A decade after a Paris-bound jumbo jet exploded in the night sky and plummeted into waters off Long Island's south shore, killing all 230 aboard, the airline industry and federal officials still are strikingly at odds over measures that safety experts say would have prevented the accident.
Trans World Airlines Flight 800 crashed minutes after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after a spark ignited vapors in a fuel tank in the center of the Boeing 747's wing. Officials never pinpointed the source of the spark but suspected a short circuit transferred excess voltage into the tank.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday July 19, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 39 words Type of Material: Correction
TWA crash: A story Monday in Section A on the 10-year anniversary of the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 erroneously said that oxygen is flammable. Oxygen is required for combustion but is not itself generally considered flammable.
The July 17, 1996, accident prompted one of the most expensive and far-reaching investigations in aviation history and changed the way airplanes' fuel and wiring systems are designed, operated and maintained.
To rule out terrorism and determine the cause of the crash, officials recovered 98% of the plane from the ocean floor and painstakingly pieced it back together.
But 10 years later, safety experts are frustrated that the primary cause of the accident -- the flammability of fuel tanks -- has not been fixed.
The Federal Aviation Administration says the problem must be solved to save lives. The airline industry, and airplane manufacturer Airbus, disagree, arguing that dozens of retrofits since 1996 adequately limit the risk of future explosions.
The FAA concluded last year that if additional steps weren't taken to modify fuel tanks perched just a few feet beneath passengers on thousands of aircraft, nine jets would "likely be destroyed by a fuel tank explosion in the next 50 years."
In November, the agency proposed a system that would pump nitrogen into center fuel tanks to replace oxygen, which is flammable. The measure, which the FAA says would cost up to $225,000 per plane to install, would affect 3,800 aircraft with center fuel tanks -- about half of today's fleet.
The nation's airlines call the system redundant, saying they have spent $1 billion since 1996 to comply with new FAA rules seeking to limit hundreds of vapor ignition sources that might blow up fuel tanks. And system installation and maintenance would exceed the FAA's upper estimate, costing an average of $420,000 per plane, the airlines say.
The dispute underscores increasing tensions between cash-strapped carriers and safety regulators.
