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  • 5/31/2025

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00:01A commuter flight over France
00:03Look, we can see the ship there.
00:05There she is.
00:06Gets a rare view of a national treasure.
00:09It's beautiful.
00:10It's a clear blue day.
00:11I'm sure both the crew members were feeling good
00:13and maybe they were going to have a little fun along the way.
00:16Just stunning.
00:17Something rips the plane to pieces.
00:22I was shocked.
00:23This was so quick and it was so horrible.
00:26With an entire nation looking for answers,
00:29investigators struggle to explain what really happened.
00:33Stop it.
00:34They uncover an unimaginable chain of events.
00:38What were they thinking?
00:39You really have to get inside the mind of the pilots
00:42and say whether or not you would have done the same thing
00:44in those circumstances.
00:49Amazing, amazing.
00:59In one of the busiest weeks of summer, Proteus Airlines Flight 706
01:20heads to the coast of Brittany, Western France.
01:23Flip, 0 plus 30.
01:26The 31-year-old captain is an experienced pilot.
01:30He's flown everything from passenger planes to water bombers.
01:36Confirmed descent in 10 nautical miles.
01:40His first officer is just 27 years old,
01:43but he has more than 300 hours flight experience
01:46in this same type of aircraft.
01:49The scale on these pilots in the Beech 1900 is very high.
01:53They're professional aviators.
01:54This is what they're trained to do.
01:55This is what they do on a daily basis.
01:57This was just a normal day for them.
01:59The captain and first officer have divided their workload.
02:03It's very common in the industry for the pilots to swap legs,
02:10meaning one pilot will take his turn flying the aircraft
02:14and then the other pilot will fly the next trip.
02:17On this particular flight,
02:18it was the first officer's turn to fly the aircraft.
02:21The captain was the pilot monitoring
02:24and that involves communicating with air traffic control,
02:27doing checklists, managing the systems on the aircraft.
02:30Flight 706 left Lyon airport a little more than an hour ago.
02:35They're on schedule to land at Lorient in approximately 20 minutes
02:39and they're being guided to their destination by local air traffic control.
02:44I authorize 3,700 feet in IFR.
02:48Confirmed.
02:52The twin-engine Beechcraft 1900D can carry 19 passengers.
02:57Some are headed to the beaches of Southwest Brittany,
03:02a popular tourist destination in France.
03:06And today they're in for a treat.
03:09The rare chance to see a treasured piece of French maritime history,
03:13a luxury ocean liner formerly known as the SS France.
03:18People in France were so proud of this boat
03:21because of mechanical advancement,
03:23but also it was a showcase of French art and design.
03:27When put into service in 1962,
03:30this was the longest passenger ship ever built.
03:33More than 150 feet longer than the Titanic.
03:37The ship is a huge draw whenever it's in French waters.
03:43So journalist Julien Beaumont is sent to cover the event for the local press.
03:49I went to Kilbrombe that day because I was a young journalist.
03:53That's my very first job.
03:55And because it was the main story at that time,
03:59I decided to go there and cover the story and make some pictures.
04:04The young journalist hires a small plane to get a better view.
04:09But he's not the only one fascinated by the ocean liner.
04:13Look, we can see the ship there.
04:16Yes, there she is.
04:18I'll let the passengers know.
04:20As Flight 706 begins its descent towards L'Oréal Airport,
04:25passengers and crew are about to get a perfect view of the famous ocean liner.
04:31The pilots definitely got caught up in the excitement of,
04:34let's go see the ship.
04:36It's not just the first class service,
04:38but I think there was elements inside them as crew members
04:41that also wanted a front row seat taking a look at the ship itself.
04:45L'Oréal 706.
04:47We'll keep a visual and we'll do a 360 for the passengers in the back.
04:50We'll resume contact after for the approach to L'Oréal.
04:53706, L'Oréal confirmed.
05:00Ladies and gentlemen, on the left off the plane,
05:02you will see the ocean liner La France,
05:04air traffic control has just given us permission to do a 360 around her.
05:08We'll resume our route to L'Oréal immediately after,
05:10in approximately five or six minutes.
05:13They descend to 2,000 feet and begin circling the ship.
05:292,000 feet is indeed quite low for a commercial aircraft.
05:36Now with that said, this is a regional aircraft that tend to fly into smaller airports,
05:42so for them to go to spend a little more time at a lower altitude is not rare.
05:48Isn't she a beauty?
