All language subtitles for Mayday.S09E08.Cracks.in.the.System.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

Miami Beach, Florida.

Sun, sand and calm blue seas.

But when a tourist points
his camera towards the sky,

he captures a scene of horror.

A plane is falling to the sea.

We have a code 4.
Code 4.
A plane down in the water.

As soon as I saw this,
I realized, I'm like: Oh, no,

this is Chalk's airplane
crashing.

The downed plane
is Chalk's Ocean Airways
Flight 101,

bound for the Bahamas.

Could it have been a collision
with an object?

Could it have been a fire?
Could it have actually been
a criminal act?

Let's notify the FBI.

The incredibly rare video
may hold the answers.

Can you enhance that for me?

An airline renowned for safety
has made a fatal error.

But it will take investigators
hundreds of hours
to finally uncover it.

Bingo.

Mayday, mayday.

The Port of Miami,
December the 19th, 2005.

Giant freighters
and ocean-going cruise ships
are a common sight.

But there's another,
much smaller craft
that's often seen in this port.

Chalk's Ocean Airways
flies seaplanes

in and out
of this busy waterway.

Today,
Flight 101 from Fort Lauderdale

is making a brief stopover here
on its way to the Bahamas.

- Feather propellers.
- Check.

Shut down engine #1.

Shutting down engine #1.

Chalk's flies
to two regular destinations,
both in the Bahamas.

Bimini, where Flight 101
is scheduled to land
this afternoon,

and Paradise Island.

Ladies and gentlemen,
this is your captain speaking.

We're just making
a short stopover here in Miami
to pick up a couple passengers.

We apologize for the delay.
We'll be on our way again soon.

- How many are we picking up?
- Just two. But they're VIPs.

For a small
community like Bimini,

Chalk's seaplanes
are a lifeline.

It's just so much easier
in the seaplane
to get to the north island,

where most
of the populations is,
than going to the airport.

So that was the main thing.
It was a convenience factor.

- Welcome aboard.
Can I see your boarding passes?
- Certainly.

Sergio Danguillecourt
is a Bacardi Rum executive.

He's the great-great-grandson
of the company's founder.

The family is well known
in the local Cuban community
for their anti-Castro politics.

He and his wife are flying
to the Bahamas to buy a yacht.

- The passengers settled in?
- We're all set.

Good afternoon, folks.

We'd like to welcome you
aboard Chalk's Ocean Airways
Flight 101 to Bimini.

Our travel time to Bimini
will be 25 minutes.

Hope you enjoy the flight.

Let's have the Start-Up
Checklist, please.

Roger.

Michele Marks
is in command of today's flight.

She was promoted to captain
earlier this year.

First Officer Paul DeSanctis
joined the airline
eight months ago.

- Starter on.
- Starter on.

This is his first flight
with Captain Marks.

All clear to taxi?

All clear.

The Grumman Mallard
is a twin-turboprop design.

It has a V-shaped hull
and underwing pontoons.

It's designed to carry
up to 17 passengers.

The plane has
retractable landing gear,

so it can operate
on either land or sea.

Gear coming up.

Takeoff on the Mallard,
depending on the days,

it could be a lot of fun
or a real challenge.

Weight and balance check.

We're good.

The Miami seaplane base
has no control tower.

The crew has to keep a lookout
for boat traffic as they taxi

through one of the busiest
ports in the world.

Taking off out of Miami
in the shipping channel,

it's kind of like trying
to take off
during rush-hour traffic.

You've got boat traffic,
wave traffic, the wind,
the airplane to deal with,

and everybody's going
different speeds,

and you're trying
to get up and go,

and navigate around everybody,
so it was always a handful.

Flight 101
will take off from X44,

a seaplane base near a channel
known as Government Cut.

- Prepare for takeoff.
- Roger. Ready to take off.

Both pilots have
their hand on the throttles.

It's to prevent the captain
from inadvertently pulling back
if the plane hits a wave.

Forty-five knots.

Fifty knots.

This is the moment
most passengers are paying for:

The takeoff.

Half speedboat, half plane,

it's a unique thrill.

Seventy-five knots.

Eighty knots.
For the pilots,

accelerating through the waves
is often the most difficult part
of the flight.

The airplane itself was...

really hard to fly
as far as on the water,
getting onto the step,

which was what we call
getting on a plane.

