Just minutes after taking off from NYC JFK Airport, TWA Flight 800 is ripped apart by a massive explosion. With a possible terror attack on their hands, the FBI joins investigators from the NTSB
Trans World Airlines Flight 800 (TWA800) was a Boeing 747-100 that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, at about 8:31 pm. EDT, 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, on a scheduled international passenger flight to Rome, with a stopover in Paris.All 230 people on board died in the crash; it is the third-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history. Accident investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) traveled to the scene, arriving the following morningamid speculation that a terrorist attack was the cause of the crash.Consequently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and New York Police Department Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) initiated a parallel criminal investigation.[5] Sixteen months later, the JTTF announced that no evidence of a criminal act had been found and closed its active investigation.
The four-year NTSB investigation concluded with the approval of the Aircraft Accident Report on August 23, 2000, ending the most extensive, complex and costly air disaster investigation in U.S. history at that time. The report's conclusion was that the probable cause of the accident was explosion of flammable fuel vapors in the center fuel tank. Although it could not be determined with certainty, the likely ignition source was a short circuit.Problems with the aircraft's wiring were found, including evidence of arcing in the fuel quantity indication system (FQIS) wiring that enters the tank. The FQIS on Flight 800 is known to have been malfunctioning; the captain remarked on "crazy" readings from the system about 2 minutes and 30 seconds before the aircraft exploded. As a result of the investigation, new requirements were developed for aircraft to prevent future fuel tank explosions.
Accident flight
The accident airplane, registration N93119 (a Boeing 747-131), was manufactured by Boeing in July 1971; it had been ordered by Eastern Air Lines, but after Eastern cancelled its 747 orders, the plane was purchased new by Trans World Airlines. The aircraft had completed 16,869 flights with 93,303 hours of operation and was powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7AH turbofan engines.[1]: 6 [10][11] On the day of the accident, the airplane departed from Ellinikon International Airport in Athens, Greece, as TWA Flight 881 and arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) about 4:38 pm. The aircraft was refueled, and a crew change was made; the new flight crew consisted of 58-year-old Captain Ralph G. Kevorkian (who had flown for TWA for 31 years and the U.S. Air Force for 9 years), 57-year-old Captain/Check Airman Steven E. Snyder (who had flown for TWA for 32 years), and 63-year-old Flight Engineer/Check Airman Richard G. Campbell Jr. (who had flown for TWA for 30 years and the U.S. Air Force for 12 years), as well as 25-year-old flight engineer trainee Oliver Krick (who previously served as a business pilot for 4 years), who had flown for TWA for 26 days and was starting the sixth leg of his initial operating experience training.
The ground-maintenance crew locked out the thrust reverser for engine #3 (treated as a minimum equipment list item) because of technical problems with the thrust reverser sensors during the landing of TWA 881 at JFK, prior to Flight 800's departure. Additionally, severed cables for the engine #3 thrust reverser were replaced.During refueling of the aircraft, the volumetric shutoff (VSO) control was believed to have been triggered before the tanks were full. To continue the pressure fueling, a TWA mechanic overrode the automatic VSO by pulling the volumetric fuse and an overflow circuit breaker. Maintenance records indicate that the aircraft had numerous VSO-related maintenance writeups in the weeks before the accident.
TWA 800 was scheduled to depart JFK for Charles de Gaulle Airport around 7:00 pm, but the flight was delayed until 8:02 pm by a disabled piece of ground equipment and a passenger/baggage mismatch . After the owner of the baggage in question was confirmed to be on board, the flight crew prepared for departure, and the aircraft pushed back from Gate 27 at the TWA Flight Center. The flight crew started the engines at 8:04 pm. However, because of the previous maintenance undertaken on engine #3, the flight crew only started engines #1, #2, and #4. Engine #3 was started 10 minutes later at 8:14 pm. Taxi and takeoff proceeded uneventfully.
TWA 800 then received a series of heading changes and generally increasing altitude assignments as it climbed to its intended cruising altitude. Weather in the area was light winds with scattered clouds, with dusk lighting conditions. The last radio transmission from the airplane occurred at 8:30 pm, when the flight crew received and then acknowledged instructions from Boston Center to climb to 15,000 feet (4,600 m). The last recorded radar transponder return from the airplane was recorded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radar site at Trevose, Pennsylvania, at 8:31:12 pm.
Thirty-eight seconds later, the captain of an Eastwind Airlines Boeing 737 reported to Boston ARTCC that he "just saw an explosion out here", adding, "we just saw an explosion up ahead of us here ... about 16,000 feet [4,900 m] or something like that, it just went down into the water." Subsequently, many air traffic control facilities in the New York/Long Island area received reports of an explosion from other pilots operating in the area. Many witnesses in the vicinity of the crash stated that they saw or heard explosions, accompanied by a large fireball or fireballs over the ocean, and observed debris, some of which was burning while falling into the water. Various civilian, military, and police vessels reached the crash site and searched for survivors within minutes of the initial water impact, but found none,making TWA 800 the second-deadliest aircraft accident in United States history at that time.
Initial investigation
The NTSB was notified about 8:50 pm the day of the accident; a full "go team" was assembled in Washington, DC, and arrived on scene early the next morning. Meanwhile, initial witness descriptions led many to believe the cause of the crash was a bomb or surface-to-air missile attack.The NTSB does not investigate criminal activity. The attorney general is empowered to declare an investigation to be linked to a criminal act, and require the NTSB to relinquish control of the investigation to the FBI. In the case of TWA 800, the FBI initiated a parallel criminal investigation alongside the NTSB's accident investigation.
