The Case for Sabotage

[hkellick]

This may be another long one. Lots of things on my mind.

As y'all know, Flight 587 crashed in Rockland, New York yesterday morning 3 minutes after takeoff. All passengers and crew are presumed dead as well as a few (and thankfully ONLY a few on the ground.). An estimated 300 people died last night in the worst "accident" since the TWA 800.

The blame is being placed on the engine. The engine that the plane used had "Been known to have problems with cracking" and 7 such problems with the engines had been dug up. This engine is used on litereally thousands of planes (INCLUDING Air Force One, so says anonova.com) with no catastrophic failures to date. The left engine that apparently failed had just been overhauled recently and both engines had had a maintence check the day before.
It's hard to say that American Airlines are, therefore, criminally negligent.. or negligent whatsoever. Of the 7 such problems with the engine, none of them had caused the engine to fly off the plane as happened in Rockland.

I'm not an Aerospace Engineer so I can't speak much on how planes are made or manufactured or even how an engine falls off or blows off a plane. However I fail to see how an accident causes the engine to fall or blow off.
Does anyone know?

And what about the sprayed fuel over Jamaica Bay? Why did the pilot start losing his fuel? He must have known he was about to crash. So why didn't he SOS? This also seems suspicious. He must have known he was going to crash if he started losing fuel. He must have known SOMETHING was wrong.

Add this peace to the puzzle. The US Government has said time and again that in order to keep the peace, they would lie or simply not tell the truth. So it's altogether possible they KNOW that this is sabotage but to keep us all from panicking some more, they'll say it was an accident.

Of course... if they hold with this story, I think you can probably kiss American Airlines, the biggest airplane company in America (i THINK) goodbye. I can't imagine consumer confidence in flying was high before yesterday but I'm sure it's gotten lower since. Will the government allow AA to go bankrupt?

I dunno. But like I said, it all seems a little too suspicious to me.

And if it WAS sabotage, I have some uncomfortable questions to ask:
1) Where was the FBI? or NSA? Why wasn't someone aware that this was planned?
2) How was this allowed to happen? Why hasn't airport security BEEN beefed up since the 11th. As kolys has said, airline security is STILL a joke. It's a joke at the borders too. As someone who lives near the border, my family and I go in and out of canada a bit and the security there is still... pathetic.
What will it take for security to increase? How many more thousands need to die?

*shakes his head*

On a more personal vein... yesterday was... interesting

Let's start with my presentation. Did I mention to y'all that I had to give a presentation yesterday on UBEESC to the GSA (Graduate Student Association) to try to get members? Well.. I did.. one problem.. we'd made a powerpoint presentation and the computer couldn't see Disc A!! So I start my presentation with "Well.. pretend there's this beautiful presentation behind me..." and go on from there. That was... interesting.

Oh.. and I found a SECOND Phish song I like: Cavern.
So I've decided I might give Phish a second chance and try to download some of their stuff and see if I like it.
So... anyone know of any good Phish I should give a chance? if so, please comment and tell me!

That's all I can think of.. so.. you're quote of the day!

***
"I can't stand it! I know you planned it!
But I'm gonna get it straight, this Watergate" - Beastie Boys "Sabotage"

Comments

[kalidor.livejournal.com]

Well, lessee hear. Okay here is a stab in that dark at what could have happened. Basically I am gonna list hear a bunch of things that have happened in the past just never at the same time.

First the engine falling off an whatnot.
A minute grain of metal inside the structure of the fan blade could be more brittle then the rest of the metal. This happens at manufacturing time due to improper mixes in the alloys, and is hard to account for regardless. It is undetectable until the point fails or at least starts to fail. The problem is it only starts to fail after a lot of stress [like that generated by several hundred hours of spinning] and once it starts it fails quickly. You may remeber the Oklahoma city crash several years ago where the pilot managed to bring the aircraft in without any hydraulics only to have the airplane cartwheel down the runway.


