
What Happened to Eastern Airlines Flight 980? - chucksmash
http://www.outsideonline.com/2126426/what-happened-eastern-airlines-flight-980
======
danso
The two guys featured did an AMA this morning:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/58aaa6/back_in_june_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/58aaa6/back_in_june_two_guys_from_boston_found_a_missing/)

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libeclipse
There's a petition to get that tape analysed:
[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/request-
bolivian-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/request-bolivian-
government-allow-ntsb-analyse-crash-recorders-eastern-airlines-flight-980)

~~~
spaceflunky
Background for the tl;dr folks:

>"By taking the flight recorders and tape back to the U.S., they discovered,
they had violated Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation,
a document that lays out the rules for international air travel. It says that
wherever a plane crashes, that country is in charge of the investigation.
Moving evidence to a different nation could be seen as undermining that
authority."

This is totally infuriating. Bureaucracy, failed diplomacy, and "national
pride" are standing in the way of a safety investigation.

Instead of asking for the US and Bolivia act like reasonable adults, perhaps
we can appeal to ICAO to have ICAO investigate or ask ICAO to find some way to
absolve the US of any wrongdoing for investigating, given that the Bolivian
government has failed to properly investigate. I'm no expert in international
treaties, but there has to be some provision in the law that would not
penalize a country for investigating when the other country was willfully
negligent and uncooperative.

Fang Liu is secretariat general of ICAO. Perhaps lobbying her for help might
produce better results.

[http://www.icao.int/](http://www.icao.int/)
[http://www.icao.int/secretariat/SecretaryGeneral/Pages/defau...](http://www.icao.int/secretariat/SecretaryGeneral/Pages/default.aspx)

~~~
goodcanadian
I would suggest that the issue is not international relations, but that these
two do not have any official capacity. It is hard enough to get an official
response to an official enquiry.

Imagine you are the secretary at the Bolivian Embassy. Your job is to answer
phones and direct queries about visa applications. You get a call from random
people saying they have the flight recorder from a plane crash. You know
nothing about the plane crash (it happened ~35 years ago) let alone the rules
governing investigations. Best case scenario, you take the caller's details
and forward it to your supervisor who is equally ignorant and has his real
work to do . . . the call is forgotten, no response comes.

This sort of scenario will play out in all government departments in all
countries. Until the right person on one side or the other gets interested,
nothing will happen. Unfortunately, the right people tend to be very busy and
have probably not even heard about this development. Even if/when they do, it
is a bit of a toss up how much they'll care. This is a really old plane crash,
and the investigation has been closed.

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jxramos
Is there a nondestructive way to copy magnetic tape over to a duplicate? Let's
get that tape read! What a mystery.

~~~
d-sc
I feel like the collective brainpower of hacker news could reverse engineer
the format pretty easily.

~~~
n1000
Yeah. I can't believe they didn't find some nerds yet that are eager to
decrypt the recorders. I have seen trickier reverse engineering on Hackaday...

~~~
mcguire
Assuming that they have the CVR tape, that would preclude any official
investigation and piss off anyone who might be inclined to help if they
managed to scramble through official channels.

Further, the CVR tape might not be spectacularly useful for a controlled
flight into terrain accident in instrument conditions. There is a fair chance
that the first problem the cockpit crew encountered was the impact.

On the other hand, it might show navigation equipment failures-say those VOR
transmitters-and traffic control communication problems.

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todd8
Fascinating article. Here's the google map link:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/El+Alto+International+Airp...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/El+Alto+International+Airport+\(LPB\)/@-16.6387704,-67.8258322,11686m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x915edfad500264a3:0xd57a8a6cf6dc4526!8m2!3d-16.5108547!4d-68.1858061)

~~~
jonah
Based on some photos in their blog, I believe the debris field they visited is
here:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/16%C2%B040'08.5%22S+67%C2%...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/16%C2%B040'08.5%22S+67%C2%B046'28.1%22W/@-16.6691796,-67.7747864,414m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-16.6690333!4d-67.7744833)

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webtechgal
Speaking for myself, I found the article to be a very interesting; almost
compelling read. (Didn't quite time it, but I think it took me about 25 - 30
minutes.)

