fire breaks out in the cabin of a dc-9 just minutes after takeoff. the pilots lose control and the plane plunges nose-first into the everglades. >> when that nose dropped, i realized it was going to crash. >> an md-11 crashes after smoke mysteriously fills the cockpit. >> the airplane was burning up around them. >> about two hours into a flight, a dc-9 fills with smoke and loses all of its electrical systems. >> we're going down. >> we thought everybody could get out because there wasn't any screams. >> moments after takeoff, flames erupt from the world's most iconic aircraft. >> it was a time bomb.

they were going to die. >> people watched in horror as it crashes into a nearby hotel. there are many ways for fires to start on a plane, and not many ways to put them out. >> in-flight fires can be one of the most catastrophic events a flight crew can face. the faa has found that up to three flights a day are diverted due to smoke or fire in flight. while it may be common, it can be one of the most dangerous situations facing any flight crew. >> the faa has done extensive testing on in-flight fires and the research that you may have as little as 20 minutes to get the fire under control, or you

may lose control of the airplane. >> over the years, aircraft have become heavily protect against fire. materials are tested for flammability. smoke detectors are installed throughout. these precautions are the product of hard lessons. fire 0s often start in areas of the plane not visible to the crew. in this hour, dramatic animations will show you where these hidden infernos can start, making you an eyewitness to the disaster unfolding. and it can unfold very quickly, as in the case of an md-11 that crashed into the atlantic ocean minutes after smoke entered the cockpit. september 2nd, 1998, passengers on board swissair flight 111 are making their way from new york to geneva. the plane is over the canadian

coast when the pilot smells smoke in the cockpit. bill pickerill is the air traffic controller that day and the last person to have contact with flight 111. >> we were at the end of the shift. at approximately 10:15 p.m. local time, we were advised by one of the other sectors in the center that a swissair flight had declared a pan because of smoke in the cockpit. >> a pan call indicates urgency that is not immediately life-threatening. as a precaution, swissair 111 is cleared for an emergency landing at halifax airport in nova scotia. >> it appeared initially to be a fairly straightforward operation. the radio transmission was very professional, very calm. there was no indication of a sense of urgency. >> as they prepare for the descent, the smoke in the cockpit becomes heavier. amid the growing danger, the pilots are faced with a difficult decision. >> the pilot advised that they needed to dump fuel. at that point, they were

approximately 16,000 feet. the fuel dump complicated the situation greatly. >> it's a good decision to get the airplane as light as you can. it's easier on the airplane. >> but delaying the landing could put the flight in even more danger. the passengers have been told that they are being diverted. but there is no smoke in the cabin and they have no idea that inside the cockpit, something is going horribly wrong. following the smoke checklist, the pilots shut off power to the cabin. if there is an electrical fire, this could cut power to the source. but the smoke only gets thicker. then the auto pilot fails. flying the plane by hand in the dark, the pilots put on their oxygen masks. >> by this point, they knew they had a very serious situation. they needed on the ground as rapidly as possible. >> as soon as they were over the water was when i suggested that they could commence their fuel

dump. that was also the time unknown to me that the aircraft began experiencing a series of critical systems failures. >> the plane begins to lose altitude. >> within a minute, they had lost several critical systems. they lost radio contact and very soon after that, we lost the transponder. >> inside the cockpit, a nightmare scenario is unfolding. fire has breached the ceiling, dripping molten aluminum on to the flight deck. they lose control of the plane and plunge into the ocean at 345 miles an hour. the impact is enormous. there are no survivors. the plane shatters and only small traces remain floating on the surface. the rest disappears into the atlantic. it is clearly now not a rescue mission, but a recovery mission. puzzled by the tragedy, investigators are eager to retrieve the wreckage. >> we knew if we found the source of that in-flight fire

and the fuel that was feeding that in-flight fire, we would get to the safety issues that we needed to identify. >> but the answers to questions about how it started and what burned are scattered on the ocean floor. >> some 185 or 190 feet below the surface of the ocean, spread out, and we didn't know exactly where it was. we didn't know exactly what we were faced with in trying to recover it. >> the first challenge is to find the black boxes. >> locate and recover the two black boxes. it was a setback because the fire in fact had burned both of those flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder about six minutes before the aircraft actually hit the water. it was pretty disappointing. >> with no information about the final six minutes, investigators are forced to rely on the wreckage for answers. >> it's not necessarily standard