And in rough sea conditions
and in rough wave conditions,
it could be a real challenge.

But this takeoff goes smoothly.

Flight 101 is no longer a boat;

it's now a plane
enroute to Bimini.

It's 2:38 in the afternoon.

The plane's flight path
takes it past South Beach...

...where sunbathers and surfers
are out in force.

Just less than a minute
into the flight,

the Grumman Mallard is climbing
through 500 feet,

well below the clouds.

Then...

...the plane rolls violently
and dives.

The pilots barely have time
to register what's happening.

Their struggles are in vain.

By chance,

a tourist from New York catches
Flight 101's final moments
on his camera.

Sixty seconds after takeoff,
the plane slams into the ocean.

Lucas Bocanegra is a lifeguard
stationed on South Beach,

near the Chalk's Ocean Airways
sea lane.

As soon as I saw this,

I realized... I'm, like: Oh, no,
this is Chalk's airplane
crashing.

We have a code 4.
Code 4.
A plane down in the water.

This is Lucas.
We're launching the jet-ski.

The two lifeguards
are the first rescuers
to go looking for the plane.

We drove as fast as we could
to the scene of the accident.

There were a lot of things
coming through my head.
I was nervous, scared,

I was, uh,
kind of full of adrenaline.

We wanted to go in
and try to rescue
as many people as we could,

but at the same time,
we've never trained
for a situation like this.

As soon as we turned
Government Cut
at those jetty rocks,

we noticed it was very calm,
very quiet.

It wasn't like the ocean side,
where it was, uh, very rough.

There was no waves.
It was very, uh,
kind of very eerie.

At first,

Lucas Bocanegra finds no sign
of Flight 101
or any of the passengers.

Little by little, we started
seeing debris float up
onto the surface of the water.

And we saw some chairs,
some luggage here and there.
And, uh...

suddenly we noticed
there was a body in the water.

As soon as we put the body
on our jet-ski,

we realized that,
from his injuries,
there was nothing we could do.

From there, it was just try
to recover as many bodies.

You know, bring them back
for their families.

News crews swarm the beach.

Chalk's Flight 101
plummeted into the channel

in full view of tourists
lining Miami Beach.

In a fraction of a second,
the whole plane was engulfed
in flames.

Black smoke
and then an explosion.
Pure fire in the sky.

It was so surreal.
We couldn't believe
we actually witnessed that.

Chopper 4 over the wreckage
as Miami Beach Coast Guard
look for any survivors.

But the effort is futile.

We retrieved
some of the bodies,
but we are unable to, uh,

find anyone that had survived.

All 20 people
on board are dead.

Including pilots Paul DeSanctis
and Michele Marks.

The residents of Bimini
are devastated
by the horrific news.

I was very sad for the crew
and the friends
that I had lost on the airplane.

You never expect an accident
to actually happen.

And to see that on television
like I did,

it was very, very sad.

In Washington,

senior NTSB investigator
Bill English is put on the case.

I was just in my office
doing some routine paperwork
for something else,

and the director stuck
his head around and the corner
and said,

"There's been an accident."
And I said, "Well, what is it?"

And he mentioned
a Grumman Mallard.

So I immediately knew
it had to be Chalk's.

Within hours,
investigators
are at the crash site...

...where 19 bodies
have been recovered.

One is still missing.

I was very familiar
with Chalk's Airways.

I'm a seaplane-rated pilot
myself,

and there is the reputation,
the legend of Chalk's Airways,

the oldest
continuously operating airline.

Chalk's has
a long and rich history.

The airline was founded in 1917.

During the Prohibition era,
passenger lists included
notorious rumrunners.

And later,
Hollywood movie stars.

Chalk's planes even patrolled
for German U-boats
during World War II.

The novelty
of flying at Chalk's
was just all that history,

all the people that have gone.

And it was really a great place
to work for that.

The Grumman Mallard
flying boat that crashed
was built in 1947.

Chalk's Ocean Airways
is the only airline

that uses Mallards
to transport passengers.

They're not really
a mainstream type of airplane,

and so there's always
that nostalgia about them.

Salvage crews find
the plane's black box.

Investigators send it
to the NTSB in Washington.

