Wreckage from TWA crash to be destroyed

Twenty-five years ago, a Boeing 747 flying from New York City to Paris exploded in midair and broke apart just off the coast of Long Island. All 230 people on board the plane, Trans World Airlines Flight 800, were killed, and the wreckage plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean.

In the lengthy investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board had workers salvage the remains from the ocean floor and painstakingly reconstruct the plane. When they finished, the reconstruction was moved to a warehouse in Virginia, where it has been used to train plane crash investigators for nearly two decades.

But with the lease on the warehouse nearing its end, the agency announced plans to decommission and destroy the remaining wreckage from one of the deadliest plane crashes in U.S. history.

The destruction will erase some of the last physical traces of an expensive, fouryear investigation that concluded electrical failure brought down the plane — a finding disputed by conspiracy theorists who believed a missile was responsible — and that had a lasting impact.

“The investigation of the crash of TWA Flight 800 is a seminal moment in aviation safety history,” the safety board’s managing director, Sharon Bryson, said in a statement. “From that investigation, we issued safety recommendations that fundamentally changed the way aircraft are designed.”

The decision will also remove one of the most tangible links that loved ones have to the victims. While the reconstruction is closed to the public, the victims’ families have been allowed to visit over the years.

Heidi Snow Cinader, whose fiancé, Michel Breistroff, died in the crash, said that some had left flowers or other mementos on the seats where their family members spent their last minutes.

Cinader did not criticize the board’s decision, although she said the site played a crucial role in providing a physical space that allowed families to grieve.

“Knowing that it’s there was always comforting,” said Cinader.

The safety board said recent developments in its investigative techniques, including technologies like 3D scanning and drone imagery, made the reconstruction less crucial to its training program.

It will stop using the reconstruction July 7, 10 days before the 25th anniversary of the crash, which took place July 17, 1996.

THE NEW YORK TIMES 1997 Wreckage recovered from TWA Flight 800 is assembled inside a hangar in Calverton, New York, on July 11, 1997. The National Transportation Safety Board says it plans to decommission and destroy the remaining wreckage.