Original subtitles

You wouldn't think it was a dangerous job

delivering the mail.

They have to try to land an airliner

in a way no pilot has ever done before.

We've lost all hydraulics.

All the controls are dead.

They've become passengers on their own plane.

And somehow, they have to land it.

Left runway!

Even at journey's end, the ordeal isn't over...

Do not move!

3000.

We're not getting any oxygen.

We have the terrain alarm.

We are in an emergency.

Baghdad, November 22, 2003.

Officially, the war in Iraq has been over for months.

But the country is violent and unstable.

No one feels safe...

A civilian cargo plane has just taken off

from the city's airport.

What's that?

Within seconds the crew lose control,

unable to figure out what has happened to their aircraft.

We've lost hydraulics.

T- hey struggle to master 100 tons of wide-bodied jet.

Their plane is on fire.

Unless they can land soon, the wing will burn up.

They'll crash and die.

Steady!

They're carrying too much speed.

They're going so fast, they may not make the Runway.

No one has ever successfully done this before.

By November 2003,

the American-led coalition has been in charge of Iraq for six months.

The Iraqi army is defeated.

Saddam Hussein, the deposed President,

remains in hiding.

Ominously, the main threat is now from secret armed groups.

They are targeting civilians, both Iraqi and foreign,

in order to make the country unstable,

perhaps even provoke a civil war.

They have plundered Iraqi army stores

for every infantry weapon there is,

even surface-to-air missiles.

Baghdad is a very dangerous place.

Dawn, on the outskirts of the city,

Claudine Vernier-Palliez, from the French weekly magazine Paris Match,

with her photographer Jerome,

is going to a secret meeting with Iraqi terrorists.

She's after the story that everyone wants.

Who are they? What do they want?

The previous day she had met the leader in a hotel room.

He called himself Abu Abdallah, but no one knew his real name.

Evidently this man was very, very determined

to stop at nothing to show the Americans

that he wanted no more of them at least,

not their military tactics.

Baghdad Airport, key to the US presence in Iraq.

Military planes fly in daily to supply the troops,

and to help rebuild the shattered country.

Because of the threat from Iraqi Terrorists,

the US has established a security zone around the airport

patrolled by Apache helicopters.

On the tarmac today is one of the few civilian aircraft to use the airport,

an Airbus A300 belonging to the courier firm DHL,

they have won the contract to carry the soldier's mail.

They led us down little roads for a long time

to be sure we would lose our bearings.

At the hotel meeting,

Claudine and her photographer had arranged to meet the rebels

at dawn the next morning

to take pictures of the fighters with their weapons.

We arrived in the field where we met other vehicles,

among them a pick-up truck.

The men got out of their cars...

and just off the road hidden under some branches,

the men recovered some weapons and some missiles.

They loaded their weapons in their vehicles

and Jerome took the pictures we wanted.

The journalists have got the story they came for.

But Abu Abdallah is not finished with them yet.

He tells them to follow.

They don't know where.

And he told me that a new phase in his resistance actions

would be to shoot missiles at planes.

A few kilometers away,

the DHL lane is getting ready to depart.

Two flights a day shuttle post and packages

in and out of the war zone.

Baghdad Tower, Oscar Oscar, Delta, Lima Lima,

the Airbus 1800 cargo...

The Australian Air Force is providing

the air traffic control in Baghdad.

Oscar Oscar Delta Lima Lima, clear to start.

Before start check list.

Start turn...

Captain Eric Gennotte is Belgian, 38 years old,

and single. He realized his dearest ambition a year ago

when he qualified to captain the Airbus A300.

In 2.45.

Rough close to...

Flight engineer Mario Rofail lives in Scotland

with his wife and children.

At 54, he's the oldest and most experienced member of the crew,

a veteran of many danger zones.

Start one...

Valve open.

The 29-year-old co-pilot, Steeve Michielsen,

is also Belgian.

He's been married just three months.

Cargo airliners are great places for young pilots

to get the hours and experience they need

to pilot commercial aircraft.

0, 16.

