Extended Legal Wrangling Comes To End

After a lengthy legal battle that spanned several years and wound up in Canada's Supreme Court, Canadians will be able to hear the last moments of one of that country's worst aviation disasters.

Air traffic control tapes from Swissair Flight 111 have been kept under wraps by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada since the flight went down on September 2, 1998. The have been released to The Canadian Press.

Of particular interest are the final minutes, starting when the plane's pilots report smoke in the cockpit... and ending with the last transmission as the aircraft dove at high speed into St. Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia, near Halifax, according to The Calgary Sun.

"Swissair one eleven heavy is declaring emergency," says one of the pilots in a heavy Swiss-German accent, as the other pilot says, almost simultaneously in the confusion: "We are declaring emergency now."

In the recording, the voices of the Swiss pilots, Urs Zimmermann and Stephan Loew, become slightly muffled when they put on their oxygen masks. Official transcripts don't indicate which pilot is speaking when.

Ten minutes later, smoke fills the cockpit and an electrical failure disables all controls, including the lights.

"Eleven heavy we starting to dump (fuel) now we have to land immediate," said a pilot with a slight urgency in his voice. "And we are declaring emergency now Swissair one eleven."

The McDonnell-Douglas MD-11 trijet, with 229 people aboard, flew for six more minutes before going down into the dark, choppy sea off Peggy's Cove at 10:31 pm Atlantic time.

The plane hit the water at about 340 mph. All on board died instantly, and the fuselage shattered into several million pieces. The force from the impact caused seismographic needles to flutter in Halifax and Moncton.

Miles Gerety lost his brother Pierce in the crash, and predicted hearing the tapes will be painful for families of the lost.

"These things bring an event back to people, the family members, who've put a lot of time and distance between the crash ... and their losses," he said.

The safety board spent four years and $57 million on its investigation, before concluding the cause of the accident was "flammable insulation that allowed a small electrical arc fire to spread uncontrolled, melting the cockpit ceiling, shorting out all power and leaving the air crew helpless."

The safety board released transcripts of the recordings within days of the tragedy, but refused to release the tapes themselves, saying it contained personal information.

Canada's information commissioner at that time, John Reid, initially supported the refusal. But after the board's refusal to release ATC recordings for four other air disasters, Reid reversed his position and went to court.

Reid lost his initial bid to get the tapes released in 2005, but won on appeal in 2006 when three justices dismissed the claim that ATC audio recordings contained personal information.

FMI: www.tsb.gc.ca, Final Accident Report On Swissair 111