- 7 months ago
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00:00A passenger plane is completely obliterated in the California hills.
00:06It would have been a horrifying experience.
00:09A 747 vanishes over the Atlantic.
00:12747s do not fall out of the sky.
00:17Fire erupts during a landing in Taiwan.
00:22Mayday, mayday, mayday!
00:26Three accidents...
00:28...all linked to Laps's insecurity.
00:32When the system fails...
00:34What's the problem?
00:35I'm the problem.
00:41A routine flight can turn into a tragedy.
00:44The most basic rule of security, which is every person, every time, every flight, matters every single time.
00:54Mayday, mayday!
00:58ULTIMUT!
01:02307, 307, 307...
01:03...and 207, 307...
01:04...and 307, 307.
01:05307, 307!
01:06308-325!
01:08Alright!
01:091.
01:11A TARGET
01:12Los Angeles International Airport, one of the busiest in the world.
01:28At Terminal 1, passengers and crew taking a flight to San Francisco are making their way through security.
01:34They board Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771.
01:52Among the 38 passengers are several PSA employees.
01:56It's very common for airline employees to commute between cities for work,
02:01and so as people would take a bus to work, many airline employees take a plane to work.
02:07Captain Greg Lindemood has been flying with PSA for 14 years.
02:13Brakes. Brakes set. Flaps up. Spoilers retract.
02:20First Officer James Nunn joined the airline only the previous spring.
02:25He's logged thousands of hours in the cockpit.
02:29Thrust levers.
02:31Today, they're piloting a British-built BAE-146 commuter jet.
02:41The flight to San Francisco will take just over an hour.
02:46Can you ask him how it's been?
02:48About halfway through the flight, Captain Lindemood worries about some mild turbulence.
02:54Center, PSA 1771. Any reports on the ride ahead? We've had a little continuous light chop.
03:00TSA, this is Rocky Moon Center. It's not too bad.
03:05Oh, my God. That was a gun.
03:10Yeah. Squawk 77, Squawk 77. We've had a gun fired on board the aircraft.
03:18Moments later, Flight 1771 plunges into a steep dive.
03:23Police find the crash site 175 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
03:38Almost nothing remains of the 30-ton passenger jet.
03:42This is one of the worst air disasters in California's history.
03:47There were no wings. There were no fuselage. There was no tail section. There were no aircraft seats.
03:56There was just papers. Papers everywhere.
04:00And the strong smell of aviation fuel.
04:07We're making a frantic search throughout this remote cow pasture looking for survivors.
04:16And we can't even find deceased human beings, much less human beings that had survived.
04:25Forty-three people died on board Flight 1771.
04:30Come on up here, guys.
04:33Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI are soon on the scene.
04:39You ever see anything like this?
04:40No.
04:40No.
04:40No.
04:40No.
04:41No.
04:41No.
04:42No.
04:42No.
04:43No.
04:43No.
04:44No.
04:45When the aircraft hit at such a high speed, it impacted and basically compressed the earth.
04:55And then they released and it blew everything back out of the hull.
05:01With the total destruction of the aircraft, I mean, you had limited amounts of information that you could gather from the wreckage.
05:08But this is not only an accident site. It's also a potential crime scene.
05:13We knew that gunshots had been heard by the air traffic controllers.
05:20177, squad 77. We've had a gun fired on board the aircraft.
05:24If the reports of gunshots were accurate, then I realized immediately that we had crime aboard an aircraft.
05:30But perhaps the pilots and controllers were mistaken.
05:37It's up to the NTSB to determine exactly what happened on flight 1771.
05:43You try to arrive on scene with a totally objective view of what's going on.
05:50The FBI is searching for evidence of a crime, the NTSB for clues about the crash.
05:56If they can recover the black boxes, they may find both.
05:59That's about the first thing you do when you get on scene, find the cockpit voice recorder.
06:03You can't overemphasize how important that was in this case, because we had no airframe left to work with.
