I was glued to the Smithsonian Channel show "Air Disasters" when they recently featured the PSA 1771 crash in 1987. It's a pretty interesting show that takes the known facts of an air disaster, as reported by the NTSB, and adds the re-enactment of the event and features interviews investigators who worked on the accident and/or passengers/crew who survived.
This episode had me floored, however, with how the NTSB and FBI were able to pretty much zero in on exactly what happened, despite the aircraft crashing into a California field in a reported 5000G nose dive that pretty much obliterated the aircraft and everyone/everything on board.
No human remains were found, but they were able to recover enough of the voice recorder and data recorder to piece together what happened, and then found the handle of the gun used by the murderer who shot the crew and some passengers (including his main target) along with part of his finger/flesh still on the trigger. They got a print, matched it to the employee and the rest was an easy puzzle to complete. Truly amazing work by the investigators.
1987 isn't that long ago, and yet airline/airport personnel were free to move past the security check points without going through the metal detector. We had plenty of threats in this world back then, and just 2 years prior there was a highly publicized TWA flight held hostage in the Mid East. But it took this domestic incident to prompt the FAA to require all people to go through the security checkpoints the same way.
This episode had me floored, however, with how the NTSB and FBI were able to pretty much zero in on exactly what happened, despite the aircraft crashing into a California field in a reported 5000G nose dive that pretty much obliterated the aircraft and everyone/everything on board.
No human remains were found, but they were able to recover enough of the voice recorder and data recorder to piece together what happened, and then found the handle of the gun used by the murderer who shot the crew and some passengers (including his main target) along with part of his finger/flesh still on the trigger. They got a print, matched it to the employee and the rest was an easy puzzle to complete. Truly amazing work by the investigators.
1987 isn't that long ago, and yet airline/airport personnel were free to move past the security check points without going through the metal detector. We had plenty of threats in this world back then, and just 2 years prior there was a highly publicized TWA flight held hostage in the Mid East. But it took this domestic incident to prompt the FAA to require all people to go through the security checkpoints the same way.