I also recall: didn't Nat Geo do an episode on this on their Air Crash
Investigations series?

~~~
webtechgal
Edit: A bit later, I was all the more convinced about the Nat Geo episode, so
I dug up the series url[1] and looked through all the episodes of all the
seasons but couldn't find it. But interestingly, the whole season 6 is somehow
missing from the drop down!!! Any thoughts?

[1] [http://www.natgeotv.com/uk/shows/natgeo/air-crash-
investigat...](http://www.natgeotv.com/uk/shows/natgeo/air-crash-
investigation)

~~~
kahirsch
Maybe you're thinking of this crash:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_965](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_965)

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myth_drannon
There is a joke about La Paz,Bolivia's airport. Because it's so high up in the
mountains the airplanes don't descend but ascend to land.

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mcguire
The Omega navigation system:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_%28navigation_system%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_%28navigation_system%29)

This paragraph seriously misrepresents VOR:

" _Meanwhile, the aircraft’s other navigation system, called VOR for very high
frequency omnidirectional range, relied on localized radio transmitters that
told pilots only where the beacons were, not where the plane was._ "

I suppose that's the hazard of having an outdoor writer describing aircraft
systems. VOR plus air traffic control and standard instrument landing
procedures would be perfectly adequate for that approach.

On the other hand, VOR maintenance is a thing, made harder by inaccessible
terrain and budgets.

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colejohnson66
Is there any reason why, over the course of 30 years, no one took a helicopter
suited for that environment up there? The article mentions them trying, but
bad weather preventing them from reaching the wreck. Why didn't anyone attempt
again when the weather was better?

~~~
mannykannot
The article makes it somewhat clear that the altitude was too high for most
helicopters to land and take off or hover, and that the Bolivian authorities
would not allow a Peruvian helicopter that could handle the altitude
participate in the search, allegedly out of pride.

Once a year or two had passed, the interest waned. An airplane with an
inexperienced crew flying into a mountain while trying to land in a
thunderstorm with only primitive and inaccurate navaids looks like an
unfortunate accident, then and now.

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mariuolo
Aside from the frosty international relationship, couldn't it be that what's
in that tape would point the finger against Bolivian flight controllers and
the latter doesn't want it to come to light because of potential liabilities?

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cloudjacker
wow tl;dr? did they find the plane or not? whats the big reveal? what did they
blow open?

~~~
mannykannot
Hint: the title is phrased as a question.

~~~
hexane360
Nothing happened to Eastern Airlines Flight 980.

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ryan606
Here's the reason there have been no bodies found. They made a movie out of
it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_\(film\))

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losteverything
Why did they do this? How do they pay rent and earn a living?

This is an unfair comment because I never met them - but I look at these
expensive high-profile wanna-be high fame adventures and think these are
simply people that have a lot of money and time and want to do something
really cool. They even have a spreadsheet planning their next cool adventure.

IMO- imagine if their time was spent helping others instead of such high level
of self gratification.

Parents who provide wealth need to provide and teach generosity and prioritize
human giving too.

~~~
URSpider94
What an odd response. As you yourself say, "this is an unfair comment."

This is a case where dozens of human lives were snuffed out in an instant, and
basically nobody ever figured out what happened. The story calls out clearly
that there are friends and family still living who have lasting emotional
scars. These guys donated their own time and money to investigate this
incident, because they took a personal interest in learning more. Beyond that,
the expedition itself was nothing to write home about -- it's not a summit of
Everest, or even Kilmanjaro. Sure, I'm sure they got some enjoyment out of
what they did, but is that wrong?

Finally, I don't see any sign that these guys are seeking your approval or
praise for what they did, so I have a hard time understanding why you are so
offended.

