Mayday (2013) s04e09 Episode Script
Vertigo
VOICEOVER: In the dark of night over the Red Sea, a pilot struggles to control his passenger jet.
- (SCREAMING) - (BEEPING) MAN: Retard power.
Retard power! Retard power! The plane seems to have a life of its own.
(SCREAMING) - (BEEPING) - Oh, God! (SCREAMING) Something's wrong with the plane! (SCREAMING) TRANSLATION: I heard a scream, a noise.
After that, I didn't hear anything.
The sands of Egypt hide thousands of years of history.
Monuments to ancient civilisations dominate the landscape.
But for sun-loving Europeans, Egypt is also a resort destination, where the most important sand is on the beach.
The town of Sharm el-Sheikh is several hundred kilometres south-east of Cairo.
Perched on the Red Sea, it's a natural destination for people looking for a little rest and relaxation.
In the early days of 2004, tourists aren't the only ones drawn to the local beaches.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also in the region visiting Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
Just after 2:00 in the morning on January 3, many vacationers are still out on the town.
But 53-year-old Captain Khedr Abdullah is just starting his day.
(ALARM BEEPS) He's renowned for his punctuality.
A former officer in the Egyptian Air Force, Khedr is now a highly respected captain with the charter company Flash Airlines.
TRANSLATION: He always liked to pack his own suitcase.
He wouldn't let me do it for him.
He always said, "I would like to prepare my own things "to make sure I don't forget anything.
" He was very precise on what he wanted and what he would take with him.
Captain Khedr meets up with his 25-year-old first officer Omar Al Shafei.
Together they'll fly out of Sharm el-Sheikh, heading for Paris.
- Morning.
- Good morning, sir.
Al Shafei is young enough to be the captain's son.
The early-morning flight isn't for everyone.
Pascal Mercier and his family are supposed to be on the Flash jet but changed their plans.
MAN: I was booked on the Flash Airlines flight.
When my agency told me that I had to wake up very early and then we had to change planes in Cairo, I said, "This is really stupid.
" I mean, my daughter was, like, two years old and the other ones were, like, six and eight.
So really I didn't feel comfortable about changing planes and so on.
For other tourists, the cheap tickets that Flash offers are worth the trouble of getting up early.
Franz Thuller was able to bring his entire family to Egypt.
They need the break.
TRANSLATION: My brother-in-law had just lost his father, so he brought his children, his mother and his wife there, just to have a good time.
Not to see the sights or anything, just to have a good time.
That's what Sharm el-Sheikh is known for.
Fatima Hjiaj is also heading back to Paris after a vacation in Sharm.
The mother-of-five is flying alone.
Before take-off, she calls her nephew in France.
TRANSLATION: I was asleep when she called.
I didn't really want to get into a conversation with her.
She was someone who called you for everything.
She needed to be reassured.
So even though she had the five- or six-hour flight ahead of her, she just wanted to make sure that I would be there to pick her up at the airport.
In all, 148 passengers and crew settle into their seats aboard the jet.
It's 5:00am.
In the cockpit, Ashraf Abdelhamid is the third member of the crew.
He's training as a first officer, although he's worked for years piloting corporate jets.
None of the crew members are happy with the poor quality of the weather information they're getting from the local air traffic controller.
They didn't say, "Sky clear.
" They said, "Clouds and sky clear.
" How? The two are opposite.
Ask him about ceiling.
No ceiling and clouds and sky clear.
- Maybe it's scattered.
- Maybe he means 'scattered'.
Good morning.
The captain is also frustrated that one of his instruments isn't working.
Although the engineer agrees there's a problem, it's not serious enough to fix.
The men laugh it off at the expense of the first officer.
Probably caused by Omar making a heavy landing.
(LAUGHS) The Flash Airlines flight will head out over the Red Sea, before turning towards Cairo.
The jet climbs through a pitch-black night.
Without a moon to light the scene, it's hard for the passengers to see much of anything outside their windows.
In the cockpit, the simple turn over the Red Sea is taking a bizarre twist.
See what the aircraft just did? Captain Khedr doesn't like the way his plane is behaving.
- OMAR: Turning right, sir.
- What? Aircraft is turning right.
Turning right? How turning right? The plane is supposed to be turning left on its way to Cairo.
Instead it's turning in the opposite direction.
OK.
Out.
The captain tries to get his plane back on course, but his situation just gets worse.
(SCREAMING) Over-bank.
Knowing he's in trouble, the captain tells the first officer to engage the autopilot.
Autopilot.
Autopilot! - But it doesn't work.
- No autopilot, Commander! The 737 is now flying almost completely on its side.
(SCREAMING) Something's wrong with the plane! The plane gains speed as it spirals towards the Red Sea.
Just minutes after take-off, the plane is out of control .
.
diving towards the water, it's travelling at more than 700 kilometres an hour.
Everyone on board is running out of time.
Just minutes after take-off, an early-morning flight has become a desperate battle for survival.
A passenger jet filled with French families is plunging towards the Red Sea.
(SCREAMING) Everyone on board can feel the tremendous speed and gut-wrenching turns.
The enormous G forces are making it difficult for Captain Khedr Abdullah to fly the plane.
Ashraf Abdelhamid, the third member of the flight crew, tells the captain to slow the plane down.
ASHRAF: Retard power.
Retard power! Retard power! The plane is travelling so fast it's threatening to tear itself apart.
After flying almost upside down, the crew is finally beginning to bring their plane under control.
(GRUNTS) Oh, God! (SCREAMING) Then they hear the ground-proximity warning.
(ALARM SOUNDS) They're getting dangerously close to the Red Sea.
(RUMBLING) (CRIES) Mamma! Mamma! Pascal Mercier and his family are staying at a beachfront hotel.
(CRIES) Mamma! My daughter woke up suddenly, screaming like hell, screaming like if something happened.
(CRIES) I didn't hear the crash, but maybe she did.
- It's OK, sweetie.
