from the wreckage?
We measured the screw jack-extension
to establish what the flap setting was.
What they find is astonishing
It is like the flaps were all the way up
The screw-jacks show
a flap-setting of just 5°
not nearly enough for a safe landing.
We just could not believe that the aircraft
would have landed with only 5°.
To provide enough lift on landing,
the flaps are usually extended step by step
from 0° all the way to 40°
as the plane slows and descends towards the runway
It is hard to overstate the value
of the flap-systems on a modern jetliner.
Investigators aren't sure
how the flaps ended up with only 5°
The flap mechanism was damaged in the crash
and may have moved on impact.
To be certain of how the flaps were set
they need to know what is on the flight recorders.
We need that data from the black boxes.
Some of that data is proving elusive.
Australian technicians have been unable
to download the CVR:
It is a huge blow.
If you don't have access to the CVR
for whatever reason,
then, it is very difficult to understand
what went on in the cockpit.
Desperate to hear what is on the device,
investigators send it to the U.S. manufacturer
hoping experts there can recover the recording.
So, steps were taken to hand-carry
the recorder to the factory,
so that the data can be downloaded
Crash investigators are having better luck
with the 2nd black box, the FDR
They have managed to download
all of its stored information
We were able to get information
about the flap-settings,
the speed on the approach,
the thrust reverser deployment
the dynamics of the approach and landing itself.
The data reveals the 737
was coming in for its landing blazingly fast
Flight 200 hit the ground at over 250 mph.
More than a 100 mph faster than normal
This is a ridiculous amount of speed
to approach an airport with the attempt of landing
The speed that impact is so fast,
it bounces twice
before skidding in to the rice fields.
The speed of the aircraft
on short final and on touchdown
was so excessive
there was no way it was going to stop.
But why did the pilots touchdown on the runway
at such a catastrophically high speed?
Hold up the data for the flaps, please
The flaps were set for 5°...
...never more than 5°
The data confirms what the screw-jacks
suggested to investigators.
The flaps on Flight 200's wings
were in a bizarre position,
one that is never used during landing
It is not operational procedure
to land with flaps 5
unless there is a jammed flap.
and it cannot be extended
Investigators are left
with an alarming possibility
That the plane crashed because
the pilots touched down
without performing one of the most critical steps
needed for any landing
An airplane that has been in an accident
because of over-running the runway
that had a flap setting of only 5 in a 737
is very disturbing.
Why the crew failed to set their flaps properly
remains a troubling question.
Meanwhile, media reports erode
public confidence in Garuda Indonesia Airways
The accident affected negatively
Garuda's reputation,
but they had
had other problems in the past.
In 2002, Garuda Flight 421 was forced
to ditch in a small river
after both engines flamed out.
And in 1997,
Garuda Flight 152 slammed into a ravine
killing all 234 people on board
Garuda's record at that stage was just
a series of accidents and incidents
with large numbers of people losing their lives.
In the wake of this latest disaster,
Garuda is banned from landing
at any airport in the EU.
The fate of Indonesia's National airline
could be at stake
if investigators cannot figure out what went wrong
on-board Garuda Flight 200.
Finally
After a painstaking data recovery process,
investigators can finally listen to the CVR
from Garuda Flight 200
Fortunately, the recorder
went to the laboratories,
a tenacious breed
and they do not give up easily
But will the sounds, captured in the cockpit,
shed light on the decisions and actions
of the flight crew?
Let's hear it
when we are cleared,
we approach runway 09, course 088
Investigators listen
as the crew discusses their plans for landing
What you do
is listening for the atmosphere
and the tone, the ambiance of you like,
in the cockpit
Approach flaps 40
The airspeed approx. 141 knots on landing
Parking to the left
Now they know they need 40° to land,
but they only get 5°
What is going on?
Approach briefing complete
At first, there is no sign the crew is worried.
The captain certainly doesn't sound stressed
Then, the first hint,
that something is going wrong
It looks like I cannot hit the glide slope.
The plane is too high
for this distance from the airport
I better get down a little faster.
