TWA Flight 800

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 at about 4:38 p.m. The aircraft was then refueled and the crew was changed. The crew was led by 58-year-old Captain Ralph G. Kevorkian, who had flown for TWA for 31 years and the U.S. Air Force for nine years and had logged 18,700 flight hours, including 5,490 on the Boeing 747. Captain/check airman Steven E. Snyder, 57, had flown for TWA for 32 years and had logged 17,200 flight hours, including 4,700 on the Boeing 747. Flight engineer/check airman Richard G. Campbell Jr., 63, had flown for TWA for 30 years and the U.S. Air Force for 12 years and had logged 18,500 flight hours, including 3,800 on the Boeing 747. Also with the crew was 25-year-old flight engineer trainee Oliver Krick, who previously served as a business pilot for four years and had 2,520 flight hours, including 30 on the Boeing 747. Krick had flown for TWA for 26 days and was starting the sixth leg of his initial operating experience training. The NTSB Final Report gives Oliver Krick's age as being 24, The ground-maintenance crew locked out the thrust reverser for engine No. 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, before Flight 800's departure. Additionally, severed cables for the engine's 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. return from the airplane was recorded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radar site at Trevose, Pennsylvania, at 8:31:12 p.m. reported to Boston ARTCC that he "just saw an explosion out here", adding, "we just saw an explosion up ahead of us here ... about or something like that, it just went down... into the water." Subsequently, many air traffic control facilities in the New York City and Long Island areas received reports of an explosion from other pilots operating in the area. ==Background==

Aircraft The aircraft involved, manufactured in July 1971, was a Boeing 747-131 registered as N93119 with serial number 20083. It had completed 16,869 flights in 93,303 hours of operation and was powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7AH turbofan engines. Crew and passengers and her daughters, Shannon and Katie, in Spring Valley Village, Texas. All three were killed on board TWA Flight 800. On board TWA 800 were 230 people, including 18 crew and 20 off-duty TWA employees, • Michel Breistroff, French ice hockey player • Marcel Dadi, French guitarist • David Hogan, American composer • Jed Johnson, Andy Warhol's partner of twelve years, interior designer, and director • Pam Lychner, American crime victims' rights advocate and former TWA flight attendant, along with two daughters • Rico Puhlmann, German fashion photographer. One of his clients, Polish fashion model Agnieszka Kotlarska (Miss Polski and Miss International), was originally supposed to be on the flight with him but backed out at the last minute. She was murdered a month later by a stalker outside her home. • Courtney Elizabeth Johns, sister of future comic book writer Geoff Johns and the inspiration for the DC Comics superhero Courtney Whitmore / Stargirl • Ana Maria Shorter, musician Wayne Shorter's second wife, and the couple's niece, Dalila, daughter of singer Jon Lucien • Jack O'Hara, executive producer of ABC Sports, along with his wife and daughter. He was going to France to supervise coverage of the Tour de France in what was to be his last assignment for the network after being let go the previous week. In addition, 16 students and five adult chaperones from the French Club of the Montoursville Area High School in Pennsylvania were on board. ==Initial investigation==

The NTSB was notified at approximately 8:50 p.m. on the day of the accident. A full "go team" was assembled in Washington, D.C. The team arrived on the scene early the next morning. As the NTSB does not investigate criminal activity, the United States Attorney General is empowered to declare an investigation for accidents that are potentially linked to a criminal act and to 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 by government contractors. 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. This hotel became known as the "Heartbreak Hotel" for its role in hosting families of victims of several airliner crashes. Many grieving relatives became angry because of TWA's delayed confirmation of the passenger list, Although NTSB vice chairman Robert Francis stated that all bodies were retrieved as soon as they were spotted and that wreckage was recovered only if divers believed that victims were hidden underneath, Anger and political pressure were also directed at Suffolk County medical examiner Charles V. Wetli as recovered bodies backlogged at the morgue. Witness interviews File:Twa 800 witness 319.PNG|right|thumb|An FBI witness statement summary (with personal information redacted) Approximately 80 FBI agents conducted interviews with potential witnesses daily. Within days of the crash, the NTSB announced its intent to form its own witness group and to interview witnesses to the crash. After the FBI raised concerns about nongovernmental parties in the NTSB's investigation having access to this information and possible prosecutorial difficulties resulting from multiple interviews of the same witnesses, the NTSB deferred and did not interview witnesses. A safety board investigator later reviewed FBI interview notes and briefed other board investigators on their contents. In November 1996, the FBI agreed to allow the NTSB access to summaries of witness accounts in which personally identifying information had been redacted and to conduct a limited number of witness interviews. In April 1998, the FBI provided the NTSB with the identities of the witnesses, but because of the time that had elapsed, a decision was made to rely on the original FBI documents rather than on reinterviewed witnesses. ==Further investigation and analysis==