It's OK.
- Mama! (CONTINUES CRYING) It's just before 5:00 in the morning, minutes after the plane took off from the airport.
It's disappeared from local radar screens.
By the time the sun rises, the crash site is found, but there's little for rescuers to do.
The plane shattered on impact.
A postcard is found, saying simply, "I think this card will arrive after me.
" Pieces of debris litter the surface, but most of the plane has sunk beneath the waves.
There are no survivors.
All 148 people on board the plane are dead.
Flight 604 was to land at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris in the morning.
As family and friends wait, officials list the plane as delayed and then slowly break the news of the accident.
TRANSLATION: They asked me, "Are you waiting for someone from Sharm el-Sheikh?" You say, "Yes.
" Then they say, "Could you come with us? "We are going to take you to a hotel.
"At the hotel, we'll explain it all to you.
" TRANSLATION: It was very strange, since we were greeted in an hotel and we passed people who were leaving happy, because they were looking for the same information as us, but their families were not on the list.
They came with the paper in hand.
"Here, yes.
Madame Hjiaj, Fatima.
"We apologise that you have to learn it this way, but she's dead.
" Later, on his voicemail Mohammed Hjiaj hears Fatima's message sent during the flight.
I heard a scream, a noise.
After that, I didn't hear anything.
Captain Khedhr's wife hears about the crash from her son.
TRANSLATION: My son called me from abroad and told me that he had heard there was an accident on Flash Airlines.
I was in disbelief for a while until it became reality.
It was a very big shock for me.
In resort hotels, workers check the empty rooms of those who were on Flight 604.
But one of the rooms is occupied.
Mr Mercier.
This guy from the hotel staff began to cry.
He was really shocked, happily shocked, to see us.
He thought we were on the flight with everybody else.
They'rethey're here.
In my hotel, 82 people were on that flight.
82 people.
It was really, really strange.
Really, really heavy.
But we were really lucky.
There had been no mayday call from the plane, no warning to air traffic control that something was wrong.
With the plane crashing just minutes after it left the airport, there are immediate concerns that a bomb had brought the jet down.
The plane had just taken off and it looked very strange why this accident happened so quickly after take-off.
When investigators examine the plane's flight path, they discover it would've gone directly over the town where Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak kept a vacation home.
It's also close to the house where British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his family were staying.
Blair and his family were supposed to leave from the same airport that day.
Security around the Prime Minister is immediately heightened.
Two days after the crash, authorities receive a phone call.
Terrorists from Yemen claim responsibility for the crash.
They say it's a protest against a French law banning the Muslim headscarf, the hijab, in public schools.
But in spite of the phone call and the rumours swirling around Egypt, investigators quickly rule out terrorism.
If you have a wreckage distributed in a very large area, that means the plane was disintegrating in the air and due to an explosion, it would be disintegrating on a wide area.
In this case, there was very, very few pieces and all located in a very small area so this indicated that the plane was intact .
.
and went into the water intact.
If it wasn't terrorism, what had ripped the plane from the sky so quickly? Investigators face an enormous challenge.
The plane has sunk below the surface of the Red Sea.
Divers have to fight off sharks that are drawn to the carnage.
The rescue teams find few bodies intact.
The aircraft and most of the 148 passengers and crew have sunk over 1,000 metres to the bottom of the Red Sea.
The first task of investigators is to find the aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders - the black boxes.
If they survived the crash, they will now be on the seabed.
But this part of the Red Sea has never been charted.
With so many French tourists involved, the French government offers to help in any way it can.
KELADA: The French immediately responded by sending a boat specially equipped with robots to search the bottom of the sea.
But the wreckage is too deep.
The sub that the French boat has can't survive the enormous pressure at the bottom of the sea.
The investigators desperately need another submarine but they're running out of time.
The black box transmits a radio signal but the battery only lasts for 30 days.
If investigators can't find it within a month, the mystery of Flight 604 may never be solved.
Getting to the black boxes before the time the ping has stopped transmitting was always a very worrisome aspect to all the investigation team.
Everybody was working 24 hours around the clock to try to salvage these and try to locate them for us.
While the recovery effort continues, family and friends of the victims begin to mourn those who died.
They pressure investigators to solve the mystery.
TRANSLATION: It's the biggest air disaster involving French nationals, the biggest in the history of civil aviation.
American, French and Egyptian experts join forces.
While waiting for the plane's black boxes to be recovered, they also begin focusing on Flash Airlines itself.
Flying just two planes, it was one of a number of low-cost charter companies that had been competing for customers in Europe.
In the last 10 years, there had been a rapid expansion of budget airlines throughout this part of the world.
Offering inexpensive, no-frills service, they fought for a piece of the holiday market.
Seaside resorts like Sharm el-Sheikh were one of the many destinations they serve.
Now, one of the ways in which they provide this extremely cheap travel is by operating their aeroplanes 24 hours a day.
Operating on such tight schedules means the planes are flown constantly.
Former Flash passengers step forward to complain about other flights.
There are a lot of stories.
I was flying home after vacation A year before the crash, while flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to Bologna, one passenger recalls seeing flames pouring from a Flash Airlines jet.
Hey! Hey! The engine's on fire! Look! (WOMAN SCREAMS) Please.
The flaming aircraft is forced to make an emergency landing.
Investigators learn that in 2002, the Swiss Aviation Authority performed a surprise inspection on the same plane that would later crash.
The pilots' oxygen masks are missing.
There aren't enough oxygen tanks.
Some of the cockpit instruments aren't working.
It's enough for the Swiss to ground the flight for eight hours until the company repairs the plane.
A few days later, Flash Airlines was banned from flying in Switzerland.
Another ban occurred in Poland.
In Norway, tour operators stopped contracting with Flash.
It's a rare event for an airline to be banned from operating into a country.
They had to have done something dramatically wrong, especially when it comes to safety.
With mounting concerns about the safety record of Flash Airlines, investigators comb through the company's paperwork.
