Mayday (2013) s03e02 Episode Script

You wouldn't think it was a dangerous job, delivering the mail.
They have to try to land an airliner in a way no pilot has ever done before.
PILOT: We've lost all hydraulics! ALARM WHIRRS No, no.
No, the speed.
THEME MUSIC GUNFIRE By November 2003, the American-led coalition has been in charge of Iraq for six months.
The Iraqi Army is defeated.
Saddam Hussein, the deposed president, remains in hiding.
Ominously, the main threat is now from secret armed groups.
They're targeting civilians, both Iraqi and foreign in order to make the country unstable, perhaps even provoke a civil war.
They have plundered Iraqi army stores for every Infantry weapon there is.
Even surface-to-air missiles.
Baghdad is a very dangerous place.
Dawn on the outskirts of the city.
Claudine Vernier-Palliez from the French weekly magazine 'Paris Match' with her photographer, Jerome, is going to a secret meeting with Iraqi terrorists.
She's after the story that everyone wants.
Who are they? What do they want? (speaks Arabic) The previous day, she had met the leader in a hotel room.
He called himself Abu Abdullah, but no-one knew his real name.
(speaks Arabic) TRANSLATOR: Evidently, this man was very, very determined to stop at nothing to show the Americans that he wanted no more of them.
At least not their military tactics.
(speaks Arabic) Baghdad Airport, key to the US presence in Iraq.
Military planes fly in daily to supply the troops and to help rebuild the shattered country.
Because of the threat from Iraqi terrorists, the US has established a security zone around the airport patrolled by Apache helicopters.
On the tarmac today is one of the few civilian aircraft to use the airport.
An Airbus A300 belonging to the courier firm DHL.
They have won the contract to carry the soldiers' mail.
At the hotel meeting, Claudine and her photographer had arranged to meet the rebels at dawn the next morning to take pictures of the fighters with their weapons.
We arrived in a field where we met other vehicles.
Among them a pick-up truck.
The men got out of the cars (speaks Arabic) .
.
and just off the road, hidden under some branches, the men recovered some weapons and some missiles.
They loaded their weapons in their vehicles and Jerome took the pictures we wanted.
The journalists have got the story they came for, but Abu Abdullah is not finished with them yet.
He tells them to follow.
They don't know where.
(speaks French) And he told me that a new phase in his resistance actions would be to shoot missiles at planes.
A few kilometres away, the DHL plane is getting ready to depart.
Two flights a day shuttle post and packages in and out of the war zone.
Baghdad Tower, oscar, oscar, delta, lima, lima, Airbus A300 cargo information, sierra request data.
The Australian Air Force is providing the air traffic control in Baghdad.
Oscar, oscar, delta, lima, lima, clear to start.
Before start check list.
Start two.
Captain Eric Gennotte is Belgian, 38 years old and single.
He realised his dearest ambition a year ago when he qualified to captain the Airbus A300.
In 245.
Valve closed.
610.
Flight engineer Mario Rofail lives in Scotland with his wife and children.
At 54, he's the oldest and most experienced member of the crew.
A veteran of many danger zones.
Start one.
Valve open.
The 29-year-old copilot Steeve Michielsen is also Belgian.
He's been married just three months.
Cargo airlines are great places for young pilots to get the hours and experience they need to pilot commercial aircraft.
0.
16.
DHL has been flying into Baghdad for six months.
There's no danger money for crew.
The airport is an oasis of calm in the middle of a chaotic war zone.
Nevertheless they are aware of what's going on around them.
When we were crossing the border from Kuwait to Iraq, the ambience in the cockpit already changed.
The journalists have been taken to another location by the terrorists.
By now, they're beginning to get uneasy.
They'd like to leave, but they have no idea where they are and they feel that a dangerous situation will develop if they attempt to go.
So, what's going on here? (speaks Arabic) This is SAM-7.
We have them from the old Iraqi army.
We have approximately 28.
We got them from two different Iraqi army depots.
We have already fired about 25 and we only have three left.
They are heat-seeking missiles equipped with homing devices which detect infra-red emissions from a plane's engines.
This SAM-14 better than SAM-7.
We don't have so many.
I think we should use this one today.
It was very good before.
Before.
.
? (speaks Arabic) We shot down a plane near Nasiriyah and my fighters recorded 177 dead.
