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.

"[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.

I would agree on your comments about engineers, whether French or those in Seattle. However, if (and it is seeming more probably based on new information) that ....

... The resulting blow could have whipped the rudder...

There should be some damage from that hard blow on the rudder and somebody at NTSB or the press should have a picture of the place of impact on the rudder. I can't imagine why we have not yet seen such a picture if the damage exists. That is what is confusing me and why I suspect a fatique problem.

I just read in a newspaper article that when delivered by Airbus this airframe had a delamination at one of the rear control attachement points and a field patch of some sort was done. It also indicated that the aircraft had encountered such sever turbulence that 47 abord had been injured. So the air frame has had at least one significant shock load that could have caused some of the materials to exceed their yield strengths. Similarly the patch might not have brought things up to 100% of design strength. I am sure we will learn more as time goes on.

But, if something had hit the rudder with such force, there should be impact damage and nobody has shown any yet. Which leads me to conclude the other obvious cause.

"And, while anything is possible, and that includes the possibility that the plane was sabotaged, the majority of Rockaway residents, The Wave included, now believe that this was indeed a tragic accident. "

"The Wave" believes that? Based on what?! Have they seen the videos? Have they seen tests for residue inside and outside the plane? Do they know the background of all the people who serviced the plane before its flight? Until these kind of data are made available, how can _anyone_ come to a firm conclusion? Modern media... Mark W.

Mark, I don't write for The Wave, I only read it...so I can't abswer your questions. But I think the last sentence in my post is the key: " Others voiced the opinion that the fact that the devastation was as a result of an accident rather than another terrorist attack somehow made them feel better".

I'm originally from Rockaway, came south about a year ago. I left many family and friends back at the beach and they've all been personally effected by the events of 9/11. The Rockaways lost a lot fine people that awful day. My best friend lost her nephew; a co-worker, her son; my in-laws, their next-door neighbor...and the list goes on. When I speak to anyone from 'back home', the first thing they say is that everyone is so depressed.
Then came the antrax scare, followed by the crash of flight 587.
Maybe The Wave, like a good mother, is trying to shield and protect its readers. They sure make it seem like anyone who doesn't believe it was an accident, is a nut case! Personally, I don't buy the story that the tail fell off because of wind turbulance. I had an ocean front apartment and for years watched thousands of planes come in for landings at JFK. Often there would be three lined up in a row and there was never a problem.
The video camera in question was positioned at the Marine Parkway Bridge, which is a good 2+ miles from the crash sight. I hoping, but doubt, that the video will answer the questions we are all asking.

>Mark, I don't write for The Wave, I only read it...so I can't abswer your questions....
Maybe The Wave, like a good mother, is trying to shield and protect its readers.

Sorry if my post was too strident -- I was just posting rhetorical questions to underscore my frustration with that kind of reporting.

I've observed in other threads -- and so have other Freepers -- that there's something bizarre and almost freakish about the notion that people could be "reassured" by something like this being accidental rather than terrorism -- I mean, heck, we're supposed to feel good thinking that a little rough air could shake a plane apart?! Yikes!

Mark W.

I can only find one unclear picture of the rudder itself. I cannot tell if there is damage of not. Carbon composites have a very little yield range (they hold or they don't). The eyewitness accounts say parts of the plane flew back and hit rudder section. The information on the other threads now leads me to believe that it was a compressor surge or a series of surges from one engine. When it finally popped hard enough, it blew a flap section off which should still have been in a 15 degree down mode after take off. As a result of the uneven lift caused a pitch change, the computer control would have whipped the rudder to a hard over to correct. The NTSB site indicates that the pilots could not hold the plane level with full aileron command (another indication for loss of a flap panel which have a far greater effective area than the aileron). The blow would not have been great as the joints were already at maximum stress. The actuators or hinge pins could have let go, allowing the rudder to free float back to center position (some rudder systems have actuators with a relief valves built in that permits an override in case of one actuator seizes). The result would be that plane now goes sideways and full force of the airspeed takes the stabilizer off. Without the rudder to compensate for the uneven flight surfaces, the plane augers in as eyewitness and flight data indicate.

Many planes have been flown home without rudders or stabilizers. The loss the rudder alone would not have doomed the aircraft as engine thrust can be used to steer the aircraft. The loss of a flap panel while in the flap down mode would the plane in a spin that very few can recover from. The DC10 in Chicago augered in due to the lost of the hydraulics, not the engine falling off. The failure of pylon took out the hydraulic lines running down the front of the wing which allowed the slats to retract on the one wing while the other remained deployed. The engine lost did not doom it, the uneven flight surfaces did.

Sounds very plausable and consistent with information I have read. The NTSB should be able to spot wing wreckage that shows the condition of the flap control surface and the location of them (i.e. one should be missing, but possibly found in the water near where the tail was found.) One concern I have read is that the black box recorder stopped prior to the final crash, indicating massive electrical/control wire failure in the tail area, ideally, the black box should record flap, rudder, engine inputs, etc. Also there should be some damage on the rudder from the flap surface unless the computer control rudder compensation was suficient to snap the rudder off. Under your scenario, there should be enough physical evidence that NTSB should be able to reach a quick conclusion.

Based on past air traffic travel around Thanksgiving, if the case is open and shut, NTSB should be under extreme pressure to make an announcement that will cause folks to relax and use airplanes for Travel by the Wednesday morning. If they don't, I will assume it is not open and shut and there is something less obvious that required detailed lab analysis.

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.

If the idiots would put cameras on the planes and record take offs and landings (first/last 8 minutes or so) they would not have to use video enhancement techniques. Every convenience store in American has a camera and we have to rely on a blurry chance recording by a highway surveilance camera to see what happened. Incredible.

An intersting new threat based on an aviation week article has been posted. It implies that the autopilot might have been mis-wired and that an unstable rudder oscilation may have caused the tail to fail. It is found at

http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/fr/577260/posts

My thoughts are that while, I doubt that the plane was in autopilot that quickly on takeoff, such a problem with the Airbus frame could have produced sufficient cyclic loadings to really fatigue the metal and composite parts within the stabilizer and rudder section of the aircraft. After enough fatique loadings and propagation of small cracks, the wake turbulence, and other takeoff forces could have propagated the crack propagation to the point of complete tail failure that occur.

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