Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 1 - Deadly Oxygen - full transcript
*
NARRATOR: US fighters scramble
to intercept a fast-moving jet.
WESLEY: Everybody knew
that there was a major problem.
COL. OLSON: Stand
by. I can't quite see.
NARRATOR: But this is
not a combat mission.
COL. OLSON: Our job
is to try to figure out
what's wrong with that airplane.
NARRATOR: It's a
midair emergency.
WESLEY:
4-7-Bravo-Alpha, Jacksonville.
Please acknowledge.
NARRATOR: A private Learjet is
hundreds of miles off course.
COL. OLSON:
There's some reason why that
crew is not communicating
with air traffic control,
and we need to find that out.
BOB: Can he see
anything in the cockpit?
BOB:
The aircraft was flying toward
a large metropolitan area.
BOB: Get me
someone from Learjet.
I need to know how long
this plane can stay in the air.
JIM: If it went
down in those areas,
there'd be mass casualties.
[* Intro Theme ]
MAN: Mayday, mayday.
[* Intro Theme ]
*
NARRATOR: It's 8:30 am at
Orlando International Airport.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Nav lights?
CPT. KLING: On.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Radios?
NARRATOR: The pilots
of a private Learjet
run through their
pre-flight checks.
CPT. KLING: Are set.
NARRATOR: They're preparing for
some high-profile passengers.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
And we're ready for taxi.
CPT. KLING: Just in time. Here's
the man himself. Good morning.
NARRATOR: Pro golfer Payne
Stewart is on his way to Dallas
with some close
business associates.
PAYNE: Sure, the
target area's wide,
but you miss, the
bunker's gonna eat you alive.
MIKE: Payne Stewart is one
of the most colorful characters
in the game of golf.
NARRATOR: At 42, Stewart is in
the middle of a comeback year.
He's just won the US Open,
one of the most
important dates on the tour,
but he's almost as famous
for his trademark wardrobe
as he is for his golfing.
MIKE: Payne Stewart
was loud, he was outgoing,
he was engaging.
His dad always wore
really colorful blazers
and he always told Payne, you
know, you want to stand out.
So Payne said I'm gonna
wear knickers, plus fours
and a flat cap,
so even people who didn't
follow golf knew who he was
by how he dressed.
PAYNE: Let me show you
my idea for that bunker.
NARRATOR: Payne Stewart
hopes his future in golf
will go beyond playing the game.
He has big plans for
building a new course
at the Dallas university
where he honed his
skills as an amateur.
MIKE: There were three other
people with him in the plane
in addition to the pilots.
He had Van Ardan,
who was his agent,
along with Robert
Fraley, also his agent,
and Bruce Borland,
who was a member of
the Jack Nicklaus design group.
PAYNE: This hole is gonna
be tough. It's over 500 yards.
NARRATOR: Stewart flies
regularly on the Learjet,
a plane that takes its name
from the man who designed it.
JIM: Bill Lear was
working on a fighter jet design
for the Swiss,
and when they decided
not to build that airplane,
he took that design and
brought it back to the US
and built the Learjet.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
you are cleared for takeoff.
CPT. KLING: You ready? Okay.
Here we go. And takeoff thrust.
NARRATOR: Captain
Michael Kling is well qualified
to fly this high
performance machine.
He's a former Air Force
pilot and flight instructor.
JIM: A lot of pilots
came out of the Air Force
and started flying Learjets
because it reminded them
and gave them that performance
that they were used to.
It was like the Ferrari or
the Porsche of business jets.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: V-one.
NARRATOR: First Officer
Stephanie Bellegarrigue
has less than 100
hours in the Lear.
She's keen to log
more flight time.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Rotate.
NARRATOR: At 9:19 am,
the Learjet lifts off.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Good morning, Jacksonville.
This is Learjet 4-7-Bravo-Alpha
climbing to flight level 2-6-0.
NARRATOR:
The crew contacts Jacksonville
air traffic control.
WESLEY: Good
morning 4-7-Bravo-Alpha.
Climb and maintain
flight level three-niner-zero.
NARRATOR: Wesley Kutch
was one of the controllers
on duty that day.
WESLEY: The crew of the Learjet
was extremely professional,
cheerful, nothing out
of the ordinary at all.
A typical hello, how are
you, verify your altitude,
course, et cetera.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Learjet 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
roger that, Jacksonville.
Climb and maintain
flight level three-niner-zero.
NARRATOR: The controller
clears the jet to keep climbing
all the way to 39,000 feet.
JIM: The Learjet
generally flies higher
than the commercial airliners.
NARRATOR: By flying at high
altitudes where the air is thin,
the Lear saves on fuel.
JIM: Well, you
get a better economy,
so you're getting from point
A to point B, costing you less.
NARRATOR:
The flight plan calls for
the plane to fly northwest
towards Cross City, Florida,
then turn west and
fly direct to Dallas.
Fourteen minutes after takeoff,
the Learjet has
traveled 80 miles.
It's time to pass
control of the plane
to a new air traffic controller.
WESLEY: Air traffic control
is a series of
what we call hand-offs,
and that means
that it's time for him
to cross to
somebody else's sector.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
contact Jack Center at 135.65.
NARRATOR: The
pilots need to change
to a different radio frequency
to talk to the next controller.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
please acknowledge.
NARRATOR: There's no answer.
WESLEY: There's
nothing really unusual
about missing a
frequency change.
It's early, just after takeoff.
I assume they're trying to
get everything buttoned up
and taken care of.
It really wasn't that alarming.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
contact Jack Center on 135.65.
WESLEY: In the back of your
mind, all controllers know,
I didn't get an acknowledgment
for that frequency change,
so you give it a moment.
You go on about your business
and then you come back to
the aircraft. You try it again.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
this is Jack Center.
SUPERVISOR: What's up?
WESLEY: It's that
Learjet. It's not answering.
SUPERVISOR: Maybe
he's off frequency.
WESLEY: There's a
plethora of reasons
where an
aircraft can miss a call.
SUPERVISOR:
Let's see if it levels
off when it's supposed to.
NARRATOR: The
Learjet has nearly reached
its approved cruising
altitude of 39,000 feet.
WESLEY: They're still climbing.
SUPERVISOR: Let me
see their flight plan.
WESLEY: When they
climbed through 39,000 feet,
everybody knew that there
was a major, major problem.
SUPERVISOR: They've got a
turn coming at Cross City.
WESLEY: Let's hope
they make that turn.
I'm gonna try again
on the other frequency.
4-7-Bravo-Alpha, Jacksonville.
Please acknowledge.
NARRATOR:
At the same time, pilots
of other planes in the area
also try to contact the Learjet.
PILOT: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha, come in.
BOB: It's kind of a band of
brothers thing, uh, among pilots
that if something is
beginning to go wrong
perhaps you can step in
safely and remedy a situation.
If the Lear's radios
were failing but not failed,
then perhaps a
relay could be set up
to communicate with the
aircraft from the ground.
WESLEY: Any pilot, any pilot,
do you have
contact with the Learjet?
PILOT: Negative.
Nothing from the Learjet.
NARRATOR: It's been 20 minutes
since Payne
Stewart's plane left Orlando.
Controllers watch nervously
as it approaches Cross City.
It's a critical moment.
They know that any
second now the Learjet
is supposed to turn
west towards Dallas.
WESLEY: The
tension level was so high,
you could hear a pin drop.
WESLEY: Damn it.
WESLEY: It's not
making a course correction.
There was
something terribly wrong.
*
WESLEY: This is
Jacksonville Center.
I'm declaring an emergency.
WESLEY: We're all kind
of in shock and disbelief
at this aircraft.
[phone ringing]
BOB: Benzon here.
NARRATOR:
Experts at the National
Transportation Safety Board
are notified of the
escalating emergency.
BOB: Get me a map.
BOB: Once the air
traffic control system realized
that the aircraft had
gone rogue, so to speak,
the next step is to
try to figure out why.
It's either being
hijacked or it's malfunctioned.
The crew has been
incapacitated somehow.
BOB: This is where they are now.
[indistinct radio chatter]
NARRATOR: Controllers
scramble F-16 fighters
to track down
the wayward Learjet.
COL. OLSON: Is the
crew incapacitated?
Is there something
wrong with the aircraft?