DHL has been flying into Baghdad for 6 months,

but there is no danger money for crew.

The airport is an oasis of calm in the middle of a chaotic war zone.

Nevertheless, they're aware of what's going on around them.

When we were crossing the border from Kuwait to Iraq,

the ambience in the cockpit really changed.

You had a kind of stress, at least, for me.

The journalists have been taken

to another location by the terrorists.

By now they're beginning to get uneasy.

They'd like to leave, but they have no idea where they are

and they feel that a dangerous situation will develop

if they attempt to go.

So, what's going on here?

We're going to do special operations today...

You'll see, I'll show you.

This is Sam 7.

We have them from the old Iraqui army.

We have approximately...

28. We got them from two different Iraqui army depots.

We have already fired about 25 and we only have three left.

They are heat-seeking missiles,

equipped with homing devices which detect infrared emissions

from a plane's engines.

This is Sam 14 better than Sam 7.

We don't have so many.

I think we should use this one today.

It was very good before.

Before...?

We shot down a plane in Lasaria

and my fighters recorded 177 dead.

And we shot down another plane with Americans on

and we killed 70 men.

But no one had ever heard about this.

I didn't believe a word of it.

From all over Bagdad you could have seen it.

So, I thought the guy was making it up.

Sir what are you going to do with this one today.

What do you think, we're going to shoot down a plane?

I'll show you.

The journalists are getting worried.

What if he's not bluffing after all?

This is not the story they came for.

It's early in the day at Baghdad Airport.

A DHL Airbus A300 carrying letters home

from US soldiers, is just departing.

The crew is unaware that just a few kilometres away

a terrorist group has its own plans for the aircraft.

Oscar Oscar Delta Lima Lima, clear for take off.

Takeoff.

The plane is a 24-year-old airliner

converted to carry cargo.

Its first stop will be the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.

It's a journey they make twice a day.

100 knots.

V1.

Rotate...

V2.

Positive climb.

Despite the calm in the cockpit,

the crew knows that below 3000 metres,

they're vulnerable to attack from the ground.

So far, no plane in Iraq has been hit with a surface-to-air missile.

But it's known that the terrorists now have such weapons.

It's a strange ambience, it's a strange feeling

between the time you take off and you reach 10,000 feet

you know that you are in danger.

Gear up

Gear up.

No lights.

Meanwhile, the terrorist leader, Abu Abdallah,

appears to have chosen his spot.

He asked us to park our cars pointing outwards

so that everybody could leave in a different direction.

That's when I should have realized that the bluffing was over.

The journalists are now very alarmed.

They cannot leave they're trapped.

This is video shot by the terrorists themselves.

They'll deliver it to the media in Baghdad the next day.

What's that?

We've lost green and yellow.

Green and yellow?

We have three hydraulic systems

and they are identified by colour.

One is green, yellow and blue.

Big jets depend on hydraulic power.

Hydraulic fluid runs inside pipes throughout the aircraft.

When the pilots move the control column,

pistons push the fluid in the pipes to climb, descend,

or turn the plane.

With no hydraulics, pilots have no way to control their flight.

The missile has exploded in the wing,

where the pipes filled with hydraulic fluid

are now draining.

It's like driving a car at speed

and suddenly losing the steering wheel.

What do we do? What do we do?

What do we do?

What could I answer?

What could I answer to him?

It was a very difficult question, yes.

My initial reaction was...

we have to do something and I asked the Captain,

"What shall we do?" Or any ideas or something.

His initial reaction was, "We have to go back."

A big jet can survive with one of the three

hydraulic systems knocked out.

Maybe even two.

But all three? None of the controls will work, period.

Blue is gone.

I think we hit something.

Blue is gone...

We've lost all hydraulics.

All three hydraulic systems gone.

There's nothing left.

The life of the aircraft is now measured in minutes.

That was the end of everything procedures,

what you've been trained all these years.

So all you needed then is to keep calm,

common sense, and of course,

here's where your experience comes.

To see whatever is left there.

But we had nothing to come back to,

to read, or to do or to follow.

