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  • 5/21/2025

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00:00A 737 vanishes from radar over one of the most remote jungles on earth.
00:07The crash pushes investigators to the limit.
00:12On the first day we had eight snake bites, three broken legs and one cardiac arrest.
00:17It's the worst accident in the history of Panama.
00:21Commercial aircraft just don't fall out of the sky.
00:26Dark theories emerge.
00:29Drug running airplanes out there.
00:31What about a bomb?
00:33They saw a big ball of fire.
00:36It was highly suspicious.
00:38An entire nation is demanding answers.
00:40We had this massive spread of parts that made no logical sense.
00:44Only one stunning conclusion can explain it.
00:48It was a big surprise to everybody.
00:51Come on!
00:59Tocomen International Airport in Panama City.
01:28V1.
01:30Copa Airlines flight 201 takes off for a short flight to Cali, Colombia.
01:34Rotate.
01:42Gear up.
01:44Captain Rafael Schial is Copa's most senior pilot.
01:47Today he's monitoring the instruments.
01:49Set thrust to climb.
01:51First officer Cesario Tejada is flying the plane.
01:56Forty passengers are on board.
01:58Mostly business travelers heading home to Colombia.
02:02The flight usually takes about an hour.
02:07But tonight there's a hitch that could add some time.
02:11We've got some heavy weather moving in from the Gulf.
02:14Flight 201 is heading straight for a storm.
02:17In Panama, out over the water, eight to ten miles out, because the Gulf's there,
02:22there's a lot of convective activity and thunderstorms.
02:27The weather was unusually terrible.
02:30It was a storm, big, big storm.
02:34It looks like we're going to have to take the long way around.
02:38If you fly through a powerful thunderstorm, there's up and down drafts,
02:42you can overcome the airplane.
02:44So you don't fly through them.
02:47It looks clear to the east.
02:49The pilots need to find a way to fly around the bad weather.
02:52Agreed. I will let them know what we are doing.
02:54You look at the weather and you decide if you can do it.
02:57If you can't, you ask for a vector around the thunderstorms.
03:00Panama Center, Copa 201.
03:03We'd like to get around this weather, requesting a new heading for 090.
03:09Copa 201, copy that. You're cleared on heading 090.
03:15Cleared heading 090.
03:19Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a short detour to avoid some bumpy weather.
03:24It may delay our arrival in Cali.
03:27I will keep you posted.
03:31The new flight path will take the 737 east around the storm,
03:35before heading south again to Cali.
03:46Panama Center, Copa 201.
03:50It's been 12 minutes since takeoff.
03:52Level at 250.
03:54The captain tells controllers he's reached cruising altitude, 25,000 feet.
04:00Minutes later, the plane disappears from radar.
04:05The controller tries the radio, but gets no response.
04:10If you're close to thunderstorms and in a lot of rain, they'll be static on the radio.
04:15And sometimes you may not be able to talk to them for a few minutes.
04:20Graciela Ocaña is one of the controllers on duty.
04:24The flight was leaving Panama airspace, entering Columbia airspace.
04:30Hopefully it's just interference from the storm.
04:34When the signal disappeared in the radar, I was worried what happened.
04:43The plane's last known location was over Panama's remote Darien Gap.
04:48Their last radar return was here, over the Darien jungle.
04:53The plane has vanished over an almost impenetrable jungle.
04:57If Copa 201 crashed here, just getting to the crash site will be a huge struggle.
05:04Ocaña reports the missing flight to aviation authorities.
05:08Hey, have you had any radio contact with Copa 201?
05:15Then comes the news she's been dreading.
05:19Early in the morning, I received a call from a radio station in Darien.
05:26Any survivors?
05:29Witnesses on the ground have reported a terrifying sight.
05:33During the night, they saw a big ball of fire falling from the sky.
05:43We had to find out where the aircraft was, and if there was anyone alive they could save.
05:54The next day, searchers make their way to the crash site.
05:58But all 47 people on board are dead.
06:04Even if it's one person, it's a big loss.
06:09And it's a plane full of passengers.
06:13It's really terrible.
06:16In Panama City, air crash investigators set up a command post at a local flight school.
