page_title: TWA Flight 800
section_title: Analysis of reported witness observations
hierarchical_section_title: TWA Flight 800 / Further investigation and analysis / In-flight breakup sequence and crippled flight / Analysis of reported witness observations
caption_attribution_description: English: Frame from NTSB animation showing a potential witness view of the TWA post-CWT explosion flight sequence. Original .mov file viewed from http://www.cnn.com/US/9712/08/twa.hearings.wrap/twa.beach.view.20.1.6.mov Français&#160;: Cliché extrait d'une animation produite par le Conseil national de la sécurité des transports (NTSB) qui montre la trajectoire estimée de l'avion de la TWA après l'explosion du réservoir central, telle qu'un témoin potentiel aurait pu l'observer de la plage.
context_page_description: Trans World Airlines Flight 800 was a Boeing 747-100 that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, at about 8:31 p.m. EDT, 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on a scheduled international passenger flight to Rome, with a stopover in Paris. All 230 people on board died in the crash; it is the third-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history.
  Accident investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board traveled to the scene, arriving the following morning amid speculation that a terrorist attack was the cause of the crash. Consequently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and New York Police Department Joint Terrorism Task Force initiated a parallel criminal investigation. Sixteen months later, the JTTF announced that no evidence of a criminal act had been found and closed its active investigation.
  The four-year NTSB investigation concluded with the approval of the Aircraft Accident Report on August 23, 2000, ending the most extensive, complex and costly air disaster investigation in U.S. history to that time.
context_section_description: At the start of FBI's investigation, because of the possibility that international terrorists might have been involved, assistance was requested from the CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency. CIA analysts, relying on sound-propagation analysis, concluded that the witnesses could not be describing a missile approaching an intact aircraft, but were seeing a trail of burning fuel coming from the aircraft after the initial explosion. This conclusion was reached after calculating how long it took for the sound of the initial explosion to reach the witnesses, and using that to correlate the witness observations with the accident sequence. In all cases the witnesses could not be describing a missile approaching an intact aircraft, as the plane had already exploded before their observations began.
  As the investigation progressed, the NTSB decided to form a witness group to more fully address the accounts of witnesses. From November 1996 through April 1997 this group reviewed summaries of witness accounts on loan from the FBI (with personal information redacted), and conducted interviews with crewmembers from a New York Air National Guard HH-60 helicopter and C-130 airplane, as well as a U.S. Navy P-3 airplane that was flying in the vicinity of TWA 800 at the time of the accident.
  In February 1998, the FBI, having closed its active investigation, agreed to fully release the witness summaries to the NTSB. With access to these documents no longer controlled by the FBI, the NTSB formed a second witness group to review the documents. Because of the amount of time that had elapsed (about 21 months) before the NTSB received information about the identity of the witnesses, the witness group chose not to re-interview the witnesses, but instead to rely on the original summaries of witness statements written by FBI agents as the best available evidence of the observations initially reported by the witnesses. Despite the two and a half years that had elapsed since the accident, the witness group did interview the captain of Eastwind Airlines Flight 507, who was the first to report the explosion of TWA 800, because of his vantage point and experience as an airline pilot.
  The NTSB's review of the released witness documents determined that they contained 736 witness accounts, of which 258 were characterized as "streak of light" witnesses ("an object moving in the sky... variously described [as] a point of light, fireworks, a flare, a shooting star, or something similar.") The NTSB Witness Group concluded that the streak of light reported by witnesses might have been the actual airplane during some stage of its flight before the fireball developed, noting that most of the 258 streak of light accounts were generally consistent with the calculated flightpath of the accident airplane after the CWT explosion.
  Thirty-eight witnesses described a streak of light that ascended vertically, or nearly so, and these accounts "seem[ed] to be inconsistent with the accident airplane's flightpath." In addition, 18 witnesses reported seeing a streak of light that originated at the surface, or the horizon, which did not "appear to be consistent with the airplane's calculated flightpath and other known aspects of the accident sequence." Regarding these differing accounts, the NTSB noted that based on their experience in previous investigations "witness reports are often inconsistent with the known facts or with other witnesses' reports of the same events." The interviews conducted by the FBI focused on the possibility of a missile attack; suggested interview questions given to FBI agents such as "Where was the sun in relation to the aircraft and the missile launch point?" and "How long did the missile fly?" could have biased interviewees' responses in some cases. The NTSB concluded that given the large number of witnesses in this case, they "did not expect all of the documented witness observations to be consistent with one another" and "did not view these apparently anomalous witness reports as persuasive evidence that some witnesses might have observed a missile
caption: Most witness observations of a streak of light were determined by the NTSB to be consistent with the calculated flightpath of TWA 800 after the CWT explosion (screenshot from an NTSB animation).
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