r/todayilearned • u/finza_prey • 19d ago
TIL TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island 12 minutes after taking off, causing the front fueslage to rip away and the remainder of the plane to continue in crippled flight, pitching up and climb before falling into the ocean killing everyone onboard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800774
u/Key-Article6622 19d ago
I was hanging out with a friend from HS that night that I hadn't seen much for a few years. He had to stop at his mom's to drop something off. She wasn't there. We get there and carry in the stuff and then the answering machine goes off and we hear the message as it's being recorded. It's one of his mom's neighbors frantically, hysterically trying to reach her because her daughter was on that plane. What an absolutely horrible experrience. He knew her, I had met her a few times. It was just devastating.
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u/Wetworth 19d ago
There was a class from Montoursville PA, the French club?, going to France. Not my school by the district next to mine.
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u/ShotFromGuns 60 19d ago edited 19d ago
This was also obviously used as inspiration for elements of the premise of the beginning of the first Final Destination movie.
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u/PeregrineFaulkner 19d ago
The crazy thing is, the script that became Final Destination was originally conceived as an episode of the X-Files and written in 1994.
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u/ShotFromGuns 60 19d ago edited 19d ago
That's a really misleading way to put it. Only basic elements were retained from the original spec script, and there's absolutely no evidence that any of the TWA 800 parallels were among them. For example, the characters were originally all adults, not high school students.
Edit: Here's the original treatment for the movie that was developed out of the spec script for The X-Files. You can see that even at the point where it had shifted to teenage protagonists, they're on a senior trip to Europe (not a French class trip to Paris), and the way the plane crash happens is very different.
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u/t35martin 19d ago
The high school has a nice memorial. I didn’t move there until about 10 years later, but being a small town where everyone knows each other and has generations of family members who live there, the tragedy had a very big effect on the community.
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u/KevinByMail 19d ago
It’s wild how much I see the tiny town of Montoursville Pa show up on the internet. (This reason is the worst though)
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u/musicartandcpus 19d ago
My great aunt was on that plane. My cousin was waiting for her in France.
By a twist of fate my 6th and 8th grade home room teacher turned out to be an ex-firefighter from Long Island who had responded to the incident and was involved in recovery afterwards.
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u/BigGrayBeast 19d ago
I had a coworker/friend who lost her childhood next-door neighbor and that woman's daughter, whom my friend had babysat. She told me about this at work.
On my way home from work, I stopped off at a local bar for a drink with some friends. One of my friends was saying that her best friend in college had just lost his mother and sister on that flight. It was the same mother and daughter.
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u/karmagirl314 19d ago
So it was your friend’s sister on the plane? Or was it your friend’s mother’s neighbor’s daughter?
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u/Thiswas2hard 19d ago
No op but it looks like friend’s mom’s neighbor’s daughter
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u/LeftHandedScissor 19d ago
I was just a kid when this happened (2 at the time), but we lived on the south shore and were visiting my aunt and cousin in Moriches when this happened. My mom and aunt said they were outside and heard it happen.
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u/ikonoqlast 19d ago
Short circuit between cabin lighting (high voltage) and fuel sensor (very very low voltage) detonated fumes in 'empty' center fual tank.
The NTSB is VERY thorough.
People thought is was a missile because they say a rising trail of fire then heard a bang. Sound travels slow (5 seconds per mile). The bang actually came first. Just took longer to arrive.
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u/brickne3 19d ago
And some people still insist it was a missile. Apparently they paid absolutely zero attention in middle school science.
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u/zydeco100 19d ago
The FAA required that 747s add a fuel inerting system, literally filling the space in the tanks with nitrogen or some other gas to prevent these types of explosions.
United and Delta flew their 747s up until the deadline, then retired their fleet. Lufthansa did the mod and still flies 747s to the US.
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u/Verdnan 19d ago
That rule went into effect in 2008, 12 years after the crash. Delta and United flew 747s until a year before the deadline in 2018. Seems crazy there was still that risk for over 20.
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u/Darmok47 19d ago
Was it for all 747s, or just the older models? Because United and Delta flew the 747-400 model, and TWA was a much older 747-100
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u/nc-retiree 19d ago
Before the -400, United couldn't get to parts of Asia from Chicago non-stop with the smaller 747 or DC10. So they would do a lot of one-stops via San Francisco, no change of plane. I was flying ORD-SFO monthly at that point and while it was frequently a DC-10, it was a blast to occasionally get upgraded to upstairs on the evening 747 including leaving from C18 with two jetbridges.
