# TWA Flight 800 **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 8, 2003, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332 "2003-01-08T17:26:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Flying\_Monk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/48db29/32.png) [@Flying\_Monk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flying_Monk)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/1 "2003-01-08T17:26:47Z")
What really happened? ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/2 "2003-01-08T17:59:04Z")
It really, really crashed. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/3 "2003-01-08T18:23:21Z")
The NTSB says it was probably a spark. [http://www.ntsb.gov/events/TWA800/default.htm](http://www.ntsb.gov/events/TWA800/default.htm) [http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/aar0003.htm](http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/aar0003.htm) Thousands of conspiracy theorists say it was shot down by missiles, or a UFO, or the American military. [http://www.flight800.org/](http://www.flight800.org/) [http://www.twa800.com/index.htm](http://www.twa800.com/index.htm) [http://www.cowan70.freeserve.co.uk/miscellaneous/twa\_800.htm](http://www.cowan70.freeserve.co.uk/miscellaneous/twa_800.htm) So, who you gonna believe, the official government report–or thousands of conspiracy theorists? \<\< shrug \>\> ---
**Author:** ![Kamandi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5daacb/32.png) [@Kamandi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamandi)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/4 "2003-01-08T18:33:57Z")
The bigger question is: why does **Flying\_Monk** have zero posts? Conspiracy…? ---
**Author:** ![jk1245](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@jk1245](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jk1245)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/5 "2003-01-08T18:39:35Z")
That’s kind of like the ol’ time travel paradox isn’t it? If FlyingMonk hasn’t posted, how can we see that he/she has 0 posts? If FlyingMonk _has_ posted, how can he/she have 0 posts? Hmmm… As to the OP, read **Duck Duck Goose’s** links and then decide for yourself who is more believable. ---
**Author:** ![jebert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ec9cab/32.png) [@jebert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jebert)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/6 "2003-01-08T19:18:49Z")
Were there settlements with the victims’ families? If so, it’s hard to believe TWA, Boeing and their insurers would just pay up and let the government off the hook if there was any chance that it was an errant military missile. Or did the government just pay them off to take the fall, in the process greatly widening the circle of co-conspirators who have managed to keep their mouths shut all these years? ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/7 "2003-01-08T19:47:02Z")
> **[Newsday | Long Island's & NYC's News Source](https://www.newsday.com)** > > Breaking News, data & opinions in business, sports, entertainment, travel, lifestyle, plus much more. Newsday.com is the leading news source for Long Island & NYC. > [@](#): > > 11 Families Settle Flt. 800 Suits > By Thomas Frank > Staff Writer > > October 25, 1998 > > Eleven families whose relatives died in the TWA Flight 800 crash have received cash settlements from the airline and plane manufacturer Boeing. > > In six cases, the victims were crew members on the plane that crashed off Long Island on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people on board. Some of the victims were unmarried, which makes their claims worth less than those who had spouses or children now deprived of income. > > The settlements, believed to be the first after the crash, were reached in the past month or two, said John Greaves, a Los Angeles attorney who represents four of the families. “These people wanted closure,” he said yesterday. > > Greaves would not disclose the settlement amounts, but lawyers familiar with them said they were in the low, six-figure range. Greaves said the settlements were “very reasonable,” because TWA and Boeing haven’t been held liable and the National Transportation Safety Board hasn’t found a cause. > > \< snip \> > > Nearly all the families of victims on the Paris-bound flight have sued TWA and Boeing. Most cases are pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. > > People who still have claims said they understood why others settled. [http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/23/twa.hearing.02/](http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/23/twa.hearing.02/) > [@](#): > > Review of TWA Flight 800 probe wraps up > Aging planes have wiring problems similar to those that may have caused crash > > August 23, 2000 > Web posted at: 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) > > …As of August 8, Boeing had settled 52 of 175 lawsuits brought by relatives of the 212 passengers and 18 crew members on board Flight 800. Lawyers have valued some settlements in the multimillions of dollars. [http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/23/twa.hearing/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/23/twa.hearing/index.html) > [@](#): > > NTSB: Metal shavings may have led to crash of TWA Flight 800 > August 23, 2000 > Web posted at: 12:24 a.m. EDT (0424 GMT) > > Federal investigators will close out the most expensive and