This is the web site for the fatal crash of the next early model Boeing 747 to fall from the sky in pieces. The date is anytime after 1 September 1996 so the actual numbers will have to be filled in by you. I'll just make some helpful guesses, OK?
The Crash:
Airline: Random, fill in actual.
Type Aircraft: Boeing 747-100 series or Boeing 747-200 series
Flight Number: Random, fill in actual.
Date: Random, fill in actual date after 1 Sep 96
Time: Night takeoff
Flight Mode: Climbing
Altitude: Random, fill in actual.
Speed: About 330 miles per hour or 300 knots calibrated airspeed.
Fatals: All on board, maybe one survivor.
Passenger List: Place your name here as well as anyone else likely to be travelling with you.
From: Random, fill in where you took off.
To: Random, fill in where you thought you were going to land.
Where: Over ocean
Radar Information: Radar blips just as destruction starts and during breakup.
Data Recorder: Abrupt power cut.
Voice Recorder: Short loud sound then silence.
Engine Info: Engine number three foreign object damage.
Wreckage Trails: Two, one for the nose and the other for the rest of the plane.
Damage starts where: In the forward cargo hold area just forward of the wing.
Official Cause: Terrorist bomb, or fuel tank explosion, or friendly fired missile, or... you'll have to help me out here because all I can think for crash cause is a reasonable, common sense, mechanical explanation that has happened before, happened now, and will happen again. But you don't want to hear that explanation. You will not listen. You will not understand. You won't believe me and now you will die.
Details of crash: Well, here I'll just have to tell it to you like a story, like I'm telling it to you personally, like it's totally about you, OK? I think so. Here we go.
All passengers, including you, were eager to get on board and get settled into their seats so they stood at the entrance of the boarding ramp when the flight number was called. The attendant took their tickets and they moved on board and found their assigned seats. Some sat in the magic seats which are in rows eight to twenty eight. Sometimes when passengers sit there they disappear and are never seen again, even though many people spend many hours looking for them.
The airplane had over fifty thousand hours flight time amongst several airlines flying in all conditions in all parts of the world for twenty five years. It was was maintained to United States Federal Aviation Regulations standards. These 747s will last forever, you thought.
You picked a seat selection in the rear because you heard that was the safest. When a plane crashes and has survivors, they usually are from the rear, that's the theory, you thought, as you stuffed your carry on bag under your seat.
You got settled in for the six hour flight from where you are now to where you are going. A one hour climb, a four hour cruise at thirty thousand plus feet of altitude, then a one hour descent to landing and cheated death again, you chuckled to yourself.
The first part of the flight was to pretend you were in a car on the freeway. OK, buckle up the seat belt, put your seat in its full upright position and look out the window at all the pretty sights. You read the crash card in the pocket in the seat back in front of you and looked at the escape hatches nearby. You wondered what happens if some crazy person walks over and unlocks that little escape door. Does it open easy or hard and then what? Oh well, forget about it, no use worrying about stuff you can't control.
The three person flight crew of the Boeing 747 had finished the preflight walk around, looking carefully at the outside of the aircraft for hydraulic leaks, oil leaks, bent metal, open hatches, or anything else they didn't expect to find. They discovered nothing unusual.
The baggage handlers had finished their job and had loaded all the passenger's baggage, full of spare underwear and shoes, into the three cargo holds. The two aft cargo doors and the forward cargo door were all closed electrically. The complex system of lock sectors, cam latches, pull back hooks and door stops had functioned correctly. There was wear, of course, on the cam and locking pins. And the door control cable bundle was frayed, of course, from the many openings and closing of the door. If the door has to be opened at the last minute for some extra baggage, then it can be opened mechanically by back driving the sectors with a ratchet wrench. This sometimes damages the cam sectors so they appear to be locked but they are not.
On your flight, the door was not opened at the last minute and back driven mechanically. The frayed wire bundle did not rub against the metal fuselage. The wear and tear on the metal was not excessive. On your flight the door closed normally.