Examination of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder data showed a normal takeoff and climb, before both abruptly stopped at 8:31:12 p.m. In addition, the backs of several damaged passenger seats were observed bearing an unknown red/brown-shaded substance. An overpressure event was defined as a rapid increase in pressure resulting in failure of the structure of the CWT. tests recreating the flight conditions showed the combination of liquid fuel and fuel-air vapor to be flammable. CIA analysts, relying on sound-propagation analysis, concluded that the witnesses could not be describing a missile approaching an intact aircraft, but were seeing a trail of burning fuel coming from the aircraft after the initial explosion. The NTSB's review of the released witness documents determined that they contained 736 witness accounts, of which 258 were characterized as "streak of light" witnesses ("an object moving in the sky... variously described [as] a point of light, fireworks, a flare, a shooting star, or something similar.") Though the FQIS itself was designed to prevent danger by minimizing voltages and currents, the innermost tube of Flight 800's FQIS compensator showed damage similar to that of the compensator tube identified as the ignition source for the surge tank fire that destroyed a 747 near Madrid in 1976. This was not considered proof of a source of ignition. Evidence of arcing was found in a wire bundle that included FQIS wiring connecting to the center wing tank. Arcing signs were also seen on two wires sharing a cable raceway with FQIS wiring at station 955. The captain's CVR channel showed two "dropouts" of background power harmonics in the second before the recording ended (with the separation of the nose). This might well be the signature of an arc on cockpit wiring adjacent to the FQIS wiring. The captain commented on the "crazy" readings of the number 4 engine fuel flow gauge about minutes before the CVR recording ended. Finally, the CWT fuel quantity gauge was recovered and indicated 640 pounds instead of the 300 pounds that had been loaded into that tank. Experiments showed that applying power to a wire leading to the fuel quantity gauge can cause the digital display to change by several hundred pounds before the circuit breaker trips. Thus, the gauge anomaly could have been caused by a short circuit to the FQIS wiring. The NTSB concluded that the most likely source of sufficient voltage to cause ignition was a short circuit from damaged wiring, or within electrical components of the FQIS. As not all components and wiring were recovered, pinpointing the source of the necessary voltage was not possible. ==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: Controversy After the accident, former Joint Chief of Staff Thomas Moorer and former White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger speculated that the airplane was destroyed by a missile, with a nearby U.S. Navy ship being the likely culprit. 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 the investigation into the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800. 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." ==Aftermath==

