We're approaching the 10th anniversary of the crash of TWA flight 800 off the coast of Long Island. The NTSB has long shut the door on this case, but others remain unconvinced. For a refresher on the event start here. Those keeping track of this saga are familiar with the whimsically termed "zoom climb" animation made by CIA to explain things. It failed to convince everyone.
Matter of fact, many pilots immediately called "bullsh", and Ray Lahr was one of them. He's filed several FOIA lawsuits over the years demanding to see the CIA's data. His latest court filing unearthed an interesting twist. He's discovered the zoom-climb video was apparently produced by the NSA for the CIA. Silly me. All this time I thought NTSB had jurisdiction over civilian crashes.
Let's keep some perspective. Even if the CIA/NSA video is correct, the zoom climb fails to rule out a bomb. Ramzi Yousef was practicing the art of making small seat bombs and had already exploded one on a Phillipine Airlines 747. In an amazing coincidence, Yousef's trial for the Operation Bojinka plot to bring down commercial airliners was happening concurrently in Manhattan. Just to add more spice to the stew July 17 was called 'Revolution Day' in Saddam's Iraq, a national holiday.
Many popular conspiracy theories can be shot down in one sitting by using a little common sense. With Flight 800 it sometimes seems the conventional explanation itself should be termed a conspiracy theory. I'm not convinced we'll ever know.
UPDATE 1/22/2006
Don Phillips is one of the most respected transportation journalists in America but with all due respect, I don't think he's done his homework on Flight 800.
In a recent column criticizing the press' yawning indifference over the announcement of new nitrogen inerter technology to stop aircraft fuel tank explosions, he casually refers to those who doesn't completely believe the CIA's zoom-climb video or the NTSB's unproven spark theory as "a cottage industry of conspiracists", ie, a bunch of nutballs.
To support the conventional fuel explosion theory Mr. Phillips offered scientific-sounding explanations about conditions needed for such explosions. Too bad he didn't dig deeper, he might have had a story.
For example, perhaps he could've interviewed a few top notch aerodynamic engineers to tell us how an airplane can climb 2500 feet without it's nose, as the NSA/CIA video purports. A little aviation history would have also been nice, for example a list of all the in-flight fuel tank explosions in commercial aviation. Or heck, just telling us why the CIA and FBI were involved in the first place.
I'd also like to have heard more on the ambient conditions present that led to the exploding tank theory. For example, we've been told the plane was kept on the tarmac for 4 hours with the auxillary power generator running the AC system, which overheated the fuel tank vapors. How rare is such a thing? We know the day in question was not particularly hot for July. And oh yes, just to be precise the crash occurred on the 17th, not the 30th.
Don Phillips is a fine journalist, someone I've been reading for years. But rather than posing a question of why modern media was not enamored with the new fuel inerters, perhaps he should have questioned why it's taken nearly 10 years for the FAA to mandate retrofitting the fleet with those inerters. Do they not care?
No comments:
Post a Comment