06:09We really had no wreckage in the normal sense of the word.
06:13After hours of searching through the shattered remains, the effort finally pays off.
06:19They find the plane's two black boxes.
06:21At the NTSB laboratory in Washington, Dennis Grossi examines flight 1771's badly damaged CVR.
06:32The case itself was basically crushed.
06:35It was bent in like somebody grabbed it and pushed it together like that.
06:40This is hardened steel, and we assess the impact forces around 5,000 Gs.
06:51Dennis Grossi knows the immense impact may have ruined any chance of hearing the last words from the cockpit of flight 1771.
07:02All right, let's give it a listen.
07:05Despite suffering huge impact forces, the audio tape is still intact.
07:11Flaps up.
07:14Spoilers retract.
07:16The first 28 minutes of the flight sound routine.
07:21We hear the flight crew talk, you know, do their normal procedures.
07:26But in the final two minutes, events take a chilling turn.
07:32Sure sounds like a gunshot.
07:34And then all of a sudden, they hear and we hear on a recording of this gunshot.
07:40The tape confirms what the pilots had reported.
07:43Two gunshots.
07:44It was actually a very sobering moment because we realized that we were listening to a very routine flight that suddenly became anything but routine.
07:58The door to the cockpit was heard open, and a female voice, presumably the flight attendant, was heard to say in a voice that was filled with alarm.
08:13There's a problem, Captain!
08:14And we heard a voice, a male voice, which we presumed to be the captain, saying...
08:18What's the problem?
08:19I'm the problem.
08:25Investigators now know that an unidentified male shot the flight crew.
08:29It's always startling when you hear something like that, when you hear the commission of a murder.
08:37That's five shots so far.
08:39And then we could hear the cockpit door shut again.
08:44And another final shot, the sixth shot.
08:47Before the tape ends, they hear one last ominous sound.
08:54Within about five seconds, we picked up what's called windscreen noise.
08:59In other words, you could tell that the aircraft was accelerating.
09:06The plane's in a dive.
09:08The engines are over-revving.
09:1065 seconds after the murder of its crew, flight 1771 smashes into the California hills.
09:18It helped us to understand what we were investigating, the heinousness of the crime that we were investigating.
09:29It just confirms that this wasn't an accident, that it was in fact a crime.
09:35And the FBI would be taking over in the investigation from here on out.
09:40The FBI must find the person responsible for this mass murder.
09:44It's establishing who had motive, establishing who had access, establishing who was the intended victim.
09:53Somehow, someone managed to get a gun on that plane.
09:56A weapon was smuggled through LAX, one of the world's busiest airports.
10:03Let's find out how that guy got on the plane, all right?
10:05If the FBI can't find the hole in security, more lives could be at risk.
10:17Investigators are still combing through the wreckage of Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771.
10:22They're looking for an uncommon piece of evidence at a crash site, a murder weapon.
10:29That's a hydraulic line, probably from the main gear.
10:31The FBI, bear in mind, knows how to investigate crime.
10:34They don't necessarily know how to investigate an aircraft accident.
10:37So we would go ahead and do our normal investigative procedures and make that information available to the FBI.
10:46Finding the weapon could help the FBI identify who fired shots on board Flight 1771.
10:53We weren't sure that we would succeed because the field of debris was so wide
10:59and the impact had reduced the airplane to so many small pieces.
11:03We were very, very fortunate when we found the gun.
11:20It was an unbelievable stroke of luck.
11:22It's a .44 Magnum.
11:36The shattered pistol leads to a morbid discovery.
11:40When we found what was left of the gun, there was a portion of the finger between the trigger and the trigger guard.
11:47That went back to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.
11:50The FBI has a weapon, a crime scene, and 42 murder victims.
12:00What they don't have is the identity of the 43rd person on board, the killer,
12:07and the way he smuggled a gun onto Flight 1771.
