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Why the Heck Aren't Those French Planes Grounded?
Debris path of Airbus A300 points to major onboard problem -- was it a terrorist, or a hobgoblin, or both?
Details (and lack thereof) on Monday's American Airlines Crash in Queens
By Mac MacArthur
Nov. 15, 2001 -- PALM BEACH (APJP) -- As I was writing the first draft of this piece late yesterday, it occurred to me that neither the president's Federal Aviation Administration chief nor the National Transportation Safety Board boss have ordered the Airbus A300 fleet in the United States grounded until it is determined what brought down an American Airlines plane of that make this past Monday.
It is Thursday -- more than 72 hours after the crash -- and not one truly defining clue as to what happened has surfaced or been invented, despite the best speculation of all parties involved -- especially the ratings-hungry cable news business.
Why in heck aren't those planes safely gathering dust in their hangars until we find out?
This has been done many times in the past for other makes and models of airplane, most notably the entire fleet of Concorde SSTs that was grounded for more than a year because of one crash in the model's entire 25-year history.
Just one crash.
So why not the Airbus 300?
That answer is simple.
GREED.
Let's move on from there.
Work continued today on deciphering the damaged flight data recorder found charred and battered in the wreckage of the plane, but what was gleaned from that recorder only made the inscrutability of the information given thus far to the public even deeper.
Remember, the tail (which is called the "vertical stabilizer" among those who like to use big words to confuse you) AND both engines came down BEFORE the rest of the airplane. This has led knowledgeable speculators -- including some with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) -- to tell the public even before they had reached the crash site that this smash-up seemed to be due to catastrophic engine failure which triggered "collateral structural damage".
Nevertheless, by this morning, these same investigators found nothing, nada, and zero, that supported such a circumstance.
The tailpieces are nearly pristine and therefore the speculation is that something else -- not debris from the plane or its engines -- caused the crash.
What could that be? A bomb somewhere in the tail section? A Taliban/Osama idiot with a power screwdriver hiding in the rear blue room? A lousy construction job? A drunk American Airlines mechanic who threw caution to the wind and forgot to retighten the rivets and bolts that hold the tail to the frame of the plane?
After all, the plane was built by the French, and we know all about them -- particularly how easily the Vichy sold the Jews into the death camps, and how they hate Americans because we "murder their language."
But I go off on a tangent.
There is, thus far, not a scintilla of evidence that either of the two GE-made engines failed -- not in a physical inspection, and not from the cockpit voice recorder where one can hear the pilot asking for full thrust in order to pull up from whatever did happen.
The old "bird strike" theory was also deep-sixed as there was no unusual damage to the turbine blades contained within the engines and their cowlings.
You may remember the "bird strike" explanation -- that was one of the first theories the government tried to foist on us after the TWA Flight 800 disaster. You remember -- the plane that exploded due to a "fowl up" near the fuel tanks? Uh-huh.
As I write, I spy something from the corner of my eye -- on the set of monitors hanging from the ceiling in my office, I can see one of the cable news outlets covering President Putin's arrival in Texas for a couple of days on the Bush Ranchette. I wonder if he will ask to tour the Branch Davidian compound? Maybe he'd like a souvenir of the gradual decline of the American justice system and the fine men and women who used to support it. Where were they that day? Are they back today?
And don't blame President Clinton or Janet Reno for the death of David Koresh and all those kids -- Reno was lied to up and down and left and right by the people at the scene whom she thought she could trust. She had only been in office for a split second and hadn't learned yet that in Washington you can trust no one.
So... the General Electric engines may not have failed. I'll bet Jack Welch is breathing at least a temporary sigh of relief -- although even Jack knows that if the government wants us to believe this was just a "routine" crash, then his company will be blamed nonetheless. After all, we can't upset the French, can we -- they were a major reason we didn't finish off Saddam, weren't they?
The NTSB, of course, will spend months pretending to "completely" analyze the condition of the GE engines and any part they may have played in the tragedy. They'll do this in Tulsa, Oklahoma -- a center of deep intellect and masterful deduction.
