Former NTSB Official Doubts Accident Caused Flt. 587 Crash

www.newsmax.com | 11/12/01 | Carl Limbacher

[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."

[Husker24]

Yes, It would be impossible to have the engine fall off and the stabilizer fall off and it be unrelated, if that was the case I will never fly again because too much stuff is just falling off of airplanes.

[TERMINATTOR]

And how is having muslims X-ray baggage, before they give it to their muslim buddies to load on the plane, going to help?

[Sueann]

I agree - I don't trust their sources - they are too opportunistic to trust that much.

[concerned about politics]

X-ray baggage

You know, nobody said the baggage was checked. They kept saying, over and over, that the baggage was "matched up to the customers." That's the only comment they would make when asked.
Did anyone hear of any baggage checking before loading?
Explosives can be "plastic".

[MistyCA]

lol....me too

[RightlySo]

An airbus 300 won't do 300-400 knots at takeoff. It's closer to 200 knots in the initial climb. Losing the left engine would cause 1) a yaw problem... it would turn to the LEFT because of the discrepancy in thrust from one side 2) a bank problem... the loss of weight on the left side would cause it to roll RIGHT.

[BlackJack]

A pilot on Chris Mathews talked about one engine suddenly reversing....causing plane to violently spin left to right... this knocks both engines off and rips the tail off. Then the plane pancakes on the ground. No crater. It was not terrorist action I think. Just a bad GE engine. This has happened before apparently.

[hove]

"Maybe the engine started to disinigrate and a piece of it shot out and cut off the stabilizer in mid flight before it fell off..."

Now that sounds like something Arlen Specter would come up with.

[maxamillion]

Yeah, I believe the engine came off causing the plane to twist, snapping the tail fin at the seam... The engine weighing at least a ton would travel quite aways in a downward arch & the tail fin, weighing alot less would just flutter into the sea...

[WOOHOO]

The engine didn't just "fall off". The wing didn't just "rip lose". Fuel tanks don't "just explode".

[MistyCA]

I wish I could check to see how that stabilizer was attached. If it is really attached to the inside of the plane by the metal straps, then I would have every reason in the world to wonder about arab baggage handlers inside the plane.

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

Fox News had print running across the bottom of the screen today that radio communication went out 4 minutes into the flight.

[WOOHOO]

No, it is attached in the tail by two bolts. NOT accessible thru the baggage compartments. The attach points are in an unpressurized area.

[JoeSchem]

It happened two months to the day after WTC, and within sight of Ground Zero. Oh, and in Afghanistan, the Taliban is crumbling and Osama bin Laden may not last the week.

People who think this was 'probably' an accident don't understand probability theory.

I would work on the assumption that it was an act of sabotage, and start pursuing leads before the trail gets too cold.

[concerned about politics]

I wonder how long it will be before we hear "the truth" from all the talking heads.
When they all start to spew the same story.

[WOOHOO]

That is just part of it. There are many more facts that prove TWA800 din't implode. Center fuel tanks - or any - dont just go "bang".

[Husker24]

yes, I remember that, a thrust reverser engaged or something. I dont remember that particular crash though.

[Husker24]

lol..

[let freedom sing]

Wasn't that a FORMER NTSB official? What's the point of listening to a FORMER NTSB official?-- it's all speculation. Which administration did this official serve?-- does this person have an ax to grind with the present administration?