There's some reason why
that crew is not communicating
with air traffic control,
so our job is to go
up and find out why.
*
NARRATOR: The situation
is growing more urgent.
The runaway plane
has been out of contact
for more than an hour,
and it's about to fly over
the densely populated area
around Memphis.
BOB: Get me
someone from Learjet.
I need to know how long
this plane can stay in the air.
BOB:
The aircraft was flying toward
a large metropolitan area.
The question became, well,
if it went out of control or
ran out of gas over Memphis,
what would happen?
[phone ringing]
NARRATOR: Learjet
investigator Jim Tidball
is immediately
recruited to the team.
JIM: Where is it right now?
NARRATOR: His first
task is to determine
how far the plane can get with
the amount of fuel on board.
JIM: I need performance
data on the 35 ASAP.
JIM: When the
airplane didn't make its turn,
it continued on towards Memphis,
and after Memphis it was
headed toward St. Louis,
and after St. Louis
again towards Minneapolis.
Those are all major
metropolitan areas.
If it went down in those areas,
there'd be mass casualties.
NARRATOR: A small
private jet on a routine flight
has turned into a
national emergency.
LOU WATERS: We have a developing
story, as you may have heard.
There is a civilian Learjet...
NARRATOR: News of a
rogue Learjet flying
hundreds of miles off course
has captivated the nation.
BOB: Turn that up, would you?
NEWS ANCHOR: The air
force is simply saying...
NARRATOR: NTSB
investigators keep a close eye
on the media coverage.
BOB: We began
assembling our launch team
and monitoring the
situation on television,
like a lot of folks
in the United States.
NEWS ANCHOR: It did take a
full load of fuel on with it.
BOB: So it became a kind
of a weird situation for us.
*
NARRATOR:
There's some good news.
The plane has
cleared Memphis air space.
WESLEY: At least it
didn't hit the city.
NARRATOR: But the
crisis is far from over.
Controllers still have
no idea why the plane
is not responding,
and there are more urban
centers in the Learjet's path.
If it doesn't
change course soon,
the fighter jets may be forced
to take drastic measures.
JIM: If the decision
came out that they were
to take the airplane out
instead of allowing it to go
towards a metropolitan area,
that decision would have
to come from the White House.
WHITE HOUSE PRESS CONFERENCE:
The FAA began tracking
an aircraft in distress.
The president was made aware
of this situation this morning
in a meeting with
his economic advisors.
*
JIM: Okay. I
think I got something.
NARRATOR: Jim Tidball has come
up with a rough calculation
of where the plane
will run out of fuel.
JIM: ATC kept giving
the team real-time data
as to where the airplane was,
the heading that it was flying,
et cetera, so we always
knew where the airplane was,
and, calculating the
fuel burn at those altitudes,
we could figure how
far it was gonna go.
JIM: My best guess is South
Dakota, possibly North Dakota.
I can't say more than that.
*
BOB: Let's hope he's right.
With any luck they
won't hit anything.
BOB: That's the scary part
of the whole equation here.
Is it gonna hit a house? Is
it gonna go down in a town?
Big Midwest, but
anything could be possible.
In the air, the F-16
pilots have caught up
with the rogue plane.
COL. OLSON: Stand
by. I can't quite see.
COL. OLSON:
Once we made the intercept,
our job is to figure out
what's going on
with the airplane.
We'll visually
look at the airplane.
COL. OLSON: No damage.
COL. OLSON: There was
no panels missing.
There was no gas
leaking, for instance.
There was no other,
any other fluids leaking.
There was no
obvious exterior damage.
NARRATOR: The fighter pilots
are desperate for some way
to communicate with
the Learjet's crew,
so they attempt a
risky aerial maneuver.
COL. OLSON: Alright, I'm
gonna try and wake them up.
COL. OLSON: Maybe, you know, by
flying through their jet wash
or the turbulence that's
caused by the lead fighter
in this case, it would get
some reaction out of them.
*
You're hoping you
get some movement.
NARRATOR: But it's no use.
The Lear does not respond.
BOB: Can he see
anything in the cockpit?
COL. OLSON: Stand by. I'm
gonna go take a closer look.
NARRATOR: But Colonel
Olson isn't giving up.
Even though his F-16 is designed
to fly at much higher speeds,
he wrestles it closer
to get a better look.
COL. OLSON: Flying an F-16 at
low air speeds can be difficult,
especially at high altitudes.
It was very strange
sitting next to them
wondering what's going
on inside the aircraft.
NARRATOR:
The windows of the aircraft
provide an ominous clue.
COL. OLSON: No movement, and
the window's covered in frost.
JIM: When the report
came back that the windshield
seemed to be iced
over on the inside
and that the cabin
windows were all dark,
that gave us cause for concern.
COL. OLSON: If the people are
conscious, they'd be trying to
scrape away that condensation
so they could see.
So if you see no attempt to
get rid of that condensation,
your mind goes,
what's the condition
of the crew and the passengers
that are on board that aircraft?
NARRATOR: The grim reality
of the situation sets in.
BOB: The frosted-over windscreen
and the darkened
cockpit and cabin indicated
that the crew is
probably no longer with us.
NARRATOR: The Learjet
is now a ghost plane.
BOB: Can we narrow down
the crash site any more?
NARRATOR: With no hope
for the passengers and crew,
the only focus now is on
where the plane will come down.
BOB: As NTSB investigators,
we're very interested in
where the aircraft
would crash obviously,
because we had to get
there as soon as we could.
NARRATOR: But all they
can do is wait and watch.
MIKE: To hear the news of Payne
likely being on that plane
was very shocking.
It didn't seem real.
He was just winning the US Open
and grabbing Phil Mickelson's
face and hoisting a trophy up.
NARRATOR: After nearly
four hours in the air,
the Learjet is approaching
Aberdeen, South Dakota.
BOB: Got it. It
could go down any time.
NARRATOR:
According to calculations,
the jet is almost out of fuel.
At 10 minutes past
12:00, it happens.
COL. OLSON: One of the
engines just flamed out,
and it started turning.
I said something like, "Look
out, the aircraft is turning."
We don't know where
this aircraft is gonna go,
but it's starting to move.
NARRATOR:
The Learjet carrying Payne
Stewart and five other people
is falling from the sky.
COL. OLSON: They're going
down. They're going down.
BOB: Where's it gonna hit?
NARRATOR: The F-16
attempts to follow.
But the plane
disappears into the clouds.
It drops below the radar.
COL. OLSON: Center,
I've got a crash site.
*
WESLEY: We all felt like
we were pretty much
just kicked in the guts,
couldn't do anything, so
it was a pretty bad day.
NARRATOR: Payne
Stewart's Learjet
has slammed into a hay
field in South Dakota.
There are no survivors.
COL. OLSON:
You have human beings on
that aircraft. They have a life.
They have a family. They have a
connection. They have a story.
You're part of the end of
their story unfortunately,
so when you look back on
it, it's a very, very sad deal.
*
JIM: It's over.
JIM: I think there
was a sense of relief
when the airplane actually
did go down in a rural area
that it did not impact a
major metropolitan area.
NEWS ANCHOR: This is
where the plane went down
after its
1,500-mile four-hour flight
halfway across the nation.
On board, golfer Payne Stewart,
two-time US Open champ.
MIKE: The guys get to
know each other really well.
It is a tight-knit
community with the media,
with the players,
with the families,
and for someone from
that family to be taken away
in such tragic
fashion was really saddening.
NARRATOR: In Brown
County, South Dakota,
the crash has
shaken local residents.
WITNESS: And after a few
flips and flops and everything
it went straight down,
and it took probably 12
seconds to hit the ground.
*
NARRATOR: For crash
investigators, the first step
is to survey the impact
area and lay out a search grid.
INVESTIGATOR: Nice and slow.
We don't want to miss a thing.
JIM: The grid-type
search was a way to proceed
so we knew where we had
been, what we had covered,
and then we could move on
to the next grid section.
To us it was very important
so we knew where we could walk,
where we couldn't walk.
NARRATOR: The 500-mile an
hour impact hasn't just smashed
the wreckage, it's driven
most of it into the ground.
JIM: The aircraft
at the accident site
was completely
destroyed and in pieces,
and there were a lot
of very small pieces.