practice to rebuild an airplane, to be able to solve the riddle of what happened. in our particular case, that was really the only way we were going to be able to do it was take the pieces that we were able to recover and then identify and place them back into a structure that resembled the original airplane. so we could basically look for fire patterns on the burned pieces that we had, then try and trace the fire to its origin. >> but how could fire breach the cockpit? the most protected area of the aircraft? the answers shocked the aviation industry. >> we had indications that there was insulation cover material in the airplane that had burned. it didn't look like the stuff should burn at all. but we've said very quickly after that that this material is what spread the fire, what made it so hot and in fact, what made that airplane crash into the ocean. >> in 1998, thousands of planes were taking to the skies full of

the same insulation. >> there was fire damage in the area over the flight deck, and this surprised us because there's testing done to ensure that these thermal acoustic blankets do not burn easily, and yet there was fire damage. >> we took some of this material and touched a match to it and lo and behold we discovered that it burned. not only did it burn, it burned completely and it burned hot and smoky. >> investigators raced to find out what ignited the insulation before another aircraft is affected. coming up, will millions of pieces of wreckage yield answers before it's too late? ♪ see what's new at projectluna.com ♪

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swissair flight 111 on its way from new york to geneva falls from the sky and into the atlantic ocean near nova scotia just minutes after the crew reports smoke in the cockpit.

in the search to find out what went wrong, investigators discovered that a common aircraft insulation material is a fire hazard. thousands of planes are refitted with new insulation and flammability testing is re-evaluated. but they still don't know how the fire started, and if other aircraft are at risk. >> when we started to look for potential ignition sources, the very first thing that comes to mind is aircraft wiring. >> the investigators scour more than 150 miles of wiring for signs of an electrical malfunction called arcing. >> arcing events are when electricity jumps from a wire to another piece of metal, could be another wire or part of the airplane or something else. when it does that, it can create tremendous amount of heat. >> finding an arcing event is difficult, and determining if one preceded another is nearly 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 determined 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 very 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 cabin as well as the different parts of the flight deck. >> when the system was installed into the aircraft, there was not enough power to wire it into the cabin system, so it was wired 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 swissair 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, burning through the ceiling. >> the situation as in the final few minutes of flight was catastrophic. the airplane's full of smoke, there is evidence of multiple aluminum that's being rained down overhead. the electrical systems are failing. pneumatic systems are failing. one by one, everything that they need to keep the airplane in flight is failing. and they finally lose control of the airplane and it rolls toward the ocean and accelerates and impacts the ocean at a very high speed.

>> in the wake of the swissair 111 crash, the airline industry is forced to re-evaluate their procedures for in-flight fires. flammability testing becomes more rigorous. insulation blankets are manufactured from more flame resistant materials. and the certification and maintenance of wiring becomes more stringent. >> swissair 111 was a watershed event in how pilots deal with in-flight smoke and fire conditions. after that, pilots recognized how quickly things could go wrong. >> what makes fire such a lethal threat to aircraft is its ability to start and grow undetected, in some cases the interiors of the plane are at risk. but a fire that starts outside can be just as catastrophic. charles degaulle airport, paris. the concorde, the world's only supersonic passenger jet, speeds down the runway at 175 miles per

hour. just before the nose wheel lifts, flames erupt from under the left wing. eyewitnesses see the low-flying plane move unsteadily through the sky with an inferno trailing behind it. just two minutes after takeoff, the most famous passenger aircraft in the world crashes into a hotel. >> they were doomed. they could do nothing. >> july 25th, 2000. air france flight 4590 is preparing for takeoff from paris' charles degaulle airport on its way to new york. people stop to watch as the concorde prepares for takeoff. no one realizes they are about to witness a disaster. >> as they start their takeoff roll, the airplane is going right down the runway, the tower tells the pilot hey, you got fire behind the aircraft.