And we shot down another plane with Americans on and we killed 70 men.
I didn't believe a word of it.
Sir, what are you going to do with this one today? (speaks Arabic) What do you think? We're gonna shoot down a plane.
(laughs and speaks Arabic) I'll show you.
The journalists are getting worried.
What if he's not bluffing after all? This is not the story they came for.
(all shout triumphantly) It's early in the day at Baghdad Airport.
A DHL Airbus A300 carrying letters home from US soldiers is just departing.
The crew is unaware that just a few kilometres away a terrorist group has its own plans for the aircraft.
Oscar, oscar, delta, lima, lima, cleared for take-off.
Take-off.
The plane is a 24-year-old airliner converted to carry cargo.
Its first stop will be the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.
It's a journey they make twice a day.
100 knots.
V1.
Rotate.
V2.
Positive climb.
Despite the calm in the cockpit, the crew knows that below 3,000 metres they are vulnerable to attack from the ground.
So far no plane in Iraq has been hit with a surface-to-air missile but it's known that the terrorists now have such weapons.
Gear up.
Gear up, no lights.
Meanwhile, the terrorist leader, Abu Abdullah, appears to have chosen his spot.
SHOUTS IN ARABIC The journalists are now very alarmed.
They cannot leave.
They're trapped.
(shouts in Arabic) This is video shot by the terrorists themselves.
They'll deliver it to the media in Baghdad the next day.
LOUD BLAS (terrorists talk excitedly) What's that? AUTOMATED WARNING: Bank angle.
Bank angle.
- We've lost green and yellow.
- Bank angle.
Green and yellow?! We had three hydraulics systems.
They are identified by colour, which one is green, and yellow, and blue.
Big jets depend on hydraulic power.
Hydraulic fluid runs inside pipes throughout the aircraft.
When the pilots move the control column, pistons push the fluid in the pipes to climb, descend or turn the plane.
With no hydraulics, pilots have no way to control their flight.
The missile has exploded in the wing where the pipes filled with hydraulic fluid are now draining.
It's like driving a car at speed and suddenly losing the steering wheel.
- Bank angle.
- What do we do? What do we do? STEEVE: My initial reaction was, "We have to do something.
" And I asked the captain, "What shall we do?" Or "Any ideas" or something.
His initial reaction was we have to go back.
Bank angle.
Bank angle.
A big jet can survive with one of the three hydraulic systems knocked out, maybe even two, but all three? None of the controls will work - period.
Bank angle.
Bank angle.
Blue is gone.
I think we hit something.
Bank angle, bank angle.
Blue is gone.
Bank angle, bank angle.
We've lost all hydraulics.
All three hydraulic systems gone.
There's nothing left.
The life of the aircraft is now measured in minutes.
That DHL is in trouble.
He's on fire and he's turning back.
Scramble the fire engines.
Have Medivac on stand-by.
The control columns have become useless.
Without the crucial hydraulic system, there's no way of moving the controls.
We had no control over the aircraft, of course, initially.
The aircraft continued to climb at that time till about 12,000 feet.
The plane has started to behave strangely.
It climbs to nearly 3,800 metres, then suddenly starts to dive of its own accord.
Then it climbs again.
Sync rate.
Sync rate.
It will not fly.
Bank, bank.
This cycle repeats itself over and over again, like a mad rollercoaster ride.
The crew can't stop the plane's wild gyrations.
They're still airborne, but somehow they must regain control.
I play with controls.
Reduce thrust? By moving the throttles to and fro, perhaps they can flatten out the huge dives and climbs.
It's all they can think of.
There is no training to fly a plane in this condition.
Bank angle.
Bank angle.
So, from that time on, all the books and the procedures went out of the window.
We have engines? We can use the thrust.
All they have left are the two engines which are undamaged.
But how do you fly and land a plane with engines alone? No airliner has ever done it.
Certainly not this one.
In August 1985, a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 had suffered a catastrophe minutes after leaving Tokyo.
The bulkhead at the back of the cabin burst open.
The force of the rushing air blew off most of the tail fin and cut all the hydraulic lines.
Without hydraulic power, the pilots of the 747 were little more than passengers themselves.
When the 747 hit a mountain, it was worst single crash in aviation history.
520 people died.
Bank angle.
Can the DHL crew succeed where the Japanese pilots failed? The first task is to try to calm the wild plunging of the aircraft.