BOB: My first impression was
we're gonna have a little
trouble gathering evidence here.
*
NARRATOR: At the
Learjet crash site,
investigators dig
through layers of earth.
They search every
inch of soil for wreckage.
BOB: It almost became
an archaeological dig,
kind of unlayering the thing as
we went down through the earth.
JIM: A good investigator
can't make decisions
based on initial information.
You have to have all the data
before you can
do an adequate job.
NARRATOR: As key
pieces are recovered,
investigators map out
the position of the plane.
They want to find
the tail and, with it,
the cockpit voice recorder.
JIM: As we were looking through
the debris in the crater,
we started finding
pieces that were close
to the cockpit voice recorder.
We knew we were
looking in the right area.
We felt confident
that we'd find the CVR.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Bob Benzon
of the National
Transportation Safety Board
is piecing together
what they know so far.
BOB: Okay. Let's
see what we got.
NARRATOR: The lengthy pursuit
of the flight has given him
an unusual head
start on the case.
BOB: For an
investigator to realize
that an accident's going
to occur before it happened
is very unusual.
It's a strange
feeling, a sad feeling
to know an
accident's going to occur
and you pack your bags early
for once instead of later.
*
BOB: The engines were okay.
BOB: The F-16 folks
were gathering data,
like both engines were running.
They could see two contrails.
It had some electrical power
because navigation and rotating
beacon lights were going on.
BOB: The electrical was working.
So what else do we know?
NARRATOR: The F-16
pilots also noticed
some unusual fluctuations
in the Learjet's altitude
before it crashed.
COL. OLSON: Stand by. I'm
gonna take a closer look.
NARRATOR: The Learjet
was bobbing up and down
in a steady rhythm
known as porpoising.
BOB: That probably
was because the autopilot
was set in a climb mode,
and the aircraft
was attempting to climb
as high as it possibly could,
but aerodynamically
there's a limit to that,
and so it would get up
to its very maximum ceiling
and then go down and try to
go back up and go down again.
NARRATOR:
No pilot would deliberately
fly a plane this way.
BOB: I think they
were unconscious or worse
when the jets got the visual.
NARRATOR: There's another lead
Benzon urgently wants to pursue.
*
COL. OLSON: No movement, and
the window's covered in frost.
BOB: The F-16 folks told us that
there was a large area of frost
in fact covering 90 percent
more of the front windscreens
of the aircraft on the inside.
That obviously
indicates that at some point
things got very,
very cold inside,
so it wasn't an
answer to all our questions,
but it led us quickly to think
that there may have been a
pressurization problem on board.
*
NARRATOR: Investigators
may be a step closer
to finding answers.
They've recovered the
cockpit voice recorder...
INVESTIGATOR: Good work.
NARRATOR: ...the only
recording device on board.
JIM: The CVR was pretty
smashed when we recovered it,
and there was concern that
we'd get nothing off of it.
*
BOB:
I only hope we hear something
that tells us what went wrong.
JIM: It was sent back
immediately to the NTSB lab,
and they did a fantastic job
of piecing this thing together
and getting data out of the CVR.
BOB: Okay. Let's hear it.
NARRATOR: The
recording captures sounds
during the last 30
minutes of flight.
As they listen, investigators
make a disturbing discovery.
No one on board
is talking at all.
JIM: It was eerie
because the airplane is flying
and there is no
voice whatsoever.
But there are other sounds
and, if they can be identified,
they could provide vital clues.
BOB: Turn that up, please.
[warning alarm]
BOB: We can hear warnings
in the cockpit, buzzers,
things like that,
so even though no
voices are heard,
there is
valuable stuff on those.
BOB: That's the
cabin altitude warning.
We are definitely looking at
a loss of pressure accident.
NARRATOR: The recording
confirms Benzon's hunch.
The plane suffered some
sort of decompression failure.
The higher the altitude, the
lower the air pressure gets.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Good morning, Jacksonville.
This is Learjet 4-7-Bravo-Alpha
climbing to flight level 2-6-0.
NARRATOR: Above 10,000 feet,
the air outside is so thin
that the cabin air
must be pressurized so that
pilots and passengers can
get enough oxygen to breathe.
Pressurization prevents
the life-threatening
condition called hypoxia.
Dr. Mitchell Garber is an expert
on just how quickly hypoxia
can incapacitate a pilot.
DR. GARBER: You've got maybe
four or five seconds' worth
of actual oxygen in your brain
and then another 12 to 15
seconds in your circulation.
Once all that is gone,
things are going to go
very horribly awry for you
very, very quickly.
[warning alarm]
NARRATOR: The evidence
paints a chilling picture.
BOB: The cabin
altitude warning horn
was blaring for
the entire 30 minutes
minus a few seconds at the end.
*
NARRATOR: The mystery now is,
why did Payne Stewart's Learjet
lose vital cabin pressure,
and why didn't the emergency
alarm prevent the catastrophe?
*
INVESTIGATOR: Not much to go on.
NARRATOR: The
search of the crash site
turns up very little of
the pressurization system,
just a couple of damaged valves.
BOB: The positive thing to
do is work with what you have.
You go to war
with what you have,
not with what you wish you had.
NARRATOR: The flow control valve
regulates how much air is drawn
from the engines into the cabin.
A problem with this valve
could cause a depressurization.
BOB: Even though
components are heavily damaged,
it's part of our
training and our job
to try as hard as we can
to determine what the component
was doing prior to the crash.
BOB: Well, let's see
what this can tell us.
NARRATOR: Benzon
examines the valve
under a high-powered microscope.
He makes an important discovery:
small scratches in the metal.
BOB: At impact, parts hit parts,
and internal components
hit internal components,
and those cause witness marks.
You could almost
consider it to be a snapshot
of what would happen at impact.
BOB: Bingo.
BOB: The witness marks
indicated quite definitely
that the valve was closed
during the horrendous impact
of the aircraft and the ground.
NARRATOR: With the
flow control valve closed,
there would have been no air
flow to maintain cabin pressure.
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: We've got a
cabin altitude warning.
BOB: The discovery that the
flow control valve was closed
was a big deal for us.
Now we were getting close
to why the accident occurred.
NARRATOR: Setting
the valve correctly
is a routine part
of every takeoff.
BOB: Either the thing broke
or the crew took
off without setting it.
INVESTIGATOR: Let's
see what these turn up.
NARRATOR: To check
for mechanical failure,
investigators need more
pieces from the mechanism
that opens and
closes the valves.
They step up search
efforts at the crash site.
BOB: We bought and
rented metal detectors,
and people were out
there on their hands and knees
sifting through
dirt with screens
to try to find these components.
[metal detector beeping]
NARRATOR: Investigators fill
crates with recovered parts.
BOB: Any more wreckage
from the pressurization system?
NARRATOR: But the valve
mechanism is never recovered.
JIM: When we find a clue
and we can't follow it
all the way to the end,
it gets very
frustrating for investigators.
We know we've got a
piece of the evidence,
but not all the evidence.
*
BOB: Play it from the top.
I want to hear something
she said before takeoff.
NARRATOR: Benzon turns to
air traffic control recordings
that captured all radio
calls with the Learjet's crew.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Orlando tower, 4-7-Bravo-Alpha.
Requesting taxi.
NARRATOR: He hopes the
recordings can tell him
when the Learjet
began to decompress.
The air used to pressurize the
plane comes from the engines,
so it can feel a bit hot.
That's why some pilots
wait until the last minute
before opening
the airflow valve.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: V-one.
NARRATOR: Did they
forget to do this?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Rotate.
WESLEY: Good
morning 4-7-Bravo-Alpha.
Climb and maintain
flight level three-niner-zero.
*
NARRATOR: If they
did forget to open
the crucial valve at takeoff,
they would have been
affected by a lack of oxygen
as soon as they
climbed past 10,000 feet.
DR. GARBER: The
progression of hypoxia symptoms
is probably most
pronounced in the mental arena,
in our ability to think, our
ability to make determinations.
It's one of the
reasons it's so critical.
NARRATOR: Benzon listens
carefully to the voices.
He wants to compare how
the pilots sound on the ground
with how they sound
at higher altitudes
where there's less oxygen.
BOB: It was important
for us to try to figure out
at what altitude, what
point in the flight really,
something began to go wrong.
