Posted on 08/27/2004 10:25:04 AM PDT by spyone
Me, too. Everyone wanted to hand me a tinfoil hat at the time. (But maybe I should hold onto it awhile, in case this turns out to be a bogus claim.)
All those witnesses who saw flames erupting from the fuselage were mistaken or crazy, just like the TWA Flight 800 eyewitnesses.
Yes, but the next question would be, which alias did he use?
One of the biggest lobbyists:
None other than Linda "little tommy" Daschle.
Thanks for the ping!
Here is the google search for this guy, I dont have time to go through it but it might be interesting if he is "the spokes hole" for other mysterious "accidents"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Ted+Lopatkiewicz%22&btnG=Google+Search
NO surprise to those of us castigated for venturing that the Goobermint lied about this one to save the airline industry.
At 11 AM, CBS Brian Gumball interviewed a pilot that has flown that route to the Dominican Republic in that very type of aircraft . He was off duty and the plane came down near where he lived. He actually went out to see what was wrong because from the sound he knew something was wrong. He was a witness. He -Mr. Mernenis said there were two or three explosions, he saw the engine fly off one way and the wing separated and went another way. Other witnesses say they saw the same thing.
The plane was at say 1000 to 2000 ft. tops 3 miles away then came down in a spin and hit 4 miles away.
Another witness at a further distance away heard no explosions and said only the engine came off.
Witnesses that did not hear explosions in the sky were all inside buildings looking through windows. Witnesses that heard explosions in the air were outside and close to the flight path.
I'll take the testimony off the off-duty pilot.
Another witness saw the plane after the engine came off at 500 ft the whole wing on right in flames and said it pitched left rolled and nose dived straight down.
I was an aviation mechanic and on flight crews where both reciprocal and jet engines went out and we flew for hundreds of miles...on the other engine.
I tell you this was sabotage. It was either hit by a low altitude heat seeking missile or a Taliban sympathizer that worked in maintenance put something up in the engine.
They are trying to keep the stock market from panicking. And the collapse of the already faltering aviation and related industries.
Something is very fishy here. I think it was sabotaged.
http://www.patriotsaints.com/News/Breaking/Queens_crash_sabotage.htm
This can't be. I am in shock here. I guess the next report will state that Flight 800 was shot out of the sky.
Where is my cheese?
It got brushed off to quickly imho.
... "There has been no evidence found, from what I can tell -- at least that's been relayed to us --"
Covering your @$$ I see.
Going by the retouched FBI photo this guy could have passed for a Hispanic w/o any difficulty. Most of the names on the passenger list were Hispanic.
When and where was he seen last?
Veteran aviation accident investigators say they have never seen a scenario like the one that played out in the final moments of American Airlines Flight 587. They have little doubt about what led the jet to crash Monday in New York City: Large pieces came loose shortly after it took off. But that hardly solves the mystery. Investigators are still searching for what could have caused the Airbus A300 jet to break into pieces and slam into homes in the Rockaway Beach neighborhood of Queens about 9:17 a.m.
The two General Electric CF6 engines landed separately in the neighborhood, each several blocks away from the fiery main crash site, federal sources say. The Coast Guard also pulled a part of the A300's tail from Jamaica Bay.
"Right now, to me, it is extremely mysterious. I find the evidence perplexing," says Bernard Loeb, the retired chief aviation investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
Engine failures, while rare, occur dozens of times each year. In extraordinary circumstances, engines fail so violently that they shoot damaging shrapnel into an aircraft.
However, it's unheard of that two engines would break loose at or about the same time. Jet and engine manufacturers go to great lengths to ensure that catastrophic engine failures cannot cause a crash.
Similarly, jets are designed with so much strength that even when the wings or tail fins are damaged, they almost never break loose before crashing, investigators say.
The part of the tail — a fin that rises vertically — that was recovered had no visible marks indicating it was struck by an object that could have torn it from the jet.
Even the early evidence about how the jet broke apart puzzled investigators and others. Some pilots who saw the jet after takeoff said it did not come apart, while other aviators said they saw pieces coming from it, one source says.
"It doesn't sound like the typical thing," says Kevin Darcy, the former lead accident investigator at Boeing who is now an aviation consultant.
Loeb says it is possible that the key to the crash could be with the tail section, which was hauled from the bay Monday afternoon. The vertical fin keeps the jet pointed straight and allows pilots to turn the jet's nose left or right.
If the small wings on the tail, which raise and lower the nose, also came loose, Loeb says, that could cause the jet's nose to move downward with great force. That, in turn, could theoretically shake the engines off of the wings.
Loeb cautions that such a scenario is highly speculative. "I don't really know exactly. But I think that's possible," he says.
Whenever engines break off a jet, investigators focus on possible failures within the engine. The CF6 engines on American's A300 fleet have recently drawn the attention of safety regulators.
The NTSB issued a recommendation last December urging that the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates the aviation industry, address safety issues on the CF6 engines.