06:24Panama's deputy director of civil aviation, Jorge Rodriguez,
06:28is under enormous pressure to figure out what happened.
06:32The loss of such a large aircraft has left his country in shock.
06:38At that time, it was the first big accident of an air carrier of Panama.
06:46We lost 47 people on board, all dead.
06:50The bad weather leads to immediate speculation that the Copa pilots may have been overcome by a deadly storm.
06:58They reported a nasty weather in the Gulf of Panama at that time.
07:04I'm going to need weather data for this entire area.
07:15In the Darien province, Panamanian firemen say a prayer for the 47 people who died aboard flight 201.
07:28The search to understand why they died brings NTSB investigator Tom Howter to Panama City.
07:35There's a lot of pressure at the NTSB in all investigations to determine the cause of the accident.
07:39That's what we do.
07:41So certainly we want to know what happened, why, and we want to prevent another accident.
07:45That's our main mission.
07:49Tom Howter, NTSB. How you doing?
07:52But there is added pressure on Howter because of the type of plane involved in the tragedy, a Boeing 737.
08:02I'd really like to get a look at the rudder on this one.
08:05The rudder is a critical control surface in the tail that helps to turn the plane.
08:11The NTSB suspects a rudder failure caused the recent crash of another 737, United Airlines Flight 585.
08:20We had previously had an accident with a 737 at Colorado Springs.
08:25It was on approach when it suddenly rolled over and dove into the ground at high speed, killing all aboard.
08:35A possible connection between the two crashes makes it critical to figure out what brought down flight 201.
08:41Because that was an unsolved accident, we were very anxious to know,
08:46is there other evidence out there to help us solve that case?
08:50If rudder failure brought down both flights, there could be a fatal flaw in every 737,
08:57the most popular commercial airliner in the sky.
09:05Passengers all over the world could be at risk.
09:09In Panama's Darién Province, investigators begin the painstaking task of trying to find all the wreckage of Copa Flight 201.
09:19The dense vegetation makes it almost impossible to spot small pieces from the air.
09:25The team must search on foot with the help of local guides.
09:30It wasn't laid out as we normally see in a crash where the airplane comes in,
09:35and, you know, here's the nose, here's the center section, here's the tail.
09:38It turned out there were like parts all over, and so we're trying to determine where they were.
09:42And so it became just a major search.
09:46They need to find as much of the plane as they can.
09:49But they quickly realize it's going to be a daunting task.
09:53The Darién jungle is probably the remotest section of Latin America you can think of.
09:59The Pan-American Highway does not go through there.
10:02There are no roads. There's just nothing.
10:05It's like one of the worst jungles in the world.
10:07I probably saw insects that National Geographic hasn't even seen yet.
10:12It was just very tough.
10:14On the first day, we had eight snake bites, three broken legs and one cardiac arrest.
10:23As they work, they map the location of every fragment of the plane.
10:27Tracking where the pieces landed could hold clues about why the plane crashed.
10:35Most of the pieces are small.
10:37But a trail of scorched vegetation leads to the first large piece of the plane.
10:41There was a large cleared-out area that actually there was a lot of fire that took place from the fuel.
10:47This is the center section of the wing.
10:49The main landing gear is right there below you.
10:51The other piece is just down here.
10:53It's an important find.
10:55But many more parts are still missing, including the rudder and the cockpit.
11:02The wreckage is spread across more than a hundred square miles.
11:05For investigators, the large area is a critical clue.
11:08Clearly, there had been some type of high-speed event where the airplane had broken up
11:13and basically just rained parts down on the jungle.
11:17The cause of the crash is unknown.
11:19The cause of the break-up we didn't know.
11:21So we have to take a look at the wreckage and try to determine how all these pieces of the puzzle fit.
11:28The crash site's proximity to the Colombian border suggests an obvious theory.
11:32It's a narrow corridor for drugs. It's a busy one.
11:35The Darien Jungle is right on the border between Panama and Colombia
11:39and there was a fair amount of drug activity coming back and forth across the jungle.
11:44The remote jungle of the Darien Gap is a haven for drug cartels
11:47flying illicit merchandise north from secret airstrips.
