Investigators Find Signs Birdstrike May Have Caused Crash of Flight 587

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 13, 2001 | SCOTT MCCARTNEY

[Axion]

Investigators examining one of the separated engines from American Airlines Flight 587 found foreign debris inside, indicating that the engine may have ingested a flock of birds and then caught on fire.

The engine burned internally, people close to the investigation said. But its parts appeared intact, except for the damage from what is known in aviation as ``foreign object debris,'' or ``FOD.'' That would suggest that the engine didn't suffer a catastrophic failure from some mechanical breakdown, but from sucking in birds, these people said.

[concerned about politics]

(Wash Times)....U.S. intelligence agencies received a warning that terrorists were planning an attack timed to Nov. 11 but so far do not believe yesterday's airliner crash was part of an attack.
One intelligence official said a warning was sent to senior Bush administration officials last week stating that unidentified terrorists were planning to carry out some type of mass attack on Nov. 11 — Veterans Day — at 11 a.m. There was no attack Sunday at 11 a.m. or p.m.

It was the next day! They threw a bird at the plane???

[concerned about politics]

All those planes are in one peace. Why aren't they scattered like the one in NY?

[Lumberjack]

MIRF gun (Multiple Independent Rapid Fire), to simulate clusterflock encounters

OMG!, a MilSpec MIRF Chicken Chucking ClusterFlocker Mk. 1! Feinstein is sure to want to ban those! Man o' mighty, do I want one now :)

[cookcounty]

Could someone with more than a tad of physics speak to the following:

If a detached engine sliced off the rear stabilizer, doesn't that mean the engine was moving more slowly in the flight direction than the rest of the aircraft? With less forward speed, wouldn't it drop somewhat faster? Just wondering.

[cookcounty]

Also, If the stabilizer was sliced off by a wing, wouldn't the wing be likely to be back there with the stabilizer, in the bay, instead of all the way up with the fuselage?

[stands2reason]

"No evidence" doesn't mean it didn't happen. "No evidence means "no evidence." Maybe they should have found evidence indicating a terrorist attack in the first 30 minutes (according to you), but they didn't.

[justlurking]

I guess the cabin pressurization pumps run off the engines and the intakes are close enough to pick up that smell.

The cabin is pressurized with bleed air from the compressor section of the engine(s). So, the air intakes for the engines and the cabin air system are one and the same.

[bootless]

Thanks for posting that. A birdstrike in a slower general aviation plane can decapitate the pilot or copilot.

[GussiedUp]

Maybe a flock of Terydactayls (sp?) but other than that...

[Tennessee_Bob]

Well, the one in the bottom picture is pretty well oxidized.

Tell you what. In a period of ten years, I participated in picking up around 15 aircraft crashes in Nevada. Some were fatalities, most weren't. None of them looked the same. Some were very centralized, all in one big smoking hole, others were scattered out over a square mile or so. All of them were fighters (with the exception of two Apaches that slammed a hilltop in formation, and an EA-6B that had a mid-air with another EA-6B). None of them had the long wings and high tail sections that an airliner has...items that can whip around and cause other damage to the rest of the aircraft. To be perfectly honest with you, I can't explain why the first aircraft crash doesn't look like the second doesn't look like the third, ad infinitum.

What we have in front of us with regards to the crash yesterday is a lot of evidence of catastrophic engine failure. I'm going by what I've seen here regarding pictures, as well as the pictures I've seen on various news sites, and what the eye-witnesses have been reporting.

Ahh..the eyewitnesses....flashes at the wing root, popping sounds, smoke and flame...some on this board are seeing terrorists in action, whether with a missile, a highpowered rifle, or a hidden monkey wrench. Personally, I haven't seen evidence of any of those things. What I did see though was a mechanical failure, something that unfortunately happens now and again.

I've read here on the board that it must be terrorist related, simply because the government said it wasn't. Well, following the logic that "the opposite of what the government says is the truth," then we discover that the WTC attack wasn't an attack, Bin Laden wasn't behind it, and it's really ok to eat all those fatty foods.

