TWA Scolds FBI for Comments on Crash

Trans World Airlines on Monday rebuked FBI Director Louis Freeh and other bureau officials for saying mechanical failure--not terrorism--was the likely cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800 last summer, even though investigators have not yet definitely reached that conclusion.

TWA complained that the comments were “unproven speculation, and no evidence recovered to date would conclusively support such a theory.”

During a television interview Sunday, Freeh said that “the evidence as we have developed it to date, and particularly the evidence we have not found, would lead the inquiry toward the conclusion that this was a catastrophic mechanical failure” that sent the 747 jumbo jet into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island, N.Y., killing all 230 people on board.

But TWA’s statement challenged Freeh, saying that “a conclusion based on ‘the evidence we have not found’ is clearly no conclusion at all.”

The St. Louis-based carrier also noted that between 15,000 and 25,000 pounds of debris from the aircraft are still on the ocean floor, and said it hopes that “those following the investigation will remain open-minded and patient.”

An FBI spokesman said the bureau had not yet seen TWA’s statement and therefore had no comment.

TWA could be severely hurt if authorities do determine that some mechanical failure caused by the airline’s maintenance was at fault--which to date they have not. TWA is the weakest financially of the eight major U.S. airlines and can ill afford any development that might cause passengers to avoid its service.

But Michael Boyd, president of the consulting firm Aviation Systems Research Corp. in Golden, Colo., said that “TWA is absolutely right” to challenge the FBI’s statements. “It’s unconscionable to say it’s a mechanical problem” if that hasn’t been firmly decided, he said.

Freeh in effect repeated what other FBI officials had said last week: that a mechanical explanation was gaining credence. But having that stance publicly announced by the FBI’s director made it the agency’s strongest statement yet on the investigation.

Boeing Co., builder of the 747 jumbo jet, was less strident about Freeh’s comments but emphasized that it has not yet picked one crash theory over another, pending further investigation.

“We want to find out what happened, and let the facts and the data lead us to that answer,” said Doug Webb, a spokesman at Boeing’s plant in Everett, Wash., where the 747s are manufactured.

Nonetheless, Freeh’s shifting of the crash’s focus toward mechanical failure and away from a bomb or other terrorism again moves the crash’s discussion closer to Seattle-based Boeing, the world’s largest maker of commercial jetliners.