Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 5 - Deadly Detour - full transcript
Enroute Flight 706 from Lyon to Lorient is knocked out of the sky over Baie de Quiberon France.
A commuter flight over France...
"Look, we can see the ship there"
"There she is"
...gets a rare view of a national treasure
It is a clear blue day,
I am sure both the
crew-members are feeling good
and maybe they are having a
little fun along the way
something rips the plane to pieces
It went so quick and it was so horrible
With an entire nation,
looking for answers,
investigators struggle to
explain what really happened
They uncover an unimaginable chain of events.
What were they thinking?
You really have to get inside
the mind of the pilots,
to say whether or not you would have done
the same thing in those circumstances
In one of the busiest weeks of summer,
Proteus Airlines Flight 706
heads to the coast of Brittany, Western France
The 31 year old Captain is an experienced pilot
He has flown everything,
from passenger planes to water bombers
His First Officer is just 27 years old,
but he has more than 300 hours flight-experience
in this same type of aircraft
The skill of these pilots in the
Beechcraft 1900 is very high
They are professional aviators,
This is what they are trained to do,
This is what they do on a daily basis.
This was just a normal day for them.
The Captain and First Officer
have divided their workload
It is very common in the industry
for the pilots to "swap legs",
meaning one pilot will take
his turn flying the aircraft
and then the other pilot
will fly the next trip
On this particular flight, it was
the First Officer's turn to fly the aircraft
The captain was the
pilot monitoring
and that involves communicating
with AirTrafficControl,
doing checklists,
managing the systems on the aircraft,
Flight 706 left Lyon Airport
a little more then an hour ago
They are on schedule to land at Lorient
in approx 20 minutes.
And they are being guided to their destination
by local Air Traffic Control
I authorized 3700 ft in IFR
The twin engine Beechcraft 1900D
can carry 19 passengers
Some are headed
to the beaches of South-West Brittany,
a popular tourist-destination in France
and today they are in for a treat.
The rare chance to see
a treasured piece of French Maritime history
A luxury Ocean-Liner,
formally known as the SS France.
People in France were so proud of this boat,
because of mechanical advancement
but also it was a show-case of French Art & Design
When put into service in 1962,
this was the longest passenger-ship ever build
More than a 150 ft longer than the Titanic!
The ship is a huge draw
whenever it is in French waters
So, journalist Julien Beaumont is sent to
cover the event for the local press
I went that day
because I was a young journalist,
it was my very first job,
and because it was THE main story at that time,
I decided to go there and covered the story
and made some pictures.
The young journalist hires a small plane
to get a better view
But he is not the only one
fascinated by the Ocean Liner.
"Look, we can see the ship there!"
As Flight 706 begins its descend
towards Lorient Airport,
passengers and crew are about to get
a perfect view of the famous Ocean Liner
The pilots definitely got caught up
in the excitement of:
"Let's go and see the ship"
It is not just the first class service, but...
... I think there was elements
inside done as crew-members
They also wanted the front-row seat
take a look at the ship itself
Lorient 706, we will keep a visual
and will do a 360 for the passengers in the back
We will resume contact after
for the approach to Lorient
706, Lorient confirmed.
Ladies and gentlemen, on the left of the plane
you will see the Ocean
Liner Le France
AirTrafficControl has just given this permission
to do a 360 around-Er
We resume our route to Lorient immediately after
in approx 5 or 6 minutes.
They descend to 2000 ft...
...and begin circling the ship.
2000 ft is quite low for commercial aircraft.
Now, what that said, this is a regional
aircraft attempt to fly to a smaller airport,
so for them to go to spend a little
more time at a lower altitude
is not rare.
Isn't she a beauty?
It would have been a tremendous view
on a crystal-clear day,
You could have seen every detail of that ship
from 2000 ft.
Not far away,
Julien Beaumont is enjoying a similar view
It was a perfect day, it was sunny, no wind,
beautiful weather...
...high temperature.
Look at the number of yachts down there
Amazing
Just stunning
As they complete
their 360 degree turn around the ship,
the pilots begin preparations
for their landing at Lorient Airport
706, we have been permitted,
We will direct course for the airport
706, Lorient, confirmed
Without any warning,
Flight 706 disintegrates in mid-air
I didn't hear the crash,
because the door was open and
I was taking my pictures
and the pilot told me:
Oh, look just in front of us,
so I just look in front and
take my camera and just shoot
I was shocked, because it was so quick
and it was so horrible
I can see some big parts,
big wreckage-pieces
just going under the sea
and some personal belongings
like a jacket,
At that time I just realized and said:
wow, a lot of people dying there
The coast guard rushes to the crash site,
hoping to rescue any survivors
but they find no one.
Hundreds of tourists aboard the ship
and surrounding yachts
are stunned by what they just see.
It was like:
We are so happy to see the boat
and in two minutes...
...all of this became a tragedy
It is soon clear there are no survivors.
All 14 passengers and crew are dead.
The sad news stunned the nation.
It was the big story in France,
all the journalists were on this story
and all the French people
wanted to know about this story
It was really the main-story in France
at that time.
As the tragedy begins to sink in,
so the mystery deepens.
Despite hundreds of eye-witnesses,
no one seems to know what brought Flight 706 down
The morning after the crash of
Proteus Airlines Flight 706,
French air-crash investigator Alain Bouillard
and his team begin working the case.
So, what knocked this plane out of the sky?
With the entire country
looking for answers,
there is immense pressure to explain how
and why the passenger plane went down.
All we knew,
was that a plane had crashed into the sea...
...and there were no survivors.
It was up to us to locate the wreckage
to first recover the flight recorders
and then to find any other parts of the plane,
that we could.
The plane's black boxes are
crucial to explain what happened
in the final moments,
leading up to the crash
But finding them won't be easy ...
...because the wreckage is a few miles off shore
at the bottom of Quiberon Bay.
The job of locating them
is up to investigator
Sébastien David
I went to the site with a beacon locator,
which receives signals from beacons
like the ones that are equipping flight-recorders
NAVY divers waste no time
and begin scouring the seabed,
searching for the wreckage
While waiting for the black boxes to be recovered,
Alain Bouillard interviews
the Air Traffic Controller
in charge of Flight 706's approach.
He is immediately surprised by what he learns
Here is the scheduled route from Lyon to Lorient.
Quiberon Bay was not even on their flight-path.
Bouillard wants to know
what they were doing there in the first place.