That DHL is in trouble.

He's on fire and he's turning back.

Grab all the fire engines, have medevac on standby

The control columns have become useless.

Without the crucial hydraulic system,

there is no way of moving the controls.

When you have this kind of emergency,

the three needles showing zero...

and the flight engineer saying to you

all hydraulics gone,

you are terrified as well.

It was fear,

we had no control of the aircraft actually.

The aircraft continued to climb at that time

to about 12,000 feet.

The plane has started to behave strangely.

It climbs to 3800 metres,

then suddenly starts to dive of its own accord.

Then it climbs again.

We're not flying!

Back! Back!

This cycle repeats itself over and over again,

like a mad rollercoaster ride.

The crew can't stop the plane's wild gyrations.

They're still airborne

but somehow they must regain control.

And now Eric are you proud of yourself?

Look in which mess you are.

You know it was dangerous to come here

and now what will you do to get out of here?

I play with controls!

Reduce thrust?

By moving the throttles to and fro,

perhaps they can flatten out the huge dives and climbs.

It's all they can think of.

And then I decide to take the challenge.

We have to come back

There is no training to fly a plane in this condition.

So from that time on,

all the books and procedures are right out the window.

We have engines?

We can use the thrust.

All they have left are the two engines,

which are undamaged.

But how do you fly and land a plane with engines alone?

No airliner has ever done it.

Certainly not this one.

In August 1985,

a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 had suffered a catastrophe

minutes after leaving Tokyo.

The bulkhead at the back of the cabin burst open.

The force of the rushing air blew off most of the tail fin

and cut all the hydraulic lines.

Without hydraulic power, the pilots of the 747

were little more than passengers themselves.

A jet with 524 people on board,

flying over the mountains of central Japan,

was virtually helpless, swaying in the sky like a drunken bird.

It really could be considered a miracle

that the pilots were able to keep the airplane flying

for 30 minutes or more after having lost

all their hydraulics and their flight controls.

But it kept circling and eventually worked its way

into the mountains and it became impossible for them to land.

There was no real alternative at all

except to fly as long as they could

and hope for some miracle which never occurred.

When the 747 hit a mountain,

it was the worst single crash in aviation history.

520 people died.

Can the DHL crew succeed where the Japanese pilots failed?

The first task is to try to calm the wild plunging of the aircraft.

The airplane will tend to go into what's called a phugoid,

in the vertical mode.

It will descend, speed up therefore pick up more lift,

then it would climb, pitch up and climb,

it would slow down, lose lift...

So it would go into this and so it was very difficult

for the pilots to control that.

They have to do it by using engine power alone,

the only thing they have left.

They find that if they reduce engine power

the plane's nose drops and they begin to gather speed.

If they then push the throttles forward,

the nose comes up and they start to climb.

But they have to learn precisely when to increase

and decrease power.

And there's another complication.

The damage to the left wing is creating drag on that side,

and pulling them round to the left in a wide circle.

One of the most difficult things to master

to keep the pitch altitude in a normal way

was already difficult enough.

And on top of this we had to use asymmetrical thrust,

because the airplane was banking to the left all the time.

There was a part of the left wing which was gone.

Bank! Bank!

So they not only have to move the throttles back and forth

to flatten out the plane's rollercoaster motion,

but also try to apply more power to the left engine

to compensate for the damaged wing,

which is causing it to lose lift.

After several minutes of violent pitching up and down,

the crew manage to flatten out the flight path.

Even after we have learned how to fly it using the throttles,

we still went through,

I would say three to four times,

we went through almost uncontrollable conditions,

we couldn't control the airplane.

Very steep dives and banks.

By now the crew realize that they've been hit by a missile

somewhere on the left wing.

Their Airbus has become the first civilian aircraft casualty of the war.

I knew we were on fire. That I knew.

So my intention was to come back and land the aircraft.

Also we were afraid,

I was afraid to be shot at, a second time.

Their fears are justified.

The terrorist leader, Abu Abdallah,

is waiting for a second chance to finish them off.

