Swissair 111, TWA 800, and Electromagnetic Interference

Sat, 09 Sep 2000 11:46:51 -0400

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An interesting study, IMHO.
Andre' N4ICK
******************************
This essay has shown eight features shared by TWA 800 and
Swissair 111: (1)
 they took off from the same airport; (2) they took off on a
Wednesday at 8:19;
 (3) they traveled along the Bette route; (4) they both had
their first signs of
 trouble in the same region of airspace between twelve and
fourteen minutes into
 the flight; (5) they both appear to have suffered an
electrical catastrophe; (6)
 they both suffered a catastrophe whose cause remains
mysterious, even after
 years of rigorous inquiry; (7) they both flew during a week
when extensive
 military exercises were being conducted; (8) they both flew
when certain
 specific transmitters (submarines, the Navy P3s) appear to
have been in the
 region.

http://nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?20000921092F

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ELAINE SCARRY: Swissair 111, TWA 800, and Electromagnetic
Interference

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FEATURE

September 21, 2000

Swissair 111, TWA 800, and Electromagnetic
Interference

ELAINE SCARRY

On the evening of July 17, 1996, TWA 800 fell into the ocean seven
miles from the Long Island town of East Moriches. The plane had taken off from
New York's JFK Airport and had been bound for Paris, France. All 230 people on
board died. The inquiry into the crash, the most expensive and (in its
attention to the plane's internal systems) the most rigorous inquiry in
aviation history, has lasted for four years. A final hearing by the National
Transportation Safety Board has been taking place on August 22 and 23, 2000,
as this issue of The New York Review goes to press; neither the
hearing nor the report that will follow it is expected (according to advance
press reports) to "pinpoint" the cause of the crash. The full
written report will become available to the public in several months.¹

During the first year and a half of the inquiry, investigators from
the National Transportation Safety Board and from the FBI concentrated on
three matters: the possibility of a mechanical cause, the possibility of a
bomb, and the possibility of a missile. In November of 1997, the FBI formally
announced its conclusion that neither a bomb nor a missile had caused the
accident (at this point, the FBI withdrew from the case). In December of 1997,
the Safety Board—which had painstrakingly reconstructed most of the plane
and scrutinized all of its internal systems—held a week-long public
meeting reviewing the extensive, but inconclusive, evidence it had accumulated.

Investigators had long known that the plane's central fuel tank
exploded, but had at first been uncertain whether that explosion occurred
early or late in the sequence of events that brought the plane down. By the
time that the December 1997 public meeting took place, the Safety Board had
long since concluded that the central fuel tank explosion was an early event
in the catastrophe. What still remained was to find the source of the
ignition, the cause of the explosion.

Between December of 1997 and August of 2000, the Safety Board
continued its search for the ignition source. Included in its inquiry, and
emphasized in the August hearings, was the possibility of a short-circuit or
some other problem in the plane's 150 miles of aging wiring. Also included in
the inquiry was the possibility of an external ignition source,
electromagnetic interference from one, or more than one, of the many military
and civilian ships and planes that had been in the vicinity of TWA 800 and
that, along with powerful civilian and military transmitters on land, might
have produced an adverse electromagnetic environment. This second line of
inquiry—electromagnetic interference from a source external to the
plane's own wiring (internal and external sources of ignition are not mutually
exclusive:damaged wiring inside a plane can increase its vulnerability to
external transmissions)—is the subject of the article that follows.

1.

In the past two years, the National Transportation Safety Board has
taken steps to assess the severity of the electromagnetic environment that
surrounded TWA 800 on the evening it fell. In July of 1998, the Safety Board
promised to enlist the technical expertise of the Joint Spectrum Center, the
agency inside the Department of Defense whose laboratories are designed to
sort out problems in the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly as those
problems affect military craft. The NTSB also promised to call upon the
services of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), some of
whose scientists work directly on problems of electromagnetic interference
affecting civilian planes, as well as space shuttles and other craft.²

By August of 1998, the Joint Spectrum Center had begun its work and in
January of 1999 it delivered to the NTSB its completed study of the ground,
sea, and air transmitters that, according to the NTSB, were known to have been
in the TWA 800 environment.³ The $45,000 study
designates the signal frequency of each fixed and mobile transmitter and
computes the electric field strength each signal would have had at the
accident site itself. The Joint Spectrum Center's report was then forwarded by
the Safety Board to NASA so that its scientists could determine whether the
electrical field strength at the accident site (as calculated by the Joint
Spectrum Center) was strong enough to have provided an ignition source for the
explosion suffered by TWA 800. NASA's assessment was expected to be completed
by December 1999, but the complex study required fifteen months rather than
the hoped-for twelve.⁴ In March of 2000 NASA
forwarded to the NTSB a report concluding that the signal stengths specified
in the Joint Spectrum Center study were not strong enough to have caused the
central fuel tank explosion.⁵

Two aspects of the work so far accomplished need to be looked at:
first, the impressive technical strengths of the Joint Spectrum Center and
NASAstudies; second, the incompleteness of the studies, the result of the
omission from the analysis of certain ships and planes in the area. The Joint
Spectrum Center, though headed by officers from the Navy, Air Force, and Army,
does not itself have the legal authority to conduct an inquiry into the
military craft in the area of the accident. The National Transportation Safety
Board does have that legal authority, and the Joint Spectrum Center must rely
on the Safety Board to carry out a full reconstruction of the possible
external sources of electromagnetic interference and to provide it with a
complete list of those sources. The Joint Spectrum Center openly states that
its report is only as accurate and as comprehensive as the Safety Board's list
of military craft in the area is accurate and comprehensive. Since NASA's
research, in turn, is based on the figures arrived at by the Joint Spectrum
Center, NASA's conclusions also depend for their validity on the accuracy of
the list the NTSB originally provided to the Joint Spectrum Center.

While major steps have been taken to ascertain the role that
electromagnetic interference might have played in the fall of TWA 800 (steps
whose strengths and weaknesses will be looked at in detail in a later part of
this article), it is important to recall that during the time the Joint
Spectrum Center and NASA studies were being made, two other drastic events
took place in the same geographical region: the fall of Swissair 111 on
September 2, 1998, and the fall of EgyptAir 990 on October 31, 1999. When each
of the three accidents is looked at in isolation, each has features that
suggest that electromagnetic interference is a possible cause—a possible
cause that, like all other possible causes, should be carefully scrutinized.

The three accidents viewed together, however, greatly increase the
need to assess with precision the possible role of electromagnetic
interference: the occurrence of three accidents in a single area increases the
chance that something in the external environment is acting as a contributing
factor. Studies by the Joint Spectrum Center and by NASA need to be undertaken
not only in the case of TWA 800 (where ships and other equipment that could
have caused electromagnetnic interference were unfortunately omitted from the
study and should now be added) but also in the cases of Swissair 111 and
EgyptAir 990. Carrying out such studies will require that the National
Transportation Safety Board first undertake a full reconstruction of the
military and civilian craft in the area surrounding each plane. Without a
comprehensive picture of all transmitters in the vicinity, no precise analysis
of the radio and radar environments can be made.