They requested a detour to see the France.
It is a shocking discovery.
A commercial airliner should only
request a detour for safety-reasons.
It is very, very rare for a passenger aircraft
to deviate from their standard flight-plan
Why would they decide to go site-seeing?
The official flight should have taken the plane
in a straight line over land.
But at the time of the crash it was flying
over the SS France...
...many miles off course.
The captain's decision to deviate
from his flight-path for such a trivial reason...
...seems almost reckless.
But the controller in Lorient
saw no conflicting traffic on radar.
So he had no reason to deny the request.
Request for descending 706
A little special request
is to fly slightly West over Quiberon Bay, sir
The controller in Lorient simply
advised the pilot of the Beechcraft,
that he didn't have any
information of the traffic
Thanks for your time.
Investigators now know Flight 706 was in an area
where it was never supposed to be
But they don't know what actually happened there.
Bouillard begins interviewing eye-witnesses.
Maybe they saw something,
the radar at Lorient did not pick up
So, this is the area that we are focusing on.
Although all of them saw
burning wreckage falling from the sky,
nobody saw what happened to cause this accident
But what they did see
catches Bouillard's full attention.
On this wonderful day,
there were many, many aviation aircraft
sight-seeing over the SS France.
Eye-witnesses had seen more than a dozen
pleasure scene aircraft on that nice afternoon.
You are positive?
These aircraft would have been flying too low
to be detected by Lorient's radar.
which explains why the Air Traffic Controller
never saw them
and that opens up a frightening possibility.
Is it possible there have could been
a mid-air collision?
A mid-air collision with a passenger plane
is so unusual;
It is almost unthinkable.
Air collisions with passenger planes
were very rare.
If it was a collision with another aircraft,
Bouillard knows that the evidence lies
in whatever wreckage they find on the sea-bed
Two days after the crash,
Sébastien David picks up a signal
from Flight 706's homing beacon
The flight recorders were found on the sea-bed
at around 16 or 18 meters
The wreckage is finally located
and the bodies are found.
This accident was tragic,
because two pilots are from the Beechcraft
12 passenger, including two babies, died.
The nation is in mourning...
...and in need of answers
Now that wreckage has been pulled
from the sea-bed,
accident investigators begin to examine the pieces
searching for clues
The whole purpose of air-crash investigation
is to determine the root cause...
...of the accident,
so they can prevent other
accidents from happening
Being able to retrieve all of the wreckage,
the FDR, the instruments
the engines, flight controls, cables
the investigators are able to
definitely rule out factors
that likely didn't contribute to the accident
and allows you to focus on something
out of the ordinary.
What do we have here?
Recovered along with the wreckage
of the Beechcraft,
they find pieces of another aircraft
The concentration of debris,
along with the examination, done by the divers...
clearly show that the wreckage was
from two different planes
So, immediately
we could confirm that the accident
was caused by a collision
It is a huge discovery
and the shape of the recovered nose-cone...
...is unmistakeable to investigators
It's a Cessna
Where did it come from?
Air-crash-investigators now know
they are dealing with a mid-air collision
They have a mystery Cessna on their hands
and they need to find out where it came from
With no witnesses to the actual collision,
and no radar data tracking the mystery plane,
they look for answers in the CockpitVoiceRecorder,
found in the Beechcraft.
The CVR was in a good condition
We were really relieved,
because we knew that we could proceed
with the safety-investigation
Hey, let's begin!
"Flaps 0+30"
The recovery was very important, to determine
the flightpath of the commercial aircraft
and to hear what happened in the cockpit
"10 nautical miles"
The recording might also reveal
if the pilots of Flight 706 made a fatal error...
...as they were flying over the SS France
"Pass over the auto-marker of 1440 ft."
From analyzing the Cockpit Voice Recorder,,
you could tell there was a
good atmosphere in the cockpit
The weather was good, the crew was relaxed
but still conducting themselves professional.
Then, as they follow the recording,
investigators hear something completely unexpected
"You are not flying over Quiberon Bay?
Who is that?
"because the SS France is there?
Is that alright?"
"Yeah"
"Right over here"
There is somebody else in the cockpit
with the pilots
"You are not flying over Quiberon Bay?
because the France is there"
We were surprised that a passenger was able
to step in to the pilot-area
It is a general rule,
the presence of a third person is not allowed
On most commercial airlines,
it is strictly forbidden for passengers
to enter the cockpit
But that rule doesn’t apply to small aircraft
The Beechcraft 1900 is an aircraft,
designed for short flights
Because there is no flight-attendant,
the crew is going to have open communication...
between the passengers and the crew,
throughout the flight.
It is a small regional aircraft, there is no door
in between the cabin and the flight-crew,
It's just rather natural;
passengers felt that they are be fairly close
to the scenic event
He saw no harm in deviating the way
"Present for descending 706"
"Another little special request is
to fly slightly West over Quiberon Bay, Sir
"To go and see the SS France there"
It is now clear, why the Captain decided
to make that fateful detour
He did it, because a passenger asked him to
Without the CVR recording,
we would never have known this information
The Captain would have made the decision
to try to comply with the passenger request
Pilots like to please the passengers
As investigators
continue listening,
it becomes clear how the desire
to entertain the passengers...
...leads Flight 706 into danger
They approach the bay at 5000 ft
but the ocean-liner below is difficult to see
"Ask if we can go lower,
3000 ft if that is possible"
"Can we descend lower, please?
"I authorize 3700 ft in IFR"
Air traffic Control gives them permission
to descend to 3700 ft
But it is not enough:
the pilots want to go even lower.
In order for all the passengers in the cabin
to see the ship,
they would had to come down to a lower altitude
because passengers really don't like steep banking
Coming down to a lower altitude allow them
to fly at a shallower banking...
..giving them a much better view.
The captain decides to descend all the way down
to 2000 ft
At this point, everything is about to change
The pilots are entering unrestricted airspace,
and cannot be seen by Lorient's radar
They are no longer guided by Air Traffic Control;
they are on their own.
What we are going to do if possible is cancel IFR
locate the visual.
"706, Lorient confirmed"
"Your IFR is cancelled at 15:54 local"
Stop it!
He cancelled Instrument Flight Rules.
It is very, very rare for commercial airlines
to cancel IFR.
The decision to cancel IFR
and switch to Visual Flight Rules...
...did surprise us.