The airplane will tend to go into what's called a fugoid in the vertical mode.
It will descend, speed up - therefore pick up more lift - then it would climb, pitch up and climb, it would slow down, lose lift.
And so it would go into this It was very difficult for the pilots to control that.
They have to do it by using engine power alone - the only thing they have left.
They find that if they reduce engine power the plane's nose drops and they begin to gather speed.
If they then push the throttles forward, the nose comes up and they start to climb.
But they have to learn precisely when to increase and decrease power.
Bank angle.
Bank angle.
And there's another complication.
The damage to the left wing is creating drag on that side and pulling them around to the left in a wide circle.
Bank, bank.
So they not only have to move the throttles back and forth to flatten out the plane's rollercoaster motion, but also try to apply more power to the left engine to compensate for the damaged wing, which is causing it to lose lift.
After several minutes of violent pitching up and down the crew manage to flatten out the flight path.
By now, the crew realise that they've been hit by a missile somewhere on the left wing.
Their Airbus has become the first civilian aircraft casualty of the war.
I knew we were on fire.
That I knew.
So, my intention was to come back and land the aircraft and also I waswe were afraid, I was afraid to be shot at a second time.
Their fears are justified.
The terrorist leader Abu Abdullah is waiting for a second chance to finish them off.
(shouts in Arabic) Iraqi terrorists have fired a missile at a civilian plane near Baghdad Airport.
The left wing is on fire and the crew is in desperate trouble.
Now the terrorists aim to finish it off.
TRANSLATOR: They launched a second missile that missed the plane this time.
And then he told everyone, "Let's go!" and we all left quickly.
SHOUTS IN ARABIC Madame Verniez-Palliez later came under a storm of criticism for not doing more to stop the attack or at least leave the scene.
I think that any journalist in the situation we were in would have reacted exactly as we did.
We have been criticised for not having said to the group leader when he told us he was going to fire on an aircraft, "No sir, we're leaving now.
" On the one hand, if we had said that to him, it would have meant a bullet in the head, that's clear.
And on the other hand, right up to the last minute, right up to the time when they fired the missile I didn't think they were going to do it.
I thought they were still bluffing.
While we were trying to find our way back with our chauffeur, we saw that the plane, it's left wing was on fire.
It was like in a film.
It was unreal.
And it was only when we could see the plane on fire that we thought of the people on board.
And then we were scared.
I realised the plane could crash, that it would crash, and then I started to realise why had they done this? It so happens we were there, we were filming, we were journalists and we were French.
So, it seems evident that they had set us up.
By the time we realised this, it was too late.
Everything had gone too fast.
The crew knows nothing of the second missile.
CONTROL TOWER: Jolly 21.
APACHE PILOT: Did you guys say there was an aircraft on fire? This remarkable video, seen here exclusively for the first time, was shot with the infra-red heat-sensitive camera of a US Apache attack helicopter.
Apaches routinely patrol the area around the airport watching out for terrorists.
5-4, Tower.
Roger, 5-4 is tracking the aircraft inbound under our sighting system.
He's gotappears to be a fire on his far left engine.
The intense heat of the fire on the Airbus shows up as a blur on the helicopter's heat-sensitive camera.
DHL PILOT: Oscar, lima, lima.
Oscar, lima, lima, tower.
We have a bit of problems controlling the aircraft.
There was a helicopter flying and he could see that the fire was not from the engine, but was from the left wing.
So it gave Mario the opportunity to ask the tower again if they could sill see some flames or smoke coming from the airplane.
Could you confirm if there's smoke coming from the aircraft or fire or anything like that? Star dragon team 5-4.
Can still see smoke and flame coming from the left tip of the left wing.
Okay, left wing tip, fire and smoke, huh? That's affirmative.
Thank you.
We were on a heading towards the airport.
We could see the airport.
Lower the gear.
Can I take control? No, I have control.
Look, I have control.
Lower the gear.
With no hydraulic power, Mario has to crank open the landing gear doors and let the wheels drop down by gravity alone.
The captain said, in fact, "We have to land", and he called for the gear down, which is a quite normal thing to go and land.
But it has an unintended effect.
Lowering the landing gear has altered the entire balance of the aircraft just when they'd thought they'd figured out how to control it.
It causes the nose to point high in the air and the speed to fall.
