Posted on 11/18/2001 3:22:40 PM PST by Map Kernow
AVIATION investigators were examining a security camera video tape yesterday which appeared to have caught the break-up of the American Airlines Airbus A300 which crashed over New York on Monday as inquiries continued to focus on the failure of the tail section.
A National Transport Safety Board official in Washington said evidence was growing that the complete tail section had broken off in flight before the engines, making the jet uncontrollable. He added that there "doesn't appear to have been sabotage in any way".
Large sections of the tail and rudder assembly, made of lightweight non-metal graphite composites, have been sent to the NTSB's forensic laboratories in Washington in search of evidence of why the assembly should have failed as the Airbus, which had just taken off from JFK International Airport in New York, ran through turbulence created by a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
American Airlines Flight 587 rattled and shook as it crossed two turbulent wakes after take-off, broke up in the air, and went into a 20-second nosedive before crashing into a residential section of Queens, killing all 260 people aboard and five on the ground.
The newly discovered videotape taken from a camera on the nearby Marine Parkway Bridge captured crucial seconds from the flight of the plane. It shows the white outline of the airliner before the image appears to break up.
Then the camera captures a spreading puff of pale smoke, followed by a plume of darker smoke. But the image is too hazy to offer clear evidence at this stage, and the film has been sent to FBI laboratories for enhancement.
New York has been left reeling as a new round of funerals begins. The Rockaway section of Queens, close to the beach and the airport, was known as home to the largest concentration of New York firemen and policemen who had died in the World Trade Centre terrorist attack on September 11. This weekend the neighbourhood mourns at the funerals of residents killed in the crash.
One young widow has emerged from the horror bearing a burden felt by the whole city. Mrs Naomi Gullickson, 38, lost her fireman husband, Lt Joseph Gullickson, in the collapse of the Twin Towers, and her father Jose Perez in Monday's air crash.
"I can't believe the two men I love most in the world are gone, my father and my husband," she told the New York Daily News. "Every day I spent wishing Joe would come back from the rubble, I had my father there for me. Now he's gone too. I can't understand what God's purpose is in all this."
Mrs Gullickson is left with two infant children, Amanda, three, and Isabel, one. Only on the Friday before the air crash, her father had helped her host a wake for Lt Gullickson, missing and presumed dead, at her home in Staten Island before a memorial service was held for him at his local Roman Catholic church.
Why not just commission an animation from the CIA?
Incomplete combustion of jet fuel in engine(s) following compressor stall?
"Theories," buddy? Oh, yeah, that's right...all those naughty, naughty "tinfoil hat conspiracy theories," right?
Well, guess what? The only "theories" I've seen have been coming from your side: "uncontained engine failure," "wake turbulence," "sumpin wrong with the dang vert. stab.," "pilot thumped the dang rudder too hard," etc. No, pal, you fellers seem to have the monopoly on wild theories this time around.
And on smears. But then, we in the "tinfoil hat" crowd have ALWAYS ceded THAT ground to you....
Only if there is one.
Excellent point. Even the "anti-conspiracy kook" crowd here with all their "I-mean,-it-could-have-happened-that-way-with-enough-torque-and-lateral-G's" mechanical failure theories don't ever want to focus on how a plane could really fail in mid-air on takeoff ascent in those circumstances, unless there was some kind of bad maintenance of the plane. It's at least a reasonable working hypothesis that someone wasn't maintaining that plane properly. Or just maybe that it had been tampered with by the people who were supposed to be maintaining it.
1. No plane is going to get caught up in a wake with 1 min, 45 sec between take-offs.
2. There was simply no chance for an "unusual communication" between the pilot and the tower because there is NO communication for the first few minutes of a flight. The pilots have to concentrate on their boards and there's little if anything the tower can tell them that they need to know--or can do anything about. (There's not supposed to be any communication at descent, either, for the same reason. On a related note, she told me of an approach to the Tokyo airport during bad weather. My cousin determined it was too dangerous at the angle/altitude they were at--the approach is "through" tightly packed/built buildings; it's a tight fit.) He and his co-pilot said nothing to the tower--or each other--and simply took the plane up and re-approached. The airline behind them took the hint and went up again. There was no time to say anything to anyone.
3. There was no way the pilot dumped fuel in the bay as some reports claimed. The pilots were too busy trying to get the damned thing in the air. They couldn't swing the plane out, dump fuel, and get back on course in a matter of seconds.
4. Birds are an unlikely problem (and it was mentioned in yesterday's Post that JFK employs a falconer to keep birds away ) . Daphne said at one airport (Brisbane, I think) a certain type of pine tree was planted. In a breeze it produces a low moaning sound that scares away birds. With a stronger wind it sounds so creepy it bothers people.
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