All language subtitles for Mayday.S09E01.Panic.on.the.Runway.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

Beatours 28,
you are clear for takeoff.

Eighty knots.

Stop!

Don't hammer the brakes.
Don't hammer the brakes.

137 people are on board
this British Airtours flight.

Within minutes,
nearly half of them
will be dead.

This should not really
have happened.

Evacuate, evacuate!

The aircraft
didn't even get airborne.

It didn't run off the runway.

And yet, still,
55 people were killed.

For investigators,
it's a familiar routine:

Reconstructing the final moments
inside the cabin,

analyzing the wreckage
and the flight-data recorders.

In the end,
they turn to a psychologist

to help them figure out
how a survivable emergency

turned into one
of British aviation's
most horrific disasters.

Mayday, mayday.

It's just before
6:00 in the morning
on August the 22nd, 1985.

Manchester's airport
is coming to life.

The first flights of the day
are being prepped for departure.

British Airtours Flight 28
is scheduled to take
131 passengers

from Manchester
to the Greek Island of Corfu.

British Airtours is a division
of British Airways,

specializing in low-cost flights
to vacation destinations.

It's a chilly morning.

A slight breeze is blowing.
Ideal flying weather.

Most of the passengers
on this early-morning flight
are travelling on vacation.

Lindsay Davies is heading
to Greece with her boyfriend,
Charlie Thickson.

Alright, let's go.

We'd been going out
with each other for a year,

and that's one of the reasons
we were so excited about it.

You know, it was our first
holiday together.

Captain Peter Terrington
is in command.

I was the senior training
captain on the fleet.

First Officer Brian Love
is being trained by Terrington.

He was going to perform
a takeoff and landing...

...as part of his training.

- Alright, Captain?
- Yep.

Uh, briefing then, Brian.
Airfield emergencies.

You handling the aircraft.
- Mm-hmm.

- What are the four things
you're gonna stop for?
- Fire, failure,

configuration warning,
or you shouting stop.
- Okay.

So you bring the thing to a stop
and I'll take over the aircraft

and leave you to deal
with the emergency.
I'll deal with the ATC. Okay?

If you've talked about
the possibility of emergency

and talked over
what you will do,
then if it actually happens,

it's easier to recall
those... items.

Okay, Brian, start 2.

Starting 2.

Oil pressure rising.
- Okay, go on.

Twenty-four, 25, 26,

27, 28, 29.

One-twenty-nine plus two
on board, Captain.

All strapped in.
Doors are closed and automatic.

Thank you, Arthur.

The crew is flying a Boeing 737.

It takes just four minutes

for the plane to reach
the foot of the runway.

Beatours 28,
you are clear for takeoff.

The 737 has 3,000 metres
to get to takeoff speed.

The engines are pushed
to high power.

I was sitting by the window,
looking out of the window.

Everything was normal.
The plane was going quite fast.

- Eighty knots.
- Check.

Oh, my God.

We heard a dull thud,

which sounded as if it came
from outside.

I was really keen to see
what was going on outside,
but couldn't see anything.

Captain Terrington
needs to act fast.

Stop!

And... the immediate reaction
was to stop.

We were quite a few knots
below our decision speed,

so I very quickly closed
the throttles and...

applied reverse thrust.

We could feel the aircraft
slowing down,

and I thought we'd blown a tire,
and I didn't know, so...

we just waited to hear.

Don't hammer the brakes.
Don't hammer the brakes.

I thought the tire
might've gone,

and would cause damage
to the undercarriage
if we braked too strongly.

Probably nothing.
I wouldn't worry.

I just assumed
that maybe a tire had burst,

so I wasn't really alarmed
at that point.

My thought at that time was:
Oh, okay,

we're gonna get off this plane
and probably...

have to move all the luggage
onto another plane and take off.

Soon, passengers
on the left side of the plane
see the real problem.

I could see orange flames
inside the back of the engine.

And at that point, I thought:

It's obviously not a burst tire.

That wouldn't cause that.
And this is perhaps something
a bit more serious.

Let me by.
I'm not staying there.

But at that point,
I knew that I wanted
to get off the plane,

and I wasn't happy at all.

I knew that there was a fire,

and I just wanted to get away
from the fire.

Smoke is seeping into the cabin.

- Please sit down.
- My nearest exit
was at the back.

