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  • 5/24/2025

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00:00All available assistance required at Dubai. Emergency descent underway.
00:04Twenty-two minutes after takeoff...
00:06Get your oxygen mask on.
00:08...the pilots of a UPS cargo jet face a life-threatening emergency.
00:13A cockpit full of smoke is an absolutely terrifying condition.
00:17Can you see anything?
00:19No, I can't see anything.
00:21It's about as bad as you can get.
00:23The pilots need information fast.
00:25Tell me what to do. What altitude, what speed, what heading?
00:29Controllers on the ground may be their only hope.
00:33I want you to tell him exactly what I say when I say it.
00:36It's almost impossible to grasp the magnitude of the task.
00:40Three hundred feet, any runway is available.
00:43If he doesn't sort this out, this is going to result in a catastrophic accident.
00:52Amazing, amazing.
00:59The World's Tallest Building
01:15Evening settles over the desert city of Dubai.
01:19The world's tallest building shimmers in the twilight.
01:24In the sky above, a 747 cargo jet climbs out from Dubai International Airport.
01:33Autopilot engaged.
01:37After a routine takeoff, the crew of UPS 6 can now let the autopilot take over most of the flying...
01:43...and settle in for a long night.
01:47I'm going to never get tired of that view.
01:49First Officer Matthew Bell is piloting the plane.
01:52He's a former U.S. Marine who's been with UPS for four years.
01:57Nice flying, by the way. You get a good touch on the controls.
02:01Captain Doug Lampe is also a seasoned pro.
02:05He's been with UPS for 15 years and logged more than 4,000 hours on the 747.
02:11Both of them were said to be very skilled aviators, very experienced.
02:17The massive cargo hold of the 747 is filled with 228,000 pounds of freight bound for Germany.
02:26The 3,000-mile journey will take the plane northwest from the United Arab Emirates...
02:32...past Bahrain and the Middle East, before crossing Europe to land in Cologne.
02:39Dubai is one of the major cargo hubs in the Middle East, in fact, in the world.
02:44A lot of cargo moves at night, so oftentimes when we're asleep...
02:49...we have over our heads thousands upon thousands of cargo flights...
02:53...moving the freight and being delivered the next day.
02:59As the 747 climbs, it passes into Bahrain's airspace...
03:04...and the captain tunes his radio to contact a new controller there.
03:09Bahrain, UPS 6 climbing to flight level 320.
03:14That'll be fine, UPS 6. This is Bahrain and you are in radar contact.
03:18Radar contact now for UPS 6. Thank you.
03:22Richard Phillips is now responsible for the plane.
03:25It's busy airspace. There's a lot of frequency changes.
03:28There's a lot of different air traffic controllers you talk to while traversing this airspace.
03:3821 minutes after takeoff, the plane has climbed to 31,000 feet.
03:44The plane is now in the air.
04:03Fire. Main deck forward.
04:05An alarm warns of a fire in the cargo hold.
04:08I'll fly the airplane. You run the checklist.
04:11Okay.
04:14Checklist for fire. Main deck forward.
04:16Land it near a surveillable airfield.
04:18Just got a fire indication on the main deck. I need to land ASAP.
04:22To have a fire on an airplane directs the crew to immediately land the airplane.
04:26There is no such thing as a good fire.
04:30Doha is at your 10 o'clock and 100 miles. Is that close enough?
04:35Phillips asks the crew if they'd like to land at a nearby airport.
04:40But the captain has a different idea.
04:43How about we turn around and go back to Dubai? I'd like to declare an emergency.
04:47He wants to return to the airport they took off from.
04:50They knew the facility. They had the charts.
04:52Giant runways, plenty of firefighting capability, good air traffic control.
04:56Phillips quickly finds a route to get Flight 6 back to Dubai.
05:02UPS 6, make a right turn heading 090.
05:06Turn right. 090.
05:12Turn right.
05:18It will take 25 minutes to fly the 207 miles back to Dubai International.
05:26All available assistance required at Dubai. Emergency descent underway.