05:50It would have been a tremendous view on a crystal clear day.
05:58You could have seen every detail of that ship from 2,000 feet.
06:04Not far away, Julien Beaumont is enjoying a similar view.
06:08It was a perfect day. I mean, it was sunny, no wind, beautiful weather, high temperatures.
06:16Look at the number of yards down there.
06:19Amazing.
06:22Just stunning.
06:23As they complete their 360 degree turn around the ship,
06:29the pilots begin preparations for their landing at L'Oréal airport.
06:35706, if permitted, will set direct course for the airport.
06:39706, L'Oréal confirmed.
06:42Without any warning, flight 706 disintegrates in mid-air.
07:01I didn't hear the crash because the door was open and I was taking my pictures, you know,
07:05and the pilot told me, oh, look, just in front of us.
07:07So I just, just look in front and take my camera like this and just shoot.
07:15I was shocked because it was so quick and it was so horrible.
07:22I can see some big parts, big wreckage places just going under the sea
07:28and some personal belongings like a jacket.
07:32At that time, you just realized and say, wow, a lot of people died there.
07:47The Coast Guard rushes to the crash site, hoping to rescue any survivors.
07:52But they find no one.
07:55Hundreds of tourists aboard the ship and surrounding yachts are stunned by what they've just seen.
08:00It was like, we are so happy to see the boat.
08:06And in two minutes, all of this became a tragedy.
08:14It's soon clear there are no survivors.
08:17All 14 passengers and crew are dead.
08:21The sad news stuns the nation.
08:23It was the big story in France.
08:24All the journalists were on this story and all the French people wanted to know about this story.
08:33It was really the main story in France at that time.
08:37As the tragedy begins to sink in, so the mystery deepens.
08:43Despite hundreds of eyewitnesses, no one seems to know what brought Flight 706 down.
08:49The morning after the crash of Proteus Airlines Flight 706, French air crash investigator Alain Bouillard and his team begin working the case.
09:05So, what knocked this plane out of the sky?
09:10With the entire country looking for answers, there's immense pressure to explain how and why the passenger plane went down.
09:18All we knew was that a plane had crashed into the sea and there were no survivors.
09:28It was up to us to locate the wreckage.
09:31First to recover the flight recorders and then to find any other parts of the plane that we could.
09:37The plane's black boxes are crucial to explain what happened in the final moments leading up to the crash.
09:52But finding them won't be easy.
09:55Because the wreckage is a few miles offshore at the bottom of Quiberon Bay.
10:00The job of locating them is up to investigator Sebastian David.
10:05I went to the site with a beacon locator which receives signals from beacons like the ones that are equipping flight recorders.
10:20Navy divers waste no time and begin scouring the seabed searching for the wreckage.
10:29While waiting for the black boxes to be recovered,
10:32Alain Bouillard interviews the air traffic controller in charge of flight 706's approach.
10:41He's immediately surprised by what he learns.
10:45Here's the scheduled route from Lyon to L'Oreal.
10:48Quiberon Bay was not even on their flight path.
10:52Bouillard wants to know what they were doing there in the first place.
10:56They requested a detour to see La France.
11:00It's a shocking discovery.
11:02A commercial airliner should only request a detour for safety reasons.
11:09It's very, very rare for a passenger aircraft to deviate from their standard flight plan.
11:16Why would they decide to go sightseeing?
11:17The official flight should have taken the airplane in a straight line over land.
11:26But at the time of the crash it was flying over the SS France.
11:30Many miles off course.
11:32The captain's decision to deviate from his flight path for such a trivial reason seems almost reckless.
11:40But the controller in L'Oreal saw no conflicting traffic on radar.
11:45So he had no reason to deny the request.
11:47Press protein is descending 706.
11:51And one little special request is to fly slightly west over Quiberon Bay, sir.
11:56To go see La France anchored there.
11:58The controller in L'Oreal simply advised the pilot of the Beechcraft
12:03that he didn't have any information on the traffic.
12:08Thanks for your time.
12:12Investigators now know Flight 706 was in an area where it was located.
12:17It was never supposed to be.
12:19But they don't know what actually happened there.
12:23Bouillard begins interviewing eyewitnesses.
12:26Maybe they saw something the radar at L'Oreal didn't pick up.
12:30So this is the area that we're focusing on.
12:34And we understand...
12:36Although all of them saw burning wreckage falling from the sky,
12:39nobody saw what happened to cause this accident.
