Steeped in Blood (24 page)

I decided on a direct approach and contacted everybody who had the remotest connection with the
Helderberg
. As I spread my net wider and word spread that I was investigating, some interesting things started to happen. People began to approach me with information. I collected every scrap of paper relating to the case and filed it away. I telephonically interviewed most of the major role players, including Roy Downes of the Directorate of Civil Aviation (DCA), forensic expert Greg Southeard, who had conducted the investigation on behalf of Boeing, and Tony Snelgar, the pilot who had been waiting on the island to take over from Dawie Uys. I also contacted Dr T.C.B. (Theuns) Kruger, the financial planning manager (technical) at SAA; John Hare, senior general manager of SAA; and Flippie Look, who was a retired pilot for SAA.

I had some fun when I phoned Look, who was very entertaining. When I spoke to him, he did the old name, rank and number bit with me (he had obviously seen a few war movies). He would not deny or confirm anything and kept referring me back to the airline officials. It was important to talk to him because he had been the pilot in charge of an aircraft parked at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel when he had allegedly seen a crate drop from the aircraft loading bay and split open to reveal missiles.

Look was at his most obtuse until I said to him, ‘They [the SAA staff] say that you don’t know the difference between fuel tanks for a Mirage and military ordnance.’ Suggesting that he couldn’t tell the difference between drop tanks and missiles caused Look to explode. ‘Christ!’ he cried, outraged. ‘I called my co-pilot and said, “Come look here!”’ The old pilot’s ego had kicked in and he confirmed my allegation without intending to.

During one of my conversations with Hare, who had previously held a senior position at Armscor, it became obvious why Armscor was pursuing the complaint. Hare indicated to me that SAA was incensed about a newspaper report in which they were accused of cremating their passengers. He also mentioned that the airline was probably going to launch a full-scale civil action against the
Weekend Star
to recover damages after the hearing.

Before I interviewed Kruger, I read all eight volumes of the Margo Commission transcript as part of my investigation. This in itself provided some interesting insights into the matter. Of particular interest was a section of the transcript that took place just after tea. The prosecutor was Brian Southwood, who is now a judge in Pretoria. Southwood stood up and said that Captain van Heerden of the Pilots’ Association was in the audience and would like to introduce himself. Instead of Van Heerden, however, a certain Viljoen stood up, saying that he represented the Pilots’ Association. The discussion between Margo, as chairman, and Viljoen went like this:

Mr Southwood:
Mr Chairman I have been informed that Captain van Heerden of the South African Pilots Association is present. He omitted to announce his presence and would like the opportunity to do so.

Captain Viljoen:
Thank you, Mr Chairman, I am Tony Viljoen and I represent the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations, known as IFAPA.

Chairman:
We are about to hear an excerpt from the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] tape; not from the tape itself, but from a transcript. Have you any submissions to make about that tape?

Captain Viljoen:
Sir, the reading of the tape into record we do not object to.

Chairman:
The whole of the tape?

Captain Viljoen:
As far as the pertinent conversation between the pilot and the air traffic control – as far as it applies to the full accident investigation, we have no objections at this stage.

Chairman:
What are you objecting to?

Captain Viljoen:
Nothing at all, not at this point.

Chairman:
Well then can the whole of the cockpit voice recorder be played in open court, because you are objecting to nothing?

Captain Viljoen:
Sir, I would agree to that.

Chairman:
Yes, but I don’t want to encourage you into an objection which you don’t want to make, but we will notice now that you will take the point that confidential portions of the conversation should not be played in public.

Captain Viljoen:
I would take that point, yes.

Chairman:
Well I don’t know what point you’re taking now. You’ve told me that you raise no objections to the whole tape being played and now …

Captain Viljoen:
You asked me if confidential portions of the tape should be read into the record.

Chairman:
Well I have heard the tape in advance. It will have to be played again to the full Board. There is nothing that is particularly confidential, but it’s private conversation up to the point where the fire alarm signal sounds. Perhaps you had better consider your position and let us know a little later what you want us to do.