They discover that the most recent maintenance records for the plane that crashed were never duplicated.
They've gone missing with the aircraft.
KELADA: The lack of having copies of the technical log and all of them being onboard, of course, this is a violation and Civil Aviation here issued very clear instructions that this should not happen.
While there are concerns about the state of the company's planes, there are no such issues when it comes to the crew of Flight 604.
Captain Khedr was considered not only a flying ace, but a national war hero for his performance in the Yom Kippur War.
During his career, he not only flew sophisticated fighter jets, but also a variety of large cargo aircraft.
He had over 7,000 hours of flying experience, as well as 2,000 hours as a flight instructor.
All the evidence shows that Captain Khedr was a model pilot.
With the aircraft and its black box data recorders still hidden deep under the Red Sea, investigators wonder was this a case of a superb pilot fighting to save a decrepit plane? See what the aircraft did? Finally, after several days of searching, a breakthrough.
A French research ship hears the locator signals given off by the black boxes.
A remotely operated sub drops down over 1,000 metres.
The violence of the crash has spread the wreckage over a wide area.
Two weeks after the crash, both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are recovered from the bottom of the sea.
Investigators finally have some hard evidence.
The Egyptian, French and American team examines the critical devices in Cairo.
After the two black boxes are found, the salvage effort wraps up.
Other than a select number of small pieces, the rest of the plane is too deep to recover.
KELADA: One of the things we did to depict the path of the aircraft was we created an animation based on the data we got from the flight data recorder and from radar.
The flight data recorder paints a devastating picture.
Shortly after take-off, the plane began heading left, just as it was supposed to.
But then it quickly started banking in the other direction.
The cockpit voice recorder shows that the turn caught the captain off guard.
Turning right, sir.
What? How turning right? KELADA: Analysing the cockpit voice recorder showed that the pilots were experiencing definitely some kind of an abnormality problem that they could not understand.
The investigators sift through the flight data to find some explanation for the jet's bizarre movement.
Perhaps some mechanical fault was forcing the plane off course.
And there is an indication that something was wrong with the Flash jet before it took off.
On the runway, the captain and the ground engineer discussed an electrical malfunction.
But it's impossible to tell from the cockpit voice recorder exactly what the problem was.
Especially electrical.
TRANSLATION: We can't be sure which equipment was being referred to by the aircraft captain and the engineer when they were discussing the faulty equipment.
Not enough parts were brought up from the bottom of the sea to be able to determine that.
And, tragically, the ground engineer was also on the flight.
Investigators travel to the United States to test the most likely ideas in a sophisticated simulator.
If they can force the simulator to repeat the movements of the Flash jet, they might be able to figure out why the plane crashed.
The results are brought back to Cairo.
There are only four mechanical faults that could've produced the flight path of the doomed jet.
Investigators believe the key to the crash is to find out why the plane began turning off course.
KELADA: These four scenarios were all related to what would cause an uncommanded bank.
So we were left with these as causes that we could not rule out.
Two of the scenarios involved the spoilers on the plane's right wing.
Spoilers lift up from the top surface of the wings, slowing it down.
By producing drag, or spoiling the airflow, they help turn the aircraft.
If the pilot's control wheel or the cables that connect it to the spoiler jammed .
.
it could've forced the plane off course.
Problems with the spoilers are one explanation but there's no physical proof.
And while there were maintenance problems with Flash planes, none of them had to do with the jet's spoilers.
The team searches for another explanation.
Another potential cause of the crash is the plane's ailerons.
This part of a plane's wing controls the angle of a plane's turn.
A malfunctioning aileron could have caused the plane to roll to the right.
Again, if the crew couldn't fix the problem, the plane would've begun to spiral into the sea.
While so-called 'aileron trim runaway' would create a flight path like the one seen during the crash, once again, there's no physical proof to support the theory.
And, typically, aileron trim runaway can be physically overcome by pilots.
All he would have to do was overpower using more force to move the control wheel in an opposite direction.
Overbanked! When they listened to the cockpit voice recorder, the investigators are puzzled by the constant discussion of the plane's autopilot.
Autopilot! The captain asks for the autopilot to be turned on .
.
but it had no effect and the plane began to plummet to the sea.
And earlier in the cockpit recording, investigators uncover another curious exchange.
Captain Khedr began the initial turn over the Red Sea manually but decided to let the autopilot take over.
Autopilot.
The flight data recorder shows that the autopilot was indeed turned on as the plane climbed.
Not yet.
But then the captain appears to change his mind.
The plane's flight data recorder shows that the autopilot was only activated for three seconds.
But investigators wonder if the autopilot had malfunctioned and stayed in command of the jet.
The automated system could have continued to control the plane, flying it to the right, even after the pilots thought it had been disengaged.
KELADA: The malfunction of the autopilot of course took a lot of work for us because it was nearly impossible to show that it did not happen and quite impossible to show that it did happen.
Sobut it was always a very prominent possibility because it would give a very, very close scenario to what was happening.
Perhaps most puzzling of all, though, is that no matter what happened to the plane, it appeared to be under control just before it crashed.
Moments before impact, the captain was seemingly back in command of his airplane.
If there had been some crippling mechanical problem why did it seem to disappear? Some members of the team want to consider something besides mechanical fault - the pilots themselves.
I think the major concern for the United States was that the human-factors elements of this accident weren't thoroughly explored.
Perhaps the high esteem given to Egyptian pilots was getting in the way.
In Egypt, pilots are very respected and in particular, air force pilots are very highly regarded.
For the past 26 years the country's president has been a highly decorated air force officer.
In an environment like this the pilot is somewhat immune to suspicion.
When something goes wrong the natural tendency is to blame the equipment.
And on this flight, the pilot was a war hero with thousands of hours of experience.
Studying the flight data recorders again, the investigators discover something peculiar.
Even before the plane's bizarre turn to the right, three things all seemed to happen at the same time.
