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Air Crash Investigation S26E03 A Perfect Storm
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00:02The plane came flying out of the bottom of the cloud at 4,000 feet per minute.
00:06Pull up! Pull up!
00:07Nuremberg Air Service Flight 108 breaks apart while the pilots attempt to land at Dusseldorf Airport in Germany.
00:17All passengers and crew are killed.
00:21Because of the size of the accident site, we use the grid to identify the positions of every part of
00:29the wreckage.
00:31Investigators reconstruct the plane to determine what happened.
00:36There must be a thousand pieces in here.
00:41Over here.
00:42They uncover evidence of a one-in-a-million failure that should not have brought the plane down.
00:47The pilots had no chance to control the aircraft in a proper way.
00:54I think under these circumstances, there was nothing they could have done.
01:00D-day, D-day!
01:04Pull up!
01:23It's an hour before sunrise at Hannover Airport in West Germany.
01:31nuremberg air service flight 108 prepares for the first flight of the day
01:42in the cockpit is 36 year old captain ralph borstorff how's the weather looking and 28
01:50year old first officer sybil hailman they each have 2500 flying hours should we clear sailing
01:59both of them would be fairly typical what you would see in commuter operations people starting
02:05their careers and getting ready to move up the weather forecast predicts calm skies with only
02:12a slim chance of thunderstorms near their destination might get a bit rough on landing
02:17because of some turbulence and a chance thunderstorm but it's unlikely just ten percent sounds good
02:26a ten percent chance of thundershowers it's ten percent chance you want to know about it but
02:31it's not something you're going to put too much thought into before flight 108 can depart snow
02:38and ice that accumulated overnight are removed this flight was a full flight had 19 passengers on board
02:48all of those being business people it's a 40-minute flight from hanover to dusseldorf a major business
02:55hub on the rhine river we started the route in 1987 about six months before this flight and we had
03:04very weak train connections between the east and western parts of germany so from the very very
03:10beginning we had full airplanes flight 108 leaves hanover at 7 15 a.m 15 minutes behind schedule flaps
03:29retracted the pilots are flying a fairchild swear engine metroliner 3 it's a powerful turboprop plane
03:37designed for short commuter flights the metro 3 airliner is a perfect scaled down airliner it
03:44hauls 19 people fast fuel efficiently all the creature comforts of a bigger airline
03:49from the very beginning i was impressed by the airplane it was extremely well designed it was
03:57flexible it was fast they could pressurization so everything a pilot likes the airplane had
04:08it takes 10 minutes for flight 108 to reach its cruising altitude of 14 000 feet
04:16it will stay at that altitude for only 15 minutes
04:23well no rest for the wicked we'll have the descent checklist will you
04:29regional flying is generally an hour and a half or less
04:33leading to increased workload for the time that you are in the air
04:39check the radar the captain notices some weather on the radar thunderstorm could be rolling in after
04:48all maybe doesn't look particularly bad i'll check the atis
04:57atis continuously broadcasts updated weather conditions at the destination airport
05:03gusting 24 visibility 10 sky condition broken clouds at 1500 feet
05:12nothing but a thunderstorm we should be fine
05:16okay we'll continue with the approach their expectation was that the weather was getting
05:22better and any thunder showers hadn't really materialized good morning this is your captain
05:28speaking we have begun our descent into dusseldorf please ensure your seat belts are fastened
05:34should be landing in about 15 minutes
05:4430 miles from the airport
05:47dusseldorf good morning requesting to send to 3000 nfd 108
05:52first officer hailman contacts the dusseldorf approach controller for landing instructions
05:58nfd 108 good morning to you you are cleared to 3000 feet and currently number three to land
06:06copy to send to 3000 number three to land
06:10when atc gives us a indication of where we are on the order for landing it helps us set up
06:15it helps
06:15us get ready it helps us know when you're going to start putting flaps and gear down three minutes later
06:24localize they're alive flight 108 lines up with the runway's center line
06:36establish on the localizer
06:40the first officer checks on the weather
06:45looks like a thunderstorm has moved right in front of us
06:51it might be trouble
06:55thunderstorms have to be treated with respect i mean they can produce hail they can produce
06:58downdraft tailwinds overpowering what the airplane is capable of doing
07:05the captain decides to maneuver around the storm
07:14the problem was it's a big thunderstorm in the approach sector of dusseldorf