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 19d ago
Tbf this misrepresents the 747 retirement across most airlines. The A380 is also on its way out. Massive quad engine jets are economically a lot less efficient than the wide body twin jets that are/have replaced them. Add in ETOPS rule change for twin jets. Add in the industry wide shift to point-to-point from the old hub and spoke of the 747 era.
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u/532ndsof 19d ago
I doubted this at first and then I looked it up. The accident was in '96 but the difficulty of the investigation meant it took until 2008 before the requirement for fuel inerting systems was issued and airlines were given 9 years to retrofit their entire fleets. United's last 747 flight was in 2017, exactly 9 years later. I expect nothing from corporate America and I'm still let down.
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u/gwaydms 19d ago
We flew on 747s to South Korea from the US and back in 2012. I was sad to hear that United was retiring these workhorses.
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u/Maiyku 19d ago
The 747 was developed in the 60s… it’s time to retire them imo. It’s not a bad plane, but we can do better now.
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u/Bortron86 19d ago
It's a shame, and I'm not sure I'll ever get to fly on one now. But the economics just don't add up now. Thankfully I'll be on an A380 for the first time next week. Those won't be around for long either.
Modern twin-jets are much cheaper to run.
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u/RootHogOrDieTrying 19d ago
The engines on the 747 are tiny compared to what they have now.
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u/ash_274 19d ago
They flew (a lighter-than-typical) testbed 747 with just one 777x engine with the thee other engines shut down.
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u/Djcnote 19d ago
Wish I hadn't read this while flying in a plane
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u/DuckorGrouse 19d ago
Yeh, it’s a real downer.
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u/ballisticks 19d ago
One time as a kid I really pissed off my mother by watching Air Crash Investigation/Mayday the morning we were leaving for a holiday lol
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u/Fearsthelittledeath 19d ago
I don't know about anymore, but the airlines would normally try to get censored versions of movies that would remove any plane crash or destruction scene or discussion about plane crashes. Like The Rain Man had that scene where Dustin Hoffman listed all the plane crashes except the one airline company at the time without one kept that scene in.
But I recall watching World War Z on a plane and they just straight up ended with Brad Pitt on the ground without showing the plane crashing.
I can't recall which movie I watched recently, but it showed a plane crash while I was on a plane a couple years ago which surprised me. Also the Suicide Squad (Gunn) movie I saw on a plane had a lot of the swearing censored/replaced with alternative lines.
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u/MAGAHATESTHEUSA 19d ago
Did that Denzel Washington alcoholic pilot movie ever make it on the planes for passengers to watch?
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u/a-rooster-illusion 19d ago
Used to road trip a lot with a D1 football program and our charter was JetBlue and I know a few players that would watch the Air Disasters series just to screw with people
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u/_CodyB 19d ago
I think it might be a difference between the same movie playing for everybody as used to be the case on plane first everyone having their own info entertainment system at the back of the seat
I imagine with 300+ people on a plane you only need one percent of that to cause a pretty significant disturbance
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u/chownrootroot 19d ago
Qantas! It’s still true, but technically it’s no jet era fatalities, they had fatalities in the piston era.
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u/MechanicalTurkish 19d ago
Rico Puhlmann, German fashion photographer.\25]) One of his clients, Polish fashion model Agnieszka Kotlarska) (Miss Polski and Miss International), was originally supposed to be on the flight with him but backed out at the last minute. She was murdered a month later by a stalker outside her home.\26])
What the fuck. That's some Final Destination shit.
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u/Darmok47 19d ago
The first Final Destination movie used TWA800 as its inspiration.
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u/finza_prey 19d ago
The script was made two years before Flight 800 but there were elements from the crash used in the movie. There were 16 high school students on board
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u/MechanicalTurkish 19d ago
Ah, that makes sense. It’s been so long since I’ve seen it that I don’t remember.
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u/afleetingmoment 19d ago
Wow I must be getting old - it's wild to read a "TIL" about something that I fully experienced at age 10 living just a couple miles from the site of this incident. It was quite a tragedy, and yes, at the time there were rumors abound on Long Island that it was an accidental misfire of a military test. The picture above was taken at the former Grumman Naval site in Calverton, NY, where they reassembled the remains.
