CNN Presents Reveals How
TWA Flight 800 Could Happen Again
Ten Years Later, Government
Safety Experts Warn More Explosions, Loss of Life ‘Virtually Certain’
Twelve minutes into a July 17, 1996,
Paris-bound flight from New
York’s JFK International Airport with 230 passengers on board, TWA Flight 800
exploded and plunged into the
Atlantic Ocean. There were no
survivors. Ten years later, CNN Presents
will air a two-hour documentary on the disaster and
reveal why government officials say similar
catastrophes are “virtually certain to occur.”
CNN Presents: No Survivors – Why
TWA 800 Could Happen Again will premiere on
Saturday, July 15, at 7 p.m., with a replay at 10
p.m. The documentary will re-air on Sunday, July
16, at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. All times Eastern.
CNN.com will launch a multimedia in-depth report at
www.CNN.com/twa800 on Wednesday, July 5, as well
as an audio podcast with CNN correspondent David
Mattingly at
www.cnn.com/podcasting.
CNN’s realistic animation of the
doomed flight will show how an explosion in the
Boeing 747’s center fuel tank caused the plane to
break apart at 13,000 feet. While the cockpit and
first-class section began to fall, the remainder of
the fuselage continued to climb through the summer
sky for approximately 30 seconds before plummeting
into the ocean off the coast of
Long Island.
Some eyewitnesses reported seeing
what they thought was a missile. Jim Kallstrom,
head of the FBI’s New York office, who lost
a friend in the disaster – the wife of an FBI
colleague – tells CNN: “I would have bet my rather
meager government paycheck that it was an act of
terrorism.”
Federal officials were already on
high alert. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded
over Lockerbie, Scotland, destroyed by a bomb hidden
by Libyan terrorists in the airliner’s baggage
compartment. Terrorist Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of
the first attack on the
World Trade Center,
was on trial in Manhattan
for a separate plot to blow up U.S. jetliners. And, just weeks
before the TWA 800 tragedy, a truck bomb killed 19
American servicemen at the
Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
As White House officials monitored
the TWA 800 investigation, they were acutely
interested in possible links to Mideast terrorism. “We especially wanted to look for an
Iranian connection,” former National Security Advisor Tony
Lake tells Mattingly for
No Survivors.
After an exhaustive investigation
into the cause of the TWA explosion, the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that
the probable cause was not terrorism, but an
electrical short circuit that sparked an explosion
in the vapor-filled center fuel tank. The NTSB
warned that other aging planes were similarly
vulnerable and, in fact, some safety experts had
warned about the risk of fuel tank explosions as far
back as the 1960s.
In a statement to CNN, Boeing says it
has “implemented numerous fuel system improvements”
and continues “to enhance an already safe fleet.”
CNN Presents also shows the
effects of the 10-year-old disaster on the victims’
families, who gather each year on a
Long Island beach to mark the anniversary.
From the beginning, the families bonded over their
shared horror and eventual realization that the
accident might have been prevented. For a few,
their loss is compounded by the suspicion that the
government has not revealed all it knows about the
events of that terrible night.
Theories of U.S. Navy missiles fired
in error and elaborate government cover-ups still
exist. Internet conspiracy rumors snared even the
late Pierre Salinger, a former Kennedy White House
press secretary who claimed to have secret documents
proving that the jetliner was hit by a U.S. Navy
missile. Actually, the documents were the musings
of a former airline pilot and had been circulating
on the Internet for months.
“We knew the story of TWA 800 would
be a compelling documentary,” said Mark Nelson, vice
president and senior executive producer of CNN
Productions. “Right now, the airlines are trying to
stop the Federal Aviation Administration from
requiring additional safety equipment. The FAA says
it’s needed to prevent future fuel tank explosions.
The industry says it’s too expensive and
unnecessary.”
CNN Presents: No Survivors – Why
TWA 800 Could Happen Again features interviews
with family members of those who perished in the
crash, NTSB officials who eventually solved the
case, former White House Chief of Staff Leon
Panetta, top officials from the FAA and the
industry’s Air Transport Association. No
Survivors was produced by Andy Segal, Jim Polk,
Jeffrey Reid, Kimberly Arp Babbit and Ben Burnstein.
The managing editor was Steve Robinson. CNN
Presents is the most honored documentary program
in cable news.
CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner
Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is
one of the world’s most respected and trusted
sources for news and information. Its reach extends
to nine cable and satellite television networks; one
private place-based network; two radio networks;
wireless devices around the world; four Web sites,
including CNN.com, the first major news and
information Web site; CNN Pipeline, an on-demand
broadband video service; CNN Newsource, the world’s
most extensively syndicated news service; and
partnerships for four television networks and one
Web site.
Images for this project are available at
www.turnerinfo.com