THE recovery of cockpit recordings from crashed planes help solve mysteries about missing flights and even identify criminal behaviour – but they also make for haunting reading. This collection of chilling records before some of the world’s most notorious plane crashes reveals the heartbreaking final words of those on board. Desperate cries for help can […]
THE recovery of cockpit recordings from crashed planes help solve mysteries about missing flights and even identify criminal behaviour – but they also make for haunting reading.
This collection of chilling records before some of the world’s most notorious plane crashes reveals the heartbreaking final words of those on board.
Desperate cries for help can be heard along with expletives, screams, sobbing and “I love you” messages just moments before the doomed flight hits the ground.
Here, The Sun Online outlines some of the most harrowing clips during the last 50 years.
May 7 1964, Pacific Air Lines 773
Francisco Gonzalez, 27, a rogue passenger who began threatening to kill himself, shot both the co-pilot and the pilot on board.
He later turned the gun on himself and the plane crashed shortly after taking off from Reno-Tahoe International Airport.
All 41 passengers and three crew members died.
The first officer on board could heard screaming: “Skipper’s shot! We’ve been shot! I was trying to help!”
It was the first instance in the US of pilots being shot as part of a murder-suicide plot.
June 8 1982, VASP Flight 168
The captain of this doomed flight was so stunned by the bright lights of Fortaleza, Brazil, that he crashed into a hillside killing 128 passengers and nine crew.
He was warned twice by the altitude alert system but ignored it, descending 2,500ft lower than his clearance limit.
A fuzzy recording reveals the anguish on board and a transcript reveals the last conversation between the first officer and captain.
The first officer asked: “Can you see there are some hills in front?”
The captain replied: “What? There’s what?”
Seconds later the first officer told him “Some hills, isn’t there?”
Then all that can be heard is the sound of the impact.
August 2 1985, Delta Airlines flight 191
A panicked flight engineer can be heard asking the crew whether the previous legs of their flight trip across different airports had been successful before the plane plummeted to the ground near an airport in 1985.
When approaching Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport the aircraft flew into a meteorological phenomenon known as “microburst induced wind shear”.
The phenomenon happens when a thunderstorm produces an intense downward gust of wind and the pilot lost control.
The plane struck the ground around a mile short of the runway and struck a car close to the busy airport.
It later collided with water tanks and 137 people were killed and 28 more were injured following the freak natural disaster during the flight.
May 9 1987, LOT Polish Airlines, Flight 5055
All 183 passengers crashed to their peril in a forest in Warsaw, Poland, when a fire in the cargo of flight 5055 wasn’t spotted in time.
The aircraft had just taken off at Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport and was heading for JFK Airport in New York City when it encountered a series of serious problems.
One of the engines started to overheat and exploded shortly after take off because of faulty bearings inside.
The debris from the exploded engine caused severe damage to the plane and caused a second engine to burn.
The crew were heard screaming: “Goodnight, Goodbye, we perish!”
It remains the deadliest plane crash in Polish history.
Jan 25 1990, Avianca Flight 52
The plane was on its way to New York City after taking off from Bogota, Colombia, in January 1990.
However, it ran out of fuel just a few miles from JFK Airport and crashed onto a hillside in small village called Cove Neck in New York.
It left South America with enough fuel to make the journey but was placed in three holding patterns before landing and became critically low on fuel.
The captain, who spoke very little English, was communicating through a first officer but at no time declared an emergency.
The First Officer also didn’t declare an emergency and instead used the term “we need priority” several times.
There were 149 passengers and nine crew members on board the flight but 73 people died because of the errors caused by the pilot and Air Traffic Control.
Mar 3 1991, United Airlines 585
A faulty rudder tragically sent all 25 people on board flight 585 to their deaths when they were just minutes away from their final destination near Colorado Springs.
The United Airlines flight was approaching the runway at Colorado Sprints Municipal Airport but experienced a rudder hardover.
The plane rolled over and went into an uncontrolled dive four miles from the runway at a speed of 245mph.
There were 20 passengers and five crew members on board and every person tragically lost their life.
The haunting recording from the cock pit heard the First Officer scream “Oh God, flip! Oh my God! Oh my God!”
August 21 1995, Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529
A dead propeller on this small Embraer Brasilia craft completely warped the left wing of the plane in August 1995.
At 18,000ft those on board heard a thud which survivors described sounded like a “baseball bat striking a trash can.”
One of the blades of propellers failed and it ended up distorting the wing’s profile.
The plane then rapidly lost altitude and was diverted to West Georgia Regional Airport but it struck a number of trees and crashed into a field near Carollton, Georgia.
Nine people out of the 29 on board tragically died.
First Officer Matt Warmerdam told fire chief Steve Chadwick to tell his wife that he “loves her”.
He was being rescued from the aircraft and didn’t think he was going to make it.
Mr Warmerdam said: “Tell my wife, Amy, that I love her.”
Mr Chadwick replied: “No sir, you tell her that you love her, because I’m getting you out of here.”
Emergency crews who rushed to scene were able to free Warmerdam after pulling him from the aircraft.
Halloween 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990
This EgyptAir flight from Los Angeles to Cairo crashed into the Atlantic Ocean around 60 miles south of Massachusetts.
Relief First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti had recently been reprimanded for sexual misconduct by pilot Chief Hatem Rushdy, who told him he would no longer fly US routes.
He was reprimanded by his superior for allegedly “exposing himself to teenage girls”.
In a fit of rage, Al-Batout allegedly dropped the aircraft 14,600 feet through the air in 36 seconds.
El-Batouty repeated his final chant of “I rely on God” eight times as passengers and crew plummeted to their end.
All of the 217 passengers and crew on board tragically died after the aircraft landed in the ocean.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the impact was “a result of the relief first officer’s flight control inputs”.
1 June 2009, Air France Flight 447
The discovery of the little black box helped to solve this mystery crash on flight 447 from Rio De Janeiro to Paris.
The flight went missing in a similar fashion to the infamous Malaysian Airlines flight, leading some to speculate about a conspiracy.
But audio from the black box revealed it had been a devastating accident, with crew incorrectly responding to an autopilot pack-up by putting the plane into a stall from which it never recovered.
It eventually crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing the 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
First officer Pierre-Cédric Bonin, 32, was heard saying: “F***! We’re going to crash! This can’t be true, but what is happening.”
In 2012, France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety, judged the plane had crashed following inconsistencies between airspeed measurements.
It is the deadliest plane crash in the history of Air France, which dates back to 1933.
March 24 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525
Tragedy struck when rogue co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s mental illness got the better of him on the first fatal Germanwings crash in its 18-year history.
Along with the revealing black box, investigators also found recent searches for “ways to commit suicide” and “cockpit doors and their security provisions” on his tablet computer.
After being declared “unfit to work” by a doctor, Lubitz hid his mental illness from his colleagues, opting instead for prescription drugs.
A delusional belief that he was going blind led him to despair over his career as a pilot, so he decided to end it instantly along with 144 other lives.
The black box recorded his pilot, Patrick Sondheimer, frantically demanding Lubitz to “open the goddamn door” after his behaviour grew suspicious.
It wasn’t until Sondheimer left for the toilet that Lubitz plunged the plane 38,000ft into the French Alps at 430mph.
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