07:20they shouldn't fly through thunderstorms
07:25in the dusseldorf control center nfd 108 please switch to tower control frequency 118 decimal 30
07:33the approach controller hands over flight 108 to the tower
07:38nfd 108 confirm switch to tower control frequency 118 decimal 30 bye
07:50moments later flight 108 disappears from radar
07:59seven miles northeast of dusseldorf airport a maintenance worker at a sewage treatment plant
08:06hears the sound of an approaching airplane
08:10flight 108 breaks out of the clouds in a steep dive
08:15500 400 300 pull up
08:23the plane pulls up just in time
08:28the plane came flying out of the bottom of the cloud at 4 000 feet per minute the g-force
08:32it would
08:32have taken to overcome that to pull the airplane nose back up uh it was violent the sound of the
08:38engines recedes into the distance
08:42that flight would have been sheer terror
08:45sheer terror for the people in the back sheer terror up front you know you went from having a
08:48visual reference to thinking you're good to all of a sudden you're back in the cloud again
08:53a minute later the plane returns this time flight 108 spirals out of control
09:03and breaks up no no no it's a horrifying sight i can't even imagine what the person watching that would
09:10be thinking two minutes before dawn flight 108 slams into an open field on the banks of the ruhr river
09:26the wreckage is scattered over a wide area first responders make their way to the crash site
09:35all 19 passengers and both pilots are dead the metroliner itself is broken into thousands of pieces
09:46you're seeing that parts are distributed throughout the area you'll start collecting all the parts
09:53mapping where they are and trying to put this puzzle back together again
10:04investigators from germany's air accident investigation unit
10:08of flight or fus begin mapping the wreckage of flight 108 to determine what caused the accident
10:16the first step was to identify the positions of every part of the wreckage and because of the size of
10:25the accident site we use the grids and we were able to get the information where every piece was
10:34uh as the accident site much of the plane along with its black boxes are badly damaged
10:43the recorders in this aircraft aren't the new digital type of recorders which record 300 400
10:49parameters this was the old foil style recorders you had altitude airspeed you had heading some
10:58information at g-loads you didn't have the data we have today by a long shot the black boxes and
11:05the
11:05debris are sent to a warehouse where investigators begin their analysis
11:12once the parts are recovered taken to a facility you can then clean where the fractures where the
11:19separations are you can look at where a part broke apart the wings the engines the tail sections separated from
11:31the aircraft investigators try to confirm witness statements that the plane broke up before it crashed
11:41this piece looks compressed like it came from a high energy impact
11:49but this piece is intact what that indicates is this intact piece of wreckage did not go to the
11:58accident site with the rest of the airplane for sure an inflate breakup the team is now convinced
12:05that flight 108 broke up before hitting the ground the question is what led to that is there any evidence
12:14of a pre-existing failure that would have led to the accident
12:19hey can you uh bring that piece over to the table
12:23did a design flaw or some kind of failure create a fatigue crack causing the wings to break off before
12:31impact
12:33even though the airplane is fairly new you don't rule out anything was there a flaw in manufacturing
12:39was there a full drilled where it shouldn't have been drilled was there some other issue that would
12:45cause a crack to start growing very early in aircraft's life well this doesn't look like a fatigue crack at
12:51all
12:55it can only mean one thing overload fracture
13:04overload fractures can occur because the airplanes exceeded speed limits uh flight control inputs are
13:11severe uh severe turbulence can cause overload and sometimes you have a combination of all three coming
13:18together hey can you get the lights what pushed this plane past its structural limits investigators examined
13:27the plane's flight path for clues nothing unusual here
13:38the flight path from departure in route to arrival for landing seemed normal what happened at this part the end
13:48of the flight
13:53oh look at that they discovered that the pilots flew an erratic flight path before the plane crashed
14:02that would certainly cause a structural overload agreed the crew was on approach and now suddenly goes
14:13through some very tight maneuvers and you piece that together put the wreckage you found and where it was
14:20found and that gives you a much better idea of what led to the accident investigators speak to the
14:29controller who oversaw the approach of flight 108 to determine what might have caused the unusual flight path
14:36so tell me about the night of the crash uh there was thunderstorm activity from about 7 40 until just