they get a cockpit warning indication there is believed to be a fire in the number two engine. >> once the plane reaches a critical speed, it cannot stop. >> typically for a pilot when you have a problem and you are committed to flight, which this flight was, they want to crawl to a safety altitude before they take action. >> the ability to fly is compromised by the fire. >> when he has the plane flying, he is heavy, low and slow. that's a critical point for a pilot. a minute after takeoff the number two engine fails. >> this the cockpit they are starting to gern warnings. they have been told they have fire. if ar pilot they go i have fire

in the number two enen. >> but the situation is not what the pilots suspect. it was the plane trying to survive. >> seconds later, engine one fails. the concord's chances of making the airfield rapidly diminished. >> now you have two engines trying to do the work of four. off plane that hasn't built up enough flying speed and controllability issue and plane on fire. >> the plane was totally

unflyable. the crew tried to reduce the power on develop engines but it you again of no use. >> as bystanders watch in horror, the plane plaeng crashes in to a small hotel. >> it was such a huge fire that i couldn't see anything, no plane, no wreckage, no hotel. >> 113 people died, including four on the ground. the tragedy sends a shock wave through the aviation world. coming up, how could the most capable aircraft in the fleet, without a fatal accident in its history, ignite during takeoff? >> it was a time bomb. they were going to die. s it lik. salesperson #1: point is there's never been s it lik. a better time to buy a jetta tdi clean diesel. avo: during the first ever volkswagen tdi clean diesel event get a great deal on a jetta tdi. it gets 42 highway miles per gallon.

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an icon of the aviation world breaks out in flames during takeoff and crashes. >> it was a scene from hell. it was absolute pandemonium. >> immediately after the crash of air france flight 4590 outside of paris, aviation experts and investigators arrive to unearth clues from a

smoldering wreckage. immediately after the crash, aviation experts and investigators arrive to unearth clues from the smoldering wreckage. >> it was really a nightmare. once i was on the scene, i knew the bodies were not there anymore, but thet was everywhere. >> when the flight data and voice recorders are located, investigators take them in for analysis. >> the two recorders were not in excellent shape, and especially the data recorder. initially, we learned not much. slowly, we began to make a scenario. >> the crash site is not the only place where investigators look for clues. the runway where the aircraft departed also becomes a focus. the streaks of soot and fuel on the runway indicate a fuel leakage that could have fed the blaze, but how did the leak start?

>> we found the part of a tank and small parts of the plane. we found also something which was not from the plane. it was a strip of metal. it was not a part of the concorde and it had nothing to do on the runway. >> how this piece of metal could have contributed to the crash is at first unclear, until another crucial clue is discovered. >> you can think of it as a jigsaw puzzle. what they found is they reassembled the tire parts that were on the runway that the pattern matched the piece of metal, so it was consistent with the tire having rolled over this piece of metal. >> the shape of the damage to the tire clearly matched the shape of the piece of metal found on the runway. aircraft, trying to find out investigators examine dozens of aircraft, trying to find out where the foreign piece of debris could have come from. >> they found not only the plane, they found the place where the part had been. >> a continental dc-10 is found

with a wear strip missing. the strip was a reinforcement that came loose when the plane took off shortly before the concorde. investigators are confident they have identified a crucial part of the accident sequence but the question remains how could a damaged tire lead to a fatal crash? greg fithe is a crash investigator and former consultant to continental airlines on an unrelated case. >> at speeds of up to 200 miles an hour, when that tire blew out after striking that piece of metal, it turned to shrapnel and those small and large fragments of rubber started to strike the bottom of the aircraft. >> the rubber strikes the underside of the wing and behind the skin of that wing is a huge fuel tank. >> these chunks of rubber hit the bottom of the fuel tank, even though it didn't breach the fuel tank, it sent shockwaves

that overpressured the system. in this case, the shock wave created an overpressure system. it's basically expanding in the tank, it blows it from inside out creating a hole for the fuel to leak out of. >> captured on camera by a passing truck, jet fuel begins spewing out of the wing and into the air, where it vaporizes and ignites. once the fire gets going, there is no way to stop it. >> as the roll picked up in magnitude, their ability to maintain level flight was degraded and the nose started down. >> ten years after the crash, continental airlines and two of its employees go on trial in paris for involuntary manslaughter. under french law, it is standard for a criminal investigation to be open after a plane crash but it's highly unusual for an airline to face criminal charges. during the trial, continental says air france knew of deficiencies in concorde's fuel tanks and wheels. air france denies the allegations and maintains the

