Narrowing the Possibilities in Latest Airliner Tragedy

Just nine weeks after a ValuJet airliner crashed in a Florida swamp, killing all 110 aboard, the nation is again riveted on a watery scene of death. The tragedy occurred just after Trans World Airlines Flight 800 took off from Kennedy Airport in New York Wednesday night, en route to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. It apparently exploded while still climbing, and it crashed in more than 100 feet of water off Long Island. No survivors have been found among the 230 who were on board.

Now, following the images of floating wreckage and a nighttime sea of burning jet fuel, the quest to know what happened, and why, is paramount. Already there has been widespread speculation on the possibility of a terrorist act. Among the many accounts that sparked interest Thursday, for example, was an ABC News report that a major Arabic newspaper received a warning on Wednesday about an attack on an American target. The State Department later said that it had viewed the warning as a “general political tract” and not as a specific threat.

News sources also indicated that authorities were narrowing the cause to catastrophic engine failure, an explosive or even a missile.

There’s little argument to be made with a new and rather cohesive sense of caution over speculating on a cause for the crash. Repeatedly, the Clinton administration and most members of Congress closed ranks and largely refused to shoot from the hip. That represented something of a welcome change from the Oklahoma City bombing, when the initial and very wrongheaded speculation focused on Middle Eastern terrorists as the only possible answer. After the ValuJet crash, federal officials quickly proclaimed the safety of the airline, mere days before they had to announce that ValuJet was considered so unsafe that it was being grounded.

Wednesday night, before any theorizing about the cause of the TWA crash emerged, people living near the scene of the tragedy were responding rapidly and heroically. Dozens of volunteer boaters put to sea, braving the darkness and burning fuel in a futile search for survivors.

There were heart-wrenching stories reflected in the passenger list of Flight 800. It included several students in a French club from Montoursville, Pa. There were Italian citizens who had been bumped from an earlier New York-to-Rome flight. An Emmy-winning executive producer from ABC News was aboard with his wife and daughter, en route to his final assignment for the network.

There were reports that TWA Airlines had been less than speedy or completely thoughtful in notifying the families of passengers. Airlines are now required by law to notify relatives within three hours, and there were indications that far more time than that passed before some families were notified after Wednesday’s crash. The airline must answer those charges as a search for the cause of the crash continues.