The box promises to reveal
critical information
about what the pilots were doing

in the seconds leading up
to the tragic mid-air disaster.

In any investigation,

the flight-data recorder
and the cockpit voice recorder
are a great desire.

The more data, the better.
We can always learn something.

But Bill English
knows he isn't going to get
all the data he wants.

Okay, thanks.

The only recorder
onboard the Mallard

was a cockpit voice recorder,
or CVR.

Most airline aircrafts
have two flight recorders.

The flight data recorder,
depending on the aircraft,

will record all sorts of...
parameters of the flight:

altitude, airspeed,
control positions and so on.

The Chalk's airplane
was not equipped
with a flight-data recorder.

It did have
a cockpit voice recorder.

Though the lack
of flight data
is a big disappointment,

media coverage of the crash
gives investigators
a very rare piece of evidence.

Authorities revealed
that the final seconds
of Flight 101

were captured on amateur video.

The dramatic footage was shot
by a tourist on South Beach.

Let's get a copy
of that video.

Okay, let's see it.

The video
only captured the final seconds
of the plane crash,

but it confirms
eyewitness reports that a wing
ripped off in mid-air.

Can you enhance that for me?

The video showed the wing
just after separation
from the aircraft,

the main part of the aircraft
fuselage, uh,

rolling off
in the other direction,

and the fire and smoke
starting from that.

It was quite startling
that the wing would fall off
on this plane.

It was a beautiful day,

the water wasn't rough
on the takeoff;

and all of a sudden,
this wing just dropped off.

It must've been absolutely, uh, devastating.

However,
the video can't reveal
why the wing came off.

Answers to that question
may lie at the crash site,

where salvage crews
are finishing their recovery
of the wreckage of Flight 101.

The right wing is found separate
from the plane,
but largely intact.

Wings falling off aircraft,
in a modern-day situations,

is a very rare, extreme event,

and there's only been
a few cases of them

in the past 20 or 30 years.

In Washington,
another type of examination
is already underway.

At the NTSB lab,

technicians are busy
analyzing the Mallard's
cockpit-voice-recorder tape.

The cockpit voice recorder,
CVR,

which does
what it sounds like,

records the pilots' voices
talking to each other
or on the microphones.

But the tape is a jumble
of voices and sounds.

Technicians can't retrieve
any useful information.

It turned out
that the erase-head function -

it's just like a tape recorder
most people are familiar with -
it didn't erase the old stuff.

So every subsequent flight
kept getting recorded over
and over and over again,

and just became a muddled sound,

and it wasn't, uh,
wasn't audible to us,
or useful.

It's another setback.

Okay, let's revisit this again
because we're running out
of options here.

Investigators have
fewer and fewer tools
to work with.

Bill English considers
the possibility

that Flight 101 hit turbulence
so violent

that it tore the plane apart.

But the weather
on the day of the crash
doesn't support that theory.

There were no storms
that could've caused
such severe turbulence.

Clearly, something else
had torn this plane apart.

There's a possibility
the Mallard collided
with something in the water

before takeoff.

Seaplanes don't take off
of a conventional runway.

They're in water,
where there could be things
like logs or other debris,

which could potentially cause
structural issues
with an aircraft.

But before they can reach
a conclusion on that theory,

investigators consider
some other intriguing evidence.

It's an urgent advisory
issued by the Federal
Aviation Administration,

or FAA.

It warns that,
due to a faulty part,

the propellers on the Mallard
could come off during flight.

You're kidding me.

Something...
such as a blade separation,

losing part of the propeller,
could cause a great structural
load on the aircraft.

English now has a solid lead.

But his team is still missing
the evidence they need
to prove their case.

The entire island
is devastated
by the loss of life

as investigators searching
for answers

wait for more wreckage
to be pulled from the sea.

In the aftermath
of the crash,

Chalk's Ocean Airways grounds
its remaining fleet
of four Grumman Mallards.

At the NTSB's
Miami command post,

they're working to identify
various plane fragments
and other debris from the crash.

We started out
with the wing itself
that separated,

the spar,
which is the main part
of the structure of the wing,

and any of the other
fractured surfaces,

looking for obvious
initiation factors.

They carefully examine
the propellers,

looking for evidence
that might confirm suspicions
raised by the FAA advisory.

But it's another dead end.