BOB: So far, so good.
Play me something from later,
after they climb
past 10,000 feet.
NARRATOR:
Changes in their voices
could reveal when
the pressure failed.
DR. GARBER: You
may get slurred speech
as you do with intoxication.
You may get slower speech
as you do with intoxication.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Good morning Jacksonville.
This is 4-7-Bravo-Alpha
climbing to flight level 2-6-0.
BOB: She sounds the same to me.
So everything's fine up
to that last radio call.
BOB: Transmissions from
the first officer were clear,
so we knew at that altitude
things were going fine.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Radios...
CPT. KLING: Are set.
NARRATOR: The
timing tells Benzon
that the crew set the
valve correctly at takeoff.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Cabin air switch.
CPT. KLING: Normal.
BOB: Something happened between
the last radio call here
and when they lost
radio contact here.
BOB: We had good transmissions
from the flight crew,
clear, without oxygen masks on
at an altitude of 28,000 feet,
and four minutes
later as the aircraft
was passing through 36,000 feet,
air traffic control
could not contact them.
So that led us to believe
that something pretty
darned important happened
between those two altitudes
in that four-minute window.
*
NARRATOR:
Something must have happened
to close the cabin air valve,
but it's impossible to say
whether it was human
error or mechanical failure.
BOB: Because of the chaotic
nature of airplane accidents,
you don't have a
lot of clues sometimes,
but that doesn't mean
that we stop investigating.
*
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: Cabin
altitude warning.
NARRATOR: There's
another baffling mystery.
The Learjet is equipped
with emergency oxygen masks.
CPT. KLING: Masks on.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Masks on.
NARRATOR: No matter what
caused the loss of pressure,
the oxygen masks
should have given the crew
enough air to breathe until
they could land the plane.
BOB: If a crew happened
to get an altitude warning,
gosh, the first thing
any flight crew should do
would be to don an oxygen mask.
CPT. KLING: I can't
breathe. Can you breathe?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: A
little bit. [gasping for air]
NARRATOR: Could the
emergency oxygen system
have somehow failed?
*
Benzon scours the
Learjet's maintenance records.
BOB: Looks like
everything was working fine.
NARRATOR: He discovers that
on several previous flights
the Learjet's crew used the
masks without any problems.
BOB: We did determine
that the oxygen was on board
and the crew could have used it.
So now the question became,
why didn't they use
supplemental oxygen?
BOB: Time to
take a new approach.
Set us to climb, please.
NARRATOR: Investigators
need to learn more
about what happened
on board the Learjet
after the crew's
last radio call.
They hope a simulation
of the flight will help.
[warning alarm]
BOB:
There goes the cabin altitude
warning. Start the clock.
DR. GARBER: You've got maybe
15 seconds to do something
once you become in a environment
that's almost
eliminated with oxygen.
BOB: Emergency
checklist. Got it.
NARRATOR: Benzon scans the
same type of checklist binder
used by the Learjet pilots.
What he's about to
discover could finally unravel
the mystery and reveal
why Payne Stewart's Learjet
tumbled from the
skies over South Dakota.
[warning alarm]
DR. GARBER: I think all of
us sort of had in our heads
the checklist will have
once you hear the
altitude warning horn
or any other indication
of a decompression event,
that you're gonna
put your oxygen mask on
as the first and
immediate action item.
NARRATOR: The simulated
loss of cabin pressure
leads Benzon to an
astounding discovery:
The first item on
the emergency checklist
is not "Put on oxygen masks."
BOB: "At 10,000
plus or minus 500 feet,
cabin altitude control
pressure to the outflow valve
is trapped."
BOB:
Some of the wording at first
glance was quite confusing,
and I imagine it
would be very confusing
if you were under a
distressed situation
and trying to figure out exactly
what the checklist meant.
BOB: "This
deactivates the automatic mode
and stops cabin
altitude from rising higher
if the failure is in the
automatic control system."
I can't believe we still haven't
put our oxygen masks on.
BOB: We were surprised, because
it implied pretty strongly
that you need to trouble-shoot
a pressurization problem,
and if you can't fix it,
then you don your oxygen masks,
and that's counterintuitive to
us. That was backwards, in fact.
The first step should
have been don oxygen masks.
BOB: Okay. Shut it down. I
think I know what happened.
*
NARRATOR:
Investigators now have a theory
about what went wrong
on board the Learjet.
BOB: Everything is fine
till about 24,000 feet.
Then something causes
the plane to lose pressure.
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: We've got a
cabin altitude warning.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Emergency checklist. Uh.
BOB:
They reach for their checklist
and start to troubleshoot.
CPT. KLING: What
does the checklist say?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: "At
10,000 plus or minus 500 feet,
cabin altitude control
pressure to the outflow valve
is trapped."
BOB: They picked up a checklist,
read it, were confused by it,
and the oxygen masks
were sitting there unused.
CPT. KLING: Could
it be the bleed air?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: "This
deactivates the automatic mode
and stops cabin
altitude from rising higher
if the failure is in the
automatic control system."
CPT. KLING: Uh, what failure?
NARRATOR: Hypoxia sets
in with devastating speed.
After 15 seconds, the crew would
be confused and disoriented.
CPT. KLING: Uh, read that again.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Uh, okay. Uh...
DR. GARBER: A lot of
it depends on how rapid
the onset of hypoxia is,
and a lot of it
depends on the individual,
but things that we
tend to see fairly commonly
and probably the
most important one
is the difficulty in thinking.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
"At 10,000...
the control pressure..."
DR. GARBER: Thought
patterns becoming more confused
and less deliberate.
You actually start
to lose consciousness.
And if you don't get
oxygen delivered back to you,
eventually you're going to
die from oxygen starvation.
BOB: But before they
can solve the problem,
the crew loses consciousness.
[warning alarm]
BOB: The Lear checklist in
a sense, a very real sense,
could lead a crew astray.
BOB: Without those masks on,
they wouldn't stand a chance.
*
[warning alarm]
DR. GARBER: Instead
of a loud warning horn,
maybe a statement from
the airplane that says
"Put on your oxygen
mask" would be more effective,
rather than having people
who are having to try and
figure out what the sound is
having to deal
with the sound itself
and then having to
try and figure out
what they're
supposed to do about it.
*
NARRATOR: In the aftermath
of the Learjet tragedy,
Payne Stewart's
family and friends,
along with golf
fans across the nation,
come together in mourning.
PRESIDENT CLINTON:
I am profoundly sorry
for the loss of Payne Stewart,
who has had such a remarkable
career and impact on his sport.
TIGER WOODS: I knew
Payne as a carefree guy
who was nice to everybody
and was very open-hearted.
MIKE: Payne wouldn't
have wanted a lot of mourning
over his death, however it
happened. He was an upbeat guy.
He was a happy guy who
just loved living life,
being with his
family, having a good time,
and he wouldn't
want people mourning.
He wanted people
celebrating his life
and being there for his family.
*
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
V-one. Rotate.
NARRATOR:
Investigators are never able
to determine conclusively
what caused the plane
to lose pressure.
BOB: The decompression
could have been caused
by a leaky seal on a door,
a small leak about
the size of a pencil
in the side of the aircraft,
a malfunction within the
system. So we don't know.
But whatever the reason,
the crew would
likely have recovered
if they'd put their masks on.
DR. GARBER: The NTSB in its
report ultimately concluded
that had they received
oxygen in a timely manner,
it's likely that we
would not be talking about
this particular accident today.
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: We've got a
cabin altitude warning.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Emergency checklist.
NARRATOR:
Following the investigation,
the NTSB recommends important
changes to aviation checklists.
BOB: We asked very
strongly that that checklist
that we suspected got the crew
in trouble, the checklist
be changed to make it clearer
and more useful in an emergency.
NARRATOR: The FAA
is quick to respond.
"Put on oxygen masks" is now the
first item on the checklist,
not just for Learjets, but for
every similar plane in the sky.
BOB: We were
pleased with the results.
The checklist was changed.
Again, not only for the Lear,
but the FAA insisted that other
aircraft, other business jets
recheck their checklists
to make sure they made sense.
JIM: I think the most
important takeaway for me
is to understand your
emergency checklists.
There are emergency
checklists for a reason,
and that's to keep you safe.
NARRATOR: US fighters scramble
to intercept a fast-moving jet.