12:11The FBI soon uncovers a gaping hole in the security system at Los Angeles Airport.
12:21What they had set up is a bypass for crew members and airport employees.
12:32You would show your badge and they would allow you to bypass both the metal detector and the X-ray unit.
12:38It was a big loophole.
12:41Is it possible that the killer was an airline employee?
12:46Using the passenger manifest, investigators identify four male employees who worked for either Pacific Southwest or its parent airline, U.S. Air.
12:55Forensic specialists lift a fingerprint from the piece of skin found in the trigger guard.
13:10They compare it to prints of employees on the flight and find a match.
13:16The killer is identified as David Burke.
13:27David Burke, he was one of those employees who would go in after he had landed and help to clean up the inside.
13:34Investigators now know David Burke smuggled a gun on board.
13:38But they don't know why.
13:40A motive gives you understanding.
13:43It helps to develop the full mosaic of the crime.
13:49At the crash site, a clue is found in the midst of the papers that scattered after impact.
13:56All of the paper on the aircraft, any of the insulation material on the aircraft,
14:03all that light stuff got blown up into the air and then the wind carried it for, I believe, miles.
14:11Investigators come across a note scribbled on an air sickness bag.
14:16The handwriting is a match to David Burke's.
14:19Hi, Ray.
14:20I think it's sort of ironical that we end up like this.
14:24I asked for some leniency for my family, remember?
14:28Well, I got none and you'll get none.
14:31The Ray, in the note, is identified as airline station manager Ray Thompson.
14:42He was David Burke's boss.
14:43Three weeks before the crash, Burke was fired from the company after being caught on tape stealing from the in-flight bar proceeds.
14:58He then came back for an appeal hearing on the day of the flight.
15:05I've reviewed your file.
15:07He was terminated by Ray Thompson.
15:10Your appeal has been denied.
15:12That termination interview was not a placid one.
15:22Thank you very much.
15:24That same day, Burke buys a ticket for flight 1771, a flight he knew Ray Thompson would be on.
15:37Ray Thompson lived in San Francisco.
15:40And he flew regularly on that flight to return to San Francisco at the end of the day.
15:45It was common knowledge among the employees that Ray Thompson would be on that flight.
15:49Exploiting the employee bypass, Burke goes through security without being scanned, carrying his .44 Magnum.
16:06Ray!
16:09Ray Thompson probably has the most merciful of all the deaths on that plane.
16:15There's a problem, Captain!
16:17What's the problem?
16:19I'm the problem!
16:31Burke takes his own life, plus the lives of everyone on board.
16:35Burke takes his own life, plus the lives of everyone on board.
16:49The tragedy of flight 1771 compelled the Federal Aviation Administration to take urgent measures to tighten security.
17:02The FAA came out and canceled the bypass authority, so therefore air crews and employees would have to go through the normal screening as any passenger would.
17:16Now it's required that any employee that leaves an airline, whether they've been fired or quit or retire or whatever, must turn their credentials in immediately.
17:27Getting on an aircraft with a gun now won't say that it's impossible, but it's next to impossible.
17:33All of these measures have made flying safer, but nothing can completely eliminate the risk of another David Burke.
17:40One of the things that sometimes is difficult for those of us in the industry to deal with, when we have to go through security, for instance, and do absolutely the same thing that everybody else does.
17:50Wait a minute, don't you recognize who I am? I'm the pilot. No, we need 100%. If we put a barrier up, the barrier is only as good as it is consistent.
18:01And that's true whether we've trained our people at the front counter to never do certain things or accept certain things, or whether we're talking about what gets past the entrance to the gate and on an airplane.
18:11Air India flight 182 flies across the Atlantic, six miles above the ocean's surface.
18:20On its way from Canada, the 747 is heading to London and then continuing to New Delhi.
18:27Captain Hansay Narendra is a veteran Air India pilot. Satwinder Binder serves as first officer.