Captain Viljoen:
Certainly Sir.

Chairman:
Mr Southwood, meanwhile you’re going to lead the witness only on that portion of the tape from the time that the alarm signal sounded.

– Margo Commission of Inquiry report, page 55 (emphasis added)

This entire conversation is bizarre. Margo indicates that there is nothing particularly confidential in the tape recording, and then keeps the first part of the recording from being heard publicly on the basis that it is confidential! He so clearly wanted Viljoen to object to the transcript being read out. What was it that he wanted kept out of the record?

Viljoen was being dense. Margo was evidently expecting or hoping for a prearranged objection to enable him to rule on the first part of the tape. Somewhere along the way the lines must have got crossed, and Viljoen was not bright enough to pick up the ball and run with it: Margo had to do it for him. On page 109 of the Margo transcript – some time after the above-quoted conversation took place – a representative from IFAPA, Van Heerden, made the objection for which Margo had been fishing. This was the Van Heerden to whom Southwood originally referred.

This whole comedy of errors indicates that there was a conspiracy of sorts between Margo and Van Heerden, and that something on that CVR transcript had to be concealed. The transcript was never read out at the inquiry, and I was determined to find out what it was that they were concealing.

My next port of call was Theuns Kruger, who reluctantly let me see the CVR transcript, but would not let me copy it. He left me alone to read it, so I read it aloud into my tape recorder. This particular transcript was produced by Colonel Leendert Jansen, who had worked in the police forensic laboratory on audio tapes in the days of General Lothar Neethling. After leaving civil service, he had gone into the private audio-analysis business.

What I read was a transcript of the recording of the voices in the cockpit. Cockpit voice recordings tape over themselves every thirty minutes, so they always constitute a record of the last thirty minutes of
conversation in the cockpit. In the Margo Inquiry, this was said to be the last tape recording of the cockpit voice recorder for the
Helderberg
– the final words recorded of the pilots before the aircraft crashed. This is of particular significance considering what the recording contained.

I suddenly realised what Margo had wanted to keep out of the open court. In the early part of the recording (ten minutes and fifty-eight seconds into the tape), a woman’s voice says, ‘
Kaptein, jy moet toesig hou op vanaand se vlug
’ (Captain, you must keep watch on this evening’s flight). This comment is of crucial importance, as the accident was supposed to have happened on the top of descent, just outside Mauritius – in other words, near the end of the flight. This remark would have been irrelevant and nonsensical if it had been made at the flight’s end – it was clearly made at the beginning of the flight.

Margo stated that the fire had occurred just outside Mauritius. He also said that there was ‘nothing that is particularly confidential’ on the voice recording, yet he prompted the witness so blatantly in the hearing to suggest that parts of it
were
confidential. The point is that this recording was, in theory, a record of the last thirty minutes of the flight, yet the woman’s comment telling the captain to keep watch paints a different picture, as does the subsequent conversation in the cockpit, which is even more revealing (the numbers next to the dialogue refer to the number of minutes into the recording that the words were spoken):

11.36
Hierdie ou word nou honger
…
Ek wens ons kry nou
dinner …

12.00
Joe’s got exactly the same …

12.06
This is bloody junk food as well …

A male voice then says that he must stay away from something. We know that Captain Uys had an allergy to certain foodstuffs, so there might have been an item on the menu that would not have agreed with him. The word ‘dinner’ is also used. This is a very specific word: it’s not breakfast; it’s not lunch – it is the main evening meal. Clearly food was being served at that stage on the flight. Yet food is usually served shortly after take-off, preceded only by drinks, as there is no sense in allowing the food to dry out in the warmers until many hours later. The cockpit crew is typically served just after the first-class passengers have been served, and generally from the same galley. When the
Helderberg
reached its cruising altitude and the activity in the cockpit was not particularly intense, it would have been the appropriate time for the cabin attendants to serve dinner. This is a far more likely scenario than the cockpit crew all eating dinner at the top of descent: just before preparing to land, the atmosphere in the cockpit would have been busy, if not frenetic.