WESLEY: Everybody knew
that there was a major problem.
COL. OLSON: Stand
by. I can't quite see.
NARRATOR: But this is
not a combat mission.
COL. OLSON: Our job
is to try to figure out
what's wrong with that airplane.
NARRATOR: It's a
midair emergency.
WESLEY:
4-7-Bravo-Alpha, Jacksonville.
Please acknowledge.
NARRATOR: A private Learjet is
hundreds of miles off course.
COL. OLSON:
There's some reason why that
crew is not communicating
with air traffic control,
and we need to find that out.
BOB: Can he see
anything in the cockpit?
BOB:
The aircraft was flying toward
a large metropolitan area.
BOB: Get me
someone from Learjet.
I need to know how long
this plane can stay in the air.
JIM: If it went
down in those areas,
there'd be mass casualties.
[* Intro Theme ]
MAN: Mayday, mayday.
[* Intro Theme ]
*
NARRATOR: It's 8:30 am at
Orlando International Airport.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Nav lights?
CPT. KLING: On.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Radios?
NARRATOR: The pilots
of a private Learjet
run through their
pre-flight checks.
CPT. KLING: Are set.
NARRATOR: They're preparing for
some high-profile passengers.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
And we're ready for taxi.
CPT. KLING: Just in time. Here's
the man himself. Good morning.
NARRATOR: Pro golfer Payne
Stewart is on his way to Dallas
with some close
business associates.
PAYNE: Sure, the
target area's wide,
but you miss, the
bunker's gonna eat you alive.
MIKE: Payne Stewart is one
of the most colorful characters
in the game of golf.
NARRATOR: At 42, Stewart is in
the middle of a comeback year.
He's just won the US Open,
one of the most
important dates on the tour,
but he's almost as famous
for his trademark wardrobe
as he is for his golfing.
MIKE: Payne Stewart
was loud, he was outgoing,
he was engaging.
His dad always wore
really colorful blazers
and he always told Payne, you
know, you want to stand out.
So Payne said I'm gonna
wear knickers, plus fours
and a flat cap,
so even people who didn't
follow golf knew who he was
by how he dressed.
PAYNE: Let me show you
my idea for that bunker.
NARRATOR: Payne Stewart
hopes his future in golf
will go beyond playing the game.
He has big plans for
building a new course
at the Dallas university
where he honed his
skills as an amateur.
MIKE: There were three other
people with him in the plane
in addition to the pilots.
He had Van Ardan,
who was his agent,
along with Robert
Fraley, also his agent,
and Bruce Borland,
who was a member of
the Jack Nicklaus design group.
PAYNE: This hole is gonna
be tough. It's over 500 yards.
NARRATOR: Stewart flies
regularly on the Learjet,
a plane that takes its name
from the man who designed it.
JIM: Bill Lear was
working on a fighter jet design
for the Swiss,
and when they decided
not to build that airplane,
he took that design and
brought it back to the US
and built the Learjet.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
you are cleared for takeoff.
CPT. KLING: You ready? Okay.
Here we go. And takeoff thrust.
NARRATOR: Captain
Michael Kling is well qualified
to fly this high
performance machine.
He's a former Air Force
pilot and flight instructor.
JIM: A lot of pilots
came out of the Air Force
and started flying Learjets
because it reminded them
and gave them that performance
that they were used to.
It was like the Ferrari or
the Porsche of business jets.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: V-one.
NARRATOR: First Officer
Stephanie Bellegarrigue
has less than 100
hours in the Lear.
She's keen to log
more flight time.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Rotate.
NARRATOR: At 9:19 am,
the Learjet lifts off.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Good morning, Jacksonville.
This is Learjet 4-7-Bravo-Alpha
climbing to flight level 2-6-0.
NARRATOR:
The crew contacts Jacksonville
air traffic control.
WESLEY: Good
morning 4-7-Bravo-Alpha.
Climb and maintain
flight level three-niner-zero.
NARRATOR: Wesley Kutch
was one of the controllers
on duty that day.
WESLEY: The crew of the Learjet
was extremely professional,
cheerful, nothing out
of the ordinary at all.
A typical hello, how are
you, verify your altitude,
course, et cetera.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Learjet 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
roger that, Jacksonville.
Climb and maintain
flight level three-niner-zero.
NARRATOR: The controller
clears the jet to keep climbing
all the way to 39,000 feet.
JIM: The Learjet
generally flies higher
than the commercial airliners.
NARRATOR: By flying at high
altitudes where the air is thin,
the Lear saves on fuel.
JIM: Well, you
get a better economy,
so you're getting from point
A to point B, costing you less.
NARRATOR:
The flight plan calls for
the plane to fly northwest
towards Cross City, Florida,
then turn west and
fly direct to Dallas.
Fourteen minutes after takeoff,
the Learjet has
traveled 80 miles.
It's time to pass
control of the plane
to a new air traffic controller.
WESLEY: Air traffic control
is a series of
what we call hand-offs,
and that means
that it's time for him
to cross to
somebody else's sector.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
contact Jack Center at 135.65.
NARRATOR: The
pilots need to change
to a different radio frequency
to talk to the next controller.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
please acknowledge.
NARRATOR: There's no answer.
WESLEY: There's
nothing really unusual
about missing a
frequency change.
It's early, just after takeoff.
I assume they're trying to
get everything buttoned up
and taken care of.
It really wasn't that alarming.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
contact Jack Center on 135.65.
WESLEY: In the back of your
mind, all controllers know,
I didn't get an acknowledgment
for that frequency change,
so you give it a moment.
You go on about your business
and then you come back to
the aircraft. You try it again.
WESLEY: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha,
this is Jack Center.
SUPERVISOR: What's up?
WESLEY: It's that
Learjet. It's not answering.
SUPERVISOR: Maybe
he's off frequency.
WESLEY: There's a
plethora of reasons
where an
aircraft can miss a call.
SUPERVISOR:
Let's see if it levels
off when it's supposed to.
NARRATOR: The
Learjet has nearly reached
its approved cruising
altitude of 39,000 feet.
WESLEY: They're still climbing.
SUPERVISOR: Let me
see their flight plan.
WESLEY: When they
climbed through 39,000 feet,
everybody knew that there
was a major, major problem.
SUPERVISOR: They've got a
turn coming at Cross City.
WESLEY: Let's hope
they make that turn.
I'm gonna try again
on the other frequency.
4-7-Bravo-Alpha, Jacksonville.
Please acknowledge.
NARRATOR:
At the same time, pilots
of other planes in the area
also try to contact the Learjet.
PILOT: 4-7-Bravo-Alpha, come in.
BOB: It's kind of a band of
brothers thing, uh, among pilots
that if something is
beginning to go wrong
perhaps you can step in
safely and remedy a situation.
If the Lear's radios
were failing but not failed,
then perhaps a
relay could be set up
to communicate with the
aircraft from the ground.
WESLEY: Any pilot, any pilot,
do you have
contact with the Learjet?
PILOT: Negative.
Nothing from the Learjet.
NARRATOR: It's been 20 minutes
since Payne
Stewart's plane left Orlando.
Controllers watch nervously
as it approaches Cross City.
It's a critical moment.
They know that any
second now the Learjet
is supposed to turn
west towards Dallas.
WESLEY: The
tension level was so high,
you could hear a pin drop.
WESLEY: Damn it.
WESLEY: It's not
making a course correction.
There was
something terribly wrong.
*
WESLEY: This is
Jacksonville Center.
I'm declaring an emergency.
WESLEY: We're all kind
of in shock and disbelief
at this aircraft.
[phone ringing]
BOB: Benzon here.
NARRATOR:
Experts at the National
Transportation Safety Board
are notified of the
escalating emergency.
BOB: Get me a map.
BOB: Once the air
traffic control system realized
that the aircraft had
gone rogue, so to speak,
the next step is to
try to figure out why.
It's either being
hijacked or it's malfunctioned.
The crew has been
incapacitated somehow.
BOB: This is where they are now.
[indistinct radio chatter]
NARRATOR: Controllers
scramble F-16 fighters
to track down
the wayward Learjet.
COL. OLSON: Is the
crew incapacitated?
Is there something
wrong with the aircraft?
