To find the cause of the crash of Flight 295, they had to dig deep...3 miles deep to the floor of the Indian Ocean.To find the cause of the crash of Flight 295, they had to dig deep...3 miles deep to the floor of the Indian Ocean.To find the cause of the crash of Flight 295, they had to dig deep...3 miles deep to the floor of the Indian Ocean.
Photos
Jonathan Aris
- Narrator
- (voice)
Dave Hemstad
- Sub Technician
- (as Dave Hemstead)
David Klatzow
- Self - Forensic Consultant
- (as Dr. David Klatzow)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsThe program shows an official at the NTSB smoking while NTSB officials and the South African investigator review the cockpit voice recording. However, by the time the cockpit voice recorder for South African Flight 295 was recovered, a ban on smoking in all U.S. federal buildings, whether owned, leased or rented, had been in force per Executive Order 13058 issued on August 9, 1997, by President Bill Clinton. South Africa Air 295 had crashed several months after the ban, on November 28, 1997.
Featured review
Lost At Sea.
It's a fine example from an above-average documentary series. A South African Boeing 747 "Combi" (carrying both freight and passengers) is flying from China towards South Africa when it suddenly fills up with smoke from a fierce fire and disappears over the Indian Ocean.
The airline of South Africa is nationalized so a good deal rests on finding answers to some important questions for the government, and of course the 747 is the jumboest jet now flying and we can have them bursting into flame in flight.
The flotsam is recovered and examined. The autopsies reveal that some of the passengers had died of smoke inhalation before the crash. The problem is that the wreckage is scattered all over, most of it on the bottom of the ocean. An American recovery craft is hired but the all-important black boxes can't be found. A million and a half dollars is spent on the search, which increasingly looks hopeless. Two months into the search, no one even knows the precise location of the wreckage. Should a halt be called? No -- the hunt went on.
Years later it finally came to a de facto end with no definite conclusion about the cause. It's not that much of a disappointment because anyone who has lived for a few years is familiar with ambiguity.
The fire in the cargo hold was violent and fast, but nothing on the manifest could account for it -- only the usual cargo of computers and the like, the most dangerous of which might be computer batteries. Whatever burned carried its own oxygen supply. That suggests rockets or similar weaponry. South Africa was under an arms embargo at the time and may have been smuggling in weapons from China. Or maybe not. The ham-fisted South African government yielded to demands for a ban on Apartheid and now the government has a transparency it didn't have before.
The airline of South Africa is nationalized so a good deal rests on finding answers to some important questions for the government, and of course the 747 is the jumboest jet now flying and we can have them bursting into flame in flight.
The flotsam is recovered and examined. The autopsies reveal that some of the passengers had died of smoke inhalation before the crash. The problem is that the wreckage is scattered all over, most of it on the bottom of the ocean. An American recovery craft is hired but the all-important black boxes can't be found. A million and a half dollars is spent on the search, which increasingly looks hopeless. Two months into the search, no one even knows the precise location of the wreckage. Should a halt be called? No -- the hunt went on.
Years later it finally came to a de facto end with no definite conclusion about the cause. It's not that much of a disappointment because anyone who has lived for a few years is familiar with ambiguity.
The fire in the cargo hold was violent and fast, but nothing on the manifest could account for it -- only the usual cargo of computers and the like, the most dangerous of which might be computer batteries. Whatever burned carried its own oxygen supply. That suggests rockets or similar weaponry. South Africa was under an arms embargo at the time and may have been smuggling in weapons from China. Or maybe not. The ham-fisted South African government yielded to demands for a ban on Apartheid and now the government has a transparency it didn't have before.
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- rmax304823
- Sep 24, 2016
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