On March 29, 2044, Ultraviolet Airlines Flight 35 crashed into the Vantage Suspension Bridge in Washington State. The crash destroyed the aircraft, the bridge, and the Wanapum Dam. The destruction of the dam sent a tsunami through the Columbia River gorge, causing property loss in several cities. In all, more than two-thousand people lost their lives. Out of the one-thousand-thirty-eight people on board the plane, only one young woman, the chief flight attendant on board, survived.
Aircraft[]
The aircraft was a massive twin-engine Antonov An-850, which was built in Ukraine in 2041 and sold to Ultraviolet Airlines a month after her completion. She was painted with the sherbet colors of the airline at a facility in Spokane in Washington State. Her tail number was NUV61195.
NUV61195 flew about 200-thousand miles and 15-thousand hours during her lifetime before her demise.
Crew[]
The flight crew consisted of 35-year-old Captain Jessica Sapphire of Spokane, who had logged 17-thousand flight hours in Antonov-850s; 55-years-old First Officer Jack Willingston of Joplin Missouri, who had 14-thousand hours of experience in Ilyushins; and 48-years-old Flight Engineer Peter Arko, also of Spokane, who had logged 21-thousand hours of experience in both Antonovs and Ilyushins.
Final flight[]
NUV61195 was scheduled for a newly developed flight plan that covered in this order, Anchorage, Spokane, Denver, and Boise.
The Antonov-850 landed in Anchorage at 955pm local time on March 28, 2044. She was scheduled for a three-hour layover. While there, one woman, the mother of the UVA chief flight attendant, boarded the flight.
NUV61195 departed Ted Stevens International Airport at 1am local time. Captain Sapphire leveled the aircraft off at Flight Level (FL) 400 (40-thousand feet in altitude) at 120am. Then she put the aircraft on autopilot and then went into the cabin to converse with her friend, a flight attendant whose mother had boarded before the flight left Anchorage.
Flight 35 entered Washington State's airspace at 240am. At about 3am Pacific Standard Time, a woman on the upper deck near the rear end of the plane complained of smelling "cigarette smoke". Chief flight attendant Sandy Gorge traced the smell to the upper deck lavatory. When she opened up the door she was met with thick smoke. She immediately closed the door and alerted Captain Sapphire.
Gorge then sought a carbon-dioxide fire extinguisher and tried to put the fire in the lavatory out. For a short time it seemed to worked, but at 310am, more passengers began to smell smoke. Gorge descended to the lower deck to alert all the flight attendants, then she returned to try to put the fire out one more time. She was unable to reach the lavatory due to all the smoke. She and the other flight attendants started herding everybody to the lower deck and towards the front of the plane.
The Antonov-850 was over the Cascade Mountains near North Bend by 315am, traveling in an east-southeast direction. In the cockpit, Captain Sapphire tried to communicate with the cabin crew via cabin phones but they had stopped working. She ordered First Officer Jack Willingston to go find flight attendant Gorge, and then she took manual control over the plane. She alerted the traffic control tower at the Grant County International Airport that she would be preparing to make an emergency landing there.
At 318am, she lost control of the rudders, and then she received a "Master Warning" and a "Pull Up" alert simultaneously. Immediately afterwards, the both of the jet's engines hit some windmills in the Ginkgo Petrified Forest and ignited, a mile west of the Columbia River. Captain Sapphire lost contact with Grant County International Airport at 319am and 24 seconds. She knew that her plane was over the Columbia River now, and decided to try to "ditch" it. At 319 and 41 seconds, she tried to call Sandy Gorge one more time to tell her to get the passenger life vests out, but communication was lost for good.
Crash[]
At 319 and 56 seconds, Captain Sapphire slowed the aircraft down to 250 miles per hour and began to bank the plane to the right in order to line the jet up with the river. Ten seconds later, Flight Engineer Peter Arko noticed the red-and-green smile-shaped lights of the Vantage Suspension Bridge and told Captain Sapphire to level the jet and pull up as fast as she could. She tried to but that moment, all flight control surfaces went offline.