12:42But what they did see catches Bouillard's full attention.
12:45On this wonderful day, there were many, many general aviation aircraft sightseeing over the SS France.
12:54Eyewitnesses had seen more than a dozen pleasure-seeing aircraft out on that nice afternoon.
13:00You're positive.
13:01These aircraft would have been flying too low to be detected by L'Oreal's radar.
13:11Which explains why the air traffic controller never saw them.
13:16And that opens up a frightening possibility.
13:18Is it possible this could have been a mid-air collision?
13:27A mid-air collision with a passenger plane is so unusual it's almost unthinkable.
13:32Air collisions with passenger planes were very rare.
13:48If it was a collision with another aircraft,
13:51Bouillard knows the evidence lies in whatever wreckage they find on the seabed.
13:56Two days after the crash,
14:05SĂ©bastien David picks up a signal from Flight 706's homing beacon.
14:10The flight recorders were found on the seabed at around 16 or 18 metres.
14:18The wreckage is finally located and the bodies are found.
14:23This accident was tragic because two pilots from the beachcraft,
14:30twelve passengers including two babies died.
14:33The nation is in mourning and in need of answers.
14:40Now that wreckage has been pulled from the seabed,
14:42accident investigators begin to examine the pieces, searching for clues.
14:49The whole purpose of accident investigation is to determine the root cause of the accident,
14:56so they can prevent other accidents from happening.
15:00Being able to retrieve all of the wreckage, the flight data recorder, the instruments,
15:06the engines, the engines, flight controls, the cables.
15:11The accident investigators are able to definitively rule out factors that likely didn't contribute to the accident,
15:19and allows you to focus on something out of the ordinary.
15:23What do we have here?
15:27Recovered along with the wreckage of the beachcraft, they find pieces of another aircraft.
15:32The concentration of debris, along with the examination done by the divers,
15:44clearly showed that the wreckage was from two different planes.
15:48So immediately we could confirm that the accident was caused by a collision.
15:53The origin of the accident was a collision.
15:58It's a huge discovery.
16:01And the shape of the recovered nose cone is unmistakable to investigators.
16:06It's a Cessna.
16:08But where did it come from?
16:12Air crash investigators now know they're dealing with a mid-air collision.
16:16They have a mystery Cessna on their hands, and they need to find out where it came from.
16:26With no witnesses to the actual collision, and no radar data tracking the mystery plane,
16:33they look for answers in the cockpit voice recorder found in the beachcraft.
16:38The cockpit voice recorder was in good condition.
16:43We were really relieved because we knew that we could proceed with the safety investigation.
16:49Okay, let's begin.
16:53Flip, zero plus 30.
16:55The recovery was very important to determine the flight path of the commercial aircraft,
17:01and to hear what happened in the cockpit.
17:04...descent in 10 nautical miles.
17:07The recording might also reveal if the pilots of Flight 706 made a fatal error
17:13as they were flying over the SS France.
17:18Pass over the outer marker at 1440 feet.
17:29From analyzing the cockpit voice recorder,
17:32you could tell that there was a good atmosphere in the cockpit.
17:35The weather was good, the crew was relaxed,
17:39but still conducting themselves professionally.
17:46Then, as they follow the recording, investigators hear something completely unexpected.
17:51You're not flying over Kiberon Bay?
17:55Who's that?
17:57Because the France is moored there.
17:59Is that right?
18:00Yeah.
18:03Right over here.
18:05There's somebody else in the cockpit with the pilots.
18:12You're not flying over Kiberon Bay?
18:14Because the France is moored there.
18:16Is that right?
18:17Yeah.
18:20We were surprised that a passenger was able to step into the pilot area.
18:24As a general rule, the presence of a third person is not allowed.
18:29On most commercial airlines, it's strictly forbidden for passengers to enter the cockpit.
18:37But that rule doesn't apply to small aircraft.
18:40The Beechcraft 1900 is an aircraft designed for short flights.
18:46Because there's no flight attendant, the crew is going to have open communications between the passengers and the crew throughout the flight.
18:53Look, it's a small regional aircraft. There's no door in between the cabin and the flight crew.
18:57It's just rather natural. The passenger felt that they were going to be fairly close to this scenic event.
19:04And he saw no harm in them deviating away.
19:07The rest of Proteus descending 706.
19:10And one little special request is to fly slightly west over Kiberon Bay, sir.
19:15To go see La France anchored there.
