TWA FLIGHT 800 PUBLIC HEARING
Opening Statement of Investigator-in-Charge
Alfred W. Dickinson
December 8, 1997

TWA flight 800, a Boeing 747-131, registration number N93119, was a scheduled air carrier flight operated under Title 14, Code of Federal Regulations Part 121. There were 230 people on board (18 crew and 212 passengers.) The flight was to have been the initial flight of a scheduled three-day flight sequence for the flightcrew. The flightcrew consisted of four flight deck crew members. The captain and the captain/check airman, who was acting as first officer, both had worked for TWA for approximately 30 years and were considered senior flightcrew members. The flight engineer, who had only about 30 hours as a flight engineer, was on a training flight. The check engineer, who occupied the jump seat, was considered a senior flightcrew member.

The flight was scheduled to depart at 7:00 p.m. for Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris. However, the flight was delayed due to a passenger/baggage mismatch and a disabled piece of ground equipment. Flight 800 took off from runway 22R at 8:19 p.m. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed and an instrument flight rules flight plan was filed.

Air Traffic Control communications with flight 800 were routine, the last transmission from the flightcrew was recorded at 19 seconds past 8:30 p.m. when they acknowledged clearance to 15,000 feet. A minute thereafter flight 800 disappeared from radar.

As one of six investigators in the major investigations division at the Safety Board, I was on call the evening of July 17, 1996. I was at home when, at about 8:50 I received a phone call notifying me that a Trans World Airlines Boeing 747 was missing off the coast of Long Island, New York. While the go-team coordinated in Washington, investigators from the NTSB regional office in New Jersey went immediately to the scene of the accident. The go-team arrived on scene early the next morning.

The go-team was accompanied by Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Francis and his assistant Denise Daniels, as well as Peter Goelz and Shelly Hazle from our Office of Government, Public and Family Affairs. Upon arriving at Islip Airport we went directly to the Coast Guard Station at East Moriches. The Coast Guard, police and private mariners were bringing in wreckage and victims. It was like nothing any of us had witnessed.

The NTSB utilizes a party system in its investigations. Parties providing technical assistance to this investigation include: the Federal Aviation Administration; the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group; Trans World Airlines; the International Association of Mechanists, Aerospace Workers and Flight Attendants; the Air Line Pilots Association; the National Air Traffic Controllers Association; Pratt & Whitney; Honeywell; and the Crane Company, Hydro-Aire.

In all major Safety Board investigations, groups are formed to look at different aspects of the accident. Each group is headed by an NTSB investigator and made up of members from the parties who can lend specific technical expertise. Due to the magnitude of this investigation, more than one NTSB investigator was assigned to many of the groups. And as the investigation progressed several new groups were formed. To date, over 18 Groups have participated, by far the most groups ever to participate in an investigation in the Safety Board’s history. The groups include: systems, structures, maintenance, airplane interior documentation, witnesses, radar, flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder, medical forensic, fire and explosion, powerplants, air traffic control, operations, aircraft performance, airport security, trawling, and flight test.

For assistance in recovering the aircraft and victims, the Safety Board called on the Supervisor of Salvage of the US Navy. The NTSB has a long standing memorandum of agreement with the Navy, and in fact this was the second time in a year in which we had called on them for assistance. The Navy was on scene by the 19^th. And by the time they completed the effort, over 95% of the 400,000 pound aircraft and remains of all the 230 people aboard had been recovered. The Navy was assisted by the US Coast Guard, Oceaneering, Underwater Search and Survey, the National Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as dive teams from Suffolk County, New York City and State Police, Suffolk County and New York City Fire Departments and the FBI. The recovery effort was an amazing feat and all the men and women who were a part of that effort deserve our admiration and gratitude. CAPTAIN McCord will discuss the Navy operations shortly.