05:31In Bahrain, Phillips' workload just skyrocketed.
05:35Iraqi Airways, Flight 10. Descend flight level 27,000.
05:40It's his job to keep the airspace around UPS 6 clear of other planes.
05:45Iraqi Airways, Flight 1. Turn right 10 degrees. I've got an emergency descent.
05:50When you declare an emergency in an airplane, anywhere in the world,
05:54you can fly at any altitude, at any heading, go in any direction, fly through any airspace.
06:00Dubai 7-0. Make a left turn. 190.
06:03It doesn't matter. You own the sky.
06:05Pack 2 and 3 off.
06:08The first officer activates the fire suppression system and depressurizes the cargo hold.
06:15The maneuver sucks the oxygen from the hold,
06:20which should stifle the flames.
06:24Cargo airplanes have a unique advantage in that they can starve a fire of oxygen,
06:29which is one of the three essential elements of a fire.
06:32Get your oxygen mask on.
06:34The pilots also don emergency masks with up to two hours of oxygen,
06:38in case smoke gets into the cockpit.
06:42Part of the checklist is to put on your oxygen mask.
06:45You don't have any choice, and in a fire, it's pretty obvious that you need to be breathing.
06:50Captain Lampe flicks off the autopilot and begins flying the plane manually.
06:55For a pilot to be hands-on in the emergency,
06:57he can immediately make inputs to the airplane without having to deal with making entries to a computer or anything like that.
07:02He can just simply point the airplane where he wants it to go.
07:11Another warning light goes off. The fire is spreading.
07:15It's a nightmare scenario.
07:19The crew now has fire alarms in several different areas of the airport.
07:24The crew now has fire alarms in several different areas of the cargo hold.
07:28The fire suppression system isn't working, and the flames are spreading fast.
07:34The fact that the fire warnings were not only not going away,
07:37but they were actually progressing, they were increasing,
07:40tells you that you have a high likelihood of a very, very serious fire in the back of the airplane.
07:48With the emergency escalating, clear communication is key.
07:53Marine, I need an emergency descent. This is UPS 6. Fire.
07:58UPS 6, descend flight level 270.
08:01UPS 6 is going down to what altitude, sir?
08:04Flight level 270, sir.
08:07Establishing effective communication is one of the first steps after the masks are in place.
08:14But the pilots are having trouble hearing.
08:16Can you hear me?
08:18The masks have built-in microphones.
08:20I can't hear a damn thing.
08:24In the midst of the emergency, the crew needs to adjust the setting to make them work.
08:30It can take some time, because the correct selection for the microphone and the mask has to be made,
08:36the overhead speakers have to be turned on, the volume has to be turned up.
08:40The downside of that is that no additional parts of the checklist are accomplished
08:46until the crew communication is established.
08:49Marine, do you read UPS 6?
08:52UPS 6, go ahead, sir.
08:55Just as the communication problem is solved, a much bigger one drifts in.
09:05Smoke.
09:06A cockpit full of smoke is an absolutely terrifying condition.
09:13You're doing everything you can to vent smoke out of the airplane, yet it continues to get worse.
09:22God, it's getting hot in here.
09:24The captain starts to feel heat. He knows the fire is right underneath him.
09:28I need a descent down to 10,000 feet right away, sir.
09:32UPS 6, descend and maintain 1-0-thousand, your discretion.
09:39A terrifying situation is about to get worse.
09:44As soon as he starts to pitch the airplane down, there's no control of the elevators.
09:50Find out what the hell is going on. I've barely got control of the airplane.
09:55That's very disconcerting because losing the normal actions of a primary flight control can have catastrophic effects.
10:05The crew of UPS 6 is still 22 minutes from Dubai International Airport.
10:13I've got no control of the airplane.
10:16What?
10:17I have no pitch control of the airplane.
10:20Pitch control, that's nose up, nose down of the airplane.
10:24It's critical to airspeed, and as he gets close to the runway, critical to being able to land.
10:29The captain knows if he can re-engage the autopilot, it might be able to steady the plane.
