Posted on 06/26/2007 8:24:12 AM PDT by Hal1950
UK filtration and advanced materials group Porvair is among a number of companies working to prevent accidents like the one that killed 230 passengers aboard TWA flight 800 in a fireball off Long Island.
The Boeing 747 en route to Paris from New York exploded 12 minutes after takeoff from JFK International airport on 17 July, 1996. The cause was the subject of intense debate for years, but investigators concluded vapours ignited in a fuel tank.
Nearly eleven years later, Boeing has given initial approval ('qualification') for one of Porvair’s filter designs to prevent similar explosions in aircraft fuel tanks, the company said on Tuesday.
‘We had expected production of this unit to start immediately after qualification, but delays with other suppliers to this project have postponed this until later in the year,’ Porvair (PRV) said in a statement.
Porvair’s filter is part of a more complex unit for airplane fuel tanks that's being assembled from parts contributed by a number of manufacturers, Porvair group finance director Chris Tyler said in an interview.
The aerospace fuel tank inerting filter, as it’s called, is designed to inject nitrogen into an aircraft’s fuel tank in order to create a ‘fire blanket’ that eliminates the risk of an explosion, he said.
Porvair in February signed a supply agreement with Parker Hannifin for a filter similar to that being designed for the Boeing fleet’s fuel tanks to be used in the fuel tanks of Airbus aircraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at citywire.co.uk ...
Why let the truth get in the way of propaganda?
http://www.dsd.es.northropgrumman.com/commercial_aircraft/threat/zone.html addresses current threat. What it was back then I don’t know but I am looking.
Light to carry and relatively easy to operate, the FIM-92 Stinger is a passive surface-to-air missile, shoulder-fired by a single operator, although officially it requires two. The FIM-92B can attack aircraft at a range of up to 15,700 feet (4800 m) and at altitudes between 600 and 12,500 feet
The Gremlin has a max range of 4500 meters, so that's not inconcievable. Since it was designed to hit combat aircraft, tracking a commercial jumbo would be childsplay.
The SA-18 Grouse has a max range of 16,000 feet. So there's another one.
You really should do just a teensy bit of research before you spout off that it's 'impossible'.
L
I still lean towards the "errant training missile" from an Aegis destroyer theory, however. The FAA tried and tried to get a 747 center fuel tank to explode using jet fuel, heat, and a spark, but couldn't. They ended up filling the tank with propane in order to duplicate the explosion.
Excerpt from the Sandia Labs final report
"Laboratory tests at Cal Tech suggested that the combustion behavior of heated gaseous Jet-A fuel-air mixtures can be replicated using a mixure of hydrogen-propane premixed with air. The choice of this simulant fuel-air mixture is based on reproducing bum rates and overpressures in laboratory-scaled vessels. The use of the simulant fuel bypasses the difficulties associated with heating liquid jet fuel, hence, the quarter-scale test apparatus required minimal external environmental control."
Never happened before that night -- never happened since.
Who would waste money buying their product?
In Afghanistan, stingers were used well beyond their specified range for hitting slow-moving Soviet aircraft.
It wasn’t “at altitude,” it was below 14,000’; it had just taken off minutes before. Furthermore, it was asked to delay climbing to give vertical clearance to another aircraft, so it was even lower than it could have been given the time since takeoff.
Everybody trying to make money from a fraud.
Sounds like all the Y2K consultants!
This British company is never going to make the big bucks preventing spontaneous fuel-tank explosions in 747s.
They need to get with the 21st Century and cash in on the current scare: global warming.
Get a mega-contract with the British government to filter out greenhouse gases and turn them into fertilizer and they’ll make billions off the gullible.
No, they really don't. Stingers can't hit anything above 12,500 feet and they can't hit anything going anywhere near 500 mph. There's no way in hell that a Stinger -- or any MANPADS -- can come close to hitting a commercial airplane at speed and at altitude.
The Gremlin has a max range of 4500 meters, so that's not inconcievable
Yes, it is inconceivable. TWA 800 was at about 4500 meters when it exploded, so the Gremlin could have hit it... maybe... if it had been hovering like a helicopter and the person who was firing it was standing on dry land directly underneath. But at 500mph, there's no way it would have anything like the range needed to down the plane. Same goes for the SA-18. We're not talking about this being a little bit beyond the maximum capabilities of any of these missiles, this is far beyond their capabilities.
Moreover, all of them would have had to have been fired from boats 8 miles out into the ocean, not an easy task by any stretch. If you've ever tried to use a MANPADS, you'll understand what I'm talking about.
Perhaps. But a Boeing 747 is not a small ground support aircraft flying low and slow. The aircraft in question was at around 4500 meters and traveling at 500 mph. That's so far beyond a Stinger's capabilities, it's almost laughable.
But they don't routinely blow up immediately after!...........
The SA-16 H Gimlet can hit a target moving over 800 mph. So you're full of crap on this one, too.
It took me all of 3 minutes to look that info up.
So you're simply wrong. Hit the links I provided and see it in black and white.
Hitting a commercial aircraft at 15K ft with a MANPADS wouldn't be all that difficult at all.
L
It could with the aid of a small rocket, fired from below........
TWA800 was at 13,800' msl.
TWA800 was just off the southern coast of Long Island.
Given your ignorance of the facts about exactly where TWA800 was at the time of the explosion, I would seriously question any knowledge you may possess about the operational capabilities of any MANPAD.
The key witnesses are Sven Faret & Ken Wendell who prepared their own detailed report. They were flying at about 8,500 feet and saw the huge fireball explode below that altitude, flew over to the smoke cloud it left and determined that the top of it was at 7,500 feet
The brief fiery streak, seized upon by the conspiracy theorists as a missile, appears to have been the ignition source of the huge fireball explosion as evidenced ty the fact that by then all of the wreckage had been falling for quite some time.
Additionally, ten expert metallurgists (four from NTSB, three from Boeing, two from FBI Laboratory, and one scientist consultant) determined from their own extensive examinations of the wreckage that there was no evidence that TWA 800 was the victim of a missile(s) shootdown.
Well stated, hats off to You!
Although I have read two books regarding the flight I claim absolutley NO expertise or inclination to enter this argument.
I would like to know your experience and theory about the crash of flight TWA 800 ?
I am not trying to be a smart A$$. I would really like to know what you think.
Not entirely true. The sister plane to TWA 800 (both were 747-131's delivered to Iran in the early '70's), blew up in midair in 1976 over Madrid, Spain after (supposedly) being hit by lightning.
Never say never.
The 747 is great plane with a marvelous safety record but, did it ever occur to you tin foil hatters that the cover-up may be on the Boeing end of it?
TWA800 was flying at 275 knots (316 mph), not 500 mph.
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