14:46after 8am
14:47mm-hmm did your other flights run into any trouble they reported moderate icing and turbulence but everyone
14:56else landed without incident okay no go-arounds no missed approaches no okay no
15:05uh but about six miles out a 7 37 got hit by lightning
15:14dusseldorf approach lufthansa 1354 we just experienced a lightning strike at 3 000 feet six miles final
15:22no immediate issues lufthansa 1354 dusseldorf approach roger let me know if you require further assistance
15:30typically when we're concerned about thunderstorms in the airport vicinity it's not much about the
15:35lightning it's more about the winds and the wind shears that can be powerful enough to push the
15:39airplane into the ground since airplanes are made of aluminium which conducts electricity most lightning
15:45strikes flow over the skin of the fuselage and safely exit through the tail i remember one occurrence of
15:52flying the aircraft got hit by lightning there was a sudden flash outside the fuselage you could
15:59hear it and the airplane kept on going and there was no associated damage to the aircraft
16:07and we continued on did you report the lightning strike to flight 108 yes
16:13nfd 108 the preceding landing experienced a lightning strike about six miles final
16:19diseldorf approach we copy and are looking outside nfd 108
16:26for flight crews it is not abnormal to deal with thunderstorms and to deal with the probability
16:32of some lightning this flight was very very usual okay great thank you for your time
16:40if it wasn't the weather that caused the pilots to push the plane past its structural limit
16:46what did
16:51will flight 108's black boxes provide clues as to why the plane broke up mid-flight
17:00it's not looking good how so
17:07flight data recording and the cockpit voice recording both stopped two minutes before the plane crashed
17:13at the exact same time that the plane started flying erratically
17:19a total power failure
17:22the cdr and fdr get their power from two separate sources so the fact that both these recorders stopped
17:30at the same time indicates whatever happened affected both electrical systems not just the one
17:36the metro liners electrical system is powered by two generators in the event of a power failure
17:43two batteries act as a backup system
17:48but if it was a total power failure that means the backup system failed as well
17:55is that even possible from the perspective and the explanations coming from the manufacturer
18:02the possibility of a total electrical loss was very low but during the course of the investigation
18:09we understood more and more that it could be that the flight crews had a total electrical loss
18:17investigators consider the effects of a total power failure
18:21they would have lost most of their instruments well except their vertical speed indicator the altitude and the third attitude
18:30indicator
18:32our metro liners have been installed with a third independent
18:39artificial horizon it used bleed air coming from the engine and as long as the engine was running
18:45the artificial horizon was working as well totally independent from electricity
18:51the standby non-electrical artificial horizon could have been used by the crew
18:56to help keep the aircraft level and straight
19:03and then the complexity of this accident gets into why didn't the crew effectively use that standby
19:10but even with limited instruments who's to say they could have even seen them oh good point
19:16the lights that illuminated the instruments may not have been working huh
19:22you need those instruments and if you can't see them then you don't know if you're up or down
19:25you're flying blind at this point
19:40to confirm the unlikely finding of a total electrical failure the team examines light bulbs from flight
19:47108 instrument panel if the light bulb was on when the plane hit the ground the hot and pliable filament
19:55inside would be stretched but if the light was off the cold brittle filament would break upon impact
20:07all these filaments are broken the outcome was that we found no bulb which was under electrical power
20:19during the impact of the aircraft investigators now have conclusive evidence of a sudden total power failure
20:31but what could have caused it the controller did tell us that another plane got struck by lightning
20:41maybe this one did too a lightning strike outside of the aircraft could lead to a problem with the electrical
20:49system
20:49inside of the aircraft if the electrical field of a lightning strike is very very high
20:55could be induced into the aircraft investigators search for evidence of lightning striking the fuselage of flight 108
21:10there must be a thousand pieces in here
21:14it's a painstaking process lightning could have struck anywhere lightning marks on the skin
21:21be looked like a circle you'll see the paint burned you may see some localized melting of the metal in
21:28that particular area
21:35over here
21:40what do you got i found it
