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the investigation of swissair 111
On the evening of September 2, 1998, a Swissair MD-11 left New York bound for Geneva. There were 229 people on the plane. A little less than an hour into the flight, the pilots smelled smoke. As a precaution, they decided to divert to Halifax. About twenty minutes later, the plane crashed into the ocean, about eight kilometres off of Peggy's Cove. It shattered into about two million pieces. There were no survivors.
"The Investigation of Swissair 111" follows the inside story of a four and a half year inquiry into what went wrong. The airplane's black boxes stopped functioning about six minutes prior to impact, leaving Canada's air crash detectives with a gaping evidence hole. Coupled with the fact that the aircraft lay in small pieces 55 metres below the surface of the ocean, this would be one of the most complex crash investigations ever.
"The Investigation of Swissair 111" follows, in intimate detail, the work, lives and struggles of this team of crash sleuths, as they try to learn, through the tragedy, how air travel can be made even safer than it already is.
The film is directed and written by Halifax-native, Howard Green, and is a co-production between CBC-TV's "The Nature of Things" and Swiss National Television. It will air at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT) , Tuesday, September 2, 2003. The Executive Producer of "The Nature of Things" is Michael Allder.
Visit CBC.CA News online for information regarding the investigation of Swissair 111.
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