We were able to determine
all the blades were attached,

and the bending that we saw
was the expected pattern
from proper operation

when those blades hit the water.

Once again,
they're back to square one.

This is what I want you
to look at.

Investigators focus
their attention
on the fractured wing.

They've noticed sooting
on parts of it.

It's evidence
of a very rapid fire.

We want to find anything
that could be
the initiating factor

for the wing separation.

Could it have been a collision
with an object?
Could it have been a fire?

Could it have actually been
a criminal act?

The burn marks
raise a sinister possibility:

An explosion. A bomb.

This now falls outside
the NTSB's area of expertise
and authority.

Let's notify the FBI.

The FBI helps us in many
of our investigations,

and we'll utilize
some of their experts

to rule out terrorism
or a criminal act.

If it was a bomb
that brought down Flight 101,

a likely target would've been
one of the 18 passengers.

Thanks for coming in.
We're gonna need your help
on this.

One name stands out
on the passenger manifest:

Sergio Danguillecourt.

- Welcome aboard.
Can I see your boarding passes?
- Certainly.

There are rumours
on the internet that the crash
was an assassination plot

and Danguillecourt
was the target.

His family made a fortune
in pre-Castro Cuba.

They were so opposed
to Fidel Castro's regime

that they had allegedly
supported clandestine attempts

to overthrow
his Communist government.

This is your copy. Alright?
Now, there's something
I wanted to show you.

We can't tell if it's just soot
or it's explosive residue.

A bomb will leave
chemical traces

and distinctive patterns
in the torn metal.

FBI technicians are specially
trained to detect them.

The samples from the wreckage
will be tested at FBI labs
in Quantico, Virginia.

Four days after the accident,

salvage crews are still
bringing in wing fragments
found at the crash site.

So we need everything
that looks like it'd come
from the right wing.

Can we get some light over here?

Overstress.

Most of the damage they see
is from overstress fractures,

areas where the metal
was literally ripped apart
when the wing tore off.

Come here.

That's the same.

When metal is suddenly stressed
to the point of breaking,

the fracture leaves
a very distinctive rough edge.

It's easy to distinguish it
from fractures that have
developed slowly over time.

Cut this from here to here
and get it to Clint
in Washington.

As we started to examine
the right wing, spar,

and other components on scene
at the Coast Guard station
or the seaplane base,

this was a visual examination
there.

We didn't have
the sophisticated lab tools
that we have at headquarters.

They identify parts
to be shipped to the lab
in Washington,

where they hope closer
inspection will reveal exactly
what went wrong with the wing.

Hey, Clint?

Clint, we're sending you as much
of the wing as we have your way.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I'm still waiting
for that report.

The results
from the FBI explosives test
come in.

A mid-air bombing assassination
could explain everything.

But there is no explosive
residue on the wreckage.

Okay, so that rules that out.

Structural failure
is now the chief suspect

in the downing
of Chalk's Flight 101.

Well, that's all that's left.

That's tomorrow.

It was obvious the airplane
had a catastrophic
structural failure.

So we needed to find out
the cause,

the initiating factor
of that structural failure.

He needs to know
more about the long history

of this particular
Grumman Mallard.

It's very typical
in any accident investigation:

We want to look
at the maintenance history
of an aircraft.

For an aircraft
that's 60 years old,
that's even more so important.

It takes days
to comb through the 28 boxes
of old records.

We want to make sure
we can develop an entire history
of this aircraft,

what sort of chronic problems
may have shown up

in the maintenance
of the aircraft,

and what types of work
had been done on any...

any of the factors that looked
likely to be involved.

Clint Crookshanks
is a structures investigator
for the NTSB.

When we go
into an investigation,

we try to go in
with a very open mind

and look at the wreckage
and let it tell the story
for what happened.

We wanted to look at every piece
that broke on the right wing

to determine if this was a...
age-related failure

or if it was something
that was caused
by a structural overload.

As with most aircraft,

the Mallard's wings
are built from aluminum alloy.

The spars run the length
of each wing.

In between the spars
are stringers
that give added support.

Together, these parts
make up the wing box,

which also doubles
as a fuel tank.

And then the skin is overtop
of all that structure

to kind of give a smooth,
aerodynamic look to the wing.

All of these together work
to carry the flight loads

that the wing
is designed to carry.