accident would not have happened if the wear strip hadn't been on the runway. in the same trial, the former head of testing for concorde, former head engineer for concorde and a retired civil aviation chief are also tried for involuntary manslaughter. the trial debated the role of many factors, including debris on the runway, fuel load, baggage weight, scheduling pressure and a missing tire spacer. >> an accident is a series of events. all accidents are series of events. this one was many events coming together very tragically. >> the trial helps bring to light a confluence of factors that could have contributed to the crash. in late 2010, a french court finds continental airlines and one of its welders guilty of involuntary manslaughter. all other defendants are acquitted. continental is fined 200,000 euros and ordered to pay air france one million more. john taylor, the welder, is

given a 15-month suspended prison sentence for going against industry norms to forge the piece of metal that fell to the ground. >> i don't think that that piece of metal brought the airplane down. i think it played a factor in the cause of the accident but i don't think it was the sole responsible cause of the accident. >> even before the verdict, the -- i don't think it was the sole, responsibility cause. aviation industry agrees on drastic safety changes. debris on the runway is now seen as an even greater threat to aircraft. manufacturers begin producing burst-resistant tires and tuel tanks are reinforced. but for the concord, i was the beginning of the end. three years after the crash, the aircraft is retired. >> for many people, this plane was something, it was a symbol. they lost something with the end of the concord story. coming up, moments after

takeoff, fire erupts inside the cabin of a dc-9, sending it nose first in though florida everglades. did you get my e-mail? [ man ] i did.

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welcome to what's next. comcastnbcuniversal. the tensions or russia. a top tide president obama says it's possible russia is preparing to take more of ukraine. moscow is amassing troops along the eastern border them massive mudslide north of seattle claimed four lives. 18 people, maybe more, are still missing. now back to "why planes crash." a dc-9 takes off from miami international airport and begins its assent. as it reaches 10,000 feet, fire breaks out in the cargo hold. moments later, the pilot loses control of the plane and plunge

in to the everglades. >> may 11th, 1996. valujet flight 592 has just taken off from miami bound for atlanta, georgia. six minutes after takeoff, the pilots hear a loud noise from inside the body of the plane. seconds later, the electrical systems fail. the first officer radios air traffic control. >> need immediate return to miami. >> jesse fisher is on duty. >> his voice was very calm, very in control. he didn't sound urgent. >> while the pilots are assessing the electrical failure, smoke has started to come up through the floors of the cabin. >> what kind of problem are you having? >> smoke in the cabin. >> roger. >> the smoke moves into the flight deck.

>> the airplane finally levels off and begins a turn, and the pilot is now a little bit more intense in his dialogue. >> with no electrical systems, the pilots struggle to maintain control of the situation. as they try to make their way back towards miami, fire begins to come up through the cabin floor. >> he is more intent so now my heart rate's up. i said proceed direct to the airport. he said i need vectors. now in my mind, i'm thinking that's not good. he's got so much smoke, he can't see his instrumentation. >> 592, turn left heading 1-4-0. >> i started issuing the vectors, bringing them back around. the turn was real slow coming back towards the airport but still, a lot of air speed. at about 9500 feet is when he says i need the nearest airport. >> we need the closest airport. >> he's maybe two or three miles closer to dade collier but at his rate of speed and altitude,

he could easily make miami. miami has services, we have the fire equipment, there's medical. dade collier is out in the everglades and there's nothing there. >> walton little is fishing in the everglades and can see something is going very wrong for flight 592. >> when i hear the loud jet noise, i look to my left shoulder, i see a large aircraft, unusually low to the ground. >> we're like okay, this is probably going to be a crash on the airport now. >> i realize the bank angle is getting steeper and steeper, and actually approaches and exceeds 90 degrees, such that it's rolling over on its back. >> when the plane banks at that angle, the wings can't provide enough lift, causing the plane to lose altitude. >> if the wings are level, then 100% of the lift is counteracting gravity. when you have it at a 45 degree