11:52In that time, we don't got no radar that is going to patrol the route of the drug smuggler.
11:59Drug runners usually fly at night when they're less likely to be spotted.
12:04Panama Center, Copa 201. We'd like to get around this weather.
12:08Requesting a new heavy aircraft.
12:10Copa 201. We'd like to get around this weather. Requesting a new heading for 090.
12:16Unlike commercial crews, smugglers avoid radar detection by switching off their plane's radar transponder
12:22and they never check in with air traffic control.
12:26If he does not report, who will know that they are there?
12:32It's really dangerous, especially if there is not good visibility.
12:40Cleared heading 090. We'll let you know when we get clear of this weather.
12:47Perhaps the unsuspecting pilots suddenly crossed paths with drug runners.
13:00It would have been the last thing they ever saw.
13:05We thought of drug running airplanes out there, something else going on out there.
13:10Everything was open for consideration.
13:13If Flight 201 did hit another aircraft,
13:16investigators should be able to find some trace of the second plane
13:20among the wreckage they're pulling from the jungle.
13:23If a red airplane hits a blue airplane, the paint is going to transfer,
13:26you're going to get a little bit of one on the other.
13:28They scrutinize each piece carefully,
13:30hunting for any speck of paint that could have come from a covert drug plane.
13:37But they come up empty.
13:39Even more telling, there's no wreckage that could have come from a second plane.
13:44We didn't find any other wreckages, old or new.
13:47And looking at the wreckage we found from the Copa airplane,
13:51we didn't find any evidence of a mid-air collision.
13:55There's another possibility.
13:58What about a bomb?
14:02Flight 201 was bound for Cali, Colombia, home of a violent drug cartel.
14:08Investigators know that a bomb on board
14:11could explain the eyewitness reports of fire in the sky.
14:16Certainly we're interested in the possibility of an explosion.
14:18We brought an FAA explosive expert with us.
14:21It's possible a bomb went off and caused the break-up of the airplane.
14:24It's possible for something else.
14:26We needed to take a look at everything.
14:30Commercial aircraft,
14:32military aircraft,
14:34military planes,
14:36military planes,
14:38military planes,
14:40military planes,
14:42military planes,
14:44military aircraft just don't fall out of the sky.
14:47So those individuals putting the team together
14:50felt that it was highly suspicious
14:52and might be something in my area of expertise.
14:56Explosives expert Alvin Walbert
14:58begins his search for evidence of an on-board bomb.
15:01There's a tremendous amount of pressure
15:03because everybody wants that answer yesterday.
15:06He's looking for signature blast marks
15:09caused by the superheated gases from an explosion.
15:12There's indicators that you look for
15:14that will tell you that this is caused from an explosive event.
15:18It's not caused from just a fire
15:21or fuel erupting or something like that.
15:24If there were a bomb,
15:26the tell-tale marks will most likely be found on metal debris.
15:32On something like aircraft aluminum
15:34you would be looking for pitting and cratering,
15:37kind of like the surface of the moon.
15:40He carefully examines each piece.
15:43He finds burn marks, evidence of a fire,
15:47but there's no sign of an explosive detonation.
15:50The bomb theory is looking less likely,
15:53but it can't be ruled out completely
15:55until they carry out one final test.
15:59The dead are airlifted to Panama City
16:02where the bodies will be x-rayed
16:04to check for embedded shrapnel.
16:07I'm looking for something
16:09that would be foreign to that human remains
16:12that is not part of the aircraft,
16:15that is not part of their personal effects,
16:18that it is something that would indicate that it was a bomb.
16:28Base camp, come in.
16:30A call from the jungle search team
16:32brings some much-needed good news.
16:34We've got the black boxes.
16:36The exhausting effort has paid off.
16:38They've found Flight 201's black boxes.
16:41This could be the breakthrough investigators need.
16:44At least we got something to analyze
16:47what was the cause of the accident.
16:50Without those boxes, you're blind.
16:53You don't get nothing.
16:56There's no lab in Panama equipped to analyze the recorders.
17:00They need to go to the National Transportation Safety Board
17:03in Washington.
17:05We were anxious to look at the flight data recorder.