At 320 and 14 seconds, the jet crashed through all six lanes of the bridge at a 40-degree right bank. The right wing and the number two engine punched a gaping hole through the road deck, sending cars flying off the bridge. Engine two fell off the jet and into the river. The left wing and engine sliced through the main cables of the bridge. Then the huge tail-plane got tangled up in the suspension cables and yanked them off the bridge, dragging numerous severed and frayed steel cables behind the jet. After 100 feet, the rear one-quarter section of the jet separated from the rest of the jet, which traveled for one-thousand more feet and slammed into Wanapum Dam at 244 miles per hour at 320 and 22 seconds, shattering apart with a massive fireball that turned night into day and putting a huge hole in the top of the dam. Everyone in the forward half of the plane were instantly killed.
Chief Flight Attendant Sandy Gorge was dragged underwater by some cables from the bridge while she was still in the detached section of the plane. She was trapped underwater for nearly five minutes, but she was able to free herself just before she would have drowned. While she escaped from the cables, both of her legs were severely lacerated. She struggled to squeeze through the tight spaces in the destroyed cabin section before she was able to swim to the surface. She pulled herself to the western shore and waited for help to arrive.
Tsunami[]
The traffic controllers at the Grant County International Airport saw the fireball in the distance at 320 and 30 seconds and called for help. The emergency services in George, Quincy, Ephrata, and Moses Lake deployed to the scene, only to find that they could not get across the now-collapsed bridge.
The water rushing through the hole in the Wanapum Dam caused the entire dam to collapse at 326am, creating a tsunami that swept through the gorge. The river-bound tsunami hit the Tri-Cities at 348am and forced the water in the Snake River to flow backwards for sixteen miles. Flooding was reported at the Interstate 82 bridge at 352am. The floods destroyed three more dams along the Columbia River, adding to the tsunami's power and speed. Portland was hit with the tsunami at 424am, covering the Portland International Airport in six feet of water and killing hundreds that lived on the shore.
Investigation[]
Several-dozen people who were on the Vantage Suspension Bridge recall seeing the lights of the massive Antonov-850 approaching while driving across it and said they tried to “floor it”. Others said they slammed on their brakes. Many people never seemed to notice the plane, and they were killed, mostly by drowning in their vehicles.
Chief Flight Attendant Sandy Gorge is the air disaster's sole survivor.
A National Transportation Safety Board member named Erica Durance was in Portland went the city was hit by the tsunami. She survived and was treated in Seattle for inhaling water.
Erica Durance went on to lead the investigation of Flight 35.
The NTSB was deployed to the remains of the Vantage Suspension Bridge to find the Black Boxes. The Flight Data recorder was found laying underwater on top of a slab of metal from the bridge. The Cockpit Voice recorder was slightly harder to find because it was hidden underneath the same slab.
According to the CVR, the Flight Engineer yelled "Whoa heads up!" about ten seconds before the plane destroyed the bridge.
The Flight Data recorder revealed that everything in the aircraft was running perfectly until 302am. The CVR picked up the sound of a man saying "Dammit", followed by several sharp impact sounds packed closely together, and then retreating footsteps. About 4 seconds later, the FDR started registering a gradual temperature rise coming from the upper deck lavatory.
At 304am, the CVR picked up the sound of one long blast of fire extinguisher retardant as Flight Attendant Sand Gorge tried to put the fire out. Immediately afterwards, The FDR noted a sudden drop in temperature, followed by a second, more intense gradual rise. At 310, Sandy Gorge went back to the lavatory and fired the fire extinguisher three times, noted on the CVR as three tiny blasts of fire extinguisher retardant, each separated by about two seconds of silence. Shortly thereafter, the CVR picked up panicking voices and a 15-second-long series of rapid footsteps (Sandy Gorge running to the cockpit).
Over the next ten minutes, all that could be heard on the Cockpit Voice recorder was screaming passengers and the flight crew talking aggressively in the cockpit. At 320 and 14 seconds, the sound of the plane hitting the Vantage Suspension Bridge can be heard, followed by six seconds of rushing air (as the CVR fell from the aircraft), a second impact (with the water), and nearly 20 seconds of muffled explosions before two deep booms (hitting the riverbed; crushed by the bridge).
It was determined that a passenger was trying to operate a lighter in the upper deck lavatory. Tbe reason is still unclear. After seeming to become irate, the passenger threw the lighter away and left the lavatory.
Investigators believe that the the light hit the trash can, it created a spark in the lighter which jumped out of the trash can and hit a paper towel in the paper towel dispenser.