19:16It's now clear why the captain decided to make that fateful detour.
19:23He did it because a passenger asked him to.
19:28Without the CVR recording, we would never have known this information.
19:34Look, you can see the ship there.
19:36The captain had made the decision to try to comply with the passenger request.
19:41Pilots like to please the passengers.
19:43Yeah, there she is.
19:44As investigators continue listening, it becomes clear how the desire to entertain passengers leads Flight 706 into danger.
20:02They approach the bay at 5,000 feet.
20:10But the ocean liner below is difficult to see.
20:14Let's see if we can go lower.
20:173,000 feet if it's possible.
20:19Can we descend lower, please?
20:21I authorize 3,700 feet in IFR.
20:25Air traffic control gives them permission to descend to 3,700 feet.
20:31But it's not enough.
20:33The pilots want to go even lower.
20:35In order for all the passengers in the cabin to see the ship, they would have had to come down to a lower altitude.
20:48Because the passengers really don't like steep bank angles, coming down to a lower altitude allowed them to fly at a shallower bank angle getting a much better view.
20:57The captain decides to descend all the way down to 2,000 feet.
21:04At this point, everything is about to change.
21:08The pilots are entering unrestricted airspace and cannot be seen by L'Oreal's radar.
21:15They are no longer guided by air traffic control.
21:21They're on their own.
21:23Listen, what we're going to do if possible is cancel IFR.
21:26We'll keep the visual.
21:28706, L'Oreal confirmed.
21:32Your IFR is canceled at 1554 local.
21:37Stop it.
21:39He canceled instrument flight rules.
21:41It's very, very rare for a commercial airline to cancel IFR.
21:50Look, we can see the ship there.
21:53Yes, there she is.
21:57The decision to cancel instrument flight rules and switch to visual flight rules did surprise us.
22:03L'Oreal 706, we'll keep a visual and we'll do a 360 for the passengers in the back.
22:11We'll resume contact after for the approach to L'Oreal.
22:14706, L'Oreal confirmed.
22:22In order to avoid a collision, the pilots must now rely solely on what they can see with their own eyes.
22:34This is see and avoid country.
22:39That means that each aircraft is entirely responsible for seeing and avoiding any other aircraft in that airspace.
22:48They're not under radar control.
22:49There's no coordination of altitudes or flight patterns.
22:53So, when you put high-speed traffic, the beachcraft in this case, in a mix of all of these other general aviation aircraft, it greatly increases the risk of mid-air collision.
23:06You don't have that extra set of eyes looking out after you.
23:11You don't have anyone else specifically putting you on a course that they know is going to be clear of other air traffic.
23:17Once that IFR clearance is cancelled, it absolves the controller of all responsibility for any traffic avoidance.
23:25Ladies and gentlemen, on the left off the plane, you will see the ocean liner La France.
23:29Air traffic control has just given us permission to do a 360 around her.
23:33We'll resume our route to L'Oreal immediately after in approximately five or six minutes.
23:38What were they thinking?
23:41They have just entered a high traffic zone and are only seconds from colliding with an unidentified aircraft.
23:48Now, Bouillard needs to know who was flying the other plane and where it came from.
23:54As investigators struggle to explain a deadly mid-air collision, they search for answers in the final minutes of the cockpit voice recording.
24:07Let's continue.
24:09L'Oreal 706, we'll keep a visual and we'll do a 360 for the passengers in the back.
24:15They learned that as Flight 706 descended into uncontrolled airspace, the pilots had no trouble spotting and identifying other planes nearby.
24:26We've got a DR-400, it's pretty much beneath us.
24:29There's a Cessna. Got it in my sights.
24:33And they were doing their jobs. Captain followed the rules of see and avoid.
24:38But for some reason, there's one Cessna they didn't see.
24:43Nor did anyone at air traffic control.
24:48Okay, here's our beach craft that we know saw the traffic in the area.
24:54Why didn't they see the Cessna they collided with?
24:57To find out more, investigators have been working to identify this mystery aircraft.
25:06Until they finally make a breakthrough.
25:10We are...
25:12We found it.
25:14They get a report from a small airfield ten miles inland from Kiberon Bay.
25:19The air traffic controller there has a missing plane.
25:28This plane left here shortly before the accident.
25:33Just nine minutes before Flight 706 went down,
25:37a private Cessna took off and it never returned.
25:43Yeah, that looks like our plane.