The early Boeing 747 fired up its number 1 engine, (all the way on the left,) then 2, then 3, then 4, (all the way on the right). The large plane lumbered out to the end of the runway.
Takeoff clearance was given and the pilot pushed the throttles all the way forward. There was not another fully loaded Boeing 747 on the runway in front of you and you did not collide with it, as happened before in the number one worst aviation crash ever. You took off smoothly.
The plane started to climb. A loaded Boeing 747 gains altitude slowly. You reached 300 knots calibrated airspeed, stabilized, and started the long climb to cruising altitude.
Now it was time to pretend you were in a cafe chatting with friends by having some peanuts and a complimentary beverage but it would be some time before the steward got to your seats in the rear. The climb continued uneventfully.
You thought ahead to when you would pretend you were in a movie theater and watch the movie. And then you looked forward to later when you would pretend to be your bed at home in your bedroom by leaning back in your seat with a pillow behind your head and trying to go to sleep.
Already the group in back of you was pretending they were in the living room back home by talking loudly and laughing at stories. One woman's voice mentioned she is saving her receipt for purchased china at the duty free store to avoid taxes, just in case she is hassled. The receipt says something about buying saucers.
Ground radar was tracking you two ways: One was by the ground radar energy beam reflecting off your large metal airframe and returning to the radar set. Depending on how long that returned beam took, a distance was determined. The other way was by sending a radar beam to trigger a box which sent back another beam to the radar set. Again, by timing and decoding the signals a distance, an altitude, an airspeed, and heading could all be determined so that the ground personnel could direct your plane safely and keep it from colliding with others.
The flight crew was in communication with the ground controllers who were issuing orders on what heading to fly, what altitude to maintain until a certain time, and what codes to put in the box to be triggered by the ground radar.
The Captain came on the speaker and spoke with that reassuring, everything is normal, everything is gonna be all right, sit back, enjoy the flight voice, and he was so glad you could join us here with this wonderful airline in this wonderful airplane on this wonderful day. You could just see him with that touch of gray in his hair, that impeccable uniform, and those steely eyes with a glint of friendliness, if you just got to know him.
During the climb you half listened to the loud conversation in back of you. One voice grated. This guy, obviously an idiot with an annoying voice, was complaining how he thought this flight was going to be on a different airplane but they substituted this early model Boeing 747 at the last moment because of unexpected passenger loads.
You thought, that's right, Jack, airlines have to make money too, you know, and if this plane makes more money than the other one, then this is the plane to fly in; no profit, no flying at all. Wake up, dummy, and join the real world.
The guy in back wouldn't shut up as he went on about a series of similar crashes that were attributed to bombs, or fire, or something, but he knew, and nobody else knew, that the causes were really a forward cargo door popping open, being torn off in the wind exposing a large hole in the nose, the nose tearing off, and the plane crashing, killing everyone, on airplanes similar to this one.
Then why are you flying, you idiot, you thought, and why are you the only idiot to know about it. The guy answered as if reading your thoughts, his wife had a credit card that gave a mile for every dollar she charged and enough miles had accumulated for a free flight somewhere. He said he thought a dollar meant a mile which meant a mile, but a mile meant a tenth of a mile and he hated to be lied to right off the bat by the people into whose hands he was putting his life.
What the hell is that guy talking about, you thought. Where are earplugs when you need them. And wasn't it against the law to talk about blowing up airplanes?
The guy went on, I refused to let her or my daughter fly in these dangerous planes so I took the flight, just because I love flying and have been flying for years. It's my life.
You mean you have one, news to me, you giggled to your self.
Yeah, nobody believes me, the loud guy said to the others which you hoped were pretending to be sleepy and closing their eyes so that maybe he would shut up. Yeah, even though I've written to the President about his airplane, Air Force One, which is an early 747, the FBI, who wants bomb information and not mechanical details, the NTSB, the FAA, the news people, and, of course, my friends who got spooked about the President and the FBI and stopped talking to me along with the government agencies who ignored me.
Get a clue, idiot, you thought, does being ignored tell you anything, like right now when nobody is replying to you.
