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00:00On the busy streets of Mexico City, people flee for their lives.
00:08I had the time to turn around and I started running away from it.
00:12And I remember thinking that, well, this is it.
00:16An out-of-control jet sets the financial core on fire.
00:22It was a disaster.
00:24The president's right-hand man is killed in the crash.
00:28A major political figure for the future in Mexico.
00:31In a nation at war with drug cartels...
00:34There was a lot of narco-trafficking going on, a lot of drug culture.
00:38...it seems the violence has reached a terrifying new level.
00:43Oh, my God!
00:44Whose natural question was, was this an assassination?
00:51Amazing, amazing.
00:58A LEARJET 45 CRUISES OVER CENTRAL MEXICO
01:15November the 4th, 2008.
01:18A Learjet 45 is cruising over central Mexico.
01:23Victor Mike Charlie, radar contact. Descend to 2-0-0.
01:292-0-0, Mike Charlie.
01:32Alvaro Sanchez and Martin Oliva are at the controls.
01:36Both pilots are captains.
01:39But tonight, Captain Oliva is flying the plane.
01:43I'll start setting 250, Alvaro, OK?
01:46Sounds right to me.
01:48The flight is a special government charter.
01:51We're getting close.
01:53The country's interior minister and his entourage are flying to Mexico City.
02:03We have a few minutes. Show me that report.
02:07Juan Camilo Mourinho is just 37 years old...
02:10...and already a rising star on the Mexican political scene.
02:15Anybody who becomes interior secretary...
02:18...has become a very important figure in Mexican politics.
02:22He was considered a personal friend of President Felipe Calderón.
02:29The politicians are on their way back to the capital...
02:32...after a day of talks aimed at combating...
02:35...the nation's skyrocketing rate of violent crime.
02:392008 was a key year in terms of drug-related violence in Mexico.
02:45A year of major escalation.
02:48And we saw a time when people...
02:51...began to get very worried about where this could go.
02:58The Mexican government has chartered a Learjet 45 for the flight.
03:03It's a high-performance aircraft that's also economical to fly.
03:08Victor Mike Charlie, descend to 1,500 feet.
03:11Altimeter 3024.
03:141,500 with 3024, Mike Charlie.
03:19When Bombardier designed this airplane...
03:21...they designed it from the ground up and made it a lot more efficient.
03:25It's safer, it's easy to fly.
03:27It's very user-friendly, if you will.
03:301,000 feet until we level off.
03:33Thanks, Alvaro.
03:35As the Learjet nears the outskirts of Mexico City...
03:38...the pilots prepare to land.
03:40Landing lights.
03:43Yep.
03:45Check.
03:47The crew can see the aircraft ahead of them on the approach route.
03:51Look.
03:53They're all lined up in front of us.
03:56Just in time for rush hour.
03:59If you've ever looked out into the sky from the approach end of an airport...
04:04...you see what looks like a string of Christmas lights.
04:06Each light is a plane lined up one after the other...
04:09...coming in on a very steady, orderly approach.
04:13It's a busy international airport.
04:15It's the main airport for Mexico City, which is a huge city...
04:19...so you have traffic from all over the world coming in there.
04:23Victor Mike Charlie, reduce your speed to 180 knots.
04:28Reducing speed to 180, Mike Charlie.
04:31The air traffic controller asks the Learjet crew to slow down...
04:35...to maintain their position in the lineup of planes.
04:40The approach to Mexico City requires a turn that's greater than 90 degrees.
04:48Things are coming at you fast.
04:50ATC telling you to turn this heading, maintain this speed, slow down to this speed.
04:57Should I pull the nose up?
04:59No, leave it. Leave it for now.
05:02Tonight, Alvaro Sanchez is serving as something of a mentor.
05:06But we're about to level off, right?
05:08Yes.
05:10He's more experienced in the Learjet than Captain Oliva.
05:14There, speed stabilized.
05:16Okay.
05:18This is one of the busiest and most critical stages of any flight.
05:21Flap down.
05:23Sanchez extends the flaps so he can further reduce their speed.
05:27Here, ATC is sequencing you, and they're basically telling you where to go,
05:31how fast to go, how high to go, how low to go,
05:34in order to sequence the traffic into the airport.
05:39Give me 8800, please.
05:418800.