In order to avoid a collision,
the pilots must now rely solely on
what they can see with their own eyes
This is "See and avoid" country
That means that each aircraft
is entirely responsible
for seen and avoiding any
other aircraft in a matter of space
They are not under radar control,
there is no coordination of
altitude or flight patterns,
So when you put high-speed-traffic...
(the Beechcraft, in this case)
...in a mix of all these aviation aircraft
it really increases the risk
of a mid-air collision.
You don't have that extra set of eyes
looking out after you
You don't have anyone else
specifically putting you on a course
that they know it is going to be clear
of other air traffic
Once that clearance
is cancelled,
it absolves the controller all responsibility
for any traffic-avoidance
What were they thinking?
They have just entered a high-traffic zone
and are only seconds from colliding
with an unidentified aircraft.
Now, Bouillard needs to know
who was flying the other plane...
...and where it came from.
As investigators struggle to explain
a deadly mid-air collision,
they search for answers in the final minutes
of the CVR
Let's continue
"Lorient 706, we will keep to visual and
we will do a 360 for the passengers in the back"
They learn that as Flight 706 descended
into uncontrolled airspace,
the pilots had no trouble spotting
and identifying other planes nearby
Got a DR 400, pretty much beneath us
There is a Cessna, got in my sights
They were doing their jobs,
The captain followed the rules of "See and Avoid"
But for some reason,
there is one Cessna they didn't see.
Nor did anyone at Air Traffic Control
OKAY, here is our Beechcraft, that we know,
saw the traffic in the area.
Why didn't they see the Cessna they collided with?
To find out more,
investigators have been working
to identify this mystery aircraft
until they finally make a break-through.
We found it
They get a report from a small airfield,
10 miles in land from Quiberon Bay
the air Traffic Controller there
has a missing plane.
This plane left here, shortly before the accident
Just 9 minutes before Flight 706 went down...
...a private Cessna took off...
...and it never returned
Yeah, that looks like our plane
He was planning to fly over to see La France
The Cessna pilot is Francis Gilibert
He is a retired airline-pilot
with more than 15,000 hours of flight-time
He was highly experienced...
...and a well respected pilot
For a pilot to reach 15,000
hours with the airline,
you can assume he was a very skilled pilot
in every aspect of aviation
His rudder-skills, his decision-making,
all of the attributes necessary is successful
A professional pilot.
Even though the Cessna was flying at an altitude
where it should have been detected on radar...
...for some reason the Air Traffic Controller
was never able to see him
Why didn't the Cessna show up on Lorient's radar?
It looks like he didn't have his transponder on
It wasn't on?
The transponder allows Air Traffic Control
to identify and track the exact location
of an airplane.
A transponder is absolute critical.
The radar may show very little if anything
from a small aircraft
In 1998, French aviation-rules don't mandate
the use of transponders on small aircraft.
So, Francis Gilibert wasn't breaking any rules
He didn't turn the transponder on for his flight,
that day
This is an incredible surprise,
because certainly he wouldn't have flown many of
those 15,000 hours without that transponder on
There are many things that could've played
a factor in why he didn't turn the transponder on
It could have been just his mindset:
Hey, I am going on a pleasure flight,
I am going on a visual flight plan
It is not going to make any difference
Without the transponder,
Lorient's Air Traffic Control had no way
of knowing the Cessna was even in the sky
But even without Air Traffic Control,
why didn't the pilots hear
each other over the radio?
Bouillard studies the different approach charts
that would have been used
aboard each aircraft
He uncovers a startling detail.
The pilots were communicating
on different radio-frequencies.
It was a big discovery
to know that in such tight airspace
...there could be two planes
on totally different frequencies
Position report
The pilot of the Cessna had not been in contact
with the Control at Lorient
He was in contact with the tower at Quiberon
So, both planes were on different frequencies...
...with different controllers.
"I am descending from 3000 to 1500"
With no transponder
and no radio-communication between them,
there is no way the pilots could have
known about each other in advance
As Flight 706 descended into traffic,
Francis Gilibert never would have heard
their course.
But that still doesn’t explain
why such experienced pilots collided.
Bouillard orders the full reconstruction
of both planes
to determine who hit who
and where they were positioned,
moments before the crash.
Let's see what this can tell us
Rebuilding the plane is always extremely difficult
but it is necessary
in order to understand the events.
Imagine dumping a puzzle box on a table
You try to figure out: where would I begin
It's the same way
except now imagine taking tin-foil,
wrapping it up , squeezing it, compressing it,
unwrapping it, doing that a dozen times
and now try and figure out
where did those pieces go back together
because all of this wreckage violent
mid air collision like this
It was mingled, it was
shredded, sheared apart,
small pieces, large pieces.
Eventually, the tireless effort of investigators
begin to pay off
What's this?
By reconstruction the aircraft,
they are able to find key pieces of evidence
In this case, it is the paint-transfer marks.
This paint is definitively from the Cessna
A paint-transfer is like,
when you have 2 cars that bump against each other
and one car leaves paint on another
The same thing happened here.
Alongside the paint-transfer,
investigators also find distinctive marks
on the Beechcraft's wing
caused by a propeller.
This is the Cessna's point of contact.
The Cessna initially struck at the wingtip
As it continued moving forward,
the heavier parts of the Cessna continued
and struck the rear part of the Beechcraft.
That part of the tail was found
over 400 meters away
That tells you:
This would have been a very violent impact.
This confirms it: The Cessna's point of impact
above the Beechcraft's 7th porthole
causing catastrophic failure
in the Beechcraft-tail to break off
The evidence is clear:
The Cessna hit the Beechcraft.
The marks also reveal the exact position
of the two planes at the moment of impact.
By the red paint going at that angle
across the wing,
the investigators can determine what
the direction of the two aircraft were
what the relative converging pattern
of flight-paths would have been,
and that opens up a whole new set of questions
Bouillard now knows how the Beechcraft
and Cessna collided
What he still doesn't understand is,
why, on such a clear day...
...the pilots failed to see each other?
Armed with physical evidence of the collision,
French investigators now want to find out
what the two pilots could see...
...in the last moments leading up to the crash
Why didn't they just look at the window?
Bouiilard turns to the FDR,
recovered from the Beechcraft
Quiet, please!
It records the plane's every move,
as well as the inputs from the pilots
The FDR allowed us
to reconstruct the 360 degree turn.
and the different altitudes and tilts
of the plane during the turn.