21:45huh once you've found a piece of metal the lightning strike
21:48it's like okay where does it go on the airplane what's in the proximity of this is it next to
21:54the electronics
21:56is it next to hydraulics where is this lightning strike occurring the only way to determine where
22:03the mystery piece comes from is to reconstruct sections of the airplane
22:11at the time of this accident uh reconstructions were fairly typical mainly
22:16we didn't have as much data as we have now so reconstructing it made sense
22:30i think i've got it investigators match the piece of the plane to the left side of the fuselage
22:36forward of the wing this is where the lightning strike
22:41but could a lightning strike in front of the left wing actually cause a total electrical failure
22:49there are power system lines running right behind where the lightning struck
22:54can't be a coincidence
22:57is it possible that that lightning strike entered the electrical wires on the other side
23:03and therefore led to the loss of electrical power so that would have been the real focus of the investigation
23:09at this point
23:16investigators examine what remains of flight 108's electrical wiring in search of evidence that the
23:23lightning strike jumped from the fuselage to the electrical system
23:29you would look for the insulation material the outsides and burned away is there melting inside the wires evans that
23:38somehow
23:39electrical energy got through the installation barrier into the wiring and then was starting actually melting the wires locally
23:49how odd those signs of arcing
23:57we checked the wiring we checked the electronic components available from the wreckage for some indication for electrical overload
24:13finding a lightning damage to the wiring not yet it's very possible once the lightning gets into the fuselage
24:21you may not see any direct impact in that area it flows into the aircraft and so even wiring is
24:30close by may appear to be unaffected
24:32but now this high energy has gone into the airplane and the question is where does it go
24:38maybe i can find something in here
24:41after we found no evidence for damage in the wiring based on the lightning strike we had to do a
24:51deeper
24:52investigation within the systems and that means we had to look for damages in the avionic components
25:02the team now focuses on even smaller components of the electrical system
25:07the diodes let's check this out
25:16a diode is an electrical component that allows current to flow in one direction
25:21only preventing reverse current flow that could damage circuits or create malfunctions
25:30if the diode is working properly there should be resistance to high current flow
25:35in one direction and not the other
25:42only 50 ohms almost nothing now the reverse
25:55also 50 ohms
25:58but investigators discover low resistance to current flow in both directions
26:10the outcome of our investigation of the diodes was that all diodes were open in both directions
26:18that means the diodes were shorted the question now was why we decided to take these to a manufacturer
26:28and ask them to do a deeper investigation
26:35results are in to better understand why the diodes shorted they examine test results provided by the manufacturer
26:43oh that's interesting looks like cracks in the center of the diode
26:55once you've seen that a diode has failed then you can do tests and research on a good diode to
27:01see
27:01how much energy you would take basically to fry that diode
27:07voltage tests are done to determine if the cracks in the diodes were the result of a lightning strike
27:12or something else
27:15a thousand volts
27:18investigators learn that when more than a thousand volts are applied to a working diode it will crack
27:24a lightning bolt can carry hundreds of millions of volts more than enough energy to crack the diode
27:30it must have been lightning
27:33the damage of the diodes
27:36only can be
27:38produced by high voltage
27:42could it be possible that high voltage would be produced within the aircraft
27:48and the answer was you know it could be only produced by the lightning strike
27:56basically the lightning hit the aircraft flowed through the system it impacted the diodes which fried
28:04them cracked them took them offline and that shut down the electrical systems on the aircraft
28:13the odds of lightning taking out an entire electrical system are next to impossible and yet that's what happened
28:23but this doesn't explain why the crew flew into the thunderstorm in the first place
28:28okay
28:31the primary rule is
28:34if you see a thunderstorm
28:36no matter what its size you avoid it
28:39you go around you divert you hold you do whatever you can you do not want to fly through a
28:45thunderstorm
28:46you do not want to do it
28:47you do not want to fly by the wind
28:54investigators examine Nuremberg air service's flight operations manual
28:58to understand why the pilots of flight 108 ended up in a thunderstorm
29:03I don't get it. It clearly states flights in or near thunderstorms should be absolutely avoided.