17:08The flight data recorder was the only data we had
17:11from the flight itself up to the time of the breakup.
17:20NTSB technicians work quickly
17:22to download the information stored on the two recorders.
17:25The flight data recorder
17:27tracks information like airspeed and heading.
17:30The voice recorder captures the sound
17:32of the pilot's conversation in the cockpit.
17:34We were hoping with the copied voice recorder
17:37we'd get more information in terms of what the crew was saying,
17:40what was happening, you know, right at the time of impact.
17:44The flight data recorder is in good condition.
17:48But the same can't be said for the voice recorder.
17:51It was a big surprise to everybody.
17:54Somehow the tape has snapped and come unspooled.
17:59My God, what a mess.
18:01The surprise was the tape was broke completely
18:04like a black spaghetti.
18:06You said a ball of mylar tape.
18:11Investigators won't know what answers the tape holds
18:14unless they can somehow repair it.
18:17If the people from NTSB cannot put that tape to work,
18:22there was no way.
18:29Battling 120-degree heat in the Panamanian jungle,
18:33investigators struggle to learn what they can
18:36from the wreckage of Copa Flight 201.
18:40Another big find could be a crucial lead in two investigations.
18:44They've recovered a key part from the plane's rudder,
18:47the power control unit.
18:49The power control unit is hydraulic ram, if you will,
18:53that moves the rudder back and forth.
18:55It's the same part investigators suspect may have failed
18:58during the recent crash of a United Airlines 737.
19:02If there's a failure mode out there
19:04that's affecting thousands of airplanes,
19:06we want to document what happened,
19:08work with the FAA and the manufacturers to correct the problem
19:11so the accident can't happen again.
19:13If they find evidence that the critical component malfunctioned,
19:16it will send shockwaves through the entire industry.
19:20Boeing Company will stop all those airplanes.
19:24Not me flying, that was the issue.
19:27Investigators test the mechanism.
19:30They need to know if it's jammed in flight,
19:33a failure that could easily put a 737 into a sudden dive.
19:39But it's another dead end.
19:41There was no evidence of pre-existing damage.
19:44It appeared to be working normally up to the time of impact.
19:48The team hopes the plane's engines will provide a better lead.
19:54In rare cases, turbine engines have been known to overheat and catch fire.
20:00If you've got a fire in the engine,
20:03there's a lot of things that you can look at.
20:06If there was an engine fire on flight 201,
20:09investigators should be able to find black scorch marks
20:12on fan blades and other internal parts.
20:16But again, their inspection turns up nothing.
20:21There wasn't a problem at all in that flight.
20:24The engines were working normally when the plane broke apart.
20:28Investigators are still no closer to understanding
20:31what happened in the skies over Panama.
20:37Medical X-rays eliminate yet another theory.
20:41All of the victim's remains were X-rayed
20:44to see if there's any evidence of an explosion.
20:47The images show no sign of any foreign debris
20:50that could have come from an explosion on board.
20:53There was nothing that I saw or that I observed
20:56that would indicate to me that there was a device on board Copa flight 201.
21:05Investigators now believe the flames witnesses saw
21:08ignited after the plane broke apart.
21:12It wasn't a bomb.
21:17There's enormous pressure on the investigation.
21:20Panamanians want to know what caused their nation's deadliest air disaster.
21:25How could that happen?
21:27We could not imagine.
21:29We needed the answer.
21:37In Washington, there's renewed hope of finding answers
21:40in the cockpit voice recorder.
21:43Technicians have managed to repair the broken tape.
21:47Well, it took a lot of effort, but they slowly found an end
21:51and straightened it out, rolled it back up, got it on a reel.
21:55Rodriguez can finally listen to the sounds captured in the cockpit.
22:00Copa 4129, you are cleared for takeoff.
22:04But what he hears reveals a stunning new problem.
22:07Cleared for takeoff, 4129.
22:09OK, here we go.
22:11The recording is not from flight 201.
22:14It's from a flight days earlier.
22:16It seems that the tape was already broken when flight 201 took off.
22:20The tape was broke about seven days before the accident.
22:25And that was the reason that recorder wasn't working at all.