The FDR allows the investigators to figure out,
what the approx geometry of both aircraft were
at the time of the impact
The Beechcraft was on a bank to the left.
The FDR tells investigators the Beechcraft
was still turning...
...when the two planes collided
The accident investigators team
was able to determine
that at the time of the impact
the Beechcraft was in a gentle bank-angle
The Cessna in a gentle descend
Bouillard knows the Cessna was descending
on the right,
because its propeller struck
the Beechcraft's right wing,
From the flight-data he also knows
that of the time of impact,
the Beechcraft was still banked to the left...
...at a 17 degree angle.
He combines the data,
to find out what the Beechcraft-pilots
could see out of their windows
The First Officer is in a better position
to see the Cessna approaching on the right.
But today, he is busy executing the turn,
and preparing for landing.
The pilot flying is actually going to be
very focused and very concentrated,
It is a a very high workload
assuring that he is staying on his altitude
and he is looking in the direction
on his instruments
in the direction of what he is going to be turning
So, he is not going to be looking
out the window at all
With the First Officer flying,
the Captain was the one responsible
for scanning the sky
Why didn't he see the Cessna?
Bouillard uses the flight-data to
reconstruct what the captain could see
at different stages during
that turn around the ship
OKAY, let's start just before the 360
and go up until the collision
Now we are entering our turn.
They discover the Cessna was in
the captain's line of sight for several seconds
but it was much too far away to see.
The size of the Cessna is a tremendous factor
It is a very small aircraft
and the difference between that and say
a 767 which would be huge in your windscreen
This would be the size of an ant
on your windscreen
As they continue the banking turn,
the Cessna drops below the captain's line of sight
We know the Cessna would have approached
from his right
By the time the smaller Cessna is close enough
to be seen, just seconds before impact,
it remains hidden from view
The captain sitting in the left-seat would
have had to look across the First Officer
out the right window to
see the Cessna coming
and in this case,
that was just not possible at all
There is no way he would have seen anything
from that direction
It is now clear why the Beechcraft pilot
didn't see the Cessna.
But why didn't the Cessna pilot
see the Beechcraft?
That Beechcraft is a pretty big plane
The 19 passenger commercial aircraft
was almost 60 ft long
We try to understand why the pilot of the Cessna
had not been able to detect anything...
...since he was in a better position
to see the other plane.
Using the same model
as the crashed Cessna,
Bouillard tries to figure out how the pilot could
have missed what was directly in front of him
"OKAY now start walking around the cockpit"
They were walking around the aircraft
to hold objects
to find out if the pilot, sitting there,
could see the objects
This would help them to determine
where blind spots would be
and where the good spot would have been for him.
"Continue"
As Bouillard directs the marker to
where the Beechcraft would have been
as it came out of its final turn...
...it disappears.
"We found it"
It's a major breakthrough
The side-blind-spot covers a zone
from 35 to 55 degrees,
which means it would have blocked the Beechcraft
for as long as 30 seconds before impact.
Even the best pilot would likely
not be able to see something,
coming from their side-window to them.
Then, investigators discover
that just as the Beechcraft exited
the blind spot from the side,
it entered a even bigger blind spot,
right in front of the Cessna-pilot.
The engine is directly in front of you,
so you would have to look around,
over the top of the cowling at the engine,
as well as the large instrument panels
and those would also be a factor in being able
to see around from the pilot's position
Even in those final seconds,
when the Beechcraft was directly
in front of the Cessna,
it was blocked from the pilot's line of sight.
By the time he came out of that last blind spot,
he didn’t have a chance
Investigators believe they now understand
the unusual sequence of events
that led to tragedy...
in the sky over Quiberon Bay
I think we now know what happened
The Beechcraft is nearing the airport in Lorient
At the request of a passenger
the Captain asks to deviate from the flight-path
He decided to take a look
at the Ocean-Liner "Le France".
Proteus Airlines Flight 706 diverts over the bay,
and descends to 3700 ft
Air Traffic Control has just given us permission
to do a 360 rounder
We resume our route to Lorient immediately after
in approx 5 or 6 minutes.
You really have to get inside
the mind of the captain
to say whether or not you would have done
the same thing in those circumstances
It is a clear-blue day,
I am sure both the crew-members were feeling good,
and maybe they are going to have
a little fun along the way.
Once near the ship, they decide to descend
to get a closer look.
But to go below 3700 ft,
they cancel Instrument Flight Rules...
...and go visual.
Now, the Beechcraft is in uncontrolled airspace...
...below radar.
With no guidance from
Air Traffic Control,
it's up to the Captain to
visually scan for nearby planes.
"There is a Cessna"
and once at 2000 ft,
they decide to do a 360 turn around the ship
With the 360 turn almost complete,
the pilots begin to prepare for landing at Lorient
At the same moment,
the Cessna is approaching from the right.
The Cessna does not have its transponder on
and it is communicating
on a different radio-frequency
Lorient Air Traffic Control has no idea it's there
The bank angle of the Beechcraft,
combined with the fact that the pilot
responsible for scanning the skies
were sitting in the left seat,
make the approaching Cessna impossible to see
They can see only sky
out of the right hand side of the plane
By terrible coincidence,
the Cessna pilot can't see the Beechcraft either
The structure of the aircraft
creates a blind-spot,
and the pilot is unable to see the Beechcraft
During the last 10
seconds of the flight,
the pilot of the Cessna was likely paying
attention to his sightseeing over the SS France,
The Beechcraft was coming in
from this approx. position
At the last moment,
the Beechcraft comes
out of the blind spot
and it's too late.
This was 'The Perfect Storm'
That crash, at the speed they were travelling
would have been catastrophic
It would have completely torn apart
both of the aircraft in 2 pieces
While the crash of Flight 706 remains a tragedy
what was learned through the
cause of this investigation
would lead to significant
innovations in airline-safety.
They include the mandatory use of transponders
in small aircraft such as the Cessna.
and limited access to the cockpit
on all commercial flights
Finally,
it is now prohibited for
commercial pilots to cancel IFR
unless it is an emergency.
As a result of this investigation,
the skies have been may safer
This catastrophe could have been avoided
with the use of the automation
that we now have available
and is now in use today.
