ot: another plane down in NY

[Dracus]

Sorry to post this, but it is another dark day.

[tesco samoa]

One request. Before this topic flies off into a rage or false information gathering session.

Could we only talk about facts not hearsay about this tragic accident.

So before you post please take 3 deep breathes and reread what your going to post.

If it seems appropriate post it.........
Thanks

Simon.

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Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!

[Dracus]

Right now they don't know anything other then it appears to have been an airbus taking off from JFK.

[LazarusLong42]

Gotta agree with Tesco. Here's what we know so far:

Airbus 300 taking off from JFK--American flight 587 (I think I'm getting the number right) headed for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. It crashed five minutes after takeoff in Rockaway, Queens (eyewitness reports place it on 129th street). Eyewitnesses are also saying the plane was flaming and debris was falling as it came down.

NTSB has been appointed as the lead investigative team, indicating the the government is starting with the assumption that this is an accident. However, Ari Fleischer (White House press sec'y) says no one is jumping to any conclusions either way. The cause is not known; black boxes are expected to be easy to recover, though, the crash being on land.

Preliminary passenger list: 246 passengers, 9 crew members.

Eric

[apache]

Here is my assumption on what happened to it, simply based on the descriptions of what people saw. My guess is that a few blades, or possibly even a full disk broke off and were shot through the wing, igniting fuel and causing the engine to vibrate heavily, as well as tearing up the wing, and probably the fuselage too. The engine vibrations then shook the engine off the wing (they are designed to do that, so the engine shakes off the wing instead of the whole wing shaking off the plane), while the rest of the fuel caught fire and the plane became one big fireball. What caused it? Probably a lack of maintainance, or just poor maintainance on the blades didn't find that a few of them were cracked or should have otherwise been replaced. I highly doubt it was a terrorist act.

[Baron Munchausen]

As a few news programs have mentioned in passing, a mere bird like a seagull can do an amazing amount of damage to a plane when it's moving at full speed or under heavy stress like during takeoff. If a moderate-sized bird got sucked into that engine it could have set off the chain of events you describe without anyone being criminally negligent in maintenance work.

[Puke]

lets see.. it banked to the right as it was crashing. the right engine had over 9000 operating hours since its Last major overhaul, which are scheduled every 10000 hours. not criminal neglect exactly, but airlines have always been good at doing just the bare minimum.

in any event, it seems to be pretty clearly a mechanical failure. no cause for alarm, it happens about once every 1.5 years or so to a major airline. move along, nothing to see.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[Deathstalker]

Airports these days are either over reacting or under reacting.

This is a story that appeared in the news a little while ago, shows how wierd things have been getting.

""
b]Be careful what you read![/i]

Novel Security Measures

BY Gwen Shaffer

Everyone knows it is a bad idea to try and board a plane carrying a box cutter, a flight manual written in Arabic, or a sack full of mysterious white powder. But with ultra-tightened airport security, a book could also prevent you from boarding that plane.

No kidding. It happened just Last week in Philadelphia.

Neil Godfrey arrived at Philadelphia International Airport around 9:30 a.m. on Wed., Oct. 10. His brother's girlfriend dropped him off with plenty of time to spare before his 11:40 a.m. United Airlines flight. Godfrey was on his way to Phoenix, where his parents live. From there, the family was planning to head out for a vacation at Disneyland.

It is fair to say that Godfrey - brother of City Paper webmaster Ryan Godfrey - doesn't look unusual for a 22-year-old kid living in Center City.

His outfit that day was typical: black Dockers, a T-shirt with a logo for the now-defunct Phoenix Gazette newspaper and New Balance running shoes. He has a medium build, recently dyed jet-black hair and a quiet demeanor.

When Godfrey stepped up to the ticket counter, the United clerk informed him he had been selected for a random baggage search.

"No problem," he replied, going through the usual motions of checking his bag and getting a boarding pass. Now toting nothing but a novel and the most recent copy of The Nation magazine, Godfrey hiked through the concourse toward his boarding gate.

As he passed through the metal detector, an airport security guard furrowed his brow at Godfrey's reading selections as they disappeared through the conveyor belt.

On the cover of the book, Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, is an illustration of a man's hand holding several sticks of dynamite. The 1991 novel is about a radical environmentalist, George Washington Hayduke III, who blows up bridges, burns tractors and sabotages other projects he believes are destroying the beautiful Southwest landscape.

"For the first time, it occurred to me the book may be a problem," Godfrey recalls.

He proceeded through the security checkpoint and sat down to read near his boarding gate. About 10 minutes had passed when a National Guardsman approached Godfrey.

"He told me to step aside," Godfrey says. "Then he took my book and asked me why I was reading it."

Within minutes, Godfrey says, Philadelphia Police officers, Pennsylvania State Troopers and airport security officials joined the National Guardsman. About 10 to 12 people examined the novel for 45 minutes, scratching out notes the entire time. They also questioned Godfrey about the purpose of his trip to Phoenix.