10:36Very quickly and prudently he decides, something's not right, let's go back to the automation.
10:42But the smoke is blinding.
10:44Can you see anything?
10:46No, I can't see anything.
10:48Terrifying would be an understatement and it would require a lot of discipline to maintain the ability to fly the airplane.
11:00The captain gropes through the smoke and finds the autopilot control.
11:07The strategy works, for now the plane is stable.
11:13But navigating back to the airport with smoke obscuring the controls will still be an enormous challenge.
11:23UPS 6 proceed direct to Dubai when you're able.
11:26With UPS 6 about to fly out of his airspace,
11:30Philips gets on the phone to controllers in the United Arab Emirates to make sure Dubai Airport is ready for the incoming plane.
11:38UPS 6 is reporting a cargo fire and has declared an emergency.
11:45Try and get Dubai into the computer.
11:48The crew needs to program their autopilot for the return to Dubai.
11:53Let's get straight into 12 left.
11:5512 left, ok.
11:57Unfortunately, the pilot is going to need to see that autopilot to configure it.
12:02No, I can't see it.
12:05It's almost impossible to grasp the magnitude of the problem-solving task.
12:13If they can get close enough to the runway and maintain the correct speed,
12:17a high-tech guidance system at the airport might help get the plane to the ground.
12:24The instrument landing system, or ILS, sends out radio signals from the end of the runway.
12:30It can guide the plane down, both vertically and horizontally, from about 12 miles out.
12:35The autopilot in the 747 is pretty sophisticated.
12:39It could pick up that instrument landing system signal and automatically fly the airplane
12:43and bring it all the way basically to the threshold of the runway.
12:47But first, Bell has to dial in the right frequency for the ILS signal from runway 12 left.
12:54Somehow, through the smoke, he does it.
12:58UPS 6 is now less than 20 minutes from the runway.
13:02Ok, UPS 6 is straight into 12 left, sir. Straight into 12 left.
13:07All planes, stand by.
13:09Other flights are rerouted to clear the way for UPS 6.
13:13Everyone is waiting for the mammoth 747 to land.
13:17Give me a heading if you can. I can't see it.
13:20Ok, stand by.
13:22The crew needs Phillips to finish guiding them to the runway.
13:25Abu Dhabi, stand by.
13:28He has to work fast. They're almost off his radar screen.
13:32Most of the time, pilots can at least see their instruments.
13:35In this case, the controller needed to be helping them in something very, very basic.
13:41Airspeed, altitude and heading.
13:45I need that heading.
13:48I need that heading. It's getting really hot in here.
13:51Just when the crew needs him most...
13:54We'll get right back to you with that, sir.
13:56Can I have that clipboard, please?
13:58Phillips loses radar contact.
14:02UPS 6 has flown beyond the range of Bahrain's radar.
14:08Emirates, this is Bahrain Area Control. I need your readouts for UPS 6. They're off my radar.
14:14Since he can no longer see UPS 6,
14:17Phillips asks controllers in Abu Dhabi to track the plane on their radar and send him updates.
14:24Heading 106.
14:26UPS 6, heading is 106.
14:33UPS 6, heading 106, if you're able.
14:38Moments later, the pilots face their worst crisis yet.
14:43Shh, shh.
14:49I can't hold oxygen.
14:52Hold on. Are you OK?
14:54The captain isn't getting any air.
14:57I can't hold oxygen. I can't breathe.
15:02There's emergency oxygen beside the jump seat at the rear of the cockpit.
15:08But the captain can't reach it.
15:12Oxygen.
15:14The captain now has just one option, but it's risky.
15:18The best thing he can do now is to get up out of the seat, go back and get that supplemental oxygen.
15:28You fly.
15:31I'm good. I've got control.
15:33No pilot wants to leave the controls in an emergency. It goes against every instinct.
15:39That would be a hard decision to make.
15:42And one made almost out of desperation, or put another way, made with no other choice.
15:49As the seconds pass, with no sign of the captain's return,
15:58First Officer Bell faces a terrifying reality.