complex investigation in the history of the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday after meeting a second day to discuss their findings in the crash of TWA Flight 800. > > Federal investigators said Tuesday they remain certain a fuel tank explosion – not a criminal act – destroyed TWA Flight 800, killing all 230 aboard. And, as the government neared the end of the four-year probe, it said an electrical short circuit most likely triggered the blast. > > One possible cause for the short circuit, NTSB investigator Robert Swaim told the board, is tiny metal shavings. > > Investigators “found that rather than removing drill shavings, maintenance people sometimes used compressed air to simply blow shavings off of avionics in the compartment,” Swaim said. > > Some drill shavings were found on wreckage that had been about two inches from the route of the fuel gauge wires, Swaim said. > > “The shavings raise the possibility that similar shavings had gotten into the wire bundles and damaged the wires,” Swaim said. “The number of repairs found throughout the wreckage indicated that there may have been numerous likely locations for a possible short circuit on TWA 800.” > > And, he said, much of the wire recovered from the wreckage on the ocean floor had damaged insulation. > > \< snip \> > > “The cause of the in-flight break up of TWA Flight 800 was a fuel-air explosion in the center wing tank,” said Bernard Loeb, the NTSB’s director of aviation safety. > > He said the possibility that the blast might be linked to structural failure on the plane or to an explosive device, such as a bomb or missile, has been ruled out. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2003, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/8 "2003-01-08T20:33:12Z")
A flying monk and a flying nun collided nearby and the tremedous ball of antienergy engulfed the airplane. ---
**Author:** ![Edlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8797f3/32.png) [@Edlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edlyn)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/9 "2003-01-09T01:06:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > \*\*A flying monk and a flying nun collided nearby and the tremedous ball of antienergy engulfed the airplane. \*\* That’s as good an explanation as the NTSB provided! The NTSB should have just called you instead of going to all the trouble of a special presentation (complete with overheads), retrofitting planes with new parts, etc. I hadn’t heard their claim about the metal shavings, though. Nice touch. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/10 "2003-01-09T01:56:54Z")
Uh, **Edlyn** , are you saying an explosion in the center fuel tank was impossible, or are we being whooshed here? ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/11 "2003-01-09T02:34:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kamandi \* > **The bigger question is: why does Flying\_Monk have zero posts?** An OP isn’t a post, according to Cecil’s official postercounter. Welcome to the message board, **Flying\_Monk**. ---
**Author:** ![Boo\_Boo\_Foo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@Boo\_Boo\_Foo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boo_Boo_Foo)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/12 "2003-01-09T05:12:56Z")
Anyway you look at it though, it was a dreadful terrible way to go for the people remaining in the aft 2/3rds of the plane. You see, after the first 1/3rd of the plane exploded away, the monster jet that a 747 is simply kept steaming away at full throttle on it’s upward climb to cruising altitude. She was at 17,000 ft when the explosion occurred. Now there’s a fair bit of speculation involved here, but the facts are as follows. The plane kept flying level for about 30 seconds AFTER the explosion and then, because she was now tail heavy, started to aim upwards. It’s generally agreed, that at least a quarter of the passengers who were in the remaining 2/3rds of the plane at this point would still have been alive, and by any yardstick, you’d have to agree, that would be a pretty terrifying ordeal. Imagine sitting in the back section of a 747 and having the front 1/3rd of the plane get blown away on a sunset evening 13 minutes into your flight? Imagine looking forward and seeing open sky, and feeling wind roar etc? Slowly, the plane gained height and went into a stall, and then, still under full power, rolled right into a straight dive into the sea. As you know, 747’s aren’t supposed to go into straight dives into the sea from 20,000 plus feet under full power. And through all of this, there were passengers still alive in the aft sections. I can but only try to imagine the horror involved in such a death. ---
**Author:** ![happyheathen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5e925/32.png) [@happyheathen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/happyheathen)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/13 "2003-01-09T05:44:40Z")
Just for giggles - I follow aviation sites, and wander around a bit. (This is why I can’t provide a link). Anyway, AVWEB published a rather thoughtless article in which (allegedly) it reffered to a lawyer as an “ambulance chaser”, and, unfortunately, named the lawyer. He sued. In following that story, I found his web page (no link). He alleges that the plane in question was, at the time the design defect was supposed to be fixed, in the service of the Iranian Air Force (transport planes lead interesting lives), and the Iranians did not perform the specified fix. So the question becomes: how did that plane become TWA 800 without the retro-fit being applied? ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/14 "2003-01-09T08:38:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kamandi \* > \*\*The bigger question is: why does **Flying\_Monk** have zero posts? > > Conspiracy…? \*\* The software starts counting at 0, not 1. Also a thread with only the OP has 0 posts although it is easy to get around that by saying it has 0 “responses”. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/15 "2003-01-09T13:31:16Z")