Once you compromise one piece
of that structure,

the ability to carry
the normal flight loads
has been compromised.

Thanks.

Over the years,
the wing box had been repaired
many times.

Chalk's mechanics had patched up
areas damaged by corrosion...

...which is not unusual
for an aging aircraft,

especially a seaplane.

The fact that they land
on water means that
their takeoff and landing loads

are different than you would
have on a land-based airplane.

Also, they're always in water,

and the corrosive effects
of water are going to happen
more readily on those airplanes.

But when investigators examine
the rest of the Chalk's fleet,

they find that the Mallards
are in far worse shape
than they imagined.

Corrosion repairs.

Corrosion. Corrosion,

corrosion, corrosion.

Corrosion repairs.

Lots of 'em.

The accident airplane
and the other airplanes
in Chalk's fleet

were rife
with maintenance issues.

Corrosion was rampant
on all the airplanes.

There was evidence
of shoddy maintenance practices
on all of their other airplanes.

Many, many of the repairs...

exhibited extremely poor
workmanship and quality;

double,
triple drilling of holes;

excessive grinding of corrosion,

uh, scars on the material.

And this involved
the structural repairs

that were made to the aircraft
over the past few years.

Crookshanks's
attention is drawn to a section
of the lower right wing.

There is a metal patch,

called a doubler,
on the surface
of the wing's skin.

A doubler is simply
a sheet of metal
that goes overtop of the skin,

and it acts as a load transfer,
it acts as a second piece
of skin to patch the crack.

It's kind of like a patch
on a pair of jeans.

This is a big repair job.

You sure we don't have anything
on this?

It's an intriguing discovery.

The patch is located
exactly where the wing broke off
from the rest of the plane.

When he takes a closer look
at this section of the wing,

Crookshanks notices
the edges are smooth and shiny,

totally unlike the rough edges
he's been seeing
on other debris.

We gotta see
what's under this.

This crack
is not from overstress.

Instead, Crookshanks suspects
it developed over many years
as the result of metal fatigue.

Metal fatigue is a process
by which any piece of metal,

a wing spar or anything,

is repetitively loaded
and unloaded.

You can think of it as bending
a paperclip back and forth,
and everyone's done this,

and after a while,
it eventually breaks.

Metal fatigue in the wings

is caused by the stress
of flight over the lifetime
of the aircraft.

In the case of this aircraft,
every time it took off,
the wing is loaded.

That's lift
that gets the airplane
up into the air.

Every time it lands,
the wing is now unloaded,

and there's no more stress
on the wing structure anymore.

That's just like bending
that paperclip back and forth.

Crookshanks is eager
to find out what's underneath
the metal patch.

Okay, let's see
what this doubler's hiding.

They find
even more metal fatigue.

Deep cracks cut across the wing.

The extent of the damage
is staggering.

A crack 40 centimetres long.

Man, oh, man.

Investigating further,

Crookshanks makes
another disturbing find.

Three machine holes
in the skin
forward of the leading edge.

All three appear
to be stop drill holes.

The holes indicate
that Chalk's mechanics
had been trying

to stop the crack
from spreading further.

Years earlier,

a mechanic had spotted the crack
on the lower surface
of the wing.

He repaired it
by drilling a hole
in the path of the crack.

It's called a stop drill hole.

The end of a crack,

you could see
even with the naked eye,
is sharp, it comes to a point.

That tends to want
to develop a crack more.

By drilling a hole
at the end of the crack,

that would spread out
the stress,

and the idea is to stop
the growth of the crack there.

But the stop drill holes
didn't work.

An attempt was made
to repair that skin
on three different occasions

by stop drilling.

Even as mechanics
put in more holes,
the crack kept growing.

After the third stop drill,

an attempt was made
to further repair the wing

by attaching doublers
on the interior and exterior
surface of the skin.

But the doublers
didn't work either.

The crack on the plane's skin
continued to grow.

Investigators now know
the right wing was damaged

long before the day
of the accident.

What they don't understand
is why the crack
could not be stopped.

Approved?
But a glimmer
of an answer comes

when they learn the plane
was sending out warning signs

of a deeper,
more serious problem.

The Chalk's airplane
involved in the accident

was showing evidence
of chronic fuel leaks
for many years.

