Philippine Airlines Flight 434: Difference between revisions
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{{Infobox Airliner accident|name=Philippine Airlines Flight 434 |
{{Infobox Airliner accident|name=Philippine Airlines Flight 434 |
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|image=[[File:Phillipine Airlines Bombing Aftermath.png|250px]] |
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|image= |
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|caption=Aftermath of the bombing, photographed by [[DSS]] |
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|Date=11 December 1994 | |
|Date=11 December 1994 | |
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Type=[[Bombing]], loss of flight controls| |
Type=[[Bombing]], loss of flight controls| |
Revision as of 22:13, 4 May 2010
Occurrence | |
---|---|
Date | 11 December 1994 |
Summary | Bombing, loss of flight controls |
Site | Minami Daito Island |
Aircraft type | Boeing 747-283B |
Operator | Philippine Airlines |
Registration | EI-BWF |
Flight origin | Ninoy Aquino International Airport |
Last stopover | Mactan-Cebu International Airport |
Destination | Narita International Airport |
Passengers | 273 |
Crew | 20 |
Fatalities | 1 |
Injuries | 10 |
Survivors | 292 |
Philippine Airlines Flight 434 (PAL434, PR434) was the route designator of a flight from Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Metro Manila, Philippines, to New Tokyo International Airport (now Narita International Airport), Narita near Tokyo, Japan, with one stop at Mactan-Cebu International Airport, Cebu. On 11 December, 1994, the Boeing 747-283B on the route, tail number EI-BWF, flew on its second leg, from Cebu to Tokyo, when a bomb, planted by terrorist Ramzi Yousef, exploded, killing one passenger. The captain of the flight, an experienced veteran pilot, landed the aircraft, saving the plane and all other passengers and crew.
Bombing
Authorities later discovered that a passenger on the aircraft's preceding leg was Ramzi Yousef.[1][2] He was later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[2] Yousef boarded the flight under the fake Italian name "Armaldo Forlani"[3], a wrong spelling of the name of the Italian legislator[4] Arnaldo Forlani.
The flight crew consisted of veteran Captain Eduardo "Ed" Reyes,[5] First Officer Jaime Herrera, and Systems Engineer Dexter Comendador.[3]
Yousef assembled a bomb in the lavatory and put it in the lifejacket pocket under Seat 26K on the right-hand side of the fuselage,[4] setting the timer to detonate the explosives four hours later. Domestic flight attendant Maria Delacruz noticed that Yousef kept switching seats during the course of the Manila to Cebu flight.[3] Yousef and 25 other passengers left the plane at Cebu. 256 passengers and a different cabin crew boarded in Cebu. Many of them consisted of Japanese people; some of them were coworkers traveling as part of a tour group. Airport congestion delayed the departure of Flight 434 from Cebu for 38 minutes. All of the passengers boarded by 8:30 a.m.; the bomb had been planted around two hours earlier. PAL 434 cleared for takeoff at 8:48 a.m.[3]
Two hours before arrival at Tokyo, the bomb exploded at 11:43 a.m. while Flight 434 cruised on autopilot 31,000 feet (9,400 m) above Minami Daito Island,[3] which is located near Okinawa Island and is 260 miles (420 km) southwest of Tokyo.
The explosion ripped the body of 24-year old Haruki Ikegami (池上春樹, Ikegami Haruki), a Japanese businessman occupying the seat, in half.[3] He was an industrial sewing machine maker returning from a trip to Cebu. The lower half of his body fell into the cargo hold.[3] Ten passengers sitting in the seats in front of and behind Ikegami were also injured; one needed urgent medical care. The bomb tore out a two square foot (0.2 m2) portion of the cabin floor, revealing the cargo hold underneath, but the fuselage of the plane stayed intact.