angle of bank, then only half of it can be counteracting the lift. so that the greater the bank angle, the less available lift there is to counteract gravity, which makes it harder to maintain altitude. >> something was changing too rapidly for the radar data to keep up with it. from 9,000 feet, i saw one more hit at 1,000 feet. now, that's bad. that's real bad. that's a rate of descent like a fighter jet. that's 8,000 feet a minute which is screaming down. >> when that nose drop occurred, i realized it was going to crash. >> there is no further communication from the flight. >> i knew they were down and it's a helpless feeling. >> as the aircraft disappeared below the horizon, what appeared

immediately afterward was a very large wave of water that rose up like a wave at a beach. >> all 110 people on board are killed. >> all right. we will show you a live picture of the crash scene. that area of scorched earth surrounded by water in the green everglades around it, very, very little left in terms of wreckage. >> investigators spend weeks combing through the swamp looking for clues. >> as they found more and more of the wreckage and they were able to look in the forward cargo hold, they realized there was a lot of fire damage in the floor of the fuselage. there was a lot of fire damage. high temperature fire. >> the fire appeared to have started in the cargo hold, but no one knew how it could have spread. >> these types of cargo compartments are designed to contain a fire, so why didn't the liner contain the fire? >> the investigators checked

records to see what was being transported in the hold. they find mail, three tires on their way to another valujet plane, and then something suspicious. >> they found there were oxygen generators in there. they found evidence that some of the generators had been discharged. that suddenly would explain why the containment liner had not worked. >> inside the cargo hold, the charred remains of nine activated canisters are recovered. >> oxygen generators use a chemical process to produce oxygen in the event passengers need it during a decompression. >> according to the ntsb, they were improperly secured for shipping. >> turned out it was just very apparently shoddy workmanship. >> but what causes the fire? according to the ntsb, a disturbance like a bump on the runway makes the spring-loaded levers on the canisters hit the tiny charge on the caps. this impact creates a small explosion and starts a reaction inside the canisters.

oxygen is generated and released into the hold. the reaction also produces heat with temperatures of up to 500 degrees fahrenheit. the combination of heat and pure oxygen creates a voracious fire. inside the hold, the pure oxygen allows the fire to burn through the liner and up into the cabin, melting the floor beams under the passengers' feet. >> they discovered that it had already burnt up pretty much in the sky. >> it was a breakdown there. there was a series of communications breakdown. a lot of safety changes came out as a result. there's absolute flat prohibition against shipping oxygen generators by air. class d cargo compartments now have the ability to detect a fire. >> state and federal charges are brought against valujet's maintenance contractor, sabre tech. sabre tech ultimately pleads no contest to one state charge of

mishandling hazardous waste. the company also faces 24 federal charges, but is convicted of only one, failing to train employees in hazardous materials handling. before the cases are finished, sabre tech goes out of business. valujet is temporarily grounded by the faa, but goes on to merge with airtran airways and is later acquired by southwest. >> when you fly, there are so many people that affect your airplane, your safety. >> coming up, a passenger smells smoke coming from a lavatory. within minutes, the pilot has to fight to control the plane on the way to the ground.

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>> the captain was faced with an unbelievably difficult task. >> barely able to see through the thick smoke, the pilot tries to get the plane back on the ground, but passengers are already succumb canning to smoke inhallation. june 2nd, 1983, air canada flight 797 has a normal takeoff and climb to cruising altitude, but about 2 1/2 hours in to the journey, the plane experiences an electrical malfunction. >> i looked at the breaker. you were allowed one reset. so i pushed it. but it didn't move. so i didn't consider that a

reset. >> captain don cameron was at the controls these days. >> like the old days. >> he is back in the cockpit of the dc-9 at the space museum in ottawa. the breakers are connected to the lav noir the back lavatory the plane. once they pop out they cut the flow of electricity to the lavatory motor. >> the crew responded appropriately. there was a problem there and they left the circuit breakers then extended or popped so that it would deprive power to that component, eliminating any potential future problem. >> unfortunately, flight 797's problems are just beginning. >> i think it was about an hour and a half into the flight that there was some commotion in the back of the plane. i remember seeing one of the flight attendants take a fire extinguisher to the back. rumors began going around in the plane that there might be a fire in the trash can, somebody might have put a cigarette out in the trash.