05:44They're about 5.5 miles away, right over the heart of downtown Mexico City.
05:49Below them, Mexico City is a sprawling metropolis of 20 million people,
05:55with some of the worst traffic in the world.
05:58A sea of cars fills the downtown core.
06:07Oh, my God!
06:10All of a sudden, chaos.
06:12They're flowing upside down, and they're hurtling towards the ground.
06:15Screams, pandemonium, sheer terror.
06:20In the morning, the Learjet goes into a steep dive and plummets towards the ground.
06:26What do we do? Alvaro!
06:30Give it to me! Give it to me!
06:33The first officer calls for control of the plane.
06:35It's yours, Alvaro!
06:38He hauls his control column back, trying to pull the plane out of the dive.
06:46Local Rike Bjorkstam is in the street below, waiting for a cab.
06:52All of a sudden, I saw this plane flying, like, really low.
06:56I had the time to turn around, and I started running away from it.
07:00But, of course, the plane was a little bit faster than what I was.
07:04They aren't much higher than the skyscrapers in downtown.
07:07They can read the signs on the buildings.
07:09They can see the people walking on the streets.
07:12I remember thinking that, well, this is it. This is it for me.
07:18Alvaro!
07:36Learjet Victor Mike Charlie has devastated Mexico City's financial district.
07:42It was a disaster.
07:44Witnesses said that the flames reached higher than the surrounding buildings.
07:49None of the nine people on board have survived.
07:53The crash has also killed seven people on the ground, and injured dozens more.
07:59Ulrike Bjorkstam has been knocked senseless by the blast, and scorched by the flames.
08:06I was quite badly burned, and it was almost as if I heard a voice in my head.
08:13It was this one thought that I had, that I need to get up now, if I'm ever going to get up.
08:18Just remember, like, a lot of explosions, cars exploding.
08:25And there was this man running towards me and asking me, like, what was that? What happened?
08:31Was it a bomb? No, it was a plane.
08:34Mexico City is in chaos as crews battle to control the fire.
08:44The sudden loss of the Interior Minister leaves the country in shock, and the government facing a potential crisis.
08:52There's immediate speculation that the crash is related to Mexico's war on drugs.
08:58This happened in a year when there had been intense confrontations between drug cartels and police,
09:08when drug cartel assassins had been murdering officials in their own homes.
09:17Adding to the speculation is the fact that Mexico's drug czar, José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, was also on board.
09:26He was on the front line of the legal action against drug cartels, which are very powerful in Mexico.
09:35So a very important job, a very high pressure job.
09:39This crash had huge implications for Mexican politics.
09:43There were important people on this plane, so it was a natural question, was this an assassination?
09:50The morning after a government Learjet slams into the heart of Mexico City,
09:56investigators begin their work at what may well be a crime scene.
10:02One of the high-ranking politicians on board, José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, has been a target in the past.
10:10He had said that he was going to kill me.
10:15Have the cartels finally succeeded?
10:18If so, it would mark a dangerous escalation in their war against the Mexican government.
10:24This is really concerning. This is no longer simply a criminal problem.
10:29It's starting to become a national security issue.
10:33The Mexican government is trying to control drug cartels.
10:38Desperate to quell public anxiety, Mexico asks for help from the United States.
10:44They call in the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board.
10:49The NTSB's Joe Seador knows this is an assignment like no other.
10:55We're going to have to do something about this.
11:00Joe Seador, NTSB.
11:03Amid the chaos, the NTSB heads to Mexico City.
11:07The Mexican government is trying to control drug cartels.
11:11They have been a target in the past.
11:14It's starting to become a national security issue.
11:18They're trying to control drug cartels.
11:22They're trying to control drug cartels.
11:26Joe Seador, NTSB.
11:28Amid the chaos of the crash site, Seador's first job is to try to identify all the aircraft debris.
11:35If you're absolutely sure it's from the plane, it goes over there.
11:39Everything else I want here.
11:41It's a monumental task.
11:44With so much damage to buildings, cars and the city itself,
11:48isolating wreckage from the Learjet is next to impossible.
11:53This plane crashed into rush hour traffic in the middle of one of the world's biggest, busiest cities.
11:59There's wreckage everywhere. There's debris. Is it a car? Is it a plane?
