The Militant - 12/15/97 -- The Real Crime In TWA Crash

Vol.61/No.44 December 15, 1997

The Real Crime In TWA Crash
There's an "overwhelming absence of evidence indicating a crime" in last year's deadly crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, claimed FBI spokesman James Kallstrom when he announced that the federal cop agency was closing its investigation. But the opposite is true. There is a high crime here. The criminals are the airline bosses, the owners of Boeing, which manufactured the plane, and the government. They have all flaunted airline safety and shown utter disregard for the lives of passengers and crews by placing top priority on the employers' profits rather than human needs. While the company and government whipped up a scare campaign over a supposed bomb, the real questions of airline safety and maintenance were shunted aside. The speedup and workforce cuts at TWA and other airlines have continued, guaranteeing further disasters like this one that took 230 lives.

From the beginning the Militant said, "Safety is the issue." In the weeks after the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA 800, facts came out indicating that the most likely cause of the explosion was a mechanical failure. But details like the pilots' report of "an erratic fuel-flow gauge" just two minutes before the Boeing 747 exploded went virtually unreported. Instead massive media coverage and government investigations focused on the supposed theory that a bomb or missile brought down the plane - despite the lack of a single shred of evidence for this assertion.

For years before this disaster Boeing, the airlines, and government agencies knew of a number of safety problems with the 747. These included weak fuse pins that caused a crash in 1992, problems with part of the aircraft's structural frame known as Section 41, and a tendency for older 747s to develop leaky fuel tanks. Upgrades to address some of these problems have only been partially carried out. A proposal by the National Transportation Safety Board to introduce "inerting" procedures that would reduce the possibility of fuel tank explosions have been shelved as too expensive.

These problems are exacerbated as TWA and other airlines hold back from investing in new planes and equipment as part of their drive to cut costs and boost sagging profits. The average age of TWA's fleet has grown to nearly 20 years, and the average for its Boeing 747s is 25 years. At the same time the airline has cut crews, speeded up the pace of work, and extracted concessions from union members to the tune of $660 million.

Washington, TWA, and Boeing have carried out a real crime by sweeping these safety questions under the rug. Also criminal is the government's cynical use of the crash to step up police presence at airports and curtail democratic rights in the name of fighting a supposed "terrorist" threat. The explosion was used to justify increased searches of passengers at airports throughout the United States, investigations into airport workers' backgrounds, and scapegoating of immigrants from the Mideast, even as the bomb charges were revealed to be nothing but hype.

Safety is a central question for the labor movement. Airline workers and their unions have the biggest stake in exposing the real crime of TWA Flight 800, and fighting to force the bosses and government to spend the time and money needed to prevent further disasters.

Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home