Sabotage?

AA 587, SwissAir, Egypt Air and TWA 800 all took off from JFK. Three of the four crashed in similar ways -- unexplained break-up mid-flight.

The FBI should be using a magnifying glass to investigate everyone having anything to do with food service, repair and maintenance and tarmac operations at JFK. Something is very, very wrong there. I suspect sabotage, and whatever method they are using is quite sophisticated indeed. A normal NTSB investigation is inadequage.

Let's Talk

If you want to talk coverup, this is as good a place to start as any. Four crashes in five years is a bit weird, especially when they all left from the same airport and they all met a similar fate. Immediately background checks are in order, looking especially for someone who has done maintenance work for these 4 airlines in the last 5 years. Probably not a terrorist, but a psychopath for sure.

Leone

Oh, Fodors, here's another candidate thread ... please bring your eraser and a net. LOL, but you folks really play loose and easy with the facts. And your suppositions ... well, I just don't know what to say. Have a good day, and ciao.

xxx

Just wondering - how easy is it for someone to sabotage a plane? Don't maintenance workers, etc. work in teams? Is it possible for someone to have access to a section of the plane long enough to do any damage? Any airline maintenance, food service, etc. people out there?

nameless

Let me just say this:

I have friends who work in the airline industry, not as pilots. I had a stopover in an airport in the US and met said friend in the terminal. He was wearing no credentials. He took me through an unlocked door right next to the hot dog stand which went down stairs, turned underneath itself, and exited to the tarmac. We then walked up a staircase rolled up to the side of the plane, walked into the cockpit and sat in the pilots' chairs. Looked around for a few minutes and then returned via the same path. No one questioned us and he didn't say Hi to any security guards as if they knew he was OK. The plane was empty and had recently landed.

This is true. I am not a troll. This was of course pre 9-11 but nevertheless shows you how lax the industry has been.

2Cents

IMO, the problem with JFK is not terrorists sabatoging planes but poor management of the airport and substandard maintenance. Someone in NYC needs to start at the top and work their way down in cleaning up the problem.

TheFacts

Egypt Air-Pilot decides to commit suicide and take along the whole plane. Could there be a connection to Bin-Laden? We'll never know.

Swiss Air-Plane was an MD-80, with a history of mechanical problems.

TWA 800-Older 747 flown by a near bankrupt airline. Center fuel tank goes. IMO, the age of the plane and poor maintenance contributed to crash.

AA587-Plane was just in for an overhaul, tail comes off in 1 piece. Someone probably didn't tighten the bolts down.

Before you go blaming sabotage-look at the maintenance records, age of the aircraft and the # of cycles each aircraft had (take offs and landings.)

Look See

There's a short video you can watch on the MSNBC site which shows their version of what might have happened. The tail section falls off first, followed by the engines, and then the rest of the plane falls out of the sky. Based on that scenario, something was definitely wrong, and it wasn't mechanical.

Facts?

Thanks for TheFacts, except for one, which is incorrect. The Swiss Air accident involved an MD-11, a 3-engine plane similar to a DC-10, not an MD-80, a smaller plane which had the jackscrew problem and the Alaska Air crash.

Jym

Look See-One of the mechanics could have improperly tightened a bolt or a bolt could have sheared off. It happens. Let's not jump to conclusions. And remember this is sweeeps month for the networks they will do anything for ratings...

Cindy

Leone, I know you don't like these threads, but IMHO air crashes involve travel and are properly the subject of discussion on this board.

As for whether someone could be sabotaging planes at JFK . . . well, we know the terrorists on Sept. 11 were quite patient, taking years to train pilots for their task. What makes anyone think they're not patient or sophisticated enough to have a number of their people trained as maintenance workers to sabotage planes at JFK whenever the opportunity arises?

I'll also note that these flights were all international. Is JFK organized such that a particular group of workers would tend to work with international flights instead of domestic ones?

The FBI ought to be looking at this rather than having the NTSB try so hard to convince me that turbulance on a clear blue day caused the tail to fall off of a plane.

Anon

I'm no expert, but I understand that work done on planes is the subject of a great deal of paperwork. But it seems to me that if the mechanic and the supervisor signing off on a repair were to work together, they could easily claim a repair was done when it was not. Or that a part had many cycles left on it when it did not. Doesn't the system basically work on trust?