The Crash of TWA Flight 800

25 years ago a disaster hit the aviation industry that sent shockwaves around the world. The loss of Trans World Airlines flight 800 was one of those air crashes that baffled the investigators and led to a host of conspiracy theories before the eventual investigation report concluded that it was something much simpler.

On 17th July 1996 the TWA Boeing 747 sat on the runway at JFK Airport in New York waiting to take off, with 230 people on board heading for Paris. As the aircraft sped down the runway a chain reaction of events was already under way. 12 minutes after take off it exploded in flames, crashing into the Atlantic Ocean. When rescuers reached the site, they were greeting with burning wreckage floating on the sea in the dark. There were no survivors.

What happened next was unprecedented, for after the mourning period came the questions. What had caused the aircraft to explode in mid-air so suddenly? Rumours of a terrorist bombing were rife but no group had claimed responsibility. Then suddenly a photograph was released to the press that set tongues wagging and conspiracies booming.

On Long Island a party was in full swing as the aircraft was heading out to sea and photographs were being taken of the people enjoying drinks and chatter without realising what was going on in the background. In one photograph, high in the sky, is what looked like a missile streaking across the night. The US Navy ships were doing exercises in the area and immediately came under suspicion.

Accusations were thrown around as the wreckage of the aircraft was still being recovered, the investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board hard at work trying to sift through the clues as to what really went on. The missile strike was soon discredited due to the fact that any military exercises did not come close to the aircraft and there were no objects in the sky being tracked on RADAR before the crash.

The wreckage of TWA 800 was reovered piece by piece, a painstakingly slow process and a massive jigsaw puzzle now started to take shape in a hangar, but before long the investigators were getting more of an idea of what had happened. It turned out that the fuel tanks were not full to capacity and that the residual space within the fuel tanks were creating a space for vapours to congregate and therefore leaving potential dangers within the aircraft. 

With this confirmed, all it took was one spark from a short circuit to blow the aircraft up, which was the conclusion of the NTSB four years after the disaster. An animation was set up to show the world what went on and it was nothing short of horrific. The front of the aircraft had been blown completely off in the initial explosion, but the aircraft continued flying for another 34 seconds without a cockpit. The Boeing 747 then descended rapidly and crashed into the sea.

Although 25  years has passed the pain of this tragedy has not gone away. Having to wait four years for an answer as well as the conspiracies only heightened the pain and not-knowing. The wreckage of the aircraft was reconstructed in a hangar and used for training, recently this has been announced that after a quarter of a century, this huge piece of aviation history will now be decommissioned from use and put to scrap.

Memorials to the disaster were installed in New York by the families group, where the relatives will gather on 17th July like they have done every year for over two decades. With the cause of the crash now known, the only thing that could be done was to take away the lessons learned and prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.