This essay is a request to the NTSB that such inquiries be started as
soon as possible.

2.

Like TWA 800, Swissair 111 is believed to have suffered an electrical
catastrophe.⁶ In the case of Swissair 111 as
in the case of TWA 800, the originating event remains mysterious: TWA 800's
catastrophe involved the wiring in the central fuel tank and Swissair 111's
catastrophe involved the wiring in the entertainment system located near the
cockpit, but in neither case do investigators believe they have yet found the
originating cause.⁷

A third feature shared by the two accidents is location, and a fourth
is timing. Each year in the United States planes take off more than 8.25
million times; in two years and two months (the time period that separates the
TWA and Swissair accidents) the figure is close to 18 million.⁸ Two of those 18 million
departures led to a mysterious electrical catastrophe. The two flights that
suffered the catastrophe could have originated from two different airports
anywhere in the country,⁹ or, for that matter,
anywhere in the world. But as it happens, both planes took off from a single
airport, New York's JFK. The two flights could have taken off on any two days
of the week and at any two minutes of the day.¹⁰ But as it happens, both took
off on a Wednesday at 8:19 PM.¹¹

The literature on electromagnetic interference is full of stories
about unwanted electrical upsets that recur in the same space at the same
time: one company, for example, found that its computers crashed every Friday
at 3:00 PM; the cause turned out to be a piece of mowing equipment that was
turned on at 3:00 PM each Friday during the summer.¹² Electromagnetic interference
often does, of course, happen only a single time; but a one-time-only event
often remains an unsolved mystery. Frequently unsolved, too, are problems
caused by electromagnetic interference that recur irregularly (one day at 3:00
PM, seventeen days later at 9:00 AM, four hundred days later at 7:15 AM) in
widely separate locations. When, in contrast, the event recurs at an exact
time and place, it may become clear that—as in the case of the computer
and the mowing machine—the problem is arising not from some problem
inside the affected piece of equipment but from something
outside—something on a regular enough schedule that its responsibility
can eventually be tracked down.

Both planes started out on a route that took them east along the
southern coast of Long Island. TWA 800 began to fall at 8:31 PM, twelve
minutes into the flight. Swissair 111 flew for an hour longer than did TWA
800; it crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia at 9:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
(See map.)

Map

If both planes crossed paths with some fatal electromagnetic event in
their environment that was operating¹³ on an almost identical schedule
on the two evenings, it would seem that Swissair 111 should have begun to have
trouble twelve minutes into the flight (the point when TWA 800's data
recorder, transponder, and data box ceased operating). In fact, something
close to this seems to have taken place.

Reports about Swissair 111 have left the public with the incorrect
impression that the plane managed to make its way, uneventfully,
east along Long Island and north along the New England coast before suddenly
beginning to encounter trouble when it was sixty miles from Halifax. The
record of the difficulty, as widely reported in the press, begins at 9:14 PM,
when Swissair 111's pilot requests permission to make an unscheduled landing
at Boston; the air controller in Moncton, Canada, reminds him that he is much
closer to the Halifax airport than to Boston, and asks him if he would prefer
to land at Halifax. At the moment of the 9:14 call, the cockpit has smoke in
it and—as the data recorder would later reveal to Canadian
investigators—ten minutes later the computers on board suddenly begin
receiving false information. Over the next ninety seconds, the autopilot
disconnects; the data grow more and more anomalous; soon the plane's
electrical systems fail altogether.¹⁴

Swissair 111 was an MD-11, a type of plane made by McDonnell-Douglas
and derived from the DC-10. When the MD-11 first appeared in the 1990s, its
"design philosophy" was widely celebrated: 1,500 software engineers
(working in consultation with pilots from thirty-seven airlines) had created a
plane that could fly smoothly while carrying out tremendous feats of
self-repair. Even if the plane were to suffer "multiple electrical
faults," its computers would quickly "reconfigure" the
electrical systems, instantly redistributing tasks among the plane's three
electrical systems. What was envisioned was not just that the plane would,
under duress, buy time for its pilots and passengers; it would diagnose and
eliminate even a severe problem, purring along as though nothing had
happened.¹⁵ It may well be that Swissair
111's problems began at 9:14 and that the plane's systems, far from correcting
themselves or buying time, simply surrendered to the ever-accelerating
decline. But it is also possible that Swissair 111's electrical problems began
much earlier and that for a time the plane did carry out acts of self-repair.

What can be said with certainty is this: It is not the case that
Swissair 111 flew uneventfully up the New England coast. In fact, it suffered
a serious problem, and the problem first surfaced in the very zone where TWA
800 fell.

In the early stage of the flight, while Swissair 111 was still
traveling east along the southern coast of Long Island, it lost radio contact
with the eastern seaboard air controllers for thirteen minutes. TWA 800 had
begun its fatal fall (and had lost the use of its radio, transponder, cockpit
recorder, and data box recorder) at a clock time of 8:31 PM, less than a
minute after a normal radio exchange with the Boston air controllers. Swissair
111 had its last normal exchange with the Boston air controllers at 8:33 PM,
after which it lost radio contact with every air controller on the northeast
coast for the next thirteen minutes.

Under normal conditions, exchanges between air controllers and pilots
occur in pairs: a call initiated by the air controller will be answered by the
pilot, who restates what the air controller has just said; or the call may
instead be initiated by the pilot, who asks a question (such as permission to
climb to an altitude that has less wind turbulence), which the air controller
answers, after which the pilot repeats the information to verify that the
words have been heard and understood. This pattern of call and recall is not a
casual practice; it is a required procedure. While the sentences of pilots and
air controllers normally occur in tight pairs, there can be many factors that
for a few seconds interrupt the rhythm of the call-and-recall pattern, and
necessitate a repetition of the call. But the failure to answer is never taken
lightly and if it continues, it may become a matter of grave concern.

For a thirteen-minute period from 8:33 PM until 8:47 PM, no completed
act of radio contact took place between Swissair 111 and the Boston area air
controllers, whose radars are positioned at Sardi on Long Island, Hampton on
Long Island, Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Augusta, Maine.¹⁶ As the plane progresses, it is
passed along from one controller to the next. In Swissair 111's last
successful exchange at 8:33, the Hampton controller had told the pilot the
radio frequency he should now use as he begins to enter the Cape Cod airspace
and the pilot had accurately repeated back to him that new frequency:

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111. Boston¹⁷ one two eight
point seven five.

Swissair 111: One two eight seven five. One
Eleven, right.

Hampton Controller: Good bye.¹⁸
From this point forward, Swissair 111 should be in communication with
the Cape sector. But the Cape controller cannot reach the plane; and so at
8:34 PM, he asks the Hampton controller to try to reach him on the old
frequency: "Try him again, thanks."