18:37There are 329 people on board, including passengers and crew.
18:51Six minutes after eight in the morning, first officer Binder makes radio contact with air traffic control in Ireland.
18:58Air India 182 is 510, 15 west at level 310. Estimate FIR at 0735.
19:15Air India 182, Shannon, roger. Cleared for London. Flight level 310.
19:23Air India is flying below two planes, causing their three signals to momentarily converge on radar.
19:31But when they diverge, only two planes are visible.
19:35Air India is no longer on the screens at air traffic control.
19:40Air India is not showing up.
19:44Hold on a minute.
19:49Air India 182, this is Shannon. Do you read? Over.
20:01Yes, it's Michael Quinn at Shannon. We have a plane off radar.
20:05Shannon air traffic control alert search and rescue teams.
20:12A 747 carrying 329 people vanishes into thin air.
20:17Air India flight 182 disappears off the coast of Ireland.
20:23We have a plane off radar.
20:26Several ships in the area keep watch for any signs of the missing 747.
20:33Its last known position is approximately 180 miles southwest of Cork.
20:39Two hours after the plane disappears, a passing cargo ship confirms the worst.
20:45Floating wreckage is spotted.
20:49Then, bodies.
20:56It becomes clear that all 329 people on board have died.
21:06Most of the wreckage, including the black boxes, has sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic over an area spanning 60 square miles.
21:14What caused the 747 to fall out of the sky over the Atlantic?
21:21Could it have been a bomb or some other kind of catastrophic mishap?
21:27The search for the black boxes was urgent and three countries participated in it.
21:34England, Ireland and India.
21:37It takes two weeks for searchers to detect the radio beacon emitted by the plane's black boxes.
21:44They lie more than 6500 feet below the surface.
21:49On the fourth attempt to retrieve them, a deep sea submersible salvages the recorders.
21:55Both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders paint a picture of a routine flight.
22:09The cockpit voice recorder indicated that there was no abnormality in the cockpit.
22:14No emergency.
22:16Every conversation was normal.
22:18The cockpit voice recorder cuts off at exactly 14 minutes and one second after 8 in the morning.
22:34Kohler checks the flight data recorder and finds the same story.
22:38A perfectly normal flight until the FDR loses power at again 14 minutes after 8 in the morning.
22:45Kohler turns to the recovered wreckage for more clues.
22:49When he examines the floor of the front cargo bay, he notices something unusual.
22:54We found that it had holes which are of a very special nature.
22:59Penetration from inside to outside at a very high speed.
23:02Similar holes are found in the side wall of the cargo bay.
23:07These also appear to have been blown out from the cargo hole.
23:14The clues point to what took down flight 182.
23:21A bomb.
23:23And so when the bomb went off, the explosion would have taken out the computers completely
23:29and there would have been absolutely dead silence.
23:31And that's precisely what happened.
23:36How did a bomb get on board flight 182?
23:40Police and crash investigators in Canada scour the passenger list for clues.
23:49Air India flight 182 originated in Toronto.
23:52But many passengers had connected via another flight from Vancouver.
23:56Canadian investigators make a breakthrough when they interview a check-in agent at Vancouver Airport.
24:03She tells them about a difficult passenger who wanted to get on the Air India flight in Toronto.
24:08Can you wait to Toronto?
24:13And I want my bag checked through to Delhi.
24:15Sir, I can't do that. Your reservation is only confirmed to Toronto.
24:19The passenger insisted his bag be checked all the way through to India.
24:24Then I have to pick up my bag.
24:27I can't check your bags through to India if you are not confirmed.
24:31The passenger got belligerent.
24:33The ticket agent was facing a long line of people waiting to check in.
24:38OK, OK. I'll check it through.
24:41But you have to check with Air India when you get to Toronto.
24:44The man's luggage was loaded, but he never boarded the plane bound for Toronto.