There's some reason why
that crew is not communicating
with air traffic control,
so our job is to go
up and find out why.
*
NARRATOR: The situation
is growing more urgent.
The runaway plane
has been out of contact
for more than an hour,
and it's about to fly over
the densely populated area
around Memphis.
BOB: Get me
someone from Learjet.
I need to know how long
this plane can stay in the air.
BOB:
The aircraft was flying toward
a large metropolitan area.
The question became, well,
if it went out of control or
ran out of gas over Memphis,
what would happen?
[phone ringing]
NARRATOR: Learjet
investigator Jim Tidball
is immediately
recruited to the team.
JIM: Where is it right now?
NARRATOR: His first
task is to determine
how far the plane can get with
the amount of fuel on board.
JIM: I need performance
data on the 35 ASAP.
JIM: When the
airplane didn't make its turn,
it continued on towards Memphis,
and after Memphis it was
headed toward St. Louis,
and after St. Louis
again towards Minneapolis.
Those are all major
metropolitan areas.
If it went down in those areas,
there'd be mass casualties.
NARRATOR: A small
private jet on a routine flight
has turned into a
national emergency.
LOU WATERS: We have a developing
story, as you may have heard.
There is a civilian Learjet...
NARRATOR: News of a
rogue Learjet flying
hundreds of miles off course
has captivated the nation.
BOB: Turn that up, would you?
NEWS ANCHOR: The air
force is simply saying...
NARRATOR: NTSB
investigators keep a close eye
on the media coverage.
BOB: We began
assembling our launch team
and monitoring the
situation on television,
like a lot of folks
in the United States.
NEWS ANCHOR: It did take a
full load of fuel on with it.
BOB: So it became a kind
of a weird situation for us.
*
NARRATOR:
There's some good news.
The plane has
cleared Memphis air space.
WESLEY: At least it
didn't hit the city.
NARRATOR: But the
crisis is far from over.
Controllers still have
no idea why the plane
is not responding,
and there are more urban
centers in the Learjet's path.
If it doesn't
change course soon,
the fighter jets may be forced
to take drastic measures.
JIM: If the decision
came out that they were
to take the airplane out
instead of allowing it to go
towards a metropolitan area,
that decision would have
to come from the White House.
WHITE HOUSE PRESS CONFERENCE:
The FAA began tracking
an aircraft in distress.
The president was made aware
of this situation this morning
in a meeting with
his economic advisors.
*
JIM: Okay. I
think I got something.
NARRATOR: Jim Tidball has come
up with a rough calculation
of where the plane
will run out of fuel.
JIM: ATC kept giving
the team real-time data
as to where the airplane was,
the heading that it was flying,
et cetera, so we always
knew where the airplane was,
and, calculating the
fuel burn at those altitudes,
we could figure how
far it was gonna go.
JIM: My best guess is South
Dakota, possibly North Dakota.
I can't say more than that.
*
BOB: Let's hope he's right.
With any luck they
won't hit anything.
BOB: That's the scary part
of the whole equation here.
Is it gonna hit a house? Is
it gonna go down in a town?
Big Midwest, but
anything could be possible.
In the air, the F-16
pilots have caught up
with the rogue plane.
COL. OLSON: Stand
by. I can't quite see.
COL. OLSON:
Once we made the intercept,
our job is to figure out
what's going on
with the airplane.
We'll visually
look at the airplane.
COL. OLSON: No damage.
COL. OLSON: There was
no panels missing.
There was no gas
leaking, for instance.
There was no other,
any other fluids leaking.
There was no
obvious exterior damage.
NARRATOR: The fighter pilots
are desperate for some way
to communicate with
the Learjet's crew,
so they attempt a
risky aerial maneuver.
COL. OLSON: Alright, I'm
gonna try and wake them up.
COL. OLSON: Maybe, you know, by
flying through their jet wash
or the turbulence that's
caused by the lead fighter
in this case, it would get
some reaction out of them.
*
You're hoping you
get some movement.
NARRATOR: But it's no use.
The Lear does not respond.
BOB: Can he see
anything in the cockpit?
COL. OLSON: Stand by. I'm
gonna go take a closer look.
NARRATOR: But Colonel
Olson isn't giving up.
Even though his F-16 is designed
to fly at much higher speeds,
he wrestles it closer
to get a better look.
COL. OLSON: Flying an F-16 at
low air speeds can be difficult,
especially at high altitudes.
It was very strange
sitting next to them
wondering what's going
on inside the aircraft.
NARRATOR:
The windows of the aircraft
provide an ominous clue.
COL. OLSON: No movement, and
the window's covered in frost.
JIM: When the report
came back that the windshield
seemed to be iced
over on the inside
and that the cabin
windows were all dark,
that gave us cause for concern.
COL. OLSON: If the people are
conscious, they'd be trying to
scrape away that condensation
so they could see.
So if you see no attempt to
get rid of that condensation,
your mind goes,
what's the condition
of the crew and the passengers
that are on board that aircraft?
NARRATOR: The grim reality
of the situation sets in.
BOB: The frosted-over windscreen
and the darkened
cockpit and cabin indicated
that the crew is
probably no longer with us.
NARRATOR: The Learjet
is now a ghost plane.
BOB: Can we narrow down
the crash site any more?
NARRATOR: With no hope
for the passengers and crew,
the only focus now is on
where the plane will come down.
BOB: As NTSB investigators,
we're very interested in
where the aircraft
would crash obviously,
because we had to get
there as soon as we could.
NARRATOR: But all they
can do is wait and watch.
MIKE: To hear the news of Payne
likely being on that plane
was very shocking.
It didn't seem real.
He was just winning the US Open
and grabbing Phil Mickelson's
face and hoisting a trophy up.
NARRATOR: After nearly
four hours in the air,
the Learjet is approaching
Aberdeen, South Dakota.
BOB: Got it. It
could go down any time.
NARRATOR:
According to calculations,
the jet is almost out of fuel.
At 10 minutes past
12:00, it happens.
COL. OLSON: One of the
engines just flamed out,
and it started turning.
I said something like, "Look
out, the aircraft is turning."
We don't know where
this aircraft is gonna go,
but it's starting to move.
NARRATOR:
The Learjet carrying Payne
Stewart and five other people
is falling from the sky.
COL. OLSON: They're going
down. They're going down.
BOB: Where's it gonna hit?
NARRATOR: The F-16
attempts to follow.
But the plane
disappears into the clouds.
It drops below the radar.
COL. OLSON: Center,
I've got a crash site.
*
WESLEY: We all felt like
we were pretty much
just kicked in the guts,
couldn't do anything, so
it was a pretty bad day.
NARRATOR: Payne
Stewart's Learjet
has slammed into a hay
field in South Dakota.
There are no survivors.
COL. OLSON:
You have human beings on
that aircraft. They have a life.
They have a family. They have a
connection. They have a story.
You're part of the end of
their story unfortunately,
so when you look back on
it, it's a very, very sad deal.
*
JIM: It's over.
JIM: I think there
was a sense of relief
when the airplane actually
did go down in a rural area
that it did not impact a
major metropolitan area.
NEWS ANCHOR: This is
where the plane went down
after its
1,500-mile four-hour flight
halfway across the nation.
On board, golfer Payne Stewart,
two-time US Open champ.
MIKE: The guys get to
know each other really well.
It is a tight-knit
community with the media,
with the players,
with the families,
and for someone from
that family to be taken away
in such tragic
fashion was really saddening.
NARRATOR: In Brown
County, South Dakota,
the crash has
shaken local residents.
WITNESS: And after a few
flips and flops and everything
it went straight down,
and it took probably 12
seconds to hit the ground.
*
NARRATOR: For crash
investigators, the first step
is to survey the impact
area and lay out a search grid.
INVESTIGATOR: Nice and slow.
We don't want to miss a thing.
JIM: The grid-type
search was a way to proceed
so we knew where we had
been, what we had covered,
and then we could move on
to the next grid section.
To us it was very important
so we knew where we could walk,
where we couldn't walk.
NARRATOR: The 500-mile an
hour impact hasn't just smashed
the wreckage, it's driven
most of it into the ground.
JIM: The aircraft
at the accident site
was completely
destroyed and in pieces,
and there were a lot
of very small pieces.
BOB: My first impression was
we're gonna have a little
trouble gathering evidence here.