Instead of a smooth left turn, the plane begins to come out of its turn early.
The nose starts to rise and the plane's airspeed decreases noticeably.
But during this time the pilot says nothing.
It seems that he's unaware of the changes to his flight path.
I've flown out of Sharm el-Sheikh at night-time and in the same type of aircraft and in no way should the pilot allow the airspeed to drop by as much as 30 knots or the bank angle to change beyond five degrees without clearly stating the reasons for the change in the flight path.
Some investigators consider a provocative theory that might explain this seemingly bizarre behaviour.
Perhaps Captain Khedr had been affected by vertigo.
Vertigo is a physiological condition that would exist with any person, not just pilots, and it's based on the inner-ear.
Over a dark ocean without a defined visual horizon no ground lights, the pilot may not be able to perceive visually whether he was flying up, down, left or right and if the fluid in his inner-ear was moving where he tilted his head that may induce a sensation, a physiological sensation that may cause the pilot to believe the plane is flying straight and level when it's actually turning.
It is actually a very high workload situation and when there are no visual cues outside, because it's a moonless night and you're over featureless territory with no lights in it, you, really, as a professional pilot, should be totally aware of the fact that this is a situation in which you could get disorientated.
It's a classic.
It's happened so many times.
It's killed so many people in the last 10 years.
When the plane was supposed to be turning slowly left the control wheel began inching towards the right.
Perhaps the captain was making the turn without even being aware of it.
FANAIAN: When you study the movement of the aircraft control surfaces, it appears that something was guiding Captain Khedr to the right.
Now, that could have been a false horizon or something he'd seen outside of his window.
See what the aircraft just did? Or perhaps he believed he was actually correcting a problem with the plane itself.
He thinks he's gained his flight path again and all of a sudden, at this moment, he receives contradictory information.
Turning right, sir.
What? Aircraft is turning right.
The contradictory information adds to the pilot's confusion.
He believes he's fixing a problem when he's told his problems have just started.
In this particular instance, not only are you trying to fly the aeroplane and understand situationally what's happening, but you're going through the mental gymnastics because your expectations are one way.
Meanwhile, you have the first officer who's telling him something that's totally different.
Aircraft is turning right.
No matter what role disorientation played in the crash, investigators are about to learn that the crew wasn't properly trained to deal with it.
Flash Airlines never provided the pilots with basic information that could have saved their lives.
As they continue to try to solve the mystery, investigators make a startling discovery.
Officials at Flash Airlines reveal that they hadn't provided the pilots with Crew Resource Management training, although it was a requirement for the company.
It might have helped the crew deal with their horrifying situation.
Crew Resource Management is a program where pilots are trained to work together rather than as individuals.
Had the pilots of Flash Air 604 received a formal CRM training program, the outcome of this flight may have been substantially different.
American investigators believe the very junior first officer may have felt the plane was in trouble before the captain did but failed to offer suggestions to his much more experienced co-worker.
- What? - Aircraft is turning right.
Nor did he attempt to take control of the plane.
Formal CRM training would have empowered the first officer who had the best situational awareness and the most information about the position of the airplane to take command of the airplane when he saw that the captain wasn't taking the appropriate corrective action.
An earlier conversation in the cockpit before take-off may reveal why the young first officer would have been reluctant to challenge the captain.
Yesterday we were coming in at dusk and the sun was too too.
I felt I could hardly see the runway.
He's already saying "In sight".
(LAUGHS) What in sight? Age, sir.
It may not have meant to be insulting but it may have reinforced the first officer's feeling that he was the student and the captain was the teacher.
I am unable to raise my eyes and he says, "In sight".
(LAUGHS) Where in sight? FANAIAN: It is going to serve as negative feedback.
The young first officer is bound to hesitate.
He doesn't want to be wrong again.
He doesn't want to lose the respect of an Air Force General.
TRANSLATION: In a crew, an effort must be made to bring together people who are able to co-pilot, not a crew in which one person pilots and the other person looks on without saying a word.
But the captain and the copilot weren't alone in the cockpit.
A third crew member with more experience than the first officer was also there.
Maybe it's scattered.
He too never said anything until the final seconds of the flight.
Otherwise how will we know when we clear the cloud? We hear him speak very clearly and very openly all during the time before the engines start up.
He was in conversation with the first officer and with the captain.
So this experienced person being very quiet all through, we believe that if he saw any of the crew members doing something that he should not be doing or not doing something that he should be doing would have said something.
Retard power! Retard power! The only words he said was, "Retard the throttles," at the later stage of the event.
Shows that that's the only thing he saw that should be done.
Even if the copilot had taken control sooner there's no way to know if he could have saved the jet.
Whatever took place on Flight 604 happened quickly and since the plane had just taken off the crew had little time to react before they crashed into the sea.
The final report on the Flash Airlines crash was released in March, 2006.
There are no clear answers.
Egyptian officials say that any of four mechanical problems could have caused the crash.
They say disorientation may have played a role but it's not the reason behind the accident.
American investigators refuse to blame the plane.
Instead, they say the problem lies with the airline which didn't sufficiently train their crews.
Two months after the crash, Flash Airlines went out of business and as a result of the Flash 604 tragedy, new rules came into place to ensure that in the future, aircraft safety violations will be judged more harshly.
The Flash Airlines crash gave the final political impetus to a move to create a European black list where if one state banned an airline, then all the other European Union states would automatically ban that airline also.
The Egyptian investigation concluded with an important recommendation.
KELADA: We have recommended that some kind of training or awareness program should be made to be able to have a pilot observe another being disoriented early and what he should do to first, maintain safe flight, second, to pull the pilot from his disorientation back to orientation.
With so much of the plane still at the bottom of the Red Sea, questions will always remain for investigators and everyone else who was affected by the crash.
TRANSLATION: I lost my nephews and my niece.
They were just kids.
What future would they have had? How can you put a price on that? What a waste.
TRANSLATION: The families will never be able to fully mourn, me included, because we'll never know what's really happened.
