ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 8, 1996 TAG: 9612100013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: JENNIFER BOWLES ASSOCIATED PRESS
From the opening footage of a wreck at the bottom of the shark-infested Atlantic to a look at the swampy remains of the ValuJet crash, the Learning Channel's ``Survival in the Sky'' is not for white-knuckle fliers.
But don't despair. Viewers of the miniseries are reminded more than once that, statistically speaking, flying is still the safest way to travel - and that there are efforts underway to make it even safer.
All four of the miniseries' one-hour segments air Sunday beginning at 7 p.m. The individual segments will be rebroadcast Monday through Thursday at various times.
Aside from stark and deadly images from some of the world's worst air disasters, the miniseries also shows how investigators piece together bits of charred debris to determine what went wrong and how air safety can be improved through the tragedies.
There also are compelling tales from survivors' near-death experiences and how they deal with guilt.
``One of the reasons we did the miniseries was the fascination with airline disasters, but also from our point of view we tried to give people really good inside information and I think you get that,'' said Nancy Lavin, an executive producer for The Learning Channel.
``It also shows the National Transportation Safety Board's point of view on investigations and I think you feel as if you've got the inside track on what they do.''
One tragedy mentioned but not profiled is TWA Flight 800, the Paris-bound 747 that exploded minutes after taking off from Kennedy Airport on July 17, killing all 230 people on board.
``It happened a little bit too late for us to get into,'' Lavin said.
NTSB investigators told The Learning Channel they would videotape the next time the agency's ``Go Team'' was dispatched to the scene of a crash. It so happened the next one involved a ValuJet plane slamming into three feet of water in the alligator-infested Florida Everglades, killing all 110 aboard.
``We flew over the accident site and all it was was water,'' NTSB investigator in charge Greg Feith says in episode 4, ``Crash Detectives.''
``The airplane had submerged and we saw that it was going to be a hell of a job,'' he says. ``There was this silence that came over everybody because we were all probably thinking the same thing: `How are we going to do this?'''
With all the high-tech equipment employed to find the two black boxes, the flight data recorder was unearthed after someone simply stepped on it.
And it was Feith who discovered the most likely cause of the crash: 144 oxygen generators in the cargo hold - a breach of regulations concerning hazardous materials - one which ignited on takeoff, sparking a chain reaction that caused the fire that burned through the cabin floor.
Two-thirds of all accidents, though, are the result of pilot error, according to the miniseries.
Case in point is the opening segment of the Feb. 6 crash of a Boeing 757 that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean minutes after takeoff from the Dominican Republic. All 189 people, mostly German tourists, were killed.
``Investigators found that a cockpit instrument wasn't working,'' the narrator says. ``The captain knew it, but took off anyway. Everyone aboard paid the price.''
The submerged wreckage, the narrator says gravely, is ``a lasting monument to a pilot's mistake.''
Perhaps the most dramatic footage is in episode 3, ``A Wing and A Prayer,'' aptly titled for its profile of a 1989 emergency landing of a crippled United Airlines DC-10.
En route to Chicago from Denver, the plane lost its tail engine and was forced to land in Sioux City, Iowa, cartwheeling into a ball of flames across the runway and adjacent cornfield. In the end, 112 died. Amazingly though, 184 survived.
Off-duty pilot Denny Fitch was credited with helping land the plane.
``I was an ordinary pilot who had an extraordinary day,'' is the way he put it in a telephone interview from his suburban Chicago home.
It took Fitch 16 months and eight surgeries to recover from the injuries, but he remains a pilot today.
Survivor's guilt, he found, was ``incredibly bad,'' but was partially alleviated when he met with one of the survivors a year later.
``We started crying,'' Fitch recalled. ``She said, `I'm so glad to meet you, you're my hero.' I told her I was sorry I couldn't save her husband.
``God wanted him, let it go,'' she told him.
``That was a huge leap for me,'' Fitch said, ``for somebody on the airplane to tell me it was all right.''
In the end, it turned out that a fault in the engine fan led to the explosion, severing hydraulic lines and rendering the flight controls useless.
``As hard as we try we don't have perfection,'' Fitch said.
LENGTH: Medium: 89 linesby CNB