The New York Review of Books

Swissair 111 was an MD-11, a type of plane made by McDonnell-Douglas and derived from the DC-10. When the MD-11 first appeared in the 1990s, its “design philosophy” was widely celebrated: 1,500 software engineers (working in consultation with pilots from thirty-seven airlines) had created a plane that could fly smoothly while carrying out tremendous feats of self-repair. Even if the plane were to suffer “multiple electrical faults,” its computers would quickly “reconfigure” the electrical systems, instantly redistributing tasks among the plane’s three electrical systems. What was envisioned was not just that the plane would, under duress, buy time for its pilots and passengers; it would diagnose and eliminate even a severe problem, purring along as though nothing had happened.¹⁵ It may well be that Swissair 111’s problems began at 9:14 and that the plane’s systems, far from correcting themselves or buying time, simply surrendered to the ever-accelerating decline. But it is also possible that Swissair 111’s electrical problems began much earlier and that for a time the plane did carry out acts of self-repair.

What can be said with certainty is this: It is not the case that Swissair 111 flew uneventfully up the New England coast. In fact, it suffered a serious problem, and the problem first surfaced in the very zone where TWA 800 fell.

In the early stage of the flight, while Swissair 111 was still traveling east along the southern coast of Long Island, it lost radio contact with the eastern seaboard air controllers for thirteen minutes. TWA 800 had begun its fatal fall (and had lost the use of its radio, transponder, cockpit recorder, and data box recorder) at a clock time of 8:31 PM, less than a minute after a normal radio exchange with the Boston air controllers. Swissair 111 had its last normal exchange with the Boston air controllers at 8:33 PM, after which it lost radio contact with every air controller on the northeast coast for the next thirteen minutes.

Under normal conditions, exchanges between air controllers and pilots occur in pairs: a call initiated by the air controller will be answered by the pilot, who restates what the air controller has just said; or the call may instead be initiated by the pilot, who asks a question (such as permission to climb to an altitude that has less wind turbulence), which the air controller answers, after which the pilot repeats the information to verify that the words have been heard and understood. This pattern of call and recall is not a casual practice; it is a required procedure. While the sentences of pilots and air controllers normally occur in tight pairs, there can be many factors that for a few seconds interrupt the rhythm of the call-and-recall pattern, and necessitate a repetition of the call. But the failure to answer is never taken lightly and if it continues, it may become a matter of grave concern.

For a thirteen-minute period from 8:33 PM until 8:47 PM, no completed act of radio contact took place between Swissair 111 and the Boston area air controllers, whose radars are positioned at Sardi on Long Island, Hampton on Long Island, Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Augusta, Maine.¹⁶ As the plane progresses, it is passed along from one controller to the next. In Swissair 111’s last successful exchange at 8:33, the Hampton controller had told the pilot the radio frequency he should now use as he begins to enter the Cape Cod airspace and the pilot had accurately repeated back to him that new frequency:

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111. Boston¹⁷ one two eight point seven five.

Swissair 111: One two eight seven five. One Eleven, right.

Hampton Controller: Good bye.¹⁸

From this point forward, Swissair 111 should be in communication with the Cape sector. But the Cape controller cannot reach the plane; and so at 8:34 PM, he asks the Hampton controller to try to reach him on the old frequency: “Try him again, thanks.”

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111. Center.¹⁹

Swissair 111: [no response]²⁰

The radio²¹ a commercial pilot uses for communication with air traffic control has a double screen: the frequency used for one sector (in this case, Hampton) is kept in place on the first screen when the new frequency (in this case, Cape) is dialed in on the second screen. That way the pilot can quickly get back to the first frequency, should he discover that he has misheard or misdialed the new frequency. But Swissair 111 can now be reached on neither frequency (though it remains visible on radar²² ). Unable to reach Swissair 111, the Hampton controller goes on to normal exchanges with other planes in the area—he instructs a plane addressed as Echo Charley to descend and maintain a specified altitude (and Echo Charley repeats back the altitude); he instructs a Delta flight to proceed to its destination (and the Delta flight repeats back the instruction).

The clock moves forward to 8:36 and the Cape controller renews his efforts to reach Swissair 111:

Cape Controller: Swissair 111. Climb and maintain flight level three one zero [31,000].

Swissair 111: [no response]²³

Cape Controller: Swissair 111. Boston.

Swissair 111: [no response]²⁴

The Cape controller now contacts the associated²⁵ controller at Hampton to enlist his help once more:

Hampton Associated Controller: Hampton.

Cape Controller: Try Swissair 111 again, please.

Hampton Associated Controller: We tried him, he’s not here. We’ll try him again.

Cape Controller: O.K.²⁶

At 8:38, the four-step cycle begins one last time. Step one: the Cape controller tries and fails to reach the plane:

Cape Controller: Swissair 111. Cleared direct [to] Bradd.²⁷

Swissair 111: [no response]

Cape Controller: Swissair 111. Swissair 111. Hear Boston Center. Contact Boston one two eight point seven five, one two eight point seven five. If you hear Boston, ident.