16:02He is now on his own.
16:05The situation now is doubly worse for the First Officer.
16:08The captain is most likely incapacitated. He's no longer communicating.
16:13And now the First Officer's got to do it all himself.
16:19Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Can anyone hear me?
16:22As the slow realization happened, the captain's not coming back.
16:27All it does is intensify the focus of what do I need to do to get on the runway in Dubai.
16:33Bell is also facing another problem.
16:36After flying beyond Bahrain's radar range, he is now about to fly out of its radio range as well.
16:44Just like a cell tower or an AM-FM radio, as you get farther away,
16:49the signal gets weaker and weaker and eventually doesn't work anymore.
16:53UPS 6, contact Dubai 132 decimal.
16:57Controllers give him a new frequency to tune in to Dubai control.
17:02But it's no use. The smoke in the cockpit is too thick.
17:06Sir, we're going to have to stay with you. We can't see our radios.
17:09Can you give me an altitude?
17:11He couldn't change back to the Dubai frequency.
17:14So the problem now is how do you talk to someone out of radio range on your frequency?
17:19His only choice is to stay with Richard Phillips in Bahrain.
17:23Phillips has to think fast.
17:26Sky Dubai 751, you're my intermediary.
17:29Sky Dubai 751, roger.
17:31In a quick piece of thinking, the controller said,
17:34I'm going to use relays to communicate with the airplane which is flying out of my radio range.
17:39He recruits a plane that's flying within radio range of both Bahrain control and UPS 6.
17:46This plane will act as a relay, forwarding messages to and from the stricken plane.
17:53At the same time, controllers in Abu Dhabi are tracking UPS 6 on radar
17:58and feeding that data to Phillips by phone.
18:04UPS 6, your altitude is 1,500. This is Sky Dubai 751 relay.
18:11It's a makeshift system that could save the first officer's life.
18:17UPS 6 is now just 12 minutes from the runway in Dubai,
18:21hurtling toward it at more than 400 miles an hour.
18:25Dubai, it's how far?
18:28It is possible for a single pilot to land a 747,
18:32but in an emergency, the workload is immense.
18:35He can't see his instruments, doesn't know where he is in relation to the ground or the airport,
18:40and has basic troubles in controlling the airplane.
18:44It's about as bad as you can get.
18:46Sir, you're going to have to work faster.
18:48Give me a heading direct to the airport in Dubai and give me immediate vectors.
18:52UPS 6 requests radar vectors to the runway.
18:55OK, tell him to stand by.
18:57UPS 6 requests vectors to runway.
19:00In Bahrain, Phillips draws on all his experience to manage the communications.
19:05The air traffic controllers were faced with this unique situation.
19:09Pilots who couldn't see their instruments, never mind the aircraft,
19:12Pilots who couldn't see their instruments, never mind just couldn't see outside,
19:16and were trying the best they could to give this pilot the information that he needed.
19:21Turn airspeed immediately. Immediately!
19:25As he fights for his life, all Matthew Bell knows is that the information he needs can't come soon enough.
19:31There's a lot of people in this communication loop,
19:35and information has to pass from one person to the next to the next to the next,
19:39and this takes time, and that's something the first officer doesn't have very much of.
19:44As UPS 6 speeds ever closer to Dubai, Phillips struggles to keep the lines of communication open.
19:52As each relay plane flies out of range, he must scramble to find another.
19:57Dubai 1, you up?
19:59Dubai 1, go ahead.
20:01Dubai 1 is a government aircraft, a 747.
20:06Captain Paddy Hurst will be the voice Bell hears during the final descent.
20:11Dubai 1, your radar contact, sir. I need you to do relays for UPS 6.
20:15All right. What do you want me to tell UPS 6?
20:18I want you to tell him exactly what I say when I say it.
20:22The next five minutes will decide the fate of UPS 6 and its lone pilot, Matthew Bell.
20:29He's now dependent on his thousands of hours of experience and training
20:34to basically rewrite an emergency procedure for this airplane,
20:40because these compound failures are far and above anything that we train for.
