http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000823/ts/airlines_twa_dc.htmlTitle: Officials: Short Circuit Likely Sparked TWA Crash
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| Top Stories News - updated 5:22 AM ET Aug 23 |
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By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. safety investigators say a short circuit likely sparked the fuel-tank blast that killed all 230 people aboard TWA Flight 800 four years ago, not a criminal act. Capping the costliest accident investigation in history, National Transportation Safety Board staff dismissed conspiracy theories that a bomb or missile downed the Boeing 747 off Long Island on July 17, 1996. No problem was reported to air traffic control by crew of Flight 800 before the explosion, which broke off the front end of the jumbo jet 14 minutes after takeoff from New York's Kennedy Airport on a scheduled flight to Paris. Bernard Loeb, head of the NTSB's office of aviation safety, told the five-member safety board reviewing the investigators' conclusions that the crash was most likely triggered by a high-voltage surge into fuel-indicator wiring leading to the aircraft's nearly empty center-wing tank. Taking all the evidence together ``leads to the inescapable conclusion that the cause of the in-flight breakup of TWA Flight 800 was a fuel/air explosion inside the center-wing tank,'' the staff investigators found. ``Although the voltage in the fuel-quantity indication system wiring is limited by design to a very low level, a short circuit from higher-voltage wires could allow excessive voltage to be transferred to fuel-quantity indication system wires and enter the tank,'' Loeb said Tuesday, summarizing a key finding. ``We cannot be certain that this in fact occurred, but of all the ignition scenarios we considered, this scenario is the most likely,'' he said. All told, the NTSB, an independent federal accident investigation agency, and Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA - news) spent a combined total of $67 million -- a record for an airliner crash. Boeing Awaits Final Word From Ntsb Loeb said the recovered wiring showed ``definite signs of deterioration and damage ... not atypical for an airplane of its age.'' The Boeing 747-100 was manufactured in November 1971 and had accumulated 93,303 flight hours. Seattle-based Boeing, the world's biggest aircraft builder, said it was awaiting a final determination by the safety board itself on the probable cause of the crash. The board is to rule on the investigators' draft report on Wednesday. As of Aug. 8, Boeing had settled 52 of 175 lawsuits brought by relatives of the 212 passengers and 18 crew members aboard Flight 800. Lawyers have valued some settlements in the multimillions of dollars. In April, Boeing told the NTSB it had found no evidence to support the idea that a ``specific electrical system or component of the 747-100 fuel-quantity indicating system ignited a fuel/air explosion.'' ``None of the recovered fuel system components inspected and analyzed showed any evidence of being the ignition source that initiated the accident,'' Boeing said at the time. The officially discounted sabotage theory stemmed largely from witness reports of upward streaking lights supposedly consistent with the firing of a heat-seeking missile. A total of 258 witnesses reported seeing a streak of light, Loeb said. In ruling out a missile hit, he said the aircraft continued in its crippled flight for about 30 seconds after the explosion blew off its nose, ``during which time burning fuel from the damaged airplane likely appeared as a streak of light.'' Conspiracy theories have been fueled by the timing of the crash -- amid criminal prosecutions in the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center and heightened concern about terrorism at the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta that summer. Investigators ruled out the possibility of a bomb or a missile after finding no evidence of sabotage in the 95 percent of the aircraft recovered from the ocean floor, though Loeb said the FBI had found traces of ``explosive residue'' on three pieces of the wreckage. ``However, these three pieces contained no evidence of pitting, cratering, hot gas washing or petaling, which would have been there had these trace amounts resulted from a bomb or a missile,'' he told the opening session of a two-day safety board meeting to consider the staff's report. Loeb, who had overall responsibility for the investigation, said the explosive residues could have resulted from, among other things, ferrying troops during the 1991 Persian Gulf War or ``dog-training explosive detection exercises conducted on the accident airplane about one month before the accident.'' James Wildey of the NTSB's Materials Laboratory Division specified that telltale bomb damage would not have been limited to the less than five percent of unrecovered wreckage, citing lessons from the Dec. 21, 1988, mid-air explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people in the air and on the ground at Lockerbie, Scotland. Even without knowing for sure what sparked the accident, the investigation has led to far-reaching changes in design and maintenance procedures that are said by experts to have made commercial aviation safer. Joe Lychner of Houston, who lost his 37-year-old wife, Pam, and two daughters, Shanon, 10, and Katie, 8, in the crash took no comfort in any of the findings. ``Boeing is continuing to play Russian roulette with the flying public,'' he said. Earlier Stories
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