I didn't want to go to the back
because the smoke
was coming in there.

So I decided in my mind
that I was gonna go
through the front.

I said to Charlie:
Come on, we're going!

And that's when I started going
towards the front of the plane.

Stopping. 28 Mike,
we're abandoning takeoff.

Looks like we've got
a fire on #1.

- Looks like there's a lot
of fire.
- Thank you.

Plane on fire, runway 24.

From where he's sitting,

Captain Terrington can't see
how bad the fire is.
He needs advice from the tower.

Do we have to get
the passengers off?

I would do,
by the starboard side.

Terrington decides
to pull off the runway.

Evacuate to the starboard
side, please.

Fire drill, engine #1.

Shutting down 2.

Evacuate! Evacuate!
Please stay calm.

Before the flight crew leaves
the cockpit,

they must complete
a 15-step checklist.

- Parking brake.
- Set.

- Speed-brake lever.
- Down.

But time is running out.

We had, uh,
an evacuation checklist,

but it was four pages long,

and the last item
was to get the passengers off.

Engine and APU
fire-warning switches.

This didn't cover my...
problem at all.

On the 737,
there are four cabin doors.

The two in the back are covered
in flames and smoke,

leaving only two for 137 people.

Then a mechanical problem
eliminates one of those.

Well, Arthur was opening
one right.

And he was really banging,
he was really trying to open it;
it was really hard to open.

The back of the cabin
is filling with smoke.

It's making breathing difficult.

Passengers rush forward.

It just seemed
to go on forever before
they started evacuating.

And that's when I thought:
I'm not gonna get off.

It's gonna blow up
with all of us on it.

Engine and APU
fire-warning switches.

Right now,
all 137 people on board
are alive.

But with every second,
their odds of surviving
are decreasing.

Flight 28...

...is becoming a death trap.

The jammed door
on the right side
of British Airtours Flight 28

leaves the crew no choice.

They must get the passengers out
from the side of the plane
that's burning.

As soon as we opened the door,
the fire service
were already arrived,

shooting foam up the slide;
it came into the galley floor.

We wanted to start evacuating
passengers, but...

there was a bit of a bottleneck
and nobody was coming forward.

The aisle is quite narrow
where the galley is,

and they were pushing forward.

And I could see this boy
that was really sort of pushed
against the wall.

He couldn't get out,
so I pulled him by his T-shirt,
had a yellow T-shirt on,

and he sort of tumbled forward,
and after that everybody sort
of just tumbled in behind him.

And we just directed them
down the slide.

Jump. Jump.

Jump.

In training, they tell you
to bring people to the door,

and you tell them to, um, jump.

Jump.

Desperate to get
people off the plane quickly,

the purser returns
to the jammed door.

After several attempts,
he manages to force it open.

The only time I turned around
was to make sure
that Charlie was following me.

See you out there.

One thing I did see
when I looked back

was people going to the front,
towards the front of the plane,

where the seats are,
and pushing the seats forward,

folding them down
as they went along.

So people were trying
to rush forward from the back.

The chute was open,

and people were just jumping out
straight onto the chute.

As I got to the bottom,
didn't look back at all,

just wanting to get off.

Dozens of passengers
have made it off the plane,

but there are still
many more inside.

It was smouldering,
and it was black,
thick black smoke.

And Charlie had said
that after you'd gone,
this black smoke came down,

he said, and everybody
was screaming and panicking.

He said people are gonna die
in there.

Standby power switch.

Captain Peter Terrington
and his first officer Brian Love

are still aboard
the burning airplane.

And they still haven't completed
the steps required to evacuate.

There was four tons of fuel
coming out of that aircraft...
wing tank.

Ready to go, Brian? Go, Brian.

I could see
quite a lot of flames.

Completing the checklist
would put their lives at risk.

We did as many items
as we could,

and then we both went out
of the flight-deck window.

There are no more passengers
at the exits.

So Joanna Toff decides
to see if anyone else is left
in the cabin.

And the smoke was...
you could touch it,
it was so thick.

And you could taste...
It was awful.

Go!

There was a young girl
just a bit further down
in the cabin.

But she was really
disorientated.

I mean, I suppose we all were, really.

We just didn't have any idea
what was going on.

I just brought her down
to the slide.
She was taken off then.

The fireman was telling me
to come on out.

