Ask the Pilot

What caused the Kenya Airlines 737 to nose-dive just after takeoff, killing all aboard? We still don't know -- and neither does the press.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Flying, Africa, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

May 18, 2007 | In the early morning hours of Saturday, May 5, a Kenya Airways 737 bound for Nairobi crashed after takeoff from Douala, Cameroon, killing all 114 passengers and crew.

The wreckage of Flight 507 wasn't discovered until late the following day, found by a local hunter in a mangrove forest three and half miles from the airport. There were no survivors, and the wreckage pattern, or lack thereof, revealed a violent, presumably out-of-control impact. The plane had gone nose-first into the swamp, with only a small bit of wreckage visible at the surface. There was little else to go on, though witnesses spoke of the flight having departed toward an area of heavy rain and thunderstorms.

Reading the accounts from 6,000 miles away, it struck me that almost anything was possible: With those storms in mind, perhaps intense turbulence had caused some sort of structural damage. Perhaps torrential rain, or hail, had something to do with it. Or maybe the weather wasn't a factor at all. Who could say?

So imagine my surprise when, barely 24 hours after the accident, I came across an Associated Press wire story that included the following quote from an airline pilot: "Whatever happened must have happened very fast, which is usually a sign of catastrophic structural failure."

The line was attributed to "a U.S. based pilot and aviation expert." Maybe, but any of his colleagues who saw the story were spitting out their coffee, rightfully wondering what sort of idiot would say a thing like that, brazenly speculating on the cause of a mysterious crash before the first bodies had been pulled from the swamp. Catastrophic structural failure? Based on what? How the hell would he know?

He wouldn't. And that idiot, unfortunately, turns out to be yours truly.

If you're familiar with my columns, you know that I routinely take the AP to task for its notoriously shoddy, distortion-laden aviation coverage, particularly when crashes are involved. Why do they never come to me for quotes?

Well, this time they did. And judging from the tone and scope of the interview, there was scant reason to expect a hatchet job. The reporter I spoke with, calling from the AP's desk in Belgium, was surprisingly knowledgeable about commercial aviation and seemed duly interested in getting the facts right. We spoke for the better part of 20 minutes, discussing everything from wind shear to pilot training.

So how do 20 minutes of useful conversation turn into 16 badly misplaced words? I don't think the problem is one of laziness so much as the constraints of time and space faced by reporters. Working quickly, with deadlines only hours or even minutes away, they don't have the room for extended testimonials, and need to make snap decisions about which portions of text are the most valuable. Some do it better than others, but without a strong background in the subject matter they're covering, accurately splicing in quotes can be dangerous business.

To wit, I did indeed utter the "catastrophic structural failure" line, verbatim. Just not in relation to the disaster in Cameroon. As I remember it, the sentence had nothing to do with my thoughts on the Cameroon crash at all. During the interview, we'd gotten to talking about the crash of another 737 in Indonesia back in January -- one in which the aircraft inexplicably plunged into the sea from 33,000 feet. "Whatever happened must have happened very fast, which is usually a sign of catastrophic structural failure." I'm reasonably comfortable with that, incomplete though it is. The rest of what I said, speculating where that structural failure may have come from, was snipped away. Was it a bomb? A control problem?

Nor were you privy to the very first thing I told the reporter, reminding him that one of the worst things we can do so shortly after an accident -- any accident, no matter how revealing the circumstances might appear -- is start mouthing off about probable cause. Investigators never do that, and neither should I. Such disclaimers don't make for colorful copy, however, and tend to be ignored.

Moreover, the reporter in Belgium wasn't even the author of the finished story. I never spoke to Emmanuel Tumanjong, whose byline graces the article in which my words appear. Apparently the quotes were passed along, and in this case were plugged haphazardly into a markedly different conversation. I also noticed that different versions of Tumanjong's article appeared in different publications. Some of them, including a wire story that ran here at Salon, included a fuller account of what I'd said. Others, like the one featured in USA Today, made me sound foolish. Journalists can write what they want; editors have the final say.

In short, the onus is on the interviewee as much as the reporter. The trick is to speak as concisely as possible. There will not be space for elaborate technical explanations. Your articulate dissertation on the nuances of wind shear will be sifted down to a sensationalist passage or two. At the same time, try to slip in as many qualifiers -- "may have been," "probably wasn't," etc. -- as you can. Speculate cautiously, and keep all answers tightly glued to the specific questions asked. If you're asked about Cameroon, don't start talking about Indonesia as a point of comparison.

So what did happen in Cameroon? Well, I'll remind you that one of the worst things we can do so shortly after an accident -- any accident, no matter how revealing the circumstances might appear -- is start mouthing off about probable cause. If solving crashes were that simple, it wouldn't take months, sometimes years, for the final reports to come out. Rarely are things as clear-cut as the headline writers wish they were. In the majority of cases there is no single, definitive cause. Instead, we find a chain of errors and failures, innocuous on their own but fatal in combination.

Next page: Few things are less friendly to airplanes than thunderstorms -- those great caldrons of energy and wickedness