Fortunately,
mid-air collisions involving commercial
airliners are almost non-existing anymore
and the reason for that,
is that we employed a multi-layer system,
airspace regulations,
radar, Air Traffic Control, TCAS
to prevent this from ever happening again.
subtitles
Rein Croonen
"Look, we can see the ship there"
"There she is"
...gets a rare view of a national treasure
It is a clear blue day,
I am sure both the
crew-members are feeling good
and maybe they are having a
little fun along the way
something rips the plane to pieces
It went so quick and it was so horrible
With an entire nation,
looking for answers,
investigators struggle to
explain what really happened
They uncover an unimaginable chain of events.
What were they thinking?
You really have to get inside
the mind of the pilots,
to say whether or not you would have done
the same thing in those circumstances
In one of the busiest weeks of summer,
Proteus Airlines Flight 706
heads to the coast of Brittany, Western France
The 31 year old Captain is an experienced pilot
He has flown everything,
from passenger planes to water bombers
His First Officer is just 27 years old,
but he has more than 300 hours flight-experience
in this same type of aircraft
The skill of these pilots in the
Beechcraft 1900 is very high
They are professional aviators,
This is what they are trained to do,
This is what they do on a daily basis.
This was just a normal day for them.
The Captain and First Officer
have divided their workload
It is very common in the industry
for the pilots to "swap legs",
meaning one pilot will take
his turn flying the aircraft
and then the other pilot
will fly the next trip
On this particular flight, it was
the First Officer's turn to fly the aircraft
The captain was the
pilot monitoring
and that involves communicating
with AirTrafficControl,
doing checklists,
managing the systems on the aircraft,
Flight 706 left Lyon Airport
a little more then an hour ago
They are on schedule to land at Lorient
in approx 20 minutes.
And they are being guided to their destination
by local Air Traffic Control
I authorized 3700 ft in IFR
The twin engine Beechcraft 1900D
can carry 19 passengers
Some are headed
to the beaches of South-West Brittany,
a popular tourist-destination in France
and today they are in for a treat.
The rare chance to see
a treasured piece of French Maritime history
A luxury Ocean-Liner,
formally known as the SS France.
People in France were so proud of this boat,
because of mechanical advancement
but also it was a show-case of French Art & Design
When put into service in 1962,
this was the longest passenger-ship ever build
More than a 150 ft longer than the Titanic!
The ship is a huge draw
whenever it is in French waters
So, journalist Julien Beaumont is sent to
cover the event for the local press
I went that day
because I was a young journalist,
it was my very first job,
and because it was THE main story at that time,
I decided to go there and covered the story
and made some pictures.
The young journalist hires a small plane
to get a better view
But he is not the only one
fascinated by the Ocean Liner.
"Look, we can see the ship there!"
As Flight 706 begins its descend
towards Lorient Airport,
passengers and crew are about to get
a perfect view of the famous Ocean Liner
The pilots definitely got caught up
in the excitement of:
"Let's go and see the ship"
It is not just the first class service, but...
... I think there was elements
inside done as crew-members
They also wanted the front-row seat
take a look at the ship itself
Lorient 706, we will keep a visual
and will do a 360 for the passengers in the back
We will resume contact after
for the approach to Lorient
706, Lorient confirmed.
Ladies and gentlemen, on the left of the plane
you will see the Ocean
Liner Le France
AirTrafficControl has just given this permission
to do a 360 around-Er
We resume our route to Lorient immediately after
in approx 5 or 6 minutes.
They descend to 2000 ft...
...and begin circling the ship.
2000 ft is quite low for commercial aircraft.
Now, what that said, this is a regional
aircraft attempt to fly to a smaller airport,
so for them to go to spend a little
more time at a lower altitude
is not rare.
Isn't she a beauty?
It would have been a tremendous view
on a crystal-clear day,
You could have seen every detail of that ship
from 2000 ft.
Not far away,
Julien Beaumont is enjoying a similar view
It was a perfect day, it was sunny, no wind,
beautiful weather...
...high temperature.
Look at the number of yachts down there
Amazing
Just stunning
As they complete
their 360 degree turn around the ship,
the pilots begin preparations
for their landing at Lorient Airport
706, we have been permitted,
We will direct course for the airport
706, Lorient, confirmed
Without any warning,
Flight 706 disintegrates in mid-air
I didn't hear the crash,
because the door was open and
I was taking my pictures
and the pilot told me:
Oh, look just in front of us,
so I just look in front and
take my camera and just shoot
I was shocked, because it was so quick
and it was so horrible
I can see some big parts,
big wreckage-pieces
just going under the sea
and some personal belongings
like a jacket,
At that time I just realized and said:
wow, a lot of people dying there
The coast guard rushes to the crash site,
hoping to rescue any survivors
but they find no one.
Hundreds of tourists aboard the ship
and surrounding yachts
are stunned by what they just see.
It was like:
We are so happy to see the boat
and in two minutes...
...all of this became a tragedy
It is soon clear there are no survivors.
All 14 passengers and crew are dead.
The sad news stunned the nation.
It was the big story in France,
all the journalists were on this story
and all the French people
wanted to know about this story
It was really the main-story in France
at that time.
As the tragedy begins to sink in,
so the mystery deepens.
Despite hundreds of eye-witnesses,
no one seems to know what brought Flight 706 down
The morning after the crash of
Proteus Airlines Flight 706,
French air-crash investigator Alain Bouillard
and his team begin working the case.
So, what knocked this plane out of the sky?
With the entire country
looking for answers,
there is immense pressure to explain how
and why the passenger plane went down.
All we knew,
was that a plane had crashed into the sea...
...and there were no survivors.
It was up to us to locate the wreckage
to first recover the flight recorders
and then to find any other parts of the plane,
that we could.
The plane's black boxes are
crucial to explain what happened
in the final moments,
leading up to the crash
But finding them won't be easy ...
...because the wreckage is a few miles off shore
at the bottom of Quiberon Bay.
The job of locating them
is up to investigator
Sébastien David
I went to the site with a beacon locator,
which receives signals from beacons
like the ones that are equipping flight-recorders
NAVY divers waste no time
and begin scouring the seabed,
searching for the wreckage
While waiting for the black boxes to be recovered,
Alain Bouillard interviews
the Air Traffic Controller
in charge of Flight 706's approach.
He is immediately surprised by what he learns
Here is the scheduled route from Lyon to Lorient.
Quiberon Bay was not even on their flight-path.
Bouillard wants to know
what they were doing there in the first place.
They requested a detour to see the France.
It is a shocking discovery.
