Mayday (2013) s10e03 Episode Script
Pilot Betrayed
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
This is your captain.
I hope you had a NARRATOR: Captain Stefan Rasmussen has been in love with flying all of his life.
After learning to fly in the air force, Rasmussen joined Scandinavian Airlines.
On December 27, 1991, he's in command of a state-of-the-art DC-9.
The flight will take him to the very edge of his abilities as his engines fail and his plane falls out of the sky.
Stockholm Scandinavian 751, we are crashing into the ground now.
What caused the most baffling accident in Sweden's history is nothing investigators could have imagined.
What they finally uncover will strain Rasmussen's lifelong relationship with airplanes to the breaking point.
It's two days after Christmas.
Stockholm-Arlanda Airport is a mass of snow, slush and ice.
Passengers boarding a mid-morning Scandinavian Airlines flight to Copenhagen are finding the cabin very uncomfortable.
WOMAN: It was really warm inside the plane when we entered because there had been, like, heaters on during the night.
And I saw when the passengers embarked, they also wanted to take off jackets and shoes because it was like a sauna.
Is it possible to turn the heat down now? 34-year-old Ulf Cedermark has been with the airline for four years.
He's the first officer on today's flight.
It was a light snowfall.
Temperature was just below freezing and light winds.
We were going to fly Stockholm to Copenhagen and then to Warsaw, back to Copenhagen and down to Barcelona that day.
It would be quite a long working day.
Stefan Rasmussen has just finished an exterior check of the plane.
The Danish pilot is in command this morning.
In those over 12,000, almost 13,000 hours I had been sitting there, I always felt that I put the aircraft on my back like a rucksack and when we took lift in the wings, we melded together.
The plane Rasmussen is strapping on today is a nearly-new DC-9, easily identifiable by its two rear engines.
By now everyone should know that door stays open.
Right! Even in the days before terrorist threats, flying with the cockpit door open is unusual.
It's just one way Rasmussen has endeared himself to the crews and passengers he flies with.
I always had my cabin door open because I found out that if we had the door open and they could see that there were human beings in there, they trust you.
INGRID ASTROM: For me it felt good that the door was open.
It just feels like you have a connection more than if the door is closed.
The winter weather has delayed this fight but Rasmussen won't compromise safety for schedule.
Where are we now with the de-icing? MAN: The wings aren't quite done.
We've done the underside.
Now they're doing the top.
Thank you.
Under Captain Rasmussen's instructions, the ground crew had already de-iced the plane once.
Now they're giving it another pass.
ULF CEDERMARK: It took a while but they had trouble getting rid of the snow on top of the wing.
So we were slightly late for the push back out to the runway.
For Captain Per Holmberg, this kind of delay is routine business.
He flies DC-9s for the airline.
A passenger this morning, he's scheduled to command another flight later that day.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
This is your captain.
I hope you had a good Christmas.
We're just getting our wings cleared as we had a bit of snow overnight.
And when that's finished, we're ready for take-off for some warmer weather.
I hand-picked the airline's best cabin crew to take care of you today.
We all hope you have a nice flight.
Finally, Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 is cleared to proceed.
There are build-ups of snow that the crew must avoid on the way to runway.
It would have been nice of them to clear the snow.
That would have made it too easy.
Approaching holding point, runway 0-8.
MAN: Roger, Scandinavian 751.
You are cleared for take-off from runway 0-8.
Spoilers? Armed.
Auto brake take-off unarmed.
Runway update performed.
Checklist completed.
Set power.
Despite the winter conditions, the take-off is routine.
V1.
Rotate.
Gear up.
Gear up selected.
When Ulf reached up for the gear, I heard some things which was different.
Just 25 seconds into the flight, as the plane is climbing, there is a problem.
When you hear things different from the normal, you get suspicious.
There was a really big roar in the aircraft, almost like an explosion.
"Boom.
" There was another banging noise that I just thought, "What is that?" I had never heard that before.
It's obvious the source of the noise is the right engine.
- It sounds serious.
- I believe it's a compressor stall.
I took the right throttle and moved it a little back but there it really became strange because the engine performance increased when I reduced the throttle.
It was like if you're sitting in your car and you're turning your wheel to the left and the car is driving to the right.
You get confused.
We're not supposed to call into cockpit now and I thought, "This is an emergency.
I have to call the captain.
" But Captain Rasmussen doesn't respond to the call.
He's too busy trying to figure out what's going wrong with his plane.
I couldn't see anything on the instruments - they were quite stable and in quite normal range and no problem but I could hear those roaring every second.
He searches for telltale signs of attack or structural failure.
I looked up at the cabin pressure because if you have a bomb or a freight door or anything which is ripped off, that will give a decompression.
In the cabin, pressure levels are stable .
.
but the crew has other concerns.
ASTROM: I saw the smoke and it smelt burnt.
What should we do about this? Just 3,200 feet above the ground, the emergency escalates - the right engine quits.
When we have flown a little over one minute, the right engine just went down.
(BEEPING) I had a very, very short moment of thinking that I was in a nightmare and just dreaming.
I was confused.
I was really confused.
Two seconds later, the left engine also quits.
The plane is now powerless.
RASMUSSEN: One engine dropped and then another engine dropped.
I thought that it wasn't true.
It wasn't true, it wasn't real.
Less than 1.
5 minutes after take-off, the DC-9 begins falling from the sky.
ASTROM: After that it was complete silence.
And I think that was the worst moment for me - just being in the air and it's so quiet.
It was like a bird just sailing through the sky.
So then I started to get scared.
Engine relay.
As the pilots try to restart their engines, things get even worse.
The left engine erupts in flames.
And I saw the exhaust gas temperature was rising rapidly.
The max temperature was around 680 degrees Celsius and I saw it go above 800.
A fire in the engine could spread to the rest of the plane.
Should I pull? If Cedermark pulls the fire extinguisher in the left engine, he will never be able to restart it.
He pulls the handle to put out the fire.
From his seat, Captain Per Holmberg can see that the crew is in trouble.
Flight 751 is now falling at a rate of 1,200 feet per minute .
.
but air traffic controllers at the Stockholm airport have no idea the plane is in trouble.
Arlanda! Stockholm, Scandinavian 751! MAN: Good morning, SA 751.
Climb to flight level 1-8-0.
We have problems with our engines.
We need to go back to to go back to Arlanda.
751, roger.
Turn right heading Suddenly the radio goes dead - a result of the failed engines.
