Within 15 minutes of receiving indications of a fire on the main cargo deck the night of July 28, 2011, the flight crew of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 747-400 freighter found that they could neither reach a nearby airport nor conduct a controlled ditching in the Yellow Sea below.
The fire had begun in or near pallets containing dangerous goods — including highly flammable liquids and lithium batteries — and had touched off explosions that breached the fuselage and sprayed the right wing with debris. Smoke filled the cockpit, and heat destroyed vital flight control components in the aft section of the freighter.
The pilots eventually found themselves unable to control the trajectory of the aircraft, which struck the water 130 km (70 nm) west of Jeju Island, South Korea.
Only small portions of the wreckage and cargo were retrieved from the sand and mud at the bottom of the sea during a search spanning two years. Among the items that eluded searchers were the flight data and cockpit …