20:45Tower clears you to land runway 12L.
20:48UPS 6, you are cleared to land 12L.
20:51Tell me what to do. What altitude, what speed, what heading?
20:55Okay.
20:56Bell desperately needs to know how to line up with the runway.
21:00They want to know what altitude, what speed, what heading.
21:03I need current altitude, speed and heading.
21:0720 miles out, heading 115.
21:11UPS 6, 20 miles heading is 115.
21:15UPS 6, you are 20 miles from the field.
21:19The information is frustratingly incomplete.
21:22Just like the game of telephone, a little bit gets lost in the translation.
21:26With so many people in the communication loop, every bit of data he's getting is outdated.
21:32It's not what's going on right now.
21:34It's what was going on some period of time, seconds ago,
21:38and he's trying to fly the airplane in real time.
21:41As he nears the airport, Bell takes the final step in his attempt to lock on to the runway signal.
21:48He pushes the ILS approach button.
21:51Come on!
21:53He knows it may be his last chance to get his plane on the ground safely.
21:58If the autopilot system captures the both lateral and vertical parts of the ILS,
22:06it says that you have a high likelihood of getting the airplane to the airport.
22:11You may bend it, it may end up in some pieces, but it's the highest likelihood of survival.
22:17No traffic between the field and the aircraft. No traffic between the field and the aircraft.
22:25Bell is doing the impossible. He manages to line the plane up with the runway.
22:34He's too high and he's too fast.
22:37But it's not enough. The plane is moving too fast to capture the ILS signal.
22:42In an instant, his best chance for a safe landing is gone.
22:50They said he's too fast and too high. Is he able to make a 360?
22:53Circling would give Bell more time to slow his plane and try again to capture the signal.
23:00You're high and fast. Can you do a 360?
23:03Negative, negative, negative.
23:05He's what's known as behind him.
23:08He's what's known as behind him. He's not on the proper vertical profile. It's not getting better.
23:13If he doesn't sort this out, this is going to result in a catastrophic accident.
23:21Bell doesn't give up. He sets the autopilot to speed up his descent.
23:26Here we go.
23:30He hopes he can bring the plane in steep and fast and somehow make the landing work.
23:36Bell is blinded by the smoke. He's operating the plane by feel.
23:42He extends the flaps and drops the landing gear.
23:52An alarm warns Bell the gear did not drop.
23:57I have no gear.
24:00He was doing everything he could to maintain control of a severely crippled airplane.
24:06Sir, where are we? Where are we located?
24:10Bell is overshooting the runway.
24:13He was pretty much lined up along the left-right course to the runway.
24:18Unfortunately, it was too high for him to make a landing.
24:26Is he able to make a left turn for a 10-mile final for Sharjah?
24:29Air traffic thought quick. They knew there was another runway nearby at Sharjah
24:33and tried to give him guidance to make that runway.
24:36Are you able to make a left turn now to Sharjah? It's 10 miles away.
24:40Give me a left turn. What heading?
24:42A small left turn could take him to the alternate airport.
24:46What sort of heading, Marine?
24:49Hurry up! What heading?
24:53Heading 095.
24:56You're on final for Sharjah.
24:59Bell tries to enter the heading into the autopilot.
25:09He's made that turn.
25:12He's making a left turn.
25:16He's made a right turn.
25:19A right turn.
25:21But instead of turning left, the plane turns the wrong way, 90 degrees to the right.
25:27Unfortunately, one digit was wrong, 195.
25:31And instead of turning left towards Sharjah, the airplane turned right, away from Dubai and Sharjah.
25:37Bell feels the plane bank the wrong way.
25:41He disconnects the autopilot to try to correct his course,
25:45but he still has no manual pitch control.
25:48The nose of the plane drops.
25:51He has no manual flight controls.
25:53So the auto flight system is off and he has to control pitch, but he has no elevator control.
25:58Airspeed!
26:00What's his airspeed?
26:02Ground speed, 266.
