South African Airways Flight 295 - Investigation

Investigation

Rennie Van Zyl, the head South African investigator, examined three wristwatches from the baggage recovered from the surface; two of the watches were still running according to Taiwan time. Van Zyl deduced the approximate time of impact from the stopped watch. The aircraft crashed at 00:07:00, around three minutes after the last communication with air traffic control. Immediately after the crash, the press and public opinion suspected that terrorism brought down the Helderberg. South African Airways was perceived as representing the South African apartheid government as the airline was government-owned, and airline offices around the world had been vandalized. Experts searched for indicators of an explosion on the initial pieces of wreckage discovered, such as surface pitting, impact cavities and spatter cavities caused by white hot fragments from explosive devices that strike and melt metal alloys found in aircraft structures. Experts found none of this evidence. The investigators drew blood samples from bodies and found that the bodies had soot in their tracheae.

The South Africans mounted an underwater search, named Operation Resolve, to try to locate the wreckage. The pingers attached to the flight data recorders were not designed for deep ocean use; nevertheless, a two month long sonar search for the pingers was carried out before the effort was abandoned on 8 January 1988 when the pingers were known to have stopped transmitting. Steadfast Oceaneering, a specialist deep ocean recovery company in the USA, was contracted at great expense to find the site and recover the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. The search area is described as being comparable in size to that of the RMS Titanic, with the water at 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) being considerably deeper than any previously successful salvage operation. However against all odds, the wreckage was found within two days of the sonar search of the area commencing.

Three debris fields were found:, and . These locations are 1.5, 2.3 and 2.5 km apart, which suggested that the fuselage broke up before impact. On 6 January 1989, the cockpit voice recorder was salvaged successfully from a record depth of 4,900 metres (16,100 ft) by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Gemini, but the flight data recorder was never found.

Van Zyl took the voice recorder to the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC, to show his goodwill and to ensure neutral observers. Van Zyl believes that if he kept the CVR in South Africa he could have been accused of covering up the truth. At the NTSB, Van Zyl felt frustration that the degraded CVR, which had been in the deep ocean for fourteen months, did not initially yield any useful information. Around 28 minutes into the recording the CVR indicated that the fire alarm sounded. Fourteen seconds after the fire alarm, the circuit breakers began to pop. Investigators believe that around 80 circuit breakers failed. The CVR cable failed 81 seconds after the alarm. The recording revealed the extent of the fire.

Van Zyl discovered that the front-right pallet was the "seat" of the fire. The manifest said that pallet mostly comprised computers in polystyrene packaging. The investigators said that the localized fire likely came in contact with the packaging and produced gases that accumulated near the ceiling. They also said that gases ignited into a flash fire that affected the entire cargo hold. The cargo fire of Flight 295 did not burn lower than one meter above the cargo floor. The walls and ceiling of the cargo hold received severe fire damage. Van Zyl ended his investigation without discovering why the fire started.