And I'm thinking: Well,
I'm not finished, you know,
we've not finished yet.

When Toff re-enters the cabin...

...the thick smoke
makes it as hard to see
as it is to breathe.

It was really dark and quiet.
I've never seen anything
like it.

And I could see the light
from the door anyway by then,

so I knew where the door was.

The smoke forces Toff
to abandon her search.

Just minutes after pulling off
the runway,

British Airtours Flight 28
has been consumed by fire.

We got out of the flight deck,
which was relatively intact.

And when we turned round,
on the ground,

we saw a complete wreck
of an aircraft.

And it had happened
in a matter of seconds.

It was... uh, dreadful.

Fifty-four people are dead.

Another would die in hospital.

There was nothing wrong,
really, with us,

we thought;
nothing physical wrong with us.

But our lives changed, you know,
just in those few hours.

I couldn't breathe.
I was virtually out the door
and I couldn't breathe then.

The smoke was coming in,

and everybody just stood up
and ran... ran out.

It was just a mad panic
getting out.

When the smoke came, you just
couldn't see anything at all,
couldn't see anybody.

It takes 125 firefighters

more than two hours
to put out the fire.

News of the disaster
soon spreads around the world.

British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher flies to
Manchester to visit the scene.

When we get
a terrible air crash
of this kind,

everyone is appalled
and shocked.

Every single aspect
of this accident
will be thoroughly investigated.

It has to be.

This is the fourth
major commercial air disaster
of the year.

In June of 1985,
an Air India jet exploded
over the Atlantic Ocean.

329 people were killed.

Weeks later, 137 people died

when a Delta Airlines flight
crashed at Dallas-Forth Worth
Airport.

And just 10 days before
the Manchester crash,

the deadliest single-aircraft
accident in history.

Japan Airlines Flight 123,

a fully loaded 747,

slammed into a mountain,

killing 520 people.

British Airtours Flight 28
adds 55 new victims
to the list of casualties.

1985 in now the deadliest year
in the history
of commercial aviation.

The flying public
is getting nervous.

Britain's Air Accidents
Investigation Branch
sends a team to Manchester

to unravel the events
that led to the catastrophe.

Among them, Stephen Moss.

He'll be inspecting
the plane's engines.

This should not really
have happened.

The aircraft
didn't even get airborne,

it didn't run off the runway,

and yet still,
55 people were killed.

Chris Protheroe
is also on the team.

His focus is on the fire.

We were aware,
from initial reports,

that the fire had entered
the aircraft very rapidly

as the aircraft came to a halt,

and that, um,
was a focus... for me.

It doesn't take too long
for Stephen Moss to figure out

where the trouble started.

He sees damage to the plane
that was not caused by fire.

The first thing we noticed
clearly was the hole
in the underside of the wing.

And right next to it
was a gaping hole
in the side of the engine.

Seems that one led to the other.

To get a plane loaded
with passengers off the ground,

you need to generate
massive thrust.

That power is created
when air travels
through the front of the engine

to a series of compressor fans.

It's then ignited,

and the exhaust pushes
the plane forward.

Something had clearly gone
very wrong

with Flight 28's left engine.

Investigators look for clues
on the runway and in the cabin,

hoping to discover
why so many people died.

Entering the cabin
for the first time,

there was a...
as with all aircraft fires,

there's an overwhelming
and pungent smell:

Burning plastic, burnt fuel.

Burning material had dropped
down onto seats,

so the aisles were filled up
with...

with the remains
of overhead lockers.

A scene of...

of devastation.

The damage in the cabin
is revealing.

It's almost completely charred
up high...

...but is relatively intact
down low.

It was clear
there had not been a flashover
in this particular case.

A flashover occurs
when the gasses
in an enclosed space

become so hot that they ignite,

incinerating everything
around them.

The way Flight 28's cabin
is charred

tells Protheroe
about the nature of the fire.

Many of the seat
squab cushions,

even things like...
the emergency evacuation cards,

which are just
plastic-laminated cards,

were pretty much undamaged.

You could've wiped them off
and put them
on another aircraft,

and nobody would've known
they'd been in this accident.

Whereas at the upper levels
in the fuselage,

there was a great deal
of heat damage,

and this is not
a characteristic of a flashover.

The fire
in the cabin had been severe,

but should not have been
catastrophic.