Only the right engine can provide power but it's now spinning too slowly to generate electricity for the instruments.
Without the engine you don't have any propulsion so you willthe only energy you have is your height.
With time running out, the pilots of Flight 751 must find a way to restart the right engine or else crash into the countryside below.
Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 is now falling from the sky at 20ft per second.
How can I help? Captain Per Holmberg, who boarded the flight as a passenger, becomes part of the flight crew.
He came out in the cockpit and he said, "Is there anything I can help you with?" I don't think I even said yes.
I said, "Start the APU.
" If the auxiliary power unit can be launched, it will bring back the radio and instruments.
So I just handed him the emergency checklist and started to focus on controlling the flight to see that we were maintaining the speed and the altitude and that we were wings level.
He managed to start the auxiliary power unit so my flight instruments were supplied from that.
But for some reason, Captain Rasmussen's instruments don't come back online.
He managed to fly the plane basically by feel.
Power is also restored to the cabin, but it's small comfort to passengers who now know they're in extreme danger.
Stockholm air traffic control instructs the pilots to return to the airport.
(OVER RADIO) Scandinavian 751, are you able to turn right heading 090 radar vectoring for 0-1? But the plane is now just 1,600ft from the ground and First Officer Cedermark's attempts to resuscitate it aren't working.
Roger, we are maintaining our head in but we're trying to restart our engines.
Making a 180-degree turn back to Stockholm could be catastrophic.
I really had the feeling that if I turned the aircraft at that time, we would have stalled.
When you're turning back, you're losing a lot of energy, so the most safe thing to do is actually just to go straight, keep your wings level.
That means that you will use less energy of your altitude, so you can maintain your speed.
You can maintain 2,000ft.
We are not able to maintain 2,000ft, we are descending.
We are at 1,600ft and descending.
Holmberg wants Rasmussen to focus his attention on finding a landing spot.
Look straight ahead.
Look straight ahead! He was screaming at Stefan, "Just look straight ahead and watch the flight path.
" Prepare for on-ground emergency.
On-ground emergency! Bend down.
Bend down! Bend down! So we shouted, "Bend down," I don't know how many times - "Bend down! Bend down! Bend down!" Keep your seatbelts fastened.
While passengers brace, Rasmussen considers where to land his plane.
Look straight ahead.
RASMUSSEN: I had an idea that on the northern direction could bring us out to the Baltic Sea which was, at that time, frozen, and that's an excellent runway.
But instead, he finds himself gliding powerlessly over a dense forest.
I saw that green area and I saw that little light spot in the middle of the forest.
But that really looked short.
Steer right, steer right! Just 500ft above the ground, Captain Rasmussen lifts the plane's nose to slow it down, hoping to soften the crash-landing.
Pine trees, from the top, they look very soft.
I could use the trees as almost like a pillow.
- Should I lower the landing gear? - Yes, gear down! Bend down and hold your knees! I prepared myself for a hard impact.
If it's an emergency landing, we have no engines, I just thought, "This is going to be a hard landing.
" Stockholm - Scandinavian 751, we are crashing into the ground now.
I wasn't afraid until we were flying into the trees.
Then I was scared and I knew we were not going to make it.
I didn't thought I should die.
I knew I should die.
III prayed to God.
(CRASHING) And then .
.
the moment after, we were, we were, we were in a strange world.
After we have come to a complete stop, I feel the smell of aeroplane fuel.
I thought, "OK, we're gonna explode.
" And I look around and I see the snow, because there was a big crack in the aeroplane fuselage just in front of the aft galley.
You could just walk down on the ground.
(WIRES BUZZ) Everything was quiet and .
.
I woke up - it might only have been a split second or so.
I was afraid that my spine was broken, that I wouldn't be able to walk again so I remember I was sitting there and I was moving my toes and my feet just to see if I could have control over them.
I had a pain in my hand because I had broken a bone in my hand and I was bleeding heavily from my forehead, so I was trying to get clear of all the blood that was coming down in my eyes.
And Stefan told me that we have to get out of the aircraft.
After ploughing through 125m of pine forest, the pilots' fear is now that the broken aircraft could catch fire.
Dozens of passengers escape through the breaks in the fuselage walls.
But Captain Per Holmberg has been knocked unconscious by the crash.
It all went so fast that, like, no-one could take in what happened.
So I tried to stay with the group of passengers I had there but I just knew the feeling also that we had to wait a long time for the rescue teams.
Help will be here soon.
Fortunately no fire materialises but because they removed their winter clothing while boarding the sweltering plane, many passengers are starting to freeze.
Most people were just standing in their shirts, T-shirts, very, very little clothes.
A few didn't even have shoes on.
They are now at risk from hypothermia.
So I focused on being caring.
Maybe I did it for my own sake also - I needed a hug also.
It was comforting to, like, comfort someone else.
The wreckage of Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 lies just 15km north-east of Stockholm-Arlanda Airport.
The fuselage has broken into three pieces.
In the chaos of the moment, nobody knows how many people have been killed in the crash.
Rescuers arrived within minutes and attend to the freezing survivors.
They pull Captain Per Holmberg from the cabin, unconscious.
He landed on the wall at impact and he skidded down on the wall to the floor at impact, so he was quite badly damaged.
He cut his eyelid and he also got his collarbone - that was broken off, so his shoulder was in front of him.
92 of the passengers have sustained injuries.
Only eight are considered serious.
But when the crew conducts a headcount they are stunned to learn that out of the 129 people who boarded Flight 751, not a single one was killed in the crash.
Everyone survived.
It was like a shock just to take in - wow, that was a fantastic moment.
I was the happiest captain in the world.
We were all alive.
That was a great moment.
Reporters break the remarkable story to the world as the Swedish Accident Investigation Board, or SAIB, takes charge of the case.
Scandinavian Airlines alerts its own investigators, dispatching Tore Hultgren to head up its team.
It is most unusual that a plane crashes in a wooded area and everybody survives.
Never heard of it before.
The police kept everybody off the site itself.
There was a cordon around the aircraft of 100m.
We had a complete aircraft, nothing had burned and we had lots of good data.
Henrik Elinder from the SAIB gets to work on the evidence.
We started to plan the documentation of the accident site, which means photographing all the final approach through the woods, and to take photos of all the parts that were spread all over the place.
The two black boxes, which record cockpit conversations and store flight data, are recovered immediately.
Investigators speak to survivors.
Everyone tells a similar story.
