Swissair Flight 111 was a scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, United States, to Cointrin Airport in Geneva, Switzerland. The flight was also a codeshare flight with Delta Air Lines. On 2 September 1998, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 operating this flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax Stanfield International Airport at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, killing all 215 passengers and 14 crew members on board. The crash site was 8 kilometres (5 mi; 4 nmi) from shore, roughly equidistant from the small fishing and tourist communities of Peggys Cove and Bayswater. It is the deadliest accident in Swissair history, the deadliest involving the MD-11, and the second-deadliest aviation accident in Canada, behind Arrow Air Flight 1285R.
The search and rescue response, crash recovery operation, and investigation by the Government of Canada took more than four years and cost CA$57 million. The investigation carried out by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) concluded that flammable material used in the aircraft's structure allowed a fire to spread beyond the control of the flight crew, resulting in the crash of the aircraft. Several wide-ranging recommendations were made, which were incorporated into newer US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a seven-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and registered as HB-IWF. The aircraft was powered by three Pratt & Whitney PW4462 turbofan engines, and the aircraft had logged 36,041 airframe hours before the accident. It bore the name of Schaffhausen until 1993, when it was renamed to Vaud. The cabin was configured with 241 passenger seats. First- and business-class seats were equipped with in-seat in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems from Interactive Flight Technologies.
The in-flight entertainment system was the first of its kind equipped on the aircraft. It allowed the first- and business-class passengers to select their own movies and games and to gamble. The system was installed in business class one year before the incident, between 21 August and 9 September 1997. It was installed in first class five months later, in February 1998, due to logistical delays.
Crew
In command was 49-year-old Captain Urs Zimmermann. At the time of the accident, he had logged approximately 10,800 hours of total flying time, of which 900 hours were logged in the MD-11. He was also an instructor pilot for the MD-11. Before his career with Swissair, he was a fighter pilot in the Swiss Air Force from 1967 to 1970. Zimmermann was described as a friendly person with professional skills, who always worked with exactness and precision. Zimmermann was due to turn 50 the day after the accident.
The first officer, 36-year-old Stefan Löw, had logged approximately 4,800 hours of total flying time, including 230 hours on the MD-11. He was an instructor on the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 and the Airbus A320. From 1982 to 1990, Löw had been a pilot in the Swiss Air Force. The cabin crew comprised a maître de cabine (purser) and eleven flight attendants. All crew members on board Flight 111 were qualified, certified, and trained in accordance with Swiss regulations under the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA).
Accident
Departure
Flight 111 took off from New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport at 20:18 EDT (00:18 UTC) on 2 September 1998. From 20:33 to 20:47 EDT (00:33 to 00:47 UTC), the aircraft experienced a radio blackout for approximately thirteen minutes, which was later found to be caused by communication radio tuning errors.
Flight
At 22:10 ADT (01:10 UTC, 52 minutes after takeoff), while flying over Yarmouth, Nova Scotia entering Canadian airspace after exiting from Boston Center, the flight crew detected an odour in the cockpit and determined it to be smoke from the air conditioning system. Four minutes later, the odour returned and smoke became visible, prompting the pilots to make a "pan-pan" radio call to Moncton Centre, the area control center (ACC) station in charge of air traffic over Nova Scotia. The pan-pan call indicated that there was an urgency due to smoke in the cockpit but did not declare an emergency as denoted by a "mayday" call. The crew requested a diversion to Boston (234 nautical miles (433 km; 269 mi) away) before accepting Moncton ATC's offer of radar vectors to the closer Halifax International Airport in Enfield, Nova Scotia, 66 nautical miles (76 mi; 122 km) away.
At 22:18 ADT (01:18 UTC), Moncton Centre handed over the plane's traffic control to the Halifax Terminal Control Centre, which was responsible for controlling traffic in and out of Halifax International Airport. Upon being advised by Halifax ATC that they were 30 nautical miles (35 mi; 55 km) from Halifax airport, the crew requested more flight distance to allow the aircraft to descend safely from its altitude of 21,000 feet (6,400 m) at the time. The crew then requested permission to dump fuel to reduce their weight for landing. Halifax thus vectored the plane south toward St. Margarets Bay, where it was safe for the aircraft to dump fuel while remaining within 40 nautical miles (45 mi; 75 km) of the airport.
In accordance with the Swissair checklist "Smoke/fumes of unknown origin", the flight crew shut off power to the cabin using the "CABIN BUS" switch, which also turned off the recirculating fans in the cabin's ceiling. This allowed the fire to spread to the cockpit, eventually shutting off power to the aircraft's autopilot. At 22:24:28 ADT (01:24:28 UTC), the crew informed Halifax that "we now must fly manually", followed by an emergency declaration. Ten seconds later, the crew declared an emergency again, saying, "...and we are declaring [an] emergency now, Swissair one eleven," and this was the last transmission received from Flight 111.
The aircraft flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder stopped operating at 22:25:41 ADT (01:25:41 UTC). The aircraft's transponder briefly resumed transmission of secondary radar returns from 22:25:50 to 22:26:04 ADT (01:25:50 to 01:26:04 UTC), at which time the aircraft's altitude was 9,700 feet (3,000 m). After this, the aircraft could be tracked only through primary radar, which does not provide altitude information.
Crash
Engine No. 2 (the middle engine in the MD-11's tail section) was shut down by First Officer Löw approximately one minute prior to the time of impact. The shutdown of Engine No. 2 would have had a minimal effect on aircraft controllability. In a smoke-filled cockpit and with almost no flight instruments and little to no view outside, Löw may have become spatially disoriented and, as a result, flew into the sea. Another possibility is that while attempting to see outside the cockpit windows, Löw inadvertently pushed the control column forward, thus resulting in a descent and eventual impact with the water.
