Science & Technology

New Documentary Questions Official TWA Flight 800 Explanation

Suggests an explosion happened outside the plane

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In a new documentary, former investigators who looked into the mysterious crash of TWA Flight 800, which killed 230, are breaking their silence to claim that the explosion that brought down the plane in 1996 was likely no accident, and that the final report on the cause of the blast was falsified.

TWA Flight 800 exploded in mid-air on July 17, 1996 about 11 minutes after taking off from New York's JFK airport on its way to Paris. Though theories abounded as to what happened to the plane—from a bomb on the aircraft to it being struck by a missile or even a meteorite—the National Transportation Safety Board concluded after a four-year investigation that the probable cause of the crash was an accidental fuel tank explosion. The NTSB said it could not be sure what exactly ignited the blast, but "of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was a short circuit outside of the [fuel tank] that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring…"