This leaves investigators
with two questions:

Why did so many people die,

and what caused the fire?

The answer
to the second question

may be outside the plane,
lying on the runway.

Investigators find a large piece
of dome-shaped metal
along the plane's path.

Stephen Moss can see
it's from a piece of the engine
called a combustor can.

It looked like there'd been
a separation of the can

from the front end,
from the back end.

The combustion chamber
of the 737's jet engines

contains nine combustor cans.

It's where fuel and air
are mixed and ignited,

so each can needs to withstand
intense heat.

Moss suspects the fractured can
somehow blew apart and destroyed
the plane's left engine.

It had struck an under-wing
fuel-tank access panel

and put a sizeable hole in that,

which directly led
to the release
of a vast quantity of fuel.

Proving the piece
of the combustion can
penetrated the wing is easy.

It fits neatly
into the hole in the wing.

This was clearly, if you like,
the root cause of the accident.

The engine on the plane
is a Pratt and Whitney JT-8D.

For Moss,
that's of grave concern.

At the time, it was probably
the most widely used jet engine

on commercial air transport
in the world.

And it was obviously
pretty urgent that we try
and find the cause of this one

in order to prevent
other aircraft
having the same problem.

There are tens of thousands
of combustor cans in service

around the world.

One of them erupted
in Manchester.

Stephen Moss needs to find out
why it failed...

...and fast.

Investigators looking into the deadly fire

on board British Airtours
Flight 28

study the plane's
maintenance log.

They discover
the combustor can that ruptured
had previously been repaired.

We needed to look
at that repair and, uh,

and how effective it was.

During a routine inspection
a year and a half earlier,

mechanics had found small cracks
in some of the combustor cans.

It was certainly not uncommon
to find, uh, fatigue cracks,

um, in the... in the cans.

They're operating
in a high-temperature
environment.

The manuals give various schemes
for repairing these cracks.

Investigators find mechanics
repaired the cracks

according to a procedure laid
out in the engine-repair manual.

They welded them closed.

But the crack on can #9
was unusually long.

The overhaul manual, um,

did not give any limit
on the length of crack
that could be repaired,

and it was a longer crack
than had been experienced
before;

it was still repaired.

After the repaired cans
were put back in the engine,

mechanics had no way of knowing
the weld didn't effectively
seal the crack.

That's because the cans
can't be inspected

while the engine
is on the plane.

Since the repair,
there were 11 reports
of slow acceleration

from the engine that exploded
in Manchester.

A damaged combustor can
could've been a reason
for the problem.

But troubleshooting guides
available to mechanics
in Manchester

didn't list that
as a potential cause.

Instead, Pratt & Whitney
offered other ways to fix
the acceleration problem.

It didn't seem to ring
any great alarm bells with them,
if you like.

They'd seen it before,

and it had never turned out
to be anything serious.

So mechanics in Manchester
made minor adjustments

to fix the plane's idle speed
and kept the plane in operation.

Cockpit voice recordings reveal
that the crew of Flight 28
was aware

there was a problem
with slow acceleration.

Slow acceleration
on the #1 engine
day before yesterday.

- I was on the flight, yes, sir.
- And they signed off on it.

But the log entry
led Captain Terrington
to believe

that the problem had been fixed.

A comment in the tech log,

uh, for... for the flight
before the last one...

...that the engine was slow
in accelerating.

It wasn't apparent
as a serious problem.

Because the engineers
had done some work,

and the aircraft had been flying
the previous day
with no problems.

The idle-speed adjustments
didn't fix the real problem:

The cracked combustor can.

And it reached
the breaking point
on Flight 28.

Stopping. 28 Mike,
we are abandoning takeoff.

Evacuate! Evacuate!

Please stay calm
and don't panic.

If the airline had, uh,
inspected the cans,

I think there is no doubt
they would've seen a problem.

Investigators now know the origins
of the Manchester disaster.

The welded crack
in combustor can #9 gave way

as Flight 28 sped
down the runway.

The front of the can
was ejected from the engine

and put a hole in the underside
of the left wing.

That led to a huge fuel leak
onto the damaged engine,
which caused the fire.

Engine fires are not uncommon.

The body of a 737 is insulated
with fire-retardant material
to protect the cabin.

Investigators still don't understand
how a fire outside the plane

spread into the cabin
as quickly as it did.

