Air Turbulence May Be Factor in Jetliner Crash, Officials Say

New York Times ^ | 11/14/01 | SHERRI DAY

[kattracks]

nvestigators said today that wake turbulence, or an air disturbance from a nearby aircraft, could have been a factor in the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, which broke apart shortly after taking off from Kennedy International Airport on Monday and plunged into a residential neighborhood.

The Airbus A-300, bound from New York to Santo Domingo, appears to have taken off from Kennedy Airport less than the standard two minutes after a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 jetliner took off, officials said.

Investigators said one of the plane's pilots could be heard on the cockpit voice recorder making comments about a "wake encounter." That could have been the Japan Airlines flight, which was four miles away, or about 800 feet higher and to the northwest of Flight 587, farther apart than they are required to be by aviation procedure.

Today's analysis of the air traffic control tower's radar data seemed to show that air turbulence could have been a factor, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board said. Although they are looking closely at that possibility, officials cautioned that the investigation was continuing and that no probable cause of the crash had been ruled in or out.

"We do not know if this really contributed in any way to the actual accident," Marion C. Blakey, chairwoman of the N.T.S.B. said at a news conference this evening. "But we are looking at this very closely."

Ms. Blakey initially said today that the American Airlines flight departed two minutes and 20 seconds after the Japan Airlines flight, but she later said, "We believe that in fact it was one minute and 45 seconds."

Ms. Blakey also said investigators were making "good progress" on the recovery of wreckage from the crash site. Both of the plane's engines are at Kennedy Airport, where they will be analyzed and later sent to Tulsa, Okla., for complete deconstruction. The plane's vertical tail fin was found in Jamaica Bay and is at Floyd Bennett Field in Queens. Preliminary analysis showed that there was no evidence that an outside object struck the vertical stabilizer, Ms. Blakey said. Investigators have also retrieved the plane's rudder, wings, nose and two black boxes.

Officials found the cockpit voice recorder on Monday and are using it to determine what went on inside the aircraft. The plane's second black box, the flight data recorder, was located on Tuesday. That recorder tracks an airplane's mechanical operations and will be compared with the cockpit voice recorder to gain a more accurate idea of what caused the incident, officials said.

George W. Black, a spokesman for the N.T.S.B., said today that the transcription of data from the second box had suffered a setback. A module on the box was damaged and had to be sliced open to recover the data, Mr. Black said. The N.T.S.B. sent the recorder to its manufacturer, which was able to recover the data.

"We have had the manufacturer repair the problem and we are reading out the data as we speak in Washington," Ms. Blakey said. "We hope we will have good information for you very shortly on the specific technical characteristics of the flight."

This evening, investigators were still trying to figure out why the Flight 587's vertical tail fin and rudder broke off in flight and landed in Jamaica Bay, while the main portion of the plane fell into a beachside Queens neighborhood in the Rockaways, just three minutes after the plane took off.

Mr. Black said such a break had happened only a few times before, in at least one case, during a trial of a B-52 bomber.

"There have been tail section fractures before over the years, but most of them were a long time ago." Mr. Black said. "There's certainly nothing in our database like this."

While N.T.S.B. officials said they have not ruled any cause for the crash of Flight 587 in or out, the preliminary evidence does not appear to point to a terrorist act or an explosion. The National Transportation Safety Board is still the lead agency on the crash. If criminal intent were found, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would take over, officials said. On Tuesday, Barry W. Mawn, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s New York office, said the agency had already begun to take some evidence from the site as a precautionary measure.

None of the 260 people on board the flight survived, officials said. Five other people who lived in Belle Harbor, the neighborhood in Queens where the plane crashed, are missing and are presumed dead, officials said.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said on Tuesday that 262 bodies had been recovered. This afternoon he said that figure remained unchanged, a fact that he said was encouraging because there had been some worry that as many as 10 people on the ground were missing.

The mayor also urged families of the victims to take advantage of the grief and counseling services at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, which include gathering specimens of DNA to aid in the identification of victims' bodies and helping families to obtain visas to the Dominican Republic to bury the dead. Most of the families have registered at the site, but he encouraged those who had not come forward to do so.

