noblues - one you may be interested in.
On 28-Nov-1987, a South African Airways Boeing B747-244B Combi, registered as ZS-SAS, lost control and crashed into the Indian Ocean near Mauritius. The aircraft was destroyed. There were 19 crewmembers and 140 passengers aboard, all were fatally injured.
At 23:48 UTC, the pilot of the Boeing B747 reported an emergency descent due to smoke in the aircraft to FL140 and requested emergency services at Plaisance Airport. At 00:07 the aircraft crashed into the sea, 134nm northeast of Mauritius and was 13 hours later. Three minutes earlier the pilot had acknowledged an instruction from Mauritius approach control to report at FL50.
Analysis of recorders, all salvaged from the seabed at 4500m, indicated that the crew was alerted by the smoke detection system to a fire in the right forward pallet, in the main deck cargo compartment. Evidence of the presence of smoke was found in the passenger cabin and galley and in the passenger trachea. The aircraft crashed because of the fire damage to the controls, or crew incapacitation, or crew distraction or a combination of these factors. The crew may have not been able to deal with the fire.
FAA Airworthiness Directive 89-18-12 R1 has been promulgated.
Safety recommendations: installation of additional area microphones, increased recording time for the cockpit voice recorder and additional time sequence underwater locator beacons for the flight recorders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_A...ays_flight_295 has some back ground and the controvesy surrounding the accident.
Portion of CVR at
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cvr871128.htm