FAA Releases Taped Comments of Pilots Who Saw TWA Jet Explode

“God bless him,” said one shaken flier as recognition set in that July night that a Boeing jumbo jet had just exploded outside New York.

The remark was captured on tape-recordings of conversations between the air traffic controller and planes in the area on July 17, 1996, the night TWA Flight 800 blew up and killed all 230 people aboard.

The recordings, which have been under analysis by accident investigators, were made public Wednesday by the Federal Aviation Administration.

A final determination remains to be made, but investigators say the plane appears to have been downed by an explosion in its center fuel tank, probably the result of mechanical failure.

The Boeing 747, en route from New York to Paris, exploded at 8:31 p.m. EDT, shortly after the controller at the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center had directed the pilot to begin climbing to 15,000 feet from 13,000 feet.

At 8:31:50 p.m., Eastwind Flight 507 told the controller: “We just saw an explosion out here. . . . Ah, we just saw an explosion up ahead of us. . . . It just went down--in the water.”

At 8:32:25, Virgin Atlantic Flight 009 followed: “I can confirm that. . . . It looked like an explosion out there about five miles away, six miles away.”