[concerned about politics]

So what "proof" did the government have about the WTC? Did they prove it was a terrorist attack, or merely assume?

[cookcounty]

""No evidence" doesn't mean it didn't happen. "No evidence means "no evidence." Maybe they should have found evidence indicating a terrorist attack in the first 30 minutes (according to you), but they didn't"

I think what most of us are reacting to is the constant, every half-hour news mantra "ALL EVIDENCE points to an accident" (emphasis THEIRS) that we listend to continuously yesterday on ABC radio and NBC TV. Then we got the "reasoning" from the NTSB spokesbabe that since their was no one shouting "Allah Akhbar" in the cockpit, it was probably not a bomb or sabotage. (Bizarre logic, to say the least)---makes you wonder what panic was gripping them.

[Colt .45]

I am in Naval Aviation! Not civilian aviation. I have see the results of bird strikes, and collisions, and a few other things which will bring down a plane. There are some basics which are endemic to all aircraft both military and civilian ... if the plane has no engines, it will not fly.

"f you think that the people who are able to see through this concocted BS gov't story are in the minority here, perhaps you need to find a different forum. The fact is, the vast majority of the folks here KNOW what didn't happen. Happenstance, or birds if you like, call it what you want, was not a party to this event."

Yeah ...okay ex-spurt why don't you tell me exactly what brought down that plane. And then I guess we'll have to revise aviation aircraft accident history to say that all accidents involving any aircraft as far back as, and including any that happened at Kitty Hawk in 1903 were terrorist related.

It will be funny to watch when you catch a whiff of reality.

[185JHP]

But how could a separated engine rise in the air, to an altitude above the level of the wing, and stay there long enough to knock the tail off? The same way TWA 800 went up 3,000 ft without the nose? A better spinscam is to say the engine exploded, blasting the wing into pieces, and a big enough piece of the wing then hit the tail and knocked it off. Of course, you have the problem of witnesses saying the tail departed the aircraft first... During the Bede Aviation development of the supersonic BD10J, the prototype experienced catastrophic structural damage, the empennage departed the aircraft, the thing pitched up and THEN both wings came off. Old Kallstrom has a tough row to hoe with this one. BTW the WSJ had a story a while back about some people tying the carcasses of hawks to ropes, and launching them into the air. The distinctive hawk outline in the air caused other birs to seekother pastures. PETA may have stopped this.

[concerned about politics]

And then I guess we'll have to revise aviation aircraft accident history to say that all accidents involving any aircraft as far back as, and including any that happened at Kitty Hawk in 1903 were terrorist related.

it wouldn't hurt to have an unbiased person taking another look at those records!

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

Would think that our engineers should be able to design the front of the engines so that birds can't accidentally fly in. If not they should be able to improve the design. Just would need some kind of shield on the engine front.

[185JHP]

The DC-10 O'Hare crash, which pretty much destroyed the market for DC-10s, involved a motor mount damaged when the airline corpoRATS violated the maintenance protocol - IIRC they put a jack under the engine while it was still atached to the wing and lifted it, damaging the mount. Engines don't usually fall off commercial airliners - although this thing involving the Airbus just lends credence to those who fly and say "If it ain't a Boeing, I ain't going!" FReegards

[cookcounty]

"But how could a separated engine rise in the air, to an altitude above the level of the wing, and stay there long enough to knock the tail off? "

Actually, this did happen in the case of AA flt#191 out of ORD in 1979. At takeoff, the DC-10's engine broke loose from the pylon, ran ahead of the wing, then went up over the wing after which it tumbled to the ground. Note, though, that the engine hit the ground LONG before the rest of the debris field (redirected forward momentum). It was thought that the disintegrating attachment of the pylon acted to "swing" the engine upward. This flt#587 situation has a different set of "speculations," with the engine exploding first, so that swinging on the pylon trick might not work.

[robjna]

ROTFLMAO