Iraqi terrorists have fired a missile

at a civilian plane near Baghdad Airport.

The left wing is on fire and the crew is in desperate trouble.

Now the terrorists aim to finish it off.

They launched a second missile that missed the plane this time.

And then he told everyone, "let's go"

and we all left quickly.

Madame Vernier-Palliez later came under a storm of criticism

for not doing more to stop the attack,

or at least leave the scene.

I think that any journalists in the situation we were in

would have reacted exactly as we did.

We have been criticized for not having said to the group leader

when he told us he was going to fire on an aircraft,

"No sir, we're leaving now."

On the one hand, if we had said that to him

it would have meant a bullet in the head, that's clear

and on the other hand, right up to the last minute,

right up to the time when they fired the missile,

I didn't think they were going do it.

I thought they were still bluffing.

While we were trying to find our way back with our chauffeur,

we saw that the plane,

its left wing was on fire.

It was now turning like this.

It was like in a film, it was unreal.

And it was only when we could see the plane on fire,

that we thought of the people on board.

And then, we were scared.

I realized that the plane could crash,

that it would crash and then I started to realize...

why had they done this?

It so happens we were there, we were filming,

we were journalists and we were French.

So it seems evident that they had set us up.

By the time we realized this, it was too late.

Everything had gone too fast.

The crew knows nothing of the second missile.

Did you guys say that there's an aircraft on fire?

This remarkable video, seen here exclusively for the first time,

was shot with the infrared, heat-sensitive camera

of a US Apache attack helicopter.

Apaches routinely patrol the area around the airport,

watching out for terrorists.

...the aircraft in bound under our siting system,

he's got... it appears to be a fire on his far left engine.

The intense heat of the fire on the Airbus

shows up as a blur on the helicopter's heat-sensitive camera.

Oscar Oscar Delta Lima Lima.

Oscar Lima Lima. What's that?

Yes, we have a problem controlling the aircraft.

There was a helicopter flying,

and he could see that the fire was not from the engine

but that it was from the left wing.

So it gave Mario the opportunity to ask the tower again

if they could still see some flames or smoke

coming from the airplane.

Could you confirm if there is smoke coming from the aircraft

or fire or anything like that?

You can still see smoke and flames coming from the left tip

of the left wing.

Okay left-wing tip, fire and smoke, huh?

- That's affirmative. - Thank you.

We were on a... heading towards the airport.

We could see the airport.

Lower the gear.

Can I take control?

No, I have control.

I have control. Lower the gear!

With no hydraulic power,

Mario has to crank open the landing gear doors

and let the wheels drop down by gravity alone.

The Captain said, "In fact we have to land,"

and he called for the gear down

which is quite a normal thing to do to land.

But it has an unintended effect.

Lowering the landing gear has altered the entire balance of the aircraft

just when they thought they'd figured out how to control it.

It causes the nose to point high in the air

and the speed to fall.

No, no... No, the speed!

It could easily stall, and then crash.

I didn't expect that at all.

I saw the aircraft taking a pitch up

and then the speed decreasing, decreasing, decreasing...

and I was returning the throttle and saying, "No, no!"

No, no! It--

The nose has gone up,

their speed is falling, and they're about to stall.

They have no choice but to pull back the throttles

to bring the nose back down again.

They're nearly at stall speed.

That would have been the end of it,

we would have fallen out of the sky.

You got a visual on this guy?

No I am looking right at him and he's way out there.

Yeah. That's gut-wrenching man...

They're up there doing everything they can.

I was afraid that maybe one wing will stall.

And this time it's finished.

...crash on the runway or crash in the desert.

Yeah trying to land on a runway whereas you can just belly up

in the desert and the sand would probably put out any fire.

Cautiously they manage to coax a bit more speed

from the engines. Lowering the gear brought them

to the brink of disaster, but now the plane is easier to control.

The airplane miraculously became more stable afterwards.

That's one of the first factors which proves how lucky we were that day.

Let's land.

Oscar Oscar, Delta, Lima Lima.

Oscar Oscar, Delta, Lima Lima. Baghdad Tower,

can make your approach now, runway is clear for landing.