No, no! No, the speed! It could easily stall and then crash.
I didn't expect that at all and I thought the aircraft taking a pitch up and then the speed decreasing, decreasing, decreasing and I was returning the throttle and saying, "No, no.
" No, no! The nose has gone up, their speed is falling.
They're about to stall.
They have no choice but to pull back the throttles to bring the nose back down again.
They're nearly at stall speed.
That would've been the end of it.
We would've fallen out of the sky.
APACHE PILOT: You have visual on this guy? No.
I'm looking right in.
He's way out there.
Yeah.
That's gut-wrenching, man They're up there doing everything they can.
INSTRUMENTS BEEP DRAMATIC MUSIC I was so afraid that maybe one wing would stall andand this time it's finished.
APACHE PILOT: I think I'd rather try to crash on a runway than crash into the desert.
2ND PILOT: Trying to land on a runway whereas you can just belly-up in the desert and the sand would probably put out any fire.
Cautiously, they manage to coax a bit more speed from the engines.
Lowering the gear brought them to the brink of disaster, but now the plane is easier to control.
The airplane miraculously became more stable afterwards.
That's one of the first factors that proves how lucky we were that day.
Let's land.
Tower, delta, lima, lima.
Oscar, oscar, delta, lima, lima, Baghdad Tower.
Can you make approach now.
Runway is clear for landing.
The Apache helicopter has been joined by others who are powerless to do anything but provide information to the stricken DHL plane.
APACHE PILOT: Looks like he might be too high again.
2ND PILOT: We're still looking up at the flare.
Come on, buddy.
You could hear other airplanes talking at the same time.
Oh, crap.
And uh, and that on its own was a bit difficult.
TOWER: Oscar, oscar, delta, lima, lima.
Could you please clear 3-3 left for us as well, because I think we've lost our flight control as well.
Oscar, oscar, delta, lima, lima, runway 33 left is available as well if you need to land there.
Okay, keep both runways open for us.
No more talking, bye.
Iraqi terrorists have fired a missile at a civilian plane near Baghdad Airport.
The left wing is on fire and the crew is in desperate trouble.
Did you know tank 1 alpha is empty? Fuel has been steadily streaming out of the tanks in the left wing.
Now one of them is empty.
- Bank back.
- AUTOMATED WARNING: Bank angle.
Yes, got it.
Bank angle.
Left wing coming up.
Against all the odds, they've made it back to the airport.
An incredible feat of flying.
They begin making preparations to land.
Which runway? We use 33 right, I think.
Lima, lima.
CONTROL TOWER: Oscar, lima, lima, go ahead.
Could you please declare full emergency? We will need the fire brigade because our landing gears might collapse as well.
Oscar, lima, lima, all available assistance is available on the field.
Everyone is on full alert.
Okay, thank you very much and no more calls.
- 1ST PILOT: That guy's got - 2ND PILOT: He's pretty stressed.
Rightfully so.
But on the brink of success, it begins to unravel.
At that time I realised that we were a bit, a little bit too high to come in and land in the situation we were.
That's what I thought as well.
We were too high and too near.
We must land.
We're too close.
We need a long final Steeve brought a very important point here and I think it was really, our saviour.
Steeve is giving his captain news he doesn't want to hear - he can't land.
They're too high and too close.
If they attempt a steep descent, they'll bury it in the runway.
Eric Gennotte will have to turn around, fly away from the airport for 37km, turn again and come back on a long final approach, slowly descending.
If we hadn't done this 20 miles, we would have been circling there forever until we dropped from the sky.
You can't make it, it's impossible.
Keep the speed up, keep the speed up.
I try, I will do the best I can.
And then I realise they were right - we have to go on long final.
But for the last 13 minutes, the wing has been on fire.
Do they have enough time? - 20 miles final.
- Okay.
APACHE PILOT: Looks like he's still pretty high.
You got them in sight? - He's still got a long way to go.
- Yeah.
Looks like he's trying to make an extremely extended final.
Yes.
I don't think they can make it in.
Time is running out.
The fire is eating up the left wing.
They're still heading away from the airport, then they have to turn and make a 37km approach.
Can they land before the wing fails? Two main structural spars give the wing its strength.
The missile has made a 5m-long crack in the rear spar.
Too much stress and it will snap like a twig.
There's another danger.
Fuel is streaming out of the punctured tanks in the left wing.