22:32It's very unusual that it does not operate.
22:34I flew the airplane for many years.
22:36I don't recall ever having the cockpit voice recorder not work.
22:40The first funeral is for one of the five flight attendants.
22:44Many mourners are asking the same question as investigators.
22:48Why did this tragedy happen?
22:51It was like a nightmare that you wish you could wake up.
22:56You do not expect that to happen, even less in your country.
23:02The flight data is finally in the hands of investigators.
23:06It paints a terrifying picture.
23:08Flight 201 suddenly went into a catastrophic dive.
23:15The airplane started coming down from 25,000 feet.
23:23Until he disintegrated at 9,195.
23:303,000 feet a minute.
23:33The extreme speed of the dive solves the mystery of the mid-air breakup.
23:37It's not designed for flying inverted at speeds approaching the speed of sound.
23:43And so we're trying to understand how it got from a level flight
23:47to be inverted coming down at high speed.
23:50That few seconds is really the focus of the investigation.
23:55The fierce weather over the Gulf of Panama may have been a factor.
23:59We had reports that the storm extended more than 100 miles from east to west.
24:09If the COPPA crew flew into a severe storm,
24:12there's a chance the pilots were confused by what experts call spatial disorientation.
24:17This is something else.
24:21Do you have a visual reference on your site?
24:23No.
24:24Do you have a visual reference on your site?
24:26No.
24:29Flying in weather at night, thunderstorms can be totally disorienting.
24:35You can't really trust your own senses.
24:37The inner ear will not lead you to the right conclusion necessarily.
24:42The G-forces you're feeling may lead you to think you're turning left when you're turning right.
24:51Altitude.
24:53Putting guns in him! Pull up! Pull up!
25:00Investigators use radar information captured in the tower to plot Flight 201's path.
25:06They want to compare it to the path of the storm.
25:10We could go back and look at the weather data and the long-range radar data.
25:14We knew where the storm was. We knew where the airplane was by the impact.
25:18And so we could piece together their flight path and where they're going.
25:22The results are conclusive. Flight 201 wasn't anywhere near the storm.
25:27I say that the weather wasn't an issue in that accident.
25:33Investigators still can't explain what happened to Copa Flight 201.
25:38They need a better approach.
25:41The data we had, the take-off, the climb-out, the cruise, everything looked like a normal flight.
25:46They delve deeper into the last two minutes of flight data and discover some very unusual flight manoeuvres.
25:52Okay, looks like they turned right, and then left, and then right again until they spiralled into a dive.
26:01Doesn't make any sense.
26:03The flight data seems completely baffling.
26:06Could it hold the key to explaining why 47 people died on Copa 201?
26:16Investigators zero in on the final two minutes of flight 201.
26:20Let's have a look at this thing.
26:22They create an animation of the flight data.
26:24Everything's normal. That was abrupt.
26:26Hoping it will shed some light on how the 737 could have made such strange manoeuvres.
26:32It should be correcting. It's not correcting.
26:34Whoa! What the heck's going on?
26:36But it only adds to the mystery.
26:39We would start seeing the aircraft roll over into a bank angle, then suddenly snap back to level or vice versa.
26:46The strange motion is unlike anything an airliner usually does during flight.
26:51I was trying to understand how can the airplane manoeuvre the way it's doing,
26:55and that was causing quite a bit of problems, because we couldn't make it fit.
26:59The aircraft is normally flown very gentle, as if your grandmother's in the back and she does not like to fly,
27:07because you're trying to make a happy customer and make them come back and fly with you again.
27:14Could the pilots have been incapacitated by drugs or a medical emergency?
27:19We've got to find that cockpit.
27:22There's no way to answer that question unless they can find the pilots' bodies and carry out forensic tests.
27:30So that was one of the main parts of the investigation, was we have to get the cockpit.
27:37Investigators are prepared for the hunt.
27:40Before going into the jungle, they examined a 737 just like the one that crashed.
27:45I thought, we're hunting around the jungle looking for parts and pieces.
27:48It might be nice to see what they look like intact.
27:51So we came across in the jungle, we have an idea of what we're really seeing.
27:56The meticulous search finally pays off.