Fire inspector Chris Protheroe
finds part of the answer

from viewing photographs
of the plane
as it sped down the runway.

It was clear
from these photographs

there was a very dynamic phase
to the fire whilst the aircraft
was at speed on the runway,

which produced this energetic,

turbulent, sort of blow-torching
type of fire, visually anyway,

trailing behind the aircraft.

A press photo
from the day of the crash
leads Protheroe to a new theory.

The photographs
of the aircraft that appeared
in the press

showed the left thrust reverser
deployed.

The general impression
that one got visually
from that photograph

was that the thrust reversers
had effectively
blow-torched fire

against the side
of the fuselage.

And that, if you like...

...was the explanation
as to why the fire
had penetrated so quickly.

That photograph
and the implications of it,
actually,

um... therefore loomed
quite large.

Stop!

There are several ways to bring
a speeding jetliner to a halt.

One is with the brakes.

Don't hammer the brakes.

Another is with the engine's
thrust reversers.

Thrust reversers
redirect the exhaust
from the jet engine forwards.

This helps slow the plane down.

It looked as though
the thrust reversers
had simply blown this big fire

on the left of the aircraft
against the...

directly onto the side
of the aircraft,

directly onto the rear fuselage.

That would explain why the fire
destroyed the cabin so quickly.

It now seems possible
that Captain Terrington
made the fire worse

by trying to slow
his plane down.

But Protheroe
has two good reasons
to doubt his theory.

One is the location
where charring
from the burning exhaust gas,

or efflux, was found.

The efflux impinges
on the fuselage further up,

closer to the roof...
the crown skins of the aircraft.

So actually...

the penetration
that we had low down
did not fit with that.

And the other reason is:

By the time the thrust reversers
were deployed,

the left engine
had already exploded.

But to act as a blowtorch,
the engine would've needed
considerable exhaust.

We did calculations to confirm
that the residual thrust
from that engine

would not have had the energy
to have this effect.

That confirmed that, uh,

the thrust reversers
couldn't actually
have played any role,

or significant role anyway,
in the fire's severity.

Clearly, something
other than the thrusters

had caused the fire
to spread so quickly.

Protheroe looks more closely
at the data.

After examining weather reports
from the day of the accident,
he finds the answer.

The wind was the main factor
that determined the severity
of the fire,

in terms of its attack
on the outside of the aircraft,

how rapidly it penetrated
the aircraft,

and it also affected
the conditions inside the cabin.

Believing he had blown a tire,

Captain Terrington made
a fateful decision.

Stopping. 28 Mike,
we are abandoning takeoff.

Well, when we heard the thud,

then we closed the throttles.

It was my assumption
that we were going
to turn off the runway,

clear the runway,
ask Air Traffic for an engineer
to come out and check the tires.

Like a highway,
an airport runway has a series
of exits.

Captain Terrington chose one
called Link Delta.

We got a fire on #1.

When we got
the additional information
of a fire warning,

the brain was already programmed
to carry out the, uh...

the stop.

The crew had been aware
that they had a fire,

but didn't really appreciate
at the time

the nature of the fire,
the severity of the fire.

So they had turned off
the runway.

Captain Terrington
turned his plane to the right
and brought it to a stop.

He couldn't have realized
that doing so would make
the problem far worse.

There was a crosswind,

a slight crosswind
from the left side
of the aircraft,

that was carrying the fire
that was burning from the fuel

that was pooled
underneath the left wing.

It carried that fire aft,
rearwards,

and to over and under
the rear fuselage,

in between the wing
and the tail plane.

The wind wrapped the fire
around the back of the plane...

...and into the cabin.

If there'd been no wind
at all,

I think the situation
would've been
very much more benign.

Investigators have discovered
how the fire started...

and the conditions
that caused it
to penetrate the cabin.

Now investigator Ed Trimble
must solve the biggest mystery

surrounding the Manchester accident.

Here we had an aircraft
which had aborted the takeoff...

...for good reason, had, uh...

...taxied off
and stopped in a taxiway...

...in an expeditious manner,
and yet...

...55 people
had lost their lives.

So there was a big question
as to...

precisely why
that had occurred.

Investigators learn
that most of the dead
were not found

in the worst-burned parts
of the plane.

Autopsies will point
to the real killer on Flight 28.