Would you mind telling me what you saw and heard? Loud booming sounds from the engines moments after the flight began, smoke in the cabin and finally, the entire loss of power and an engine on fire.
You have a twin-engine aircraft and you are really not supposed to lose both engines at the same time.
The Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines are sent to a Scandinavian Airlines repair shop for closer examination.
Investigators are eager to speak with Captain Rasmussen about the incident.
But to their dismay, Scandinavian Airlines takes him to the media first.
The first question - (READS) "What did you think when both engines refused to function?" It will take me an awful lot of time to tell you all that.
The normal case is that the key witnesses, like the crew and so on, should be kept in quarantine until they meet the investigation board.
European media celebrate Captain Stefan Rasmussen as a hero for landing the DC-9 without engine power.
But investigators consider the possibility that he or his co-pilot had made errors that caused the crisis in the first place.
The honour and the glory always rests with the captain but so does, also, the mishaps.
I knew that being a person where, in the spotlight of the press would be a quite different situation and I said to myself, "The only thing you can do now is to give them "all the story and then pray that they will find the reason.
" Lars Lindberg is an investigative representative for the Swedish Airlines Pilot Association.
He examines the wreckage for signs of mechanical or structural failure.
We knew both engines had failed for some reason so we were concerned - what was the background for something like that to happen? The first time I saw the engines in the workshop I was surprised.
Is this all they found? There was a number of parts that were completely missing and this was something we hadn't seen before, to this extent.
To find out what happened, investigators must find the missing pieces, which now lie somewhere in snow-covered fields and forests.
A close study of Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751's engines reveals exactly which pieces are missing.
LINDBERG: Part of this aircraft was shedding parts from both engines.
And then what you do is you go further in and you document everything and you try to find the root cause and see how it all comes together.
The missing pieces could hold the key to discovering why both of the plane's engine quit within seconds of each other.
But they could be anywhere along the 15km route the aircraft covered during its short flight.
They must be found.
Investigators use the flight data recorder to map the plane's journey and determine where engine parts may have fallen.
After scouring the snow-covered fields along the plane's path, the recovery team finds 500 fragments - just a fraction of what's missing.
Many are very badly damaged.
Some of the titanium blades actually seem to have been on fire.
LINDBERG: You have this titanium fire inside both engines, both the right and the left engine.
And this titanium fire is a very unique occurrence.
It's requiring very, very high pressure and very high temperature for a titanium blade to catch fire.
Investigators dig deeper into the cause of the engine trouble.
The left engine's fuel line is badly dented.
It was obviously hit by a fast-moving piece of metal inside the engine.
The impact caused it to rupture.
This part got dislodged.
It went out and hit the fuel line and that fuel line cracked, sprayed fuel onto the hot engine.
(EXPLOSION) The engine was clearly coming apart during the flight.
That sounds serious.
The discovery explains the fire in the left engine and why so many pieces of it were found so far from the crash site.
But investigators are left wondering why the engines broke up in the first place.
(BOOM!) A major clue comes from passenger and crew testimonies which told of repeated booming noises before the left engine caught fire.
The cockpit voice recorder picked up these sounds.
You can hear that and we could correlate that with when the damage occurred.
You can see that on the flight data recorder.
The sounds are familiar to investigators and leave no doubt the DC-9's engines began surging shortly after take-off.
Jet engines rely on a steady stream of air for combustion.
A series of fans move incoming air through various stages of compression.
But when that flow is disrupted, fuel at the rear of the engine ignites violently and shoots forward.
That's a surge.
You can have a small surge and you can have a large surge.
You can have the complete surge on the whole engine.
That sounds serious.
LINDBERG: This surge process was very violent so after a very short time we had an aircraft with two engines that could not be restarted, that didn't generate any thrust.
Basically you had a giant glider at that point.
A closer look at the fan blades from the front of the engines explains why they were surging - they're badly dented.
The damage would have prevented them from effectively directing air to the rear of the engines.
This damage that twisted the fan blade started this process.
You've got this disturbed air in the fan, you've got this rotating fan stall that then triggered this whole breakdown, the compressor surge and then the whole process that led up to the dual engine failures.
But what exactly mangled the blades? There are ways to tell.
If it comes from a stone, rubber, ice and so on you can see it on the shape of the damage.
The ice causes very specific damages.
It's sort of like a soft dent.
Analysis of dent patterns on the fan blades is conclusive - they were struck by ice.
Now investigators want to find out where the ice could have come from.
Weather data for the 24 hours leading up to the crash.
They know Stockholm had been hit with rain and snow in the hours before Flight 751 took off.
It was a situation where the temperature around zero degrees, it was a drizzle, snow rain in the morning.
They learn that the DC-9 arrived from Zurich the night before with the fuel tanks more than half full.
HULTGREN: We had quite a large amount of reserve fuel, or diversion fuel, in the wings.
The fuel in the wing tanks were close to -20 degrees Celsius.
The conditions that night were ideal for the formation of clear ice on the wing surface.
And here you had very, very cold fuel on the top wing skin and as the temperature dropped during the night, it went to snow and rain and finally snow, so there was a layer cake - ice at the bottom, slush and snow on top.
10 inches total, on top of the wings in the morning.
Responsibility for de-icing the plane ultimately falls on the captain.
Rasmussen insists he was aware of the overnight build-up.
Investigators wonder if the pilot did all he could to ensure his plane was completely free of ice.
Rasmussen claims he instructed technicians to de-ice the plane thoroughly.
I did a walk around the aircraft.
It was cold, it was frosty.
Noticing that there was still frost on the wings, the head technician ordered a second round of de-icing.
I was really convinced that the aircraft was clean .
.
and so was he, so was he.
RASMUSSEN: (ON TAPE) Where are we now with the de-icing? The wings aren't quite done.
They've done the underside.
The cockpit voice recorder backs up Rasmussen's testimony.
They've got it good and clean under the wings? Yes, yes.
De-iced the aircraft once and looked again and said, "Once more" and they de-iced a second time.
In fact, a total of 850 litres of fluid was sprayed on the aircraft.
But the fluid may have been faulty - not potent enough to melt the thick layer of ice that had accumulated on the wings overnight.
Technicians test samples of the fluid used to de-ice Flight 751.
HULTGREN: They found no discrepancies.
There was nothing wrong with any of the fluids used.
But when investigators interview the maintenance crew that worked on the plane, they begin wondering if the de-icing team was thorough enough in their efforts.
The ground crew insists that after they sprayed the wing, it appeared to be clean.