Swissair 111: [no response]

Step two: the Cape associated controller contacts the Hampton associated controller to ask for help:

Hampton Associated Controller: Hampton.

Cape Associated Controller: Yes. This is Cape. Could you try Swissair 111 again off of Kennedy.²⁸

Hampton Associated Controller (speaking to Hampton controller): Try Swissair 111 again, Gary.

Cape Associated Controller: Thanks, Bob.²⁹

Step three: the Hampton air controller now twice tries to reach the plane, once by calling the name of the plane and announcing the radio frequency to be used for contact; then by calling the name and identifying who it is that is attempting to reach him:

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111. One twenty-eight seventy-five.

Swissair 111: [no response]

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111. Center.

Swissair 111: [no response]

Step four: having observed the failed exchange between the Hampton controller and the pilot, the Hampton associated controller now reports the unhappy result to the Cape associated controller:

Cape Associated Controller: Ya. Go ahead.

Hampton Associated Controller: Negative joy on that Swissair.³⁰

Cape Associated Controller: O.K., then. Thanks.³¹

Although Swissair 111 is still in the air, it has lost radio contact.

Swissair 111—off the air for a total of thirteen minutes—eventually does get back in contact with the air controller. The pilot’s voice first comes through not at the air controller station at Hampton, Cape Cod, or Nantucket but at Augusta, Maine. The Augusta air controller at first believes he is receiving a call from a different Swissair plane (flight 104), one that is flying in the Augusta region airspace; but he quickly corrects himself and swiftly relays to the Swissair 111 pilot the frequency on which he should contact Boston:

Swissair 111: Boston Center, Swissair 111 heavy.³²

Augusta Air Controller: Is that Swissair 104?

Swissair 111: Negative. This is Swissair 111…[Here Swissair 111 and Swissair 104 begin to speak simultaneously.]

Augusta Air Controller: Stand by, Swissair 104. Swissair 111, Boston Center.

Swissair 111: Boston Center, Swissair 111. Go ahead.

Augusta Air Controller: Swissair 111, contact Boston Center, one three three point four five. [frequency 133.45]

Swissair 111: Three three four five. Swissair 111.³³

The time is 8:47.³⁴ A moment later, at 8:48, Swissair 111 successfully contacts Boston’s Nantucket sector:

Swissair 111: Boston Center. Swissair 111 heavy.

Nantucket Air Controller: I’m sorry. Who was that last call?

Swissair 111: Boston Center, Swissair 111 heavy is calling 133.45.

Nantucket Air Controller: Swissair 111. Boston Center, roger. How do you read?

Swisssair 111: I read you loud and clear. Go ahead.

Nantucket Air Controller: Swissair 111. Climb to flight level two niner zero. Higher shortly.

Swissair 111: Level two niner zero. Swissair 111.³⁵

Other than the spirited inquiry about legibility—”How do you read? I read you loud and clear”—the air controller and pilot do not stop to welcome one another back or to discuss the previous radio blackout. They at once turn to the business at hand, the resumption of the scheduled climb to 33,000 feet that had been interrupted at 27,000 feet when the radio transmissions were suspended. The confident tone and the reassuringly professional procedure of information given (two niner zero) and repeated (two niner zero) continue over a sequence of exchanges about altitude and radio frequency until 8:58, when the Nantucket controller passes the plane on to the Moncton controller in Canada. Radio contact has been restored; a normal flight has been regained; the events of the previous quarter-hour now seem—and may actually only be—an uneventful anomaly, a passing fluke.

But before too many more minutes pass, a lethal set of events—as we now know—will begin to take place; and the possibility exists that the fatal sequence of events is linked to the earlier events, that the electrical and radio systems³⁶ of Swissair 111 were already under strain³⁷ and that although the relatively new plane was able for a time to withstand, or compensate for, whatever was affecting it, eventually it lost the capacity to do so.

Two questions are raised by the thirteen-minute blackout. First, is the blackout related to the final set of catastrophic events? Second, if the blackout is related to the final catastrophe, does that tell us anything about whether the problem originates from a source inside or outside the plane? It tells us that external, as well as internal, causes need to be scrutinized. The fact that Swissair 111 begins to have radio trouble at the time when, and place where, TWA 800 suffered its swift catastrophe increases our obligation to include external agents in the overall inquiry.

Almost as mysterious as the thirteen-minute silence of the pilots is the silence of the FAA and our country’s Safety Board after the accident. What can account for their not having reported to the public the radio troubles suffered by Swissair 111 as it progressed along the southern shore of Long Island (where its sister plane had fallen in an earlier summer) and up the sea lanes running beside New England? Why was it important to confine the accident to Canadian airspace and Canadian waters in the public imagination?³⁸

Common sense presses us to consider the possibility that the thirteen-minute radio blackout may bear on what by 9:14 had become a swiftly accelerating electrical catastrophe. So, too, does certain supplementary information. First, it is highly unlikely to be the case that the pilot simply dialed the wrong frequency when his plane was handed off from the Hampton to the Cape sector: as noted earlier, the pilot reads back the correct Cape frequency when the Hampton controller gives it to him; further, pilots have multiple radio screens and leave one tuned on the old frequency.