Families to Press TWA for Compensation

Families of victims of the TWA Flight 800 crash said Saturday that they will press the airline for immediate compensation.

Their announcement came after federal investigators briefed them about possible problems in the doomed plane’s central fuel tank, a briefing that apparently stopped short of answering their most pressing questions about the cause of the July 17 tragedy.

“We didn’t hear very much new, Jose Cremades, a spokesman for the families, told a news conference following the session. “The key issues that we wanted to find answers to have not been answered.”

Cremades said a representative would meet with Trans World Airlines officials Monday to press for funds to help families whose main wage-earner was killed in the crash.

Cremades said many family members were encountering financial hardship since the crash.

He also said members agreed that claims they file for the $75,000 compensation authorized under the Warsaw Convention for deaths in international aviation would not resolve any other claims they might make.

“This does not preclude anything else,” said Cremades, of France, who lost a 15-year-old son in the crash of the New York-to-Paris flight.

About 100 family members attended the three-hour session, which was conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board, the FBI and the Navy at the families’ request. The session at the State Department was closed to the media.

The meeting came a day after NTSB officials, believing that a spark generated by static electricity may have set off the fuel tank explosion that destroyed the Boeing 747 and killed 230 people, recommended urgent modifications for hundreds of jetliners, including all 747s.

The NTSB proposals, which included a spate of possible changes designed to hold down the buildup of heat in airliners’ center fuel tanks, are now being studied by the Federal Aviation Administration, which has said it will probably act on them soon.

Industry officials were cautious Saturday in reacting to the NTSB recommendations.

Doug Webb, a spokesman for Boeing Co., the manufacturer of the 747, said Saturday that it is too early for the company to speculate on the cost of the NTSB recommendations or how quickly they might be put into place on U.S. airliners.

The NTSB’s recommendations centered on proposals to modify the fuel systems in airliners to keep fuel from reaching flash-point temperatures and to prevent the buildup of explosive vapors in fuel tanks--both suspected problems in the crash of Flight 800.

Among the list of possible changes were proposals to add cooled fuel to the tanks just before takeoff and to pump inert gases into the tank and into areas around heat-producing equipment. The proposals could cover the approximately 1,000 747s in service as well as thousands of other airliners.

Despite its push to put such modifications into effect, the NTSB insisted Saturday that it was “by no means certain” that the explosion on Flight 800 had been set off by static electricity.

Officials said that they still have not discarded the possibility that the plane was downed by a terrorist bomb or even a missile.