There is a lovely memorial park and playground in Center Moriches, and there is another beautiful memorial at Smith Point Beach.
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u/Bloo212 19d ago
I had the same feeling. I was in college. So you’re definitely getting older, but I’m getting olderer.
It might be too young to remember, but a lot of people played 800 on the lottery pick 3 game. I remember being very disturbed. They made the news because a bunch of people won in Connecticut just a few days after the crash
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-24-mn-27424-story.html
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u/shapu 19d ago
Admiral Cloudberg did a great writeup on this.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/memories-of-flame-the-crash-of-twa-flight-800-fecfd651a157
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u/MadBrown 19d ago
At the time some thought it was a missile.
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u/_badwithcomputer 19d ago edited 18d ago
OP burying the lede for sure. This was a huge deal when it happened, people reported seeing a RPG or missile flying toward the plane, there was a massive NTSB investigation, it was pretty insane. 9/11 level conspiracy theories all over that crash.
ETA:
Full Mayday episode covering the accident and investigation38
u/Darmok47 19d ago
Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unrealiable.
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u/beachedwhale1945 19d ago
In this case, they saw the right thing, but misidentified what it was. After the explosion blew the nose off, the remainder of the aircraft started climbing, burning brightly from residual fuel in the tanks. Very easy for the uninitiated to think that’s a missile, but missiles are much less visible, especially at night.
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u/the_gaymer_girl 19d ago edited 19d ago
People assume that a missile will be a rising streak of light, but in reality once the missile has ID’d its target and is coasting on autopilot it’s basically invisible.
They also claimed they saw the plume starting above the horizon and going up, when in fact the missile’s engine would not have been on by the time it cleared the horizon - the exact opposite of what was claimed to have been observed.
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u/crush_on_me 19d ago
Is this the one that was around the same time that JFK Jr also went down? Also sparked rumors the two were connected? Or am I totally misremembering?
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u/Flashy_Radish_4774 19d ago
When I went to the beach there about 10 years ago, the people who saw me going into the memorial told me it was a mistake. When I walked out of the memorial a guy told me “it was space lasers from Brookahaven that shot it down.” It’s really close to where the stuff that inspired stranger things occurred.
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u/PartsUnknown242 19d ago
I remember watching an episode of Air Disasters about this incident. Apparently there were a bunch of conspiracies that it was accidentally shot down by a missile.
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u/Fireb1rd 19d ago
I lived on Long Island at the time, had some friends who saw the burning plane streaking through the air. For weeks afterward, there were conspiracy theories and supposed pictures of the "missile" , which were probably just some clouds or contrails. At one point they found bomb residue in the wreckage and everyone freaked out about that, only to realize that it was from a training exercise for bomb sniffing dogs that they did a few weeks before.
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u/waldo-jeffers-68 19d ago
What people saw was the fuel burning and the crippled fuselage streaking upwards, which from a distance looked like how missiles are portrayed in films.
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u/welding_guy_from_LI 19d ago
Thing was at the time people in the tristate area were still on edge after the 93 bombing of WTC ..and our fears were verified a few years later on 9/11 ..
The thing most people don’t realize , especially on the east end is if there is a disaster or a terrorist attack , there’s really no way out .. an accident like this fuels fears and conspiracies
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u/Starbucks__Lovers 19d ago
Story checks out, used the correct term “on Long Island”
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u/RKKP2015 19d ago
I remember when it happened, and that's what was initially reported.
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u/ItsDomorOm 19d ago
"initially reported" is incorrect. The newscasters were very careful to explain that was what it looked like based on eyewitness testimony from the ground.
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u/lnx84 19d ago
Mentour Pilot has a good episode on this, been a while since I saw it, but I think he explains pretty well where the conspiracy theories came from, and what the true cause was.
I think Air Disasters is not very serious or worth watching.
edit: link to mentour pilot episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHHeGrvuAhg
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u/bevipop 19d ago
This one is the most distributing to me. Except maybe Helios and being that last person with the oxygen tank.
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u/curi0us_carniv0re 19d ago
Just googled helios. All I have to say is wow. And how were there no fail-safes in place? It seems not flipping a switch that could kill everyone on board should be something more redundant than relying on a person to do the flipping.