According to the log,

fuel leaks from the right wing
were repaired again and again.

But they kept happening.

The crews started to notice
repeated fuel leaks

during standard operations,

and we tried to bring it up
to the attention of management
just for our concerns.

Just two days before the crash,
it happened again.

While doing routine maintenance
on the Mallard,

a mechanic came across fuel
dripping from the right wing.

They always addressed
the problem with trying
to reseal the fuel tanks,

or trying to fix whatever
problem they thought they had.

It always seemed to be
a reoccurring issue.

The procedure
for plugging a leak

was to apply a chemical sealant
to the inside
of the empty fuel tank.

The sealant would take a day
to dry.

Then the plane
could be refuelled
and returned to service.

The leaks should've been a clue

that the crack
in the wing skin
was just the tip of the iceberg,

that there was a much more
dangerous problem

with the wing's
interior structure.

Fuel leaks
in this particular aircraft

are indicative of a problem
with the wing structure.

In fact, Grumman put out a...
service bulletin back in 1963

that warned mechanics
chronic fuel leaks
are an indicator

of a structural issue
with the aircraft.

Okay, let's what we got here.

Crookshanks examines
the pieces that make up
the right fuel tank.

Some kind of sealant.

He wonders
why the fuel leaks persisted

in spite of the constant efforts
to repair them.

Hand me that scraper, please.
Thank you.

Beneath the layers of sealant,
he finds his answer.

Bingo.

Cracks in a critical support beam
called a Z-stringer.

It's the piece
that the plane's skin
was directly attached to.

Alright. Will you finish
cleaning this off,
then get some pictures, okay?

Thank you.

Crookshanks finds evidence

that Chalk's mechanics had tried
to repair the stringer.

It appears that they did
some grinding on this Z-stringer
to remove a fatigue crack.

However, they never went back in
and reinspected that area.

Instead, they only applied
chemical sealant to the area

to make it leak-proof.

And in the process,
concealed the damage.

Chalk's made repeated efforts
to repair the airplane

by stop-drilling
the wing-skin cracks,

adding doublers
overtop of the cracks,

but they never addressed
the root of the problem,
which is the cracked Z-stringer.

The reason they couldn't address
the Z-stringer is it was covered
in fuel-tank sealant.

The broken Z-stringer
weakened the entire wing.

Now with every takeoff
and landing,

the plane's skin was absorbing
the forces.

Over time,
the skin began to crack,
as well.

The final outcome
was inevitable.

The fatigue cracking
reached critical length,

and the wing separated
from the airplane.

Investigators conclude
that a hidden crack

in a key component
of the right wing

led to the devastating crash
of Flight 101.

Chalk's failure to identify
such a serious problem

now forces investigators
to re-examine
the airline's long history.

Chalk's Ocean Airways
had an image

as one of the safest airlines
in the world.

Despite the age of their fleet,

the airline had
an outstanding record of safety
dating back almost 90 years.

Chalk's safety record
was great.

They had never lost a passenger
in all their years of operation.

Chalk was an old,
established company,

but it seems to me
that somewhere along the line,

the management
and the quality of the work done

had slipped quite a bit
from in the past years.

What have you got
on the financial state
of this company?

Investigators are beginning to suspect

that the company's reputation
for safety

may have been undermined
in recent years
by money problems.

Financial issues
in an airline,

especially a small carrier
like this,

can manifest themselves
in many ways.

Personnel are sometimes
one of the first things to go.

A search
of Chalk's financial history
uncovers some trouble.

In the 1980s,
Chalk's went through
a string of owners

before going bankrupt in 1999.

The airline was revived
by a Miami businessman,

but it kept losing money.

Just a few months
before the crash,

the last attempt to sell
the business fell through.

Not doing so well.

It wasn't a secret
that we were having
financial difficulty.

The pilots had taken pay cuts
and the captains
had taken concessions,

and we downsized a lot
as far as personnel.

It wasn't just personnel
that felt the pinch.

It was difficult for Chalk's
to find spare parts
and do some of their repairs.

Chalk's had a number
of other un-flyable aircraft
that they owned

that they would cannibalize
for spare parts.

There were only maybe 50
or 55 aircraft that were built.

In that case,
the original manufacturer,
Grumman,

was no longer in production
of that aircraft,

they no longer supplied parts.