To land smoothly,
planes need to loose enough speed and altitude
to descend gradually
and meet the runway at a shallow angle.
Flight 200 is much too high
he is a bit behind,
but it shouldn't be a problem yet
Stray compares the descend to Flight 200
with the flight path they should have been flying.
It is not unusual to be a little behind
in terms of slowing down
and especially in terms of descending
and sometimes, you find yourself high and fast
and you got to make a decision
He definitively has some work to do
if he hopes to get on track
I said speed, flaps 15°
Flaps 5°
The captain is calling for flaps 15°
Why is he saying:
'Flaps 5°' ?
Flaps 15°
Something is very wrong in this cockpit.
Check speed flaps 15°
The captain repeatedly tells the first officer
to increase the flaps to 15°
But the first officer never moves them past 5°
Flaps 15°
It is like they are not even in the same cockpit.
Landing demands precise crew coordination.
but as they speed towards the runway
the captain and his first officer
seemed to be ignoring each other.
There is a lot of evidence,
that this crew was not thinking it through
they weren't situationally aware...
...they were not communicating.
First things first:
Why did the first officer ignored the captain
and leave the plane in flaps 5°
It is very perplexing
If you got professional pilots,
we can make mistakes
but usually, that is why we got 2 people up there
one catches the other
Investigators suspect the high speed at landing
explains the fist officer's decision
NOT to increase the flaps-setting
Way to fast for flaps 15°
Flaps can be damaged by excessive drag
And when the captain calls for flaps 15°
the plane is speeding at over 250 knots.
Much too fast
to safely extend the flaps any further
The plane is moving so quickly,
that wind drag could tear the flaps right off
the wings if the flaps are extended past 5°
I can very well understand why the 1st officer
did not comply on going to flaps 15°
they are grossly over speeding flaps 5°
The first officer was exactly right
in not putting them down
Alright, they were moving too fast
to deploy the flaps
But why didn’t the first officer say so,
tell the captain to slow down
One of the issues was that he didn’t communicate
He has reasoning for
not responding to those commands
He didn’t communicate that to the captain
When you take
a pristine Monday morning quarterback look at this
regardless of airline, regardless of culture
it is very clear that the copilot should have said
Captain: I got the airplane
But what it tells me here is
that this copilot did not feel that
he could speak up, one way or another.
Even more bizarre:
Why didn't the captain react to the loud alarms,
sounding in the cockpit,
just moments before the first impact.
Go around, captain
Go around!
The landing checklist completed, right?
It is a tough one to ignore
There is nothing subtle about it
The ground proximity warning is a clear signal
to a pilot that he is flying dangerously low
There were 15 ground proximity alerts and warnings
during that final stage of the approach
But a crew member he is
there should be instant action
Instead of aborting the landing
the captain does something
that baffles investigators.
Go around captain!
Go around!
Landing checklist completed, right?
He asks the first officer
if the landing checklist is complete.
Landing checklist?
I have never heard anything like this.
When the copilot called for the captain
to go around
and the captain responded:
landing checklist complete?
It was just something that we could not understand
I was appalled,
this was industry's worst practice
for crew resource management
apart of ignoring 15 warnings,
ignoring two pleas by a copilot to go around
and landing 79 knots too fast
This was atrocious
For investigators, the question remains:
Why did the crew continue with a landing
that was clearly heading for disaster?
Personnel files revealed both Garuda pilots
are fully licensed and certified.
The captain in particular
has many years of experience.
but his dangerously fast landing attempt
and the poor communication in the cockpit
lead investigators to question
the quality of the crew's training.
So, there was a much deeper look
at what training had been provided to the crew.
☮ Weak situational awareness and coordination
☮ Poor communication
☮ Unstabilized approaches.
A review of training records for the entire
airline uncovers a disturbing detail.
This is not the first Garuda crew
to have problems with a routine landing.
We know that in 2001
an analysis had been conducted
and there was a number of instances of
unstabilized approaches or
fast approaches by crews.