Of the 54 people
who died in the cabin,

only six had suffered
serious burns.

All the rest died
from smoke inhalation.

It seems the smoke in the cabin
was particularly lethal.

Survivors tell investigators
that the smoke was unbearable.

The smoke was really black
and... and it was...

it was almost touching you,

it was... it was...
it was really weird.

And they said the effect
of that was shocking.

That immediately you took
one breath of the smoke,

you began to feel debilitated

and you knew that if you took
another breath or two,
you weren't going to make it.

At the time
of the Manchester accident,

the effects of fire
on an airplane had been
well studied and understood.

But the effects of smoke
were not.

To figure out what made
the smoke so toxic,

Trimble decides
to recreate the fire
that burned on Flight 28.

We were trying to model
not only the gases
which were produced,

but also the kind
of threat levels
which were produced.

The smoke that filled the plane
was from materials

burning inside the cabin.

The foam in the seats,

the wool in the carpets
and the plastic overhead bins

all release poisonous fumes.

Those conditions are recreated
by burning those same materials.

Trimble discovers the passengers
on Flight 28 inhaled smoke

that contained a deadly blend
of poisonous gases...

...including high levels
of carbon monoxide
and hydrogen cyanide.

Now he desperately needs
to find out if there's any way

to protect airline passengers
from that kind of smoke.

It would seem to me...
pretty clear...

that unless we could protect
people's respiratory systems

from the assault
from such combustion gases...

...there was little
that we could do to improve

survival chances
from aircraft fires.

Over the course of five weeks,

investigators run dozens
of tests,

experimenting with different filters.

They burn nearly a quarter ton
of material

to create the necessary smoke.

Their dramatic conclusion:

It may have been possible
to save passengers' lives.

There was not the slightest
doubt in my mind
that in these situations,

in an aircraft cabin,
if it is being assaulted
by combustion gases...

...your chances of survival
are vastly improved

if you have, um...
smoke-hood protection.

British Airtours
Flight 28 had only enough
smoke hoods for the crew.

They were never used.

Trimble's research indicates
that smoke hoods for passengers
could've saved lives.

There were hoods available,

both of the filter type
and the breathable gas type,

which can provide
a very high level of protection
to people

in these circumstances.

Many of the passengers
on Flight 28 would've survived

with a few more minutes
of breathing time.

It was... it was in a blink
of an eye, you know, from...

...from the time, you know,
we stopped on the runway.

You know,
just within a few minutes,
it was all over, really.

A full Boeing 737
is designed to be evacuated
in less than two minutes.

So even without additional time,

more of the passengers
on Flight 28
should've been able to get off.

To discover why so many people
never made it off the plane,

investigators turn
to an unlikely source
for the answer.

Jump, jump, jump!

By law,
airplane manufacturers
must prove their planes

can be evacuated quickly
and safely.

When the 737 was introduced
in the UK,

Boeing demonstrated
that 130 people
could get off the plane

in just 75 seconds.

All public-transport aircraft
are certificated
to the same criteria,

and that is that the total
complement of passengers

must be capable of evacuating
from the aircraft

using half the exits
in the aircraft -

it's generally one side
or the other -

within a maximum of 90 seconds.

But 90 seconds
after Flight 28 came to a stop,

most of the passengers
were still on board.

The reason why the evacuation
in Manchester wasn't, uh...

achieved in 90 seconds

is because the conditions
in a real fire evacuation

are completely different
from the certification
conditions.

The certification
evacuation is conducted
in clear conditions,

with no smoke
that reduces vision
and overwhelms passengers.

Within minutes
of coming to a stop,

Flight 28 filled
with thick, black smoke.

A soon as the smoke
began to spill into the rear...

cabin and then flow forwards...

...essentially that induced
immediate panic in those...

who were so affected
by the smoke,
because their respiration...

I mean, the typical comment was:

"I took one breath of smoke
and I felt as though my lungs
were solidifying."

You can imagine,
under these conditions,
that people...

have got to get away
from the smoke.

And the people did this

by basically clamouring
over the seats and other people
in front of them.

In less than five minutes,

what should've been
a survivable accident
turned deadly.

To prevent future tragedies,

Britain's Civil Aviation
Authority decides to learn more
about people.

Helen Muir is a psychologist
and a leading expert

on how airplane design
can influence survival.