A commercial airliner should only
request a detour for safety-reasons.
It is very, very rare for a passenger aircraft
to deviate from their standard flight-plan
Why would they decide to go site-seeing?
The official flight should have taken the plane
in a straight line over land.
But at the time of the crash it was flying
over the SS France...
...many miles off course.
The captain's decision to deviate
from his flight-path for such a trivial reason...
...seems almost reckless.
But the controller in Lorient
saw no conflicting traffic on radar.
So he had no reason to deny the request.
Request for descending 706
A little special request
is to fly slightly West over Quiberon Bay, sir
The controller in Lorient simply
advised the pilot of the Beechcraft,
that he didn't have any
information of the traffic
Thanks for your time.
Investigators now know Flight 706 was in an area
where it was never supposed to be
But they don't know what actually happened there.
Bouillard begins interviewing eye-witnesses.
Maybe they saw something,
the radar at Lorient did not pick up
So, this is the area that we are focusing on.
Although all of them saw
burning wreckage falling from the sky,
nobody saw what happened to cause this accident
But what they did see
catches Bouillard's full attention.
On this wonderful day,
there were many, many aviation aircraft
sight-seeing over the SS France.
Eye-witnesses had seen more than a dozen
pleasure scene aircraft on that nice afternoon.
You are positive?
These aircraft would have been flying too low
to be detected by Lorient's radar.
which explains why the Air Traffic Controller
never saw them
and that opens up a frightening possibility.
Is it possible there have could been
a mid-air collision?
A mid-air collision with a passenger plane
is so unusual;
It is almost unthinkable.
Air collisions with passenger planes
were very rare.
If it was a collision with another aircraft,
Bouillard knows that the evidence lies
in whatever wreckage they find on the sea-bed
Two days after the crash,
Sébastien David picks up a signal
from Flight 706's homing beacon
The flight recorders were found on the sea-bed
at around 16 or 18 meters
The wreckage is finally located
and the bodies are found.
This accident was tragic,
because two pilots are from the Beechcraft
12 passenger, including two babies, died.
The nation is in mourning...
...and in need of answers
Now that wreckage has been pulled
from the sea-bed,
accident investigators begin to examine the pieces
searching for clues
The whole purpose of air-crash investigation
is to determine the root cause...
...of the accident,
so they can prevent other
accidents from happening
Being able to retrieve all of the wreckage,
the FDR, the instruments
the engines, flight controls, cables
the investigators are able to
definitely rule out factors
that likely didn't contribute to the accident
and allows you to focus on something
out of the ordinary.
What do we have here?
Recovered along with the wreckage
of the Beechcraft,
they find pieces of another aircraft
The concentration of debris,
along with the examination, done by the divers...
clearly show that the wreckage was
from two different planes
So, immediately
we could confirm that the accident
was caused by a collision
It is a huge discovery
and the shape of the recovered nose-cone...
...is unmistakeable to investigators
It's a Cessna
Where did it come from?
Air-crash-investigators now know
they are dealing with a mid-air collision
They have a mystery Cessna on their hands
and they need to find out where it came from
With no witnesses to the actual collision,
and no radar data tracking the mystery plane,
they look for answers in the CockpitVoiceRecorder,
found in the Beechcraft.
The CVR was in a good condition
We were really relieved,
because we knew that we could proceed
with the safety-investigation
Hey, let's begin!
"Flaps 0+30"
The recovery was very important, to determine
the flightpath of the commercial aircraft
and to hear what happened in the cockpit
"10 nautical miles"
The recording might also reveal
if the pilots of Flight 706 made a fatal error...
...as they were flying over the SS France
"Pass over the auto-marker of 1440 ft."
From analyzing the Cockpit Voice Recorder,,
you could tell there was a
good atmosphere in the cockpit
The weather was good, the crew was relaxed
but still conducting themselves professional.
Then, as they follow the recording,
investigators hear something completely unexpected
"You are not flying over Quiberon Bay?
Who is that?
"because the SS France is there?
Is that alright?"
"Yeah"
"Right over here"
There is somebody else in the cockpit
with the pilots
"You are not flying over Quiberon Bay?
because the France is there"
We were surprised that a passenger was able
to step in to the pilot-area
It is a general rule,
the presence of a third person is not allowed
On most commercial airlines,
it is strictly forbidden for passengers
to enter the cockpit
But that rule doesn’t apply to small aircraft
The Beechcraft 1900 is an aircraft,
designed for short flights
Because there is no flight-attendant,
the crew is going to have open communication...
between the passengers and the crew,
throughout the flight.
It is a small regional aircraft, there is no door
in between the cabin and the flight-crew,
It's just rather natural;
passengers felt that they are be fairly close
to the scenic event
He saw no harm in deviating the way
"Present for descending 706"
"Another little special request is
to fly slightly West over Quiberon Bay, Sir
"To go and see the SS France there"
It is now clear, why the Captain decided
to make that fateful detour
He did it, because a passenger asked him to
Without the CVR recording,
we would never have known this information
The Captain would have made the decision
to try to comply with the passenger request
Pilots like to please the passengers
As investigators
continue listening,
it becomes clear how the desire
to entertain the passengers...
...leads Flight 706 into danger
They approach the bay at 5000 ft
but the ocean-liner below is difficult to see
"Ask if we can go lower,
3000 ft if that is possible"
"Can we descend lower, please?
"I authorize 3700 ft in IFR"
Air traffic Control gives them permission
to descend to 3700 ft
But it is not enough:
the pilots want to go even lower.
In order for all the passengers in the cabin
to see the ship,
they would had to come down to a lower altitude
because passengers really don't like steep banking
Coming down to a lower altitude allow them
to fly at a shallower banking...
..giving them a much better view.
The captain decides to descend all the way down
to 2000 ft
At this point, everything is about to change
The pilots are entering unrestricted airspace,
and cannot be seen by Lorient's radar
They are no longer guided by Air Traffic Control;
they are on their own.
What we are going to do if possible is cancel IFR
locate the visual.
"706, Lorient confirmed"
"Your IFR is cancelled at 15:54 local"
Stop it!
He cancelled Instrument Flight Rules.
It is very, very rare for commercial airlines
to cancel IFR.
The decision to cancel IFR
and switch to Visual Flight Rules...
...did surprise us.
