Philippine Airlines Flight 434

Philippine Airlines Flight 434
Aftermath of the bombing, photographed by the United States Diplomatic Security Service.
Date December 11, 1994
Summary Terrorist bomb detonation leading to loss of flight controls
Site Minami Daito Island, Okinawa, Japan
25°50′45″N 131°14′30″E / 25.84583°N 131.24167°E / 25.84583; 131.24167Coordinates: 25°50′45″N 131°14′30″E / 25.84583°N 131.24167°E / 25.84583; 131.24167
Aircraft
Aircraft type Boeing 747-283B
Operator Philippine Airlines
Registration EI-BWF
Flight origin Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Pasay, Philippines
Stopover Mactan–Cebu International Airport, Cebu, Philippines
Destination Narita International Airport, Tokyo, Japan
Passengers 273
Crew 20
Fatalities 1
Injuries 10
Survivors 292

Philippine Airlines Flight 434 (PAL434, PR434) was a flight on December 11, 1994 from Cebu to Tokyo on a Boeing 747-283B that was seriously damaged by a bomb, killing one passenger and damaging vital control systems. The bombing was a part of the unsuccessful Bojinka terrorist attacks. The Boeing 747 (tail number EI-BWF) was flying the second leg of a route from Ninoy Aquino International Airport (formerly Manila International Airport), Pasay City in the Philippines, to Narita International Airport, in Tokyo, Japan, with a stop at Mactan–Cebu International Airport, Cebu, in the Philippines. After the bomb detonated, 57-year-old veteran pilot Captain Eduardo "Ed" Reyes was able to land the aircraft, saving it and the remaining passengers and crew.[1]

Authorities later discovered that Ramzi Yousef, a passenger on the aircraft's prior flight leg, had placed the explosive.[2][3] Yousef boarded the flight under the fake Italian name "Armaldo Forlani",[4] an incorrect spelling of the name of the Italian legislator[5] Arnaldo Forlani. Yousef was later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[3]

Aircraft

The aircraft operating Flight 434 was a 15-year-old Boeing 747-283B, registration EI-BWF, serial number 21575. It made its first flight on February 17, 1979, and was delivered to Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) on March 2, 1979 as SE-DFZ, operating the plane as "Knut Viking". The plane was then delivered to Philippine Airlines on April 1, 1992, after flying with Nigeria Airways, Lionair (Luxembourg), and Aerolineas Argentinas, from June 3, 1983, to March 30, 1992.

Bombing

Setting the bomb

EI-BWF, the aircraft involved, in December 1988

Yousef boarded the aircraft for the Manila to Cebu leg of the flight. The plane departed from Manila at 5:35 a.m. After the plane was airborne, he went into the lavatory with his toiletry bag in hand and took off his shoes to get out the batteries, wiring, and spark source hidden in the heel (below a level where metal detectors in use at the time could detect anything). Yousef removed a modified Casio digital watch from his wrist to be used as a timer, unpacked the remaining materials from his toiletry bag, and assembled his bomb. He set the timer for four hours later, which was approximately the time at which the plane would be far out over the ocean en route to Tokyo, put the entire bomb back into the bag, and returned to his assigned seat.

After asking a flight attendant for permission to move to seat 26K, saying he could get a better view from that seat, Yousef moved there and tucked the assembled bomb into the life vest pocket underneath. He exited the aircraft in Cebu.[6] Philippine domestic Flight Attendant Maria De La Cruz noticed that Yousef had switched seats during the course of the Manila to Cebu flight and got off the plane in Cebu with the domestic cabin crew, but did not pass the information along to the international flight crew that boarded at Cebu for the trip to Tokyo. 25 other passengers also got off the plane at Cebu, where 256 more passengers and a new cabin crew consisting of Flight Purser Isidro Mangahas, Jr., Flight Stewards Fernando Bayot, Agustin Azurin, Ronnie Macapagal, E. Reyes, R. Santiago, Flight Attendants M. Alvar, Alpha Nicolasin, Cynthia Tengonciang, Andre Palma, Socorro Mendoza, E. Co, L. Garcia, N. dela Cruz, Adora Altarejos, L. Abella and Japanese interpreter K. Okada, boarded the plane for the final leg of the flight to Tokyo.[4]