*
NARRATOR: At the
Learjet crash site,
investigators dig
through layers of earth.
They search every
inch of soil for wreckage.
BOB: It almost became
an archaeological dig,
kind of unlayering the thing as
we went down through the earth.
JIM: A good investigator
can't make decisions
based on initial information.
You have to have all the data
before you can
do an adequate job.
NARRATOR: As key
pieces are recovered,
investigators map out
the position of the plane.
They want to find
the tail and, with it,
the cockpit voice recorder.
JIM: As we were looking through
the debris in the crater,
we started finding
pieces that were close
to the cockpit voice recorder.
We knew we were
looking in the right area.
We felt confident
that we'd find the CVR.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Bob Benzon
of the National
Transportation Safety Board
is piecing together
what they know so far.
BOB: Okay. Let's
see what we got.
NARRATOR: The lengthy pursuit
of the flight has given him
an unusual head
start on the case.
BOB: For an
investigator to realize
that an accident's going
to occur before it happened
is very unusual.
It's a strange
feeling, a sad feeling
to know an
accident's going to occur
and you pack your bags early
for once instead of later.
*
BOB: The engines were okay.
BOB: The F-16 folks
were gathering data,
like both engines were running.
They could see two contrails.
It had some electrical power
because navigation and rotating
beacon lights were going on.
BOB: The electrical was working.
So what else do we know?
NARRATOR: The F-16
pilots also noticed
some unusual fluctuations
in the Learjet's altitude
before it crashed.
COL. OLSON: Stand by. I'm
gonna take a closer look.
NARRATOR: The Learjet
was bobbing up and down
in a steady rhythm
known as porpoising.
BOB: That probably
was because the autopilot
was set in a climb mode,
and the aircraft
was attempting to climb
as high as it possibly could,
but aerodynamically
there's a limit to that,
and so it would get up
to its very maximum ceiling
and then go down and try to
go back up and go down again.
NARRATOR:
No pilot would deliberately
fly a plane this way.
BOB: I think they
were unconscious or worse
when the jets got the visual.
NARRATOR: There's another lead
Benzon urgently wants to pursue.
*
COL. OLSON: No movement, and
the window's covered in frost.
BOB: The F-16 folks told us that
there was a large area of frost
in fact covering 90 percent
more of the front windscreens
of the aircraft on the inside.
That obviously
indicates that at some point
things got very,
very cold inside,
so it wasn't an
answer to all our questions,
but it led us quickly to think
that there may have been a
pressurization problem on board.
*
NARRATOR: Investigators
may be a step closer
to finding answers.
They've recovered the
cockpit voice recorder...
INVESTIGATOR: Good work.
NARRATOR: ...the only
recording device on board.
JIM: The CVR was pretty
smashed when we recovered it,
and there was concern that
we'd get nothing off of it.
*
BOB:
I only hope we hear something
that tells us what went wrong.
JIM: It was sent back
immediately to the NTSB lab,
and they did a fantastic job
of piecing this thing together
and getting data out of the CVR.
BOB: Okay. Let's hear it.
NARRATOR: The
recording captures sounds
during the last 30
minutes of flight.
As they listen, investigators
make a disturbing discovery.
No one on board
is talking at all.
JIM: It was eerie
because the airplane is flying
and there is no
voice whatsoever.
But there are other sounds
and, if they can be identified,
they could provide vital clues.
BOB: Turn that up, please.
[warning alarm]
BOB: We can hear warnings
in the cockpit, buzzers,
things like that,
so even though no
voices are heard,
there is
valuable stuff on those.
BOB: That's the
cabin altitude warning.
We are definitely looking at
a loss of pressure accident.
NARRATOR: The recording
confirms Benzon's hunch.
The plane suffered some
sort of decompression failure.
The higher the altitude, the
lower the air pressure gets.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Good morning, Jacksonville.
This is Learjet 4-7-Bravo-Alpha
climbing to flight level 2-6-0.
NARRATOR: Above 10,000 feet,
the air outside is so thin
that the cabin air
must be pressurized so that
pilots and passengers can
get enough oxygen to breathe.
Pressurization prevents
the life-threatening
condition called hypoxia.
Dr. Mitchell Garber is an expert
on just how quickly hypoxia
can incapacitate a pilot.
DR. GARBER: You've got maybe
four or five seconds' worth
of actual oxygen in your brain
and then another 12 to 15
seconds in your circulation.
Once all that is gone,
things are going to go
very horribly awry for you
very, very quickly.
[warning alarm]
NARRATOR: The evidence
paints a chilling picture.
BOB: The cabin
altitude warning horn
was blaring for
the entire 30 minutes
minus a few seconds at the end.
*
NARRATOR: The mystery now is,
why did Payne Stewart's Learjet
lose vital cabin pressure,
and why didn't the emergency
alarm prevent the catastrophe?
*
INVESTIGATOR: Not much to go on.
NARRATOR: The
search of the crash site
turns up very little of
the pressurization system,
just a couple of damaged valves.
BOB: The positive thing to
do is work with what you have.
You go to war
with what you have,
not with what you wish you had.
NARRATOR: The flow control valve
regulates how much air is drawn
from the engines into the cabin.
A problem with this valve
could cause a depressurization.
BOB: Even though
components are heavily damaged,
it's part of our
training and our job
to try as hard as we can
to determine what the component
was doing prior to the crash.
BOB: Well, let's see
what this can tell us.
NARRATOR: Benzon
examines the valve
under a high-powered microscope.
He makes an important discovery:
small scratches in the metal.
BOB: At impact, parts hit parts,
and internal components
hit internal components,
and those cause witness marks.
You could almost
consider it to be a snapshot
of what would happen at impact.
BOB: Bingo.
BOB: The witness marks
indicated quite definitely
that the valve was closed
during the horrendous impact
of the aircraft and the ground.
NARRATOR: With the
flow control valve closed,
there would have been no air
flow to maintain cabin pressure.
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: We've got a
cabin altitude warning.
BOB: The discovery that the
flow control valve was closed
was a big deal for us.
Now we were getting close
to why the accident occurred.
NARRATOR: Setting
the valve correctly
is a routine part
of every takeoff.
BOB: Either the thing broke
or the crew took
off without setting it.
INVESTIGATOR: Let's
see what these turn up.
NARRATOR: To check
for mechanical failure,
investigators need more
pieces from the mechanism
that opens and
closes the valves.
They step up search
efforts at the crash site.
BOB: We bought and
rented metal detectors,
and people were out
there on their hands and knees
sifting through
dirt with screens
to try to find these components.
[metal detector beeping]
NARRATOR: Investigators fill
crates with recovered parts.
BOB: Any more wreckage
from the pressurization system?
NARRATOR: But the valve
mechanism is never recovered.
JIM: When we find a clue
and we can't follow it
all the way to the end,
it gets very
frustrating for investigators.
We know we've got a
piece of the evidence,
but not all the evidence.
*
BOB: Play it from the top.
I want to hear something
she said before takeoff.
NARRATOR: Benzon turns to
air traffic control recordings
that captured all radio
calls with the Learjet's crew.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Orlando tower, 4-7-Bravo-Alpha.
Requesting taxi.
NARRATOR: He hopes the
recordings can tell him
when the Learjet
began to decompress.
The air used to pressurize the
plane comes from the engines,
so it can feel a bit hot.
That's why some pilots
wait until the last minute
before opening
the airflow valve.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: V-one.
NARRATOR: Did they
forget to do this?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Rotate.
WESLEY: Good
morning 4-7-Bravo-Alpha.
Climb and maintain
flight level three-niner-zero.
*
NARRATOR: If they
did forget to open
the crucial valve at takeoff,
they would have been
affected by a lack of oxygen
as soon as they
climbed past 10,000 feet.
DR. GARBER: The
progression of hypoxia symptoms
is probably most
pronounced in the mental arena,
in our ability to think, our
ability to make determinations.
It's one of the
reasons it's so critical.
NARRATOR: Benzon listens
carefully to the voices.
He wants to compare how
the pilots sound on the ground
with how they sound
at higher altitudes
where there's less oxygen.
BOB: It was important
for us to try to figure out
at what altitude, what
point in the flight really,
something began to go wrong.
BOB: So far, so good.