The fact that Godfrey recently dropped out of Temple University and has yet to find a job may have piqued suspicion of law enforcement officials even more.

"The fact that I don't work or go to school may have contributed to them thinking I have nothing to live for," Godfrey speculates.

Eventually, one of the law enforcement officials told Godfrey his book was "innocuous" and he would be allowed to board the plane.

"I was pretty shaken up," he says. "But I also felt guilty that I hadn't realized bringing this book to the airport may cause a problem."

Another 10 minutes or so passed while he sat in the waiting area. A female United employee - Godfrey failed to jot down her name - came over and informed him that he wouldn't be allowed to fly, "for three reasons."

The first reason, she said, was that Godfrey was reading a book with an illustration of a bomb on the cover. Secondly, she said, he purchased his ticket on Sept. 11. (Godfrey bought the ticket on Priceline.com shortly after midnight, at least eight hours before the World Trade Center was attacked).

And the final reason cited by the United employee was that Godfrey's Arizona driver's license had expired. The employee pointed to a date to substantiate this allegation.

"No," Godfrey told her. "That's the day the license was issued."

The woman then pointed to another date on the card, Feb. 17, 2000, contending it was the expiration date. Godfrey countered that the date identified him as "under 21" until then.

"Too bad, it's too late," the flight attendant informed him.

A defeated and disappointed Godfrey reclaimed his luggage and was escorted out of the airport.

When he got home, Godfrey did what a lot of guys do when they need consoling - he phoned his mom.

Godfrey's mother offered to call United and attempt to straighten things out. A central reservation clerk assured her that her son was not Banned from ever flying United again. She booked him on a different flight to Phoenix, this one departing Philadelphia at 3:04 p.m. that same afternoon.

Godfrey scurried back to the airport, leaving the Abbey novel at home. He exchanged it for a seemingly benign novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

When Godfrey arrived at the airport around 1:15 p.m., his luggage was again searched. But as Godfrey passed through the metal detector, a police officer recognized him from the commotion just a few hours earlier. The cop pulled Godfrey aside and made a few phone calls. Ultimately, he declared that everything checked out fine. But a National Guardsman standing nearby vetoed that decision.

"This time, they took my Harry Potter book and about four people studied it for 20 minutes," Godfrey says.

Finally, at about 1:45 p.m., officials apparently felt reassured that Godfrey was not a security threat. They told Godfrey he would be permitted on the plane, but that he couldn't pass through security until 2:30 p.m.

At the appointed time, an escort took Godfrey through security, while at least 15 law enforcement officials looked on. Rather than taking Godfrey directly to his gate, however, he was ushered into a private interrogation room.

"They patted me down and found nothing," Godfrey says. But when he emerged from this room, Burt Zastera, supervisor of airport operations for United, told him he would not be allowed to fly.

"He told me he didn't know the reason why, that he was 'just conveying the information,'" Godfrey recalls. Zastera gave Godfrey a contact number he could call for a full explanation.

Godfrey's father called that number and was told his son was Banned from flying United because he cracked "a joke about bombs."

"That is totally false," Godfrey says, pointing out that no one at the airport ever mentioned this to him. Plus, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations stipulate that any passenger who jokes about explosives be arrested on the spot. By contrast, Godfrey was never charged or even accused of breaking the law. In fact, Philadelphia Police officers didn't even file an incident report, according to department spokesman Cpl. Jim Pauley.

Other airport and law enforcement officials have very little to say about Godfrey's treatment.

Zastera says he is "not allowed to comment" on what happened because it is a security matter. United Airlines spokesman Chris Bradwig says he is "unaware" of the Oct. 10 incident.

"Even so, we don't comment on security matters," he says.

A supervisor with Aviation Safeguard, the company United contracts to man security checkpoints in Philadelphia, denied responsibility for detaining Godfrey.

"The only ones who determine who can't get on a flight is the airline," says an Aviation Safeguard supervisor, who refused to provide her name. "We don't stop any books."

Philadelphia International spokesman Mark Pesce agrees that only individual airlines determine whether to permit a passenger to fly.

"When a passenger passes through security, it is under the jurisdiction of the airline. We don't get involved," he says, adding that stories like Godfrey's are likely to become increasingly common.

The FAA has no policy regulating "specific types of reading material," says spokeswoman Arlene Salac.


""

So, be careful what you bring on planes these days.

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"We are all...the sum of our scars"....(paraphrased) Matt. R. Stover-'Blade of Tyshalle'.

"Human existance is all imagination...Reality is no more than a simple agreement among its participants that this is where we shall meet, and these are the rules that we shall abide by."- Kevin McCarthy/David Silva "The Family:Special Effects"..

"Long Live the Legion!!"-Comic book fandom...

[Coal]

So a copy of David Weber's 'Crusade', set several hundred years in the future and about relegious zealot aliens on a crusade to conquer Earth or one of the Area 51 books (aliens, consperiacys and terroists), would be a bad idea for reading on a flight?

[Puke]

think they would get edgy about a copy of 1984 or F451?

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)