[jlogajan]

"I will never believe it was an accident. They'll never convince me of that." -- 45-year-old bus mechanic

But the cosmotologist down the street thinks it was metal fatigue due to improperly cycled annealing.

[dead]

My butcher knows for a fact that it was them damn geese.

The goose clavical bone, wedged correctly into the rotor, would cause exactly that kind of damage, he says.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Well if noted authorities such as a cosmetologist and a bus mechanic disagree it's time to settle this matter once and for all and call in the ultimate arbiter...

Miss Cleo!

[bootless]

But the cosmotologist down the street thinks it was metal fatigue due to improperly cycled annealing.

Thank you. There may well have been a bomb in the cargo hold. But that might have also been an explosion due to a mechanical problem with the engine, combined with all the other stuff we're talking about.

I'm sorry, but it is incredibly difficult for even a person trained in accident investigation to instantaneously dissect and analyze a crash realtime while it's happening in front of them. It happens quickly, a lot happens at once, it's emotionally traumatic, and what APPEARS to be one thing often turns out to be another.

I'm not ruling out a bomb, or some other terror act, not at all. But eyewitnesses to crimes and aircraft accidents (and we may have both at the same time, here) are not at the top of the list of reliable account. This summer at Oshkosh, a friend of mine died in an approach to landing accident in an experimental plane. One of the officers of the company that made that plane witnessed it. He knew what to look for, knew the plane inside and out, and still was not able to 100% process what was basically a stall-spin accident.

I feel badly for this guy, and I'm sure that's he's able to provide the investigators with some valuable information, but it is beyond the realm of possibility that he could diagnose the cause of the accident in that manner.

On the other end of the witness spectrum, I truly believe that whoever (MIS-)handled the TWA 800 went exactly the other way with all the witnesses who saw a missile. And there are other very credible people close to the situation who believe very strongly that it was an attack. But to write off more than 100 witnesses by saying they were drunk, for instance, is wa-a-a-a-y beyond the pale, and into the criminal spectrum.

[timestax]

bttt

[Don Joe]

"But the cosmotologist down the street thinks it was metal fatigue due to improperly cycled annealing."

Is it possible -- and I'll admit this is pure conjecture at this point -- that some of the passengers and/or crew members hadn't been shopping like they should have been? Have several of them not purchased a car recently?

I want to know why no one in the media is asking these questions.

[SandyEgo]

---priceless response! thanks....

[TankerKC]

But the cosmotologist down the street thinks it was metal fatigue due to improperly cycled annealing.

Too funny!