HIST 1080 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Swissair Flight 111, Sept
19 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
1977 in uk: what are the conditions that allow disasters to occur. They are complex: air tra c control towers and their system. They construct disaster: swissair 111, con gured to hold 240 people, bussiness class and rst class has in ight entertainment system. The plane is the most sophisticated plane of its time. 250 kms of wiring: pilots are very accomplished, main pilot is instructor, zimmerman and a ghter pilot. 8:33 pm on sept 3rd, running a tranjectory from nyc to geneva. Flies along for 15 mins with no problem. Then for 14 mins there is no radio contact. Flies along at 8:10 atlantic time, they smell something. 4 mins later smell comes back accompainied by smoke: pan pan call, urgency but not emergency, to get check out at nearest airport. They need to dump fuel, to lose weight and shed height: air control tells them to go to margrets bay, dump fuel and circle back.