29:09So why didn't they do the sensible thing and go around the storm?
29:14At that time, they had several possibilities.
29:18One possibility was just to prepare if they would fly through the thunderstorm,
29:23what could happen, what they have to do, what they have to prepare.
29:27Another possibility could have been just to divert to another airport.
29:33Let's have a listen to what the pilots were saying about the storm.
29:41Check the radar.
29:43Thunderstorm could be rolling in after all.
29:46Halfway through the flight, the crew learns there's adverse weather ahead.
29:51Maybe.
29:54Doesn't look particularly bad.
29:58I'll check the ATIS.
30:01The crew checks Dusseldorf Airport's weather service.
30:04Information Bravo at 070.
30:07But there's no indication of a thunderstorm.
30:10Once they got the ATIS, their expectation bias was that the weather was getting better.
30:14Broken clouds at 1,500 feet.
30:18Nothing but a thunderstorm. We should be fine.
30:21The captain considers the information and makes his decision.
30:26Okay.
30:28We'll continue with the approach.
30:32They just assume best case scenario and don't do a proper briefing.
30:37As professional pilots, we always brief each other based off the worst conditions.
30:40You never know if that 10% probability of thunderstorms actually happens.
30:43And if it does happen and it's too late, you don't have time to brief it.
30:51NFD-108.
30:5311 minutes later, the situation becomes more critical.
30:57Proceeding landing experienced a lightning strike about six miles final.
31:02If I were the crew and I were on approach and proceeding traffic in front of me were to get
31:06struck by lightning,
31:07at that point I would initiate a missed approach, go around and hold somewhere and figure out what we're going
31:11to do
31:11because the weather at that point is moving on to the approach path.
31:14You need to take that pretty seriously.
31:15But that's not what the pilots do.
31:19Dusseldorf approach. We copy and are looking outside.
31:22NFD-108.
31:28Hey, did you hear what happened to Walter last weekend?
31:31Yeah. Not surprised.
31:34Hold on.
31:35They should be talking about deviating or go around here, not someone's weekend.
31:40They should have been deciding where they were going to go and what they were going to do
31:43instead of going down this rabbit hole.
31:44They just thought the other person's comfortable with it and will continue going if they're comfortable.
31:47I'm comfortable.
31:49Investigators continue listening to the CVR as the pilots prepare for landing.
32:09You're left of the center line.
32:11What?
32:13You're left of the center line. You need to turn right.
32:16The captain started deviating to the left, apparently without telling the first officer of his plan.
32:21I don't want to go in there. I'm trying to get around it.
32:23We're too close to the runway. You can't change course now.
32:28Sounds like the captain is trying to deviate around the storm.
32:31And the first officer isn't on the same page.
32:34It's a bad idea to try and re-intercept the approach when you're already unstabilized.
32:38It's just a bad idea. You just do a go-around.
32:40Huh.
32:52Again, no discussion of their options.
32:55Uh-huh.
32:56There's some tension in the cockpit.
32:58There's some issue between the captain and the first officer.