The airline's
deteriorating health

and the shortage of spare parts
had a direct impact on safety.

There's so much regulation
and there's so much necessity
to make the airplane fly,

it's hard to skimp
on maintenance
and not impact reliability.

And if you don't have
reliability,

then you're just spiralling
downhill.

But no matter
how tight the finances were,
as a commercial airline,

Chalk's should've been closely
monitored by the Federal
Aviation Administration.

In fact, the FAA did assign
an inspector to work closely
with Chalk's.

The FAA inspector,

which is called a Principal
Maintenance Inspector,

was responsible
for the oversight
of the maintenance program

as carried out by Chalk.

The inspector was aware
the plane was suffering

from chronic fuel leaks.

And yet, inexplicably,

he gave Chalk's
a clean bill of health

just two months
before the crash.

What was this guy doing?

Investigators are at a loss
to explain

why the FAA inspector
didn't pick up on warning signs

the Chalk's seaplane
was giving off.

The fact that Chalk
was an old, established carrier,

maybe they just accepted:

Well, there's only two
or three planes,
it's a small operation...

...they only fly
during the nice weather,

and, uh...

they're good old boys
over there,

they know what they're doing.

In effect,
the FAA didn't step back

and take a look at that forest
for the trees

and find out
just what's going on
in the maintenance program

with these Chalk's aircraft.

The FAA may not have found fault
with Chalk's,

but it turns out
that several people
very close to the airline did.

We did talk to this group
of pilots who had left Chalk's
prior to the accident.

And every single one of them
did have some story

about maintenance aspects
on their aircraft.

Whether it had to do
with fuel leaks
or other maintenance aspects,

they all had some...

level of concern about the way
Chalk's was taking care
of these very old airplanes.

In fact,
the pilots were so concerned,

that in the year
leading up to the crash,

many of them met
to discuss the problem
of declining maintenance.

The captains of the company
decided it would be best for us
to get together as a group,

discuss the issues that we had,
to try to get
our concerns addressed.

One major issue
that had happened,

we had an elevator cable
that had snapped in flight,

and the crew luckily was able
to get the airplane down

using power
and different settings
and shifting people.

But in most scenarios,
that would've been an accident
in itself.

In aviation,
there's error chains
that they talk about,

and if you keep compiling
one link after another,

it's only a matter of time
before an accident will occur.

And from my point of view,

I thought that if they kept
going down the same road
that they were going down,

something could happen.

Eventually,
Captain Weber decided
he'd seen enough close calls.

My turning point,
and why I decided
to leave Chalk's,

was I just had seen too many
things in the recent months,

too many mechanical issues
that were major issues
in my mind.

And I had three engine failures
myself that year.

And I had a wife at home
that was pregnant.

I had lost I guess my confidence
in the company's ability
or the airplane,

and I had just had enough.

The NTSB's report
on the crash of Flight 101

harshly criticizes the FAA

for not detecting growing
maintenance and financial
problems at Chalk's.

Had the maintenance program
or the FAA stepped back
and said,

"These aircraft need more
than just a one-time fix,

they need something
much deeper than this,"

the accident probably
would not have happened.

It also uncovers
a loophole in the FAA's
aging aircraft regulations,

which require extra inspections
for older planes.

But those rules didn't apply
to Mallards.

The Grumman Mallard
was manufactured in 1947.

It only carried 17 passengers,

and it was not
a transport-category airplane.

Therefore, it was exempt from
the supplemental inspections.

What we have here
is the FAA has made
an aging airplane safety rule

and they've exempted the oldest
airplanes in the fleet.

The NTSB recommends
that the FAA expand
its oversight of aging planes.

When we determine
the probable cause
of an air crash,

the point is to do this

so that similar accidents
won't happen again
in the future.

I think we've used this accident

to point towards...

the industry and the FAA

to make sure they take a look
at the overall picture

of what's going on
at an air carrier.

Flight 101 spelled the end
of Chalk's Ocean Airways.

A few months after the report
was released,

the airline shut down.

There was a lot of history
and a lot of family, community,

involved with the passengers
as well as the people
in the airline.

So to see the whole airline
and everything else kind of go
down with the airplane

is additionally emotional...

for everybody
that ever worked there
or ever loved the airplanes.

difuze