South African Airways Flight 295 - Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories

In January 1992, the journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society reported that the inquiry into the in-flight fire that destroyed SAA Flight 295 might be reopened because the airline had allegedly confirmed that its passenger jets had carried cargo for Armscor, a South African arms agency. The RAeS journal, Aerospace, asserted: "It is known that the crew and passengers were overcome by a main deck cargo fire, and the ignition of missile rocket fuel is one cause now under suspicion." A complaint against the newspaper that first published the allegations, Weekend Star, was lodged by Armscor.

However the inquiry was not reopened, and this might have spawned a number of conspiracy theories concerning the nature of the cargo that caused the fire, which in turn fueled public doubts about the outcome of the initial inquiry. Examples of such theories include:

• The SADF was smuggling the hoax substance red mercury on the flight for its atomic bomb project.
• Reports from the Project Coast investigation suggested there was a weighbill showing that 300 grams of highly volatile activated carbon had been placed on board the Helderberg, leading to speculation that this substance had caused the fire.

The television show Carte Blanche dedicated an investigation into a number of these allegations.

A South African government chemist examined a microscopic particle on the nylon netting next to the front-right pallet on Flight 295. The chemist found that the airflow patterns on the iron suggested that it traveled at a high velocity while in a molten state; therefore the fire on Flight 295 may have not been a flash fire triggered by packaging. Fred Bereswill, the investigator from Boeing, said that this would suggest that the source of the fire would have had properties like a sparkler, with the source including its own oxidizing agent. A British fire and explosion analyst examined the exterior skin of the aircraft which had been located above the pallet; the analyst found that the skin became as hot as 300 degrees Celsius. Bereswill said that it would be difficult for a fire to burn through the skin of an aircraft in-flight because of the cool airflow outside of the aircraft.