SouthShoreNow.ca

Crash probe could take another year

Lisa Brown
Lighthouse staff

 SHEARWATER - One year after investigators began probing the crash of Swissair Flight 111 looking for the cause of 229 deaths they still don't have an answer.

 While the first anniversary of the air disaster on September 2 marks an important milestone for families and communities affected by the tragedy, it's almost just another day for investigators as work continues at Shearwater and elsewhere.

 Larry Vance is the deputy investigator in charge of the Swissair probe. To date, recovery and investigation have cost over $60 million, but he knows there's still a long way to go.

 "From an investigation point of view, a one-year anniversary doesn't have a whole lot of significance. It's more significant for the families and it's significant to us simply because it is significant to the families," he said Monday.

 "As far as the actual work that is going on, the work will continue the same basically as it has," he added.

 The investigation hangar at Shearwater where the front section of the downed jet is being reconstructed will be available to the families while they are in Nova Scotia this week. Many families have come there over the past year to see the debris and talk with officials.

 "We always welcome them at the hangar and try to provide whatever information we can to them. We'll be doing the same thing at the anniversary time," Mr. Vance said.

 He doesn't feel the anniversary adds any additional pressure to the investigation. Those probing the disaster knew from the outset that it would take a long time to come up with answers. As long as they continue trying to retrieve debris needed to reach conclusions, the process will be slow.

 "How long it's going to take is the question that everybody asks and sometimes we ask ourselves," Mr. Vance said. "The answer to that is that we will take whatever time is necessary to get it done properly and get it done right and to extract the maximum amount of safety information out of it that we possibly can.

 "That's how we will mark our conclusion," he added. "When we have extracted all the safety information potential from this that we possibly can then we will say that we're done."

 The investigation could go on for another year or more.

 While finding the cause of the crash is important, there are investigations where none is conclusively found. The TSB's goal is to determine what safety information is available from the investigation process.

 "Whether that actually gets us to the point where we find the lead event, we'll have to wait and see. If we gather up enough information for accident prevention purposes, that's our goal," Mr. Vance said.

 About 10 per cent of the aircraft has not yet been recovered. Officials are currently looking at options to resume recovery work following this, the anniversary week.

 The wreckage still missing includes about half of the MD-11's cockpit. The plane crashed into the water at an angle nose first when it went down. The forward section of the aircraft suffered the most damage and pieces of debris from that area are smaller and often harder to retrieve.

 But investigators are focussing on the front portion of the plane because the crew reported smoke in the cockpit 16 minutes before the crash. Bits of wiring and other debris from that section show signs of intense heat and officials want to determine the cause of that fire.

 They are in the process of contracting a ship with a suction system to dredge the crash zone. They hope to do the work in late September.

 Whether or not that will be the final stage of the recovery process, investigators won't know until they see what debris is retrieved from the ocean floor. Mr. Vance said he doesn't know if it's realistic to hope to retrieve all of the missing 10 per cent of the aircraft.

 "What we do have as an objective is to get more material," he said. "I think that when we've exhausted all the humanly possible methods of doing that within reason then we'll declare that to be finished.

 "It's one of those things that you analyze as you go," he added. "It's not like we have some measuring stick particularly laid out for us so that we can follow it along. We're doing some invent-as-you-go here. We're certainly using all the ingenuity we can muster and then some."

 The Swissair crash is unique because of its particular circumstances. Other aircraft, including TWA 800, have crashed into the ocean, but in larger pieces in less water.

 "I don't know that it's happened before. Certainly we don't have somebody else's notes to go and refer to to tell us how to recover wreckage from that particular spot at that depth in that many pieces," Mr. Vance said.

 Materials obtained during the suction operation will go to a TSB location in Sheet Harbour for sorting. Once the aircraft debris is separated from the rocks and mud, it will be taken to Shearwater for further analysis.

 Investigators are currently trying to develop tests to find the message in retrieved wires showing signs of arcing damage. Those experiments to discover if the arcing was the cause or the result of the on board fire are being conducted at labs in Ottawa.

 "Basically what we're trying to determine is if we can determine whether a wire was arcing in a clean environment, in other words more or less as a lead event, or whether a wire was arcing in a dirty environment, which would be basically that we would consider that there was a fire first and then the arcing," Mr. Vance explained.

 To the investigators, the past year of work and the efforts of the coming months are all necessary. Not only will they hopefully bring some measure of comfort to the families of the victims of the disaster, but they will improve safety in the long run.

 The TSB has already made recommendations stemming from the Swissair crash. Most recently, they announced late last month that insulation used inside the MD-11 to keep heat in and noise out helped spread the fire.

 The board made an urgent recommendation to eliminate metallized polyethylene terephthalate insulation, known under the trade name Mylar, from commercial aircraft. Investigators concluded that the continued use of Mylar constituted an unnecessary risk.

 On the heels of the TSB findings, the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority - recognized internationally as the leader in safety standards - ordered the replacement of Mylar insulation in American-registered commercial aircraft. It's expected that other regulators will follow suit so all 1,230 planes built with the insulation are altered worldwide.

 Other than the Swissair disaster, Mylar has been implicated in five aircraft fires in recent years. Three happened aboard MD-11s similar to the Swissair jet.

 Those kinds of changes will lead to improved aviation safety, the TSB's ultimate objective.

 "The benefit from an investigation like this is to try to prevent this type of occurrence from happening again," Mr. Vance said Monday. "If you are going to advance transportation safety, then you have to do some very thorough investigating of all the occurrences that happen for accident prevention purposes.

 "If you don't do that," he added, "then you're basically accepting that you would feel comfortable allowing a similar event to happen again."