Geoffrey Birchall, with 7,362 and 8,749 hours' experience respectively; and 45-year-old flight engineer, Giuseppe "Joe" Bellagarda and 34-year-old relief flight engineer, Alan Daniel, with 7,804 hours and 1,595 hours of experience respectively. Accident Flight 295 took off at 14:23 UTC (22:23 local time) on 27 November 1987 from Taipei Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, on a flight to Johannesburg via Mauritius. Thirty-four minutes after departure, the crew contacted Hong Kong air traffic control to obtain clearance from waypoint ELATO () to ISBAN. A position report was made over ELATO at 15:03:25, followed by waypoints SUNEK at 15:53:52, ADMARK at 16:09:54 and SUKAR () at 16:34:47. The aircraft made a routine report to the SAA base at Johannesburg at 15:55:18. At some point during the flight, believed to be during the beginning of its landing approach to Mauritius, a fire developed in the cargo section on the main deck which was probably not extinguished before impact. The 'smoke evacuation' checklist calls for the aircraft to be depressurised, and for two of the cabin doors to be opened. No evidence exists that the checklist was followed or that the doors were opened. A crew member might have gone into the cargo hold to try to fight the fire. A charred fire extinguisher was later recovered from the wreckage on which investigators found molten metal. The following communication was recorded with Mauritius air traffic control, located at Plaisance Airport near Port Louis: The fire began to destroy the aircraft's important electrical systems, resulting in loss of communication and control of the aircraft. At exactly 00:07 UTC (4:07 local time), the aircraft broke apart in mid-air, the tail section breaking off first, due to the fire beginning to burn the structure of the aircraft, and crashed into the Indian Ocean, about from the airport. Other theories given for the ultimate demise of the aircraft were that the flight crew eventually became incapacitated by the smoke and fire or extensive damage to the 747's control systems rendered the plane uncontrollable before it hit the ocean. After communication with Flight 295 was lost for thirty-six minutes, at 00:44 (04:44 local time), air traffic control at Plaisance Airport formally declared an emergency. Search and salvage When Flight 295 last informed Plaisance air traffic control of its position, its report was incorrectly understood to be relative to the airport rather than its next waypoint, which caused the subsequent