12:03Who knows? I mean, it's just a mess.
12:07Investigators make an early breakthrough.
12:11They recover the plane's flight data recorder.
12:15If it survived the fire, it could hold crucial clues about what went wrong.
12:21We can gleam out a lot of information from the recordings from air traffic control,
12:27from the impact, from radar.
12:31But to get some very specific information,
12:34we would really want that flight data recorder to tell us what the flight of the aircraft was.
12:39That's great. One down, one to go.
12:42It's got to be nearby. Let's keep looking.
12:47But the second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, is still missing.
12:53Investigators need to find it. And fast.
12:58Faced with the suspicious death of two key members of the government,
13:02President Felipe Calderon himself is watching their every move.
13:07In fact, I briefed the president of Mexico, President Calderon, at least three or four times.
13:13He was dealing with his aid, his personal aid, on a daily basis, if not hourly basis.
13:18One of the things that he wanted to prove was that this was not either a drug hit or a political assassination.
13:26President Felipe Calderon was very vested in this case.
13:31So the pressure on the investigators doing this was absolutely immense.
13:37They had to get answers. They had to get them soon.
13:43Investigators intensify their search for the missing voice recorder.
13:49This is what we're looking for. But bear in mind, it might not be orange anymore.
13:54With a fire like that, this thing could be burnt black.
13:57All right, let's go. Spread out.
13:59We got photos down so that everybody would know what it looked like.
14:03And we had to tell them, no, these are orange photos,
14:06but they could be anywhere from brown to black to being crumpled up.
14:11While aircraft investigators comb through the wreckage, the FBI begins testing for explosive residue,
14:19evidence that a bomb downed the plane.
14:23But with so much debris to test, getting a definitive answer won't be easy.
14:30An intensive search for the cockpit voice recorder turns up nothing,
14:35until an overlooked piece of blackened debris suddenly catches an investigator's eye.
14:41It was interesting because we had been walking over the CVR the entire time we were on scene.
14:48But because it was a brownish black and it was on its side, I believe,
14:53that we just didn't identify it initially.
14:58Let's see what we've got here.
15:03I must have walked over this ten times.
15:06Mexican investigators will accompany the boxes to Washington, D.C.,
15:10where experts at the NTSB will do their best to recover the crucial data.
15:17They do not have the recorder labs available like we have here in the NTSB.
15:23And so they were very open to the fact that as soon as they found it,
15:26it was a given that they were going to be coming to Washington, D.C.
15:34Oh, what have we got here?
15:37Back at the crash site, a wing embedded in the roof of a car
15:41is one of dozens of pieces of wreckage Seador needs to chart.
15:46It's the right side. It's the right wing tip.
15:51He wants to know if the plane came down in one piece,
15:55or if it broke apart in mid-flight,
15:58something that would point strongly to a bomb.
16:02Well, this is the nose.
16:06Now, the whole plane's here.
16:09There's no way it blew apart in the air.
16:11So we had the left wing tip, both left and right,
16:14horizontal stabilizer and the vertical stabilizer.
16:17This told us that the whole aircraft had made it to the accident site, as we say.
16:22The fact that the debris was so tightly clustered together on the ground
16:26really was strong evidence against the notion of an in-flight explosion.
16:32Mexican and U.S. investigators breathe a collective sigh of relief.
16:36FBI test results confirm the finding.
16:41There's no evidence of a bomb.
16:45When the FBI took samples around various parts of the aircraft,
16:50and even, I believe, even on parked cars and in the building,
16:54they found no trace of any explosive device.
17:04But the way the wreckage has fallen
17:06does provide a puzzling detail about how the plane came down.
17:11Looks like the plane was heading west when they hit the ground.
17:18Flying away from the airport that way.
17:23So why are they flying the wrong way?
17:27We knew that he was coming into Mexico City,
17:29and the first thing that we noticed was that the aircraft,
17:32when it struck the ground, was actually moving away from the airport.
17:36The Learjet crashed into the heart of Mexico City at the height of rush hour.
17:42Investigators hope to find somebody
17:44who saw something that might explain the odd flight path.
17:48So you didn't see it in the air at all?
17:50But they're out of luck.
17:52Witnesses can only describe the moment of impact and the terrifying aftermath.
