From air tragedy to teaching tool

ASHBURN, Va. - Inside the cabin, many passenger seats look much as they did when the plane took off from New York on a warm July night eight years ago.

Some seats still have their tray tables attached. Some even have their cushions, as if TWA Flight 800 continued to Paris and landed safely.

Other seats tell the real story. They have been mangled into aluminum skeletons, reflecting the tremendous force when the Boeing 747's center fuel tank exploded high above the Atlantic Ocean. All 230 people on board were killed.

The seats were reinstalled as part of an extraordinary reconstruction of the plane's fuselage. The giant jigsaw puzzle was assembled in Calverton, N.Y., in the months after the crash, from wreckage that divers fished from the sea. It helped the National Transportation Safety Board rule out theories about missiles and learn important details about the explosion.

Now, the wreckage has been reassembled at the NTSB Academy in this Washington suburb to teach the science of crash investigation.

The academy, which offers courses to people in government and the transportation industry, will use the TWA wreckage to show how pieces of metal can solve the most challenging mysteries.

The 93-foot reconstruction is a sobering sight. The "Trans World" logo is deformed but still visible. Large chunks of the fuselage are torn away, revealing the passenger seats. The reconstructed wreckage is not intended as a memorial to the crash - only the academy's students and guests are allowed to see it - but even seasoned NTSB officials say it provokes strong emotions.

"When you go into that hangar, people's voices go down," said Peter Goelz, a former NTSB managing director. "You realize that accident investigation is serious business, it's about people's lives. You look at that reconstruction and there is no way of minimizing the fact that this was a terrible tragedy."

Crash investigators routinely do small-scale reconstructions. But only a few have been rebuilt on this scale, such as Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

The TWA reconstruction, which was done in a Calverton hangar where the wreckage was kept, took several months and cost about $500,000. Investigators dubbed it "Jetasaurus Rex."

The Flight 800 investigation was especially difficult for the NTSB because of a turf battle with the FBI. The law enforcement agency took charge because many officials believed the crash was caused by a bomb or a missile.

The FBI insisted on reconstructing a large portion of the plane in hopes that damage patterns would reveal what happened. NTSB officials balked, saying it would simply prove what they already knew: There was no bomb, no missile.

The wreckage still had a few hints of the FBI involvement on Tuesday. One piece was tagged "FBI Evidence - USS Grapple 8-1-96," apparently refering to the ship that recovered the piece.

Despite their initial opposition, NTSB investigators came to appreciate the reconstruction. They examined every hole in the wreckage and could not find the tell-tale trace of a weapon. But there was plenty of evidence of a fuel tank explosion.

Soot patterns showed how fire erupted from the tank. Twisted metal showed the sequence of the explosion. Crushed metal near the nose showed that section had broken off and struck the water with tremendous force.

Together, the pieces helped solve the mystery of Flight 800.

Jetasaurus Rex also became a powerful public relations tool. It helped the NTSB rebut theories about bombs and missiles to families of the passengers, members of Congress and the news media.

"When you look at the center tank, there simply is no debate" about what happened, said Goelz.

Ellen Engleman Conners, the chairman of the NTSB, said she finds the wreckage inspirational because it reminds her "our work does matter."

- Bill Adair can be reached at adair@sptimes.com or 202 463-0575.

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