25:46He was planning to fly over to see La France.
25:49The Cessna pilot is Francis Gillibert.
25:53He's a retired airline pilot with more than 15,000 hours of flight time.
25:59He was highly experienced and a well-respected pilot.
26:03For a pilot to reach 15,000 hours with an airline,
26:06you can assume he was a very skilled pilot in every aspect of aviating.
26:11Not only his stick and rudder skills, his decision-making,
26:15all of the attributes necessary to be a successful professional pilot.
26:20Even though the Cessna was flying at an altitude where it should have been detected on radar,
26:25for some reason the air traffic controller was never able to see him.
26:30Why didn't the Cessna show up on L'Oreal's radar?
26:33It looks like he didn't have his transponder on.
26:38It wasn't on.
26:44The transponder allows air traffic control to identify and track the exact location of an airplane.
26:52A transponder is absolutely critical.
26:56The radar may show very little, if anything, from a small aircraft.
26:59In 1998, French aviation rules don't mandate the use of transponders on small aircraft.
27:07So Francis Gilibert wasn't breaking any rules.
27:12He didn't turn the transponder on for his flight that day.
27:16This is an incredible surprise,
27:18because certainly he wouldn't have flown many of those 15,000 hours without that transponder being on.
27:23There's many things that could have played a factor in why he didn't turn the transponder on.
27:30It could have been just his mindset of,
27:32hey, I'm going on a pleasure flight, I'm going on a visual flight plan.
27:36It's not going to make any difference.
27:38Without the transponder, L'Oreal's air traffic control had no way of knowing the Cessna was even in the sky.
27:45Your IFR is cancelled at 1554 local.
27:50But even without air traffic control, why didn't the pilots hear each other over the radio?
27:58Bouillard studies the different approach charts that would have been used aboard each aircraft.
28:05And he uncovers a startling detail.
28:12The pilots were communicating on different radio frequencies.
28:19It was a big discovery to know that in such tight airspace,
28:24there could be two planes on totally different frequencies.
28:27Position report, Julia Deco is 3000 Abime Aradon.
28:31The pilot of the Cessna had not been in contact with control at L'Oreal.
28:38He was in contact with the tower at Quiberon.
28:41And so both planes were on different frequencies with different controllers.
28:47I am descending from 3000 to 1500.
28:51With no transponder and no radio communication between them,
28:55there's no way the pilots could have known about each other in advance.
28:58Ask him if we can go lower.
29:01As Flight 706 descended into traffic, Francis Gilibert never would have heard their calls.
29:08But that still doesn't explain why such experienced pilots collided.
29:14Buillard orders the full reconstruction of both planes to determine who hit who,
29:28and where they were positioned moments before the crash.
29:32Let's see what this can tell us.
29:34Rebuilding the plane is always extremely difficult,
29:38but it's necessary in order to understand the events.
29:41Imagine dumping a puzzle box on a table and trying to figure out where do I begin.
29:50It's the same way, except now imagine taking tinfoil and wrapping it up, squeezing it, compressing it,
29:57unwrapping it, doing that a dozen times, and now trying to figure out where did those pieces go back together.
30:03Because all of this wreckage, especially in a violent midair like this, was mangled.
30:09It was shredded, sheared apart, small pieces, large pieces.
30:14Eventually, the tireless efforts of investigators begin to pay off.
30:18What's this?
30:22By reconstructing the aircraft, they were able to find key pieces of evidence.
30:37And in this case, it was the paint transfer marks.
30:39This paint is definitely from the Cessna.
30:44A paint transfer is like, well, when you have two cars that bump up against each other,
30:49and one car leaves paint on another, same thing happened here.
30:53Alongside the paint transfer, investigators also find distinctive marks on the beechcraft's wing,
31:00caused by a propeller.
31:02This is the Cessna's point of contact.
31:08So the Cessna initially struck out at the wing tip.
31:11As it continued moving forward, the heavier parts of the Cessna continued and struck the rear part of the aircraft.
31:19That part of the tail was found over 400 meters away.
31:24That tells you this would have been a very violent impact.
31:27I'd say this confirms it.
31:30Cessna's point of impact above beechcraft's seventh porthole,
31:34causing catastrophic failure and the beechcraft tail to break off.
31:39The evidence is clear. The Cessna hit the beechcraft.
31:44The marks also reveal the exact position of the two planes at the moment of impact.