17:58Nobody knew what had happened and what it was that exploded,
18:03because there were several explosions, I think,
18:06maybe two from the plane and then, of course, all the cars.
18:09It was a very chaotic situation,
18:12a lot of panic in people's minds, like, what's going on?
18:18No one can tell investigators anything about how the plane was flying
18:22before it suddenly changed direction and crashed.
18:26How we say it with investigators is the accident didn't happen here.
18:29This was the result, the impact of the ground was the result of the accident,
18:33which occurred at altitude,
18:35and because of that we didn't really have any witnesses to that part of the flight.
18:42It's a disappointing setback for investigators,
18:45one that only increases the pressure
18:48to explain the mysterious crash in the Mexican capital.
18:53At a state funeral,
18:55the Mexican president honors the victims of an air disaster
18:58that set Mexico City ablaze and shook the nation to its core.
19:07President Felipe Calderón lost a good friend and a prodigy,
19:12as well as his number two in the government.
19:15The sombre moment is a reminder that there is still no explanation
19:18for the crash that killed 16 people.
19:23For those who survived, it's a reminder of how lucky they are.
19:27I felt guilty of being alive
19:29because so many other people got killed,
19:33and it could have been me.
19:35So why did I survive?
19:38I don't know.
19:41And it could have been me.
19:43So why did I survive,
19:45and not the rest of the people who were next to me on the street?
19:54At the NTSB lab in Washington, D.C.,
19:57all eyes are on the plane's flight data recorder, or FDR.
20:02It could hold vital clues,
20:04data that will explain exactly what happened
20:07in the last moments of the flight.
20:09Flight data recorders can hold
20:11up to several thousand streams of data at any time.
20:14This includes everything from control inputs,
20:17control surfaces, speed, temperature, pressure,
20:21pretty much everything an investigator would want to look at.
20:26Technicians manage to download all the data,
20:29but investigators quickly realize
20:32it won't be any help in solving the crash.
20:36The information is more than two years old.
20:39The recorder stopped working long before the accident flight.
20:43It was very disappointing news to hear
20:45that we did not have any of the accident flight recorded.
20:49Investigators need a new strategy
20:52if they hope ever to understand
20:54why the Learjet ended up flying the wrong way.
21:01They turn to security cameras
21:03mounted in and around Mexico City's financial district.
21:07One of the advantages of an urban environment for investigators
21:10is that there's a lot of cameras around.
21:12Yeah, one of these cameras must have been looking in the right direction.
21:16We just basically said,
21:18find every and all video that is available
21:21from every building around.
21:24It's a long shot, but there's a chance
21:27a camera may have captured images of the Learjet in flight.
21:31The witnesses and their memory are good, but they're not exact.
21:36Video, on the other hand, is very important to us,
21:39especially if we don't have any FDR data.
21:43Next.
21:45Sidor hopes the gamble will pay off.
21:48He scans through the video frame by frame,
21:51focusing on the critical seconds just before the crash.
21:55Next.
21:57Most of the cameras are aimed at the ground.
22:00Next.
22:02Too low to show the plane.
22:04And it would be, yep, OK, there's the flash,
22:07there's the aircraft hitting, and it was, again, we were saying,
22:10that's not the accident, we need to keep looking.
22:14Finally, a lucky break.
22:17Oh, hello there.
22:19A camera from a rooftop helicopter pad
22:22has captured a short glimpse of the flight just before impact.
22:26Can we enhance this one?
22:28We could see the streak of the aircraft going down,
22:31and we were like, hey, we got something here.
22:37The video reveals that the plane went into an extremely steep dive
22:41and reversed course in midair.
22:46But it doesn't reveal what caused the plane to suddenly change direction.
22:52So one minute, they're under control heading towards the airport,
22:56and all of a sudden, they're in a dive heading away from the airport.
23:02I don't even know how you turn around that fast.
23:05We knew it was coming in in this direction,
23:07and then all of a sudden, the next thing we know,
23:09it's going in this direction.
23:11How does it get there?
23:13An airplane can't just automatically turn in flight and go down,
23:16so we had to determine what would actually have to happen
23:19in order to get that airplane in that position.
23:23Investigators wonder if there was something wrong
23:26with the plane's control surfaces.
23:28I guess if the spoilers were to fail just on one side, that could flip it.