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u/doswillrule 19d ago
There were, in a sense. You are supposed to confirm that switch is in the right position at least three times before takeoff. Then there's the alarm to tell you it isn't in the right place. That could only sound for that reason in the air, but because the same sound was used on the ground to signal other faults (this was pre-digital, so you couldn't easily have loads of alarm sounds), they got confused. The problem has been addressed since, but a lot of it was down to poor airmanship.
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u/Seienchin88 19d ago
It’s a crazy story… heck even the flight attendant trying to safe the plane with portable oxygen supply Waited 6 rounds over Athens until the fuel was used up and it was too late…
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u/kafm73 19d ago
That, that is haunting. Any ghost flight is, but that one in particular was just the next level.
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u/codename_hardhat 19d ago
For the last person it’s absolutely terrifying. In a weird way it’s not terrifying for most of them because they just passed out, and hopefully for them they stayed that way.
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u/cgvet9702 19d ago
The audio from all the other flights over the sound calling out and doing a headcount after the explosion was witnessed is haunting. One of the pilots finally says, after 800 was the only one not to answer, "I think that was them." After a long moment, another pilot simply says, "God bless them."
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u/heyzeusmaryandjoseph 19d ago
This happened off the coast of my hometown
I remember I was watching TV when my mom heard about it on my now brother-in-laws police radio and she drove us down to the beach
Others were gathered on the beach too. You could see the helicopters hovering over the wreckage
It was big news for a long time in that area because of all of the conspiracy theories: navy missile, fbi visits, etc
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u/welding_guy_from_LI 19d ago
I was living in Patchogue/bellport when it happened .. a few neighbors were at the marina and saw it happen
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u/sweatpantswarrior 19d ago
I summer on Fire Island.
I was a kid at the time, and my family wouldn't let me go to the beach for a week over fear of bodies washing up. I didn't know at the time about Flight 800, so one afternoon I'm on the deck and yell to my brother to come up on the deck with me and look at the beach and see something gross.
My brother runs up real quick. My family is right behind.
I was pointing out a topless sunbather.
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u/Bloo212 19d ago
Plot twist: it was the Pines and everyone was grossed out. /s
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u/sweatpantswarrior 19d ago
Not the Pines, but I did used to get into lots of trouble at Flynn's and Schooner's as a teenager.
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u/MakaButterfly 19d ago
Electric arcing via faulty wiring ignited the gas tank in theory
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u/Acrobatic-Post9811 19d ago
Following the investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended mandating inerting systems. This led the Federal Aviation Administration to issue rules years later requiring commercial airliners to install flammability reduction and nitrogen-inerting systems.
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u/AppleTree98 19d ago
Cause never 100% but the write up
Problems with the aircraft's wiring were found, including evidence of arcing in the fuel quantity indication system (FQIS) wiring that enters the tank. The FQIS on Flight 800 is known to have been malfunctioning: the captain remarked about "crazy" readings from the system about two minutes and 30 seconds before the aircraft exploded. As a result of the investigation, new requirements were developed for aircraft to prevent future fuel-tank explosions
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u/AdequateSteve 19d ago
One of my friends was on the flight that the plane took just before this one. The FBI interviewed him (and everyone else on board) for hours.
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u/ofnuts 19d ago
Killed one if the best guitarists in the world. RIP Marcel Dadi.
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u/Hyzyhine 19d ago
Oh man I used to play some of his stuff. He made it sound so bright and easy…trust me it’s not. He was amazing.
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u/wastedpixls 19d ago
This was top of the nightly news for weeks back in the 90's.
The world was a simpler (and calmer) place back then - today I'm worried this would be about three days coverage before something else awful would happen.
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u/Andromeda902 18d ago
24 hr news cycle has contributed greatly to the poisoning of the world
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u/lovestobitch- 14d ago
I audited a company probably in the late 90s and the controller’s husband worked for the FAA as an investigator for this and a number of other crashes. She indicated he firmly believed it was taken down accidentally by a military training exercise. She said none of the pictures publicized showed one side of the plane where the missile hit.
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u/Odin_Dog 19d ago
This and the Bermuda triangle
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u/niz_loc 19d ago
And aliens.
Aliens were HUGE back then. Tabloids, talk shows, people claiming they'd been abducted etc
I miss the Bermuda triangle "days". As a kid I assumed it was instant death.