If the tanks run dry, an engine will stop and they'll crash.
We were controlling the bank and the pitch of the aeroplane using the two engines.
So, if we'd lost one engine, then we couldn't do anything with the other engine.
So then the result would have been disastrous.
Despite the fire, the crew's confidence is growing.
Now they have some control over the plane, but the prospects for a safe landing are not good.
This is the closest any commercial jet has got to a safe landing with no hydraulics.
In 1989, in the United States, the crew of this United DC10 lost all their controls after an engine blew up and turbine blades shredded the hydraulic pipes.
The pilots managed to regain some control, moving the throttles backwards and forwards like the DHL crew.
But at the last minute, as they approached the small provincial airport of Sioux City in Iowa - disaster.
Of the 296 people on board, 111 died.
So within four years, two major airliners had crashed because a loss of hydraulics had crippled the planes, killing 631 people.
In its investigation report on the Sioux City disaster, the US National Transportation Safety Board asked for urgent research to find ways of controlling big jets that had lost their hydraulics.
But over Baghdad, 14 years later, the DHL crew only have their wits to help them as they try to land.
The crew are now 28km away from the airport, getting close to where they will turn in order to make their long final approach to the runway.
15.
2.
DRAMATIC MUSIC Now we turn right.
Not yet! This is where experience counts now and you have to rely on what you know.
We were pretty sure that we'd be able to make it to the airport.
We were absolutely not sure that we were gonna be able to make it to the runway.
16.
5.
Now we turn.
17 miles.
Now we turn.
The only way they can turn is by applying more power to the left engine to make them go right, and vice versa.
They're swinging around to the right, trying to keep the plane steady and descend all at the same time using nothing but the engines.
Airport at 340, come right.
Now 320.
Speed? 10 knots and stable.
Keep speed up.
Yes, yes.
1,000 feet.
500 feet.
200 feet.
Turn on the heading.
Against all their instincts, they'll have to keep the speed up on landing or the nose will drop and they'll crash.
They should be landing at around 300km/h, but they're coming in 100km/h faster.
No-one knows if the landing gear will take the strain.
As they reach 120 metres the hot air from the ground and strong wind blowing across their flight path upset all their plans.
The winds coming from the left and the turbines we were drifting to the right.
That's where the airport building was.
It's bumpy.
As the plane approaches the runway, the nose is pointing dangerously low and the left wing is dropping.
AUTOMATED WARNING: Sync rate.
Come on, buddy.
They're carrying too much speed.
They could overrun the runway.
Sync rate.
Sync rate.
Keep the speed up.
We are going left.
Yes, I increase.
If we go to right on landing we may go off the runway.
They are landing 3-3 left.
Fire trucks on stand-by, Medivac on stand-by.
SIRENS WAIL APACHE PILOT: I don't think it's gonna be too high now.
- Terrain.
Pull up.
- Steady.
Steady.
You are approaching the end of your life.
You realise it.
Terrain.
Pull up.
Terrain.
Come on, buddy.
30 Terrain.
Pull up.
Terrain 20.
APACHE PILOT: Oh! It looks like one of his gear collapsed.
Yeah, it did.
Off runway! (shouts) PILOT: He's in the dirt.
2ND PILOT: He's come off the runway.
That's what's left of him.
The DHL Airbus has managed to land through an incredible feat of flying.
But their troubles are not over.
Nice landing, wow! Confirm evac? Evacuate.
- Evacuate.
- Evacuation.
SIRENS WAIL A final irony - after getting safely to the ground, against all the odds, one more unforeseen danger.
She might blow.
FIREMAN: Hey, guys! Don't move.
That area has unexploded ordinance.
Do not move.
What's that? He's saying there might be bombs here.
I don't believe this.
We're coming to get ya.
The area is still littered with unexploded bombs and shells left over from the battle to capture the airport from Saddam's men.
Now, when we get to ya, we're gonna back up and you gotta follow in our tracks.
We're gonna get ya out of here, but you gotta walk right in my wheel tracks, okay? DRIVER: Keep coming.
Keep coming, it's not much further now.
Now, for the first time, the crew can see the damage for themselves.
They've survived the unsurvivable.
No crew has ever successfully landed such a badly damaged airliner.
They had to learn and practise a whole new flying technique, but the remarkable thing is, had they known it, the technology had already been invented to save any pilot in this desperate situation.