23:35The rudder, ailerons and spoilers
23:38control the aircraft's movement through the air.
23:41A malfunction in one of them
23:43might have thrown the Learjet out of control.
23:46You have a spoiler that comes up on one wing and not the other,
23:49it can create a rolling moment that would cause an upset.
23:54Investigators check the mechanism that moves the spoilers.
23:59They are hydraulically operated,
24:01so was there hydraulic problems with the aircraft?
24:05Spoilers were retracted, so that's not it.
24:11There's no sign of any malfunction,
24:13and none of the plane's spoilers were deployed at impact.
24:17They couldn't have caused the problem.
24:20One by one, investigators carefully examine
24:23every control surface on the plane.
24:26They all check out.
24:29We had no evidence to suggest
24:31that this was a mechanical failure in the aircraft.
24:34It's another dead end.
24:36Investigators are no closer to understanding
24:39why a government-chartered Learjet
24:41suddenly veered off course
24:43and slammed into Mexico City.
24:47Alvaro! What do we do, Alvaro?
24:53Facing constant pressure
24:55from the highest levels in the Mexican government,
24:58investigators are running out of leads.
25:01They turn to what may be their last hope
25:03of understanding what brought down the Learjet.
25:07The cockpit voice recorder.
25:09The cockpit voice recorder doesn't just give you voices,
25:12it gives you alarms, it gives you wind sound,
25:15any other relevant audio cue that can help you figure out
25:18what happened in that crucial moment of the flight.
25:21We have a few minutes. Show me that report.
25:26Despite some damage from fire and impact forces,
25:30technicians have been able to recover the recorded data.
25:35We knew we didn't have FDR.
25:37We knew we didn't have FDR.
25:39We were glad to hear, though, that the CVR did work
25:42and that the accident flight had been captured.
25:46All right, I think we waited long enough. Let's hear it.
25:50Victor Mike Charlie, reducing speed to 180 knots.
25:54Reducing speed to 180, Mike Charlie.
25:56Because it's a small aircraft, we could hear
25:58not just all the sounds that were in the cockpit,
26:01but we could also hear the sounds in the cabin.
26:04We must be getting close.
26:06As they listen to the moments just before the crash,
26:09they hear nothing out of the ordinary.
26:12Now leave it.
26:13Leave it for now.
26:14One of the things that it did reassure us
26:16is that there was not an intentional act
26:18that brought down the aircraft.
26:20There was no sound similar to a struggle,
26:22there was no sounds of an explosive device,
26:25and so that helped close the book
26:28on that aspect of the investigation.
26:31The mystery of what did cause the crash persists.
26:35Step down.
26:36Investigators listen as the pilots descend towards the runway.
26:40Look.
26:42They're all lined up in front of us.
26:44All seems well, until...
26:51Turbulence from that thing.
26:53Oh, man.
26:54One of the interesting things that we did hear
26:56was that the flight crew did mention turbulence.
27:00What the hell?
27:03All right, sounds like that's where the trouble starts.
27:05Where are we at?
27:0714 seconds before hitting the ground.
27:10It seems the Learjet hit a patch of violently unstable air.
27:15Oh, my God!
27:16All of a sudden, boom,
27:17they're upside down, plummeting towards the ground.
27:21Calvaro!
27:22What do we do?
27:24Calvaro!
27:25Without the flight data,
27:26the voice recording leaves investigators
27:28with only a partial picture.
27:30We don't know exactly what each of these pilots
27:33was thinking at the time.
27:34We don't know what control inputs were being made,
27:37but it shows that there was that confusion factor
27:40in the cockpit of what to do,
27:42how to recover the aircraft from the upset.
27:45They don't seem to know what hit them.
27:47Calvaro!
27:48What do we do, Calvaro?
27:49Give it to me!
27:51Give it to me!
27:52You know, hearing that sound
27:53and, you know, putting myself in their place
27:56and knowing what that outcome is going to be,
27:59it's got to be horrible.
28:00It's yours, Alvaro!
28:02They tried to pull out.
28:04It wasn't enough.
28:05They had so little time,
28:06they had so little altitude.
28:08Calvaro!
28:12Calvaro!
28:14Calvaro!
28:17We had a normal flight coming in,
28:19and then we had a loss of control relatively quick.