26:05This officer never gave up trying to fly the airplane or land the airplane.
26:10Okay, your ground speed is 266. It sounds like you're too fast.
26:15800 feet.
26:17You're 800 feet.
26:24300 feet, any runway is available.
26:27Any runway available, UPS 6.
26:31If able, climb immediately. Climb immediately!
26:34UPS 6, climb immediately!
27:01What's the word?
27:06Radar contact lost.
27:13UPS 6 has crashed into a military base 10 miles from Dubai International Airport.
27:19Neither pilot has survived.
27:23First officer Matthew Bell, who fought to the final seconds,
27:28leaves behind a wife and a four-year-old daughter.
27:32Captain Douglas Lampe was also married with four children.
27:37It's one of Dubai's worst ever aviation disasters.
27:43And for the first time, the man in charge of the investigation is a UAE national.
27:49The Director of Air Accident Investigation Khalid Al-Raisi.
27:54I remember it was a Friday evening on the month of Ramadan,
28:00and shortly after we got the call.
28:03He knows he's facing one of the most important challenges of his career.
28:08This is the busiest airport in this region, and UPS is a major career as well.
28:14It was so important to know what the reason that the aircraft crashed.
28:24Al-Raisi already has an important lead.
28:27The pilots told controllers the plane was on fire.
28:31But he doesn't know what caused the fire,
28:34or how it could have crippled a jumbo jet so completely.
28:39The $220 million plane is now charred rubble.
28:43The unrecognizable remains spread over a wreckage site the size of six football pitches.
28:49The airplane had hit at very high speeds.
28:52There were a lot of small pieces, and when that happens,
28:55from an investigative standpoint, it's going to be really challenging.
29:00Al-Raisi quickly appoints New Zealander Darren Straker to lead the investigation.
29:05Straker is an experienced air crash investigator recently recruited to the UAE.
29:12OK, let's get moving. We need to see every piece.
29:17First question is, what was on fire?
29:20How did it get on board?
29:22Why didn't the aircraft fire suppression system handle it?
29:26And how did this 747 drop out of the sky in the middle of a large city?
29:33Since the 747 is American built,
29:37well, what do you need?
29:39Al-Raisi also calls in investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Board.
29:45We knew right away from the air traffic communications,
29:48they had this catastrophic fire and all these other side effects in the airplane.
29:53We needed to find out, how could this happen?
29:57The 747 is one of the most popular planes in the sky.
30:02The newly formed team needs answers fast.
30:06I want you to search this entire grid, inch by inch.
30:10The first step is to recover as much debris as possible.
30:15We call it eating the elephant. Where do you start? One bite at a time.
30:18First things to look for were the flight recorders, the CVR and FDR.
30:27The cockpit voice recorder is found almost immediately.
30:30It should have captured everything the pilots said in the cockpit.
30:35But there's no sign of the flight data recorder.
30:38And the heat of the desert is making a difficult search even more challenging.
30:42We needed to find the data recorder.
30:45So we just resorted to searching square by square.
30:48We made 10 meter square sections and we just progressed in a linear fashion
30:52from the beginning of the debris field.
30:55Meanwhile, investigators hope the cockpit voice recorder will provide some leads.
31:01Fire! Main deck forward.
31:03But it only raises more questions.
31:05I'll fly the airplane, you run the checklist.
31:07Okay.
31:12Back two and three off.
31:14The recording shows the crew reacted quickly,
31:17immediately engaging the other flight recorders.
31:20The recording shows the crew reacted quickly,
31:23immediately engaging the onboard systems designed to contain a fire.
31:28Why couldn't they make it back to the airport?
31:32Those systems should prevent this from happening, but they didn't.
31:39I've got no oxygen.
31:42I can't breathe.
31:44The thing that stood out for me was the speed of the onset of the problems they faced.
31:50How does a fire get so out of control, uncontained,
31:54that the airplane is rendered almost unflyable and the crew is put at risk?
32:00Three days in, the search for the second recorder pays off.