From an investigative standpoint, one of our first priorities was, as always, the retrieval of the flight recorders. After an extensive search, Navy divers recovered both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder on the evening of July 24. They were flown by a Coast Guard falcon aircraft to NTSB headquarters in Washington, DC where NTSB engineers immediately began analyzing them. Both contained good data and revealed a routine flight until ending within a fraction of a second of one another at approximately 12 seconds after 8:31 p.m.

Through detailed mapping, the Navy identified three debris fields which were labeled red, yellow, and green. The red debris field was farthest west, therefore containing the pieces of wreckage that exited the aircraft first, including some structure from the center wing tank and fuselage just forward of the wings; the yellow debris field, which was actually a part of the red debris field located in its northeast corner, contained the nose of the aircraft; and the green debris field some 1.5 miles east of the red contained the wings, all four engines and the aft section of the aircraft.

After the aircraft wreckage was recovered from the ocean, it was transported to an abandoned Navy facility in Calverton, NY. The wreckage pieces were documented - noting the extent and type of damage to each piece, and the latitude and longitude of its recovery. This information, along with photographs and engineering drawings filled approximately 15 volumes of 3 inch binders, and was incorporated into an electronic database. The wreckage was also thoroughly examined and tested for chemical residues by the FBI. The hangar floor was marked and the wreckage laid out as to its position on the aircraft. It was a 24 hour a day operation, with two shifts working 12 hours each, 7 days a week.

Early in the investigation, it became clear that an explosion had occurred in the center wing tank. The Safety Board contracted with Dr. Joe Shepherd from the California Institute of Technology to conduct research on the explosive properties of Jet A fuel and he will be discussing his work later this week.

To better understand the accident, we built a 3 dimensional reconstruction including the structure around the center wing tank from about fuselage station 520 to station 1640. The reconstruction, the largest in the world, took over two months to construct and contains over 876 pieces of wreckage, weighing over 60,000 pounds. The Fire and Explosion Group analyzed the soot and fire patterns. And metallurgists from the Structures Group thoroughly investigated each piece of aircraft, examining holes and penetrations and conducting a sequence study to determine the sequence in which the pieces came off the aircraft. In addition, a trajectory study was conducted in an effort to understand how the aircraft responded after the explosion. The findings of these studies will be discussed today as part of this hearing.

The cabin interior - seats, galleys and lavatories - was also reconstructed in a hangar at Calverton. Every piece was thoroughly examined for evidence of an explosive device - none was found. Medical and forensic information was reviewed and correlated with cabin damage in an effort to identify injury and damage patterns. The findings of these efforts will also be discussed later today.

Radar data were obtained from the FAA, Department of Defense, and Sikorsky. Data from nine locations in five states were reviewed and correlated with data from the CVR and FDR. No sequence of radar returns intersected TWA 800’s position at any point in time, nor were there any radar returns consistent with a missile or other projectile traveling towards TWA flight 800. This data will be discussed later today.

All four engines were recovered and torn down in a hangar in Calverton. There was no evidence that the engines were struck by anything, or that any of them experienced an uncontained engine failure that could have ignited the center wing tank by throwing debris into it. Fuel from the engines was analyzed and found to conform to the specifications of the fuel used at JFK and Athens.

The Maintenance Group assembled in Kansas City, Missouri to review the maintenance records of the aircraft. The aircraft, which was manufactured in July 1971, was purchased new from the Boeing Company by TWA. The aircraft was utilized for commercial transport until it was sold to Iran on December 15, 1975. Although the aircraft was ferried to the Boeing Military Aircraft Company in Wichita, Kansas, for modifications, Iran never took possession of the aircraft and the modifications were never accomplished before it was returned to TWA’s certificate on December 16, 1976. The Maintenance Group reviewed all maintenance records from the date of manufacture until July 17, 1996. The records indicated that TWA had accomplished mandatory directives, maintained scheduled maintenance, and maintained a continuous airworthiness maintenance program on the accident aircraft. All applicable airworthiness directives had been complied with and no maintenance items were deferred. We will address some of these issues later in this hearing.