After visiting both Belle Harbor and Washington Heights on Tuesday, the mayor said he wanted to bring the two communities together for a joint memorial service. Washington Heights, a neighborhood in northern Manhattan that was home to many of the crash victims, has the densest population of Dominicans in the city. Belle Harbor, a predominately white neighborhood, is also a community in mourning, as at least 75 of its residents were firefighters, police officers or civilian workers who were killed at the World Trade Center as a result of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

"They are communities that have great deal in common," Mr. Giuliani said. "They share a great faith in God. They have a very strong reliance on family. They have very strong connections to each other, and they have a very very strong work ethic. These two communities are much more similar than they are different, and they share something else now and that is massive and disproportionate loss."

Meanwhile, at a news conference outside of the Javits Center this afternoon, community leaders from Washington Heights asked the federal government to grant amnesty for Dominican immigrants who are afraid to come forward to identify their loved ones' remains because they are living illegally in the United States.

"There's a lot of illegal immigrants here that have lost relatives, that have lost families, and they're torn," said Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, which lost six of its members in the crash. "They don't want to come forward and identify their dead wives, their husbands, their parents, only because they're not here legally. They fear that if they say who they are, they're going to be eventually deported."

Mr. Mateo said six immediate family members of Monday's crash victims had approached him with this problem so far, but he feared that dozens more were in the same situation.

On Tuesday, Senator Charles E. Schumer said he had received a commitment from the Justice Department to expedite visas for people who want to travel from the Dominican Republic to New York to attend funerals. Mr. Mateo said that offer should also be extended to illegal aliens in New York who want to travel to the Dominican Republic to bury the dead. After doing so, they should be allowed to re-enter the United States, Mr. Mateo said.

[Nita Nupress]

Please see my above post. If terrorists in the USA had this capability, we probably wouldn't hear about it unless they were caught with weapon in hand. This kind of news would bring the airline industry to a complete screeching halt.

Anyone know right off hand what the symptoms would be if a plane were targeted by a directional EMP weapon?

U.S. Threatened With EMP Attack

[Map Kernow]

You forgot the most important tool in your box!

A fresh roll of reynolds wrap!

Magic-pulse weapons and secret death rays are useless without it!~

How 'bout BS theories about "involuntary reverse thrust deployment"? Remember pushing that one? You never did state where you got that theory, or how it would explain the flight path the plane took before it crashed. You're the last guy to accuse others of conjuring wild theories, bub.

[slym]

For more on airplanes and EMP, google the name Tom Beardon or go to www.cheniere.org for more info than you ever wanted to know. He's for real, this chap is - - well qualified, recognized in his field and a truthteller.

[jlogajan]

Anyone know right off hand what the symptoms would be if a plane were targeted by a directional EMP weapon?

Give it a rest. If directional EMP weapons can rip planes apart, the US wouldn't be using missiles anymore. Why would backwater terrorists have snazzier technology that we do? Come on!

[RadioAstronomer]

EMP does not cause structural damage. It disrupts non sheilded sensitive electrical systems and causes damage to unsheilded complex electronics such as microchips. An EMP pulse could not cause a wing, tail, or engine to fall off an airliner.

[jwalsh07]

Honeywell Flight Recorder Specs

I don't know what brand was on 587 but I'm sure they are similar if not the same.

[jlogajan]

the fix is in, they are going to lie again

Some people recommend tin foil, but a double layer of wax paper and tin foil will stop those penetrating pesky conspiratorial lies. Try it!

[Dog Gone]

An EMP, if it could be directed (and I have no idea how feasible that is), should be able to completely disable a fly-by-wire system like the Airbus.

But you're right. No pieces would fall off the plane until it hit the ground.

[Nita Nupress]

EMP does not cause structural damage. It disrupts non sheilded sensitive electrical systems and causes damage to unsheilded complex electronics such as microchips. An EMP pulse could not cause a wing, tail, or engine to fall off an airliner.

Thanks! That's what I needed to know.

[RadioAstronomer]

On the other hand, does the A300 have a hydrolic backup? It's an older bird. Also EMP would not cause the noise heard on the cockpit recorders.