32:06The flight data recorder should contain information about exactly where the fire started
32:11and how it progressed.
32:14Let's see if the lab can do this back in Washington.
32:16Investigators won't know what they have until they can get the recorder
32:19to an NTSB laboratory for analysis.
32:22Recorders are designed to withstand some fire and some heat,
32:26but they're not completely immune.
32:28They can be burned, they can be damaged by heat and by impact.
32:45Beyond the outer edge of the wreckage field, investigators make an unexpected find.
32:51We looked outside the burned area and saw this little shrub, maybe three feet high,
32:56just sitting out by itself in the dirt, burnt, far away from the main area.
33:03Inside that bush was one small lithium battery that had burned,
33:11blown itself up and shot out of the wreckage into the little bush.
33:17The small piece of evidence suggests a terrifying new theory.
33:25The cargo manifest reveals UPS 6 had dozens of shipments of lithium batteries
33:30or consumer electronics that contained them.
33:3581,000 batteries. That's a lot of hazardous cargo.
33:40Once we'd got the cargo manifest and seen the total volume of these batteries that were on board,
33:46we were heading in the right direction.
33:48Lithium batteries are extremely flammable.
33:52They can provide up to ten times the energy of regular alkaline batteries,
33:56which is why they last longer in electronics.
33:59But their volatile chemical composition means they can burst into flames if they're damaged.
34:05Is that what happened in the cargo hold of UPS Flight 6?
34:11Joseph Panagiotou is a fire and explosives expert for the NTSB.
34:17There's been instances where they're trying to load a pallet of cargo which contains a lot of batteries
34:21and it catches on fire at the airport before getting onto the airplane.
34:25So we're aware that that is a possibility.
34:29You can't automatically conclude that that's what it is, but it's one of the prime suspects.
34:34Demand for lithium batteries has never been higher.
34:37Several billion are manufactured and shipped around the world every year.
34:42Lithium batteries are on everything that we do.
34:45They're in our cars, they're in our homes, they're in every airplane we get on.
34:50They are everywhere.
34:53At a testing facility in the United States,
34:56Straker runs lab tests to explore just how flammable lithium batteries can be.
35:04The results are astonishing.
35:10When they heat a single box containing 100 batteries, it quickly ignites,
35:15sending up flames that reach temperatures of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
35:21We were completely surprised at how a small double-A sized lithium battery
35:27would overheat and then vent and practically just explode into a problem which you couldn't contain.
35:40The black box flight data has been downloaded.
35:43Investigators study each parameter, trying to reconstruct how the plane broke down over time.
35:51We could see numerous systems failing, things dropping offline.
35:55We could start tracing back as things were failing, lining them up physically with the airplane.
36:03The next step is to map the failures and use them to trace the path of the fire.
36:13The data paints a vivid picture of an intense fire that burned through the cargo hold at a critical location.
36:21All the failures are right here, behind the cockpit.
36:25If you are familiar with the 747, you know it has that very distinctive hump up in the front.
36:30The cockpit is part of that hump and the cargo deck is underneath there.
36:34A lot of the cabling, the control cables, electrical cabling and everything,
36:39ran through this one common area just at the aft part of that hump,
36:43right above the part of that cargo compartment where we saw the first fire alarms.
36:50So what was in the containers beneath those systems?
36:55Bingo. Lithium batteries.
36:58Right underneath the critical failure points in the airplane,
37:02we found some shipments in there of some pretty large batteries, a lot of energy, packed in a very dense place.
37:08That was a big moment to figure that out.
37:10We had the solution to the issue of where the failures originated and how they originated.
37:19In the crowded cargo deck, the flames soon spread to other containers,
37:24many of which also contained batteries.
37:27We've seen in fire tests that sometimes they become projectiles, flaming projectiles,
37:32and they can spread a fire that way and make it even worse.
37:45Fire. Main deck forward.
37:47By the time the crew gets a warning,
37:49the fire is already burning too intensely for the suppression system to put it out.
37:57The manual flight control system is in the direct path of the fire.
