NO SIGNS OF ENGINE FAILURE!

FOX News

[X-Servative]

At the NTSB press conference, they just stated that both engines appear to be intact and that there are no signs of engine failure, according to George Black, NTSB Boardmember.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Am I the only one who wants to know exactly who serviced and had access on the ground crew to that plane/engine on 11-11

Nope. You can bet the NTSB will look into it -- and if it smells funny, the FBI too.

and was the flight that crashed the first time it had been in the air since the ground crew worked on it ? No.

It is also unlikely that it was hit by a missile (a Stinger or Strela/Grail makes a very distinctive plume). Unlike most worried FReepers, I've seen 'em, and in New York City at 9:12 in the morning you are not going to miss 'em.

It is also unlikely that, as one concerned fellow suggested, a Muslim worker in the European Airbus plant sabotaged the plane in manufacture. It was built in 1988 and has been flying ever since, until yesterday's tragedy. I don't pretend to understand these Jihadis but he would have to be hell for patience. And... I dunno how you sabotage a plane to crack up 13 years down the road.

I suspected sabatoge on the ground from the first time I heard yesterday it had been serviced day before.

A mechanical error is also possible. It has happened before. So far all NTSB is trying to do is gather all the facts they can. The wreckage tells a story, the maintenance logs tell a story. Autopsies of the victims ensure that their last story will be told, if only in the privacy of the NTSB offices. Experts from Airbus, American Airlines, the engine designers and builders, the APA (pilot's union) and the government will be called in as needed. Crack aerodynamicists and metallurgists are on call, too.

NTSB will release many facts as quickly as possible, but they will take their time drawing conclusions. An accident like this usually takes a year to be a complete report available to the public. There are some facts that NTSB normally never releases, but these are ones that would not help the public understand the accident but instead merely invade the privacy of the victims and their families. Those things include autopsy photos, accident scene photos that show human remains, some parts of the autopsy reports, and the actual CVR tape (a transcript is prepared. In recent years, the transcripts have been censored under pressure from crew unions and Christian fundamentalists who are offended by salty language, but only non-pertinent information is edited out).

NTSB also controls the accident site with the help of local police. People aren't permitted to wander in, and journalists and lawyers (and their minions) are particularly guarded against, as both of these types have a record of mishandling evidence and disrespecting the deceased.

Finally, when the NTSB has all the evidence from the scene, they will release it to local authorities for clean-up. Meanwhile they will be reconstructing as much of the plane as necessary in a hangar somewhere. They build an armature and hang airplane parts on them. Engineers can tell by examining the parts which order they break up in. (Contrary to other statements, inflight breakups are not unknown. They are actually fairly common among small planes when the pilots fly them into really bad weather. There have also been a number of jetliner breakups, triggered sometimes by weather, loss of control, or malfunction).

When the NTSB has a large tranche of facts they will release it to the public and post it on the website (www.ntsb.gov). A number of groups of experts will look at the engines, the maintenance, the performance of the pilots (this is the "human factors group") and any other specialty factors in the disaster. When all the facts are in, all the reports are posted, and the IIC (Investigator In Charge) is ready to propose a probable cause for the investigation, NTSB will hold a public hearing in a city near the accident. The experts will be heard from (and disagreements can be aired. You too can attend this hearing and speak).

Finally the hearing will result in a Statement of Probable Cause. Not the cautious name for what is essentially a scientific, not a judicial, process. If they can't figure it out they don't issue a probable cause. Yeah, this really happens. Sometimes they come back and revisit an old accident in the light of new evidence, too.

The purpose of the investigation is to examine causative factors in an accident (usually there is a chain of unfortunate circumstances leading to the disaster) and to make recommendations that may prevent a repeat. The NTSB report may not be used in litigation or in criminal proceedings, which is why when crime is suspected the FBI takes charge of the scene. Right now, FBI agents are shadowing NTSB and NTSB is willing to chop the investigation to FBI if evidence of crime is found. Honestly, they are keeping an open mind.

FBI and NTSB have worked hard at working together since the TWA 800 disaster. FBI led that investigation because there was no obvious way the plane could have exploded like that... when the fuel tank explosion was found to be theoretically possible, and no credible evidence of crime was found, NTSB got the investigation back, in front of a public that was now unready to believe anything but the FBI's discredited bomb and missile theories! So you have the ongoing ravings about bombs and missiles in that case.

There are times I find myself disagreeing with NTSB, usually in lesser-known accidents involving small planes, or airline accidents that did not have many casualties. (These accidents usually get a lot fewer resources than a headline-grabbing disaster). But I have never been able to fault their methods or their integrity.