24:49The ticket identified him as M Singh.
24:55It simply had an initial but no full name.
24:58We believe that name to be, was fictitious and that the person never intended to travel.
25:03She broke the rules as they were, she should not have allowed that to go through for New Delhi interline.
25:14But she was so bullied and so browbeaten by Mr Singh in front of everybody else that I think to her eternal sadness and heartbreak, she gave in.
25:26Singh's suitcase didn't raise any red flags when it was loaded onto the domestic flight from Vancouver to Toronto.
25:37But after the bag arrived in Toronto, it faced stricter inspections for the international flight to India.
25:43Why wasn't the bag flagged there?
25:48When investigators talked to security agents, they learned that the X-ray machine, which normally scans every piece of luggage, broke down that day.
25:58The technology, especially the X-ray technology, were very weak, very in their infancy at that time, and it didn't work reliably.
26:13And in the case of the Air India episode, the technology went quite badly wrong.
26:19This is what it will sound like.
26:24Instead of the X-ray machines, security workers used a portable wand that triggers an alarm if it detects explosive chemicals.
26:36But the agents had little experience using it.
26:39Still, everything seemed normal.
26:48Until security got to Singh's bag.
26:59This would be the last in a series of security lapses that resulted in the deaths of 329 people.
27:06At Leicester B. Pearson Airport in Toronto, a suitcase arrives from Vancouver.
27:14It triggers a portable explosives wand.
27:17But the sound differs from the one agents were told would indicate the presence of explosives.
27:23The suitcase is eventually placed at the front of the jet.
27:27And the passenger who checked in the bag doesn't board the plane.
27:32Then, as Air India Flight 182 soars over the Atlantic.
27:38They want about 30 customs seals.
27:42Customs?
27:43Yeah, customs seals.
27:50Most of the dead are Canadian citizens.
27:53This is the largest terrorist attack and mass murder in Canadian history.
28:00Police eventually trace the bombing to Sikh extremists living in British Columbia.
28:06One confesses to assembling the bomb and is sent to prison.
28:11While the suspected mastermind is killed several years later in India.
28:15After investigators discover the security lapses that allowed the bomb on board Flight 182,
28:24luggage screening at most international airports is overhauled.
28:27In the case of Air India, the most important thing of all was passenger baggage reconciliation.
28:36No plane leaves with baggage unattached to a specific passenger inside that plane.
28:46Someone made an exception or someone failed to follow the rule thinking it won't matter this one time.
28:57It always does.
28:59The rules are there for a purpose.
29:01And about the time someone decides they can skip them even once is when a tragedy happens.
29:06Hualien Tower, good afternoon.
29:15Uni Air 873, visual approach, 50 miles out.
29:21Uni Air Flight 873 is nearing Hualien Airport in Taiwan.
29:27Uni Air 873, continue approach, report at 5 miles out.
29:31The first officer is flying under the watchful eye of the more experienced captain.
29:42They've been in the air for only 20 minutes.
29:46Traveling south, hugging the coastline from Taipei to Hualien.
29:54It was what you'd call a puddle jumper.
29:56It was a short flight.
29:57You don't expect anything to happen.
29:59Right on schedule, the crew prepares to land the MD-90.
30:07But as they close in, the first officer struggles with the landing.
30:13Too high.
30:16Too high.
30:20You are sinking too fast.
30:22I have control.
30:24The captain takes over the controls.
30:27You have control.
30:28The plane touches down with ample runway to stop.
30:33You start rolling and it all irons out.
30:35So you're on the ground.
30:36And you start to relax.
30:38But as the plane slows.
30:39The hell?
30:40Fire breaks out.
30:48Passengers panic.
30:52Mayday, mayday, mayday.
30:54Mayday, mayday.
30:55It's suddenly a fight for survival on board flight 873.
31:07You have a safe flight.
31:08Panic is as dangerous as the fire.
