ADVISORY/Exclusive Investigation: NOVA/PBS Investigate the Swissair Crash of Flight 111 and the Safety Recommendations That Have Yet to Be Implemented by the FAA.

Entertainment Editors/Business Editors

ADVISORY...for Tuesday (Feb. 17)

--(BUSINESS WIRE)

Editor's Note - A copy of this program and expert interviews are available by contacting Jonathan Renes at 617-300-4427, [e-mail]. Press Release and photography are available at http://pressroom.wgbh.org/nova

WHO:    NOVA, PBS' award-winning science series that airs nationally
        Tuesdays at 8pm ET.

WHAT:   NOVA's cameras exclusively document the findings from the
        investigation of the accident involving Swissair Flight 111.
        Swissair Flight 111 took off from New York City bound for
        Geneva, Switzerland with 229 people aboard on September 2,
        1998. The flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast
        of Nova Scotia, leaving no survivors.

WHEN:   Crash of Flight 111 airs on NOVA Tuesday, February 17, at
        8PM ET/PT on PBS (check local listings).

NOVA was given unprecedented access to one of the most intricate aviation investigations ever mounted. This investigation cost $40 million, took four years, and involved a search for evidence among two million pieces of debris. Investigators eventually confirmed that the cause of the accident was a fire set off by conditions that still exist on many planes today.

In March of 2003, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board made twenty-three recommendations to the FAA to improve flight safety, including the installation of smoke detectors and video cameras to reveal hidden fires, providing black boxes with a back-up power supply, increasing the size and visibility of standby instruments, stricter standards on aircraft wiring, new flammability standards and the removal, from all airplanes, of the insulation material that burned in the Flight 111 accident, Metalized Mylar. To this date the FAA has not approved most of the recommendations that were made - including the installation of additional fire detection and suppression devices.

"If the cabin of a modern jetliner was a restaurant or a nursing home, it would fail safety standards and would not get an occupancy permit," says David Evans, editor-in-chief, Air Safety Week.

In the end the culprit for the fire on Flight 111 was faulty wiring located in the attic of the plane above the cockpit. A spark ignited materials - previously thought to be nonflammable - spreading smoke and fire in to the cockpit, blinding the pilots. Had there been fire detection and suppression devices in the airplanes attic, the disaster could have been avoided.