Masaharu Mochizuki, a passenger on the flight, recalled that injured passengers initially tried to move away from the blast site, but cabin crew told passengers to remain where they were until an assessment of the situation could be made. Fernando Bayot, a flight attendant covering the forward part of the aircraft, moved an injured passenger away from the bomb site. Bayot then saw Ikegami and tried to pull him out of the hole but soon realized that most of Ikegami's body below the waist was either damaged or missing entirely. Ikegami died minutes later; Bayot called another flight attendant over to pretend to minister to Ikegami's needs with a blanket and oxygen mask in order to prevent additional panic, then reported the extent of the passenger injuries to the cockpit.[3]
Immediately after the explosion, the aircraft banked hard to the right, but the autopilot quickly corrected the bank.[3] After the blast Reyes asked Comendador to survey the blast site to check for damage. Reyes placed the Mayday call, requesting landing at Naha Airport, Okinawa Island, Okinawa Prefecture. The Japanese air traffic controller experienced difficulty in trying to understand Reyes's request, so an American air traffic controller from a United States military base on Okinawa took over and processed Reyes's landing. The autopilot stopped responding to Reyes's commands and flew past Okinawa. Reyes said in an interview for the Canadian TV series Mayday that when he disengaged the autopilot, he feared that the aircraft would bank right again and the crew would lose control of the aircraft; however, because of the pressing need to land quickly to attend to the injured and inspect the plane for additional damage, Reyes instructed Herrera to take hold of his own control stick, and then Reyes deactivated the autopilot. The aircraft did not bank after the disengagement of the autopilot, but neither would it respond to steering inputs from either controller due to control cable damage caused by the bomb's explosive energy which made the plane's skin expand rapidly.[3] The crew struggled to use the ailerons, which could allow the aircraft to turn, but still were unable to change the plane's direction. Finally, the flight crew disengaged auto-throttles and resorted to steering via throttle control, reminiscent of United Airlines Flight 232.[3]
By using the throttles to steer the plane, reducing air speed to both control the radius of turns and to allow the plane to descend, and dumping fuel to lessen the strain on the landing gear,[3] the captain landed the damaged Boeing 747-283B at Naha Airport at 12:45 p.m., one hour after the bomb exploded.[4] The aircraft's other 272 passengers and 20 crew members survived.
Location of bomb
The seat where the bomb exploded (seat 26K) would normally be above the center wing fuel tank on an older Boeing 747. However, on the SAS Version model of the 747, used in this flight, seat 26K was two seats forward of the tank. If the bomb had exploded in a diagonal manner, it would have punctured the aircraft skin, causing explosive decompression. Instead, the explosion occurred in a vertical manner running front-to-back on the plane; Ikegami's body took the brunt of the force, people immediately in front and behind were injured, and the sudden vertical expansion of the cabin severed steel cables controlling the 747's rudder and elevator located in the aircraft ceiling. The bomb also severed the copilot's control cable for the right aileron.[3]
Construction and details of the Bomb
United States prosecutors said the device was a "Mark II" "microbomb" constructed using Casio digital watches as described in Phase I of The Bojinka Plot of which this was a test. On Flight 434, Yousef used one tenth of the explosive power he planned to use on eleven U.S. airliners in January 1995. The bomb was, or at least all of its components were, designed to slip through airport security checks undetected. The explosive used was liquid nitroglycerin, which was disguised as a bottle of contact lens fluid. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate, sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide, and liquid acetone. The wires he used were hidden in the heel of his shoe, below the detectable range of the metal detectors used by airports of the day.[3]
Aftermath
Manila police were able to track the batteries used in the bomb and many of its contents from Okinawa back to Manila. Police uncovered Yousef's plan on the night of 6 January and the early morning of 7 January 1995, and Yousef was arrested a month later in Pakistan[3].
Flight 434 today
Today Flight 434 no longer originates in Manila, but it is still a Cebu-Tokyo flight and uses Airbus A330 aircraft rather than Boeing 747s. Philippine Airlines still operates a Manila-Tokyo route as flight 432.
The aircraft, at the time having the tail number EI-BWF, was later converted to a cargo configuration Boeing 747-2XBF. It subsequently changed hands several times, always to air cargo companies, and finally placed in storage in 2007.[6]
Flight 434 coverage
In addition to the news broadcasts, the popular National Geographic Channel show Mayday (also known as Air Crash Investigation and Air Emergency) aired an episode about Philippine Airlines Flight 434 called "Bomb on Board." The recognizable Filipino Canadian actor Von Flores portrayed Captain Reyes.[3]
See also
{{{inline}}}
- List of terrorist incidents
- List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
- Flying an airplane without control surfaces
- Loss of control
References
- ^ State's Security Bureau Takes on Expanded Role, Washington Post, September 27, 2004.
- ^ a b CNN.com, January 8, 1998. 'Proud terrorist' gets life for Trade Center Bombing.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p "Bomb on Board," Mayday
- ^ a b c Yousef bombs Philippines Airlines Flight 434, GlobalSecurity.Org report on incident
- ^ GovTrack: Senate Record: TRIBUTE TO CAPTAIN EDUARDO REYES (110-s20070215-46)
- ^ Boeing 747 - MSN 21575, airfleets.net