Well, life is tough out there and you just have to take your chances with an act of God once in a lifetime, wrong place at the wrong time event, said one new female voice.
Oh, no, don't encourage him, you thought.
The loud idiot said that finally he figured that since nobody agreed with him over the years, that maybe he was wrong and what the hell, the risk was small anyway, and if you can't trust your pilot, your manufacturer and your government, who can you trust.
Exactly right, you idiot, now shut up. You thought again about putting some earplugs in because the last thing you wanted to think about, as you listened to the reassuring steady whine of the huge four jet engines carrying you three hundred and thirty miles an hour through the night air, was airplane crashes. Give me a break, you thought, I've got enough to worry about without thinking about things I have no control over. Maybe I'll order a drink and pretend I'm at my favorite bar with my buddies watching football. You pushed the overhead button to get the attention of the steward but realized that the steward had two hundred people to give beverages to before he got to you so you just lay back and took a deep breath and relaxed. And the button didn't make the light come on anyway, it was broken, but no problem. It was trivial.
But it made you think, how many pieces was this plane made of? How many didn't work? If the story were true about a structural defect in Boeing 747s, you thought, why did the manufacturer not do something about it? Why did not the government transportation agencies investigate it and find out the real cause? Why did not the TV and radio and newspapers write about it? It must be bull, some nut with a strange story just to get attention. But...but...but..you thought back to the crashes and remembered thinking, they can't all be bombs, and in your experience, the simplest, ordinary, cause of an event is usually the correct explanation, not the weird ones that make good movies.
So you thought about airplane movies, they did always have a crash in them someplace, didn't they? But usually someone lived and you always expected that someone would be you, didn't you?
The plane lumbered on, gaining altitude as the fuel burned off, the speed stayed the same, and the excess thrust was converted to lift.
There was no bomb aboard. There were no explosives stored in the baggage compartment. No one was on a boat aiming a missile at you. There were no fires in the lavatory about to be started by a smoker. The engines were running perfectly. The crew was not asleep or drunk. The ground control personnel had normal working equipment with good power backup as they watched you on radar and talked to you on high powered radio transmitters. There was no crazy hijacker on board. There were no mountains ahead higher than you were. You were not lost. The flight controls were responding correctly to pilot inputs. There were no corroded metal panels about to part. Everything was working normally; everything looked normal, everything sounded normal. The pilot keyed the mike to tell the ground that everything was normal.
But of course, everything was not normal. For some reason, and I don't know the reason, and if I don't know the reason, then I know you don't know the reason because I'm telling this story, the forward lower lobe cargo door motor was powered up and started to whine. The motor moved the door locks and cams to the open position. Why? Who knows? It could have been one of lots of reasons: faulty electrical short, defective lock mechanism, door not shut properly, wear and tear, maybe an incorrect open signal sent to door control system by interacting avionics transmitters located behind nose wheel; who knows? Who cares?
Well, you care because as the door cracked open in the fast moving air flow the higher pressure air inside the cargo compartment pushed the door open quickly into the low pressure outside air. The right side cargo door instantly flew up and out on its upper piano hinges, hit the fuselage in front of the wing, broke in two and the lower half flew off into space reflecting ground radar beams as it went. It also reflected the sun which was barely seen above the horizon at your altitude. The sunlight reflected off the spinning shiny metal door and appeared as a streak to viewers on the ground far away as it fell. The upper half of the forward cargo door remained attached to the hinges and tore off a large piece of fuselage skin above the door and flew off into space reflecting ground radar beams as it went into space. These pieces later landed closest to the door opening event because they left first and fell first.
The door being cracked open and being torn away happened so fast that the huge hole opened up in the nose before anybody realized it. The high pressure air in the now open cargo compartment rushed out in an explosive force to equalize with the low outside pressure air. This rushing noise was loud and was heard as a loud sound, or bang, or thump on the cockpit voice recorder. Baggage from the cargo compartment was pushed outside into the engine intake airstream which was being sucked into the huge 40000 pound thrust engine number three, the inboard engine on the starboard side. The hi-bypass jet engine sucked in the plastic, metal, and wood baggage. The foreign objects hit the high speed revolving turbine blades and were cut up and passed through to the burner section which cremated the small items. The metal objects blunted the leading edge of the turbine blades which rubbed against the intake and started a disintegration process inside the engine which led to excessive vibration which would shortly lead the engine to detach from the pylon and airframe and land separately from the other engines.