Explosion

Flight 434 landed in Cebu at 6:50 a.m., after a flight time of 1 hour 15 minutes. At 8:38 a.m., after a 38-minute delay, due to airport congestion, the plane took off with a total of 273 passengers on board, among them, 24-year-old Haruki Ikegami (池上春樹, Ikegami Haruki), a Japanese industrial sewing machine maker returning from a business trip to Cebu, occupying seat 26K.[4] At 11:43 a.m., 4 hours after Yousef planted his bomb, the device exploded underneath Ikegami, killing him instantly and injuring an additional ten passengers in the adjacent seats in front of and behind seat 26K.[4] The blast blew off a two-square-foot (0.2 m²) portion of the cabin floor, and the cabin's rapid expansion from the explosion severed a number of control cables in the ceiling that controlled the plane's right aileron, as well as cables that connected to the steering controls of both the Captain and First Officer.[4]

The severity of the disaster was reduced by several mitigating factors. One was that the seat layout of this particular 747 had a modified seating arrangement instead of the standard arrangement, making seat 26K two rows forward of the center fuel tank; the hole in the floor beneath the seat punched through to the cargo hold instead of the fuel tank, sparing the plane from exploding.[4] The bomb's orientation, positioned front-to-back and upward angled from horizontal, caused the blast to expand vertically and lengthwise, meaning that the plane's outer structure was spared, as Ikegami's body absorbed most of the blast force;[4] the lower half of his body fell into the cargo hold. Additionally, the 38-minute delay in takeoff from Cebu meant the plane was not as far out to sea as anticipated, which contributed to the captain's available options for an emergency landing.[4]

Masaharu Mochizuki, a passenger on the flight, recalled that passengers, both injured and uninjured, initially tried to move away from the blast site, but cabin crew told passengers to remain in place until an assessment of the situation could be made.[4] Assistant purser and lead economy class flight attendant, Fernando Bayot, moved an injured passenger named Yukihiko Osui away from the bomb site. Bayot then saw Ikegami and tried to pull him out of the hole, but soon realized that most of Ikegami's body below the waist was either damaged or missing entirely. In order to prevent additional panic, Bayot called another flight attendant over to give the appearance that they were tending to Ikegami's needs with a blanket and oxygen mask, then reported the extent of the passenger injuries to the cockpit.[4] Of the ten passengers who were injured, one needed urgent medical care.[4]

The flight deck and cabin crew members[7] were later commended by President Fidel Ramos for their "professional handling of a potentially disastrous situation".

Landing

Immediately after the explosion, the aircraft banked hard to the right, but the autopilot quickly corrected the bank.[4] After the blast, Captain Reyes asked Systems Engineer Dexter Comendador to survey the blast site to check for damage. Reyes placed the Mayday call, requesting landing at Naha Airport, Okinawa Island, Okinawa Prefecture.[4] The Japanese air traffic controller experienced difficulty in trying to understand Reyes' request, so an American air traffic controller from a United States military base on Okinawa took over and processed Reyes' landing.[4] The American air traffic controller directed a USAF Lear jet towards PAL 434 to visually check for damage of the outer fuselage and to verify that the landing gear was in place. The autopilot had stopped responding to Reyes' commands and the aircraft flew past Okinawa.[4]

Reyes said in an interview for the Canadian television series Mayday that when he disengaged the autopilot he feared that the aircraft would bank right again and the crew would lose control of the aircraft; however, because of the pressing need to land quickly to attend to the injured and inspect the plane for additional damage, Reyes instructed Herrera to take hold of his own controls and then Reyes deactivated the autopilot.[4] The aircraft did not bank after the disengagement of the autopilot, but neither would it respond to steering inputs from either controller due to the control cable damage caused by the bomb.[4] The crew struggled to use the ailerons, which could allow the aircraft to roll but were still unable to change the plane's direction. Finally the flight crew, including First Officer Jaime Herrera and Comendador, disengaged the auto-throttles and resorted to steering via throttle control, reminiscent of United Airlines Flight 232.[4]