28:22There was no evidence of any mechanical failure.
28:27So what do you think?
28:28Wake turbulence?
28:31So we had to really look at the possibility
28:34of a wake turbulence event.
28:37Wake turbulence forms when the low-pressure air above the wing
28:41draws high-pressure air upwards,
28:43creating a swirling vortex that trails behind the aircraft
28:47as it flies.
28:50As a plane flies along,
28:51each of its wingtips is generating
28:53a tiny horizontal tornado called a wingtip vortex.
28:59The powerful vortices can linger in the air for minutes at a time,
29:03creating an invisible hazard for other aircraft.
29:06When a smaller plane flies into these rotating columns of air
29:11at low altitude,
29:12they can spin out of control and crash into the ground
29:15within seconds.
29:16It's recommended that aircraft flying on the same flight path
29:20should stay about five miles apart at all times.
29:24If they get too close, it can be deadly.
29:28Perhaps wake turbulence can explain
29:30what knocked the Mexican government Learjet out of the sky.
29:36Investigators need to know more
29:38about the aircraft's approach to the runway.
29:42They speak to the air traffic controller on duty that night.
29:46One of the air traffic controller's most crucial jobs
29:49is to separate those inbound planes,
29:52to keep them a safe distance apart
29:54so they don't get into each other's wake turbulence.
29:58The controller tells them he was busy that evening
30:01handling a lot of traffic.
30:03Victor, Mike, Charlie, reduce your speed to 180 knots.
30:07Imagine it's rush hour.
30:09Planes are stacked up, coming in from all over the country.
30:13This is the crunch time.
30:14This is when the air traffic controllers really earn their pay.
30:18Victor, Mike, Charlie, please turn right.
30:21And maintain 220 knots.
30:23Around 6.30pm, the controller slotted the chartered Learjet
30:27in behind a much larger aircraft.
30:30A Boeing 767 was flying its approach
30:33directly in front of the Lear 45.
30:37Just have a rush hour.
30:39But there was a problem.
30:41The Lear 45 wasn't hitting the speeds needed
30:44to hold its position in the line-up.
30:47What a controller does is tell each aircraft
30:50how fast they should be going,
30:52if they should speed up, if they should slow down,
30:55and that it's very important for pilots
30:57to actually comply with each of those requests
31:00in order to maintain that separation.
31:02Victor, Mike, Charlie, are you at 220 knots?
31:05The controller had to remind the crew to speed up to 220 knots
31:09when they joined the line of landing planes.
31:12Increasing speed. Increasing speed right now.
31:16Just a few minutes later,
31:18the Learjet 45 was descending too quickly.
31:21First they were going too slow.
31:23Then they were going too fast.
31:25It seems the crew wasn't paying close attention
31:28to the controller's instructions.
31:30Could that explain the crash?
31:32Did carelessness on the part of the pilots
31:35lead to a fatal error in the cockpit?
31:39Investigators need to know exactly
31:41how close the Learjet came to the 767.
31:45They analyse data from air traffic control radar
31:48in the final minutes before the accident
31:51and make a surprising discovery.
31:54Separation is not ideal,
31:56but it shouldn't have been a problem.
31:59It seems the Learjet never got close enough
32:02to hit the 767's wake.
32:05They got close to the preceding 767,
32:08but it wasn't something that was, oh, OK,
32:11they got within a mile.
32:13They were still about 4 miles away from the 767.
32:17It wasn't anything that was very apparent
32:20that a wake turbulence encounter would have caused this accident.
32:24So we had to go back and do a lot more work
32:27in order to understand why this particular day
32:30at this particular time that 767
32:33wake turbulence affected the Lear 45.
32:36What the hell!
32:38Turbulence from that thing!
32:40Oh, man!
32:44Conflicting evidence has brought
32:46the Lear 45 crash investigation to a surprising impasse.
32:50While the cockpit recording points to wake turbulence as the culprit,
32:54radar data suggests the government jet
32:57was never close enough to the plane in front.
33:01To try to resolve the conflict,
33:03investigators take an unusual step.
33:06They download the flight data recorder from the Boeing 767
33:10that was flying ahead of the Learjet.
33:13If something was causing the 767
33:16to produce more wake turbulence than usual,
33:19the plane's flight data should tell them.