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111. Center.¹⁹

Swissair 111: [no response]²⁰
The radio²¹ a commercial pilot
uses for communication with air traffic control has a double screen: the
frequency used for one sector (in this case, Hampton) is kept in place on the
first screen when the new frequency (in this case, Cape) is dialed in on the
second screen. That way the pilot can quickly get back to the first frequency,
should he discover that he has misheard or misdialed the new frequency. But
Swissair 111 can now be reached on neither frequency (though it remains
visible on radar²² ). Unable to reach Swissair
111, the Hampton controller goes on to normal exchanges with other planes in
the area—he instructs a plane addressed as Echo Charley to descend and
maintain a specified altitude (and Echo Charley repeats back the altitude); he
instructs a Delta flight to proceed to its destination (and the Delta flight
repeats back the instruction).

The clock moves forward to 8:36 and the Cape controller renews his
efforts to reach Swissair 111:

Cape Controller: Swissair 111. Climb and
maintain flight level three one zero [31,000].

Swissair 111: [no response]²³

Cape Controller: Swissair 111.
Boston.

Swissair 111: [no response]²⁴
The Cape controller now contacts the associated²⁵ controller at Hampton to enlist
his help once more:

Hampton Associated Controller:
Hampton.

Cape Controller: Try Swissair 111 again,
please.

Hampton Associated Controller: We tried him,
he's not here. We'll try him again.

Cape Controller: O.K.²⁶
At 8:38, the four-step cycle begins one last time. Step one: the Cape
controller tries and fails to reach the plane:

Cape Controller: Swissair 111. Cleared direct
[to] Bradd.²⁷

Swissair 111: [no response]

Cape Controller: Swissair 111. Swissair 111.
Hear Boston Center. Contact Boston one two eight point seven five, one two
eight point seven five. If you hear Boston, ident.

Swissair 111: [no response]

Step two: the Cape associated controller contacts the
Hampton associated controller to ask for help:

Hampton Associated Controller:
Hampton.

Cape Associated Controller: Yes. This is Cape.
Could you try Swissair 111 again off of Kennedy.²⁸

Hampton Associated Controller (speaking to
Hampton controller): Try Swissair 111 again, Gary.

Cape Associated Controller: Thanks, Bob.²⁹
Step three: the Hampton air controller now twice tries to reach the
plane, once by calling the name of the plane and announcing the radio
frequency to be used for contact; then by calling the name and identifying who
it is that is attempting to reach him:

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111. One
twenty-eight seventy-five.

Swissair 111: [no response]

Hampton Controller: Swissair 111.
Center.

Swissair 111: [no response]
Step four: having observed the failed exchange between the Hampton
controller and the pilot, the Hampton associated controller now reports the
unhappy result to the Cape associated controller:

Cape Associated Controller: Ya. Go
ahead.

Hampton Associated Controller: Negative joy on
that Swissair.³⁰

Cape Associated Controller: O.K., then.
Thanks.³¹
Although Swissair 111 is still in the air, it has lost radio contact.

Swissair 111—off the air for a total of thirteen
minutes—eventually does get back in contact with the air controller. The
pilot's voice first comes through not at the air controller station at
Hampton, Cape Cod, or Nantucket but at Augusta, Maine. The Augusta air
controller at first believes he is receiving a call from a different Swissair
plane (flight 104), one that is flying in the Augusta region airspace; but he
quickly corrects himself and swiftly relays to the Swissair 111 pilot the
frequency on which he should contact Boston:

Swissair 111: Boston Center, Swissair 111
heavy.³²

Augusta Air Controller: Is that Swissair
104?

Swissair 111: Negative. This is Swissair
111...[Here Swissair 111 and Swissair 104 begin to speak
simultaneously.]

Augusta Air Controller: Stand by, Swissair 104.
Swissair 111, Boston Center.

Swissair 111: Boston Center, Swissair 111. Go
ahead.

Augusta Air Controller: Swissair 111, contact
Boston Center, one three three point four five. [frequency 133.45]

Swissair 111: Three three four five. Swissair
111.³³
The time is 8:47.³⁴ A moment later, at
8:48, Swissair 111 successfully contacts Boston's Nantucket sector:

Swissair 111: Boston Center. Swissair 111
heavy.

Nantucket Air Controller: I'm sorry. Who was
that last call?

Swissair 111: Boston Center, Swissair 111 heavy
is calling 133.45.

Nantucket Air Controller: Swissair 111. Boston
Center, roger. How do you read?

Swisssair 111: I read you loud and clear. Go
ahead.

Nantucket Air Controller: Swissair 111. Climb
to flight level two niner zero. Higher shortly.

Swissair 111: Level two niner zero. Swissair
111.³⁵
Other than the spirited inquiry about legibility—"How do you
read? I read you loud and clear"—the air controller and pilot do not
stop to welcome one another back or to discuss the previous radio blackout.
They at once turn to the business at hand, the resumption of the scheduled
climb to 33,000 feet that had been interrupted at 27,000 feet when the radio
transmissions were suspended. The confident tone and the reassuringly
professional procedure of information given (two niner zero) and repeated (two
niner zero) continue over a sequence of exchanges about altitude and radio
frequency until 8:58, when the Nantucket controller passes the plane on to the
Moncton controller in Canada. Radio contact has been restored; a normal flight
has been regained; the events of the previous quarter-hour now seem—and
may actually only be—an uneventful anomaly, a passing fluke.

But before too many more minutes pass, a lethal set of events—as
we now know—will begin to take place; and the possibility exists that the
fatal sequence of events is linked to the earlier events, that the electrical
and radio systems³⁶ of Swissair 111 were
already under strain³⁷ and that although the
relatively new plane was able for a time to withstand, or compensate for,
whatever was affecting it, eventually it lost the capacity to do so.

Two questions are raised by the thirteen-minute blackout. First, is
the blackout related to the final set of catastrophic events? Second, if the
blackout is related to the final catastrophe, does that tell us anything about
whether the problem originates from a source inside or outside the plane? It
tells us that external, as well as internal, causes need to be scrutinized.
The fact that Swissair 111 begins to have radio trouble at the time when, and
place where, TWA 800 suffered its swift catastrophe increases our obligation
to include external agents in the overall inquiry.

Almost as mysterious as the thirteen-minute silence of the pilots is
the silence of the FAA and our country's Safety Board after the accident. What
can account for their not having reported to the public the radio troubles
suffered by Swissair 111 as it progressed along the southern shore of Long
Island (where its sister plane had fallen in an earlier summer) and up the sea
lanes running beside New England? Why was it important to confine the accident
to Canadian airspace and Canadian waters in the public imagination?³⁸

Common sense presses us to consider the possibility that the
thirteen-minute radio blackout may bear on what by 9:14 had become a swiftly
accelerating electrical catastrophe. So, too, does certain supplementary
information. First, it is highly unlikely to be the case that the pilot simply
dialed the wrong frequency when his plane was handed off from the Hampton to
the Cape sector: as noted earlier, the pilot reads back the correct Cape
frequency when the Hampton controller gives it to him; further, pilots have
multiple radio screens and leave one tuned on the old frequency.

