TWA Flight 800: The 25th anniversary of the explosion marks a new chapter in the history of the disaster

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The service will take place on Long Island, New York, more than 260 miles from the 30,000-square-foot hangar at the National Transportation Safety Board’s Training Center in Ashburn, Virginia, where the wreckage of a reconstructed Boeing 747 was more than two decades ago. . The agency, which until last week had been using the salvaged wreckage for accident investigation training courses, is set to halt work and destroy it in the coming months.

“It was very helpful, but I think we got to the point where it was time to move forward from that, but in a different way,” Frank Helldrop, an NTSB official who was a member of the original team of Flight 800 investigators, told CNN.

A plane bound for Paris exploded minutes after taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people on board. The wreckage of the plane fell into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of Long Island. With the help of the Navy as well as contract trawlers cruising the ocean floor, investigators were able to recover more than 95% of the aircraft, and nearly a year later, the remains of all who died were also recovered.

After a thorough investigation lasting four years, Helldrop’s team determined that the probable cause of the explosion was an electrical failure that exploded vapors in the central wing’s fuel tank, although they did not definitively identify the source of the initial spark.

But while the NTSB plans to destroy the reconstructed debris by removing, melting or shredding nearly 1,600 pieces, some people close to the disaster say the operation will bring no closure with it.

“You can never shut the door on this. You can never leave it away,” said John Seaman, whose niece Michelle Baker died in the disaster.

Seaman, who said he only visited the reconstruction once, describes it as a memorial to those who discovered the truth behind Flight 800.

“It’s a testament to what happened,” he told CNN. The reconstruction “was fantastic and made me feel so happy to be an American.”

Similarly, NTSB managing director Sharon Bryson said the impact of Flight 800 will continue long after the wreck is destroyed.

She told CNN that this may not be an “investigation you closed the book on. We learned a lot and a lot of things changed for the book to be closed, at least anytime soon.”

The agency plans to meticulously document the wreck over several months using 3D scanning techniques, and the data will be archived for historical purposes before it is permanently destroyed.

Investigators initially suspected an error

The tragedy prompted one of the largest and most expensive aviation investigations in history, sparking a flurry of conspiracy theories and suspicions that terrorists had hit the plane with a missile.

Of the 755 reports uncovered by the FBI, accounts varied widely but hundreds described what they believed to be either a flare or fireworks heading toward the plane before it exploded. Some witnesses even used the words “rocket” or “rocket.”

“When you talk about a plane crash – was it a bomb? Was it a missile? Well, you can see the evidence,” said Peter Jewels, who was NTSB director at the time of the Flight 800 disaster. .

Although the agency ultimately deemed the explosion an accident and found no evidence of a sinister game, investigators also looked at state-sponsored actors during the investigation, according to Leon Panetta, who was President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff at the time of the tragedy. .

He previously said, referring to Pan Am Flight 103: “The investigation was looking at almost every possibility, including government agencies, because we knew that Libya was involved in connection with the downing of a passenger plane over Scotland,” referring to Pan Am flight No. 103. “In Iraq and Saddam Hussein. We were looking at, you know, the possibility that Iran played a role in that.”

The NTSB said the original agreement with the families of those who died in the accident included a stipulation that the reconstruction would only be used as a training tool and never as a public exhibition, and Bryson said the families had been notified of the shutdown before the agency. public announcement.

CNN’s Claire Colbert contributed to this report.

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