Page 28 - Flight Controls News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Air 539 from ontario, california, to seattle? a chorus of angry infants. >> all the babies were crying at the same time. >> reporter: ears popping plane-wide as the 737 with 131 passengers and 5 crew momentarily loses enough cabin pressurization to cause a painful alert that something is wrong. >> my ears about blew up on me. >> reporter: in the cockpit, pilots send an emergency call from 25,000 feet asking for priority landing at san jose airport. telling controllers they're in the midst of a catastrophic electrical failure with loss of some flight controls and cabin pressure. >> the captain ...

Into the cockpit, drawing power from the same source as the flight controls. >> under normal conditions, an in-flight entertainment system arcing event and fire would be controllable because they would be able to shut off electricity to it. unfortunately, in the case of swiss air 111, they were unable to do that. >> wear and tear on the entertainment system wiring created an opening that allowed electricity to jump out. an arcing event. the arc occurred right next to the wires that powered the flight deck's most crucial equipment, setting off a fire that spread across the cockpit attic, burnin...

>> but when they did that, they no longer had air flow across the flight controls. >> they did a very good job of trying to get control of the airplane. but they just didn't have enough altitude or time to do it. >> the plane staggers up to 325 feet. as it's rolled on to its side and slowed down, it's uncontrollable, and goes into a nose dive. >> american 191, heavy. want to come back into what runway? >> he's not talkin' to me. >> there he goes. there he goes. >> within 31 seconds of the engine severing from the plane, the dc-10 slams into a trailer park less than a mile from the runway. >> t...

Impossible. but six months into writing the final report, the impossible happens. >> we managed to come up with a wire bundle that was, in fact, involved in the lead event. >> the investigators identify microscopic points on two wires and determine that they were the first to experience a fault. but it's still unclear why they malfunctioned and how they caused the crash. >> the md-11 was one of the earlier planes to have personal in-flight entertainment. and so in the first-class cabin area, this system drew a lot of power, and on this type of airplane, it has individual power supplies for the...

Off the airplane. there's no indication for that. >> look at this, look at this. blew up engine. equipment. >> the leading edge slats which give the wing better lift during slow speeds during takeoff and landing are controlled hydraulically. now with no hydraulics on the left side, the slats retract back into the wing. >> which means he has less lift on that side than he had on the opposite side, so it wants to roll. >> an eyewitness manages to snap a photo of the plane rolling on to its side with its left wing pointing straight down to the ground. what happens next seals the fate of flight 19...