31:49By the red paint going at that angle across the wing, the active investigators can determine what the direction of the two aircraft were,
32:02what the relative converging pattern flight pass would have been, and that opens up a whole new set of questions.
32:10Bouillard now knows how the beechcraft and Cessna collided.
32:14What he still doesn't understand is why, on such a clear day, the pilots failed to see each other.
32:22Armed with physical evidence of the collision, French investigators now want to find out what the two pilots could see in the last moments leading up to the crash.
32:33Why didn't they just look out the window?
32:37Bouillard turns to the flight data recorder recovered from the beechcraft.
32:42Play it, please.
32:45It records the plane's every move, as well as the inputs from the pilots.
32:49The flight data recording allowed us to reconstruct the 360, and the different altitudes and tilts of the plane during the turn.
33:03The flight data recorders allowed the ex-investigators to figure out what the approximate geometry of both aircraft at the time of the impact.
33:11The beechcraft was on a bank to the left.
33:19The flight data recorder tells investigators the beechcraft was still turning when the two planes collided.
33:26The ex-investigation team was able to determine, is that at the time of the impact, the beechcraft was in a gentle bank angle, the Cessna in a gentle descent.
33:36Bouillard knows the Cessna was descending on the right, because its propeller struck the beechcraft's right wing.
33:45From the flight data, he also knows that at the time of impact, the beechcraft was still banked to the left, at a 17 degree angle.
33:55He combines the data, to find out what the beechcraft pilots could see out of their windows.
34:06Look at the number of yachts down there. Amazing.
34:10The first officer is in a better position to see the Cessna approaching on the right.
34:15But today, he's busy executing the turn, and preparing for landing.
34:18The pilot flying is actually going to be very focused and very concentrated.
34:23It's a very high workload, ensuring that he's staying on his altitude that he's ended into.
34:28And he's looking in the direction, on his instruments, in the direction in which he's going to be turning.
34:34So, he's not going to be looking out the window at all.
34:37With the first officer flying, the captain was the one responsible for scanning the sky.
34:43Why didn't he see the Cessna?
34:51WeR uses the flight data to reconstruct what the captain could see at different stages during their turn around the ship.
35:00Okay, let's start just before the 360 and go up until the collision.
35:07Now we're entering our turn.
35:10They discover the Cessna was in the captain's line of sight for several seconds.
35:16But it was much too far away to see.
35:19The size of the Cessna is a tremendous factor.
35:23It's a very, very small aircraft.
35:25And, in fact, the difference between that and, say, a 757, which would be huge in your windscreen,
35:32this would be the size of an ant on your windscreen.
35:34As they continue the banking turn, the Cessna drops below the captain's line of sight.
35:43We know the Cessna would have approached from his right.
35:47By the time the smaller Cessna is close enough to be seen, just seconds before impact, it remains hidden from view.
35:53The captain sitting in the left seat would have had to look across the first officer, out the right window, to see the Cessna coming.
36:02And in this case, that just was not possible at all.
36:05There's no way he would have seen anything from that direction.
36:07It's now clear why the Beechcraft pilots didn't see the Cessna.
36:19But why didn't the Cessna pilots see the Beechcraft?
36:23That Beechcraft's a pretty big plane.
36:24The 19-passenger commercial aircraft was almost 60 feet long.
36:33We tried to understand why the pilot of the Cessna hadn't been able to detect anything, since he was in a better position to see the other plane.
36:44The capacity to detect the other plane.
36:58Using the same model as the crashed Cessna, Bouillard tries to figure out how the pilot could have missed what was directly in front of him.
37:07Okay, now start walking around the cockpit.
37:09They would walk around the aircraft holding objects to find out if the pilot sitting there could see the object.
37:17And this would help them to determine what the blind spots would be and where the good visibility spots would have been for him.
37:24Continue.
37:26As Bouillard directs the marker to where the Beechcraft would have been as it came out of its final turn,
37:33it disappears.
37:36That's it. We found it.
37:39It's a major breakthrough.
37:40The side blind spot covers a zone from 35 to 55 degrees.
37:46Which means it would have blocked the Beechcraft for as long as 30 seconds before impact.
37:53Even the best pilot would likely not be able to see something coming from their side window to them.
37:59Then investigators discover that just as the Beechcraft exited the blind spot on the side, it entered an even bigger blind spot right in front of the Cessna pilot.
38:09The engine is directly in front of you, so you would have to look around over the type of the cowling of the engine, as well as the large instrument panel.