She's asked to study
the behaviour of passengers
on Flight 28

to figure out why so many died.

What we had to learn to do
was to design
the aircraft interior

so even if we had
what we might say

was dysfunctional behaviour
in totality,

we could accommodate
the needs of individuals

in their desperate rush
to get out.

Muir configures
a cabin to duplicate Flight 28

and fills it with volunteers.

Then, to have them act
as though the plane's on fire,

she offers money
to the first ones off.

And that produced behaviour
that was quite unbelievable.

People went over seats,
they went round past each other,
all sorts of things.

And indeed, when survivors from
the actual Manchester accident
came and saw the videos,

they said, "Yeah,
that's how it was."

The evacuation of Flight 28
was slowed by the fact

that passengers became jammed
in the bulkhead opening

separating the main cabin
from the galley.

Jump down the slide.

Investigators discover
the logjam was created

by the design of the Boeing 737.

The bulkhead opening
was 22.5 inches wide,

just enough for one person
to fit through.

But what they wanted to know
was how much wider
would they have to make it

for people not to get stopped
and blocked.

We were trying to do
as much as we could to recreate
the situation

which had happened
in Manchester, and then...

to systematically vary
the aircraft interior

to see what changes
would improve the situation
for passengers.

Muir's tests showed
the narrow bulkhead opening
created bottlenecks

that flight attendants
had to constantly clear.

Increasing the width
to 30 inches greatly improved
the movement of passengers.

But we showed,
through repeat testing,

that if you changed
the minimum gap
from 20 to 30 inches,

you would dramatically improve
the speed at which people
could get out,

and you'd reduce the likelihood
of people falling and slipping
and so on.

As a result
of Helen Muir's work,

a recommendation was made
to increase the space between
the bulkhead walls to 30 inches,

...and introduce strip lighting
to help guide passengers
to exits

even when they are blinded
by smoke.

Muir also found a way
to improve cabin safety
without redesigning the cabin.

Please sit down.

She conducted
research on the behaviour
of the cabin crew in emergencies

and found that passengers
get off a plane much faster
with a highly assertive crew.

Mind your head!

- Come on, this way!
- This way! Take it easy.

It's because we don't want
people really making
their own decisions.

We want people to do
exactly what the cabin crew
or the procedures state.

And we don't want
people hesitating,

particularly at the door.

Helen Muir's research
prompted manufacturers

to redesign cabins
to make them safer.

But one safety feature
remains controversial:

Smoke hoods.

Ed Trimble believes
they should be mandatory
on all commercial flights.

Without a doubt.
Without a doubt.

Helen Muir is less convinced.

She's studied how smoke hoods
affect passenger behaviour,

and is worried they would
slow down the orderly evacuation
of an airplane.

We know you've only got
literally...

...1.5 to 2 minutes
for everybody to get out.

What we don't want to have
is something
which is difficult to put on,

and so it slows people
getting down.

The most important lesson
of British Airtours Flight 28

is that seconds matter.

It's now universally accepted
that it takes 90 seconds

from the first sign of fire
before it becomes unsurvivable.

The passengers on Flight 28
lost valuable time

when the starboard-side door
jammed.

The investigators determined
that the slide mechanism
deployed too early,

preventing the door
from opening.

There was a flaw that led
the slide container's lid to jam

if the door is opened
too quickly.

After the Manchester accident,

Boeing quickly redesigned
the system
so that couldn't happen.

But the recommendations made
by the AAIB weren't adopted
quickly enough

to save lives six years later.

In 1991,

a Boeing 737 slammed
into another plane on the runway
in Los Angeles and caught fire.

Many of the 22 people who died
were overcome by smoke
before they could get out.

But in 2005, the crash
of an Air France jet in Toronto

showed how much has changed
since the Manchester accident.

All 309 people
got off that plane
in just 90 seconds.

No one died.

Some major changes
to commercial airliners...

Ah! Alright, the door's open!

...came about
because of a flight
that never left the ground.

That's the only way
I can resolve it,

with the death
of 55 of my passengers.

The fact that...

...flying is now safer.

I can't imagine anybody,
you know,

doesn't wish
that it hadn't happened.

You know,
despite what's been learned
and despite...

maybe the subsequent lives
that have been changed,
you know,

you'd give anything
for it not to have happened.

difuze