On Sept. 22, 2000, a CF6 engine on a US Airways Boeing 767 blew up as mechanics tested it on the ground in Philadelphia. There was a loud explosion, and a fire broke out under the left wing of the jet, the NTSB reported.
"The incident raises serious safety concerns because, if it had occurred during flight rather than on the ground during maintenance, the airplane might not have been able to maintain safe flight," the NTSB wrote.
Other incidents involving the engine have also raised concerns among investigators.
In April 2000, a Continental DC-10, which had three CF6 engines, had one engine break apart as it took off from Newark International Airport. Pieces from that engine damaged a second engine. The crew landed the jet after burning off fuel, and no one was injured.
Since then, the FAA has required additional inspections of all CF6 engines. "My understanding is that the airplane was in compliance with all airworthiness directives," says Al Becker, spokesman for American.
Birds are another possible cause of engine failure. The marshy area near New York's Kennedy International Airport, where Flight 587 took off 3 minutes before the crash, is a haven for birds. Several crashes, though not on A300 jets with GE engines, have been caused by engines exploding after birds were sucked into them.
However, several accident investigators say it seems unlikely that such failures struck Flight 587. Major failures on jet engines are often obvious after a crash, but sources said the engines exhibited little evidence of such a failure. The sources cautioned that such on-scene observations are not always reliable.
Furthermore, earlier failures of the CF6 engines have not caused them to break off. On the US Airways 767, for example, the engine remained on the wing.
In fact, one engine specialist who asked not to be identified, said modern, high-power engines like the CF6 have failed so rarely in flight that investigators have little idea what would happen to a jet if one came apart.
Investigators also say it seems unlikely that failures violent enough to shake each engine loose from the aircraft could strike both at about the same time.
Though federal officials went out of their way to say no evidence suggested sabotage, officials say privately that they cannot rule it out. It is possible, safety experts say, that a bomb or a missile downed the jet. In the past, terrorists have attempted to shoot down jets using small handheld missiles. Loeb says an explosion at the rear of the jet could have caused the tail section to break free.
Investigators hope the answers will come soon. The voice and data recorders, which have been recovered, will offer important evidence about how systems aboard the jet were functioning and what the pilots were saying in the final moments.
I read the passenger list several times. There were only a couple of "different" names. I was trying to make a connection to Nuyen, the anthrax victim who went to church with many of those from that island group and the other oddball anthrax victim in Connecticut who only went out on weekends. Wasn't Nov. 12, 2001, Veteran's Day and people were HOME instead of at work?
Imagine the irony of getting on a plane to die for Allah, but before you get the chance, the plane goes down on its own because of mechanical failures!!!!!
You don't get to die for Allah. You don't get any credit. And worst of all, you don't get any of the 72 virgins!
Major bummer!!
I do not believe the government should lie.
However, if this had been an act of terrorism, and if the government knew about it, then the cover-up certainly worked! The terrorists got ZERO benefit from it. Perhaps terrorists groups concluded that they get no bang for the buck by bringing down aircraft since they didn't get any publicity!
That being said, I highly doubt that this was terrorism. Due to the arguments above I think that one of the organizations would have stepped forward and claimed responsibility. These guys are into advertising. There are lots of unconventional and/or foreign media outlets which cannot be controlled by the U.S. government.
As I was typing the previous paragraph, it occurred to me that November 2001 was a really "iffy" time to be a terrorist. The U.S. had not reacted to 9/11, but it was clear that some heads were going to roll. Perhaps they didn't want to stick their heads up.
[To anyone who has read this far: No, I am not John Kerry just because I can hold a debate with myself! :]
But, how did he get explosives into the tail fin? Unexplained.
If this is true he was travelling under an assumed name & non-Canadian passport.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=105&STORY=/www/story/11-14-2001/0001615907
From the description of events taken from the black box, it doesn't sound consistant with a bomb.
Accident Sequence
The NTSB calculated that the time between flight 587’s liftoff from Runway 31L until impact with the ground was 103 seconds. The flight data recorder (FDR) recorded data for about 93 seconds after liftoff and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) continued to record information until at or about the time of the plane’s impact with the ground.
Based on radar data, flight 587 took off approximately 105 seconds behind a Japan Airlines 747. The FDR indicates that flight 587 encountered two wake vortices generated by JAL flight 47. The second wake encounter occurs about 8 seconds before the end of the FDR data. For the first few seconds after the second wake encounter, the aircraft responded to flight control inputs. Both wake encounters averaged about 0.1 G lateral (side to side) movement. During the last 8 seconds of FDR data, the plane experienced three stronger lateral movements, two to the right of 0.3 and 0.4 Gs, and then one to the left of 0.3 Gs. These lateral forces corresponded in time with rudder movements. The NTSB continues to investigate the cause of the rudder movements.
The FDR’s rudder data becomes unreliable about 2.5 seconds before the end of the recording, and sound spectrum analysis shows that engine sounds can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder beyond that point.
The rudder and tail fin were found first in the wreckage path, followed by the engines and then by the main wreckage impact point at the intersection of Newport and 131st Street, Belle Haven, New York.
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