33:22The data from that precise flight data
33:26would give a good clue
33:28as to what kind of wake turbulence
33:31that plane would be putting out.
33:34But the data reveals nothing unexpected.
33:37It seems the 767 was generating
33:40a normal amount of wake turbulence.
33:43Investigators are missing a piece of the puzzle.
33:46The plane's flight data should tell them.
33:49The data from that preceding plane's flight data recorder,
33:54Then they factor in some additional information
33:57about the weather that changes everything.
34:00One aspect of wake vortices
34:03is to understand the weather,
34:06the current weather that's going on.
34:09They learn that the 767's wake vortices
34:12would have lingered for longer than usual,
34:15putting the Learjet in lethal danger.
34:18The reason? Extremely calm weather.
34:22The wind wasn't strong enough to disperse them.
34:25Normally you think of calm air, clear skies, no wind,
34:29great conditions for flying.
34:32Actually, calm air is worse for wingtip vortices
34:35because the wind doesn't break them up
34:38and chop them up into innocent pieces.
34:41Their danger remains potent.
34:43We had a calm atmosphere.
34:45We had a heavy aircraft in front,
34:47we had a light aircraft behind.
34:49All the circumstances came together
34:52to have that trailing Lear 45
34:55have an encounter with the wake turbulence of the 767.
34:59The crew could see the 767 ahead of them.
35:02He's starting to turn, so he's 5 miles from us.
35:07But they mistakenly thought they were still a safe distance away.
35:12When you look out your cockpit window,
35:15you see this tiny dot ahead of you.
35:17It's impossible to tell just by eyeballing it
35:20how close that plane in front of you really is.
35:23Like a sledgehammer from above,
35:25the wake turbulence slammed into the smaller plane,
35:28flipping it over.
35:30It's this powerful force, but you don't know
35:33that you're about to hit it until you're already in it.
35:36This explains the midair change of direction.
35:39The aircraft rolled around into a sort of a barrel roll,
35:43and then as it was coming around, they were pulling out.
35:46If they would have had another maybe 1,000 feet
35:49or a couple thousand feet,
35:51they could have actually recovered the aircraft.
35:54At that point, they're along for the ride,
35:57and you don't have time, you don't have time.
36:00You barely have time to realize that you're going to die.
36:09Severe wake turbulence on a calm day
36:12now appears to be the likely cause of the crash.
36:18But something doesn't sit right with investigators.
36:21They wonder why a crew entrusted with flying top government officials
36:25didn't use more caution,
36:27especially given the calm winds that evening.
36:30Once the investigators realized
36:32that it most likely was a case of wake turbulence,
36:34the big question was,
36:36how did it creep up on the plane in front of it
36:39close enough that it hit that wake turbulence?
36:42The key to a successful descent
36:45is reducing the plane's speed and altitude in a controlled way.
36:50When you're coming into a busy airport at peak rush hour time,
36:54you don't have a lot of room for error.
36:58You can't screw up.
37:00You have to know what you're doing.
37:04The 767 is coming down nice and steady.
37:08Now, look at the Lear.
37:11The comparison of the 767's final descent with that of the Lear 45
37:16reveals two different piloting techniques.
37:20Shall I pull the nozzle?
37:22No, leave it. Leave it for now.
37:25They are using a stepped approach.
37:28The Lear jet descends unevenly in a series of steps,
37:32speeding downward to lose altitude,
37:35then levelling off to slow down.
37:38The 767 ahead of them is descending on a steady slope towards the runway.
37:44If a pilot's really in control of his airplane,
37:47he can lose altitude and lose speed at the same time.
37:51If he's not really in control, he'll focus on one or the other.
37:56The Lear jet pilots didn't successfully control
37:59either their speed or their altitude.
38:02There, speed stabilised. OK.
38:05They flew too fast towards the plane ahead and dropped down too far...
38:09Flap down.
38:11..right into the deadly vortex.
38:15If they had stepped down and maintained the airspeeds
38:18that were requested of them by air traffic control,
38:21then this approach would have gone without a hitch.
38:27Oh, my God!
38:28If you're not paying attention to air traffic control,
38:31if you're not paying attention to your speed,
38:33things can get beyond your control very quickly.
38:37What do we do?
38:43Let's hear it again, please.
