South African Airways Flight 295, flown by a Boeing 747 named Helderberg (Afrikaans: Bright Mountain or Clear Mountain, a mountain range in the SW Cape Province), was a commercial flight that suffered a catastrophic in-flight fire in the cargo area and crashed into the Indian Ocean east of Mauritius on 28 November 1987, killing everyone on board. An extensive salvage operation was mounted to try to recover the flight data recorders, one of which was recovered from a depth of 4,900 metres (16,100 ft)â€"the deepest successful salvage operation ever conducted. The official inquiry, headed by Judge Cecil Margo, was unable to determine the cause of the fire, leading to a number of conspiracy theories being advanced in the following years.
History of the flight
South African Airways Flight 295 was a Boeing 747-244B Combi, named The Helderberg (registration ZS-SAS; serial number 22171) that was delivered to the airline in 1980. The aircraft took off on 27 November 1987 from Taipei Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, on a flight to Johannesburg via Mauritius. Dawie Uys served as the captain of the flight.
The Boeing 747-244B Combi is a variant of the aircraft that permits the mixing of passengers and airfreight on the main deck according to load factors on any given route and Class B cargo compartment regulations. Flight 295 had 140 passengers and six pallets of cargo on the main deck. The master waybills stated that 47,000 kilograms (104,000Â lb) of baggage and cargo were loaded on the plane. A Taiwanese customs official performed a surprise inspection of some of the cargo; he did not find any cargo that could be characterised as suspicious.
The flight crew consisted of 49-year-old Captain Dawie Uys (who had 13,843 flight hours), 36-year-old First Officer David Attwell (who had 7,362 flight hours), 37-year-old Relief First Officer Geoffrey Birchall (who had 8,749 flight hours), 45-year-old Flight Engineer Giuseppe Bellagarda (who had 7,804 flight hours), and 34-year-old Relief Flight Engineer Alan Daniel (who had 1,595 flight hours).
Thirty-four minutes after departure, the flight contacted Hong Kong air traffic control to obtain clearance from waypoint ELATO (22°19′N 117°30′E) to ISBAN. A position report was made over ELATO at 15:03:25, followed by waypoints SUNEK at 15:53:52, ADMARK at 16:09:54 and SUKAR (12°22′N 110°54′E) at 16:34:47. The aircraft made a routine report to the South African Airways base at Jan Smuts (ZUR) at 15:55:18.
At some point during the flight, a fire developed in the cargo section on the main deck; the fire was probably not extinguished before impact. The 'smoke evacuation' checklist calls for the aircraft to be depressurised, and for two of the cabin doors to be opened. No evidence exists that the checklist was followed, or the doors opened. A crew member might have gone into the cargo hold to try to fight the fire. A charged fire extinguisher was later recovered from the wreckage on which investigators found molten metal.
The following communication was recorded with Mauritius air traffic control, located at Plaisance Airport:
After communication of flight 295 is lost for 36 minutes, at 00:44 (04:44 local time), Air Traffic Control at Mauritius formally declared an emergency.
Accident scene
When the Helderberg last informed Mauritian air traffic control of its position, its report was incorrectly understood to be relative to the airport rather than its next waypoint, which caused the subsequent search to be concentrated too close to Mauritius. The United States Navy sent P-3 Orion aircraft from Diego Garcia, which were used to conduct immediate search and rescue operations in conjunction with the French Navy. By the time the first surface debris was located 12 hours after impact, it had drifted considerably from the impact location. Oil slicks and eight bodies showing signs of extreme trauma appeared in the water. All 140 passengers and 19 crew on the manifest were killed.
The South African Navy sent the SAS Tafelberg and the SAS Jim Fouche to assist in the recovery of debris and remains. The ocean tugs John Ross and Wolraad Woltemade also attended the scene, along with the Department of Environment Affairs vessels RS Africana and RS Sonne
Investigation
Rennie Van Zyl, the head South African investigator, examined three wristwatches from the baggage recovered from the surface; two of the watches were still running according to Taiwan time. Van Zyl deduced the approximate time of impact from the stopped watch. The aircraft crashed at 00:07:00, around three minutes after the last communication with air traffic control. Immediately after the crash, the press and public opinion suspected that terrorism brought down the Helderberg. South African Airways was perceived as representing the South African apartheid government as the airline was government-owned, and airline offices around the world had been vandalised. Experts searched for indicators of an explosion on the initial pieces of wreckage discovered, such as surface pitting, impact cavities and spatter cavities caused by white hot fragments from explosive devices that strike and melt metal alloys found in aircraft structures. Experts found none of this evidence. The investigators drew blood samples from bodies and found that the bodies had soot in their tracheae.