At 22:31:18 ADT (01:31:18 UTC), Flight 111 struck the ocean at an estimated speed of 345 miles per hour (555 km/h; 154 m/s; 300 kn). The impact time also coincides with seismographic recorders at Halifax and Moncton, which detected a seismic event at the time. The collision with the water decelerated the aircraft with approximately 350 g, causing it to disintegrate instantly, killing everyone on board. The location of the crash was identified as approximately 44°24′33″N 63°58′25″W.
Victims
There were 132 Americans (including one Delta Air Lines employee and one United Airlines employee), 41 Swiss (including the 13 crew members), 30 French, 4 Canadians, 3 Britons, 3 Italians, 2 Greeks, 2 Lebanese, and 1 each from Afghanistan, China, Germany, India, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, St. Kitts and Nevis, Mexico, Sweden, and Yugoslavia, and 4 other passengers on board. Epidemiologists Jonathan Mann and Mary Lou Clements-Mann, a married couple who were both prominent researchers of HIV/AIDS, died in the crash.
Post-crash response
Search and rescue operation
The search and rescue (SAR) operation was code-named Operation Persistence and was launched immediately by Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax (JRCC Halifax). The search and rescue operation consisted of 400 Royal Canadian Air Force personnel, the Royal Canadian Navy, 700 Canadian Army personnel; the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG); Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary (CCGA) resources; and 450 Royal Canadian Mounted Police and more than 2400 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel who were participating as part of Operation Homage. The United States Navy and the Red Cross were also involved in the operation.
Local fishermen and boaters, many of whom were CCGA volunteers, were the first rescue resources to approach the crash site, which were mostly privately owned fishing boats operating from Peggys Cove and Bayswater, as well as other harbours on St. Margaret's Bay and the Aspotogan Peninsula. The CCG Mahone Bay Inshore Rescue Boat arrived on scene at approximately 0045. They were soon joined by the CCGS Sambro.
The crash site's proximity to Halifax placed it within one hour's sailing time of ships docked at Canada's largest naval base, CFB Halifax, and one of the largest CCG bases in Canada, the CCG Regional Headquarters in Dartmouth. Calls went out immediately, and ships sailed directly to St. Margaret's Bay.
The provincial ambulance service, Emergency Health Services (EHS), received word of the crash at 22:39 AT and ordered 21 emergency units from Halifax, the South Shore, and the Annapolis Valley to respond. An EHS helicopter was also sent to the crash site, and the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax was put on emergency alert. The emergency health services were stood down around 3:30 the next morning, as expectations of finding survivors diminished.
The land search, including shoreline searching, was the responsibility of Halifax Regional Search and Rescue. The organization was responsible for all ground operations, including military operations and other ground search and rescue teams.
Search and recovery operation
By the afternoon of 3 September, it was apparent that there were no survivors from the crash. On the morning of 4 September, JRCC Halifax de-tasked dedicated SAR assets and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) were given control of the scene.
The aircraft broke up on impact with the water, and most of the debris sank to the ocean floor at a depth of 55 m (180 ft). Some debris was found floating in the crash area, and over the following weeks, debris washed up on nearby shorelines.
The initial focus of the recovery was on finding and identifying human remains and on recovering the flight recorders. As the force of impact was "in the order of at least 350 g", the aircraft was fragmented, and the environmental conditions only allowed the recovery of human remains along with the aircraft wreckage. Only one of the victims was visually identifiable. Eventually, 147 were identified by fingerprint, dental records, and X-ray comparisons. The remaining 81 were identified through DNA tests.
With CAF divers (navy clearance divers, port inspection divers, ship's team divers, and Army combat divers) working on the recovery, the Government of Canada requested a larger dedicated salvage recovery vessel from the Government of the United States. USS Grapple was tasked to the recovery effort, arriving from Philadelphia on 12 September. Among her crew were 32 salvage divers, and she welcomed two teams of Canadian Navy clearance divers that flew across Canada from Fleet Diving Unit (FDU) Pacific.
The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) were found by the Canadian submarine Okanagan using sonar to detect the underwater locator beacon signals and were quickly retrieved by Canadian Navy divers (the FDR on 6 September and the CVR on 11 September 1998). Both had stopped recording when the aircraft lost electrical power at approximately 10,000 ft (3,000 m), 5 minutes and 37 seconds before impact.
The recovery operation was guided by the TSB with resources from the Canadian Forces, Canadian Coast Guard, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, United States National Transportation Safety Board, and other agencies. The area was surveyed using route survey sonar, laser line scanners, and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to locate various items. After being located, the debris was then recovered (initially by divers and ROVs, later by dredging and trawling).
On 2 October 1998, the TSB initiated a heavy lift operation to retrieve major portions of the wreckage from deep water before expected winter storms began. By 21 October, an estimated 27% of the wreckage was recovered. At that point in the investigation, the crash was generally believed to have been caused by faulty wiring in the cockpit after the IFE system started to overheat. The TSB released its preliminary report on 30 August 2000 and the final report in 2003.
The final phase of wreckage recovery employed the ship Queen of the Netherlands to dredge the remaining aircraft debris. It concluded in December 1999 with 98% of the aircraft retrieved: approximately 127,000 kg (279,000 lb) of aircraft debris and 18,000 kg (40,000 lb) of cargo.