31:20You can't expect any passenger to just sit in a seat and wait for an evacuation.
31:22Evacuate!
31:23Evacuate!
31:24Evacuate!
31:25Evacuate!
31:26Evacuate!
31:27Evacuate! Evacuate!
31:35Fire is consuming the passenger cabin with terrifying speed.
31:43The 90 passengers and six crew members have only seconds to escape.
31:52Left! Turn out!
31:57It takes more than an hour to contain the massive fire.
32:0328 people are hospitalized, many suffering from serious burns.
32:09One passenger will die in hospital later.
32:13How did fire break out during what seemed like a routine landing?
32:21Tuolien, Taiwan. An MD-90 has burst into flames during landing.
32:27Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council must figure out what caused so much destruction and threatened so many lives.
32:40I got a call and they said there was a major accident that happened in Hualien.
32:46I immediately rushed back to Taiwan.
32:48Investigators from the United States National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration arrived to assist in the investigation.
33:05We've seen lots of in-flight fires.
33:08We've seen crashing into things on landing.
33:11I had never seen one where they had some kind of fire erupt after the aircraft got on the ground.
33:17Very unusual.
33:23Okay.
33:24Let's see if the tape can tell us anything.
33:27Investigators turn to the black boxes for clues.
33:30Too high.
33:36You're sinking too fast.
33:39I have control.
33:49The plane gets on the ground without incident.
33:51So far, so good.
33:52You could hear the thrust reversers.
33:55You could hear the speed brakes come up.
33:57You could hear everything from the cockpit as being normal.
34:01We could pretty much rule out the flight crew having anything to do with this.
34:05The first they knew something was different was when they heard that sound.
34:09Explosives expert Ed Cattell is part of the investigation team.
34:35There's a lot of pressure on a post-blast investigator to solve the case quickly.
34:42It could have been a bombing and we just weren't sure what we were looking at.
34:49Cattell identifies a likely detonation point.
34:52The burnt out overhead bin above row 8.
34:55But instead of finding the holes typical of a bomb explosion,
35:01he finds the aircraft's skin ripped open along the rivet lines
35:04that join sections of the fuselage together.
35:10The effects were more of a pushing and heaving than a shattering
35:14and a really high-pressure, high-explosive event.
35:19Cattell concludes it wasn't a bomb that caused the damage.
35:25But if not a bomb, then what was the source of the explosion?
35:34Let's check the rows.
35:37We have a blast area first.
35:39We had no idea what we were looking for.
35:42You just look for anything that's just a little bit different from something else.
35:47On the far side, underneath seat 7C, he spots something unusual.
35:53It looked like a bottle or a jug of some sort.
35:58It looked like it had been ripped apart.
36:00It turned out it was the top third of a bottle.
36:06I found something.
36:07You could smell gasoline instantly, not kerosene or the fuel that is used in a jet engine.
36:20It smells like gasoline.
36:24What is this doing on this airplane?
36:27Gasoline is prohibited from any kind of airplane.
36:30Could this be the source of the explosion?
36:33Investigators order up a chemical analysis of the fragment.
36:44The piece is soon identified as coming from a bottle of a common brand of laundry bleach.
36:50But lab results confirm that it wasn't bleach in the bottle.
36:54No question about it.
36:56It's gasoline.
37:02Everybody sort of will say, well, bingo, we found the golden nugget.
37:07The discovery only raises more questions.
37:11How did someone get gasoline on board an airplane?
37:14And how did it ignite?
37:16Investigators need to find out how a small bottle of gasoline ended up on Uni-Air flight 873.
37:28This could take a while.
37:34We're looking for things that are beyond the normal.
37:38We're looking for suspicious behavior.
37:39We're looking for items that are singled out by the screeners.
37:44We're looking for something that's not right.
37:49Look at this.
37:53A security guard has pulled over a passenger to inspect his bag.
37:58There were two bottles that we can't quite tell what they are.