The finding shines new light
on what happened in Jogjakarta.
Investigators may finally be zeroing in
on the cause of the Garuda 200 disaster.
Play that last bit again for me, please
They believe Garuda's poor training record
helps explain the deadly landing in Jogjakarta.
High quality training for pilots
is absolutely critical
especially when they face a crisis.
It is one of the few things that can help
a pilot avoid a strange psychological phenomena,
known as fixation.
Fixation is
when we are focused on completing a task
to the exclusion of other things
that may be going around us
When you see people ignoring all
the warnings of the systems
and the bells, and the airspeed
and everything else here
you got people who are fixated.
Nothing was getting through to this guy
They theorize that the captain was so fixated
on descending to the proper altitude
that he didn't notice his speed.
and even when the alarms sounded,
he failed to realize
that his plane was in grave danger.
It is hard to imagine
how somebody could get to that point
but we have a lot of flaws
and a part of the flaw in the case
of a pilot fixating on a runway
is that he or she can blank out
the rest of the advice, the GPWS, everything.
Training helps combat fixation
by reinforcing standard procedures,
designed to ensure pilots can break the spell
and take in the information they need
PULL UP
Go around captain, go around
Go around
The landing checklist is complete, right?
Better training might also
have helped the first officer
overcome his reluctance to
correct the captain's mistake.
Without question, if the captain
wasn't going to respond by going around,
which is what he should have done instantly
in hearing Whoop Whoop 'PULL UP'
the copilot should have said:
'I've got it', and done the same thing.
Digging further into the
airline's operations
investigators discover another factor
that could help explain the disastrous landing:
Fuel Efficiency Incentive
Garuda recently introduced a policy,
that rewards pilots...
...for saving fuel!
In this case, it was a bonus,
that would be applied
if they minimized the fuel they used.
Aborting a landing and going around
burns more fuel.
but the captain denies he was trying to save fuel
at the expense of his passengers safety.
He did not at any time say to excuse his actions
by blaming the company's policy
We learned in the 80's
that we had to get inside the pilot's head
We had to figure out what the state of mind was,
whether he survived or not
In this particular case,
the state of mind had to be so bizarre
in terms of the fixation
of getting this airplane on the ground
that it is hard to understand
how any professional airman could get there.
In 2008, captain Marwoto Komar faced charges
and was found guilty of negligence.
but the conviction was overturned on appeal
when the Indonesian High Court ruled
that prosecutors failed to
convincingly proved their case
The public reaction was one of horror
to this crash.
Particularly is that details came out about
what the pilot had been doing
The fact that he had ignored 15 warnings.
He ignored two pleas to go around by the copilot
He was approx. 80 knots too fast on touchdown
These elements just betrayed this
as a cowboy operation
In their final report,
investigators urge the airline
to scrap the fuel incentive policy
It is just not a good idea
to introduce this game that may compromise safety
in order to safe costs.
The report also calls for improved pilot training.
We can't change their behaviour,
it already happened
But what we can do is to try to change
those conditions and influence to their behaviour
so that we can try to prevent this
from happening again
In the aftermath of the Garuda 200 disaster
the airline overhauled
its training and safety protocols.
The European ban on Garuda
was lifted 2 years after the crash.
and today,
it is a safer airline than it has ever been.
The impact this crash had on Garuda
was a watershed
They completely went through
the operations department, the flights-department
They've changed everything about the airline.
It went from a pariah in the industry
to a well respected airline today.
But for the survivors of Garuda airways Flight 200
difficult memories remain.
To me, three days before it with me
the adrenaline, everything in your body
everything is rising and then
we get back home and that settles sort of thing
I just backed down in a heap
In recognition of his heroism,
Quinlan is honoured with one
of Australia's highest awards:
The bravery medal
I always blessed that I can still walk,
I can help people
and I tried people, the best I could
You always want to do more, though
That's the thing
A lot of people lost their lives that day
Amazing remarkable people
They will never be forgotten,
but I hope never to see that again.
Subtitles
Rein Croonen