The companion piece “The cockpit” gives the Windsor flight from the flight deck. This one gives it from behind the cockpit door, as the Safety Board’s report of February 1973 reconstructed it from the flight attendants and the passengers, and then from under the floor, where the Board’s inspectors listed what the collapse had done to every cable that ran through it. Everything quoted is from the report.
The decompression
The decompression “manifested itself to the passengers and flight attendants as a muffled explosive sound and a white gray fog which formed throughout the cabin. The door to the cockpit and the door of the galley lift opened, and several ceiling panels in the center of the cabin fell down. A floor hatch in the aisle next to seat 4H flew up and struck a passenger in the face.” The chief flight attendant, standing in the forward service area, was thrown from it. “The two flight attendants seated at the two aft exits were thrown to the floor, which had partially collapsed into the baggage compartment below. The circular standup bar on this collapsed floor section was torn loose from the floor.” No passengers were seated in the aft lounge; the two attendants’ injuries did not stop them working.
Five of the eight attendants said their first thought was oxygen. The masks were set to drop at 14,000 feet, and the aircraft was below that, so they did not. One attendant at the second left door got a walk-around bottle and called the cockpit on the intercom to say that the damage was at the back of the aircraft. The chief flight attendant and the attendant at the first right door went forward to the cockpit for instructions at various times.
The preparation
On the captain’s orders the chief flight attendant told the others to prepare for an emergency landing, got an estimate of eight to ten minutes, and briefed the passengers over the public address system with the emergency checklist in her hand. The others showed the brace position, pointed out the exits, explained the slides, and collected shoes and loose belongings. “A number of passengers reported that the emergency instruction card was very useful in determining their nearest exit location.” The passengers beside the collapsed floor were moved, and so were several near the fallen panel; the two attendants assigned to the rear exits were moved to the jumpseats forward. One attendant briefed a male passenger near her door in how to open it, “just in case she would not be able to operate it after landing.” Another, “because she noticed a lack of comprehension on the part of these persons when emergency instructions were given,” took two foreign passengers through the brace position and their exit. Before the landing all the attendants were seated and the chief had reported to the captain that the checklist was complete.
The slides
On the roll-out more ceiling panels fell. When the aircraft stopped the cabin lights went out, the emergency lights came on, and the alarm sounded from the cockpit. Six of the eight exits were opened at once, three a side; the two at the rear were not used, because of the floor. The slides deployed automatically, “although two slide packs fell inside the cabin and had to be kicked out,” which the report says is not unusual, since the door’s motion as it opens shifts the pack on the sill. “Most passengers reportedly needed no encouragement to leave the airplane and were waiting near the doors for slide deployment,” and many had to be held back while the slides filled; the overwing slides take seventeen seconds. “The evacuation proceeded smoothly except that two elderly female passengers had to be helped through exits by a flight attendant, and one passenger’s path was obstructed by a fallen ceiling panel.” The attendants’ estimate was thirty seconds.
Nine passengers and two attendants were hurt, and all of them were examined at a local hospital. One passenger had a dislocated finger; one had been struck in the face by the floor hatch; the rest had contusions, lacerations and sprained ankles, mostly friction burns from the slides, because the double-width slides let people turn as they went down and there was nothing to hold. The Board listed this, too, as a finding.
Of the cabin crew the Board wrote: “The manner in which the flight attendants handled the emergency was indicative of excellent training and a highly professional attitude. This was evident in their immediate recognition of the possible need for supplemental oxygen, the leadership exhibited by the chief flight attendant in directing the other flight attendants and in staying abreast of the airplane’s progress, in preparing the passengers for an emergency landing and evacuation, and in the prompt and elaborate briefing given the passengers.” The eight were the chief flight attendant, Cyda Smith, with American since 1968, and stewardesses Beatrice Copland, Janice Hickingbottom, Colleen Maley, Sandra McConnell, Charlotte McGhee, Marlene Saydeh and Carol Stephens, who had been hired on 16 May 1972 and had graduated from the stewardess school the same day, four weeks before.
Under the floor
The Board’s inspection found the aft lounge floor’s first nine transverse beams fractured about six inches from the vertical struts on the left side and failed in bending on the right, “and allowed the floor to settle partially into the cargo compartment.” The cargo door had taken most of its skin with it and had struck the leading edge and upper surface of the left tailplane on the way. Through the floor beams ran the cables, and the list of what the collapse had done to them is the list of what the crew had been flying without.
Elevators: the right-hand cables, Nos. 5 and 6, “preloaded downward by the collapsed cabin floor structure,” so that the elevators worked but “higher than normal control forces were required”; both left-hand cables separated, No. 4 pulled out of its tension regulator and No. 3 out of its swaged fitting at the elevator crank.
Rudder: the right cable “stretched taut by the collapsed floor structure and could not be moved”; the pedal mechanism “had overtraveled its forward position and was jammed”; the nose-left stop and the lower crank on the torque tube both failed; the rudder itself deflected trailing edge right; the trim cables preloaded, with “limited response to rudder trim in the range from neutral to trailing edge right trim.”
Stabiliser trim: the switches on either control wheel worked, but the alternate electrical switches on the pedestal did not; both left-hand manual trim cables had failed and both right-hand cables were preloaded, and the manual handles need both; the position indicator’s drive shear pins were sheared and its cables broken, so the crew had no indicator and did not know that the wheel switches still worked.
Tail engine: the throttle, fuel shut-off and firewall shut-off cables had all failed, and the valves were found in mid-position.
The three hydraulic systems were intact, with no leak and no loss of pressure; the brakes held pressure in both systems when tested; the report of no left brake “was in all probability caused by the pilot’s inability to actuate the pedal, as the rudder pedal was overextended to the left, which necessitated a long awkward reach.” The nose steering worked normally from the wheel.
What the floor said
The Board’s analysis closes the loop between the cabin and the hold. “This particular cargo compartment was not vented to the passenger cabin above it, as were other cargo compartments on the airplane. Thus, the loss of the door caused the full differential pressure between the pressurized passenger cabin and the atmosphere to be exerted on the cabin floor over the compartment. This loading failed the floor support structure, and the cabin floor collapsed downward into the cargo compartment.” The flight controls had been designed “with considerable redundancy,” but the redundant cables all ran “through the cabin floor beams over this cargo compartment,” and the floor’s displacement “either severed or severely impaired the operation of these cables.” Then the sentence that the French Commission would quote back across the Atlantic three years later: “The Board believes that the lack of pressure relief vents in this cargo compartment represents a significant hazard; sudden loss of pressurization in this compartment should not jeopardize the safety of the flight. If complete venting is not feasible, even partial pressure relief might reduce the cabin floor displacement and the attendant interference with critical flight controls.”
Flight 96 had an empty lounge over the hole, two pilots with two good engines to steer with, and the weather of a June evening with a mile and a half of visibility in smoke and fog. The Commission’s comparison of the two floors is a single clause: the Windsor damage “was less severe than in the case of TC-JAV in which the floor was more heavily loaded.” Over Saint-Pathus the floor over the door was carrying two triple seat units with six people in them.