The South Africans mounted an underwater search, named Operation Resolve, to try to locate the wreckage. The pingers attached to the flight data recorders were not designed for deep ocean use; nevertheless, a two-month-long sonar search for the pingers was carried out before the effort was abandoned on 8 January 1988 when the pingers were known to have stopped transmitting. Steadfast Oceaneering, a specialist deep ocean recovery company in the USA, was contracted at great expense to find the site and recover the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. The search area is described as being comparable in size to that of the RMS Titanic, with the water at 5,000 metres (16,000Â ft) being considerably deeper than any previously successful salvage operation. The wreckage was found within two days of the sonar search of the area commencing.
Three debris fields were found: 19°10′30″S 59°38′0″E, 19°9′53″S 59°38′32″E and 19°9′15″S 59°37′25″E. These locations are 1.5 km (0.93 mi), 2.3 km (1.4 mi) and 2.5 km (1.6 mi) apart, which suggested that the fuselage broke up before impact. On 6 January 1989, the cockpit voice recorder was salvaged successfully from a record depth of 4,900 metres (16,100 ft) by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Gemini, but the flight data recorder was never found.
Van Zyl took the voice recorder to the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC, to show his goodwill and to ensure neutral observers. Van Zyl believes that if he kept the CVR in South Africa he could have been accused of covering up the truth. At the NTSB, Van Zyl felt frustration that the degraded CVR, which had been in the deep ocean for fourteen months, did not initially yield any useful information. Around 28 minutes into the recording the CVR indicated that the fire alarm sounded. Fourteen seconds after the fire alarm, the circuit breakers began to pop. Investigators believe that around 80 circuit breakers failed. The CVR cable failed 81 seconds after the alarm. The recording revealed the extent of the fire.
Van Zyl discovered that the front-right pallet was the "seat" of the fire. The manifest said that pallet mostly comprised computers in polystyrene packaging. The investigators said that the localised fire likely came in contact with the packaging and produced gases that accumulated near the ceiling. They also said that gases ignited into a flash fire that affected the entire cargo hold. The cargo fire of Flight 295 did not burn lower than one metre above the cargo floor. The walls and ceiling of the cargo hold received severe fire damage. Van Zyl ended his investigation without discovering why the fire started.
Margo commission
An official commission of inquiry was chaired by Judge Cecil Margo, with co-operation from the aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, and the United States National Transportation Safety Board.
The official report determined that while the Helderberg was over the Indian Ocean, a fire had occurred in the main deck cargo hold, originating in the front right-hand cargo pallet. Aircraft parts recovered from the ocean floor showed fire damage in temperatures over 300 °C (572 °F); tests showed that temperatures of 600 °C (1,112 °F) would have been required to melt a carbon-fibre tennis racket recovered from the crash site, leading Boeing specialist Fred Bereswill to speculate that an oxidant such as ammonium perchlorate was present. The reason for the loss was not specified, but two possibilities were detailed in the official report: Firstly, that the crew became incapacitated due to smoke penetration into the cockpit. Secondly, that the fire weakened the structure and the tail separated leading to impact with the ocean. The commission concluded that it was impossible to apportion blame to anyone for the fire. The manufacturer is quoted in the report as having "contested" any scenario that involved a break-up of the aircraft and thus the commission did no more than mention the two possible scenarios in its final report as incidental to the primary cause of the accident.
The commission determined that the primary cause of the aircraft's loss was that fire detection and suppression facilities in class B cargo bays (the type used aboard the 747-200 Combi) were inadequate. The accident alerted aviation authorities worldwide to the fact that the regulations regarding class B bays had lagged far behind the growth in capacity of such cargo bays. The exact source of ignition was never determined, but the report concluded that sufficient evidence was found to confirm that the fire had burned for some time and that it might have caused structural damage.
Combi design
The crash was the first fire incident on the 747 Combi and one of few fires on widebody aircraft. Fred Bereswill, the investigator from Boeing, characterised the Flight 295 fire as significant for this reason. Barry Strauch of the NTSB visited Boeing's headquarters to inquire about the Combi's design. Boeing's fire test in the Combi models did not accurately match the conditions of the Helderberg's cargo hold; in accordance with federal US rules, the Boeing test involved setting a bale of tobacco leaves ablaze. The fire stayed within the cargo hold. The air in the passenger cabin was designed to have a marginally higher pressure than cargo area hold, so if a crew member opened the door to the cargo hold, the air from the passenger cabin would flow into the cargo hold, stopping any smoke or gases from exiting through the door.
