[Steven W.]

This would also explain why fuel (early black) fire was so minimal in the crash zone.

[jlogajan]

No, the pilot was in a conspiracy to cover up a missile hit. :-)

[Clinton's a rapist]

Was this before or after the wing fell off?

[Texaggie79]

I heard him say that on fox.

[BlueHorseShoe]

I just heard that. Just terrible to hear this. Those poor people.

And...I accidentally flipped channels to CNN and can you believe Hillary has her ugly mug on the tube again! She will not go away! I'm so sick and tired and weary of her mug.

[steveo]

How fast can these aircraft dump their fuel? Wasn't the flight only a few minutes old at the time of the crash?

[DainBramage]

He had just taken off, hardly enough time. Pitaki doesn't know.

[joathome]

Yeah, I heard some guy on Fox say that the pilot would know there were mechanical problems, but he wouldn't necessarily know what caused those problems. This does not tell us it wasn't sabotage or terrorist related.....just that there probably weren't any terrorists in the cockpit.

[longleaf]

When was Gov. Pataki appointed to the NTSB? What is his source for this?

[dead]

Did anybody post the obligatory "Nothing to see hear folks, time to move on and go shopping" post yet?

I always love reading that witty response 50 times an hour.

[Dog Gone]

Well, it's a good thing nobody was smoking on a boat at the time in Jamaica Bay.

[Smogger]

People are saying mechanical failure this and mechanical failure that. Of course it was a mechanical failure. Even if a bomb goes off on the plane the result would be a mechanical failure.

The question isn't whether or not the plane crash was the result of a mechanical failure. It obviously was. The question is was the mechanical failure the result of improper maintenance, an act of God, or deliberate sabotage.

I suspect it will take quite a while to learn the truth about this (if ever.) In the meantime I think that the safest assumption is that it was a deliberate act of sabotage.

[June2]

I think we should all look at this suspiciously. The hits on the WTC showed that these guys did their homework. They knew where to hit the building to weaken its structure. Is it such a stretch to think that they may have sabotaged airplanes to fail at some later point in time(by extensive studying of the planes) by compromising a critical part of an airplane.

They did find mechanic ID's on some of them didn't they?

[Nimitz]

Your kidding, right? The damn thing is still burning. Believe what you will. Pataki is fighting the battle of his life to halt the spiral of economic destruction that is taking place in his state. It has been going on for 4 years and has been accelerated in recent months. Pataki knows they dumped fuel huh? Fifty different slants on this story are floating right now. The fires are still BLAZING and the NTSB is already out with a probable ".....looks like mechanical failure..." Right. Pataki is just shoring 'em up.

Remember TWA800

[Travis McGee]

A fifty caliber sniper round fired up the runway could easily hit the 12' diameter jet intake and cause the engine to self destruct.

Instead of posting National Guardsmen inside of terminals, they should be on the perimeters and approaches.

[BluH2o]

Haven't read thru every post on this string so someone may have touched on this ... a catastrophic engine failure that caused the wing to disintigrate would dump fuel. My take on this ... the crew didn't have time to initiate a fuel dump, they were to busy trying to stabilize the aircraft.

[ikka]

Gov. Pataki is reporting that the pilot of the ill-fated American Airlines flight dumped most of the airplane's fuel over Jamaica Bay, anticipating a crash landing and most likely indicating a trained response to onboard mechanical failures.

IF he dumped fuel, wouldn't he also have time to inform the tower?

[webster]

Dumped fuel HA!

[smokinleroy]

How dare he dump that nasty fuel on those helpless fish!!

[Fulbright]

I do not see a link between a mechanical failure and dumping fuel. I see a link between dumping fuel and an attempt to save lives on the ground.

[Rum Tum Tugger]

I just heard a fellow on a talk show in Tampa Florida who claimed that he was an American Airlines pilot who flies the Airbus say that the Airbus is not capable of dumping fuel. In other words, he said the pilot of an Airbus couldn't dump fuel if he wanted to. He sounded credible.