33:03We don't know exactly what it was, but clearly this was not conducive to the crew working together
33:12to determine what was the best course of action.
33:15So now the captain turns the plane directly into the thunderstorm.
33:24Hold on tight. Here it comes.
33:26Uh-huh.
33:33Neither crew knew what the other one was doing.
33:35They hadn't briefed for the weather.
33:37They didn't have the plane set up for flying around in the vicinity of thunderstorms.
33:41And they just kept going.
33:49Why wasn't this crew on the same page?
33:56This understanding of the investigation team at that time was,
34:01and the communication between both pilots was not in a way as it should be.
34:07What'd you find?
34:10Well...
34:11Investigators examine personnel records for insight into the pilot's working relationship.
34:19The captain had a total of 2,473 flight hours,
34:25but only 277 hours in the Metro 3.
34:30That's not a lot of experience on type.
34:33No, it's not.
34:35The FO had basically the same number of flight hours,
34:43but over 1,300 hours in the Metro.
34:51Investigators discover that the first officer had much more experience on the Metro liner than the captain.
34:59With the crew having such an imbalance in time,
35:01the first officer is going to feel like they could be the captain,
35:04that they got passed over for the upgrade.
35:05They have more experience on the routes.
35:06They have more experience on the plane.
35:08More experience with the airline, even in this case.
35:12She probably didn't trust his handling of the aircraft.
35:16That's never good in a cockpit.
35:20Did the pilot's imbalance in experience make it difficult for them to cope with a lightning strike?
35:31So they start making their descent here.
35:35Investigators examine how the pilots of flight 108 flew the plane as they entered the thunderstorm.
35:42And then, a minute before they lose power, they start ascending again.
35:46Why would that happen?
35:49Let's hear what happens here.
36:01Okay, glide alive.
36:04Quarter flaps.
36:09Selected.
36:11Three minutes from the airport,
36:13the captain begins configuring the aircraft for landing.
36:17And half flaps.
36:22Half flaps, please.
36:24As they descend towards the runway, the captain rushes his flap settings.
36:30The plane is now climbing instead of descending.
36:33The captain requested the next flap setting, half flaps.
36:38The airplane then ballooned up, climbed an altitude 400 feet.
36:44I'm not sure that was so good.
36:46The captain trims the plane's nose down to counteract the increase in altitude.
36:52In response to the 400-foot climb, the captain trims the airplane.
36:56Rather than just putting a few bits of electric trim in,
36:59he holds the electric trim, pitching the nose down quite substantially.
37:03He then adds even more nose down trim.
37:11We're still slightly high.
37:19Okay, descending.
37:24With all that trim the captain has at it,
37:26the plane is in a nose-heavy position when the lightning strikes.
37:41So now the captain loses the ability to recover.
37:44Mm-hmm.
37:46When the lightning strike happens, he loses electrical power,
37:49so he may have a lot more heavier flight controls than he was prepared for.
37:54And when the lightning strikes, the instrument lighting fails,
37:59making the instruments impossible to read.
38:03There's no emergency teacher in the Metroliner manual
38:05that tells you what to do if all your batteries fall offline.
38:09You're a test pilot, and at that point you use your pilot experience.
38:12One of the things to do was for the non-flying pilot
38:15to get a flashlight to illuminate the standby instrument
38:19to help the flying pilot out.
38:22The flashlights weren't found.
38:24We don't know if they're on the aircraft or not.
38:26The power failure cuts off their ability to see
38:29and to communicate with each other.
38:31They couldn't hear each other.
38:34We've lost electrical power.
38:38We have nothing!
38:40You've got a crew that can't communicate
38:42because you've lost the intercom system.
38:43You've got a headset on, and the Metro's a very noisy cockpit,
38:46so you can't hear the other person and what they're saying to you.
38:48If they couldn't see their instruments or hear one another,
38:52could the pilots still fly their plane?
38:56They have aileron and rudder controls, which aren't electrical.
39:00Their engines are still running.