Play me something from later,
after they climb
past 10,000 feet.
NARRATOR:
Changes in their voices
could reveal when
the pressure failed.
DR. GARBER: You
may get slurred speech
as you do with intoxication.
You may get slower speech
as you do with intoxication.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Good morning Jacksonville.
This is 4-7-Bravo-Alpha
climbing to flight level 2-6-0.
BOB: She sounds the same to me.
So everything's fine up
to that last radio call.
BOB: Transmissions from
the first officer were clear,
so we knew at that altitude
things were going fine.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Radios...
CPT. KLING: Are set.
NARRATOR: The
timing tells Benzon
that the crew set the
valve correctly at takeoff.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Cabin air switch.
CPT. KLING: Normal.
BOB: Something happened between
the last radio call here
and when they lost
radio contact here.
BOB: We had good transmissions
from the flight crew,
clear, without oxygen masks on
at an altitude of 28,000 feet,
and four minutes
later as the aircraft
was passing through 36,000 feet,
air traffic control
could not contact them.
So that led us to believe
that something pretty
darned important happened
between those two altitudes
in that four-minute window.
*
NARRATOR:
Something must have happened
to close the cabin air valve,
but it's impossible to say
whether it was human
error or mechanical failure.
BOB: Because of the chaotic
nature of airplane accidents,
you don't have a
lot of clues sometimes,
but that doesn't mean
that we stop investigating.
*
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: Cabin
altitude warning.
NARRATOR: There's
another baffling mystery.
The Learjet is equipped
with emergency oxygen masks.
CPT. KLING: Masks on.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: Masks on.
NARRATOR: No matter what
caused the loss of pressure,
the oxygen masks
should have given the crew
enough air to breathe until
they could land the plane.
BOB: If a crew happened
to get an altitude warning,
gosh, the first thing
any flight crew should do
would be to don an oxygen mask.
CPT. KLING: I can't
breathe. Can you breathe?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: A
little bit. [gasping for air]
NARRATOR: Could the
emergency oxygen system
have somehow failed?
*
Benzon scours the
Learjet's maintenance records.
BOB: Looks like
everything was working fine.
NARRATOR: He discovers that
on several previous flights
the Learjet's crew used the
masks without any problems.
BOB: We did determine
that the oxygen was on board
and the crew could have used it.
So now the question became,
why didn't they use
supplemental oxygen?
BOB: Time to
take a new approach.
Set us to climb, please.
NARRATOR: Investigators
need to learn more
about what happened
on board the Learjet
after the crew's
last radio call.
They hope a simulation
of the flight will help.
[warning alarm]
BOB:
There goes the cabin altitude
warning. Start the clock.
DR. GARBER: You've got maybe
15 seconds to do something
once you become in a environment
that's almost
eliminated with oxygen.
BOB: Emergency
checklist. Got it.
NARRATOR: Benzon scans the
same type of checklist binder
used by the Learjet pilots.
What he's about to
discover could finally unravel
the mystery and reveal
why Payne Stewart's Learjet
tumbled from the
skies over South Dakota.
[warning alarm]
DR. GARBER: I think all of
us sort of had in our heads
the checklist will have
once you hear the
altitude warning horn
or any other indication
of a decompression event,
that you're gonna
put your oxygen mask on
as the first and
immediate action item.
NARRATOR: The simulated
loss of cabin pressure
leads Benzon to an
astounding discovery:
The first item on
the emergency checklist
is not "Put on oxygen masks."
BOB: "At 10,000
plus or minus 500 feet,
cabin altitude control
pressure to the outflow valve
is trapped."
BOB:
Some of the wording at first
glance was quite confusing,
and I imagine it
would be very confusing
if you were under a
distressed situation
and trying to figure out exactly
what the checklist meant.
BOB: "This
deactivates the automatic mode
and stops cabin
altitude from rising higher
if the failure is in the
automatic control system."
I can't believe we still haven't
put our oxygen masks on.
BOB: We were surprised, because
it implied pretty strongly
that you need to trouble-shoot
a pressurization problem,
and if you can't fix it,
then you don your oxygen masks,
and that's counterintuitive to
us. That was backwards, in fact.
The first step should
have been don oxygen masks.
BOB: Okay. Shut it down. I
think I know what happened.
*
NARRATOR:
Investigators now have a theory
about what went wrong
on board the Learjet.
BOB: Everything is fine
till about 24,000 feet.
Then something causes
the plane to lose pressure.
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: We've got a
cabin altitude warning.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Emergency checklist. Uh.
BOB:
They reach for their checklist
and start to troubleshoot.
CPT. KLING: What
does the checklist say?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: "At
10,000 plus or minus 500 feet,
cabin altitude control
pressure to the outflow valve
is trapped."
BOB: They picked up a checklist,
read it, were confused by it,
and the oxygen masks
were sitting there unused.
CPT. KLING: Could
it be the bleed air?
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE: "This
deactivates the automatic mode
and stops cabin
altitude from rising higher
if the failure is in the
automatic control system."
CPT. KLING: Uh, what failure?
NARRATOR: Hypoxia sets
in with devastating speed.
After 15 seconds, the crew would
be confused and disoriented.
CPT. KLING: Uh, read that again.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Uh, okay. Uh...
DR. GARBER: A lot of
it depends on how rapid
the onset of hypoxia is,
and a lot of it
depends on the individual,
but things that we
tend to see fairly commonly
and probably the
most important one
is the difficulty in thinking.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
"At 10,000...
the control pressure..."
DR. GARBER: Thought
patterns becoming more confused
and less deliberate.
You actually start
to lose consciousness.
And if you don't get
oxygen delivered back to you,
eventually you're going to
die from oxygen starvation.
BOB: But before they
can solve the problem,
the crew loses consciousness.
[warning alarm]
BOB: The Lear checklist in
a sense, a very real sense,
could lead a crew astray.
BOB: Without those masks on,
they wouldn't stand a chance.
*
[warning alarm]
DR. GARBER: Instead
of a loud warning horn,
maybe a statement from
the airplane that says
"Put on your oxygen
mask" would be more effective,
rather than having people
who are having to try and
figure out what the sound is
having to deal
with the sound itself
and then having to
try and figure out
what they're
supposed to do about it.
*
NARRATOR: In the aftermath
of the Learjet tragedy,
Payne Stewart's
family and friends,
along with golf
fans across the nation,
come together in mourning.
PRESIDENT CLINTON:
I am profoundly sorry
for the loss of Payne Stewart,
who has had such a remarkable
career and impact on his sport.
TIGER WOODS: I knew
Payne as a carefree guy
who was nice to everybody
and was very open-hearted.
MIKE: Payne wouldn't
have wanted a lot of mourning
over his death, however it
happened. He was an upbeat guy.
He was a happy guy who
just loved living life,
being with his
family, having a good time,
and he wouldn't
want people mourning.
He wanted people
celebrating his life
and being there for his family.
*
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
V-one. Rotate.
NARRATOR:
Investigators are never able
to determine conclusively
what caused the plane
to lose pressure.
BOB: The decompression
could have been caused
by a leaky seal on a door,
a small leak about
the size of a pencil
in the side of the aircraft,
a malfunction within the
system. So we don't know.
But whatever the reason,
the crew would
likely have recovered
if they'd put their masks on.
DR. GARBER: The NTSB in its
report ultimately concluded
that had they received
oxygen in a timely manner,
it's likely that we
would not be talking about
this particular accident today.
[warning alarm]
CPT. KLING: We've got a
cabin altitude warning.
FO. BELLEGARRIGUE:
Emergency checklist.
NARRATOR:
Following the investigation,
the NTSB recommends important
changes to aviation checklists.
BOB: We asked very
strongly that that checklist
that we suspected got the crew
in trouble, the checklist
be changed to make it clearer
and more useful in an emergency.
NARRATOR: The FAA
is quick to respond.
"Put on oxygen masks" is now the
first item on the checklist,
not just for Learjets, but for
every similar plane in the sky.
BOB: We were
pleased with the results.
The checklist was changed.
Again, not only for the Lear,
but the FAA insisted that other
aircraft, other business jets
recheck their checklists
to make sure they made sense.
JIM: I think the most
important takeaway for me
is to understand your
emergency checklists.
There are emergency
checklists for a reason,
and that's to keep you safe.