And guess who owns the base where they'll be disassembled? Why, American Airlines -- naturally. Could it get any more pathetic?
Everyone agrees -- surprise, surprise -- that other "facts" clearly indicated something went wrong, and suddenly at that, after American Airlines Flight 587 left Runway 31L at John F. Kennedy International Airport Monday morning -- especially the two hundred fifty-one human beings (not simply "passengers") who were killed when the too-big jet plunged into a quiet neighborhood in Rockaway Beach, a neighborhood I am familiar with, only a few miles from where I grew up.
The NTSB spokesperson -- Mr. Black (how appropriate is that name?) -- said that the tail sections of the plane (the "vertical stabilizer" and the "rudder") were "complete." Even an idiot watching FOX "News" Channel running that scene of the tail being hauled up from the deep ad nauseam could have told you that there were no marks, holes, Arabic graffiti, or other structural damage visible to these key pieces of the aircraft. If you are into plane crashes, you might recall that the tail is always intact -- it is the strongest part of any aircraft because it is subject to the most tremendous stress.
Black says the NTSB took a "quick" second look at the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) tape recovered almost immediately after the crash. Huh? What the hell is Black talking about? The tape is only 144 seconds long -- they could have translated into 97 languages and written them out in longhand 1,000 times during the past couple of days. A "quick" second look? To top it off ,107 seconds of that tape show the flight as having been "completely normal", said Black.
On the 108th second, one can hear, Black said, "an airframe rattling noise." I don't know about you, but every flight I take includes plenty of "airframe rattling noise" as the plane speeds down the runway looking for the sky. Black said this noise was captured on the CVR tape. Well, good. But what does this prove? Nothing. Why? Well, read on.
On the 115th second one of the pilots mentioned an encounter with a Japan Airlines 747 "wake" which is the disturbance in the air, much like the wake of powerboat in the water, and which often buffets following planes a bit. But the Japan Airlines plane was nearly three minutes ahead of the American Airlines plane and its wake shouldn't have caused a problem.
Another theory down.
Six seconds later, one can hear the first officer -- in the right hand seat -- call out for "maximum power." The NTSB and others I spoke with today told me this could mean several things. First, it might mean that the plane couldn't be steered properly and the pilot was using an engine or engines to help the steering. This would indicate a lack of rudder control. Or, perhaps the pilot was trying to gain altitude in preparation for an emergency landing at JFK.
We may never know. All of you have heard the unproved rumors that the plane jettisoned fuel over Jamaica Bay, New York. This also appears not to be true.
At 127 seconds one of the pilots, we don't know which, "indicated" that control of the plane had been lost.
The cockpit recorder stopped -- or so we are told, at 144 seconds. Two minutes and 24 seconds after rolling onto the runway for takeoff.
So we know that the tail wasn't "knocked off" by the engines or anything else.
Mr. Black tells us that the cockpit voice recorder doesn't really tell us when the plane took off, or how long it remained in the air. Another stall. The NTSB will now "merge" the "data" from the flight data recorder (FDR) with the CVR, air traffic control radar tapes, and "other sources" to "develop" a detailed look at the plane's "flight profile".
Well, the "profile" is simple. It's a plane. It crashed. It killed nearly 300 people. We don't know why despite the fact that we can land a little robot car encased in a beach ball on Mars and send pictures, nearly in real time, of Martians take a cold plunge at their favorite health club.
But rest assured: the noises captured on the CVR will "get significant scrutiny from investigators." Mr. Black, of course, has never actually heard the tape himself.
And of course, he could not provide any detailed description of these noises.
He did offer this pearl of wisdom, "Not only are words important on a tape, but sounds are important."
Why haven't we heard those tapes? Because, it is purported, it would bother the relatives of the crew. Well, I don't think so. I think that they might want to hear what happened from their loved one's lips -- and not from Mr. Black's.
Black also reminded industry pros -- and get this -- that explosions, bomb detonations, and other telling sounds "have often been picked up on the recorders."
Which leads to the question: why the hell aren't ALL the noises picked up? Why the hell aren't there cameras on the major parts of the aircraft and in the cabins so we could see EXACTLY what had happened?