Investigators devised a new test involving a cargo hold with conditions similar to the conditions of Flight 295; the plastic covers and extra pallets provided fuel for the fire, which would spread quickly before generating enough smoke to activate smoke alarms. The hotter flame achieved in the new test heated the air in the cargo hold. This heated air was more pressured than normal, and overcame the pressure differential between the cargo hold and the passenger cabin. When the door between the passenger and cargo holds was open, smoke and gases therefore flowed into the passenger cabin.
The test as well as evidence from the accident site proved to the investigators that the design of the Boeing 747 Combi did not provide enough fire protection to the passengers. The FAA confirmed this finding in 1993 with its own series of tests.
After the accident, South African Airways discontinued use of the Combi and the Federal Aviation Administration introduced new regulations in 1993 specifying that manual fire fighting must not be the primary means of fire suppression in the cargo compartment of the main deck. Complying with these new standards required weight increases, which made the 747 Combi economically unviable on some routes. Nevertheless the 747 Combi remained in the 747 product line up until 2002, when the last 747-400 Combi was delivered to KLM.
Conspiracy theories
In January 1992, the journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society reported that the inquiry into the in-flight fire that destroyed SAA Flight 295 might be reopened because the airline had allegedly confirmed that its passenger jets had carried cargo for Armscor, a South African arms agency. The RAeS journal, Aerospace, asserted: "It is known that the crew and passengers were overcome by a main deck cargo fire, and the ignition of missile rocket fuel is one cause now under suspicion." A complaint against the newspaper that first published the allegations, Weekend Star, was lodged by Armscor.
However the inquiry was not reopened, and this might have spawned a number of conspiracy theories concerning the nature of the cargo that caused the fire, which subsequently increased public doubts about the outcome of the initial inquiry. Examples of such theories include:
- The SADF was smuggling the hoax substance red mercury on the flight for its atomic bomb project.
- Reports from the Project Coast investigation suggested there was a waybill showing that 300Â grams of activated carbon had been placed on board the Helderberg, leading to speculation that this substance had caused the fire.
The television show Carte Blanche dedicated an investigation to a number of these allegations.
A South African government chemist examined a microscopic particle on the nylon netting next to the front-right pallet on Flight 295. The chemist found that the airflow patterns on the iron suggested that it travelled at a high velocity while in a molten state; therefore the fire on Flight 295 may have not been a flash fire triggered by packaging. Fred Bereswill, the investigator from Boeing, said that this would suggest that the source of the fire would have had properties like a sparkler, with the source including its own oxidising agent. A British fire and explosion analyst examined the exterior skin of the aircraft which had been located above the pallet; the analyst found that the skin became as hot as 300 degrees Celsius. Bereswill said that it would be difficult for a fire to burn through the skin of an aircraft in-flight because of the cool airflow outside the aircraft.
David Klatzow's theory
Dr David Klatzow was one of the forensic scientists who, by his own admission, was retained to work on the case by Boeing's counsel around the time of the official enquiry. He subsequently criticised the Margo commission for spending an inordinate amount of time looking into "relatively irrelevant issues" and that the commission ignored the most important question: what was the source of the fire and who had been responsible for loading it onto the aircraft. Klatzow believes that there are certain irregularities in parts of the commission transcript that indicate that something on the CVR transcript had to be concealed.
Klatzow put forward a theory that the fire likely involved substances that would not normally be carried on a passenger aircraft and that the fire was not likely a wood, cardboard, or plastic fire. South Africa was under an arms embargo at the time; the South African government therefore had to buy arms clandestinely. His theory postulates that the South African government placed a rocket system in the cargo hold, and that vibration caused unstable ammonium perchlorate to ignite.
Klatzow contends that conversation of the crew suggests that the fire started above the South China Sea, shortly after takeoff; he believes that this indicates that the voice recorder was not working for a long period of the flight or that the crew turned it off (Cockpit Voice Recorders in aircraft at that time only recorded 30 minutes ). If this is the case, he says it is then likely that an unknown number of the passengers would have already died from smoke inhalation from the first fire. Klatzow believes that theory is consistent with reports that find most of the passengers were in the first class area of the plane at the front as smoke from the back of the plane forced them to move forward. The captain did not land the aircraft directly after the fire, Klatzow argues, because if he had he would have been arrested for endangering the lives of his passengers and it would have caused a major problem for South Africa, costing the country and SAA R400 million. Klatzow argues that the captain, who was also a reservist in the South African Air Force, would therefore have been ordered to carry on to South Africa in hopes of making it there before the aircraft's structural integrity gave in. These points have been refuted by others.