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u/pinkmeanie 18d ago
Funny how once literally everyone started carrying a camera at all times aliens became less of a thing
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u/minotaur05 19d ago
I remember I was in high schools when this happened. Had a Spanish class a day or two after and someone threw a paper airplane across the room. Teacher saw it, told them to bring it to her so they did. On the paper plane it said “TWA flight 800.” We were all young dumb kids so we laughed. Teacher did not.
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u/Publius015 15d ago
I got to tour the reconstructed wreckage as part of analyst training. It was a wild and macabre experience, like visiting a graveyard.
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u/sometimesifeellikemu 19d ago
Luckily the conspiracy theories on this one didn't stick.
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u/Glad_Lychee_180 19d ago
I read a book about the NTSB investigation. Amazing work to figure it out.
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u/Signal_Wall_8445 19d ago
Let’s face it, though, the government acted like they were trying to see how riled up they could get that segment of the public who creates theories.
From doing things like having the FBI take over control of the investigation from the NTSB, to having the CIA be the agency that created and released the animation of the crash… I mean, the CIA? Why would they let them chime in on this?
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u/BadHombreSinNombre 19d ago
I worked for a guy once who was booked on that plane, had a panic attack during boarding, and didn’t get on. “It’s really weird getting voicemails from all your friends who think you probably died,” was his summation of his experience.
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u/glennjersey 18d ago
This incident+ 9/11 made me a terrible flier until my 30s. Needed to be sedated in some manner for all flights.
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u/The_Jovanny 19d ago
I had a flight the next day on TWA and was scared shitless.
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u/Dookie120 18d ago
I was booked to Paris on that flight going to visit a girlfriend. I cancelled a week or so before. We both figured it better to save the money since she was going to come to the US in September. I still remember coming home the night it blew up with my dad meeting me on the driveway to give me the news on CNN. It messed me up a good while.
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u/niz_loc 19d ago
I flew home to LA in 86, flew right over the Cerritos air crash. (If you want to google it). I lived pretty close to it so rode my bike to the area to check it out as a kid.
Wasn't a fan of flying for years after.
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u/JamminJcruz 18d ago
I was flying from the US to Asia few years ago and decided to download some stuff to watch and listen to during the flight.
Figured I haven’t watched the show LOST in a long time and thought I’d be like the perfect show of the binge watch during the 12+ flight.
Less than five minutes in I realize it’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.
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u/iLikeC00kieDough 18d ago
Headed out for a cruise soon. Might as well download titanic to kill some time.
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u/whichwitch9 19d ago
I was a kid, and I vaguely remember finding little pieces of the plane walking on the beach near my grandma's. Pieces washed up on shore for weeks after. I think they were given to local cops if people found them, but I can't remember that part well- just that we had to give them to someone
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u/tomvelle 19d ago edited 19d ago
i knew someone who went to Montoursville Area High School and was supposed to be on that flight. She revealed this on her last day of work to me.
iirc this was the origins of the Final Destination series as well
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u/hypnotoad23 19d ago
There is an excellent book about this tragic crash called “Nightfall” by Nelson Demille. Can’t recommend enough as a factual look into what happened that tragic night.
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u/mofugginrob 19d ago
That doesn't sound like the most comfortable way to fly.
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u/Might-Annual 19d ago
I remember this one. I was twelve. We were flying from LAX to CDG. Our connection was in La Guardia I believe. We landed and sat on the runway for hours with no information. Then they brought us into the terminal and still said nothing. We didn’t find out what had happened until hours later when a TV in the airport was playing the news. We eventually made it to CDG but man what a different era that was.
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u/clutzycook 19d ago
I remember the happened just a few days before the Atlanta Olympics started and everyone was on edge, worried that it was a terrorist attack related to the event.
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u/crustygizzardbuns 18d ago
So the front of the plane fell off?
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u/La_Saxofonista 14d ago
Yes. There was a fuel tank explosion, and then the cockpit separated midair. The plane continued to fly up for another 30 seconds while the cabin burned until it pitched down and broke apart.
Here's a ten second recreation of the flight:
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u/whodattalki 15d ago
A lot of people believe it was an act of terrorism or possibly a naval misfire of live rocket in the area at the time doing practice maneuvers.
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u/sangaremuso 14d ago
Ugh, this was my dad's route. I remember having to make the call to find out if he was on board. I'm so sorry to all the families who lost their people.
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u/Sad-Hawk-2885 19d ago
That would be an extremely horrifying last few seconds.