The Apache helicopter has been joined by others,

who are powerless to do anything but provide information

to the stricken DHL plane.

Looks like he's going up too high again.

I'm still looking up at the flare.

Come on, buddy.

We could hear other airplanes talking at the same time.

And that was a bit difficult...

Oscar Oscar Delta Lima Lima.

Could you please clear 3-3 Left for us as well,

because I think we may be going there as well.

Oscar Oscar Delta Lima Lima, runway 3-3 Left

is available as well if you need to land there.

Okay keep both runways open for us.

No more talking, bye.

Did you know tank 1 Alpha is empty?

Fuel has been steadily streaming out

of the tanks in the left wing.

Now, one of them is empty.

Bank back!

Got it...

Left wing coming up!

Against all the odds, they've made it back to the airport.

An incredible feat of flying.

They begin making preparations to land.

Which runway?

We use 3 3 Right, I think.

Lima Lima!

Oscar Lima Lima, go ahead.

Can you please declare a full emergency?

Yes, you will need the fire brigade because our running gear might not work.

Oscar Lima Lima, all available assistance

is available on the field.

Everyone is on full alert.

Okay thank you very much and no more calls.

Man, that guy's good. He's pretty stressed.

And rightfully so.

But on the brink of success it begins to unravel.

At that time, I realized we were a little bit too high

to come in and land in the situation we were.

That's what I thought as well.

We were too high and too near.

We must land!

We are too close, we need a long final!

I think Steeve brought a very important point here

and I think it was really a saver.

Steeve is giving his captain news he doesn't want to hear.

He can't land.

They are too high and too close.

If they attempt a steep descent, they'll bury it in the runway.

Eric Genotte will have to turn around,

fly away from the airport for 37 kilometers, turn again,

and come back on a long final approach, slowly descending.

If we hadn't done those 20 miles,

we would have been circling there forever

until we dropped from the sky.

You can't make it. It's impossible.

Keep the speed, keep the speed up.

I try. I will do the best I can.

And then I realized, they were right.

We have to make a long final

But for the last 13 minutes, the wing has been on fire.

Do they have enough time?

20 miles final.

Okay.

He's still pretty high.

He's still got a long way to go.

He's got an extremely extended final

and I figure he can make it in.

Time is running out.

The fire is eating up the left wing.

They're still heading away from the airport.

Then they have to turn and make a 37-kilometre approach.

Can they land before the wing fails?

If we had stayed another 15 minutes in the air

with that fire still burning,

maybe that tip of the wing would have broken off and again,

the results would have been disastrous.

Two main structural spars give the wing its strength.

The missile has made a 5-metre long crack in the rear spar.

Too much stress and it will snap like a twig.

There's another danger:

fuel is streaming out of the punctured tanks in the left wing.

If the tanks run dry, an engine will stop,

and they'll crash.

We were controlling the bank

and the pitch of the airplane using the two engines,

so if we lost one engine,

then we couldn't do anything with the other engine.

So, the end result would have been disastrous.

Despite the fire, the crew's confidence is growing.

Now they have some control over the plane.

But the prospects for a safe landing are not good.

This is the closest any commercial jet has got

to a safe landing with no hydraulics.

In 1989, in the United States,

the crew of this United DC10 lost all their controls

after an engine blew up,

and turbine blades shredded the hydraulic pipes.

The pilots managed to regain some control,

moving the throttles backwards and forwards like the DHL crew.

There were 296 people on board.

But at the last minute, as they approached

the small provincial airport of Sioux City in Iowa, disaster.

Of the 296 people on board, 111 died.

So, within four years, two major airliners had crashed

because a loss of hydraulics had crippled the planes,

killing 631 people.

In its investigation report on the Sioux City disaster,

the National Transportation Safety Board

asked for urgent research to find ways of controlling big jets

that had lost their hydraulics.

But over Baghdad, 14 years later,

the crew only have their wits to help them

as they try to land.