38:02Luckily, the autopilot system is not.
38:06It can still send electrical signals directly to the servos that operate the plane's controls.
38:17But when the pilot switches off the autopilot, the plane becomes nearly impossible to fly.
38:23I have no pitch control of the airplane.
38:28Fire quickly destroys more systems, including the captain's oxygen supply and the landing gear controls.
38:36I have no gear.
38:40But Straker believes the tragedy would have been even worse if not for the final actions of the first officer.
38:47300 feet, any runway is available.
38:49At the last moment, in a plane he could barely control...
38:53If able, climb immediately. Climb immediately!
38:56He manages to narrowly avoid a suburb of Dubai.
39:02At the very end, there are some control movements that go in,
39:05which if he hadn't made them two seconds beforehand, they would have collided with that residential area.
39:12He knew what was in front of him,
39:15and he also knew from the ground proximity warning system that time was running out.
39:29Investigators have one final question.
39:33The 747's cargo area is equipped with a flame-resistant liner.
39:37It wraps the entire cargo hold in a protective shield.
39:41It should have protected the critical systems.
39:44We had to get on top of the reason of this failure, to save other people's lives.
40:00To find out how fire could have burned the plane,
40:03investigators conduct another dramatic test.
40:07We did our tests with a representative load.
40:14The fire on the pallet was enormous.
40:19We were standing behind glass, about 50 feet away from this, and I could feel the heat.
40:25What the test showed us was that there was no fire.
40:28It was about 50 feet away from this, and I could feel the heat.
40:32What the test showed us is not just the energy, but the time factor as well.
40:38All this penned up energy, released so quickly,
40:41that it could create this catastrophic event,
40:43without the time needed for the pilots to get safely back down on the ground.
40:48The cargo liner failed.
40:50The flames spread quickly, eating through vital control systems.
40:55Once the single point of failure, which is the cargo liner, has disintegrated,
41:00you don't have protections for your oxygen system,
41:02you don't have protections for your flight control,
41:04you don't have protections for your environmental control, it's all gone.
41:14It all came down to a single point of failure.
41:17We never thought that a new aircraft could have such failure,
41:21or nobody thought that these failures would happen.
41:25The final report highlights the need for better smoke detectors
41:29and fire extinguishers in cargo holds.
41:35It also calls for new fire-resistant cargo containers.
41:40The final report for UPS 6 came up with 36 safety recommendations.
41:46This number talks by itself on the depth of the safety lessons,
41:50which we learned from this accident.
41:55One of the big changes that's already occurring in the cargo industry
41:58is the concept of container-level fire detection.
42:03Rather than relying on the smoke detection or fire detection
42:06in the cargo compartments themselves, these very large compartments,
42:10we're moving towards the ability to detect fires
42:13inside the cargo pallets themselves, inside the containers,
42:16rather than waiting before it's too late and too big.
42:21At UPS, the entire company mourned the loss of their colleagues.
42:26Even before the report came out, they took steps to keep their pilots safer.
42:32The company is testing a new cargo container
42:35that can withstand a 1,200-degree fire for up to four hours.
42:40That type of containment capability will allow our people,
42:44as well as anyone in the world, to safely get an aircraft on the ground
42:48no matter where they're flying.
42:51UPS has also improved safety in the cockpit.
42:55We've implemented full-face oxygen masks,
42:57which can be placed on our pilots with one hand.
43:00Three seconds gives them more time to respond to perhaps a smoke-filled cockpit.
43:05We also will be the first international carrier to install EVAS,
43:08which is the Enhanced Vision Assurance System.
43:11The new system creates a sealed air bubble for the pilots
43:15that allows them to see both their instruments and the view ahead
43:19if the cockpit ever fills with smoke.
43:27The industry has taken on board what's in the report.
43:32They're addressing the risk clearly.
43:35There's a general public awareness that the batteries now can pose a serious risk.
43:39So if all of the safety recommendations which the Civil Aviation Authority
43:43have put in the report are implemented,
43:46any other similar accident will be avoided.