In order to avoid a collision,
the pilots must now rely solely on
what they can see with their own eyes
This is "See and avoid" country
That means that each aircraft
is entirely responsible
for seen and avoiding any
other aircraft in a matter of space
They are not under radar control,
there is no coordination of
altitude or flight patterns,
So when you put high-speed-traffic...
(the Beechcraft, in this case)
...in a mix of all these aviation aircraft
it really increases the risk
of a mid-air collision.
You don't have that extra set of eyes
looking out after you
You don't have anyone else
specifically putting you on a course
that they know it is going to be clear
of other air traffic
Once that clearance
is cancelled,
it absolves the controller all responsibility
for any traffic-avoidance
What were they thinking?
They have just entered a high-traffic zone
and are only seconds from colliding
with an unidentified aircraft.
Now, Bouillard needs to know
who was flying the other plane...
...and where it came from.
As investigators struggle to explain
a deadly mid-air collision,
they search for answers in the final minutes
of the CVR
Let's continue
"Lorient 706, we will keep to visual and
we will do a 360 for the passengers in the back"
They learn that as Flight 706 descended
into uncontrolled airspace,
the pilots had no trouble spotting
and identifying other planes nearby
Got a DR 400, pretty much beneath us
There is a Cessna, got in my sights
They were doing their jobs,
The captain followed the rules of "See and Avoid"
But for some reason,
there is one Cessna they didn't see.
Nor did anyone at Air Traffic Control
OKAY, here is our Beechcraft, that we know,
saw the traffic in the area.
Why didn't they see the Cessna they collided with?
To find out more,
investigators have been working
to identify this mystery aircraft
until they finally make a break-through.
We found it
They get a report from a small airfield,
10 miles in land from Quiberon Bay
the air Traffic Controller there
has a missing plane.
This plane left here, shortly before the accident
Just 9 minutes before Flight 706 went down...
...a private Cessna took off...
...and it never returned
Yeah, that looks like our plane
He was planning to fly over to see La France
The Cessna pilot is Francis Gilibert
He is a retired airline-pilot
with more than 15,000 hours of flight-time
He was highly experienced...
...and a well respected pilot
For a pilot to reach 15,000
hours with the airline,
you can assume he was a very skilled pilot
in every aspect of aviation
His rudder-skills, his decision-making,
all of the attributes necessary is successful
A professional pilot.
Even though the Cessna was flying at an altitude
where it should have been detected on radar...
...for some reason the Air Traffic Controller
was never able to see him
Why didn't the Cessna show up on Lorient's radar?
It looks like he didn't have his transponder on
It wasn't on?
The transponder allows Air Traffic Control
to identify and track the exact location
of an airplane.
A transponder is absolute critical.
The radar may show very little if anything
from a small aircraft
In 1998, French aviation-rules don't mandate
the use of transponders on small aircraft.
So, Francis Gilibert wasn't breaking any rules
He didn't turn the transponder on for his flight,
that day
This is an incredible surprise,
because certainly he wouldn't have flown many of
those 15,000 hours without that transponder on
There are many things that could've played
a factor in why he didn't turn the transponder on
It could have been just his mindset:
Hey, I am going on a pleasure flight,
I am going on a visual flight plan
It is not going to make any difference
Without the transponder,
Lorient's Air Traffic Control had no way
of knowing the Cessna was even in the sky
But even without Air Traffic Control,
why didn't the pilots hear
each other over the radio?
Bouillard studies the different approach charts
that would have been used
aboard each aircraft
He uncovers a startling detail.
The pilots were communicating
on different radio-frequencies.
It was a big discovery
to know that in such tight airspace
...there could be two planes
on totally different frequencies
Position report
The pilot of the Cessna had not been in contact
with the Control at Lorient
He was in contact with the tower at Quiberon
So, both planes were on different frequencies...
...with different controllers.
"I am descending from 3000 to 1500"
With no transponder
and no radio-communication between them,
there is no way the pilots could have
known about each other in advance
As Flight 706 descended into traffic,
Francis Gilibert never would have heard
their course.
But that still doesn’t explain
why such experienced pilots collided.
Bouillard orders the full reconstruction
of both planes
to determine who hit who
and where they were positioned,
moments before the crash.
Let's see what this can tell us
Rebuilding the plane is always extremely difficult
but it is necessary
in order to understand the events.
Imagine dumping a puzzle box on a table
You try to figure out: where would I begin
It's the same way
except now imagine taking tin-foil,
wrapping it up , squeezing it, compressing it,
unwrapping it, doing that a dozen times
and now try and figure out
where did those pieces go back together
because all of this wreckage violent
mid air collision like this
It was mingled, it was
shredded, sheared apart,
small pieces, large pieces.
Eventually, the tireless effort of investigators
begin to pay off
What's this?
By reconstruction the aircraft,
they are able to find key pieces of evidence
In this case, it is the paint-transfer marks.
This paint is definitively from the Cessna
A paint-transfer is like,
when you have 2 cars that bump against each other
and one car leaves paint on another
The same thing happened here.
Alongside the paint-transfer,
investigators also find distinctive marks
on the Beechcraft's wing
caused by a propeller.
This is the Cessna's point of contact.
The Cessna initially struck at the wingtip
As it continued moving forward,
the heavier parts of the Cessna continued
and struck the rear part of the Beechcraft.
That part of the tail was found
over 400 meters away
That tells you:
This would have been a very violent impact.
This confirms it: The Cessna's point of impact
above the Beechcraft's 7th porthole
causing catastrophic failure
in the Beechcraft-tail to break off
The evidence is clear:
The Cessna hit the Beechcraft.
The marks also reveal the exact position
of the two planes at the moment of impact.
By the red paint going at that angle
across the wing,
the investigators can determine what
the direction of the two aircraft were
what the relative converging pattern
of flight-paths would have been,
and that opens up a whole new set of questions
Bouillard now knows how the Beechcraft
and Cessna collided
What he still doesn't understand is,
why, on such a clear day...
...the pilots failed to see each other?
Armed with physical evidence of the collision,
French investigators now want to find out
what the two pilots could see...
...in the last moments leading up to the crash
Why didn't they just look at the window?
Bouiilard turns to the FDR,
recovered from the Beechcraft
Quiet, please!
It records the plane's every move,
as well as the inputs from the pilots
The FDR allowed us
to reconstruct the 360 degree turn.
and the different altitudes and tilts
of the plane during the turn.
The FDR allows the investigators to figure out,
what the approx geometry of both aircraft were
at the time of the impact
The Beechcraft was on a bank to the left.