28:04We found the cockpit in the base of the big tree.
28:08Like he hit the tree and stopped there.
28:17In Panama City, pathologists examine the bodies.
28:22During the autopsies, we found no evidence of a heart seizure at that time
28:27or any medical event with either of the pilots at the time of the impact.
28:30Toxicology tests also confirm that neither pilot was impaired by drugs.
28:35There must be another explanation for the bizarre maneuvers.
28:39We're trying to understand what happened here that caused the upset.
28:43It was quite a mystery for a long time.
28:46With little else to go on, investigators focus on the cockpit debris.
28:50It provides some intriguing details about the last moments of the flight.
28:54We started to be able to piece together what may have been going on in the cockpit at the time this happened.
28:59The delicious food makes up for the long hours.
29:03First officers flying the airplane, the captain is back from the controls,
29:08he's having his meal and everything seems like a very normal flight when things started going wrong.
29:15Investigators study the flight instruments and cockpit controls that pilots rely on to fly the plane.
29:25The position of a switch raises an immediate red flag.
29:32The vertical gyro switch affects the most important flight instrument in the cockpit,
29:37the attitude indicator.
29:44V1. Rotate.
29:47Each pilot has his own attitude indicator.
29:50It shows him how the plane is positioned with respect to the horizon.
29:54The pilot's attitude indicator is like a ball.
29:58It shows bank angle, it shows pitch.
30:01It's the sole control of the aircraft.
30:04And without it, it would be very, very difficult to fly the airplane.
30:09Each attitude indicator is connected to its own sensor, called a vertical gyro, or VG.
30:15The gyros constantly measure the plane's attitude.
30:18If the gyros don't match, the pilots get a warning.
30:22Normally, you'll have the captain's attitude indicator powered by one gyro,
30:27and the first officer's attitude indicator powered by another gyro.
30:31If there's a problem with one gyro, the pilots can switch both indicators onto the other one.
30:37If one gyro goes bad, you don't want to have the pilot looking at bad data,
30:42so you switch them both over to the good data.
30:45It appears that's what happened.
30:48The gyro control switch has been positioned to feed both indicators from VG1, the captain's gyro.
30:54Looks like they're having trouble with the first officer's gyro.
30:58Both of them are reading data from the same gyro source,
31:01which makes you think that at some point, either it was selected that way
31:06or they didn't realize it had been selected that way,
31:08but they're both feeding data from the same source, which is unusual.
31:12Investigators could be on the verge of an important breakthrough.
31:17But they won't know for sure until they can test the flight instruments for any kind of malfunction.
31:25We basically removed all the components from the cockpit and shipped those back to the U.S. for examination.
31:32This could be their last chance to understand what happened to Flight 201.
31:43Investigators need to know if a faulty cockpit instrument
31:46was giving the crew of Flight 201 misleading data about the position of their plane.
31:52Okay, fire it up.
31:54What we wanted to look at was, is there anything here that would show us what happened?
32:00Maybe the failure is actually an attitude indicator.
32:03They test the displays and the gyros that feed them.
32:06Well, this one seems to work fine.
32:08There's nothing wrong with the first officer's instrument.
32:10Let me see the other one.
32:13They run the same test on the captain's attitude indicator.
32:17At first, the captain's instrument seems fine, too.
32:20We put them on a bench, we can power them up. They actually work quite well.
32:25Then they notice something odd.
32:28Hang on, it seems to be stuck.
32:30Occasionally, the display momentarily freezes in place.
32:34The attitude indicator stops moving, even though the gyro feeding it is still in motion.
32:41Yeah, there it goes. Now it's working.
32:47Investigators need to know what's causing the failure.
32:53They test every wire connecting the display to the gyro.
32:59No wonder.
33:01Finally, they find the culprit.
33:05This wire is hanging by a thread.
33:08We found basically a break in the wire.
33:10It was intermittent. It was close enough that sometimes it would touch and sometimes it wouldn't.
33:14The discovery gives new meaning to the bizarre rolling motion captured by the flight data recorder.
33:20The captain's instrument and the flight recorder are both fed by the same gyro.