The floor beams buckled downward as the high pressure air in the now open passenger compartment pushed the beams down into the now low pressure cargo compartment.
The large hole above the cargo hold and passenger compartment allowed carry on baggage, metal carts, and humans to be pushed out into the fast moving airstream and to be sucked into the number three engine which was vibrating badly but still powerful enough to ingest foreign objects and mulch them up, burn them up, and spit them out. At least ten passengers in the magic seats in rows eight to twenty eight were pushed from their seats into the airstream to be sucked into the intakes and were ground up, mashed, and burnt to small particles which were exhausted into the thin air to drift away on the winds.
As this was going on, you were peacefully thinking about airplane movies having crashes and someone usually lives and that someone would be you. That's what you were thinking one half second ago, and that's what you were thinking as the door popped open and pressure changes started happening.
The now nine foot by thirteen foot hole in the right side of the nose of the early model Boeing 747 allowed the three hundred and thirty miles per hours air pressure into the slashed open cargo compartment. The heavy volume of fast moving air pressed against the bent and fractured floor beams. The fuselage skin on the other side of the nose blew out. The beams broke.
The entire nose forward of the wing came off. The power cables and information cables were severed at the nerve center behind the nose wheel. The nose fell down disintegrating as it went and formed its own debris trail very close to the event because it left before the wings and tail and the rest of fuselage.
As the nose fell, the flight crew inside was pushing buttons and calling for help but all the power had been instantly cut as the nose separated from the rest of the airplane.
Now you were aware something was going on because your eardrums exploded. The normal air pressure in the middle ear cavity behind the eardrum pushed out into the now low pressure of your ear canals which were open to the now low pressure of the passenger compartment. It felt as if your brain exploded. It hadn't, that should come later. What happened to you would be called, at the pathologist's report, baro-trauma, or bilateral tympanic membrane rupture.
The now headless aircraft, which had been going three hundred and thirty miles per hour, was no longer aerodynamic and slowed to one hundred miles per hour in a few seconds. Full soda cans flew forward and impacted in the seat backs making strange holes. You were pressed into the seat in front of you in a whiplash. Many of the people around you died by breaking their necks. But you were in the rear of the plane and tightly belted so did not die, just stunned.
The aircraft carcass descended and picked up speed again. The fuselage started to disintegrate, the wings started to disintegrate, and the tail started to disintegrate. Forty thousand gallons of fuel was vaporized and surrounded the falling debris. It was about to be ignited by the hot exhaust of one of the remaining three engines still running at full power but spooling down from disrupted airflow and fuel supply.
Inside the disintegrating fuselage cabin the rush of air mixed with the screams of the remaining living passengers. One of those was you and another was the loud guy.
All you could think of was reaching under your seat and taking out your carry on bag because you knew you had a parachute there. You had never sky dived but a friend did and had asked you to buy a harness and parachute for him and bring it back. He had already paid you for the just packed and ready to go parachute. It was red and white and blue and real pretty.
You reached down, pulled out your carry on bag, pulled out the chute, unstrapped the seat belt, put on attached harness and chute, and started to get up to open the escape hatch to jump out. The noise and pain were deafening and excruciating.
The loud guy saw you and grabbed hold of your leg and wouldn't let go.
"Take me with you," he screamed.
Yeah, right, you thought, I've never jumped out of a plane before, my parachute has never been tested before, I don't know how much weight the chute can handle, I'm scared and in pain, there's a smell of gas in the air, dead bodies are everywhere, and you want me to take you with me, risking my life even more than it is now. And I don't even like you, you son of bitch, this is probably all your fault. If you hadn't talked about airplane crashes in early Boeing 747s giving similar accident evidence when the cargo door opens up in flight, this never would have happened.