On 20 July 2011, retired SAA captain Clair Fichardt announced that he had made a statement in connection with the missing Jan Smuts air traffic control tapes, after he was persuaded to do so by Klatzow. Fichardt claimed that captain James Deale admitted to handing the tapes to captain Mickey Mitchell, who was chief pilot at the Johannesburg control centre on the night of the crash. Deale would further have stated that Gert van der Veer, head of SAA, and lawyer Ardie Malherbe were present during the transfer of the tapes. Earlier, during the TRC hearings, Klatzow had cross-examined Van der Veer, Mitchell and Vernon Nadel, the Operations Officer who was on duty.
Post-apartheid investigation
In 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established by the post-apartheid South African Government, investigated apartheid era atrocities. In particular, the Helderberg accident was investigated to determine if there was any truth behind the conspiracy theories that the Margo Commission had covered up or missed any evidence that might implicate the previous government. David Klatzow was invited by the TRC to explain his theories and cross-examine witnesses. Unlike most other hearings of the TRC, the hearing into SAÂ 295 was conducted in camera, and without any representation from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA); Klatzow considered the CAA untrustworthy because it had participated in the official enquiry, which he considered flawed. A number of key aspects of Klatzow's theory hinged on his criticism of the actions of Judge Margo during the official enquiry, yet Judge Margo was not summoned to answer any of the allegations made against him.
The commission concluded that nothing listed in the cargo manifest could have caused the fire. Following public pressure, the TRC records were released into the public domain in May 2000. Upon receiving the documents, Transport Minister Dullah Omar stated that the inquiry would be reopened if any fresh evidence was discovered. The police were tasked to investigate whether there was any new evidence, and to make a recommendation to the minister. In October 2002, the minister announced that no new evidence had been found to justify re-opening the enquiry.
On the 25th anniversary of the crash, Peter Otzen Jnr, the son of one of the victims, announced that he was approaching the South African Constitutional Court in an attempt to have the commission of inquiry into the disaster reopened. In pursuit of this, he has obtained affidavits from former SAA employees who had never before given evidence. An Australian, Allan Dexter, has revealed to Mr. Otzen under oath that he was informed by the SAA Manager at Taipei airport that the Helderberg was carrying rocket fuel, which caused it to crash. A second affidavit secured by Mr. Otzen was sworn by former Chief Cabin Steward Willem Bothma, who attested to the fact that when he was in Taipei on 28 November 1987, the day of the crash, he received a telex from the SAA CEO Gert van der Veer which read 'Seize all cargo documents related to SA295. No one to see it.' Both of these received coverage in the Sunday Times, a national publication in South Africa.
Joanne Lillie and Dominique Luck, the latter having lost her mother on SA295, have published a book titled 'Surviving 295: Life After the Helderberg'. Published by Jacana Media, it was released in South Africa in September 2014, and is being launched in Cape Town on October 15, 2014.
Passengers and crew
Passengers and crew nationalities on board SAA Flight 295:
Taiwanese authorities stated that 58 passengers began flying in Taipei, including 30 Taiwanese citizens, 19 South Africans, 3 Japanese, two Mauritians, one Dane, one Netherlander, one Briton, and one West German. The other passengers transferred from other flights arriving in Taipei, and as such their nationalities were not known to Taiwanese authorities.
At least two passengers died of smoke inhalation.
Notable passengers
- Kazuharu Sonoda, A professional wrestler also known as Haru Sonoda (Magic Dragon), and his bride, Mayumi Sonoda (è–—ç"° 真å¼", Sonoda Mayumi), boarded Flight 295.
Dramatization
Mayday (also known as "Air Disasters", Air Emergency and Air Crash Investigation) aired an episode titled "Fanning the Flames" (also titled "Cargo Conspiracy" and "Mystery Fire" in some countries) which documents the crash.
See also
- 1986 Mozambican Tupolev Tu-134 crash, where the apartheid government was accused of sabotaging the plane of the President of Mozambique.
- TWA Flight 800, another Boeing 747 crash surrounded by conspiracy theories.
- Swissair Flight 111
- List of unrecovered flight recorders
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
- Partially Real ATC Recording An MP3 format of part of the actual ATC recording. The real recording starts at 21 minutes. It is slightly abridged, with some empty sound cut short.
- `We are going to die,' said crew member
- Vol South African Airways 295 : Maldonne à Pretoria (French)
- “We have a smoke problem in the aeroplane!†Die “Helderbergâ€-Tragödie (German)
- "SAA 747 Wreckage Examined in Detail" a 1989 Flight article