38:09Let's see if we can get any closer.
38:12Could one of these be the bottle containing gasoline?
38:22Sure looks like a match.
38:23It turns out the two bottles are identical and are the same brand of bleach as the fragment found on the plane.
38:35The guard just put them back.
38:37The security person then looked at the contents and read the contents,
38:42did not remove the camp, did not smell it, but gave it back and put it back down.
38:53Investigators now question the security inspector to find out more.
38:58Why'd you let the bleach bottles through?
38:59Why didn't you open them to check?
39:01The bottle said bleach.
39:03He said it was bleach.
39:06That time there was a procedure that whenever there is a bottle,
39:11the inspector shall open the bottle and smell it to make sure it's not a hazardous material.
39:18We're opening the family cabin and needed to clean.
39:24Oh.
39:25Okay.
39:26He did not actually open the cab and smell it and just let it go.
39:31Can you tell me anything about the passenger carrying the bleach bottles?
39:34Sure.
39:35I recognized him right away.
39:38Investigators discover that the man who carried the bottle through security
39:41was a Taiwanese athlete named Kuchin Shoy.
39:45The suspect was a very famous decathlon champion.
39:51Almost everybody knew him.
39:55When Kuchin Shoy is brought in for questioning,
39:59he explains that after passing security,
40:01he gave his bag to a relative who carried it on board.
40:05He pleads his innocence to the media.
40:07Because my family was on the plane,
40:12why would I do such a stupid thing as to put gasoline on board?
40:18It's up to the police to determine if Kuchin is criminally responsible
40:22for the bottles ending up on board.
40:24Air crash investigators have a different priority.
40:27We did not look into the motive of the suspect.
40:32What we did care is how to improve safety.
40:35So our focus is what happened, how did it happen?
40:41Here we were with a compartment that we knew had two bleach bottles
40:47that had gasoline on them.
40:50Where pretty certain fumes leaked out of them,
40:53and you get to a point when that becomes very flammable,
40:56and it doesn't take much to set that off.
40:59Two bottles of gasoline ended up in an overhead bin.
41:01But what caused them to explode?
41:07Lab technicians comb through all the debris taken from the aircraft and runway,
41:13looking for anything that may have sparked an explosion.
41:17They make an astonishing discovery.
41:20There was a motorcycle battery.
41:22And that motorcycle battery was also actually something you should not be on the aircraft.
41:30This motorcycle battery was found a couple of rows away from the bottle,
41:36and the top of the battery has been damaged.
41:38And it's exposing the poles, the positive and the negative terminals.
41:43Investigators can now construct a theory as to what caused the explosion.
41:52The gasoline may have leaked, created a vapor inside of that overhead bin,
42:00and as the aircraft came to a sudden stop,
42:04then the battery slid and created an arc.
42:09It would have created the explosion to blow the door off of the overhead bin.
42:14Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council concludes this is the probable cause of the explosion.
42:40But no clear answer was ever found as to why someone took banned substances onto the plane.
42:51After six separate trials, Ku Chin Shui was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing.
42:57The court concluded the evidence wasn't strong enough to justify a criminal conviction.
43:02Still, the aviation report calls for an overhaul of the Taiwanese system that screens for hazardous materials.
43:13Training for security personnel was improved in the hopes of preventing another disaster.
43:18I'm willing to bet that nobody in screening in Taiwan ever misses another motorcycle battery.
43:24Three horrific air disasters lead to fundamental changes in airport security procedures.
43:34But the threats are always evolving.
43:38For aviation authorities, there's a never-ending obligation to stay vigilant.
43:43Whatever lessons were learned in the past will be somewhat relevant in the future, but not 100% relevant.
43:49And the aviation industry, government organizations responsible for security, and frankly, even passengers, have to be aware at all times and evolve with those threats.
44:01generally enough.
44:02relationship with relatively consistent with conflict
44:03relationship with the
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