38:46Investigators need to know
38:48how could the crew have made such a critical piloting error?
38:52The cockpit voice recorder points them to the answer.
38:55We're going to put in a vertical nav all the way.
38:58Uh-huh. Enter 1-2000.
39:00They hear something unsettling from early in the flight.
39:041-2000.
39:06It won't let me.
39:08It doesn't indicate it either.
39:11It has to be.
39:13The pilots don't seem to know how to operate
39:16the Lear jet's flight management system.
39:18That's weird.
39:20It's the system that controls most of the aircraft's critical functions.
39:25It's really striking how they seem confused
39:28by the controls of their airplane.
39:30These guys are trying to figure out what nav does what,
39:33what dial means what.
39:35It's like guys who are just unboxing a VCR
39:37and trying to figure out how to program it.
39:39OK, I've heard enough.
39:41For investigators, the discovery raises a troubling new issue.
39:46What kind of pilots don't know how to program their plane?
39:56All right, let's see what we have on these two.
40:00Investigators dig into the work records of the two Lear jet pilots.
40:05They're looking for anything that could account
40:08for the pilots' lack of proficiency in the cockpit.
40:11What the hell?
40:13They come across discrepancies
40:15in the pilots' certification for the aircraft.
40:18Missing signatures.
40:22Missing signatures.
40:25When you look at the paperwork for the type certification
40:28for the Lear jet 45, for both the pilot and the co-pilot,
40:31there were signatures missing, there were forms missing.
40:34It seemed that something was very fishy
40:36about how these guys got their type certification.
40:40When they try to track down Captain Oliva's flight instructor...
40:44Let me guess. No sign of the instructor.
40:48...they find no proof that any training took place.
40:52We were very surprised to hear that this was happening
40:55at such a high level in the government.
40:57It's not the president, but it's the equivalent of the vice president
41:01that's flying around with pilots
41:03that have very questionable training and backgrounds.
41:08Investigators dig for further irregularities.
41:12They study Captain Oliva's logbook,
41:14where he kept a record of all his flights.
41:17Can you call the flight school?
41:21They contact the flight school where Captain Oliva trained.
41:25They learn that many of the training flights
41:28he claimed to have made never took place.
41:31The flight school that provided that information
41:34definitely found that there were some issues
41:37with his command of the aircraft.
41:40Investigators reach a shocking conclusion.
41:43The pilot in command of a Mexican government Learjet was a fraud.
41:49It's pretty mind-boggling
41:51that a pilot would fake his own credentials.
41:54This is a plane that you're flying.
41:56You're in it. Your life is at stake too.
41:58You'd think you would want to have the proper credentials
42:01to fly an airplane.
42:03These guys were totally faking it.
42:05The truth about Alvaro Sanchez and his qualifications
42:08is equally shocking.
42:11His claims to be a member of a Learjet 45 training team
42:15and an instructor are also proved false.
42:18These are people who clearly were enamoured
42:21of the convenience of cutting corners.
42:23Taking advantage of some corruption somehow to fly a plane
42:26that they had no business being in, let alone flying.
42:29We must be getting close.
42:31It was their own fraud and deception
42:33that ultimately led the pilots into a situation
42:36they simply couldn't handle.
42:39No, leave it. Leave it for now.
42:41They found themselves piloting a powerful jet
42:44they didn't know how to control
42:46during a demanding descent in high-risk conditions.
42:50It all added up to a fatal outcome.
42:54It's highly irresponsible.
42:56It's irresponsible because at that point
42:58you're putting yourself in danger,
43:00you're putting the people that you're flying,
43:02you're putting them in danger, you're violating their trust.
43:05In the aftermath, Mexican authorities suspend
43:08the licenses of two flight schools
43:10suspected of issuing false training documents
43:12to the Learjet pilots.
43:15Some of the recommendations from this accident
43:18was to have more oversight authority
43:20for these type of flights
43:22because there is a need for these important political persons
43:27to have the best possible flight crews,
43:30the best possible aircraft,
43:32the best possible operation there is
43:34in order to have safe flights.
43:36This job might have seemed like a really appealing one
43:39to fly around with the most important people in the country,
43:42and that might have made them feel like it was worth it
43:46to cut corners on their training and their credentials,
43:50but it was a heavy price to pay.
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