39:03The runway is about seven miles away.
39:07They should have been able to use the controls
39:09they did have to land the plane.
39:12They still had control over the ailerons, over the rudder.
39:15It was difficult, but technically still flyable.
39:18But without the ability to see their instruments,
39:20they'd have no way of knowing where they were.
39:27Seconds later, Flight 108 is diving towards the ground.
39:33The pilots had no chance to control the aircraft in a proper way
39:39because the light for the third artificial horizon was not there
39:44and they had no visual ground contact.
39:47And I think under these circumstances,
39:49it's nearly impossible to control the aircraft.
39:56Investigators finally understand how a lightning strike caused a fatal crash.
40:09You're left of the center line.
40:11What?
40:12It starts with a poorly functioning crew.
40:15You're left of the center line. You need to turn right.
40:17I don't want to go in there. I'm trying to get around it.
40:19We're too close to the runway. You can't change course now.
40:23Okay. I hear you.
40:25Instead of giving him the advice or the two-crew mentality
40:29that we're not where we should be, we shouldn't be here,
40:31the first officer chose to go the other route,
40:33which was shut down and only make the minimum calls,
40:35which were deviation calls.
40:37Half-laps, please.
40:43The pilots decide to fly their nose-heavy aircraft into a thunderstorm.
40:52A powerful lightning strike...
40:54We've lost electrical power.
40:57...causes a total power failure.
41:00We have nothing!
41:01...and the disoriented crew...
41:04Where are we?
41:05I can't tell.
41:06...loses control of the plane.
41:11...loses control of the plane.
41:13400!
41:15300!
41:16Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!
41:21After you've been struck by lightning,
41:23you've got winds that are gusting all over the place.
41:25It starts to become a pretty violent situation pretty quick.
41:28The combination of turbulence
41:30and the pilot's blind actions lasting more than a minute
41:34sends the plane into extreme turns and banks.
41:40Are we banking?
41:41Can't tell!
41:42What's the airspeed?
41:43Don't worry about the speed, just pull!
41:44You think you can trust your senses, but you can't.
41:46You don't know if you're banking to the left,
41:48you don't know if you're banking to the right,
41:49you can't tell if you've got a nose low or a nose high.
41:52You can think you do, you can think you trust it.
41:55At the end of the day, your gut instinct will be wrong.
41:57The plane is so overloaded with the G-forces in these turns,
42:03it broke up.
42:06Yeah.
42:16Pull up! Pull up!
42:17I'm crying!
42:20You're looking at a G-load that literally ripped
42:22the engine pylon off the wing,
42:24that literally broke the wing spar,
42:26the strongest part of the airplane,
42:27broke it like a toothpick,
42:28that way exceeded what the aircraft manufacturer
42:31ever designed that airplane to go through.
42:49The main conclusion of the report
42:51by Germany's Air Accident Investigation Unit is clear.
42:55The crew flew into a thunderstorm,
42:58even though they could have flown around it.
43:02You have two fairly experienced pilots
43:04that they never, ever should have been in that situation.
43:07There were red flags throughout.
43:09If anything can be learned from this one,
43:11you've got to speak up on a two-crew airplane
43:12and you can't let the other person
43:14take you to the scene of the crash.
43:16In their recommendations,
43:18the FUS reiterates the need for training and manuals
43:22that clearly describe how to operate
43:24in and near thunderstorms.
43:28This is a very different crew
43:30than we see today
43:31who are well-trained in cockpit resource management
43:34who work together as a crew.
43:36And the systems change for the better
43:39and the airplanes are much better.
43:42As for Nuremberg Air Service,
43:44the company soon replaced
43:46the remaining Metroliners in its fleet.
43:48I made myself one of the last flight
43:51with the Metroliner.
43:52I had some tears in my eyes
43:53because I think it wasn't the aircraft's fault.
43:56As for Nuremberg Air Service,
43:59I remember-
44:01that means a diagnostics
44:02At the moment lashing
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