Supertext Captions by Red Bee Media Australia
- (SCREAMING) - (BEEPING) MAN: Retard power.
Retard power! Retard power! The plane seems to have a life of its own.
(SCREAMING) - (BEEPING) - Oh, God! (SCREAMING) Something's wrong with the plane! (SCREAMING) TRANSLATION: I heard a scream, a noise.
After that, I didn't hear anything.
The sands of Egypt hide thousands of years of history.
Monuments to ancient civilisations dominate the landscape.
But for sun-loving Europeans, Egypt is also a resort destination, where the most important sand is on the beach.
The town of Sharm el-Sheikh is several hundred kilometres south-east of Cairo.
Perched on the Red Sea, it's a natural destination for people looking for a little rest and relaxation.
In the early days of 2004, tourists aren't the only ones drawn to the local beaches.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also in the region visiting Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
Just after 2:00 in the morning on January 3, many vacationers are still out on the town.
But 53-year-old Captain Khedr Abdullah is just starting his day.
(ALARM BEEPS) He's renowned for his punctuality.
A former officer in the Egyptian Air Force, Khedr is now a highly respected captain with the charter company Flash Airlines.
TRANSLATION: He always liked to pack his own suitcase.
He wouldn't let me do it for him.
He always said, "I would like to prepare my own things "to make sure I don't forget anything.
" He was very precise on what he wanted and what he would take with him.
Captain Khedr meets up with his 25-year-old first officer Omar Al Shafei.
Together they'll fly out of Sharm el-Sheikh, heading for Paris.
- Morning.
- Good morning, sir.
Al Shafei is young enough to be the captain's son.
The early-morning flight isn't for everyone.
Pascal Mercier and his family are supposed to be on the Flash jet but changed their plans.
MAN: I was booked on the Flash Airlines flight.
When my agency told me that I had to wake up very early and then we had to change planes in Cairo, I said, "This is really stupid.
" I mean, my daughter was, like, two years old and the other ones were, like, six and eight.
So really I didn't feel comfortable about changing planes and so on.
For other tourists, the cheap tickets that Flash offers are worth the trouble of getting up early.
Franz Thuller was able to bring his entire family to Egypt.
They need the break.
TRANSLATION: My brother-in-law had just lost his father, so he brought his children, his mother and his wife there, just to have a good time.
Not to see the sights or anything, just to have a good time.
That's what Sharm el-Sheikh is known for.
Fatima Hjiaj is also heading back to Paris after a vacation in Sharm.
The mother-of-five is flying alone.
Before take-off, she calls her nephew in France.
TRANSLATION: I was asleep when she called.
I didn't really want to get into a conversation with her.
She was someone who called you for everything.
She needed to be reassured.
So even though she had the five- or six-hour flight ahead of her, she just wanted to make sure that I would be there to pick her up at the airport.
In all, 148 passengers and crew settle into their seats aboard the jet.
It's 5:00am.
In the cockpit, Ashraf Abdelhamid is the third member of the crew.
He's training as a first officer, although he's worked for years piloting corporate jets.
None of the crew members are happy with the poor quality of the weather information they're getting from the local air traffic controller.
They didn't say, "Sky clear.
" They said, "Clouds and sky clear.
" How? The two are opposite.
Ask him about ceiling.
No ceiling and clouds and sky clear.
- Maybe it's scattered.
- Maybe he means 'scattered'.
Good morning.
The captain is also frustrated that one of his instruments isn't working.
Although the engineer agrees there's a problem, it's not serious enough to fix.
The men laugh it off at the expense of the first officer.
Probably caused by Omar making a heavy landing.
(LAUGHS) The Flash Airlines flight will head out over the Red Sea, before turning towards Cairo.
The jet climbs through a pitch-black night.
Without a moon to light the scene, it's hard for the passengers to see much of anything outside their windows.
In the cockpit, the simple turn over the Red Sea is taking a bizarre twist.
See what the aircraft just did? Captain Khedr doesn't like the way his plane is behaving.
- OMAR: Turning right, sir.
- What? Aircraft is turning right.
Turning right? How turning right? The plane is supposed to be turning left on its way to Cairo.
Instead it's turning in the opposite direction.
OK.
Out.
The captain tries to get his plane back on course, but his situation just gets worse.
(SCREAMING) Over-bank.
Knowing he's in trouble, the captain tells the first officer to engage the autopilot.
Autopilot.
Autopilot! - But it doesn't work.
- No autopilot, Commander! The 737 is now flying almost completely on its side.
(SCREAMING) Something's wrong with the plane! The plane gains speed as it spirals towards the Red Sea.
Just minutes after take-off, the plane is out of control .
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diving towards the water, it's travelling at more than 700 kilometres an hour.
Everyone on board is running out of time.
Just minutes after take-off, an early-morning flight has become a desperate battle for survival.
A passenger jet filled with French families is plunging towards the Red Sea.
(SCREAMING) Everyone on board can feel the tremendous speed and gut-wrenching turns.
The enormous G forces are making it difficult for Captain Khedr Abdullah to fly the plane.
Ashraf Abdelhamid, the third member of the flight crew, tells the captain to slow the plane down.
ASHRAF: Retard power.
Retard power! Retard power! The plane is travelling so fast it's threatening to tear itself apart.
After flying almost upside down, the crew is finally beginning to bring their plane under control.
(GRUNTS) Oh, God! (SCREAMING) Then they hear the ground-proximity warning.
(ALARM SOUNDS) They're getting dangerously close to the Red Sea.
(RUMBLING) (CRIES) Mamma! Mamma! Pascal Mercier and his family are staying at a beachfront hotel.
(CRIES) Mamma! My daughter woke up suddenly, screaming like hell, screaming like if something happened.
(CRIES) I didn't hear the crash, but maybe she did.
- It's OK, sweetie.
It's OK.
- Mama! (CONTINUES CRYING) It's just before 5:00 in the morning, minutes after the plane took off from the airport.