Please remember that the first time a bomb was ever used to down an aircraft, it was the NTSB's forerunner's investigation that determined this fact and provided the evidence vital to the FBI's case. If there was a bomb, or a missile, it will be found.

What else could it be? This is absolutely speculation at this point, but I would say in order:

1. some maintenance error. Several FReepers have already mentioned American's loss of a DC-10 in Chicago in 1989 when an engine came off because mechanics had damaged an engine pylon. JAL 46E, a 747 freighter from Anchorage, suffered a similar pylon failure when the engine went paws-up, but was able to land safely, in 1993. (JAL 46E's engine failure was caused by a flaw in a part of the engine. Before the government was done, all engine parts cast from that batch of metal -- and yes, the paper trail on airline parts goes all the way back to raw materials -- had to be tested and/or scrapped).
2. uncontained engine failure interfering with flight controls (in the A300, fly-by-wire). This is of course the cause of the "impossible" United 232 accident in Sioux City, IA.
3. uncommanded reverser deployment. (This happened on a Lauda Air 767 and the cause has never been 100% certain -- it could have been one of three things and all three were ordered to be changed)
4. Flight control failure. Some failures could theoretically cause control surfaces to move quickly enough to fail the structure.
5. sabotage. No evidence for or against yet, so we can't rule it out. But sabotaging a jet is not easy.

Common accident causes it probably isn't, and why not:

1. Primary pilot error. It is hard to think of a way the crew could have caused this. They might have done something to make it worse, I dunno, but for now let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
2. Weather. While I know of a 707 and a DC-9 that were returned to kit form by bad weather, one flew into a mountain wave and one flew into a thunderstorm. I was in New York and it was a great day to fly -- no such bad weather was present.
3. A fuel problem. Whatever they had on board sure did burn, and where they were coming from all it could have been is jet fuel.
4. Cargo door or pressurisation failure. The airplane got to 2,800 feet above sea level, max. There would not have been any pressure differential between the plane and the outside yet. (This has caused a number of tragic earth-plane encounters).
5. A missile. Again, someone would have seen it. If it was, though, it will be unmistakeable. Weapons and bombs damage things differently than crashes do.
6. Bird strike. This initially popular idea seems to be contraindicated by lack of bird remains in the tail and engine wreckage. Once again, further evidence could cause this position to change.

But all this is speculation. Let's let the pros gather the facts and then see what they do with them. Let's not be flustered by journalists, who know absolute squatto about aviation, and conspiracy theorists, who know only those facts that advance their theory (whether real or not) and discard the ones that don't fit. Compare the approach of the FBI, who were willing to let their TWA 800 theories go when the evidence did not support them, and the conspiracy crowd, who massage "evidence" to support more and more farfetched ideas.

Sorry for this long post. Hope that FReepers find it helpful. I know a bit about this stuff, and am not taking a position on the cause of this tragedy until I know more facts.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Dan Day]

I Took Out The Name of the Poster. You Can Check if you want to

Why bother?

What does an emotional response add to the investigation?

[Saundra Duffy]

I smell a rat! But why are the authorities so adamant about it being engine failure. Don't they think we can take the truth? For victory & freedom!!!

[Criminal Number 18F]

Under questioning by multiple passengers who knew better, she [the gate agent] still wouldn't be specific about the reason.

She probably didn't know herself. The airlines often don't tell the gate agents much at all, leaving them to lie or to profess ignorance, a tough choice when angry travellers are in front of them.

Just because they have a shirt with the airline logo, doesn't mean they know what's going on. The dispatcher might not have told them; the security or baggage or maintenance people may not have told the dispatcher.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Regulator]

Yeah, that's what I saw. It was hard to tell from the photo what was left of the attach structure, but I thought that might have been the case. I have no idea of the loading that would be generated by (speculation here) an empennage coming unglued but it certainly could lead to a) big side loading on the whole engine/pylon/wing attach assembly, with b) surge being induced this time by turbulent shedding off the inlet lip due to the large yaw angle and its oscillatory nature (classic compressor stall followed by surge).

So,
bomb --> tail section shears off --> violent dutch roll like yaw --> cyclic loads on engine/pylon assembly --> compressor stall --> surge --> violent cyclic flow --> REALLY big torsional loads --> wing failure --> explosion on wing
seems like just one more plausible scenario.

[anniegetyourgun]

Wrong about what? There is no final report and I've taken no position.

