As I noted in yesterday's morning links, we've recently seen a reprehensible display of cheap sensationalism from muckrakers claiming that the 1996 crash of Flight 800 has all been a massive conspiracy.
Speaking of hoaxes and conspiracies, you might have heard that some glory-seeking and/or mentally-deficient morons are claiming the explosion aboard Flight 800 back in '96 was — and I hope you're sitting down — a government cover-up! That's right, it was a missile, either accidentally fired from a U.S. warship during exercises or a deliberate act of terrorism; your choice. And the government is keeping it all a secret because of, er, um, because it would be really-really embarrassing for everybody on the international stage. That part — along with who fired the deadly missile — remains a little hazy on the details.
Regardless, this delightful little theory has the same problem the 9/11 'Truthers' had. By the time you figure in all of the people involved in the investigation over three years, plus all of the outside people like those operating nearby airport radar units that tracked the crash, you are counting upon hundreds of people to keep silent for the rest of time eternal. In an age when everyone's 15 minutes of fame is just a YouTube video away, isn't it interesting that not one person has ever come forward, protected by shadowy face and encrypted voice, and said "I was working for the NSA/FBI/CIA when Flight 800 was shot down, and here's what really happened that fateful day." Not one.
The problem is that conspiracy nuts are exactly like global warming alarmists. You can show them graphs and videos all day long but it won't do the slightest bit of good. But, like AGW, it's still fun to try.
To wit:
— Not brought down by enemy fire, check!
— Not brought down by friendly fire, check!
— Not an external explosion at all, check!
— Gas tank blew up from an electrical short circuit allowing high voltage to enter a low-voltage line, check!
— Flaming fuselage, still under power, streaked upwards after the nose cone broke off as witnessed by hundreds on the ground, check!
— Sensationalistic muckrakers opening old wounds for nothing but greed dragged out to the street and publicly flogged, unchecked!
The full episode is here.
One thing to note is that while it mentions that a handful of gas tanks have blown up over the years (lightning, sabotage, engine falling off), electrical short wasn't on the list. The implication is that this was a pretty rare event and that the equally-sensationalistic documentary continually screaming about how this could happen at any moment to any airplane in the sky (!!!) was quite a bit overblown.
And the same might be said of Boeing's reaction. While it's certainly caring of them to put in an 'inerting' system, all that'll do is add another quarter-ton of weight to the plane; weight that'll have to be compensated for somewhere else, possibly impairing the integrity of the aircraft. Merely replacing the wiring would have accomplished the same end. When they talk about the 'chain of events' that lead up to an airline disaster, about nineteen factors had to line up perfectly in order for the high-voltage line to arc into the low-voltage gas tank line in the first place, plus the perfect abrasion on the gas tank sending unit allowing the spark to occur at all.
On the other hand, this raises a key point. While the FAA has been criticized over the years for only taking action after a horrific accident has occurred, this is obviously a highly unjust complaint because it's simply impossible to predict everything that could go wrong on such a complex craft and the tremendous pressures it faces at altitude.
But when something does go wrong, the FAA is to be credited with making damn sure it won't happen again. Glancing over the Mayday airline disaster documentaries indicates that, with one glaring exception, not one accident whose mechanical cause was even suspected ever repeated itself. In many cases it was equivalent to the now-mandatory inerting system; that is, probably a serious overreaction, but the bottom — and only — line is that the tragedy hasn't happened again.
The one exception was the rear door popping off a DC-10, way back in '72. The FAA took the manufacturer's word for it that it'd be fixed, but two years later it happened again, this time with the explosive decompression taking out the plane's hydraulics and a loss of 346 lives.
That's when the FAA learned a valuable little lesson in 'trust' and started officially covering the bases, with the resultant sterling record of no repeats. There will always be the occasional piece of fuselage ripping off because of some metal rot that no one spotted; the occasional bird strike as well as the hopefully-rare control tower mix-up resulting in either an in-air or on-ground collision, but the crafts, themselves, seem as solid as they'll ever be.
The last stat I read:
You have a greater chance of being stung to death by bees than you do of dying in an airplane. So, just stay from any bee hives and, statistically, you should be good to go!