38:19So those would also be a factor in being able to see around from the pilot's position.
38:23Even in those final seconds when the Beechcraft was directly in front of the Cessna, it was blocked from the pilot's line of sight.
38:34I'm descending from 3,000 to 1,500.
38:46By the time he came out of that last blind spot, he didn't have a chance.
38:50Investigators believe they now understand the unusual sequence of events that led to tragedy in the sky over Quiberon Bay.
39:05I think we now know what happened.
39:08The Beechcraft is nearing the airport in L'Oreal.
39:12At the request of a passenger, the captain asks to deviate from the flight path.
39:166, and one little special request to fly slightly west over Quiberon Bay, sir.
39:23They decide to take a look at the ocean liner La France.
39:29Proteus Airlines Flight 706 diverts over the bay and descends to 3,700 feet.
39:35Ladies and gentlemen, on the left of the plane, you'll see the ocean liner La France.
39:40Air traffic control has just given us permission to do a 360 around her.
39:42We'll resume our route to L'Oreal immediately after in approximately five or six minutes.
39:48You know, you really have to get inside the mind of the captain to say whether or not you would have done the same thing in those circumstances.
39:56It's a clear blue day. I'm sure both the crew members were feeling good, and maybe they were going to have a little fun along the way.
40:01Once near the ship, they decide to descend to get a closer look.
40:08But to go below 3,700 feet, they cancel instrument flight rules and go visual.
40:16706, L'Oreal confirmed.
40:19Now the Beechcraft is in uncontrolled airspace, below radar.
40:26With no guidance from air traffic control, it's up to the captain to visually scan for nearby planes.
40:32There's a Cessna.
40:33And once at 2,000 feet, they decide to do a 360-degree turn around the ship.
40:44With the 360 almost complete, the pilots begin to prepare for landing at L'Oreal.
40:48At the same moment, the Cessna is approaching from the right.
40:57The Cessna does not have its transponder on.
41:00And it's communicating on a different radio frequency than the Beechcraft.
41:05I am descending from 3,000 to 1,500.
41:08L'Oreal air traffic control has no idea it's there.
41:13It's beautiful.
41:14The bank angle of the Beechcraft, combined with the fact that the pilot responsible for scanning the skies was sitting in the left seat, make the approaching Cessna impossible to see.
41:27They can see only sky out of the right-hand side of the plane.
41:32By terrible coincidence, the Cessna pilot can't see the Beechcraft either.
41:36But the structure of the aircraft creates a blind spot, and the pilot is unable to see the Beechcraft.
41:46During the last 10 seconds of flight, the pilot of the Cessna was likely paying attention to his sightseeing over the SS France.
41:55The Beechcraft was coming in from this approximate position in his peripheral vision.
41:59At the last moment, the Beechcraft comes out of the blind spot.
42:07And it's too late.
42:08The Beechcraft was being Voices...
42:09It's too late.
42:10No!
42:11No!
42:12No!
42:13No!
42:14No!
42:16No!
42:17No!
42:19No!
42:20No!
42:21No!
42:22No!
42:23No!
42:24No!
42:25No!
42:26No!
42:27No!
42:28No!
42:29No!
42:30No!
42:31No!
42:32No!
42:33No!
42:34No!
42:35No!
42:36No!
42:37While the crash of Flight 706 remains a tragedy,
42:42what was learned through the course of this investigation would lead to significant innovations in airline safety.
42:51They include the mandatory use of transponders in small aircraft such as the Cessna,
43:00and limited access to the cockpit on all commercial flights.
43:04You're not flying over Quiberon Bay? Listen, what we're going to do if possible is cancel IFR. We'll keep the visual.
43:13Finally, it is now prohibited for commercial pilots to cancel instrument flight rules unless it's an emergency.
43:22As a result of this investigation, the skies have been made safer.
43:27This catastrophe could have been avoided with the use of the automation that we now have available,
43:32and is now in use today.
43:35Fortunately, mid-air collisions involving commercial airliners are almost non-existent anymore.
43:41And the reason for that is that we have employed a multi-layered system,
43:45airspace regulations, radar, air traffic control, traffic collision and avoidance systems,
43:51to prevent this from ever happening again.
43:53It is now in use today.
43:54It is now in the meantime.
43:55It is now in the meantime.
43:56I will be very much prepared for you, thank you, thank you.
43:58Ever since we've prepared it, we're going to have to work done again.