Word: ntsb
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plunge headlong into the ocean. But given the history - amplified, and sometimes simplified, by the media and the movies - of terrorists claiming to be inspired by Islam, it could also signal a motive for what is now suspected of having been the criminal downing of EgyptAir Flight 990. The NTSB Tuesday was set to hand over the investigation of the crash to the FBI, believing that the final cockpit conversations on the Boeing 767's voice-data recorder indicate that a crew member may have been responsible for the flight's demise. Handing the case over to Louis Freeh...
...history is their guide, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) staff will take a hard look at a problematic piece of equipment on the Boeing 767--the thrust reverser. These devices slow the aircraft down during landing by reversing the airflow from the engines. And while the devices are great for shortening landing rolls--or stopping a plane during an aborted takeoff--they can be deadly if accidentally deployed in flight. In 1991 a thrust reverser on a Lauda Air Boeing 767 deployed in midair, sending the plane into a death plunge over Thailand. That...
...determining if that was the case may not be easy. Reconstructing the contents of a tape that has spent two weeks submerged under 250 feet of salt water could prove difficult. The NTSB will probably need translators since the last words of the Egyptian flight crew were likely in Arabic. And if in fact there was no mechanical problem, what went wrong? Did an intruder succeed in wrecking the plane? Or did the pilot himself somehow send the plane down, either through some kind of error or even deliberately? In the end, the questions may outnumber the answers provided...
...that the first EgyptAir Flight 990 black box has given us is another piece of the puzzle - but one that rules out rather than provides an easy solution. The NTSB announced Wednesday that analysis of the flight-data recorder reveals that the doomed plane's initial descent was a controlled maneuver by the pilot rather than a precipitous plunge, and that the Boeing 767's thrust reversers had not deployed in mid-flight, ruling out a hypothesis popular in media coverage immediately after the Halloween night crash. The big question, of course, is what prompted the pilot, eight seconds after...
There's no point trying to connect the dots, because they're all over the page. Radar data released by the NTSB late Wednesday showed that EgyptAir Flight 990 plunged precipitously at nearly the speed of sound for 16,000 feet, but then climbed about a mile - and possibly began breaking up in midair - before falling into the ocean. That might suggest a last-ditch attempt by the crew to gain control of the stricken craft, which could have broken up under structural stress if the pilot had attempted to pull too quickly out of a 700-mph dive...