Second, it cannot be the case that the pilot, distracted by a meal or
a book or a conversation or an extraordinary cloud formation, simply
"forgot" that he was in the midst of a climb or that he was passing
though one of the busiest corridors in the world. The voice of this pilot,
both before the blackout and once his radio returns, is professional, crisp,
quick: he consistently responds to each air controller's call a split second
after he receives it, and often recites back the information in the precise
order in which it has been given. One Swissair official has said that of 450
pilots who fly the MD-11, this particular pilot was considered one of the top
five.³⁹ Captain Urs Zimmermann's
professional reputation and voice signature alone should persuade us that he
was incapable of "neglecting" air traffic communication. But if more
evidence is needed, there is the MD-11's sophisticated data recorder which
registers whenever a pilot attempts to key into the communication system: it
shows that during the thirteen-minute blackout, the pilots of Swissair 111
made repeated attempts to initiate radio contact.⁴⁰

Third, it cannot be the case that either United States or Swiss flight
procedures permit such a blackout to pass with a complacent shrug or a bemused
scratch of the head. In 1990, the US House of Representatives held a hearing
on Pilot/Air Traffic Controllers Communication Issues. The hearings
enumerated twelve kinds of communication error and the potentially fatal
consequences of even the most seemingly minor of them (such as two people
attempting to speak at the same time for several seconds). The twelve kinds of
problem had earlier been outlined by a 1988 aviation industry report entitled
A Call to Action. Included are such problems as an air controller
using an abbreviation that could stand for two different planes; a pilot's
accent making it hard for the air controller to determine whether he has
accurately understood the instruction; and a "blocked" line
occurring when one pilot attempts to use a frequency shared with other pilots,
one of whom is at that moment already speaking. At several points the report
specifies with alarm the duration of a given problem, and it is never close to
Swissair 111's thirteen-minute blackout: frequency blockage "for several
minutes" is cited as though a self-evidently alarming situation; a
"stuck mike"⁴¹ that lasted for
"five minutes" is a second example; radio contact lost for twenty
miles (two or three minutes in a commercial plane) is a third example. If
several minutes or two minutes or five minutes of lost communication requires
an industry "call to action" and hearings before the House of
Representatives, how can a thirteen-minute gap be considered a problem too
minor even to mention in the press in the United States? How can it be too
minor to mention when it—unlike the shorter communication blackouts cited
in the congressional hearings—was prelude to a fatal plane crash?

3.

TWA 800 and Swissair 111, then, share at least five features: (1) a
grave electrical accident, (2) a so far indecipherable cause, (3) a takeoff
from the same airport and a route across the same geography, (4) a takeoff on
the same minute of the day and day of the week, and (5) the malfunctioning of
its radios beginning at almost the same time (somewhere in the three-minute
interval between 8:31 and 8:34).⁴²

Should these five features be seen as extraneous, a set of interesting
but ultimately insignificant coincidences? Or are they instead features that
together expose the cause of the accidents? Either answer could be correct.
The only way to learn which is accurate is to investigate the second
possibility with the greatest possible rigor and speed. Has the United States
investigative team (the American researchers who are assisting the primarily
Canadian investigation) under-taken to reconstruct the external environment
through which Swissair 111 flew? There is, to date, no public sign of any such
reconstruction. If United States investigators wait until every possible
internal cause has been explored before they begin to look at the external
possibilities, will it be possible to construct an accurate and complete
record of that external environment? The memories of air control-lers, pilots
in the area, and seamen are clearer today than they will be in two years:
their assistance in reconstructing the external environment should therefore
be sought today, not two years from today. External explanations need to be
pursued for exactly the same reasons that internal explanations are already
being urgently pursued: because there is an absolute need to know the cause of
these two isolated catastrophes and because there is an absolute need to
prevent other planes from crashing.

From what we know about the external environment, a sixth feature
shared by TWA 800 and Swissair 111 begins to come into view. The two planes
attempted to make their flights on an evening when military craft were in the
air or sea below. The route from JFK International Airport east along the
southern coast of Long Island and north past the New England shoreline
requires any plane on its way to northern Europe to thread its way through a
ribbon of air that is skirted on one side or the other by military warning
zones. The boundaries of each zone are marked on aviation maps and labeled
with the letter "W" followed by a number.⁴³ Where the map has room, a
printed sentence appears inside the zone: "Warning: National Defense
Operations Area, Operations hazardous to the flight of aircraft conducted
within this area."⁴⁴

Such military warning zones are, of course, often unused by the
military, and during such unused periods can be entered by civilian flights.
But the record of scheduled military exercises shows plans for air and sea
activities in the week during which Swissair 111 attempted its flight, just as
the equivalent record from two years earlier shows planned exercises during
the week of TWA 800's flight.⁴⁵ This may be why Swissair 111,
like TWA 800 earlier, had been directed onto the Bette route in traveling east
out of New York, for this route is assigned when the military exercise zones
south and southeast of Long Island, called W-105 and W-106, are in use by the
military.⁴⁶

The list of ships and planes in the external environment (along with
the already-known location of all ground transmitters) needs to be
reconstructed swiftly and accurately by those who have both the authority and
obligation to carry out this task, the United States' National Transportation
Safety Board, and not by isolated citizens working through Freedom of
Information inquiries. The Freedom of Information procedure is an inspired
United States invention, but it allows only a piecemeal picture to come into
place, and that only over many slow months. At present, however, Freedom of
Information inquiries appear to be the only path of reconstruction available
to us; so let us look at what they let us know about the September 2-September
3, 1998, period.

In or near the warning areas skirting the Swissair 111 flight were
three submarines: USS Connecticut (SSN-22), USS Dallas
(SSN-700), and USS Billfish (SSN-676). The commander of Submarine
Group Two from the Naval Submarine Base in New London, whose office provided
the names of the submarines, states that these craft were each acting in
isolation and not in exercises with other craft and therefore "will not
assist you in your stated goal of discovering 'which exercises took
place.'"⁴⁷ But at issue here is not armed
exercises; at issue instead are electromagnetic transmissions (or any related
phenomena such as radar decoys, or chaff): all communications between the
submarines and both fixed and mobile transmitters need to be scrutinized,
including, for example, the two-million-watt submarine transmitter at Corbett,
Maine. Whether any submarine transmitters were close to the plane, and, if so,
whether their signals were strong enough to adversely affect the plane are
among the many questions that need to be answered.

