Flight 800 Case Study

What Really Happened to Flight 800? When flying on a plane many might be scared for ones life when soaring through the sky at such altitude, but with the chance of losing your life being only at one in a 11 million it is unlikely anything would happen (curiosity.com). Tragically this one in a 11 million chance happened to everyone on TWA Flight 800, with the odds in their favor this became a national mystery for the cause of this intentional or unintentional mishap. The aircraft and the cause for the explosion was a question from the beginning and has stayed unsolved to this day. This case created serious thought among what had happened which brought two main theories front and center, which being an explosion in the fuel tank or a government

Kennedy International Airport in New York on July 17th, 1996. TWA Flight 800 had a rather normal day up until the crash. The aircraft was on its way from New York to Paris with a layover in Rome and had been in Greece previously before reaching New York (TWA flight 800 crash - Atlantic Ocean off New York: 1996 1). Once the plane had arrived at JFK International Airport it was stationed at gate 5 terminal 26 and departed the airport at around 8pm making its way towards its destination in France (1-2; Callahan 1). Just Eleven minutes into the Flight the plane exploded eight miles away from the coast of Long Island then creating from that moment on a national mystery of what had caused the plane to explode (TWA flight 800 crash - Atlantic Ocean off New York:1996 2). Soon after the aircraft was submerged in water and had been seen by many as it went down in flames, water vessels in the surrounding area were able to reach the site within minutes, but soon to be discovered all 230 people had not survived with all bodies being found and 95% of the plane being recovered (McDowell-Smith 1). With all the information before the crash being easily attained the cause for the crash was unknown which leads many to wonder what had actually caused this tragedy. The misfortunate catastrophe of the explosion of Flight 800 brought grief to many which brought people longing for an answer to bring closure

To clarify, this alternate theory stemmed from multiple bystanders claiming they saw something moving upwards towards the aircraft before the outburst (TWA flight 800 crash - Atlantic Ocean off New York: 1996 4). It also became even more apparent when people said they saw a missile and information of the Navy ships being in the area and near the time of the crash had surfaced (Cole 30). The suspicion of this theory became even more strange due to the minute people had started making acquisitions of missile contact with TWA Flight 800 the FBI immediately became involved which then lead some to believe the NTSB was giving false reasoning for the crash to cover the Navy’s missile mistake (McDowell-Smith 2). Adding on to the suspicion, when the FBI discussed what they had seen with 736 trusting eye witnesses, many gave evidence supporting the idea of a missile, some of the witnesses even stated “ We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color. Once it went into flames I knew that it wasn’t a flare” another eye witness also stated “I looked up because it sounded like thunder. I kept looking trying to figure out what it was. And that’s when I saw a flare come off the water. The flare, trailing orange flame, shot up roughly at a 45 degree angle, then rapidly increased its angle of ascent.