But that appearance was deceptive.
It looked perfect because the clear ice on top of the fuel tanks - you cannot see the clear ice.
A technician inspected the front of the wing and found no ice.
He couldn't have known that there was ice further back, out of his reach.
No provisions for stairs or anything that he could use to get up on the wing at the de-icing platform.
It looked shiny and nice, couldn't see any ice on it.
But still there was maybe an inch of ice on top of the wing when the aircraft took off.
As soon as the plane took flight, the ice became a problem.
On this aircraft the engines are positioned behind the wings and as the aircraft rotated and the wings bend in order to take the weight of the aircraft, this ice on the wing loosened and it sucked right into the engine.
The ice damaged the fan blades at the front of the engines and ultimately caused them to begin surging.
HULTGREN: Nobody really expected this would happen, could happen, but it did.
When ice breaks off the wings during flight, it doesn't pose a problem for most aircraft.
But the placement of a DC-9's engines leaves them more susceptible to being struck.
The Pratt & Whitney engines on Flight 751 were designed to withstand this type of ice ingestion.
Something else must explain the disaster.
Investigators know that the wrong reaction by a pilot can make surges worse.
They comb through the flight data to see what these pilots did when the emergency struck.
The first thing you do when you have a surge, if you recognise it as a surge, is that you reduce power.
Captain Rasmussen claims he did just that.
Of course you just pull the throttle back and then you have the balance between the incoming fuel, and incoming air, and that was exactly what I did.
But the flight data recorder tells a different story.
Why is the engine power increasing? It clearly shows that in the moments after the surge, thrust was reduced but then, seconds later, was increased to beyond full power.
Yeah, it didn't add up because the RPM was increasing to 110% and the throttle position was moving.
It shouldn't be.
The only thing that could move the throttle was the pilot's hand.
But if Rasmussen didn't push the throttles forward, something else did.
It would explain the captain's confusion as his engines began to surge.
As a pilot, when you've gone through the training, you've done all your emergency training, you've been through the simulator and now you have a system that is doing something that you don't expect, it's very confusing.
Despite their relentless efforts, investigators can find no possible explanation for the increase in thrust.
LINDBERG: The frustrating part with the investigation was that we could not figure out why the system did what it did.
Then, almost two months after the accident, the plane's manufacturer provides the answer.
The culprit is something called Automatic Thrust Restoration.
It's brand-new.
It automatically increases the thrust during the climb.
Swedish authorities learn that Automatic Trust Restoration or ATR was recently introduced as a safety feature on Scandinavian Airlines planes.
It existed because the FAA had discovered some pilots were throttling back considerably while taking off and landing to reduce noise over residential neighbourhoods.
The ATR was designed to make it impossible for them to throttle back to dangerous levels.
So as soon as he powered back, the system kicked in.
Investigators learned that when Rasmussen reduced power to clear his engine surge, the system read this as a dangerously low power setting and pushed the throttles forward.
The increased thrust made the surging worse until the engines destroyed themselves.
The investigation concludes that the pilots had taken the right steps to clear the surge and prevent the catastrophe but the computer code which governs the ATR undermined their efforts.
The strip of zeros and ones caused the throttles to move and caused the engines that were stalling because they already got too much fuel with even more fuel.
They went into self destruct, both engines, only in a few seconds, both totally destroyed.
The system was so new to Scandinavian Airlines that nobody there had even heard of it.
LINDBERG: It was confusing for everyone because we didn't know about the system, we didn't have information on the system, SAS didn't know the system existed on their aircraft.
We hadn't bought that modification .
.
and it was sneaked in via another system.
Because he didn't know about the ATR, Rasmussen was unaware that he could only save his plane by switching it off.
News that the Automatic Trust Restoration was responsible for the accident proved both a blessing and a curse for Captain Rasmussen.
It eliminated any notion that he had made a mistake.
RASMUSSEN: When I got that message, I was really released.
It was like winning in the lottery, it wasbecause I was so happy because then I could explain why I was in that total cone of confusion.
But the fall-out would ultimately destroy a love affair and end a career.
On October 20, 1993, the Swedish Accident Investigation Board releases its report on the crash of Flight 751.
It determines that the actions of Captain Rasmussen and First Officer Cedermark contributed to the safe outcome of this incident.
And although investigators question Captain Per Holmberg's decision to enter the cockpit in the first place, they do praise his contribution.
This crew flew until they stood still on the ground.
They never gave up.
They never gave up.
They didn't give an inch.
The investigators put much of the blame for the accident on Scandinavian Airlines because their procedures for checking for clear ice were inadequate.
I believe it's a compressor stall.
The report also condemns the fact that the pilots didn't know about the Automatic Thrust Restoration and how it would act in a surge situation.
If the ATR system hadn't been there, if the throttles hadn't moved forward, there wouldn't have been an accident.
It was a bit strange that we didn't have all the documentation available to us so we knew what we could expect if something like this would happen.
In the wake of the crash, Scandinavian Airlines started training its pilots how to use the ATR system.
They also implemented steps to ensure airplanes don't take off with clear ice on the wings.
We changed all the procedures, we provided stairs for the mechanic and they made it a requirement to go up on top of the wing and touch it with your hand to verify after de-icing.
After healing from his injuries, First Officer Ulf Cedermark returned to the cockpit.
I didn't feel the responsibility that I wouldn't be able to do my job again.
Whatever happens, I know that I still can see things for what they are and I still love doing my job and if something bad happens, I can deal with it.
But Stefan Rasmussen's return proved far more difficult.
Set power.
After I'd heard from a high-skilled psychologist, we talked about getting in the air again.
He knew that that would be a hard decision to take.
Gear up.
(BEEPING) Fire drill.
After time in the simulator, Rasmussen couldn't regain confidence in his plane.
Sorry, guys.
In a disaster situation, in a crisis, is that you have optimised the teamwork between man and machine.
I really felt that I didn't trust the aircraft.
Pilots tend to take the responsibility for all that went wrong.
Too much of the glory and also too much of the responsibility.
With the right counselling, about 90% of pilots involved in an accident are able to continue flying.
Even though Captain Rasmussen received treatment, his career ended with the crash of Flight 751.
Taking that decision to leave aviation as pilot was likehaving your highest love and, um come to that conclusion that .
.
that you have to kill her.
I had many hours, many missions of happiness in an aircraft.
I love my passengers, I love my aircraft so much so I said, "That's it.