Anyhow, with a minute fracture like this several of the fan blades inside the engine will be thrown off. [Good old Centripetal force] Now many modern engines have specially designed cowls that are supposed to absorb the impact of these blade 9 out of 10 times. But when they don't the blade burst thru the cowls and keep on going. That said they could fly into the airplane cutting the hydraulics, much like they did in the Oklahoma city crash, possibly even the fuel line, and perhaps even damaging the engine strut to the point that the engine could be sheared off by drag. [Mcdonald Dougless DC-10 or DC-9 ]

Ok, so far this is a POSSIBLE explination for engine failure, and maybe for the fuel dump. Next, why didn't the pilot radio for help.

This information comes from an emergancy landing of a Canadian Air Jet in an abandoned airstrip outside Winniepeg. Due to and improper fueling, [Idiots on the ground couldn't convert the airports Imperial measures to the standard metric kilos of fuel] the plane ran out of fuel. In this particular case it resulted in a complete shutdown of the hydraulic system of that specific airliner. A few seconds after the hyrdraulics shutdown the computer on the airplane seized up and the aircraft lost all power. Now, in such a case this type of craft is designed with a special propeller that drops out of the nose and uses the windshear to generate electricity, but in this case instead of the instantaneous deployment, it was nearly five minutes of uncontrolable gliding before the prop deployed. In these five minutes they were completely without any power including to the radio or the fly by wire systems. [Airbus]

Now, I don't know the location of the emergancy prop, if the engine could have effected it, however I would assume that if said propeller once again took five minutes to deploy and if the airplane was just then suffering problems, the five minutes would probably have been enough time for them to crash. Remeber they were taken off and not nearly near cruising altitude or speed for a sustained glide. In fact, assuming they were taking off and the hyrdraulics had gone bad their flaps would be stuck in "take-off" position. This position, while it does creat more lift on the wing during take off, would crash a plane that is trying to either glide or cruise.


So, here is one out of many possbilities of how this could have been just a failure caused by a bad engine. I am sure there are many more. Perhaps even look at the possibilty that TWA flight 800 had a spark in the fuel tank that blew the plane up, and apply this, with what I have highlighted, to a spark in the fuel line of the engine.

Once again, these are just possibilites. Not saying anything one way or the other. Just gives your mind something to chew on.

Have a nice day ^_^x;

[kolys.livejournal.com]

With many engines, the thing is only held onto the wing by six bolts. If some total incompetent was responsible for reattaching the engine after the maintenance checks, that could certainly account for it. A friend of mine who's something of an expert on aviation informs me that if the engine was badly secured, then even something so simple as a 'bird strike' has the potential for causing such an event. And even if it wouldn't directly cause the event in question, it could lead to a minute fracture in the fan blades of the engine, as Kalidor suggests in his comment here. There are countless reasons why it could happen without any human assistance beyond gross incompetence.
As for the government talking of lying to the people for their own good... well, they've been saying that about all manner of things since the 1940s. I'm not going to worry unduly about that sort of thing.
I'm not going to believe that this is sabotage until I see something a LOT more convincing. At least the plane's cockpit voice recorder doesn't show any evidence of unusual activity there, beyond the initiation of standard emergency procedures.
Damn A300s only having two engines. Methinks airlines will be buying the 4-engine A340s from now on, even if they are somewhat more expensive.

The crash

[janinedog]

This entry is old, I know, but I just read it. I'm surprised that you haven't heard their theory (or maybe you have, and I haven't gotten to that entry yet) about the crash. It makes lots of sense. Basically, it was pretty much proven that a big 747 plane took off right before flight 587. The standard is to wait 2 minutes between planes taking off, because of the wind or whatever that results from a plane taking off. However, supposedly the first plane was delayed, and so 587 took off only 1 minute 45 seconds after the first plane. The draft caused by a plane is very strong (200 mph seems to be stuck in my head), and it is very likely that it could have made 587's engine fall off because of the pressure or whatever. I don't know the exact details...but it makes sense, and they really believe that that's the reason, at least until other evidence proves otherwise. I personally don't think it's terrorism. Also, about airport security..when we took Mark to Newark airport for him to go home, there was a guy in a military outfit with a HUGE gun walking around. If that's not secure, I don't know what is. And they yelled at us for taking pictures in the airport too. :-P