Posted on 11/12/2001 7:40:57 PM PST by Freedom of Speech Wins
Monday Nov. 12, 2001; 11:34 p.m. EST
Former NTSB Official Doubts Accident Caused Flt. 587 Crash
Aviation expert and former National Transportation & Safety Board official Vernon Grose said late Monday that he's increasingly skeptical that the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 was purely accidental.
"I am backing away from the ready idea that this is simply an accident," Grose told Fox News Channel's John Scott.
The veteran air crash prober said that he questions the sequence in which the plane broke up over Jamaica Bay before slamming into a residential area in Rockaway, Queens.
"Photographs you've already shown tonigt (indicate) the vertical stabilizer of the aircraft with the American Airlines insignia right on it (fell into) Jamaica Bay long before the engine falls off in Queens," he told Scott.
Grose said that if the vertical stabilizer detached from Flt. 587 over Jamaica Bay, which the plane traversed before plummeting to the ground in Rockaway, it suggested that catastrophic engine failure alone may not have caused the crash.
"No, I don't think that's the situation at all," he told FNC.
"The engine that came free, which apparently was the number 1 left engine, and crashed on land - that was well after the vertical stabilizer was detached from the aircraft and that tells me that somehow..... that the airplane was progressively disintegrating, not just losing an engine and then diving into the ground."
"Earlier today I thought it was simply the loss of an engine that caused this," Grose told FNC. "But I'm not convinced now.... I am becoming more skeptical."
"Most of the incidents at Kennedy happened at Runway 31L, where Flight 587 took off. Pilots using that runway reported 139 incidents, at least 62 of which involved gulls. Other animals included barn owls, larks, sparrows, homing pigeons, a peregrine falcon and a jackrabbit.
"For years, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, has used cannon-like noisemakers and trained falcons to scare birds away. The FAA also uses sharpshooters to kill birds.
hmm...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24536-2001Nov13.html
But remember when they were looking for that border, railroad ,mass killer near Texas, Mexico border a few years back, FBI went all out for witneses, even offering a reward. But when it comes to airliner disasters, they want NO EYEWITNESSES.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.