33:25The way the airplane is wired is what the captain is seeing on his attitude indicator
33:30is what's being recorded on the flight data recorder.
33:33Since the captain's gyro was broken, it was sending faulty roll data to the recorder.
33:39COPPA 201 didn't really make any quick rolling maneuvers at all.
33:43Okay, let's see what the plane was really doing.
33:46By carefully analyzing other parameters on the flight data recorder,
33:50they managed to calculate its actual movements and reveal the plane's true motion.
33:58Making a visual of it, where you can see what the data is showing and what the airplane is doing,
34:03that visual is extraordinarily helpful.
34:06The red image shows the bad data the pilots were seeing,
34:10while the solid image shows how COPPA 201 was actually flying.
34:15They're trying to level the plane, but they're making it worse.
34:21You have the attitude indicator here, stuck.
34:24Now, but the airplane's going the other direction.
34:27And since suddenly the attitude indicator gets powered to it, unsticks,
34:32it goes back and mimics the airplane again.
34:35The pilots' ability to troubleshoot the problem
34:38was likely complicated by the intermittent nature of the failure.
34:41Go right. You need to go right.
34:43I am. What's it doing?
34:47If they're totally confused by their attitude indicator,
34:51they are making improper control inputs.
34:54When it sticks, the pilot's trying to correct that problem.
34:57And so he's trying to get the airplane level again,
35:00but he doesn't realize that all he's doing is making the problem worse in the wrong direction.
35:04He's looking at an instrument providing bad data.
35:07And unfortunately, in the period of time, he lost control of the aircraft.
35:12The plane rolls so far to the right it becomes unrecoverable.
35:16Though the pilots don't know it, they're now falling from the sky.
35:22Once it got to this point, they didn't have a chance.
35:25But a puzzling question remains.
35:28It was the captain's gyro that failed in flight and started sending bad data.
35:33So why did the pilots select it?
35:35So the question is why they believed the captain's gyro was the good one.
35:40Why was it switched to that position?
35:43Because of that mistake, both pilots were seeing the wrong information.
35:47The accident wouldn't have happened had they been on VG-2.
35:52What could have led the pilots to make such a lethal error?
36:00You want to know how are they trained for unusual events?
36:03What's their level of skill?
36:05How would they handle unusual situations?
36:08Are they trained for gyro failures?
36:13OK, let's start.
36:15Investigators go into the type of flight simulator the Copa crew used for their 737 training.
36:21Climb to 25,000, turn right.
36:27They recreate the flight of Copa 201.
36:30Now, trigger the failure.
36:35Including the malfunction of the captain's attitude indicator.
36:38Now, how did you make the switch?
36:42Wait a minute, let me see that.
36:44That is not the same switch that was on Copa 201.
36:52Two different configurations for one small control switch
36:55has overwhelming implications for the investigation.
36:58This is the gyro switch from the simulator where the captain was trained.
37:02Next slide, please.
37:06And this is the gyro switch from Copa 201.
37:10Now, can we get a close-up, please?
37:14All right, now let's see both.
37:17Wow, that's completely different.
37:19The cockpits of the simulator were dissimilar,
37:22and so it was possible to get confused,
37:24thinking you were going to independent gyro source when you weren't.
37:28In the simulator, flipping the toggle to the left
37:31switches the captain's instrument to an auxiliary gyro,
37:34independent of the other two.
37:37On flight 201, flipping the switch to the left
37:40puts both instruments on the captain's malfunctioning gyro.
37:44Panama Center, Copa 201.
37:47Level at 250.
37:50Level at 250.
37:53Roger that, 201.
37:57With no voice recording from the cockpit of Copa 201,
38:00investigators will never know for certain who flipped the switch the wrong way.
38:07But they've finally collected enough evidence
38:09to build a compelling theory of how the flight went so horribly wrong.
38:14Turning right, heading 1-6-0.
38:19After diverting around the storm,
38:21the crew of Copa flight 201 needs to turn right to get back on course.
38:31The delicious food makes up for the long hours.
38:35Well clear of the storm now.
38:37As the plane levels out,
38:39an error flag warns there's a problem with the captain's attitude indicator.