Potentially important to the inquiry is the record of flights by the
Navy P3 planes, which are stationed at Brunswick, Maine. On the earlier night
when TWA 800 fell, a P3 had crossed the plane's path fifteen seconds before
TWA 800 lost its transponder, voice recorder, and data recorder. (The P3
itself, though it had a safe flight, reported on its return that it lost the
use of various pieces of electrical equipment during the flight.) The record
for the evening on which Swissair 111 flew has some similarity. According to
written documents provided by the Commander Naval Air Forces, Atlantic Fleet,
three P3s were in flight during the hour and fifteen minutes when Swissair 111
made its way east along Long Island and north along the New England coast.⁴⁸ Two of the three were from
Patrol Squadron 26, a squadron called the Tridents (named after the
three-pronged spear used by the sea god Neptune). The Navy P3 that flew within
one mile of TWA 800 was also from Patrol Squadron 26.⁴⁹

The third P3 in the air on the night of Swissair 111's passage was a
P3 from Patrol Squadron 10, the Red Lancers, whose insignia is a pair of
lightning bolts.⁵⁰ This type of P3 carries more
high-powered transmitters than the Squadron 26 planes, and may be closer to an
EP-3 or electronic warfare plane.⁵¹ (Its surveillance capacities
were widely described during the Kosovo conflict: each time we heard that our
planes could identify a plane sitting on the ground from an altitude of 27,000
feet, identify a bicycle leaning against a wall from 20,000 feet, and
differentiate species of grass from 10,000 feet, it was Red Lancer P-3s from
Squadron 10 in Brunswick, Maine, that were being described.⁵² )

The relation between the P3s from Squadron 26 and the P3s from
Squadron 10 is perhaps illuminated by an incident that occurred on the
afternoon of the day Swissair 111 attempted its evening flight. A regular P3
from Squadron 26 flying in military exercise zone W-104 (off the coast of
Massachusetts) reports in its mission statement that it had to leave the
exercise area one half hour earlier than planned because of the presence of a
P3 from Squadron 10 (the warning zone covers hundreds of square miles so it is
unclear why it could not accommodate two P3s). The pilot's mission statement
does not explain why the presence of the Red Lancer plane necessitated his own
departure, but he does report that his plane "lost" its UHF and VHF
radios, as well as an instrument that informs the crew when they are
positioned over a particular sonobuoy. How it lost its two radios and its On
Top Position Indicator (OTPI), and whether that loss is connected to its
having operated near the P3 from Squadron 10, are matters that need to be
clarified. It is, of course, the three P3s that were flying at the same time
as Swissair 111, rather than these flights that took place a few hours
earlier, that are of primary importance.

The possibility of electronic warfare practice is suggested by several
items in the Navy record. A document called the "Fleet Area Control and
Surveillance Facility,"⁵³ which summarizes the military
exercises on the eastern seaboard in the first week of September 1998,
explicitly announces Electric Counter Measures and Electric Counter-Counter
Measures operations during the week and includes among "Weekly
Notes" a memo on the need to "submit a small scale
E[lectric]C[ounter]M[easure] Notification" in accordance with Navy rules.
One such electronic warfare exercise, for example, is specified for the night
of September 2, the night Swissair 111 flew, in military exercise zone W-72
off the coast of Virginia from 10:00 PM to 12:00 AM.⁵⁴

All three P3s were on several-hour-long missions, and therefore could
have been very far from, or, instead, near to, the path of Swissair 111.⁵⁵ Where they were is one of many
questions that need to be answered with precision and care.

I hope the National Transportation Safety Board is already at work to
reconstruct the external environment of planes, ships, and ground
transmitters⁵⁶ along the route of Swissair
111; or if it is not already, will undertake such a reconstruction soon; and
that it will enlist the assistance of the Joint Spectrum Center and NASA in
determining the power levels both at the moment the flight first lost radio
contact and at later moments along the route. Relevant, too, will be the
record of other flights that have lost radio contact in this same geographical
region.

In addition to reconstructing the electromagnetic environment of each
plane that suffers a fatal fall, a related form of scrutinizing the
environment has been suggested by D.V. Giri, who specializes in applied
electromagnetics, including EMP (electromagnetic pulse), HPM (high-powered
microwave), UWB (ultrawide band systems), and lightning.⁵⁷ Mr. Giri suggests that the NTSB
could enlist NASA's modified F-106B to assess the environment.⁵⁸ Elaborately equipped to measure
lightning strikes and coronas, the airborne laboratory could make a series of
test flights from JFK along the Bette route, experimenting with various
takeoff times and speeds. The test plane (if suitably modified for sensitivity
to radio transmissions rather than lightning) could conceivably discover a
single transmitter, or a complex ar-ray of transmitters, that may be producing
the adverse electromagnetic environment.

This essay has shown eight features shared by TWA 800 and Swissair
111: (1) they took off from the same airport; (2) they took off on a Wednesday
at 8:19; (3) they traveled along the Bette route; (4) they both had their
first signs of trouble in the same region of airspace between twelve and
fourteen minutes into the flight; (5) they both appear to have suffered an
electrical catastrophe; (6) they both suffered a catastrophe whose cause
remains mysterious, even after years of rigorous inquiry; (7) they both flew
during a week when extensive military exercises were being conducted; (8) they
both flew when certain specific transmitters (submarines, the Navy P3s) appear
to have been in the region.

These overlaps may implicate the external environment. If two planes
suffered a mysterious electrical catastrophe but had taken off from different
cities, traveled along different routes at different times, and had their
first trouble one after twelve minutes and the other after one hundred
minutes, it would still be crucial to reconstruct the electromagnetic
environment and include it among the pos-sible causes to be investigated.
(Electromagnetic interference, as stated at the outset, can just as easily
happen at irregular as at regular times and places, though the irregularity of
the external environment makes it harder to discern that the external
environment is playing a part). But to have two electrical accidents and also
to have them share many key features of time and place should surely
accelerate the inquiry into the external environment.

Rusty Yeiser, a retired naval aviator and former commander of the
Joint Spectrum Center who oversaw the Center's analysis of TWA 800's
electromagnetic environment, believes that other accidents would benefit from
similar analyses. He recently said:

Aircraft electronic systems (often referred to today as
"avionics") continue to grow more and more complex, and are
increasingly relied upon for safety of flight functions (including flight
control, navigation and communicating, and data storage and retrieval). Given
this, it would seem reasonable that a comprehensive examination of the
external electromagnetic environment should become a routine component of
commercial aircraft accident investigations conducted by the NTSBor other
similar national organizations abroad. The Joint Spectrum Center's core
capability for analysis of electromagnetic interference lends itself directly
to this type of task.⁵⁹
Physical events, as has often been observed, tend to outpace our
ability to describe them. While the present essay on TWA 800 and Swissair 111
was being written, a third large passenger plane entered the Atlantic Ocean
south of Long Island, a third large passenger plane that—as in the other
two cases—fell without any discernible mechanical cause. There are
factors which differentiate EgyptAir 990 from the two earlier flights (it did
not take off on a Wednesday at 8:19) but also key factors that link them.