By using the throttles to steer the plane, reducing air speed to both control the radius of turns and to allow the plane to descend, and dumping fuel to lessen the strain on the landing gear,[4] the Captain landed the damaged 747 at Naha Airport at 12:45 p.m., one hour after the bomb exploded.[5] The aircraft's other 272 passengers and 20 crew members survived.[4]

The bomb

United States prosecutors said the device was a "Mark II" "microbomb" constructed using Casio digital watches as described in Phase I of the Bojinka plot, for which this was a test.[8] On Flight 434, Yousef used one tenth of the explosive power he planned to use on eleven U.S. airliners in January 1995. The bomb was, or at least all of its components were, designed to slip through airport security checks undetected. The explosive used was liquid nitroglycerin, which was disguised as a bottle of contact lens fluid.[8] Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate, sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide, and liquid acetone. The wires he used were hidden in the heel of his shoe, below the detectable range of the metal detectors used by airports of the day.

Aftermath

Manila police were able to track the batteries used in the bomb and many of its contents from Okinawa back to Manila. Police uncovered Yousef's plan on the night of January 6 and the early morning of January 7, 1995, and Yousef was arrested a month later in Pakistan.[4]

The aircraft, at the time having the tail number EI-BWF, was later converted to a cargo configuration as Boeing 747-283B(SF). It subsequently changed hands several times, always to air cargo companies, and was finally placed in storage in 2007 at Châteauroux-Centre "Marcel Dassault" Airport.[9]

The crew moved on to separate ways following the incident. Reyes would move to Cebu Pacific and served there until his retirement in 2002. He later died in February 2007 from prostate cancer. Comendador also moved to Cebu Pacific and served as a management pilot in that company then moved to AirAsia Philippines where he served as COO and later appointed as CEO in July 2016.[10]

Philippine Airlines still uses the flight number 434, but it currently operates as a Cebu-Narita sector which utilizes an Airbus A321 or A330. The airline retired its last 747 aircraft in September 2014. PAL still operates a Manila-Tokyo (Narita and Haneda) sector separately.

The events of Flight 434 were featured in "Bomb on Board", a Season 3 (2005) episode of the Canadian TV series Mayday[4] (called Air Emergency and Air Disasters in the U.S. and Air Crash Investigation in the UK and elsewhere around the world). Filipino Canadian actor Von Flores portrayed Captain Reyes while Canadian actor and comedian Sam Kalilieh played Ramzi Yousef.

See also

References

  1. ↑ GovTrack: Senate Record: Tribute To Captain Eduardo Reyes
  2. ↑ State's Security Bureau Takes on Expanded Role, Washington Post, September 27, 2004.
  3. 1 2 CNN.com, January 8, 1998. 'Proud terrorist' gets life for Trade Center Bombing.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 "Bomb on Board". Mayday. Season 3. Episode 5. 2005. Discovery Channel Canada / National Geographic Channel.
  5. 1 2 Yousef bombs Philippines Airlines Flight 434, GlobalSecurity.Org report on incident
  6. ↑ Simon Reeve (2002). The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism. UPNE. p. 79. ISBN 978-1-55553-509-4.
  7. ↑ [Manila Bulletin], December 18, 1994
  8. 1 2 Bonner, Raymond; Weiser, Benjamin (August 11, 2006). "Echoes of Early Design to Use Chemicals to Blow Up Airlines". The New York Times Company. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
  9. ↑ Boeing 747 – MSN 21575, airfleets.net
  10. ↑ "PHL AirAsia names Comendador as interim CEO". GMA News Online. 9 July 2016. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
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