CNN examines whether another TWA Flight 800 could happen…
CNN announced that it will be airing “CNN Presents: No Survivors - Why TWA Flight 800 Could Happen Again” on Saturday July 15th at 7pm ET…
Twelve minutes into a July 17, 1996, Paris-bound flight from New York’s JFK International Airport with 230 passengers on board, TWA Flight 800 exploded and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. There were no survivors. Ten years later, CNN Presents will air a two-hour documentary on the disaster and reveal why government officials say similar catastrophes are “virtually certain to occur.”
CNN Presents: No Survivors – Why TWA 800 Could Happen Again will premiere on Saturday, July 15, at 7 p.m., with a replay at 10 p.m. The documentary will re-air on Sunday, July 16, at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. All times Eastern. CNN.com will launch a multimedia in-depth report at www.CNN.com/twa800 on Wednesday, July 5, as well as an audio podcast with CNN correspondent David Mattingly at www.cnn.com/podcasting.
CNN’s realistic animation of the doomed flight will show how an explosion in the Boeing 747’s center fuel tank caused the plane to break apart at 13,000 feet. While the cockpit and first-class section began to fall, the remainder of the fuselage continued to climb through the summer sky for approximately 30 seconds before plummeting into the ocean off the coast of Long Island.
Some eyewitnesses reported seeing what they thought was a missile. Jim Kallstrom, head of the FBI’s New York office, who lost a friend in the disaster – the wife of an FBI colleague – tells CNN: “I would have bet my rather meager government paycheck that it was an act of terrorism.”Federal officials were already on high alert. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, destroyed by a bomb hidden by Libyan terrorists in the airliner’s baggage compartment. Terrorist Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the first attack on the World Trade Center, was on trial in Manhattan for a separate plot to blow up U.S. jetliners. And, just weeks before the TWA 800 tragedy, a truck bomb killed 19 American servicemen at the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
As White House officials monitored the TWA 800 investigation, they were acutely interested in possible links to Mideast terrorism. “We especially wanted to look for an Iranian connection,” former National Security Advisor Tony Lake tells Mattingly for No Survivors.
After an exhaustive investigation into the cause of the TWA explosion, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the probable cause was not terrorism, but an electrical short circuit that sparked an explosion in the vapor-filled center fuel tank. The NTSB warned that other aging planes were similarly vulnerable and, in fact, some safety experts had warned about the risk of fuel tank explosions as far back as the 1960s.
In a statement to CNN, Boeing says it has “implemented numerous fuel system improvements” and continues “to enhance an already safe fleet.”
CNN Presents also shows the effects of the 10-year-old disaster on the victims’ families, who gather each year on a Long Island beach to mark the anniversary. From the beginning, the families bonded over their shared horror and eventual realization that the accident might have been prevented. For a few, their loss is compounded by the suspicion that the government has not revealed all it knows about the events of that terrible night.
Theories of U.S. Navy missiles fired in error and elaborate government cover-ups still exist. Internet conspiracy rumors snared even the late Pierre Salinger, a former Kennedy White House press secretary who claimed to have secret documents proving that the jetliner was hit by a U.S. Navy missile. Actually, the documents were the musings of a former airline pilot and had been circulating on the Internet for months.
“We knew the story of TWA 800 would be a compelling documentary,” said Mark Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer of CNN Productions. “Right now, the airlines are trying to stop the Federal Aviation Administration from requiring additional safety equipment. The FAA says it’s needed to prevent future fuel tank explosions. The industry says it’s too expensive and unnecessary.”
Seems as though flight 800 was brought down by the equivilant of an errant missle after all… the ignorance of the nitrogen safety technology.
Comment by Greg Ramsdell — July 15, 2006 @ 8:54 pm
You can’t make airline travel 100% safe and still make it available (costwise) to the general public. The report was weak on evidence that wiring caused the explosion. I wish they had looked closer at the eyewitness accounts of a missile.
Comment by Ray Stein — July 15, 2006 @ 10:22 pm
I intend to watch the CNN Report on this subject tonight but, I anticipate it is a copy of the documentary presented by the History Channel a few months ago. After zealously watching the History Channel documentary and being watching the live report on CNN of the TWA’s Flight 800 the night it occurred, I conclude that, the interpretations and explanations given by the different goverment agencies including the NTSB, FBI and the CIA are not totally credible as they had major disagreements, power plays, arguments and differences of opinions and conclusions during the investigation and during the formulation of the official report. The truth is self evident, and the facts deeply analayzed must always produced the inevitable truth in any situation of this type; however, the report provided by the goverment agencies is the compromise of those disagreements and differences of all of this agencies; the truth is not negotiable. This clearly tells me and the public that there is a lot more to the incident than these agencies wants to report to the public.
Maybe they are saying the truth but, their behavios and the way they conduct business provides an unequivocal image that all the goverment agencies dostores the truth in any major incident that is of public interest, as in the Assasination of President Keenedy, the incident of the Gulf of Tonkin, etc. As far as I am concerned, I do not believe a word of what they say, as a matter of fact, it makes me more certain that there is a lot hidden for the public to find out. I appreciate CNN’s efforts in striving to bring the truth to the surface and to the publi’s domain at all times. Thanks fore a job very well done.
Raul F. Fernandez
Comment by Raul F. Fernandez — July 16, 2006 @ 4:56 pm
This program is almost over, and I am surprised that one of the most popular conspiracy theories was not mentioned. I was a flight attendant for more than 15 years, so natually people would send me all kinds of information.
At the time of flight 800’s crash, there were many reports on the ground from people seeing a ‘beam’ before the plane blew up. But of course, forensics proved that there was no missile hit. But then, I was notified that there was rumor that someone from Montauk Island sent a micor-wave beam (on a dare) to flight 800.
Thinking this was futuristic, I started studying microwave technology, and in the end, it seemed a viable reason for this plane to come down. But, what I also learned is that microwave beams leave absolutely no residue, thus no evidence. In the end, the explanation of faulty wiring is the most provable, but I must say, I experienced many small electrical fires while flying–always put out–and I find it extremely hard to believe that an entire 747 can be brought down by a spark in the fuel tank, whick is statistically unlikely.
Anyway, I was disapointed that this theory was not mentioned.
By the way, I started with Pan Am in 1979, was sold to United with the 86 aquisition and quit in 1995.
Comment by Debra Boardman — July 16, 2006 @ 11:51 pm