Swissair Flight 111 Crash

Incident
Tikkanen stated that the Swissair Flight 111 had crashed on the 2nd of September, 1998.
This crash had claimed the lives of all the 229 passengers who had been present in the flight. The
aircraft was a tri-engine McDonnell Douglas MD-11 that was bound towards Geneva. It was a
scheduled plane that was supposed to start its journey from the John F. Kennedy international
airport. The plane had crashed into the sea at Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia, Canada in just 53
minutes after the take-off. The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) based in Canada had
investigated the case. The investigation revealed the fact that the mishap had occurred from an
inflight fire that had broken thereby leading to the disabling of the various major electrical
devices that were present within the cockpit. The investigation revealed that the pilots were
manually6 controlling the aircraft when the smoke filled inside the cockpit. It was a cloudy night
and the pilots had reportedly asked for a diversion to the nearest airport and had sent in a “pan-
pan” signal.
However, the smoke and the fire had increased uncontrollably thereby leading to the loss
of the control of the pilots. The pilots declared an emergency situation and the plane crashed into
the water and shattered into pieces within a few minutes.
Risks
The investigation by the TSB revealed that the disaster had resulted from the breaking of
a fire in the cockpit during the flight. The fire had spread in a deadly manner and thus led to the
fatal condition within the flight and eventually the death of all the person aboard. Russell stated
that the fire had been “spreading rapidly through the walls of the doomed jet.” The tragedy was
over in a small span of twenty minutes however, the investigation reports state that the data was

lost due to the loss of the electric supply to the flight data recorder and the voice recorder
was snapped in just 6 minutes before the crash.
There was no criminal activity that was undertaken by the crew that was onboard. The
flammable insulation had caught fire due to the fault in the wiring system. This had led to the
failure of the key electrical systems that were present inside the aircraft. The investigation
revealed the fact that the installation of the new entertainment system within the aircraft might
have led to the spreading of the fire. The investigation report further revealed the absence of the
mechanism for the fire detection just above the cockpit. This barred the crew from realizing that
the fire had spread in the frontal part of the jet which was flying at a high speed of 7 nautical
miles per minute. The key electrical systems had begun to fail and shutdown in a very fast
succession after the detection of the foul smell in the cockpit for about a span of 13 minutes.
Fault Tree Analysis
The Fault Tree Analysis is generally used to deal with the revelation of the cause of the
failure of the control systems that have been present within the aircraft. The analysis attempts to
discuss the various factors that had been a reason for the development of the issues that are
responsible for the development of the disaster situation. The analysis is majorly dependent on
the deductive approaches towards the top-down understanding of the incident. The analysis
considers the various minor events that could result in a huge disaster. The concerned incident
had been caused due to the flawed wiring, the absence of the fire detection, the cloudy weather,
the use of the flammable substances as a part of the entertainment system which was present
within the organization. The absence of the proper fire detection system had resulted in the
conditions wherein the pilots could not take proper action due to the non-detection of the fire
within the aircraft.