The second part of this article will look at EgyptAir 990, as well as
at the important, but incomplete, work that has so far been carried out on TWA
800.

          —This is
the first of two articles.

Copyright (c) 2000 The New York Review of Books. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without written permission strictly prohibited.

¹ Matthew L. Wald,
"Flight 800 Report Not Expected to Pinpoint Crash's Exact Cause,"
The New York Times, August 15, 2000, p. A23;
Pete Donohue, "Flt. 800 Report Won't Cite Cause," New York Daily
News, August 18, 2000; Laurence Zuckerman,
"US Reviews Draft Report on T.W.A. Crash," The New York
Times, August 23, 2000, p. A19. (back)

² NTSB Chairman
Jim Hall outlined these steps in a July 8, 1998, letter, printed in The New
York Review, August 13, 1998. The article I
wrote on the subject in The New York Review and the correspondence that followed were published in the issues of
April 9, July 16, and August 13, 1998. These were forwarded by the Safety
Board to the Joint Spectrum Center when the Safety Board engaged the Center's
assistance (conversations with Commander John Mahoney of Joint Spectrum
Center, September 1998, November 1998, January 1999). NASA's formal report
opens by briefly describing the New York Review articles and correspondence (J. Ely, T. Nguyen, K. Dudley, S.
Scearce, F. Beck, M. Desphande, C. Cockrell, "Investigation of
Electromagnetic Field Threat to Fuel Tank Wiring of a Transport
Aircraft," NASA/TP-2000-209867, March 2000, p. 1). (back)

³ Joint Spectrum
Center, Department of Defense, "TWA Flight 800 Electromagnetic
Environment," (Project Engineer, Richard DeSalvo; Consulting Engineers,
Martin Macrae, Douglas Hughes), January 1999. In the NTSB's accident inquiry
documents, the report is Docket No. SA-516, Exhibit No. 9A. Addendum 2,
"Concerning Electromagnetic Environment." (back)

⁴ During this
time, NASA studied not only the external transmitters that could have affected
the plane, but passenger-carried devices such as cell phones and computers. As
their study points out, such devices are often operating several inches away
from wires running through the passenger cabin wall. (back)

⁵ NASA scientists
studied one possible path of interference-induced ignition: they looked at the
way external signals could affect a particular wire (the fuel quantity
indicator wire) that runs into the central fuel tank. As will be elaborated at
a later point, NASA concluded that the external emitters listed by the Joint
Spectrum Center could have at most introduced 0.1 millijoule of energy into
this wire, and that a minimum of 0.2 millijoules is required to produce
ignition. (J. Ely, et al., "Investigation of Electromagnetic Field Threat
to Fuel Tank Wiring of a Transport Aircraft," p. 39.)

NASA,
however, provided a second, supplementary paper to accompany the first that
calls into question the accuracy, and even the applicability, of the 0.2
millijoule standard "when considering radio frequency (RF) sources."
The report outlines four categories of work that needs to be done to develop
an accurate standard for RF sources. (Franklin A. Fisher, "Some Notes on
Sparks and Ignition of Fuels," NASA/TM-2000-210077, pp. 1, 34). (back)

⁶ According to Vic
Gerden, lead investigator of the Swissair 111 accident for the Transportation
Safety Board of Canada, investigators have to date found twenty wires running
into the cockpit—some from the entertainment system and some from
flight-related systems—that suffered "arcing" (telephone
conversation, June 29, 2000). Arcing is a hot and persistent form of
electrical sparking across a gap between two conductors; it can damage both
the wire in which it occurs as well as the electrical devices to which it is
connected. The Canadian Safety Board is trying to determine whether the arcing
took place at an early or a late moment in the sequence of events. It is known
that some of Swissair 111's electrical systems ceased functioning six minutes
before the plane crashed into the ocean, but whether all five of the plane's
systems (three main electrical systems and two auxiliary systems) failed has
not yet been determined (Gerden, June 29, 2000). Both Vic Gerden and Boeing's
safety spokesman have consistently stated that the accident, though so far
indecipherable in origin, appears to be electrical in nature. (For accounts of
the electrical nature of the Swissair 111 accident, see also Paul Koring's
1998 articles in Toronto's The Globe and Mail, September 8, 10, 11, 16; October 5; and November 21,
1998.)

The simultaneous cessation of apparently independent systems
also occurred in the TWA 800 accident. The NTSB "Systems Group Chairman's
Factual Report of Investigation" states: "The electrically driven
altimeters of the Captain and First Officer were found to display 13,820 and
13,800 feet, respectively," even though "wiring schematics showed
the two altimeters to be powered by separ-ate sources on different
wings"; the transponder stopped at the same moment as the altimeters; the
cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder also stopped within a
quarter-second of one another (Robert L. Swaim, Docket No. SA-516, Exhibit No.
9A, p. 6). (back)

⁷ The two
locations—TWA 800's fuel tank and Swissair 111's entertainment
system—have both been given much attention in the press. But they have
been given different importance by the United States and the Canadian safety
boards. The United States National Transportation Safety Board believes, with
a high degree of certainty, that the central fuel tank is the site of TWA
800's trouble; the officials of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada have
repeatedly stated that damaged wiring connected to the entertainment system is
not, in their view, a special suspect in determining the cause of the crash of
Swissair 111. The system's wiring is not ruled out as a cause, but neither is
the wiring from any other source. (back)

⁸ This number is based on figures provided in the Department of
Commerce's Statistical Abstract of the United States: National Data
Book (1998, 118th edition), chart 1070,
"US Scheduled Airline Industry-Summary: 1985 to 1996," p. 655. The
last year for which the number of departures is specified is 1996 when the
figure is 8,227,900 departures. (back)

⁹ According to the Statistical Abstract of the United
States there are 18,292 airports in operation
in the United States; 5,129 of them are public (Chart No. 1080, "Civil
Flying: Summary 1970 to 1996," p. 659). (back)

¹⁰ Counting only
the minutes between 6:00 AM and 9:00 PM, when most plane departures occur,
there were 6,300 different minutes at which the two planes might have taken
off in a given week. (back)

¹¹ The 8:19 PM departure time for Swissair 111 was announced by
Terry Benczik, spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,
and was widely cited (The New York Times,
September 3, 1998, p. A1; National Public Radio Morning
Edition, September 3, 1998). TWA 800 is usually
also described as taking off at 8:19. But media reports of both Swissair 111's
departure time and of TWA 800's departure time vary back and forth between
8:18 and 8:19. They do so in part because the official documents themselves
vary: for example, the fall of TWA 800 into the sea at 8:31 is alternately
described in NTSB documents as taking place twelve minutes and thirteen
minutes "into the flight," which would place takeoff at 8:19 in the
first instance and 8:18 in the second. (See, for example, "Flight Data
Recorder [FDR] Group Chairman's Factual Report: Revision 1" [February 15,
2000], Docket No. 5A-516, Exhibit 10A, p. 2.)

