Fire Above the Cockpit / Swissair Flight 111
Black Box Down
00:00
The Inflight Entertainment System on the Accident Airplane
The in flight entertainment system on this plane had been installed in the business class cabin one year before the incident. There was a reliance on sight and smell to detect and differentiate between odor or smoke from different potential sources. This reliance resulted in the misidentification of the initial odor and smoke as originating from an air conditioning source, which is something you mentioned earlier. In the absence of such a fire fighting plan, they concentrated on preparing the aircraft for the diversion landing. So again, they just didn't treat it as aggressively as they should have.
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