" I never regret it, never.
And I think I was right.
This is your captain.
I hope you had a NARRATOR: Captain Stefan Rasmussen has been in love with flying all of his life.
After learning to fly in the air force, Rasmussen joined Scandinavian Airlines.
On December 27, 1991, he's in command of a state-of-the-art DC-9.
The flight will take him to the very edge of his abilities as his engines fail and his plane falls out of the sky.
Stockholm Scandinavian 751, we are crashing into the ground now.
What caused the most baffling accident in Sweden's history is nothing investigators could have imagined.
What they finally uncover will strain Rasmussen's lifelong relationship with airplanes to the breaking point.
It's two days after Christmas.
Stockholm-Arlanda Airport is a mass of snow, slush and ice.
Passengers boarding a mid-morning Scandinavian Airlines flight to Copenhagen are finding the cabin very uncomfortable.
WOMAN: It was really warm inside the plane when we entered because there had been, like, heaters on during the night.
And I saw when the passengers embarked, they also wanted to take off jackets and shoes because it was like a sauna.
Is it possible to turn the heat down now? 34-year-old Ulf Cedermark has been with the airline for four years.
He's the first officer on today's flight.
It was a light snowfall.
Temperature was just below freezing and light winds.
We were going to fly Stockholm to Copenhagen and then to Warsaw, back to Copenhagen and down to Barcelona that day.
It would be quite a long working day.
Stefan Rasmussen has just finished an exterior check of the plane.
The Danish pilot is in command this morning.
In those over 12,000, almost 13,000 hours I had been sitting there, I always felt that I put the aircraft on my back like a rucksack and when we took lift in the wings, we melded together.
The plane Rasmussen is strapping on today is a nearly-new DC-9, easily identifiable by its two rear engines.
By now everyone should know that door stays open.
Right! Even in the days before terrorist threats, flying with the cockpit door open is unusual.
It's just one way Rasmussen has endeared himself to the crews and passengers he flies with.
I always had my cabin door open because I found out that if we had the door open and they could see that there were human beings in there, they trust you.
INGRID ASTROM: For me it felt good that the door was open.
It just feels like you have a connection more than if the door is closed.
The winter weather has delayed this fight but Rasmussen won't compromise safety for schedule.
Where are we now with the de-icing? MAN: The wings aren't quite done.
We've done the underside.
Now they're doing the top.
Thank you.
Under Captain Rasmussen's instructions, the ground crew had already de-iced the plane once.
Now they're giving it another pass.
ULF CEDERMARK: It took a while but they had trouble getting rid of the snow on top of the wing.
So we were slightly late for the push back out to the runway.
For Captain Per Holmberg, this kind of delay is routine business.
He flies DC-9s for the airline.
A passenger this morning, he's scheduled to command another flight later that day.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
This is your captain.
I hope you had a good Christmas.
We're just getting our wings cleared as we had a bit of snow overnight.
And when that's finished, we're ready for take-off for some warmer weather.
I hand-picked the airline's best cabin crew to take care of you today.
We all hope you have a nice flight.
Finally, Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 is cleared to proceed.
There are build-ups of snow that the crew must avoid on the way to runway.
It would have been nice of them to clear the snow.
That would have made it too easy.
Approaching holding point, runway 0-8.
MAN: Roger, Scandinavian 751.
You are cleared for take-off from runway 0-8.
Spoilers? Armed.
Auto brake take-off unarmed.
Runway update performed.
Checklist completed.
Set power.
Despite the winter conditions, the take-off is routine.
V1.
Rotate.
Gear up.
Gear up selected.
When Ulf reached up for the gear, I heard some things which was different.
Just 25 seconds into the flight, as the plane is climbing, there is a problem.
When you hear things different from the normal, you get suspicious.
There was a really big roar in the aircraft, almost like an explosion.
"Boom.
" There was another banging noise that I just thought, "What is that?" I had never heard that before.
It's obvious the source of the noise is the right engine.
- It sounds serious.
- I believe it's a compressor stall.
I took the right throttle and moved it a little back but there it really became strange because the engine performance increased when I reduced the throttle.
It was like if you're sitting in your car and you're turning your wheel to the left and the car is driving to the right.
You get confused.
We're not supposed to call into cockpit now and I thought, "This is an emergency.
I have to call the captain.
" But Captain Rasmussen doesn't respond to the call.
He's too busy trying to figure out what's going wrong with his plane.
I couldn't see anything on the instruments - they were quite stable and in quite normal range and no problem but I could hear those roaring every second.
He searches for telltale signs of attack or structural failure.
I looked up at the cabin pressure because if you have a bomb or a freight door or anything which is ripped off, that will give a decompression.
In the cabin, pressure levels are stable .
.
but the crew has other concerns.
ASTROM: I saw the smoke and it smelt burnt.
What should we do about this? Just 3,200 feet above the ground, the emergency escalates - the right engine quits.
When we have flown a little over one minute, the right engine just went down.
(BEEPING) I had a very, very short moment of thinking that I was in a nightmare and just dreaming.
I was confused.
I was really confused.
Two seconds later, the left engine also quits.
The plane is now powerless.
RASMUSSEN: One engine dropped and then another engine dropped.
I thought that it wasn't true.
It wasn't true, it wasn't real.
Less than 1.
5 minutes after take-off, the DC-9 begins falling from the sky.
ASTROM: After that it was complete silence.
And I think that was the worst moment for me - just being in the air and it's so quiet.
It was like a bird just sailing through the sky.
So then I started to get scared.
Engine relay.
As the pilots try to restart their engines, things get even worse.
The left engine erupts in flames.
And I saw the exhaust gas temperature was rising rapidly.
The max temperature was around 680 degrees Celsius and I saw it go above 800.
A fire in the engine could spread to the rest of the plane.
Should I pull? If Cedermark pulls the fire extinguisher in the left engine, he will never be able to restart it.
He pulls the handle to put out the fire.
From his seat, Captain Per Holmberg can see that the crew is in trouble.
Flight 751 is now falling at a rate of 1,200 feet per minute .
.
but air traffic controllers at the Stockholm airport have no idea the plane is in trouble.
Arlanda! Stockholm, Scandinavian 751! MAN: Good morning, SA 751.
Climb to flight level 1-8-0.
We have problems with our engines.
We need to go back to to go back to Arlanda.
751, roger.
Turn right heading Suddenly the radio goes dead - a result of the failed engines.
