How A Simple Coincidence Killed 112 People | Dan Air 1903

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This is the story of dan air 1903. On the 3rd of july 1970 a dehavilland comet was on the way from manchester airport to barcelona airport. If you dont know the comet was the worlds first jet airliner. At the time the comet was the cutting edge of what was possible, she made everything that had come before her look outdated. But for the comet being on the cutting edge meant that sometimes she got cut, the comet infamously had design issues that took two planes down and that lead to a redesign of the entire structure of the plane. If you want to see a video about those accidents then let me know in the comments below! But the story of 1903 is often overlooked and almost forgotten. . on that fateful day flight 1903 was a charter flight with 112 people onboard. The jet took off at 4:08 pm and it climbed to its cruising altitude and the french controllers routed the plane through french airspace. It was a bit busy so flight 1903 had to take some detours and so as it approached spanish airspace it was a bit late. The french controllers decided to take them down from 37000 feet to 22000 feet. Once the jet had entered spanish airspace the pilots were ready to get down to 9000 feet. Throughout all of this the pilots of flight 1903 were in contact with controllers letting them know their estimated arrival times at each way point in their route. Once the pilots were in contact with barcelona approach they got an instruction to turn to the left to a heading of 140 degrees. The pilots acknowledged and like before they told ATC that they expected to be at the waypoint Sabadell at 6:07 pm. At 6:00 pm approach asked the pilots for confirmation that they indeed would be hitting sabadel at exactly 6:07 pm. But things had changed and the pilots now told them that they would be at sabadell at 6:05 pm two minutes earlier than expected. So the controller now updated his clearance, the left hand turn was canceled and the pilots now had to proceed directly to sabadell. As flight 1903 was getting down to 9000 feet, the controller enquire if they had a DME or distance measuring equipment onboard, the comet did not. The pilots were then cleared down to 6000 feet and they were instructed to make a left hand turn to 140 degrees now. Lets pause for a second why is th controller asking flight 1903 to turn to the left to 140 degrees. The airport was using ASR-5 radar and they were using the radar in primary mode meaning that they didnt have labels on their screen telling them who was who, instead they just had a bunch of blobs on their screen. To see who was who the controllers would just ask the pilot to make a turn and that way based on who was making the turn on radar they could tell who was who. This technique is still used today when someone’s transponder conks out. I dont know why they had to use this though the comet was equipped with a bendix tra 61 Al transponder . maybe the ASR-5 that the airport was using was not equipped to receive transponder signals or something, if you know why let me know in the comments below. . Right after this the controller wanted to know if flight 1903 was passing the waypoint sabadell, the pilot replied with “in about 30 seconds” just 15 seconds later they were at the waypoint sabadell and the controller said “radar contact, continue descent 2800 feet altimeter 1017 transition level 5-0”. After that the pilots
How did a modern airliner fly into a Spanish mountain as it was attempting to land at one of the busiest airports in spain. If there was a systemic issue at play here they needed to find it as soon as possible otherwise 1000s of lives would be at risk The first thing that they looked at were the navigational aids that the pilots were using at the time of the crash, if they were to malfunction then that would explain the accident so the investigators decided to look at the the Sabadell NDB, Barcelona VOR, Perpignan VOR and Gerona VOR to see if any of them were malfunctioning and they weren't something else brought flight 1903 down. Now if this were a modern accident the investigators would have a wealth of data from the data recorders on the plane but with this being the 1970s not a whole lot of data was recorded on the data recorders. Only a few parameters were recorded namely time, speed, altitude, pitch attitude, heading and
vertical acceleration were recorded and that too only for the last 8 minutes of flight. This is a far cry from what is possible today where 100s of parameters are recorded from the position of control surfaces to the placement of t