Special Hearings — Helderberg Flight Special Hearing — 1998-06-01

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: The story starts in November 1988, when an aircraft, the Helderberg, belonging to the South African Airways, took off from Chan Kai Shek airport in Taipei, ostensibly bound for Mauritius, with a cargo of passengers and goods.
 The aircraft was a 747 manufactured by Boeing, and it was in a configuration known as the kombi design.   What this means is that somewhere on the main deck of the aircraft, the deck normally inhabited by passengers, a partition was placed and cargo was carried on that main deck, as opposed to being carried in the hold.   The consequences of carrying the cargo on the main deck were unfortunate and have led, both prior to the accident and subsequent to the accident, in a revision of the policy of carrying cargo and passengers on the main deck, for reasons that will become apparent as my narrative unfolds.
 The aircraft took off an hour or more late from Taipei, for reasons that have never been fully satisfactorily canvassed or understood.   
 The take-off was uneventful, we are led to believe, and, as is normal with aircraft flights, the aircraft would have entered into a climbing phase of its journey and there-after it would have levelled out in normal cruise and it would have passed through various flight information zones on its way to the next touchdown, which would have been Plaisance Airport in Mauritius.
 Now I would like to divert from the main course to explain to you how the air communications aboard South African aircraft work.   There are the normal radio communications between aircraft and between stations which are within easy radio distance, a few hundred to a few thousand kilometres, but carried aboard every aircraft in the South African overseas fleet is a means of communicating between the pilot and the cockpit crew and a station at Johannesburg International Airport as it was then known, Jan Smuts Airport, called ZUR, now if you could write down the initial ZUR, it is the call sign of that radio station at Johannesburg Airport.   That radio station is manned 24 hours a day with a number of shifts and was equipped with a tape recorder which was of unique design.   
 Each tape recording occupied approximately 24 to 26 hours, and as the tape recording neared the end of its session, the next tape would automatically come into play and there would be a period, a short period, of overlap between the two tapes, so that nothing was lost.   The coming into play of the second tape would be heralded by a warning signal and the staff would be able to change the previous tape over so that it was always in readiness should there be something untoward that happened.
 As each tape was completed, and these are not cassette tapes, these are large tapes which cannot be played on just any old tape recorder, but they are large tapes which come in a box and on the box is an information card detailing the nature of the material on that tape.   As each tape is finished and recorded, it is taken and stored in a locked cabinet and there are somewhere between 30 and 33 or 34 of these tapes, so that at any one time there is 30 days of taped conversations with the air crew of the South African Airways overseas fleet on record.

CHAIRPERSON: So does this relate only to overseas trips?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: I thin it relates only to overseas tapes,  because there are other means of communication internally where you would not have to use ZUR, but there is no reason why an aircraft fitted with the necessary radio equipment on an internal flight could not use the ZUR tape, but it is primarily to keep track of the overseas fleet.
 Now let me examine, also as part of the diversion, the functions of ZUR.   There is no doubt that to run an operation such as this is expensive, both in terms of money and in terms of personnel, and there is no doubt that the degree of security and the extent to which the tapes are carefully guarded, renders it an important operation, and particularly so should anything untoward happen aboard any aircraft.   
 There are set operating principles and guidelines which are contained in the operators manual and which every operator is expected to familiarise himself with prior to working at ZUR, and those standing instructions involve inter alia the frequencies at which calls are expected to be made and the procedure should calls not be made on time to be followed by the staff at ZUR.
 I will deal in detail later on in my presentation with the attitude of South African Airways and of various pilots and other staff members to the radio station at ZUR, but suffice it to say this is an important station.   The care in its setting up and the time and financial trouble to maintain it bespeak of an important function, and that function is not difficult to find.
 If it were so that an aircraft should experience trouble or should experience some life-threatening emergency, it is important that the home base should know about these emergencies.   It's of little use to the passengers and crew aboard an aircraft which has had some accident to know that the first steps towards the resolution of the accident will be taken only once the plane becomes late, either at its next way-point or late in arriving at its home town.   
 There is no doubt that ZUR's function is considerably more than that which has been alluded to and suggested and told to me by the radio staff and by the staff of SAA, who have consistently, in the period of time that I've investigated this case, tried to suggest to me that Radio ZUR fulfilled no other function than for the pilot to notify the home base to have a wheelchair ready or at there was no water aboard the aircraft or that they'd run out of face towels or the like.   
 I will revert to the Radio ZUR tape in due course, but let us get back to the main thrust of my presentation to you.

MS TERREBLANCHE: Just a quick question, you mention frequency, are you talking about radio frequency... (intervention).

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: No.

MS TERREBLANCHE: ...or the number of times... (intervention).

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: I'm talking about the number of times.   The frequencies which ZUR operated were well-known and were operated on by these people and they were frequencies which were assigned to the radio station and to the aircraft concerned.
 Incidentally, there was also a facility aboard the aircraft called sel-call, which is short for selective call, which is rather like a radio paging system whereby the parties at Johannesburg Airport could, by dialling in a code, contact a particular aircraft and draw its attention to the fact that they wished to make a communication with it.   Sel-call, at the Johannesburg Airport at the time, was not functioning, but there were ways of by-passing this, either by means of making use of another airline's selective call apparatus, or by making other efforts to raise the aircraft, all of which procedures were enshrined in the operators manual.

MS TERREBLANCHE: Dr Klatzow, just one clarification, I have been told by some people I've interviewed that there is no international law obligation for SAA to have had such a radio tower.   Can you (inaudible)?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Yes, there is no radio, there is no obligation, but the fact is that SAA had such a radio, and it was clearly important in function, important enough, to have it manned 24 hours a day with a 24 hour tape recording, which is not the sort of thing that you would use for purely administrative functions aboard the aircraft, such as having a wheelchair ready for disabled passengers on landing.
 Now, the Helderberg took off, we know, from Taipei, and we know that it proceeded, according to the Margo Inquiry, on its merry way until shortly before the top of descent into Mauritius... (intervention).

CHAIRPERSON: How long ordinarily would that journey have taken?