He s overseeing the paper s coverage of the TWA crash. Thanks for being with us, Mr. Horvath. Let s start with what is known. Well, there are some indications from inside the central fuel tank, the way that it s burned, the pieces that it pulled up are indicative of an explosion. It kind of sloshes around in there, and you can t get that last bit out.
Vapors can develop in the mostly empty tank.
This is considered routine. Well, there s a difficulty with the temperature because they don t believe there would have been any reason they would have been hot enough to explode on their own without some sort of catalyst. There had been some problems with the fuel system in the 747's. Boeing had put out a warning about the fuel pumps corroding. These are kinds of things that have been known to lead to small fires but nothing along the lines of a catastrophic explosion.