So you hit the loud guy in the face with your elbow; he fell back, you looked at his face and he was mouthing words which looked like, "I give you a curse, you are cursed, I curse you."
Ha, you thought, that's all I need, like I'm not cursed now. You reached an emergency exit and just as you were about to open it, the whole side of the fuselage peeled away and everyone near you, including the loud guy, floated out into dusk lit space.
On the ground the radar operators noticed a sudden strange blip that flew away and that all of a sudden many primary, skin paint radar blips appeared where your plane was supposed to be and the secondary radar transponder replies had stopped. They called the crew but got no response. So they called air sea rescue and gave the location of last position before communications and radar contact were lost.
You and the loud guy fell together through the sky amongst all the debris and fuel vapor. You looked over and dimly saw, in the waning sunlight, two halves of a door weaving back and forth like frisbees. The door halves came toward you and just as they approached, they veered and came together in the middle of the loud guy. You could see his head on the top half of his body look down and then look up at you. He strangely grinned and mouthed some words. They looked like: "The cam lock sectors are in the unlocked position but the locks are in the locked position. I was right, it was the inadvertent opening of the forward cargo door inflight that causes crashes of early model Boeing 747s giving similar destruction evidence. And it happened to us!"
With that the loud guy and door separated into two pieces and floated away and floated away, finally.
You pulled the ripcord and the drogue chute opened up and pulled the main chute out to inflate in the rushing air.
Just then one of the three hot jet engines ignited the fuel vapor and the entire remaining fuselage and wing and tail erupted into a huge fireball seen for miles around.
But you were mostly above the fireball. That is, the chute was above the fireball, you weren't. The burning fuel vapor expanded and just reached you as you had slowed your descent with the open parachute. The fire burnt all your clothes off, and melted the polyester material in your shirts, socks, pants, and underwear into your skin, like a permanent tattoo.
But the main chute was intact. Then minute pieces of debris blew in your eyes and partially blinded you. Other pieces of debris were spinning around like razor blades and a few pieces flew by and cut several of the lines connecting you to the parachute. Your velocity increased because of the decreased lift provided by the chute.
Everything was under you now. The nose had since landed and formed its own debris trail. The rest of the aircraft was falling into the water forming its own debris trail. The flight data recorders had fallen into the water and were transmitting a homing signal for the searchers and investigators to find. The engines had landed, some with foreign object damage and debris still inside the burn chambers. The radar blips were fading from the ground radar screens. The fire had gone out. Many parts of passenger bodies were floating on the water after they had hit and exploded like a water balloon thrown from a rooftop ten thousand feet high onto a hot driveway.
It was just you coming down, injured, in pain, disfigured, in a damaged parachute too fast to survive.
But, as luck would have it, as you predicted, someone usually survives in airplane crash movies and you figured it would be you. Just under you was an island with a big volcano on it. The volcano was so high that snow would fall and remain all year long. A tall tree stood over a very deep snowbank which angled downward towards the sea.
You couldn't see much because you were blinded, but you felt your still rapidly descending body hit the branches of the tree which slowed you down, although breaking your back, and then you felt yourself land into the soft deep snow which slowed you down, although breaking your neck, and then you felt yourself sliding and sliding and sliding down the hill, slowing all the time until you came to a stop.
You looked up. You couldn't move, in severe pain, deaf and blind, but you were alive. Ha, you thought, I fooled you. You can't kill me. You did wonder though, what was the curse that the loud guy had given you.
You passed out. A local scientific team had seen you, found you, called for helicopter rescue, and sent you to a hospital where you went into surgery and coma for six weeks.
During the six weeks this is what happened.
The search was immediately started to retrieve the flight data recorders. Radar tapes were reviewed. A strange radar blip before the destruction started was reviewed over and over again and dismissed as an anomaly. The streak was dismissed as eye witness exaggeration. The radar blips recorded during the complete destruction were tracked to the sea and the search area was defined. Searchers found debris and floating bodies.