It's disappeared from local radar screens.
By the time the sun rises, the crash site is found, but there's little for rescuers to do.
The plane shattered on impact.
A postcard is found, saying simply, "I think this card will arrive after me.
" Pieces of debris litter the surface, but most of the plane has sunk beneath the waves.
There are no survivors.
All 148 people on board the plane are dead.
Flight 604 was to land at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris in the morning.
As family and friends wait, officials list the plane as delayed and then slowly break the news of the accident.
TRANSLATION: They asked me, "Are you waiting for someone from Sharm el-Sheikh?" You say, "Yes.
" Then they say, "Could you come with us? "We are going to take you to a hotel.
"At the hotel, we'll explain it all to you.
" TRANSLATION: It was very strange, since we were greeted in an hotel and we passed people who were leaving happy, because they were looking for the same information as us, but their families were not on the list.
They came with the paper in hand.
"Here, yes.
Madame Hjiaj, Fatima.
"We apologise that you have to learn it this way, but she's dead.
" Later, on his voicemail Mohammed Hjiaj hears Fatima's message sent during the flight.
I heard a scream, a noise.
After that, I didn't hear anything.
Captain Khedhr's wife hears about the crash from her son.
TRANSLATION: My son called me from abroad and told me that he had heard there was an accident on Flash Airlines.
I was in disbelief for a while until it became reality.
It was a very big shock for me.
In resort hotels, workers check the empty rooms of those who were on Flight 604.
But one of the rooms is occupied.
Mr Mercier.
This guy from the hotel staff began to cry.
He was really shocked, happily shocked, to see us.
He thought we were on the flight with everybody else.
They'rethey're here.
In my hotel, 82 people were on that flight.
82 people.
It was really, really strange.
Really, really heavy.
But we were really lucky.
There had been no mayday call from the plane, no warning to air traffic control that something was wrong.
With the plane crashing just minutes after it left the airport, there are immediate concerns that a bomb had brought the jet down.
The plane had just taken off and it looked very strange why this accident happened so quickly after take-off.
When investigators examine the plane's flight path, they discover it would've gone directly over the town where Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak kept a vacation home.
It's also close to the house where British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his family were staying.
Blair and his family were supposed to leave from the same airport that day.
Security around the Prime Minister is immediately heightened.
Two days after the crash, authorities receive a phone call.
Terrorists from Yemen claim responsibility for the crash.
They say it's a protest against a French law banning the Muslim headscarf, the hijab, in public schools.
But in spite of the phone call and the rumours swirling around Egypt, investigators quickly rule out terrorism.
If you have a wreckage distributed in a very large area, that means the plane was disintegrating in the air and due to an explosion, it would be disintegrating on a wide area.
In this case, there was very, very few pieces and all located in a very small area so this indicated that the plane was intact .
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and went into the water intact.
If it wasn't terrorism, what had ripped the plane from the sky so quickly? Investigators face an enormous challenge.
The plane has sunk below the surface of the Red Sea.
Divers have to fight off sharks that are drawn to the carnage.
The rescue teams find few bodies intact.
The aircraft and most of the 148 passengers and crew have sunk over 1,000 metres to the bottom of the Red Sea.
The first task of investigators is to find the aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders - the black boxes.
If they survived the crash, they will now be on the seabed.
But this part of the Red Sea has never been charted.
With so many French tourists involved, the French government offers to help in any way it can.
KELADA: The French immediately responded by sending a boat specially equipped with robots to search the bottom of the sea.
But the wreckage is too deep.
The sub that the French boat has can't survive the enormous pressure at the bottom of the sea.
The investigators desperately need another submarine but they're running out of time.
The black box transmits a radio signal but the battery only lasts for 30 days.
If investigators can't find it within a month, the mystery of Flight 604 may never be solved.
Getting to the black boxes before the time the ping has stopped transmitting was always a very worrisome aspect to all the investigation team.
Everybody was working 24 hours around the clock to try to salvage these and try to locate them for us.
While the recovery effort continues, family and friends of the victims begin to mourn those who died.
They pressure investigators to solve the mystery.
TRANSLATION: It's the biggest air disaster involving French nationals, the biggest in the history of civil aviation.
American, French and Egyptian experts join forces.
While waiting for the plane's black boxes to be recovered, they also begin focusing on Flash Airlines itself.
Flying just two planes, it was one of a number of low-cost charter companies that had been competing for customers in Europe.
In the last 10 years, there had been a rapid expansion of budget airlines throughout this part of the world.
Offering inexpensive, no-frills service, they fought for a piece of the holiday market.
Seaside resorts like Sharm el-Sheikh were one of the many destinations they serve.
Now, one of the ways in which they provide this extremely cheap travel is by operating their aeroplanes 24 hours a day.
Operating on such tight schedules means the planes are flown constantly.
Former Flash passengers step forward to complain about other flights.
There are a lot of stories.
I was flying home after vacation A year before the crash, while flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to Bologna, one passenger recalls seeing flames pouring from a Flash Airlines jet.
Hey! Hey! The engine's on fire! Look! (WOMAN SCREAMS) Please.
The flaming aircraft is forced to make an emergency landing.
Investigators learn that in 2002, the Swiss Aviation Authority performed a surprise inspection on the same plane that would later crash.
The pilots' oxygen masks are missing.
There aren't enough oxygen tanks.
Some of the cockpit instruments aren't working.
It's enough for the Swiss to ground the flight for eight hours until the company repairs the plane.
A few days later, Flash Airlines was banned from flying in Switzerland.
Another ban occurred in Poland.
In Norway, tour operators stopped contracting with Flash.
It's a rare event for an airline to be banned from operating into a country.
They had to have done something dramatically wrong, especially when it comes to safety.
With mounting concerns about the safety record of Flash Airlines, investigators comb through the company's paperwork.
They discover that the most recent maintenance records for the plane that crashed were never duplicated.