38:45They fall back on their training and flip the gyro switch to the left,
38:49thinking they're switching to the auxiliary gyro.
38:52But it's not as simple as that.
38:54The captain's instrument is still on the gyro,
38:57but the gyro switch is still on the left.
39:00They flip the gyro switch to the left,
39:02thinking they're switching to the auxiliary gyro.
39:05You may revert to your training and do something inappropriate
39:09because that's what you're trained to do.
39:13Now they're both on the bad gyro and neither of them knows about it.
39:17That's weird. Why won't it level?
39:19The gyro malfunction causes the autopilot to switch off.
39:23First officer Tejada must now fly by hand.
39:26He turns his wheel to level the wings.
39:29His frozen instrument makes it look like the plane isn't responding,
39:32so he continues to turn the controls,
39:35sending the plane further and further to the left.
39:39He's trying to correct a problem he's seen on his instrument.
39:42He's taught to follow your instruments, believe in your instruments.
39:45He's actually making the problem a lot worse.
39:49The pilots have no way of sensing their error.
39:52It's too dark to see anything outside that could help orient them.
39:56In the middle of the night, you don't have the horizon.
39:59You lose the horizon, you don't know where you are.
40:03As the short circuit cuts in and out,
40:05the instrument starts working, then suddenly stops again.
40:08Go right. You need to go right.
40:10I am. What's it doing?
40:14Now he sees a left bank, so he's trying to correct it by banking right.
40:20In the cabin, there's little sign of trouble.
40:23The barrel roll maneuver was fairly smooth.
40:26There was 1G.
40:28So I doubt the passengers really realized the impending danger
40:32until the airplane was essentially inverted and started to come through,
40:35and then it would have happened very quickly.
40:41Altitude!
40:43What in God's name?
40:45Pull up! Pull up!
40:47In between the two pilots, there's a third standby attitude indicator.
40:52Fed by its own independent gyro.
40:55By comparing the two main indicators to the standby,
40:58pilots can quickly determine which one of the main indicators is faulty.
41:03The standby attitude indicator should have given them the correct indication.
41:08Why the pilots didn't use the standby remains a mystery.
41:12Had they looked at the standby and said there's something really wrong here,
41:16that just didn't happen.
41:18By the time the pilots realize they're in a dive,
41:21Left! Left! Left!
41:23I'm trying, Captain!
41:24it's too late.
41:26It'd be extraordinarily disconcerting.
41:28You've gone from a few degrees to the left to multiple degrees to the right.
41:33It was like, what's happening here?
41:35Once unusual attitudes get out of hand, they're much more difficult to recover from.
41:40This airplane got so nose low and at such a high speed,
41:44I can't imagine in a cockpit what was going on.
41:48In seconds, massive G-forces incapacitate passengers and crew.
41:54I think I have it, Captain!
41:56Oh, God!
41:59As the airplane gets faster, now components are being overstressed
42:03and you'll start breaking off parts of the aircraft.
42:09In the dive, the airplane caught fire
42:12because of rupture of the tank and explode.
42:26We were so sorry that,
42:30that the end was the worst.
42:35It's the worst accident in the history of Panama
42:39and I hope we never run through one again.
42:44Jorge Rodriguez spends months helping prepare the final report on COPPA 201
42:49for Panama's Civil Aviation Authority.
42:52It's very important that you analyze and find out what was the cause of the accident.
42:59COPPA Airlines responds with a major overhaul of its fleet,
43:03standardizing the layout of cockpit controls.
43:06Their fleet is fully harmonized.
43:08It's a completely different airline than it was at that time.
43:11COPPA also revamps pilot training
43:13to make sure its crews are prepared for any instrument malfunction.
43:17I flew four and a half years with them
43:20and their training is the best I've seen.
43:22I really respect them for that.
43:24For the airline industry, COPPA 201 is a reminder
43:27of how even small problems can result in catastrophe.
43:31A minor flaw can result in a tragedy
43:34and so we have to always look for these flaws,
43:37we have to train for them,
43:38we have to every day challenge ourselves to be the best.
43:42Whether it's the guy who makes the component on the bench
43:45to the people who maintain the aircraft to the pilots,
43:48it takes everybody working together.