Word: planes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Board (NTSB) staff will take a hard look at a problematic piece of equipment on the Boeing 767--the thrust reverser. These devices slow the aircraft down during landing by reversing the airflow from the engines. And while the devices are great for shortening landing rolls--or stopping a plane during an aborted takeoff--they can be deadly if accidentally deployed in flight. In 1991 a thrust reverser on a Lauda Air Boeing 767 deployed in midair, sending the plane into a death plunge over Thailand. That jet was No. 283 on Boeing's assembly line. EgyptAir Flight...
...what were, initially, unanswerable questions. The Deep Drone, an underwater robot outfitted with sonar and cameras, located the crucial black boxes--the flight-data recorder and cockpit-voice recorders--within days. The flight-data recorder from the 767-300 is a new design that stores 55 measurements of the plane's movements and control inputs--as much as five times more than previous models--that should help investigators piece together what went wrong...
Despite such speculation, the case for an accidental thrust-reverser deployment is weak, at least for now. When a reverser is accidentally deployed, "one side of the plane is going forward, the other side is going backward," explains Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter. The plane would likely have exhibited the kind of jerky push-pull motion that characterized the Lauda Air jet's descent in 1991. The radar indicates, however, that Flight 990 nosedived in a straight line in its original descent. And if the pilots faced such a problem, they should have had time to send out a distress signal...
Disasters such as TWA Flight 800 have exposed the folly of assuming the worst: terrorism. Still, EgyptAir has a track record: in 1985 Palestinian terrorists hijacked one of its planes to Malta, resulting in 60 deaths, and just three weeks ago, a hijacker forced another plane to fly to Germany. To enhance security, two armed guards usually fly aboard EgyptAir flights. There were no such guards on Flight 990. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hastened to dismiss sabotage, but the Egyptian government's war against Islamic militants cannot be discounted...
...dashed Monday, as sources close to the investigation indicated that the tape provided no answers. Evidence from the first "black box" had established that the Boeing 767's engines were turned off at 33,000 feet, precipitating a plunge of 16,000 feet in just 40 seconds before the plane steeply climbed for a mile and a half and then finally plunged into the ocean. That shifted the locus of the investigation - and most conspiratorial conjecture - to the cockpit, and the factors that might have prompted the crew to turn off the engines. But the "black box" tape...