Search and recovery operations
Search and recovery operations were conducted by federal, state, and local agencies, as well as government contractors. An HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter of the New York Air National Guard saw the explosion from about 8 miles away; it arrived at the scene of the explosion while debris was still in the process of falling into the water, forcing the crew to pull away. They reported their sighting to the tower at Suffolk County Airport. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), side-scan sonar, and laser line-scanning equipment were used to search for and investigate underwater debris fields. Victims and wreckage were recovered by scuba divers and ROVs; later scallop trawlers were used to recover wreckage embedded in the sea floor. In one of the largest diver-assisted salvage operations ever conducted, often working in very difficult and dangerous conditions, over 95% of the airplane wreckage was eventually recovered. The search and recovery effort identified three main areas of wreckage underwater;the yellow zone, red zone, and green zone contained wreckage from front, center, and rear sections of the airplane, respectively.The green zone with the aft portion of the aircraft was located the furthest along the flight path.
Pieces of wreckage were transported by boat to shore and then by truck to leased hangar space at the former Grumman Aircraft facility in Calverton, New York, for storage, examination, and reconstruction. This facility became the command center and headquarters for the investigation.NTSB and FBI personnel were present to observe all transfers to preserve the evidentiary value of the wreckage.367 The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered by U.S. Navy divers one week after the accident; they were immediately shipped to the NTSB laboratory in Washington, DC, for readout.58 The victims' remains were transported to the Suffolk County Medical Examiner's Office in Hauppauge, New York.
Tensions in the investigation
Relatives of TWA 800 passengers and crew, as well as the media, gathered at the Ramada Plaza JFK Hotel.Many waited until the remains of their family members had been recovered, identified, and released.[3–4 This hotel became known as the "Heartbreak Hotel" for its role in handling families of victims of several airliner crashes.
Grief turned to anger at TWA's delay in confirming the passenger list,conflicting information from agencies and officials, and mistrust of the recovery operation's priorities.Although NTSB Vice Chairman Robert Francis stated that all bodies were being retrieved as soon as they were spotted, and that wreckage was being recovered only if divers believed that victims were hidden underneath,2 many families were suspicious that investigators were not being truthful, or withholding information.
Much anger and political pressure was also directed at Suffolk County Medical Examiner Dr. Charles V. Wetli, as recovered bodies backlogged at the morgue.Under constant and considerable pressure to identify victims with minimal delay, pathologists worked nonstop. While some victims' bodies were mostly intact, most were either burned, fragmented, skeletonized, or decaying, so they had to be identified by DNA testing and dental records. Since the primary objective was to identify all remains rather than performing a detailed forensic autopsy, the thoroughness of the examinations was highly variable. Ultimately, remains of all 230 victims were recovered and identified, the last over 10 months after the crash.
With lines of authority unclear, differences in agendas and culture between the FBI and NTSB resulted in discord. The FBI, from the start assuming that a criminal act had occurred, saw the NTSB as indecisive. Expressing frustration at the NTSB's unwillingness to speculate on a cause, one FBI agent described the NTSB as "No opinions. No nothing." Meanwhile, the NTSB was required to refute or play down speculation about conclusions and evidence, frequently supplied to reporters by law enforcement officials and politicians. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, an invited party to the NTSB investigation, criticized the undocumented removal by FBI agents of wreckage from the hangar where it was stored.
Report conclusions
The NTSB investigation ended with the adoption of the board's final report on August 23, 2000. The board determined that the probable cause of the TWA 800 accident was:
[An] explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT), resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty, but, of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was a short circuit outside of the CWT that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system.
In addition to the probable cause, the NTSB found the following contributing factors to the accident:
The design and certification concept that fuel tank explosions could be prevented solely by precluding all ignition sources.
The certification of the Boeing 747 with heat sources located beneath the CWT with no means to reduce the heat transferred into the CWT or to render the fuel tank vapor noncombustible
During the course of its investigation, and in its final report, the NTSB issued 15 safety recommendations, mostly covering fuel tank and wiring-related issues. Among the recommendations was that significant consideration should be given to the development of modifications such as nitrogen-inerting systems for new airplane designs, and where feasible, for existing airplanes.
Controversy
The NTSB's conclusions about the cause of the TWA 800 disaster took four years and one month to be published. The FBI's earliest investigations and interviews, later used by the NTSB, were performed under the assumption of a missile attack, a fact noted in the NTSB's final report. Six months into the investigation, the NTSB's chairman, Jim Hall, was quoted as saying, "All three theories—a bomb, a missile, or mechanical failure—remain." Speculation was fueled in part by early descriptions, visuals, and eyewitness accounts of the disaster that indicated a sudden explosion and trails of fire moving in an upward direction.
On June 19, 2013, the NTSB acknowledged in a press release that they received a petition for reconsideration of its investigation into the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800.[56] In 2014, the NTSB declined the petition to reopen the investigation.In a press release, the NTSB stated: "After a thorough review of all the information provided by the petitioners, the NTSB denied the petition in its entirety because the evidence and analysis presented did not show the original findings were incorrect."
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