The FBI was called in to investigate because Boeing 747s just don't fall out of the sky. The FBI assigned five hundred agents to the investigation. They started investigating all passengers who had flown on the destroyed aircraft and all passengers who had flown on the plane the flight before. Many suspicious persons were discovered and issued subpoenas to appear before a judge to answer questions and present records or be held in contempt of court and go to jail. The FBI asked the Treasury Department to assign agents of the Alcohol Tobacco, and Firearms to assist them in the investigation because they didn't have enough agents.
The NTSB was in charge of the investigation. The few investigators available became garbage collectors for the debris which was then analyzed by the FBI which stated that they knew a bomb blew the airplane out of the sky and they would just have to find the proof and would, sooner or later. The FBI quietly released all interesting information that supported a bomb theory every day to the press while denying they were the source leaving the impression that the NTSB was of the unofficial opinion that it was a bomb but didn't want to go on record just yet.
The flight data recorders were found. The cockpit voice recorder ended with a short loud sound, or thump, or bang, which baffled the investigators. The data recorders ended abruptly which indicated a sudden power cut to the data recorders which baffled the investigators. The investigators said that a mechanical defect which would cut the power supply that quickly was a remote possibility but that it is not ruled out. No possible defects were offered as candidates.
Some crazy guy started emailing the NTSB to investigate the possible opening of the forward cargo door in flight, just like UAL flight 811, which had a cargo door open and tear off in flight, killing nine people and leaving much evidence before returning and landing safely. Compare Flight 811 data to the recent crash, the crazy guy said. And Pan Am 103, and Air India 182. He was reassured by the NTSB investigator that everything was all right.
Engine number three was brought up to the surface with foreign object damage inside it.
Two massive debris trails were laid out and more debris retrieved. The FBI took control of the two pieces of the forward cargo door and sent it to the FBI laboratory in Washington DC for evidence of bomb residue. The lab tech moved the latches and locks and cams around from their found position to examine all the crevices for explosive residue. None was found.
The recovered body count grew daily but never got below ten with many of the missing assigned to the magic seats from row eight to twenty eight.
The floor beams above the cargo hold were recovered and put aside.
Paper work discovered that two Airworthiness Directives were against the forward cargo door on early 747s. One was called "To Insure That Inadvertent Opening of the Lower Cargo Door Will Not Occur Flight," an event termed not acceptable by the FAA. A possible cargo door opening was not ruled in or out or ever mentioned as a potential cause of crash.
The Boeing representative who was assisting the NTSB investigation reassured investigators that the Boeing 747 is a strong airplane and would not have any mechanical defects and therefore it would be a waste of time to look for one and the time is better spent looking for a one time only type event cause such as a leaking fuel tank explosion which fault could be placed on the airline which had not managed to place a representative on the investigation team.
The investigation team was led by a very cautious, sensitive man who spent many hours consoling the grieving families of the dead passengers. He made it a priority to recover the bodies ahead of clue filled debris. He was surrounded by engineers, investigators, and aviation employees who had a very intense personal interest in the determination of the cause of the crash. Their lives, livelihoods, families, careers, promotions, retirement, self esteem, and identity were all riding on the outcome of the investigation. They were very obliging in assisting the NTSB and worked long hours presenting the truth as they saw it.
The FBI continued its minute examination of every piece and fragment of the wreckage looking for microscopic traces of explosive. Some invisible molecules were found on very tiny pieces. A meeting was held to determine if the FBI should supersede the NTSB as leader of the investigation. The decision was made to wait a while longer. Without official authority the FBI continued to issue subpoenas, tail foreign nationals, monitor phone calls, intercept mail, and prod informers for information.
The same crazy guy with a web site who says forward cargo door did it all goes on the radio and talks about it. Some newspaper reporters call but lose interest when it is discovered the guy also says the forward cargo door brought down another Boeing 747 which everybody in the world knows was a bomb, not a cargo door. He must be crazy. He even said another bomb blown up plane years ago was a cargo door. Three 747s blown up by bombs and he thinks it's a cargo door opening. "We'll be in touch, see you later," they said, ever so polite.