> [@](#): > > The software starts counting at 0, not 1. Also a thread with only the OP has 0 posts although it is easy to get around that by saying it has 0 “responses”. Irrelevant. Software _normally_ counts from 0. However, post counts start at one. The SD board has no response counter. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/16 "2003-01-09T13:44:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by smiling bandit \* > \*\*Irrelevant. Software _normally_ counts from 0. However, post counts start at one. The SD board has no response counter. \*\* Sorry to point out the obvious but if you look in any of the forum pages you will see that a thread with one post has a 0 (zero) in the column titled “replies”. ---
**Author:** ![Edlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8797f3/32.png) [@Edlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edlyn)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/17 "2003-01-09T17:54:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by El\_Kabong \* > \*\*Uh, Edlyn, are you saying an explosion in the center fuel tank was impossible, or are we being whooshed here? \*\* I wouldn’t say impossible, it’s just not what happened to 800 to the best of my belief. I had 14 years background in aerospace (pay close attention to these things) and had someone who worked for TWA when it happened. I also had CNN on when the first announcement was made and heard everything as initially reported that evening. When the flight data was available, I gave a copy of it to the guy who designed the AOA (angle of attack) sensor for him to review. His comments: it’s like it hit a brick wall. An article buried in the local paper reported what two (local) NWA pilots in the area saw that night matched what I had heard the evening it happened. There’s more, but you know, it still upsets me to look back on this issue. I’m not into conspiracy, but I can’t lay aside my observations to accept their story. I like the drill shavings, though: neither explosion, nor wind, nor fire, nor water, nor transport can shake them away! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/18 "2003-01-09T18:14:35Z")
To be fair, **Edlyn** , all of my experience (20+ years) in electromechanical products (building, installing and maintaining) in a variety of heavy land and sea vehicles agrees with the supposition that drill shavings in wire bundles are Bad Joo-joo. They are a pervasive product of many manufacturing or repair processes, and unbelievably insidious when not properly removed. Even in moderate vibration environments, they act as efficient little abrasive monsters, filing away at wire insulation. I think it’s quite plausible for the NTSB to say that _if_ drill shavings were not adequately removed from proximity with that aircraft’s wire bundles, the likelihood of a short circuit caused by abrasion of insulation is fairly high. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/19 "2003-01-09T18:20:39Z")
In a fine bit of research (professional courtesy absolutely intended), **Duck Duck Goose** uncovered: > [@](#): > > October 25, 1998 > > Eleven families whose relatives died in the TWA Flight 800 crash have received cash settlements from the airline and plane manufacturer Boeing… This pretty much punctures a lot of the conspiracy theorists’ craziness on Flight 800. If it really was a missle or other outside agent that brought down the plane, do you think TWA and Boeing would have stumped up a dime in settlement cash? Or do you think the government paid them off, Pierre Salinger? I have a personal interest in this story, well, almost personal. I grew up not far from Montoursville, a community which lost a group of kids who were on a trip to France. My best friend taught one of their classes. I remember how many in Montoursville thought it was a real insult that the conspiracy theorists had tried to get in on the investigation, an act which could have damaged any settlement claims. So much for “conspiracy theory” being a harmless, victimless lark. ---
**Author:** ![HomeSlice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/9d8465/32.png) [@HomeSlice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HomeSlice)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twa-flight-800/147332/20 "2003-01-09T18:24:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jebert \* > \*\*Were there settlements with the victims’ families? If so, it’s hard to believe TWA, Boeing and their insurers would just pay up and let the government off the hook if there was any chance that it was an errant military missile. Or did the government just pay them off to take the fall, in the process greatly widening the circle of co-conspirators who have managed to keep their mouths shut all these years? \*\* HOLY LURKER BATMAN! 😃