They've gone missing with the aircraft.
KELADA: The lack of having copies of the technical log and all of them being onboard, of course, this is a violation and Civil Aviation here issued very clear instructions that this should not happen.
While there are concerns about the state of the company's planes, there are no such issues when it comes to the crew of Flight 604.
Captain Khedr was considered not only a flying ace, but a national war hero for his performance in the Yom Kippur War.
During his career, he not only flew sophisticated fighter jets, but also a variety of large cargo aircraft.
He had over 7,000 hours of flying experience, as well as 2,000 hours as a flight instructor.
All the evidence shows that Captain Khedr was a model pilot.
With the aircraft and its black box data recorders still hidden deep under the Red Sea, investigators wonder was this a case of a superb pilot fighting to save a decrepit plane? See what the aircraft did? Finally, after several days of searching, a breakthrough.
A French research ship hears the locator signals given off by the black boxes.
A remotely operated sub drops down over 1,000 metres.
The violence of the crash has spread the wreckage over a wide area.
Two weeks after the crash, both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are recovered from the bottom of the sea.
Investigators finally have some hard evidence.
The Egyptian, French and American team examines the critical devices in Cairo.
After the two black boxes are found, the salvage effort wraps up.
Other than a select number of small pieces, the rest of the plane is too deep to recover.
KELADA: One of the things we did to depict the path of the aircraft was we created an animation based on the data we got from the flight data recorder and from radar.
The flight data recorder paints a devastating picture.
Shortly after take-off, the plane began heading left, just as it was supposed to.
But then it quickly started banking in the other direction.
The cockpit voice recorder shows that the turn caught the captain off guard.
Turning right, sir.
What? How turning right? KELADA: Analysing the cockpit voice recorder showed that the pilots were experiencing definitely some kind of an abnormality problem that they could not understand.
The investigators sift through the flight data to find some explanation for the jet's bizarre movement.
Perhaps some mechanical fault was forcing the plane off course.
And there is an indication that something was wrong with the Flash jet before it took off.
On the runway, the captain and the ground engineer discussed an electrical malfunction.
But it's impossible to tell from the cockpit voice recorder exactly what the problem was.
Especially electrical.
TRANSLATION: We can't be sure which equipment was being referred to by the aircraft captain and the engineer when they were discussing the faulty equipment.
Not enough parts were brought up from the bottom of the sea to be able to determine that.
And, tragically, the ground engineer was also on the flight.
Investigators travel to the United States to test the most likely ideas in a sophisticated simulator.
If they can force the simulator to repeat the movements of the Flash jet, they might be able to figure out why the plane crashed.
The results are brought back to Cairo.
There are only four mechanical faults that could've produced the flight path of the doomed jet.
Investigators believe the key to the crash is to find out why the plane began turning off course.
KELADA: These four scenarios were all related to what would cause an uncommanded bank.
So we were left with these as causes that we could not rule out.
Two of the scenarios involved the spoilers on the plane's right wing.
Spoilers lift up from the top surface of the wings, slowing it down.
By producing drag, or spoiling the airflow, they help turn the aircraft.
If the pilot's control wheel or the cables that connect it to the spoiler jammed .
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it could've forced the plane off course.
Problems with the spoilers are one explanation but there's no physical proof.
And while there were maintenance problems with Flash planes, none of them had to do with the jet's spoilers.
The team searches for another explanation.
Another potential cause of the crash is the plane's ailerons.
This part of a plane's wing controls the angle of a plane's turn.
A malfunctioning aileron could have caused the plane to roll to the right.
Again, if the crew couldn't fix the problem, the plane would've begun to spiral into the sea.
While so-called 'aileron trim runaway' would create a flight path like the one seen during the crash, once again, there's no physical proof to support the theory.
And, typically, aileron trim runaway can be physically overcome by pilots.
All he would have to do was overpower using more force to move the control wheel in an opposite direction.
Overbanked! When they listened to the cockpit voice recorder, the investigators are puzzled by the constant discussion of the plane's autopilot.
Autopilot! The captain asks for the autopilot to be turned on .
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but it had no effect and the plane began to plummet to the sea.
And earlier in the cockpit recording, investigators uncover another curious exchange.
Captain Khedr began the initial turn over the Red Sea manually but decided to let the autopilot take over.
Autopilot.
The flight data recorder shows that the autopilot was indeed turned on as the plane climbed.
Not yet.
But then the captain appears to change his mind.
The plane's flight data recorder shows that the autopilot was only activated for three seconds.
But investigators wonder if the autopilot had malfunctioned and stayed in command of the jet.
The automated system could have continued to control the plane, flying it to the right, even after the pilots thought it had been disengaged.
KELADA: The malfunction of the autopilot of course took a lot of work for us because it was nearly impossible to show that it did not happen and quite impossible to show that it did happen.
Sobut it was always a very prominent possibility because it would give a very, very close scenario to what was happening.
Perhaps most puzzling of all, though, is that no matter what happened to the plane, it appeared to be under control just before it crashed.
Moments before impact, the captain was seemingly back in command of his airplane.
If there had been some crippling mechanical problem why did it seem to disappear? Some members of the team want to consider something besides mechanical fault - the pilots themselves.
I think the major concern for the United States was that the human-factors elements of this accident weren't thoroughly explored.
Perhaps the high esteem given to Egyptian pilots was getting in the way.
In Egypt, pilots are very respected and in particular, air force pilots are very highly regarded.
For the past 26 years the country's president has been a highly decorated air force officer.
In an environment like this the pilot is somewhat immune to suspicion.
When something goes wrong the natural tendency is to blame the equipment.
And on this flight, the pilot was a war hero with thousands of hours of experience.
Studying the flight data recorders again, the investigators discover something peculiar.
Even before the plane's bizarre turn to the right, three things all seemed to happen at the same time.
Instead of a smooth left turn, the plane begins to come out of its turn early.
The nose starts to rise and the plane's airspeed decreases noticeably.
