The crash of Swissair flight 111

On September 2, 1998, 229 people died when Swissair flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic off Nova Scotia, the worst accident in Swiss civil aviation history. This film looks back at the tragedy.

The MD-11 aircraft took off from New York at 8:18pm local time, heading for Geneva. Just under an hour later, the pilot and co-pilot detected smoke in the cockpit coming through the air-conditioning system. They requested permission to land and were redirected to the airport at Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Communication with Halifax ended six minutes before impact with the water. There were no survivors.

This film by Swiss public television, SRF, re-enacts the drama from the point of view of three people on the plane: the captain, a flight attendant and a passenger. Almost 25 years later, their real-life families and colleagues explain how they reacted to the unbelievable news and how they rebuilt their lives. The film also looks at the logistical challenges of piecing the shattered airplane back together in the search for a cause of the crash.