Turkish Airlines Flight 981 (March 3, 1974)

Date: March 3, 1974
Passengers: 335
Crew: 11
Fatalities: 346
Cause: The cargo door at the rear of the plane, which was not secured properly, blew open and severed a number of control cables, rendering an engine, the rudder, and the elevators inoperable (and also blowing out six passengers still strapped into their seats). The aircraft plunged and fragmented so violently on impact that most of the wreckage was in small pieces.


Legend:
CAM     Cockpit area microphone or sound source
RDO     Radio transmission from accident aircraft
ATC     Paris ATC
-1      Voice identified as captain
-2      Voice identified as first officer
-3		Voice identified as second officer
-?      Voice unidentified
*       Unintelligible word
@       Non-pertinent word
#       Expletive
( )     Questionable insertion
(( ))   Editorial insertion
[ ]     Translation from Turkish
...     Pause
Times expressed in local French time. Translations are not perfect in some cases because I used Google Translate to get a rough idea of what they are saying.


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1239:20		CAM-2	Erhan, [I'm doing] three six zero
			CAM-1	Ten [degrees]

1239:56		CAM		((sound of decompression))

1240:00		CAM-?	((sound of exclamations))
			ATC		[Whisky twice, you are still with Paris one two eight decimal one] ((not sure what this is))
			CAM		((sound of cabin depressurisation alarm))
			CAM-1	[What happened?]
			CAM-2	[The fuselage has burst]

1240:11		ATC		[Yes, estimate Boulogne at this moment]
			CAM-2	[Straighten up, straighten up]
			CAM-1	[I cannot straighten up]

1240:22		CAM		((sound of depressurisation alarm ends))
			CAM		((sound of overspeed alarm))
			CAM-2	[Hydraulics]
			CAM-?	[There is nothing]
			CAM-1	[Hydraulics] ((spoken with anguish))
			CAM-?	gıktı olden ((literally: It's out of our hands. We cannot control it any more))

1240:45		CLE?	OOPWN, Roger main my frequency report over Boulogne
			CAM-?	[Ah]
			CAM-?	[Ah]
			CAM-2	[We're going to hit the ground]
			CAM-2	[Speed]
			CAM-2	[Ah]

1241:12/13			((end of recording))


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https://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/726.pdf --- Contains the rest of the untranslated transcript.