>> the captain sends his first officer to assess the situation. >> i look back, and you couldn't see the back of the airplane for the sort of blue hazy smoke. claude came back and said, i don't like what's going on back there. i think we better go down. >> the pilots put on their oxygen masks and prepare for an emergency landing into the closest airport, cincinnati. the crew moves passengers forward in the cabin to get away from the smoke. but there was little else they can do. >> dropping oxygen masks to the passengers in a situation like this would do absolutely no good. the masks are designed so they will take ambient air in and supplement it with oxygen. even if the oxygen masks had been deployed, when you took a breath in, you're going to get ambient air in. >> a flight attendant empties a fire extinguisher trying to control the smoke but can't find the source of the fire. >> when they open the lavatory

door, they could see smoke but not point of origin. there wasn't open flame. that was behind the walls, it was an inaccessible area. >> a fire behind the walls is a worst-case scenario, it's almost impossible to put out or contain. a disaster is in progress. >> smoke was scary, then all of a sudden i lost all my electric power. >> that's when the crew realized that they had a life-threatening event on their hands. they needed on the ground as soon as they could possibly get there. >> approach air canada 797, we're on a mayday, we're going down. >> moments later, dense smoke begins to come through the cabin walls. >> roger, do you have time to give me the nature of the emergency? >> we have a fire in the wash, in the back washroom, and we're filling up with smoke right now. >> filled the cabin very quickly. i would say 10 to 15 minutes. it was horrible. it was so thick that you couldn't see your hand in front of you. >> you could feel your lungs and

your throat burning from the sensation of breathing in. i suggested that we put our heads lower. in firefighting school we learned that the lower you got, the more that you could be below the smoke. >> with low visibility and few remaining control or navigation systems, captain cameron is flying almost blind. >> we have no heading. we have no instruments. all we have is laser right now. >> i would have been up close like this with my eyeball maybe three, four inches away from the window on the left side. at this point you know you got something serious. when you got the thing lit like a christmas tree. i didn't think about what was burning or what had happened. i just knew something serious had happened. >> you can advise people on the ground there we're going to need fire trucks. >> the trucks are standing by for you, air canada. can you give me number of people and amount of fuel? >> we don't have time. it's getting worse. >> you could definitely feel when we started to descend because it was a really

dramatic, quick decline. i definitely questioned whether or not we would make it safely to the ground. that's when my fear was probably peaked. >> the captain is now completely relying on air traffic control to guide him down to the airport. >> roger. you're 14 miles east of the airport. continue your left turn. >> he would tell me to turn right until he tells me to stop. >> he was faced with not being able to see his air speed. with not being able to see what few instruments he had. it was a very difficult situation to fly. >> where's the airport? >> 12:00 and eight miles. >> we came in, the airplane wanted to pitch over. we had to stop with a pull force. >> air canada 797, you are clear to land on runway -- >> we don't see the runway. >> after a strenuous descent, the captain finally gets the airport into view. >> four miles, i see the airport in front of me.

the runway was almost lined up. >> the landing is rough. the plane slams into the ground. all four tires explode from the pressure. >> although there was a very v landing, it wasn't rocky, we came to a firm stop. >> but the passengers and crew are not out of danger. coming up, as passengers tray to escape the smoke, the plane bursts into flames. >> it looked like ininferno. thet intelligent servers, designed by hp, will give ups over twice the performance, using forty percent less energy. multiply that across over a thousand locations, and they'll provide the same benefit to the environment as over 60,000 trees. that's a trend we can all get behind.

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air canada flight 797 fills with smoke and loses electrical power before making an emergency landing at cincinnati airport. passengers are desperate to escape the deadly fumes.