The FDR tells investigators the Beechcraft
was still turning...
...when the two planes collided
The accident investigators team
was able to determine
that at the time of the impact
the Beechcraft was in a gentle bank-angle
The Cessna in a gentle descend
Bouillard knows the Cessna was descending
on the right,
because its propeller struck
the Beechcraft's right wing,
From the flight-data he also knows
that of the time of impact,
the Beechcraft was still banked to the left...
...at a 17 degree angle.
He combines the data,
to find out what the Beechcraft-pilots
could see out of their windows
The First Officer is in a better position
to see the Cessna approaching on the right.
But today, he is busy executing the turn,
and preparing for landing.
The pilot flying is actually going to be
very focused and very concentrated,
It is a a very high workload
assuring that he is staying on his altitude
and he is looking in the direction
on his instruments
in the direction of what he is going to be turning
So, he is not going to be looking
out the window at all
With the First Officer flying,
the Captain was the one responsible
for scanning the sky
Why didn't he see the Cessna?
Bouillard uses the flight-data to
reconstruct what the captain could see
at different stages during
that turn around the ship
OKAY, let's start just before the 360
and go up until the collision
Now we are entering our turn.
They discover the Cessna was in
the captain's line of sight for several seconds
but it was much too far away to see.
The size of the Cessna is a tremendous factor
It is a very small aircraft
and the difference between that and say
a 767 which would be huge in your windscreen
This would be the size of an ant
on your windscreen
As they continue the banking turn,
the Cessna drops below the captain's line of sight
We know the Cessna would have approached
from his right
By the time the smaller Cessna is close enough
to be seen, just seconds before impact,
it remains hidden from view
The captain sitting in the left-seat would
have had to look across the First Officer
out the right window to
see the Cessna coming
and in this case,
that was just not possible at all
There is no way he would have seen anything
from that direction
It is now clear why the Beechcraft pilot
didn't see the Cessna.
But why didn't the Cessna pilot
see the Beechcraft?
That Beechcraft is a pretty big plane
The 19 passenger commercial aircraft
was almost 60 ft long
We try to understand why the pilot of the Cessna
had not been able to detect anything...
...since he was in a better position
to see the other plane.
Using the same model
as the crashed Cessna,
Bouillard tries to figure out how the pilot could
have missed what was directly in front of him
"OKAY now start walking around the cockpit"
They were walking around the aircraft
to hold objects
to find out if the pilot, sitting there,
could see the objects
This would help them to determine
where blind spots would be
and where the good spot would have been for him.
"Continue"
As Bouillard directs the marker to
where the Beechcraft would have been
as it came out of its final turn...
...it disappears.
"We found it"
It's a major breakthrough
The side-blind-spot covers a zone
from 35 to 55 degrees,
which means it would have blocked the Beechcraft
for as long as 30 seconds before impact.
Even the best pilot would likely
not be able to see something,
coming from their side-window to them.
Then, investigators discover
that just as the Beechcraft exited
the blind spot from the side,
it entered a even bigger blind spot,
right in front of the Cessna-pilot.
The engine is directly in front of you,
so you would have to look around,
over the top of the cowling at the engine,
as well as the large instrument panels
and those would also be a factor in being able
to see around from the pilot's position
Even in those final seconds,
when the Beechcraft was directly
in front of the Cessna,
it was blocked from the pilot's line of sight.
By the time he came out of that last blind spot,
he didn’t have a chance
Investigators believe they now understand
the unusual sequence of events
that led to tragedy...
in the sky over Quiberon Bay
I think we now know what happened
The Beechcraft is nearing the airport in Lorient
At the request of a passenger
the Captain asks to deviate from the flight-path
He decided to take a look
at the Ocean-Liner "Le France".
Proteus Airlines Flight 706 diverts over the bay,
and descends to 3700 ft
Air Traffic Control has just given us permission
to do a 360 rounder
We resume our route to Lorient immediately after
in approx 5 or 6 minutes.
You really have to get inside
the mind of the captain
to say whether or not you would have done
the same thing in those circumstances
It is a clear-blue day,
I am sure both the crew-members were feeling good,
and maybe they are going to have
a little fun along the way.
Once near the ship, they decide to descend
to get a closer look.
But to go below 3700 ft,
they cancel Instrument Flight Rules...
...and go visual.
Now, the Beechcraft is in uncontrolled airspace...
...below radar.
With no guidance from
Air Traffic Control,
it's up to the Captain to
visually scan for nearby planes.
"There is a Cessna"
and once at 2000 ft,
they decide to do a 360 turn around the ship
With the 360 turn almost complete,
the pilots begin to prepare for landing at Lorient
At the same moment,
the Cessna is approaching from the right.
The Cessna does not have its transponder on
and it is communicating
on a different radio-frequency
Lorient Air Traffic Control has no idea it's there
The bank angle of the Beechcraft,
combined with the fact that the pilot
responsible for scanning the skies
were sitting in the left seat,
make the approaching Cessna impossible to see
They can see only sky
out of the right hand side of the plane
By terrible coincidence,
the Cessna pilot can't see the Beechcraft either
The structure of the aircraft
creates a blind-spot,
and the pilot is unable to see the Beechcraft
During the last 10
seconds of the flight,
the pilot of the Cessna was likely paying
attention to his sightseeing over the SS France,
The Beechcraft was coming in
from this approx. position
At the last moment,
the Beechcraft comes
out of the blind spot
and it's too late.
This was 'The Perfect Storm'
That crash, at the speed they were travelling
would have been catastrophic
It would have completely torn apart
both of the aircraft in 2 pieces
While the crash of Flight 706 remains a tragedy
what was learned through the
cause of this investigation
would lead to significant
innovations in airline-safety.
They include the mandatory use of transponders
in small aircraft such as the Cessna.
and limited access to the cockpit
on all commercial flights
Finally,
it is now prohibited for
commercial pilots to cancel IFR
unless it is an emergency.
As a result of this investigation,
the skies have been may safer
This catastrophe could have been avoided
with the use of the automation
that we now have available
and is now in use today.
Fortunately,
mid-air collisions involving commercial
airliners are almost non-existing anymore
and the reason for that,
is that we employed a multi-layer system,
airspace regulations,
radar, Air Traffic Control, TCAS
to prevent this from ever happening again.
subtitles
Rein Croonen