Such variation occurs in
part because "takeoff" can be understood to take place at four
distinct temporal moments: (1) the moment the plane is cleared for takeoff;
(2) the moment the plane begins rolling down the runway; (3) the moment the
plane lifts off the ground; (4) the moment the airborne plane passes through
the departure gate at JFK airport. TWA 800, according to data recorders, was
rolling down the runway at 8:18 PM, and lifting off the ground at 8:19
PM.

Since the Swissair 111 accident happened much more recently than
the TWA 800 accident, its data recorders are not yet in the public record
(four years after the TWA 800 crash, its fully revised record became
available). But the transcript of spoken conversation between the pilots and
various ground and departure gate controllers suggests that as the two planes
proceeded through the four stages of takeoff listed above, they were usually
within sixty to ninety seconds of one another. (Because neither pilot verbally
comments on the moment of liftoff, it is omitted in the sequence that
follows.) Swissair 111 is rolling down the runway at 8:17:08 PM and TWA 800 at
8:18:20 PM; Swissair 111 is passing through the JFK departure gate a few
seconds before 8:19 and TWA 800 passes through the gate at 8:20:20 PM;
Swissair 111 is "handed off" or transferred from the JFK departure
gate controller to the Boston controller at 8:22:24 PM and TWA 800 passes this
same point at 8:23:20 PM (FAA Transcript of Swissair 111 Pilot Conversation
with Ground, Local, and De-parture Gate Controllers, obtained through the
author's Freedom of Information request; and Transcript and Analysis of TWA
800 Cockpit Voice Recorder in NTSB Accident Inquiry Documents, James Cash,
"Factual Report of Investigation Cockpit Voice Recorder," p. 4). (back)

¹² Conversation
with Ron Brewer, expert on EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) systems design,
October 1998. (back)

¹³ It is also, of course, possible that they encountered fatal
signals from the same mobile or fixed transmitter but at different times, TWA
800 somewhere between 8:19 and 8:31, when it lost all electrical power; and
Swissair 111 somewhere between 8:19 and 9:14, when it announced smoke in the
cockpit. (back)

¹⁴ Each of these
events is compatible with electromagnetic interference, as well as with other
possible causes. (Once the fire was underway, it could itself have been the
cause of the generation of anomalous data; at issue is the cause of the fire.)
Because the events have features that appear to suggest a powerful electrical
event, the Canadian Safety Board (which is investigating many possible causes)
has looked closely at the question of a lightning strike, as did investigators
in the TWA 800 case, who discovered there had been no lightning strike within
a 300-mile radius of the plane (Docket No. SA-516, Exhibit No. 5-A, p.
5).

Articles that describe the generation of false data by Swissair
111's onboard computers include Don Phillips, The Washington
Post, September 12, 1998, and Anthony de Palma,
"Frantic Swissair Pilots Got Faulty Data," The New York
Times, September 13, 1998, p. 52. It is
important to stress that, according to Vic Gerden of the Canadian Safety
Board, the generation of false data lasted for only ninety seconds prior to
the moment when the plane's electrical systems (including its data recorder)
shut down. (back)

¹⁵ For accounts of
the MD-11's capacity for self-diagnosis and self-repair, see Aviation Week
& Space Technology, October 22, 1990, p.
45; The Washington
Post, June 18, 1989, p. A3; and Bulletin of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, June 30, 1989, p. 1532. (back)

¹⁶ The following reconstruction draws together eight separate but
overlapping FAA tapes from five different radar sectors in the first
forty-five minutes of Swissair 111's September 2, 1998, flight. The tapes were
obtained (May 19, 1999) through a Freedom of Information request originally
filed November 1998 and re-requested (after denial) on April 21,
1999.

The citation of radio transcripts is not meant to suggest that
air controllers ought to have known that grave trouble lay ahead; it is
instead meant to suggest that once a catastrophe has occurred, it is important
to look back at the transcript to learn the precise location in which a
problem first surfaces. (back)

¹⁷ "Boston" followed by a series of numbers means,
"Contact the next Boston controller on the following frequency." (back)

¹⁸ Minute 8:33 on
FAA Tape for Hampton Radar Sector for September 2, 1998, 8:23 to 8:45 Eastern
Daylight Time. "Swissair 111 Aircraft incident, 9/3/98 at 0131 UTC ZBW,
Sec 31R, A/G, Ch 03, 0023-0045 UTC [12:23 to 12:45 Universal Time
Coordinated], 'Cert Rerec' [contains the name of an FAA official certifying
that the tape is an accurate re-recording], Tp 503, FOIA 1999-001839NE
[identification number of Freedom of Information request that prompted the
sending of the tape]. The eight FAA tapes all use this form of titling, but
will be given below in abbreviated form.

Universal Coordinated Time is
used by the FAA as well as by the military and is sometimes called "Zulu
time": it is the time at the Greenwich meridian and is four hours ahead
of the time on the east coast of the United States and three hours ahead of
the time in Nova Scotia. In this tape, therefore, the time of the recording
starts at twenty-three minutes after midnight on September 3 (and the accident
itself takes place at 1:31 AM on September 3).

This essay consistently
uses Eastern Daylight Time even when referring to events that took place in
Canada, where the clock time was one hour later. (back)

¹⁹
"Center" is a terse form of self-identification: "This is
Boston Center calling you." (back)

²⁰ Minute 8:34 on FAA Tape for Hampton Radar Sector. (back)

²¹ Commercial
planes carry multiple radios, only one of which is used for communication with
controllers. (back)

²² There is nothing on the air controller tapes to suggest that at
any point Swissair 111 disappears from radar. Had that happened, the
disappearance would have been registered in the controllers' verbal statements
to one another and recorded on the voice tapes. At one point, the visibility
of the plane on radar is explicitly acknowledged by a Nantucket associated
controller (see note 35 below).