>> as soon as it came to a stop, that's when i removed the door and lisa and i both went out on to the wing. >> but moments after the exit doors are opened, the plane explodes into flames. >> when this additional oxygen entered the cabin with the fire burning, it ignited that smoke. >> there were flames leaping out of the door and into the air, probably six to ten feet in the air. >> it looked like an inferno. there were flames leaping out the doors. there was smoke all around it. >> and that's when we knew that we needed to get off the wing because i knew that fuel was in those wing tanks. so, i knew that we needed to get off. >> as the passengers evacuate, captain cameron stays in the cockpit, relying on the tank of compressed air that supplies his oxygen mask, he begins shutting down the aircraft. but before he can finish, the air runs out. >> i couldn't breathe. so, i threw the mask off, opened

a window and saw somebody on the wing. i thought, good, the evacuation is going well. then i tried to get out myself and i couldn't move. >> captain cameron loses consciousness. firefighters have to spray him with foam to revive him. >> it was ice cold and it tasted like soap. next thing i remembered, i was hanging from the window sill with my right hand and let myself go and i fell down. >> but for some passengers it's too late. >> 46 people on the plane. half of them were killed. of those who survived, only five were not injured. >> we came out on that side of the plane. >> we started talking to each other about the people -- let us know that people sitting next to them had not gotten off the plane. >> saw the evidence the next day in the hangar, but as far as the

enormity of the deaths of that, that's still with me. i feel badly about that still, that we couldn't get them all off. but we couldn't. >> we thought everybody was off. we thought everybody could get off. like we said, there wasn't any screams or noise coming from the plane. so, you felt that everybody was under control and -- >> getting off? >> -- was getting off. >> it was a real mixed bag of emotions. of course, we were thrilled to have survived such an incredible ordeal and to realize that some people had not survived was still upsetting. >> immediately after the accident, investigators focus on finding the source of the fire. >> the investigators knew early on that they had had a fire of likely electrical origin because of the amount of damage done in the lavatory area. >> the circuit breakers that popped early in the flight were connected to the lavatory.

investigators immediately suspect an arcing event. >> the electricity that is flowing through a wire as, over time, insulation can chaff, crack. and these cracks allow the electricity to not flow down the wire path as it's supposed to, but to jump to a part of the frame of the airplane or to another wire that might be exposed. >> the lavatory motor is small but carries a lot of power. >> weight on an airplane is something you try to keep to an absolute minimum. one of the ways that we do that in aircraft is to utilize very small, but very powerful electric motors so that a very small motor can get three boosts of electricity, as it winds around. >> the motor inside the lavatory is supplied with three phase power, much stronger than a household current. electricity jumping from one of

these wires would release an enormous amount of energy and could ignite a fire. investigators do, in fact, find evidence of arcing on the left and right lavatory feeder wires, that come out through holes in the floorboards. the arc starts a fire that ignites the lavatory walls, the fire then spreads consuming vital electric systems, making it almost impossible for captain cameron to control the aircraft. >> became suddenly very hard to fly. it was nose heavy because the stabilizer trim had failed. >> his arms would have been very, very, very tired by the time he got on the ground. he had expended a lot of physical energy just to keep control of the airplane. he did a really good job. he's a seriously good aviator. >> air canada says the plane met all safety standards. the question now is whether those standards should be made tougher. >> with extensive evidence from the aircraft and detailed accounts from the flight crew and pxs, the aviation entry

learned some hard lessons. >> we changed dramatically the composition of aircraft interiors and seats to be more tolerant of an on-board fire condition. one additional lesson learned was how important floor lighting is to aid passengers in locating ways out of the airplane, where the exits are and the path to get there. >> when i get back on an airplane, yes i would. especially if i had that crew, i would be no problem whatsoever. >> all the fire needs to start is oxygen, fuel and ignition. and all three are in plentiful supply on board aircraft. the airline industry has learned hard lessons about in-flight fires. the technology and protocols developed in the wake of these tragedies have made it harder for fires to get out of control. and while smoke and fire may continue to ground flights daily, they are less likely to result in the catastrophic failures of the past.

a mystery as deep as the ocean. >> you can see everything and nothing. there's no sign of flight 370. how could an airliner with 239 people aboard just vanish. >> planes just adopt disappear. this is not a science fiction movie where all of the sudden it's is there and then it's gone. >> we've never seen anything like this. >> no, this is unprecedented. >> it's the longest a commercial plane has been missing in the history of aviation. >> were the pilots incapacitated? were they dead? did somebody hijack the plane? we don't know. >> so many theories, so few