You remain in a coma, oblivious to it all. The world waits for your recovery to shed some light on the mystery. Your eardrums heal. Your eyes regain some vision. You start to shake in your hospital bed. Your eyelids quiver. Your fingers twitch. Every move is carried live on TV under the "developing story" caption.
However, more weeks go by and not much happens. The daily press briefing is discontinued from lack of interest. The crash is old news supplanted by newer airplane crashes. The press loses interest in crash cause since the exciting bomb or missile idea fades leaving boring mechanical problem as possibility. It looks like the US is not going to go to war to get even with someone by killing a lot of strangers. The media attention moves on.
The body count ends with ten unrecovered bodies from the shark filled water. Most of the debris is brought to the surface. It looks like the cause will be unknown until a probable cause is issued a year or so later by the government when most interest is lost.
The aircraft manufacturer breathes a sigh of relief, their airplanes will still be built and sold. The airline breathes a sigh of relief, their airplanes will not be grounded. The insurers breathe a sigh of relief, claims take years to settle, especially with an unknown cause. The engine manufacturers breathe a sigh of relief, their engines are OK. The government breathes a sigh of relief, the administration is not embarrassed by lack of oversight and employment is kept high by making the planes and flying the passengers around. The passengers scratch their heads and say, well, you got to trust someone, and if you can't trust the government, who can you trust?
The crazy guy with the web site sits typing all day long, scanning photos all day long, responding to email all day long, and uploading pages to his web site all day long. Web site hit count goes down and down as interest is lost in old news. No one calls, no one emails, friends get tired of hearing about the stupid cargo door thing, family roll their eyes and look at each, he's off again, try to change the subject, wife says, as she has said for six years, I don't want to hear about that anymore.
His four year old daughter brings accident report book to web site guy, opens it up to picture with hole in side of nose and says, hole, then she picks and points to picture of pieces on ground and says, pieces, then she points to reconstructed fuselage sequence and says, airplane, then she points to forward cargo door and says, door. Web site guys thinks if a four year old can understand concept of door opening up in flight exposing large hole in nose which tears off which causes plane to crash into pieces, then there is hope that others will understand, the doors will be fixed, planes fly again and life goes on.
Rejuvenated with energy and hope, he shuts down web site and plays computer game with daughter thinking, this is what's real and important, not some strangers far away who will hurl out of their seats into the night to their deaths. Hell, probably some of them are escaping bank robbers and deserve to die. He and daughter play video game, forgetting all about stupid forward cargo door opening in flight thing.
You start to come out of coma. The doctors allow you to be interviewed. The FBI is chosen to interview first with others watching on closed circuit TV. You are badly burned, mostly deaf and blind and a quadriplegic. You communicate to others by moving a pencil clamped between your teeth and slowly tapping out your answers, letter by letter, on a computer keyboard which flashes your answers around the world on the internet.
First, the FBI welcomes you and assures you everything is all right and the little IRS problems, discrepancies really, that were discovered when investigating your life have been, well, will be, taken care of. And they just have a few questions about the cause of your terrible accident.
What do you remember seeing? they shout loudly so that you can hear.
You hazily recall a sharp visual image and peck out, "Flying pieces of metal, moving back and forth."
Ah, says the FBI. What did they look like?
"They moved together, like they had a life of their own," you tapped, thinking back to the two halves of the door floating and coming together in the midsection of that loud idiot.
"It was terrible," you typed, unprompted, "they hurt him, oh, they hurt him, and then they went away."
Hmmmm, said the FBI inside the hospital room.
Hmmmm, said the manufacturer representatives.
Hmmmm, said the insurers.
Hmmmm, said the many involved government agencies.
Hmmmm, said the TV reporters.
How did it happen, they asked the FBI to ask. The FBI asked.
"Everything was normal, I heard a great noise and felt a great pain, and the plane went down. It was as if something had hit the plane and cut it in two," you typed.
Hmmmm, went everybody.
