Video: South Africa’s 911: Improved Cockpit Voice Recording – SAA Flight 295: The Helderberg 1987

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Here we listen to the audible parts of the 28 minutes of the Cockpit Voice Recording (CVR). The CVR lay at a depth of 15,000-20,000 feet (deeper than the Titanic) for over a year. They recovered only 1 minute 14 seconds of fully understandable conversation from it.

I also did some noise reduction on this separately to see if I could make it easier to hear.

Then I extracted another 6 minutes and another 1 minute all of which contain some sort of conversation but its almost impossible to understand what they are saying. They are however relaxed.

The discussion which you can hear clearly is also, strangely, the very first time the Captain and crew realise that there is a fire burning in the cargo hold.

I suggest you use the transcript at this link in order to follow the conversation and what is happening: Helderberg_Transcript_CVR_MRU