Only the right engine can provide power but it's now spinning too slowly to generate electricity for the instruments.
Without the engine you don't have any propulsion so you willthe only energy you have is your height.
With time running out, the pilots of Flight 751 must find a way to restart the right engine or else crash into the countryside below.
Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 is now falling from the sky at 20ft per second.
How can I help? Captain Per Holmberg, who boarded the flight as a passenger, becomes part of the flight crew.
He came out in the cockpit and he said, "Is there anything I can help you with?" I don't think I even said yes.
I said, "Start the APU.
" If the auxiliary power unit can be launched, it will bring back the radio and instruments.
So I just handed him the emergency checklist and started to focus on controlling the flight to see that we were maintaining the speed and the altitude and that we were wings level.
He managed to start the auxiliary power unit so my flight instruments were supplied from that.
But for some reason, Captain Rasmussen's instruments don't come back online.
He managed to fly the plane basically by feel.
Power is also restored to the cabin, but it's small comfort to passengers who now know they're in extreme danger.
Stockholm air traffic control instructs the pilots to return to the airport.
(OVER RADIO) Scandinavian 751, are you able to turn right heading 090 radar vectoring for 0-1? But the plane is now just 1,600ft from the ground and First Officer Cedermark's attempts to resuscitate it aren't working.
Roger, we are maintaining our head in but we're trying to restart our engines.
Making a 180-degree turn back to Stockholm could be catastrophic.
I really had the feeling that if I turned the aircraft at that time, we would have stalled.
When you're turning back, you're losing a lot of energy, so the most safe thing to do is actually just to go straight, keep your wings level.
That means that you will use less energy of your altitude, so you can maintain your speed.
You can maintain 2,000ft.
We are not able to maintain 2,000ft, we are descending.
We are at 1,600ft and descending.
Holmberg wants Rasmussen to focus his attention on finding a landing spot.
Look straight ahead.
Look straight ahead! He was screaming at Stefan, "Just look straight ahead and watch the flight path.
" Prepare for on-ground emergency.
On-ground emergency! Bend down.
Bend down! Bend down! So we shouted, "Bend down," I don't know how many times - "Bend down! Bend down! Bend down!" Keep your seatbelts fastened.
While passengers brace, Rasmussen considers where to land his plane.
Look straight ahead.
RASMUSSEN: I had an idea that on the northern direction could bring us out to the Baltic Sea which was, at that time, frozen, and that's an excellent runway.
But instead, he finds himself gliding powerlessly over a dense forest.
I saw that green area and I saw that little light spot in the middle of the forest.
But that really looked short.
Steer right, steer right! Just 500ft above the ground, Captain Rasmussen lifts the plane's nose to slow it down, hoping to soften the crash-landing.
Pine trees, from the top, they look very soft.
I could use the trees as almost like a pillow.
- Should I lower the landing gear? - Yes, gear down! Bend down and hold your knees! I prepared myself for a hard impact.
If it's an emergency landing, we have no engines, I just thought, "This is going to be a hard landing.
" Stockholm - Scandinavian 751, we are crashing into the ground now.
I wasn't afraid until we were flying into the trees.
Then I was scared and I knew we were not going to make it.
I didn't thought I should die.
I knew I should die.
III prayed to God.
(CRASHING) And then .
.
the moment after, we were, we were, we were in a strange world.
After we have come to a complete stop, I feel the smell of aeroplane fuel.
I thought, "OK, we're gonna explode.
" And I look around and I see the snow, because there was a big crack in the aeroplane fuselage just in front of the aft galley.
You could just walk down on the ground.
(WIRES BUZZ) Everything was quiet and .
.
I woke up - it might only have been a split second or so.
I was afraid that my spine was broken, that I wouldn't be able to walk again so I remember I was sitting there and I was moving my toes and my feet just to see if I could have control over them.
I had a pain in my hand because I had broken a bone in my hand and I was bleeding heavily from my forehead, so I was trying to get clear of all the blood that was coming down in my eyes.
And Stefan told me that we have to get out of the aircraft.
After ploughing through 125m of pine forest, the pilots' fear is now that the broken aircraft could catch fire.
Dozens of passengers escape through the breaks in the fuselage walls.
But Captain Per Holmberg has been knocked unconscious by the crash.
It all went so fast that, like, no-one could take in what happened.
So I tried to stay with the group of passengers I had there but I just knew the feeling also that we had to wait a long time for the rescue teams.
Help will be here soon.
Fortunately no fire materialises but because they removed their winter clothing while boarding the sweltering plane, many passengers are starting to freeze.
Most people were just standing in their shirts, T-shirts, very, very little clothes.
A few didn't even have shoes on.
They are now at risk from hypothermia.
So I focused on being caring.
Maybe I did it for my own sake also - I needed a hug also.
It was comforting to, like, comfort someone else.
The wreckage of Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 lies just 15km north-east of Stockholm-Arlanda Airport.
The fuselage has broken into three pieces.
In the chaos of the moment, nobody knows how many people have been killed in the crash.
Rescuers arrived within minutes and attend to the freezing survivors.
They pull Captain Per Holmberg from the cabin, unconscious.
He landed on the wall at impact and he skidded down on the wall to the floor at impact, so he was quite badly damaged.
He cut his eyelid and he also got his collarbone - that was broken off, so his shoulder was in front of him.
92 of the passengers have sustained injuries.
Only eight are considered serious.
But when the crew conducts a headcount they are stunned to learn that out of the 129 people who boarded Flight 751, not a single one was killed in the crash.
Everyone survived.
It was like a shock just to take in - wow, that was a fantastic moment.
I was the happiest captain in the world.
We were all alive.
That was a great moment.
Reporters break the remarkable story to the world as the Swedish Accident Investigation Board, or SAIB, takes charge of the case.
Scandinavian Airlines alerts its own investigators, dispatching Tore Hultgren to head up its team.
It is most unusual that a plane crashes in a wooded area and everybody survives.
Never heard of it before.
The police kept everybody off the site itself.
There was a cordon around the aircraft of 100m.
We had a complete aircraft, nothing had burned and we had lots of good data.
Henrik Elinder from the SAIB gets to work on the evidence.
We started to plan the documentation of the accident site, which means photographing all the final approach through the woods, and to take photos of all the parts that were spread all over the place.
The two black boxes, which record cockpit conversations and store flight data, are recovered immediately.
Investigators speak to survivors.
Everyone tells a similar story.