But during this time the pilot says nothing.
It seems that he's unaware of the changes to his flight path.
I've flown out of Sharm el-Sheikh at night-time and in the same type of aircraft and in no way should the pilot allow the airspeed to drop by as much as 30 knots or the bank angle to change beyond five degrees without clearly stating the reasons for the change in the flight path.
Some investigators consider a provocative theory that might explain this seemingly bizarre behaviour.
Perhaps Captain Khedr had been affected by vertigo.
Vertigo is a physiological condition that would exist with any person, not just pilots, and it's based on the inner-ear.
Over a dark ocean without a defined visual horizon no ground lights, the pilot may not be able to perceive visually whether he was flying up, down, left or right and if the fluid in his inner-ear was moving where he tilted his head that may induce a sensation, a physiological sensation that may cause the pilot to believe the plane is flying straight and level when it's actually turning.
It is actually a very high workload situation and when there are no visual cues outside, because it's a moonless night and you're over featureless territory with no lights in it, you, really, as a professional pilot, should be totally aware of the fact that this is a situation in which you could get disorientated.
It's a classic.
It's happened so many times.
It's killed so many people in the last 10 years.
When the plane was supposed to be turning slowly left the control wheel began inching towards the right.
Perhaps the captain was making the turn without even being aware of it.
FANAIAN: When you study the movement of the aircraft control surfaces, it appears that something was guiding Captain Khedr to the right.
Now, that could have been a false horizon or something he'd seen outside of his window.
See what the aircraft just did? Or perhaps he believed he was actually correcting a problem with the plane itself.
He thinks he's gained his flight path again and all of a sudden, at this moment, he receives contradictory information.
Turning right, sir.
What? Aircraft is turning right.
The contradictory information adds to the pilot's confusion.
He believes he's fixing a problem when he's told his problems have just started.
In this particular instance, not only are you trying to fly the aeroplane and understand situationally what's happening, but you're going through the mental gymnastics because your expectations are one way.
Meanwhile, you have the first officer who's telling him something that's totally different.
Aircraft is turning right.
No matter what role disorientation played in the crash, investigators are about to learn that the crew wasn't properly trained to deal with it.
Flash Airlines never provided the pilots with basic information that could have saved their lives.
As they continue to try to solve the mystery, investigators make a startling discovery.
Officials at Flash Airlines reveal that they hadn't provided the pilots with Crew Resource Management training, although it was a requirement for the company.
It might have helped the crew deal with their horrifying situation.
Crew Resource Management is a program where pilots are trained to work together rather than as individuals.
Had the pilots of Flash Air 604 received a formal CRM training program, the outcome of this flight may have been substantially different.
American investigators believe the very junior first officer may have felt the plane was in trouble before the captain did but failed to offer suggestions to his much more experienced co-worker.
- What? - Aircraft is turning right.
Nor did he attempt to take control of the plane.
Formal CRM training would have empowered the first officer who had the best situational awareness and the most information about the position of the airplane to take command of the airplane when he saw that the captain wasn't taking the appropriate corrective action.
An earlier conversation in the cockpit before take-off may reveal why the young first officer would have been reluctant to challenge the captain.
Yesterday we were coming in at dusk and the sun was too too.
I felt I could hardly see the runway.
He's already saying "In sight".
(LAUGHS) What in sight? Age, sir.
It may not have meant to be insulting but it may have reinforced the first officer's feeling that he was the student and the captain was the teacher.
I am unable to raise my eyes and he says, "In sight".
(LAUGHS) Where in sight? FANAIAN: It is going to serve as negative feedback.
The young first officer is bound to hesitate.
He doesn't want to be wrong again.
He doesn't want to lose the respect of an Air Force General.
TRANSLATION: In a crew, an effort must be made to bring together people who are able to co-pilot, not a crew in which one person pilots and the other person looks on without saying a word.
But the captain and the copilot weren't alone in the cockpit.
A third crew member with more experience than the first officer was also there.
Maybe it's scattered.
He too never said anything until the final seconds of the flight.
Otherwise how will we know when we clear the cloud? We hear him speak very clearly and very openly all during the time before the engines start up.
He was in conversation with the first officer and with the captain.
So this experienced person being very quiet all through, we believe that if he saw any of the crew members doing something that he should not be doing or not doing something that he should be doing would have said something.
Retard power! Retard power! The only words he said was, "Retard the throttles," at the later stage of the event.
Shows that that's the only thing he saw that should be done.
Even if the copilot had taken control sooner there's no way to know if he could have saved the jet.
Whatever took place on Flight 604 happened quickly and since the plane had just taken off the crew had little time to react before they crashed into the sea.
The final report on the Flash Airlines crash was released in March, 2006.
There are no clear answers.
Egyptian officials say that any of four mechanical problems could have caused the crash.
They say disorientation may have played a role but it's not the reason behind the accident.
American investigators refuse to blame the plane.
Instead, they say the problem lies with the airline which didn't sufficiently train their crews.
Two months after the crash, Flash Airlines went out of business and as a result of the Flash 604 tragedy, new rules came into place to ensure that in the future, aircraft safety violations will be judged more harshly.
The Flash Airlines crash gave the final political impetus to a move to create a European black list where if one state banned an airline, then all the other European Union states would automatically ban that airline also.
The Egyptian investigation concluded with an important recommendation.
KELADA: We have recommended that some kind of training or awareness program should be made to be able to have a pilot observe another being disoriented early and what he should do to first, maintain safe flight, second, to pull the pilot from his disorientation back to orientation.
With so much of the plane still at the bottom of the Red Sea, questions will always remain for investigators and everyone else who was affected by the crash.
TRANSLATION: I lost my nephews and my niece.
They were just kids.
What future would they have had? How can you put a price on that? What a waste.
TRANSLATION: The families will never be able to fully mourn, me included, because we'll never know what's really happened.
Supertext Captions by Red Bee Media Australia