[moe]

The FAA has always grounded the fleet whenever an airframe problem is suspected. Why have they not grounded the A-300 fleet in this case if this is just an accident caused by the airframe shaking and then failing?

[eno_]

You didn't list "bomb" and you forgot to take uncontained engine failure off the list of possibles.

I thought sabotage was last on the list, and bomb was #1, due to the witness who said she saw a bright flash. Now that it appears certain the fash was NOT caused by the engine blowing up... ? But then why did the vertical stabilizer come off so cleanly?

[pgkdan]

Yes I heard her...I think her name was Jackie Powers and she seemed to me to be very articulate and coherent. Someone with a screen name I can't remember posted yesterday that he heard her comments and thought she sounded like a real kook. That comment soiunded like disinformation to me because the lady I heard sounded reliable and steady as hell.

[cmsgop]

Fly By Wire? Im not so sure. I thought the A320 was first.

[cmsgop]

It was Done Out Of Respect for the Poster.

[fourdeuce82d]

"...George Pitaki, who made a fool of himself saying the pilot "dumped fuel" when not only did he not know this to be the case, it turned out to have been impossible.. Governors, the FBI, and other officials are lying to our faces. "

Pataki makes a statement that anybody who has any familiarity with the plane in question will know is false. We could assume A) he is part of a cover-up, or B) He shot off his mouth, repeated a rumor, misunderstood something, whatever.

You yourself seem to believe he doesn't know what he is talking about- which explanation does that suggest to you? This is what I'm responding to- not speculation over whether this was an attack of not- I don't know. What irritates me is this assumption that the only explanation for discrepancies & false statments in the media is that they are all lying.

One note- I don't have a tv, so I haven't *seen* these folks. Maybe if I did, their shifty behavior and sweaty brows would sway me toward thinking they were lying. But all I keep hearing are things like "no evidence yet= it definitely wasn't terrorism." And I think that's ludicrous.

[TaZ]

As one former Engineer who worked in Aerospace (16 years with air/fuel, hydraulic and powerplant components) I find this crash very disturbing. I was working at Parker-Hannafin right after American airline flight 191 lost it's engine over Chicago and was one of the people assigned to research certs on the bolt that failed. Of course the manufacturing history of those bolts was impeccable and it was determined that gross negligence via a ground crew using a fork-lift caused the bolt fracture.

I saw the picture of the Rudder assembly and from what I saw I observed no tears to the base assembly which would refer to a impact or stress related shearing off the rudder from the fuselage. Added to the situation that both engines fell off the plane simultaneously, I find this to either be a case of extreme negligence in maintenance, extremely poor stress/fatigue analysis in design or sabotage.

I am leaning towards sabotage, even though I never fly on Airbuses, I always specify Boeing or Lockheed aircraft when I fly, I won't even fly on a McDonnell-Douglas plane.

FYI, if this had occurred at cruise speed I might be a little more likely to believe it was due to wind-shear.

[Aliska]

Good informative post. Between sabotage or mechanical failure or some other cause, it could go either way with me.

But sabotaging a jet is not easy.

Without going into too much detail, could you please elaborate?

[nicmarlo]

Don't know if this has been posted previously, sorry if duplicated.Portion of AP Article:

Rattling Noise Heard in Cockpit[type in any city and you'll get article] . . . But Black said it was too early to say if there was any relationship between the noises or the turbulence and the crash of Flight 587.

From takeoff to the end of the tape lasts less than 2 minutes, 24 seconds, Black said at a news conference. The first portion of the flight to the Dominican Republic appeared normal, with the co-pilot at the controls. But 107 seconds after the plane had started its takeoff roll, a rattling was heard; 14 seconds later, a second rattle was audible, Black said. Twenty-three seconds later — after ``several comments suggesting loss of control'' — the cockpit voice recording ends, he said.

Also, the pilots spoke of encountering turbulence in the wake of a Japan Airlines jumbo jet that took off ahead of Flight 587, Black said. ``Wake turbulence'' is believed to have contributed to other deadly airline crashes.

The NTSB was also looking at whether the engines failed after sucking in birds, a phenomenon that has caused severe damage to airliners in the past. But Black said an initial inspection of the engines found no evidence of such a collision. He said a more detailed analysis still needs to be done.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[fourdeuce82d]

"I have yet to see a single Freeper say, "it was clearly an accident, no chance of sabotage, end of story". On the flip side, I've seen *dozens* of Freepers firmly conclude that it was sabotage, period, anyone who disagrees must be an idiot sheeple, blah blah blah."

EggsAckley.