Would you mind telling me what you saw and heard? Loud booming sounds from the engines moments after the flight began, smoke in the cabin and finally, the entire loss of power and an engine on fire.
You have a twin-engine aircraft and you are really not supposed to lose both engines at the same time.
The Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines are sent to a Scandinavian Airlines repair shop for closer examination.
Investigators are eager to speak with Captain Rasmussen about the incident.
But to their dismay, Scandinavian Airlines takes him to the media first.
The first question - (READS) "What did you think when both engines refused to function?" It will take me an awful lot of time to tell you all that.
The normal case is that the key witnesses, like the crew and so on, should be kept in quarantine until they meet the investigation board.
European media celebrate Captain Stefan Rasmussen as a hero for landing the DC-9 without engine power.
But investigators consider the possibility that he or his co-pilot had made errors that caused the crisis in the first place.
The honour and the glory always rests with the captain but so does, also, the mishaps.
I knew that being a person where, in the spotlight of the press would be a quite different situation and I said to myself, "The only thing you can do now is to give them "all the story and then pray that they will find the reason.
" Lars Lindberg is an investigative representative for the Swedish Airlines Pilot Association.
He examines the wreckage for signs of mechanical or structural failure.
We knew both engines had failed for some reason so we were concerned - what was the background for something like that to happen? The first time I saw the engines in the workshop I was surprised.
Is this all they found? There was a number of parts that were completely missing and this was something we hadn't seen before, to this extent.
To find out what happened, investigators must find the missing pieces, which now lie somewhere in snow-covered fields and forests.
A close study of Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751's engines reveals exactly which pieces are missing.
LINDBERG: Part of this aircraft was shedding parts from both engines.
And then what you do is you go further in and you document everything and you try to find the root cause and see how it all comes together.
The missing pieces could hold the key to discovering why both of the plane's engine quit within seconds of each other.
But they could be anywhere along the 15km route the aircraft covered during its short flight.
They must be found.
Investigators use the flight data recorder to map the plane's journey and determine where engine parts may have fallen.
After scouring the snow-covered fields along the plane's path, the recovery team finds 500 fragments - just a fraction of what's missing.
Many are very badly damaged.
Some of the titanium blades actually seem to have been on fire.
LINDBERG: You have this titanium fire inside both engines, both the right and the left engine.
And this titanium fire is a very unique occurrence.
It's requiring very, very high pressure and very high temperature for a titanium blade to catch fire.
Investigators dig deeper into the cause of the engine trouble.
The left engine's fuel line is badly dented.
It was obviously hit by a fast-moving piece of metal inside the engine.
The impact caused it to rupture.
This part got dislodged.
It went out and hit the fuel line and that fuel line cracked, sprayed fuel onto the hot engine.
(EXPLOSION) The engine was clearly coming apart during the flight.
That sounds serious.
The discovery explains the fire in the left engine and why so many pieces of it were found so far from the crash site.
But investigators are left wondering why the engines broke up in the first place.
(BOOM!) A major clue comes from passenger and crew testimonies which told of repeated booming noises before the left engine caught fire.
The cockpit voice recorder picked up these sounds.
You can hear that and we could correlate that with when the damage occurred.
You can see that on the flight data recorder.
The sounds are familiar to investigators and leave no doubt the DC-9's engines began surging shortly after take-off.
Jet engines rely on a steady stream of air for combustion.
A series of fans move incoming air through various stages of compression.
But when that flow is disrupted, fuel at the rear of the engine ignites violently and shoots forward.
That's a surge.
You can have a small surge and you can have a large surge.
You can have the complete surge on the whole engine.
That sounds serious.
LINDBERG: This surge process was very violent so after a very short time we had an aircraft with two engines that could not be restarted, that didn't generate any thrust.
Basically you had a giant glider at that point.
A closer look at the fan blades from the front of the engines explains why they were surging - they're badly dented.
The damage would have prevented them from effectively directing air to the rear of the engines.
This damage that twisted the fan blade started this process.
You've got this disturbed air in the fan, you've got this rotating fan stall that then triggered this whole breakdown, the compressor surge and then the whole process that led up to the dual engine failures.
But what exactly mangled the blades? There are ways to tell.
If it comes from a stone, rubber, ice and so on you can see it on the shape of the damage.
The ice causes very specific damages.
It's sort of like a soft dent.
Analysis of dent patterns on the fan blades is conclusive - they were struck by ice.
Now investigators want to find out where the ice could have come from.
Weather data for the 24 hours leading up to the crash.
They know Stockholm had been hit with rain and snow in the hours before Flight 751 took off.
It was a situation where the temperature around zero degrees, it was a drizzle, snow rain in the morning.
They learn that the DC-9 arrived from Zurich the night before with the fuel tanks more than half full.
HULTGREN: We had quite a large amount of reserve fuel, or diversion fuel, in the wings.
The fuel in the wing tanks were close to -20 degrees Celsius.
The conditions that night were ideal for the formation of clear ice on the wing surface.
And here you had very, very cold fuel on the top wing skin and as the temperature dropped during the night, it went to snow and rain and finally snow, so there was a layer cake - ice at the bottom, slush and snow on top.
10 inches total, on top of the wings in the morning.
Responsibility for de-icing the plane ultimately falls on the captain.
Rasmussen insists he was aware of the overnight build-up.
Investigators wonder if the pilot did all he could to ensure his plane was completely free of ice.
Rasmussen claims he instructed technicians to de-ice the plane thoroughly.
I did a walk around the aircraft.
It was cold, it was frosty.
Noticing that there was still frost on the wings, the head technician ordered a second round of de-icing.
I was really convinced that the aircraft was clean .
.
and so was he, so was he.
RASMUSSEN: (ON TAPE) Where are we now with the de-icing? The wings aren't quite done.
They've done the underside.
The cockpit voice recorder backs up Rasmussen's testimony.
They've got it good and clean under the wings? Yes, yes.
De-iced the aircraft once and looked again and said, "Once more" and they de-iced a second time.
In fact, a total of 850 litres of fluid was sprayed on the aircraft.
But the fluid may have been faulty - not potent enough to melt the thick layer of ice that had accumulated on the wings overnight.
Technicians test samples of the fluid used to de-ice Flight 751.
HULTGREN: They found no discrepancies.
There was nothing wrong with any of the fluids used.
But when investigators interview the maintenance crew that worked on the plane, they begin wondering if the de-icing team was thorough enough in their efforts.
The ground crew insists that after they sprayed the wing, it appeared to be clean.