Many Internet users responded to the incident; the resulting Web traffic set records for Internet activity at the time. CNN's traffic quadrupled to 3.9 million views per day. The Web site of The New York Times had its traffic increase to 1.5 million views per day, 50% higher than its previous rate. In 1996, few U.S. government Web sites were updated daily, but the United States Navy's crash Web site was constantly updated and had detailed information about the salvage of the crash site. The wreckage was moved to a purpose-built NTSB facility in Ashburn, Virginia. The reconstructed aircraft was used to train accident investigators until it was decommissioned in 2021. In 2008, the Department of Transportation issued a final rule designed to prevent accidents caused by fuel-tank explosions. The rule required airlines to pump inert gas into the tanks. The rule covered the CWT on all new passenger and cargo airliners, and passenger planes built in most of the 1990s, but not on old cargo planes. The NTSB had first recommended such a rule just five months after the incident and 33 years after a similar recommendation issued by the Civil Aeronautics Board Bureau of Safety on December 17, 1963, nine days after the crash of Pan Am Flight 214. The crash of TWA Flight 800, and that of ValuJet Flight 592 earlier in 1996, prompted Congress to pass the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act of 1996 as part of the federal aviation appropriations bill. Among other things, the act gives NTSB, instead of the particular airline involved, responsibility for coordinating services to the families of victims of fatal aircraft accidents in the United States. In addition, it restricts lawyers and other parties from contacting family members within 30 days of the accident. During the investigation, the NTSB and the FBI clashed with each other. The agencies lacked a detailed protocol describing which agency should take the lead when it was initially unclear whether an event was an accident or a criminal act. At the time of the crash, 49 CFR 831.5 specified that the NTSB's aviation accident investigations have priority over all other federal investigations. After the TWA flight 800 investigation, the NTSB recognized the need for better clarity. to clarify the issue in 49 USC 1131(a)(2)(B), which was amended in 2000 to read: In 2005, the NTSB and the FBI entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that stated that, "[i]n the immediate aftermath of a transportation accident, the NTSB is the presumptive lead investigative agency and will assume control of the accident scene." The FBI may still conduct a criminal investigation, but the NTSB investigation has priority. When investigative priority remains with the NTSB, the FBI must coordinate its investigative activities with the NTSB investigator-in-charge. This authority includes interviewing witnesses. The MOU states that: "[t]his procedure is intended...to ensure that neither NTSB nor FBI investigative activity unnecessarily complicates or compromises the other agency's investigation." The new statutory language and the MOU have improved coordination between the NTSB and FBI since the TWA Flight 800 accident. , NTSB and FBI personnel conduct joint exercises. Each agency can call upon the other's laboratories and other assets. The NTSB and the FBI have designated liaisons to ensure that information flows between agencies and to coordinate on-scene operations. Heidi Snow, the fiancée of Flight 800 victim Michel Breistroff, established the AirCraft Casualty Emotional Support Services nonprofit group together with families of victims of Pan Am Flight 103. Memorials The TWA Flight 800 International Memorial was dedicated in a parcel immediately adjoining the main pavilion at Smith Point County Park in Shirley, New York, on July 14, 2002. Funds for the memorial were raised by the Families of TWA Flight 800 Association. The memorial includes landscaped grounds, flags from the 13 countries of the victims, and a curved black granite memorial with the names engraved on one side and an illustration on the other of a wave releasing 230 seagulls. In July 2006, an abstract black granite statue of a lighthouse was added above a tomb holding many of the victims' personal belongings. The lighthouse statue was designed by Harry Edward Seaman, whose cousin died in the crash, and dedicated by New York Governor George Pataki. Destruction of wreckage For almost 25 years, the wreckage of Flight 800 was kept by the NTSB and used as an accident-investigation teaching aid. By 2021, the methods taught using the wreckage were determined to no longer be relevant to modern accident investigation, which by then relied heavily on new technology, including three-dimensional laser-scanning techniques. As the NTSB did not wish to renew the lease for the hangar in which it had stored the reassembled accident debris, it decommissioned the wreckage in July 2021. As the NTSB had agreements with the victims' families that the wreckage cannot be used in any kind of public exhibit or be scuttled in the ocean, it plans to scan each piece of debris with a three-dimensional laser scanner, with the data being permanently archived, after which the wreckage will be destroyed and the metal recycled. Any parts of the plane that cannot be recycled will be disposed of in landfills. Destruction of the wreckage was scheduled for completion before the end of 2021. ==Dramatization==

The incident was reenacted in season 17, episode 4 of Mayday, titled "Explosive Proof", as well as the tenth episode of season 2 of Seconds from Disaster. On July 17, 2013, the 17th anniversary of the tragedy, the Epix premium TV channel aired the documentary TWA Flight 800, directed by Kristina Borjesson, which alleges that the crash investigation was a cover-up. The film highlights extensive eyewitness interviews, with many interviewees directly objecting to publicly described versions of their own descriptions of events. It also highlights interviews with investigators who had been involved in the original inquest, six of whom had filed a petition to reopen the probe. Their petition was based on eyewitness accounts, radar evidence indicating a possible missile and claims of evidence tampering. They dubbed it "The TWA 800 Project". Former NTSB investigator Henry Hughes has been quoted that he believes a bomb or a missile caused the crash. Some have noted that the crash of fictional Volée Airlines Flight 180 from the first (2000) and fifth (2011) Final Destination films mirrors the loss of TWA Flight 800. According to the creator of the Final Destination franchise, Jeffrey Reddick, the script for the first film was written in 1994, two years before the Flight 800 crash. That said, the first film did reuse real-life news coverage of TWA Flight 800 as if it were coverage of the Flight 180 crasha decision that Reddick later said he "wasn't particularly happy about". == See also ==