Just prior to the accident flight, while the airplane was on the ground at JFK Airport, routine periodic service was accomplished and the dispatch release for the flight contained three open minimum equipment list (MEL) items including a missing number 2 left canoe flap track fairing, an inoperative number 3 engine thrust reverser, and one inoperative weather radar transmitter.

As I mentioned earlier, neither the CVR nor the FDR indicated any problems with the aircraft before the explosion. The FDR contained 18 parameters and indicated that at the time the recording stopped the aircraft was in a wings level climb. The interruption in the recording was consistent with a sudden loss of electrical power to the recorder.

The CVR indicated a routine flight with the captain sitting in the left seat flying the airplane and the check captain sitting in the right seat handling the radio transmissions. Conversation within the cockpit was routine and included all the appropriate checklist requirements. The flightcrew discussed a sticky fuel flow gauge, a common occurrence in the 747, and mentioned that they would begin to cross-feed fuel to the engines. The last 170 milliseconds of the CVR recording contained a unique sound signature. We have done extensive sound spectrum analysis comparing the sound signature both visually and mathematically to other recordings - including bombs, fuel/air explosions and structural failures. The FAA conducted explosive tests addressing cargo hold hardening on a Boeing 747 in Bruntingthorpe, England and we placed small explosives on the center wing tank of the same plane. As part of both these tests, we recorded the explosions on voice recorders in hopes of aiding our analysis of the sound spectrum from the cockpit recorder of TWA flight 800.

In addition to examining the fuel pumps and fuel quantity indicating system from flight 800 for evidence of malfunction, the Systems Group has conducted extensive testing to identify possible ignition sources. Tests were conducted concerning static electricity at the Naval Research Laboratories and Wright Laboratories at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the Group has done extensive work to better understand the possible failure modes that could lead to a spark entering the center wing tank. These tests will be discussed this week.

Last July in an effort to learn more about the atmosphere in the center wing tank and possible remedies the Safety Board conducted a series of flight tests. A leased Boeing 747 was outfitted with more than 150 sensors to measure temperature, vibration and pressure in the center wing tank and vapor samples were taken. 9 flights were flown including simulations of TWA flight 800 for a total of 43 hours of flight time. The results of these tests will be discussed this week.

During this extended investigation, weekly telephone conference calls have taken place with all the parties to the investigation participating in these calls. These tele-conferences were necessary to provide for an open exchange of information and ideas and to keep all of the parties informed as to the progress of the investigative groups. Additionally, we have had all-hands meetings periodically during the investigation at the hanger in Calverton. These meetings were held with all of the parties to the investigation to further discuss the activities of the investigation and define additional areas for research. During these meetings, the parties were asked to provide their comments on the scope of the investigation. Additionally, as you mentioned Mr. Chairman, the Safety Board has received hundreds of unsolicited letters and telephone calls from persons offering their opinions and thoughts on this accident. And, at this time, I am not aware that any party to the investigation, or any other persons or organizations have raised avenues of investigation that we have not pursued fully, or are not currently examining.

This investigation has marked a lot of firsts for the Safety Board, it has been by far the most expensive and the most extensive in the history of the Board. It was the longest on-scene investigation, and has involved more Safety Board staff than any investigation - almost 1/3 of the Board’s 370 employees. This investigation has truly known no bounds. We have utilized a variety of resources, calling on experts from different disciplines, as well as countries - including NASA, Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Nevada, Reno, Applied Research Associates in Denver, Brookhaven Laboratories, the California Institute of Technology, Wright Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the Naval Research Laboratory, China Lake, Britain’s Defense Evaluation and Research Administration, and the Christian Michaelson Research Institute in Norway.

In addition, under the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization, air safety investigators from the United Kingdom, France, Singapore, Australia, Canada and New Zealand participated in the investigation as technical observers.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. The record of the investigation is contained in the documents in our public docket. The Court Reporter has a list of them.