[slym]

From "The Reading Room" of www.rumormillnews.com:

From: Andrea Ritze
Date: Wed Nov 14, 2001 5:20 am
Subject: AA 587 and TWA 800 on Fox News

Tuesday evening on the Fox News Channel program, "O'Reilly Factor," I watched the segment where Bill O'Reilly interviewed "former NTSB investigator" Vernon Grose. While asking questions about the crash of AA 587, O'Reilly said something to the effect that he hoped that the NTSB would not behave like this was a "cover-up," which was the problem surrounding the investigation of TWA 800.

At O'Reilly's association of the word "cover-up" to TWA 800, Vernon Grose reacted positively to this lead-in, which led to O'Reilly's follow-up question. What did Vernon Grose think about the NTSB's official conclusion on TWA 800?

Grose responded that he had interviewed more people than anyone else who worked on the TWA 800 investigation, and that HE WAS NOT SATISFIED with the NTSB's official conclusion for the cause of the crash.

However, there was only the implication that there was a cover-up in the TWA 800 investigation. Grose was not explicit, and O'Reilly went on to the next point.

NOTE: The "O'Reilly Factor" program will repeat (Tuesday night) Wednesday morning from 4am-5am, EST, on the Fox News Channel.

[Dog Gone]

I don't think the A300 has backup hydraulics, but I'm not sure. What I remember is that the manufacturer touted the fact that it had redundant computer systems so that the failure of one or even two wouldn't cause a crash.

But if they all went out at once I think all the pilots could do is watch the view.

[RadioAstronomer]

At one time in my life, I used to work in an EMP shielded facility. We had contiguous welded steel plate completely surrounding the entire building (including the power plant and under the floor). To enter, we had to walk through a steel tunnel with steel RF shielded doors on each end that could only be opened one at a time.

[Nita Nupress]

Give it a rest. If directional EMP weapons can rip planes apart, the US wouldn't be using missiles anymore. Why would backwater terrorists have snazzier technology that we do? Come on!

Do I look like an expert in directional EMP weapons?  Why do you think I flagged intelligent people who were on the EMP thread to answer my questions?  And did you notice your name was not on that ping list, jlogajan? 

You were on one of the other EMP threads that I didn't link here, but I still didn't flag you. That's because in my three years here, I've come to associate the word "jlogajan" with the word "idiot."   You are certainly free to do the same with my name. :)

Now, go away.  I determined long ago that you're nothing but a loser who gets his jollies by denigrating others.   Judging from your reply to me and to someone else in #27, you've certainly reinforced that opinion once again.

[RadioAstronomer]

That would bite. I always thought there should be mechanical backups in all planes. But who am I to say, I am not an airplane designer.

[chadsworth]

Anyone know right off hand what the symptoms would be if a plane were targeted by a directional EMP weapon?

These people ( term used without much discretion) have access to some high level technology in the underground.

I just read an EMP test report that basically said - "Classified". Not much help. I gathered from the article that there is a concern however. If I can find more specific data, I will post it. The article came from

(EMP test report)

[Nita Nupress]

No pieces would fall off the plane until it hit the ground.

I guess I need to go read up on what "mechanical" problems happened on the plane and in what sequence it occurred. I've been too busy to keep up with this for the last 24 hours. The story seems to be changing much faster than I can keep up. Whatever happened to the "bird" explanation?!

(BTW, another root canal coming up. Ugh.)

[Nogbad]

The crash was caused by turbulence,
the anthrax was sent by a nutty professor, working alone.

Let's forget about these stories now and move on.

[slym]

Re EMP, check out Tom Beardon's website (especially the correspondence section). Go to www.cheniere.org for a really informative read!

[Dog Gone]

The bird theory and the turbulence theory are possible explanations that were and should have been explored. I don't think anybody investigating the crash ever said that these had been established as causes.

The one I want to see investigated is whether something exploded in the baggage compartment. But there is apparently no sound of an explosion on the voice recorder, which makes that less likely.

Have fun with that root canal. Remember, it's still better than dentures.