This is why Margo wanted this first part of the tape kept out of the record. If it had been included, it would have raised awkward questions, including why the conversation about the meal and the comments about keeping watch had not been taped over many times before the alleged first fire outside Mauritius.

The rest of the conversation is nothing out of the ordinary – all sorts of banter one would expect in the course of a normal cockpit
conversation – men, while on their own, talking about girls’ salaries, seniority and a whole host of other trivial matters.

Only the last part of the recording was included at the Margo Inquiry: twenty-eight minutes and thirty-one seconds into the tape recording, the fire alarm sounds and a voice says, ‘There is the fire-alarm bell.’ This is followed by about ninety seconds of recording while the captain and crew try to make sense of what is happening, and then there is silence. That is the end of the recording.

Reading the full transcript gives the impression that a whole scene in a Shakespearean tragedy has been taken out of context and slapped into another part of the play. At the time, the debate was rife over what the cockpit voice recording contained, as it was of very poor quality – almost as if it had been tampered with and perhaps overlaid with white or pink noise. Boeing would not have put such inferior equipment on their aircraft. It doesn’t really matter, though, because Margo had at least had a transcript of the conversation made. It was clear that Margo believed it contained important enough information for it to remain confidential: he made sure that it stayed out of the inquiry.

It is a fact that this was the last thirty minutes of conversation recorded in the cockpit of the
Helderberg
. It also appears that this conversation took place shortly after take-off. So why is it that this is the last recorded conversation? The reason is that the cockpit voice recorder stopped working some time immediately after this conversation – long before the aircraft reached Mauritius and the scene of the supposed first fire.

From the reference to the fire alarm on the cockpit voice recording, and the fact that the CVR suddenly ceased functioning, it was clear that there had been a fire on board the aircraft. Indeed, pieces of the wreckage confirmed burn marks on the crown of the aircraft (a fire burns upwards, so the greatest damage would be to the crown). The voice recorder had ceased to work either because the fire had burnt through the power and input cables that passed along
the aircraft’s crown, or because the pilots had pulled the circuit breaker so that they could retain the last parts of their conversation, ensuring that it didn’t get taped over. We will never know which it was.

If a fire had burnt through these power cables, it must have started in the early part of the flight – round about the time when the crew were discussing dinner – and not at the end of the flight, as Margo wanted us to believe.

Conflicting statements and cover-ups

‘Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.’

–
SOPHOCLES

It was clear that Margo wanted the public to believe that there had been only
one
fire on the
Helderberg
, and that it had occurred just outside Mauritius, shortly before the aircraft crashed. Yet, if the transcripts of the cockpit voice recording are to be believed, the fire took place just a few hours after take-off. Why did Uys then not land the aircraft as soon as possible?

His behaviour directly contradicted all the principles of pilot training. If there had been a fire on board the
Helderberg
, the first step would have been to extinguish it and land the aircraft immediately. A pilot in this situation would not know if damage to the skin of the aircraft had occurred, whether the structure and integrity of the aircraft were still intact, whether he would run into a storm or turbulence, or whether there was the potential for another fire – too many unknown factors simply to continue flying. Despite all this, however, Uys flew on. Why did he not do the simple thing and land the aircraft, which would have saved his life and the lives of the remaining passengers and crew, especially since there were several places where this stricken aircraft could have landed?

At the time of the Margo investigation, the flight engineers
wrote a dissenting view about the fire and submitted it to Margo. Ray Scott, a flight engineer, told me at a meeting in Midrand on 11 April 1995 that Margo had called the engineers to his private residence on a Sunday and said to them, ‘Listen, you don’t know what you are doing. This thing has security overtones. If you carry on with this, you will cost the country R400 million. [The insurers wouldn’t pay out.] The safety of your future and your families is at risk.’