I remembered the story of the DC10 of Sioux City,

that it has been done before,

the only control we still had in the aircraft, in the cockpit

was the engine,

nothing else.

The crew is now 28 kilometers away from the airport,

getting close to where they will turn in order to make

their long final approach to the runway.

15.2.

16.

- Now we turn right. - Not yet.

This is where experience counts now,

and you have to rely on what you know.

We were pretty sure that we were going to be able

to make it to the airport, but we were absolutely not sure

that we were going to be able to make it to the runway.

16.5

- Now we turn. - 17 miles.

Now we turn!

The only way they can turn is by applying more power

to the left engine to make them go right, and vice versa.

They're swinging round to the right,

trying to keep the plane steady and descend

all at the same time, using nothing but the engines.

Airport's at 3-4 to come right.

Now 3-20.

- Speed? - 10 knots and stable,

keep speed up. - Yes, yes.

1000 feet.

3500 feet.

3200 feet.

Turn on ahead.

Against all their instincts,

they'll have to keep the speed up on landing,

or the nose will drop and they'll crash.

They should be landing at around 300 kilometers per hour.

But they are coming in 100 kilometers per hour faster.

No one knows if the landing gear will take the strain.

As they reach 120 metres,

the hot air from the ground and strong wind blowing

across their flight path, upsets all their plans.

The winds coming from the left and the turbulence,

we were drifting to the right,

that's where the airport building was.

It's bumpy!

As the plane approaches the runway,

the nose is pointing dangerously low

and the left wing is dropping.

Come on, buddy!

They're carrying too much speed.

They could over run the runway.

Keep the speed up! We are going left.

Yes! I increase.

If we go into fast landing, we may go off the runway.

They are landing 3-3 left.

Fire trucks on standby, Medevac is on standby.

...looks like he's too wide now.

Steady, steady!

You are approaching the end of your life.

You realize it.

Come on, buddy!

- Back! - Okay!

Oh...

Looks like one of his gear collapsed.

Yeah, it did.

Off runway!

He's in the dirt?

He's just come off the runway.

That's what's left of him.

The DHL Airbus has managed to land

through an incredible feat of flying...

But their troubles are not over.

Nice landing, wow.

Confirm evacuate?

Evacuate.

Evacuation.

A final irony.

After getting safely to the ground against all the odds,

one more unforeseen danger.

She might blow.

Hey, guys! Don't move.

That area has unexploded ordinance.

Do not move.

What's that?

He's saying there might be bombs here.

I don't believe this.

We're coming to get you!

The area is still littered with unexploded bombs and shells

left over from the battle to capture the airport from Saddam's men.

Now when we get to you, we're going to back up

and you gotta follow in our tracks!

Now, we're gonna get you outta here,

but you gotta walk right in my wheel tracks, okay?

Keep coming. It's not much further now.

Now, for the first time,

the crew can see the damage for themselves.

They have survived the unsurvivable.

No crew has ever successfully landed

such a badly damaged airliner.

They had to learn and practice a whole new flying technique.

But the remarkable thing is, had they known it,

the technology had already been invented to save any pilot

in this desperate situation.

The DHL pilots have managed to fly and land

a plane without any flying controls.

It's the first time it's happened.

Two earlier occasions near Tokyo and Sioux City, Iowa,

ended with the loss of over 600 lives.

In 1989, NASA began to investigate ways

to land crippled aircraft using only throttle controls.

Engineers and pilots came up with software

that could cope with total hydraulic failure.

It's called: PCA,

for Propulsion Controlled Aircraft.

The PCA concept is simple.

Pilots tell the aircraft's flight management computer

what they want to do: turn, climb, descend.

But instead of sending those commands down hydraulic lines to the control surfaces,

the computer orders the engines alone to do it.

To test this software,

this MD11 aircraft is landing with no hydraulics,

and using engine thrust alone.

The pilot is not moving the throttles.

The PCA software is doing it all for him.

Though none of the plane's normal controls were used,

the MD11's landing was not only survivable

but very similar to a normal landing.