Thank you, said the FBI, we'll get back to you on that, here's our card; if you think off anything else, just give us a call.
You went to sleep as the administered drug took effect.
More days passed. You rested. The web site guy had a new interest, putting in a brick walkway next to his driveway. Everyone agreed that was a good interest, so real, so satisfying, so fulfilling, so non-weird. His wife and friends started talking to him again.
The manufacturer and airlines and insurers and government representatives were very busy, however. One day they all got together in a oiled wood paneled room and asked what can we live with regarding this plane crash, flight so and so, the exact number was fading in their memories actually. The amount of money riding on the cause of the crash was very clear to them. It was 2.1 billion dollars.
They reviewed the evidence. They had radar blips of a plane bursting in mid-air. Electrical power was cut suddenly. There was no real evidence of a bomb and that had been done before anyway, twice. The weather was fine. The pilots were cool. And they had an eyewitness account and some found notes in a passenger's purse. The eyewitness testimony indicated a mid-air collision with a thinking, controlled object. The tattered note evidence indicated flying saucers.
It was agreed that the only plausible explanation, based upon available evidence, that would be acceptable to the innocent manufacturers of engine and airframe, to the innocent airline, and to the innocent government agencies was the cause of the crash to be a mid-air collision with an unidentified flying object or objects that departed the scene.
The fact that the UFO was not seen on radar was explained that it was a stealth UFO. The fact that no metal not common to the crashed airplane was found was explained as aliens have high technology metals which don't leave traces when they hit ordinary human made aluminum. The choice of one or more objects was added so as to appear not too certain of the event but to give an impression of mature latitude.
Everyone agreed this was fine solution. The manufacturer and airline could not be held to blame for a mid-air with an invisible flying saucer, it could happen to anyone. The insurer was elated because now the liability was limited to a small amount per passenger instead of a huge amount for negligence. The TV and other lesser media such as newspapers and magazines loved the idea knowing ratings would soar as the fake pictures and reasoned conjectures flooded into the talk shows. The government was very satisfied because now it could ask for and receive unlimited extra funding for research into alien defense mechanisms, hiring more agents, buying more machines, and being able to cloak much more activity and spending as Top Secret, Need to Know Only, and not many people needed to know, that's for sure. In fact, the fewer people that know, the better, was the motto of the heads of the government agencies as they submitted their confidential revised funding requests.
The accident report was released. It ignored all aspects of a mechanical malfunction and emphasized the sudden power loss, the strength of the airplane, the written evidence, and the conversation of the only eyewitness. It came to the conclusion that the probable cause of your crash was a mid-air collision in the forward cargo hold area with an unidentified flying object/objects that departed the scene. As an appendix, a recent scientific discovery of life on Mars was added, just for information's sake.
You came out of the coma again. Your head was clear. You researched your accident and several others. You remembered the conversation of the loud guy talking about similar accidents to early model Boeing 747s giving similar evidence which now matched your accident. You remembered the whine of the door motor and the decompression. You remembered the door halves coming together and the cam latches being confirmed as being open by the loud guy. Now you knew what caused the huge plane to crash and what caused all the others to crash and kill all those people. You wanted to stop the killing, to stop the crashes, to fix the doors and to tell the world what had happened and how to fix it. You knew it could happen again.
You started typing on your computer into the internet after finding the original, now abandoned, crash web site about doors. You started the site back up again and typed, "It was the opening of the forward cargo door in flight that caused my plane to crash. I felt it. The opening in flight of the forward cargo door is causing the crashes of early model Boeing 747s. It is all documented, common sense, reasonable and likely. The problem can be fixed forever."
You were ignored; you were not believed; you were scorned; you were rebuffed; you were rejected.
You called a physician known to assist troubled people out of existence. After the deadly injections, you typed to the world, "It's true, I am cursed. I know the truth. Goodbye."
You had previously written a code virus to be placed in personal computers to automatically appear on every anniversary of your crash date.
The crash anniversary arrived. The virus took effect. The message displayed to the world: "You won't believe me so now you will die."
The End