But that appearance was deceptive.
It looked perfect because the clear ice on top of the fuel tanks - you cannot see the clear ice.
A technician inspected the front of the wing and found no ice.
He couldn't have known that there was ice further back, out of his reach.
No provisions for stairs or anything that he could use to get up on the wing at the de-icing platform.
It looked shiny and nice, couldn't see any ice on it.
But still there was maybe an inch of ice on top of the wing when the aircraft took off.
As soon as the plane took flight, the ice became a problem.
On this aircraft the engines are positioned behind the wings and as the aircraft rotated and the wings bend in order to take the weight of the aircraft, this ice on the wing loosened and it sucked right into the engine.
The ice damaged the fan blades at the front of the engines and ultimately caused them to begin surging.
HULTGREN: Nobody really expected this would happen, could happen, but it did.
When ice breaks off the wings during flight, it doesn't pose a problem for most aircraft.
But the placement of a DC-9's engines leaves them more susceptible to being struck.
The Pratt & Whitney engines on Flight 751 were designed to withstand this type of ice ingestion.
Something else must explain the disaster.
Investigators know that the wrong reaction by a pilot can make surges worse.
They comb through the flight data to see what these pilots did when the emergency struck.
The first thing you do when you have a surge, if you recognise it as a surge, is that you reduce power.
Captain Rasmussen claims he did just that.
Of course you just pull the throttle back and then you have the balance between the incoming fuel, and incoming air, and that was exactly what I did.
But the flight data recorder tells a different story.
Why is the engine power increasing? It clearly shows that in the moments after the surge, thrust was reduced but then, seconds later, was increased to beyond full power.
Yeah, it didn't add up because the RPM was increasing to 110% and the throttle position was moving.
It shouldn't be.
The only thing that could move the throttle was the pilot's hand.
But if Rasmussen didn't push the throttles forward, something else did.
It would explain the captain's confusion as his engines began to surge.
As a pilot, when you've gone through the training, you've done all your emergency training, you've been through the simulator and now you have a system that is doing something that you don't expect, it's very confusing.
Despite their relentless efforts, investigators can find no possible explanation for the increase in thrust.
LINDBERG: The frustrating part with the investigation was that we could not figure out why the system did what it did.
Then, almost two months after the accident, the plane's manufacturer provides the answer.
The culprit is something called Automatic Thrust Restoration.
It's brand-new.
It automatically increases the thrust during the climb.
Swedish authorities learn that Automatic Trust Restoration or ATR was recently introduced as a safety feature on Scandinavian Airlines planes.
It existed because the FAA had discovered some pilots were throttling back considerably while taking off and landing to reduce noise over residential neighbourhoods.
The ATR was designed to make it impossible for them to throttle back to dangerous levels.
So as soon as he powered back, the system kicked in.
Investigators learned that when Rasmussen reduced power to clear his engine surge, the system read this as a dangerously low power setting and pushed the throttles forward.
The increased thrust made the surging worse until the engines destroyed themselves.
The investigation concludes that the pilots had taken the right steps to clear the surge and prevent the catastrophe but the computer code which governs the ATR undermined their efforts.
The strip of zeros and ones caused the throttles to move and caused the engines that were stalling because they already got too much fuel with even more fuel.
They went into self destruct, both engines, only in a few seconds, both totally destroyed.
The system was so new to Scandinavian Airlines that nobody there had even heard of it.
LINDBERG: It was confusing for everyone because we didn't know about the system, we didn't have information on the system, SAS didn't know the system existed on their aircraft.
We hadn't bought that modification .
.
and it was sneaked in via another system.
Because he didn't know about the ATR, Rasmussen was unaware that he could only save his plane by switching it off.
News that the Automatic Trust Restoration was responsible for the accident proved both a blessing and a curse for Captain Rasmussen.
It eliminated any notion that he had made a mistake.
RASMUSSEN: When I got that message, I was really released.
It was like winning in the lottery, it wasbecause I was so happy because then I could explain why I was in that total cone of confusion.
But the fall-out would ultimately destroy a love affair and end a career.
On October 20, 1993, the Swedish Accident Investigation Board releases its report on the crash of Flight 751.
It determines that the actions of Captain Rasmussen and First Officer Cedermark contributed to the safe outcome of this incident.
And although investigators question Captain Per Holmberg's decision to enter the cockpit in the first place, they do praise his contribution.
This crew flew until they stood still on the ground.
They never gave up.
They never gave up.
They didn't give an inch.
The investigators put much of the blame for the accident on Scandinavian Airlines because their procedures for checking for clear ice were inadequate.
I believe it's a compressor stall.
The report also condemns the fact that the pilots didn't know about the Automatic Thrust Restoration and how it would act in a surge situation.
If the ATR system hadn't been there, if the throttles hadn't moved forward, there wouldn't have been an accident.
It was a bit strange that we didn't have all the documentation available to us so we knew what we could expect if something like this would happen.
In the wake of the crash, Scandinavian Airlines started training its pilots how to use the ATR system.
They also implemented steps to ensure airplanes don't take off with clear ice on the wings.
We changed all the procedures, we provided stairs for the mechanic and they made it a requirement to go up on top of the wing and touch it with your hand to verify after de-icing.
After healing from his injuries, First Officer Ulf Cedermark returned to the cockpit.
I didn't feel the responsibility that I wouldn't be able to do my job again.
Whatever happens, I know that I still can see things for what they are and I still love doing my job and if something bad happens, I can deal with it.
But Stefan Rasmussen's return proved far more difficult.
Set power.
After I'd heard from a high-skilled psychologist, we talked about getting in the air again.
He knew that that would be a hard decision to take.
Gear up.
(BEEPING) Fire drill.
After time in the simulator, Rasmussen couldn't regain confidence in his plane.
Sorry, guys.
In a disaster situation, in a crisis, is that you have optimised the teamwork between man and machine.
I really felt that I didn't trust the aircraft.
Pilots tend to take the responsibility for all that went wrong.
Too much of the glory and also too much of the responsibility.
With the right counselling, about 90% of pilots involved in an accident are able to continue flying.
Even though Captain Rasmussen received treatment, his career ended with the crash of Flight 751.
Taking that decision to leave aviation as pilot was likehaving your highest love and, um come to that conclusion that .
.
that you have to kill her.
I had many hours, many missions of happiness in an aircraft.
I love my passengers, I love my aircraft so much so I said, "That's it.
" I never regret it, never.
And I think I was right.