murder, cyber warfare, nuclear physics and old fashioned smuggling. that is tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. eastern right here on fox. we want to take you back to reno, nevada and the site of the air crash that killed nine people. and now a spectator was there and we talked with him. i understand you were about 50 from the tarmac, a very close seat. can you tell me what was going on that made you feel suddenly that this was going to be deadly? guest: our box was 50 from the impact and we saw the plane come around the turn and it started to slip out and came over the crowd and started to pitch and it was clear that the pilot was having control problems and then it started coming straight down right at our box and we tried to decide whether to run and saw the pilot regain control, it appeared and tried to head the plane out over the brush and it went over our
miles away from the mountain. it was a distance from the crash site. they knew it departed the plane early. so now you ask the question, what could cause a decompression, control problems and the loss of a vertical fin. looking at the plane s maintenance history, they learn there was previous damage to the aft brusher bulk head, and that s what keeps the cabin pressurized. it was cracked seven years before the crash. when the tail was accidentally drug along the runway, something known as a tail strike. it can occur in one of phases of flight. it can occur on takeoff or on landing, when the plane is in a tail low and nose high attitude, and either way it will create damage. the repair is problematic. the structure is so large, more than 15 feet across, the airplane was originally built
747 structure has cracked and expanded to the breaking point that it snapped. it s the aft pressure bulkhead, an umbrella-shaped structure toward the back of the plane. it s the device that keeps the pressure in the back part of the airplane contained properly. without that pressure, you can t pressurize the two and you wouldn t be able to breathe at 35,000 feet without the use of pressurized supplemental oxygen. the back of the airplane is getting a considerable amount of stress, not only from the pressurization, but also from the tail and all the stresses of flight. that bulkhead is very, very robust. it is a serious piece of structure. at the moment of the decompression, all the pressurized air for the cabin needs somewhere to go. it blasts back the cracked bulkhead, and unbeknownst to the pilot, the tremendous force blows the vertical fin and other parts of the tail section right off the giant 747.
they were in the middle 20,000 feet, which is where airplanes experience the most pressure on the vessel itself. at that point they received a door warning that a door was ajar which turned out not to be the case. we ve already seen how an airplane s fuselage expands as the plane goes up and contracts as the plane comes down. the altitude with the greatest pressure differential between the pressurized inside of an aircraft and the unpressurized atmosphere outside is right around 24,000 feet. that s where jal-123 experiences an explosive shock. a massive decompression for reasons that they didn t know. but the crew did not realize the amount of damage they sustained until very quickly, the airplane became less and less controllable to the point it was no longer controllable at all. that would be a nightmare scenario for a pilot. what the pilot s don t know is that a critical piece of the
when any structural element of an airplane fails, the result can be fatal. a 747 has a cargo door blown out in mid flight. the decompression is so powerful it sucks two rows of seats and nine passengers out of the plane in a split second. this was taken from row 17 aisle seat. this video shot by bruce lambert two weeks after the fatal accident documents the aftermath of united airlines flight 811. investigators immediately know the problem centers on the cargo door. they can tell from the gaping hole where it used to be. the key question, why did it explode open, plummeting to the pacific ocean below? but the key piece investigators would like to examine, the cargo door itself, is lost at sea.