Posted on 11/17/2001 10:58:21 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Saturday, Nov. 17, 2001 11:39 a.m. EST Flight 587 Video Shows 'Puff of Smoke' in Sky A second-by-second videotape of the final moments of doomed American Airlines Flight 587 shows a puff of smoke in the sky seconds after it crashed outside New York's JFK Airport Monday, lending credence to eyewitnesses who say the jetliner exploded before slamming into a Rockaway, N.Y., neighborhood. Though Flight 587 probers have not released the key videotape, shot from a Metropolitan Transportation Authority highway surveillance camera, reporters from New York's Daily News were allowed to view it Friday. "The tape ... shows a white outline of the jetliner against a clear sky in fairly steep decline," the News reported in Saturday editions. "Seconds later, the outline disappears and the video shows a blurry, white, undefined patch as the plane apparently breaks apart." Visible in one of the final frames of the sequential videotape is "a puff of white smoke in the sky." The images of Flight 587's final moments are said to be "very unclear." FBI and NTSB investigators hope to learn more through video enhancement techniques. On Friday, MTA spokesman Tom Kelly told NewsMax.com that the FBI had turned the videotape over to the NTSB, but apparently both agencies now have copies and continue to analyze them. Enhancement of the Flight 587 video could confirm the accounts of eyewitnesses like Jackie Powers, who, minutes after the crash, told both ABC News and WABC Radio in New York that she saw "an enormous flash" near the wing on the A-300 Airbus before it dropped from the sky. "I don't know if it was fire or an explosion," she said. "It appeared that debris fell from the left side [of the plane]. It just plummeted. It had no momentum whatsoever. It just plummeted." Dozens of other witnesses told various media outlets they saw the jet either explode or catch fire before it crashed. An explosion would be a problem for NTSB officials, who spent the better part of the last few days trying to sell the idea that the plane's vertical stabilizer snapped off, causing the in-flight breakup, because of "wake turbulence" from a Japan Airlines 747 that had taken off from JFK two minutes earlier. Independent aviation experts have generally scoffed at the NTSB theory. "[747 wake turbulence] is not strong enough to be able to break off a tail or to compromise any sort of a normal airplane," said ABC News aviation analyst John Nance on Friday. "They could turn a little airplane upside down. But especially an A-300, which is a jumbo jet - no way in the world should that ever have any potentially disastrous impact on the aircraft or the tail," he explained. On Wednesday, an unnamed aviation expert quoted in New York's Newsday said one likely explanation for Flight 587's breakup was a bomb exploding on board. (See: Aviation Expert: Bomb One Likely Cause of Flight 587 Crash.)
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
TWA 800
War on Terrorism
Actually, the heavier the plane is, and the slower it is going, the bigger the wake disturbance.
Boats in water are a direct parallel. The Queen Mary makes a bigger wake than than a catamaran. And what happens to the wake on your bass boat when you slow down entering harbor? The amplitude gets higher...because it has to move the same amount of water (displaced by weight, which remains constant) in less time.
There are 3 stories on this and not one mention of terrorism as a possible cause in any of them.The T word is not used at all.
According to USA Today this was an accident, case closed.
The new NTSB Chief Blakey is a political snake in the grass who has NO AVIATION EXPERIENCE.
To the credit of the real investigators at NTSB, they have repeatedly responded to reporters questions that THEY CANNOT RULE OUT TERRORISM.
The press however, feels we are not in posession of enough intelligence to even be insulted, therefore the outlandish spectacle of their constant reference to an "accident"
By the way, Blakey now says that the real cause won't be "known for many months".
Not only is she an overnight expert in aviation accident investigation but she is now apparently psychic.
You're lying. Strike one.
I read "Proof" that it was engine failure.
Another lie. Strike two.
I've read "proof" that the tail fell off in the wind!
No you haven't -- you've read instrument data that said the aircraft experienced strong turbulance, and people are examining the possibility that this may have overstressed the tail.
Strike three, you're out. Go collect your tinfoil hat, you've earned it.
So you just happened to join freerepublic today and just happened to know about pics on the web site of the now totally discredited NTSB .
The photos are proof of nothing.
I can assure you that Blakey has no business talking about the cause of this accident because she is a just appointed political hack with NO EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER IN INVESTIGATING AIRPLANE ACCIDENTS.
Why don't you stop the B.S. and tell us who you are and who you work for.
"Ken: I'm still shacking, its a its just a terrible sight."
Yes, I'll bet it is, but really, what he does on his own time has no bearing on the situation at hand.
Who typed this transcript for Fox? A taliban reject? Bad voice-to-text software? An untrained monkey?
Frankly, with the degree of accuracy shown in the above interchange, I question the accuracy of the rest of the transcript.
IMO it was sheer idiocy to design the tail so that the attachment point was at the point of highest stress. That's just asking for trouble. If I was designing it, I would have put a couple of reinforced slots in the top of the plane's body under the vertical stabilizer, then had the two side panels extend through the slots, and attach them to the inside bottom of the plane.
That would allow the high stress point (where the stabilizer transfers its torque to the plane) happen well away from the attachment point, and the stress on the attachment point would be minimal.
The way they designed it was almost like gluing two wood panels together end-to-end and then using it as a diving board. First person to walk out on the board would snap it in half. Lumber that's factory-joined is dovetailed together, to spread any force over a larger area. I can't think of any reason to put an attachment at the highest stress point of a critical assembly.
Disclaimer: I'm not an aircraft designer, but I did see "Flight of the Phoenix". :) And, I have enough common sense to know that you don't fabricate a butt union for something that'll be put into a situation where it'll receive torsional or sideways stress.
Can you?
I wouldn't trust that snake in the grass Blakey if she said the Earth was round.
Statistically, the crashes should be distributed according to this.
Maybe an intrepid soul could find the departure runway for those flights too....
Ther new head of the NTSB however,who walks around with her NTSB jacket like shes an expert while KNOWING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT AIRPLANE CRASHES, insists on stating they have "NO EVIDENCE OF TERRORISM".
She is a snake in the grass because she knows she will be quoted instead of the real investigators.
The reality is that there is more evidence of terrorism than not and that the Government and anybody else is way out of line in saying anything other than they're not sure.
So which Government agency do you work for?
What you said kind of goes with my thoughts in post #86: the greater problem: not admitting a security breach. How can security breaches be fixed if "they don't exist?"
Perpetual "I no nuthink."
Now, this would be interesting. I'd like to see numbers and comparisons on this type of data.
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