I believe that the DHL incident has revived interest

in propulsion controlled aircraft systems

as an augment to...

perhaps the systems we have in today's aircraft

that would certainly mitigate the damage

that could have been done to this aircraft

and certainly could mitigate the damage

done to an aircraft carrying 500 to 600 people.

One of the enthusiasts for the PCA system is Captain Dennis Fitch,

one of the pilots who survived the Sioux City DC10 crash.

This is just absolutely an amazing piece of equipment.

What they have done, and what they have achieved,

and the success ratio that we now have to survive

and the ability we now have with modern aircraft

completely controlled on hydraulics...

to have this occur again and to have this on board the aircraft,

is a very warm feeling as a pilot.

Blue is gone.

We've lost all hydraulics.

America's Federal Aviation Administration

conducted research into PCA but soon abandoned it.

It says the risk of losing all hydraulics is too low

to make systems like the PCA worthwhile.

The FAA's conclusion after their studies

was that these events are so rare

as to not require the mandate of an additional system.

And of course they did not consider the event

or the possibility of a surface-to-air weapons attack

on the aircraft.

The DHL is the first plane in Iraq

to be hit by a surface-to-air missile.

But in recent years the threat of terrorist controlled

shoulder launched antiaircraft missiles has been growing.

There have been roughly 30-odd incidents

of commercial aircraft being attacked

by man-portable surface-to-air missiles

leading up to the DHL one.

What makes the risk of missile attack in Iraq so serious

is that for months nobody was guarding

the abandoned depots of the Iraqi army

leaving terrorists free to help themselves

to millions of dollars worth of arms.

I believe there are weapons caches everywhere in Iraq.

In my opinion they also have many missiles.

There is widespread fear these terror weapons

could soon be targeting passenger airliners

all over the world.

The US government's Department of Homeland Security

is spending over 100 million dollars on research

to adapt military counter missile technology

for civilian airliners.

It is inevitable today that commercial aircraft

will have to be fitted, at some time

with laser and infrared jamming systems.

The infrared jammer will confuse

the seeker for the missile,

whereas the laser jammer will direct a pulse

into the seeker and burn out the seeker of the missile.

Singapore Airlines, Quantus Airlines,

they're all looking to install something into their aircraft.

If you look at things like the queen's flight in the UK,

the president's aircraft in the USA

and the King of Jordan's fleet, they're all fitted.

Terrorism is with us today

and will always be with us for the rest of our lives.

It's impossible to defeat terrorism

but what is possible is to control terrorism

at a commercially acceptable level,

if we don't do that then there's no future for us.

But miraculously, without any of this equipment,

the crew had brought their plane to a successful landing.

It is the only confirmed occasion in history

when a missile has exploded on a large civilian airliner

which has then landed without crashing.

For Mario Rofail, it was a good note on which to retire.

It was a good time to say goodbye to aviation.

I had been flying for 30 years.

Clean record even to the last minute.

We were lucky but also,

we fought to survive.

I learned some things about life, maybe, but...

I don't think it makes me a better pilot.

The three DHL crew have received

some of the highest awards that the civilian aviation community

has to offer in recognition of an unprecedented achievement.

Teamwork was absolutely the key factor

of bringing that plane back to the ground

with all three people alive.

On December 30, 2003,

five weeks after the missile struck the airliner,

General Mark Kimmitt gives his daily press briefing in Baghdad.

Of note on Saturday, Sarhid ahb Sarhid,

a former directorate of military intelligence officer

suspected of leading a large anti-coalition group

in the region and suspected of the downing of the DHL jetliner

died at a coalition medical facility from wounds received

in a targeted raid on his complex.

The Americans believed they had killed the leader

of the group that fired the missiles at the DHL.

Claudine Vernier-Palliez is not so sure.

So I thought he was dead. I tried to verify this later.

He wasn't dead and it wasn't him they got.

And my photographer returned to Iraq and saw this person again.

He was still alive.

In the fog of war, no one can say for sure

whether the man who called himself Abu Abdallah

is still alive.

But what is certain is that the threat of further missile attacks on planes,

both military and civilian, is still there.

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