I'll tell you why: because the airlines, run by the lowest dregs of the business world, were too damn cheap to pay for equipment of real sophistication. And let's not forget that the Congress -- every one of ,them as far as I'm concerned -- protected these cheapskate creeps that run the big airlines based upon the simplistic notion that it is far safer to fly than to drive your car.
Let me ask this: how often is it that a few hundred people are killed or murdered in an auto accident?
Black, who seems never to have heard of faulty maintenance or sinister night-crawling Islamic fundamentals with one of those Sears Craftsman "do anything" pocket tools, told an industry reporter that the same "noises" were heard by the tower, or at least on the control tower tapes of communication between the air traffic controllers and Flight 587. The noises, which Black also did not describe in detail, were heard about the same time as the plane lost control. Black clamed he didn't know what these sounds indicated either.
Black said that transcription of the CVR tapes is slated to begin today, with participation of representatives from France's Bureau Enquêtes-Accidents as well as Airbus, in a display of fair play I suppose.
Two airline crews saw at least part of the final flight for that plane and those people.
They tell the same story, nearly. It goes generally like this: the plane kind of wobbled, spiraled out of control, and went down almost nose first. A videotape of the plane taking off stopped just after the plane retracted its landing gear. The NTSB is talking to other witnesses of course -- but remember what happened when they did that during the aftermath of the TWA 747 Flight 800. It seemed, at least, that the government was more interested in protecting the stupid missile range on Long Island or hiding the fact that some terrorist may have blown the plane out of the sky -- a possibility that now appears more popular than ever.
Black also mentioned the possibility of runway debris and the fact that the NTSB has not "determined" if there was any such trash on the runway. Well, of course, every possible explanation must be preserved if the government decides that it was a terrorist situation -- but that it doesn't want us to know, God forbid, because the airlines are so worried that their treasuries aren't able to take another hit.
We do know this much: the plane stopped sending any signals from its transponders just as it reached an altitude of 3,000 feet. If it lost all power, which this indicates, then it took its nose dive from there -- about the height of 300 story building, to give you some perspective (well, at least as much perspective as the FAA and the NTSB have given us).
And what's all this mystery about, anyway? Who made the rules that say we can't know everything that our employees know WHEN they know it -- not days, weeks, months or years later? Even hours later is no good here. If that plane was sabotaged then I want to know now -- because I'll drive up to DC instead of fly next week to visit my kids.
Period.
If one follows the trail of debris on a map, one can almost draw a straight line between the major pieces of the plane:
The tail is first in line, in the water of Jamaica Bay.
The rudder is next about 600 feet further on.
The plane's number one engine aptly ended up next, about 700 feet from the crater made by the rest of the plane.
That's it.
The plane also crashed with its flaps retracted, which is the position one would expect for takeoff.
The two pilots knew what they doing. The captain was a 16-year veteran with American Airlines and the first officer had a ten-year history with the same airline.
So what happened?
What will we tell the thousands of relatives of these dead people? What will tell the pilots kids and their wives? Will they get the truth -- or will the truth be hidden until after the big-volume holiday travel season?
Don't get me wrong (although it's a lead-pipe cinch that the bozos over at Free Republic will quote me out of context -- that is, if their censors forget to yank this copyrighted material from their boards).
I don't know, at all, what happened. All I know is that if I can rely on the more than 100 investigators involved in this catastrophe, no one has a clue as to how this could have happened in any "routine" flight.
What I want to know is how it could have happened in a non-routine flight.
And that, my friends, is what no person in the present administration, or from a previous one, is willing to guess.
Hopefully, we can count on FOX "News" to come up with some suitably freaky and flaky theories we might pursue.
Certainly the White House isn't sharing what it knows, or doesn't know, with us. God knows, they're not going to ground those A300s. Besides, the President is off playing with his horseys, moo-cows and the Russian President while the rest of us mourn another 300 lives either lost to greed, or to terror -- or maybe to both, wouldn't you say?
Copyright © 2001, Mac MacArthur.
