This year the musical pieces, the floral offerings and the poems go to the background. Tomorrow they are fulfilled 15 years of Spanair flight accident JK5022 that covered the Madrid-Gran Canaria route, where 154 people died and 18 were injuredand on the occasion of the indicated date the Movistar Plus+ platform has released the series documentary Flight JK5022. The Spanair tragedy, a series of three chapters in which the causes of the tragic accident that occurred in 2008 at the airport of the Spanish capital are explained. The proposal, which was born with the impulse of the Association of People Affected by Flight JK5022, does not seek to become the final point of the fight of the relatives of the victims, but it does intend to remember and give visibility to the tragedy fifteen years later and accentuate the idea that those affected have had to seek alternative paths to the judicial route to demonstrate their truth. In addition, the lack of those responsible for the event is criticized again. “We have forced society to remember what happened because Spain is a devourer of tragedies, they are consumed at a dizzying pace and then they are easily forgotten and buried,” says the president of the Association, Pilar Vera.
The project originated precisely in the head of the Canary Islands three years ago when it was proposed to make a special documentary so that it would see the light on the fifteenth anniversary of the tragedy. Five years ago, when they turned ten, the Association organized a commemorative concert in the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium with the Las Palmas Symphony Orchestra. “I didn’t have the energy to get involved in such an effort again and so I started looking for financing,” Vera recalls about the beginnings of the audiovisual project. One of the doors she knocked on was that of Secuoya Studios, the production company that was ultimately in charge of shaping the initiative. The Association has collaborated actively in the projectnot only in what refers to providing the testimonies of those affected, survivors and family members, but also facilitating the contacts of the professionals and technicians who appear in the episodes.
three matters
The docuseries addresses three main issues. The first episode (Destiny), in which the events are described, focuses on the management of the emergency, not only during that fateful August 20, 2008, but also the days following the tragedy. The second episode (Is no one going to pay for mine?) revolves around the Association’s fight for air safety. The real testimonies of the relatives of the victims narrate to the viewer the institutional management of the case. And the third episode (Powerfull knight) focuses on trying to break down the responsibilities of Boeing, the manufacturer of the crashed plane, for having launched supposedly defective planes on the market. “Boeing never wanted to explain itself either in court or through legislation, now at least people will know its internal structure,” Vera explains about the third and last episode.
The Association is very clear that the vision of Movistar Plus+ is marked by its commercial character, typical of this type of proposal on payment platforms. “The docuseries it addresses some aspects from the commercial point of view, they seek to sell and they have had to make it entertaining”, affirms the president, who assures that the piece does not contain “all the achievements of the Association during the last fifteen years”. Even so, the spokesperson for the victims is satisfied with the overall result of the project for get to give visibility to a tragedy that occurred five decades ago today.
The docuseries includes recreations of the conversations of the leaders and supervisors, rescued from the black box, as well as the rescue teams that acted at that moment. They encountered great difficulties in gaining access to the area of damage.
error chain
This audiovisual production It has nothing to do with the documentary JK5022, A string of errors that the Association itself published in 2012 and which summarizes the work carried out by those affected to detect and correct the deficiencies that caused the Spanair accident in order to prevent such accidents from occurring again. The piece, available on YouTube, shows the links in the chain that led to the disaster and that, according to those affected, the Administration has hidden.
This documentary evidences the failures of the Official Report prepared by the Civil Aviation Accident and Incident Investigation Commission (Ciaiac) published in 2011. A report that focuses on rhold pilots accountable –died in the accident– due to improper configuration of the take-off system.
The TOWS (Take off warning system) alarm, which should have warned the pilots of the incorrect configuration of the aircraft, did not work, but the Ciaiac report does not determine the cause of the incorrect operation of the warning. “There are 308 pages dedicated to hiding the truth,” the victims narrate in the documentary.
Years later, in 2021, the Congress of Deputies and the Investigation Commission regarding the accident of Spanair flight JK5022 agreed with the Association by accepting that the tragedy was due to a “systemic failure of Spanish civil aviation”, something that clashes head-on with the conclusions that Ciaiac made public at first.
The Commission acknowledges that all security barriers failed that result in the fatal outcome, not only before the tragedy but also during it, due to the delayed medical assistance necessary in the difficult-to-reach place where the plane finally crashed. Which coincides with the investigations that the Association made public in the 2012 documentary in which it speaks of a chain of errors that goes through pilots, maintenance technicians, the Boeing company (MYD), the Administration, the inspection and the company Spanair, which ceased operations on January 28, 2012. “Fifteen years later we have seen how our work has not been in vain because the Congressional Investigation Commission has ratified it,” says Vera.
The new one docuseries, Directed by Alberto Puerta, it continues along this line and tries to demonstrate, with the statements of other pilots, the business pressure that professionals receive so that commercial flights continue and, above all, be punctual. The pilot Miguel Ángel Gordillo, who worked with Iberia, told the docuseries that “there is a list that compares your times with other colleagues”. He was precisely fired from the company for refusing to drive under less than optimal circumstances. “The airplane that does not fly, does not produce”, the professional points out in one of the chapters.
Report Findings
In the conclusions of its report, the Commission of Investigation regarding the accident of Spanair flight JK5022, elaborated a list of persons who held a position of responsibility on the date of the accident, and therefore they assumed decisions that were made within the system at the time of the incident. A total of 18 people, including the Minister of Public Works, Magdalena Álvarez, the General Director of Civil Aviation, Manuel Bautista, or the General Director of Civil Aviation, Enrique Sanmartín, among others.
A series of recommendations is also made, such as the creation of a multimodal body for the investigation and prevention of accidents with multiple victims or support for the creation of a Flight Safety Foundation, a project urged by the association of those affected.
The president of the Association complains that the tragedy has been losing weight in the media and anniversaries, on many occasions, go unnoticed. Now the docuseries put the accident back into “orbit”, arousing media interest.
This new production includes the advances in research that since 2012, the year of the first documentary, have been made with a single objective: “fight for the memory of the 154 deceased for the safety of the transport of the living”. This is how Vera explains it, that since what she now calls a “war” began, she wants those who “continue to fly to do so as safely as possible.”
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The Canary Islands have fared better in the international arena, as far as their fight is concerned. In 2015 Vera created the International Federation of Victims, recognized by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which in 2021 declared that February 20th will be commemorated the International Day of Air Accident Victims and their Families. An achievement that she tried to achieve in Spain for years and could not. “At an international level it turns out that what I do is respected and understood, but here in Spain I have become the number one danger for the Ministry of Transport,” she says.
The docuseries honors and gives visibility to the tragedy, but it does not end the struggle of the Association. The president confesses that she has a list of pending things to do. A few months ago, the Association filed a lawsuit in the ordinary jurisdiction based on the final report of the Investigation Commission regarding the accident of Spanair flight JK5022 against those responsible who are alive. They are also awaiting approval, once work begins in the Courts, of the bill to create the Independent Authority for the technical investigation of railway, maritime and civil aviation accidents and incidents. On Vera’s list is also finding a way to continue the Association once she retires. In the documentary she tells that she fears that the day she leaves, the fight for justice will be extinguished.