The DHL pilots have managed to fly and land a plane without any flying controls.
It's the first time it's happened.
Two earlier occasions, near Tokyo and Sioux City, Iowa, ended with the loss of over 600 lives.
In 1989, NASA began to investigate ways to land crippled aircraft using only throttle controls.
Engineers and pilots came up with software that could cope with total hydraulic failure.
It's called PCA, for Propulsion Controlled Aircraft.
The PCA concept is simple.
Pilots tell the aircraft's flight management computer what they want to do - turn, climb, descend - but instead of sending those commands down hydraulic lines to the control surfaces.
The computer orders the engines alone to do it.
To test this software, this MD11 aircraft is landing with no hydraulics and using engine thrust alone.
The pilot is not moving the throttles, the PCA software is doing it all for him.
Though none of the plane's normal controls were used, the MD11's landing was not only survivable, but very similar to a normal landing.
I believe that the DHL incident has revived interest in Propulsion Controlled Aircraft System as an augment to perhaps the systems that we have in today's aircraft that would certainly mitigate the damage that could have been done to this aircraft and certainly could mitigate the damage done to an aircraft carrying 500 to 600 people.
Blue is gone.
We've lost all hydraulics! America's Federal Aviation Administration conducted research into PCA, but soon abandoned it.
It says the risk of losing all hydraulics is too low to make systems like PCA worthwhile.
The AFA's conclusion after their studies was that these events are so rare as to not require the mandate of an additional system.
And, of course, they did not consider the event or the possibility of a surface-to-air weapons attack on the aircraft.
The DHL is the first plane in Iraq to be hit by a surface-to-air missile but in recent years the threat of terrorist-controlled, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles has been growing.
There have been roughly 30-odd incidents of commercial aircraft being attacked by man-portable surface-to-air missiles, leading up to the DHL one.
What makes the risk of missile attack in Iraq so serious is that for months nobody was guarding the abandoned depots of the Iraqi army, leaving terrorists free to help themselves to millions of dollars worth of arms.
There's widespread fear these terror weapons could soon be targeting passenger airliners all over the world.
The US Government's Department of Homeland Security is spending over $100 million on research to adapt military counter-missile technology for civilian airliners.
It is inevitable today that commercial aircraft will have to be fitted, at some time, with laser and infra-red jamming systems.
The infra-red jammer will confuse the seeker for the missile, whereas the laser jammer will direct a pulse into the seeker and burn out the seeker of the missile.
Singapore Airlines, Qantas Airlines, they're all looking to install something into their aircraft.
If you look at things like the Queen's flight in the UK, the President's aircraft in the USA, and the King of Jordan's fleet - they're all fitted.
But miraculously, without any of this equipment, the DHL crew had brought their plane to a successful landing.
It's the only confirmed occasion in history when a missile has exploded on a large civilian airliner which has then landed without crashing.
For Mario Rofail, it was a good note on which to retire.
It was a good time, actually, to say goodbye, yeah, to aviation.
As I said, I'd been flying for 30 years.
And, um, clean record.
Even to the last minute.
We were lucky, but also, we worked - we fight to survive.
I learned some things about life, maybe, but I don't think it makes me a better pilot.
The three DHL crew have received some of the highest awards that the civilian aviation community has to offer in recognition of an unprecedented achievement.
Teamwork was absolutely the key factor of bringing the aeroplane back to the ground with all three people alive.
On 30 December, 2003, five weeks after the missile struck the DHL airliner, US General Mark Kimmitt gives his daily press briefing in Baghdad.
Of note on Saturday, Sarhid Harb Sarhid, a former directorate of military intelligence officer suspected of leading a large anti-coalition group in the region and suspected of the downing of the DHL jetliner, died at a coalition medical facility from wounds received in a targeted raid on his complex.
The Americans believed they had killed the leader of the group that fired the missiles at the DHL.
Claudine Vernier-Palliez is not so sure.
TRANSLATOR: So, I thought he was dead.
I tried to verify this later.
He wasn't dead.
And it wasn't him they got.
And my photographer returned to Iraq and saw this person again.
He was still alive.
He was still alive.
In the fog of war, no-one can say for sure whether the man who called himself Abu Abdullah is still alive.
But what is certain is that the threat of further missile attacks on planes, both military and civilian, is still there.