One other spoken confirmation of
Swissair 111's visibility is more ambiguous. The Atlantic controller (who
assists planes over the ocean that have not yet reached the coastline) is
bringing American Flight 1829 into Bradley International Airport in Hartford,
Connecticut, and is, on the basis of consultation with the Boston controllers,
having him fly at 27,000 feet. The Atlantic controller calls the Boston
controller at Hampton associate position and says, "You wanted him
[American 1829] down to twenty-seven. I see someone else out there at
twenty-seven," after which the two controllers agree to change American
1829's altitude to 26,000 feet. The unnamed "someone else out there at
twenty-seven" may well be Swissair 111 which is indeed flying at 27,000
feet (because his scheduled climb to 33,000 feet was interrupted by the radio
blackout) (Minute 8:40 on FAA Tape for Hampton Associate Controller). (back)

²³ Which of the
eight FAA tapes is being quoted will usually be clear from the context (here,
for example, the FAA tape for the Cape radar sector). But because some of the
exchanges occur on two different tapes, citations will continue to be given in
the notes. (back)

²⁴ Minute 8:36 on
FAA Tape for Cape Controller (covering the 8:31 to 8:44 period). (back)

²⁵ At each radar
sector there is both an air controller and an associated air controller. The
associated air controller monitors the exchanges taking place between the
controller and the area pilots; sometimes he or she contacts the controller to
give advice based either on observation or on information coming in from other
radar sectors. For each FAA tape from a radar sector such as Hampton, Cape, or
Nantucket, there is a second taped voice record of the associated controller.
These tapes overlap, but are not identical, with the controller's tape since
they contain not only pilot-controller exchanges but conversations between
controllers and associated controllers, as well as voices coming in from other
radar sectors. (back)

²⁶ This exchange at 8:36 is recorded on two tapes, the tape for
the Hampton associated air controller (covering the interval 8:31-8:45) and
the tape for the Cape controller. (back)

²⁷ Bradd is a map point along the ocean flight path. (back)

²⁸ The phrase
"Swissair 111...off of Kennedy" means "the Swissair plane that
a short time ago took off from JFK International Airport." (back)

²⁹ This exchange
occurs at 8:39 PM on two FAA tapes, that for the Hampton associated controller
and that for the Cape associated controller (covering the 8:31 to 8:44 PM
interval). (back)

³⁰ The phrase
"negative joy" often means "no success." In this case,
what is "negated" appears to be both the substantive outcome of the
undertaking (Swissair 111 was not reached) and the state of pleasure that
would have come with reporting a positive outcome. It seems to have a meaning
close to the following: "Of the two possible outcomes of my inquiry, the
result is not the one hoped for." (back)

³¹ A moment later one hears the voice of the [Cape] associated
controller saying to a colleague: "...filing that? Looks like they're
filing that." The fact that this statement comes almost immediately after
the report of the failure to reach Swissair 111 suggests that one of the
supervisors may be filing a formal record of the failure; but the exchange is
much too abbreviated to be clear, and could have a different meaning
altogether. In a letter replying to the author's inquiry, FAA regional
administrator Robert Bartanowicz states that there is no formal filing in the
Boston office (July 29, 1999). (back)

³² It is hard to be certain from the tape whether the pilot uses
here the word "heavy," a term that indicates a large passenger or
cargo plane, or the word "heading." (back)

³³ FAA Tape for
Augusta, Maine, Radar Sector (covering the interval 8:41 to 8:53 PM). It is
conventional practice for pilots to drop the digit "one" when
repeating back the frequency to the air controller, as the Swissair 111 pilot
does here in the final line quoted. (back)

³⁴ Swissair 111 actually first appears on the FAA tape of the
Augusta Controller Center one minute earlier at 8:46; but the transmission is
not completely clear and perhaps because the plane is not yet in the Augusta
region, the air controller—who at that moment is in conversation with
another plane—does not hear the call.

The Augusta controller's
conversation with that other plane appears to contain a question about
intentional interference directed at that plane: "South Cat 4 what is
your heading right now?" After South Cat 4 answers, the Augusta air
controller asks, "Are their [or there] aircraft planning on sending you a
block?" The pilot does not respond. (back)

³⁵ FAA Tape for
Nantucket (covering the 8:42 to 9:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time
interval).

As mentioned earlier, Swissair 111 has throughout its flight
been steadily visible on the air controllers' radar screens; and the plane can
now be seen by the Nantucket controller. This conclusion is an inference based
on the absence of the severe alarm that would have been audible on the tapes
had Swissair 111 ever lost not only its radio but its secondary radar. But
explicit confirmation occurs at 8:54 and 8:55 when the Nantucket associated
controller and another controller go over a checklist of the planes visible on
radar. Each time one controller says the name of a plane and its altitude, the
other controller confirms its visibility by saying the word "Radar."
Swissair 111 is among the planes announced during this roll call (FAA Tape for
Nantucket Associate Position, covering the period 8:48 to 9:01 PM Eastern
Daylight Time). (back)

³⁶ Since a plane has so many backup radios, the loss of all radios
for even three or four minutes is, according to Joe Como, a spokesman for the
Airlines Pilots Association, highly unusual, and almost never happens without
other things also being wrong (conversation with Joe Como, June 1999,
describing radio blackouts in general, not Swissair 111 in particular). (back)

³⁷ The plane's
systems would be strained (to take one of many possible examples) if some, or
all, of the arcing found by the Canadian Transportation Safety Board in twenty
wires took place at the moment radio contact was first lost (8:33 PM). It is
also possible that the arcing occurred not at the initial moment of loss of
radio contact but soon afterward, as attempts were made—either by the
pilots or by the automated repair systems within the plane itself—to
reactivate the radios (between 8:34 and 8:46). The arcing may also, of course,
have taken place late in the flight, around the time the cockpit began to fill
with smoke (9:14), or ten minutes later, when anomalies first appeared on the
data recorder (9:24), or ninety seconds later when the radio, transponder, and
many electrical systems all simultaneously failed (9:26), six minutes before
the plane entered the sea (9:31 PM).

Sometimes arcing events are
self-announcing: they set off circuit breakers and shut down electrical
systems. But other times their work is quieter. Testifying about wiring
problems before the Transportation Committee in the House of Representatives,
Captain Paul McCarthy, the Executive Air Safety Chairman of the Airline Pilots
Association, described a phenomenon known as the "ticking fault."
The arcing event takes place in milliseconds, releasing high amounts of heat,
but acting so quickly that the protective circuit breakers have no time to
work (Prepared Testimony of Captain Paul McCarthy before the Transportation
and Infrastructure Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and
Emergency Management, House of Representatives, September 15, 1999). (back)

³⁸ "There's
nothing significant on those tapes. This [the fall of Swissair 111] is a
Canadian problem," said one FAA official to the author. (back)

³⁹ Captain
Christian Stuessi, Swissair's chief of pilots, quoted in the San Diego
Union Tribune, December 18, 1998. (back)

⁴⁰ Canadian
Transportation Safety Board head Vic Gerden, telephone conversation, June 29,
2000. (back)

⁴¹ The term means
that the pilot's mike accidentally becomes stuck in an "on" position
that lets that pilot speak but prevents any other pilot or air controller from
using the frequency. (This clearly does not describe what happened in the case
of Swissair 111, since other pilots were able to continue communicating and
the Swissair 111 pilot was not able to do so.) (back)

⁴² The two planes
would have been in approximately the same location at the first moment of
failed radio contact—in the narrow corridor south of Long Island and
north of military exercise area W-105 and W-106. Both planes were starting
into a climb but were at different altitudes. (back)

⁴³ When the
military warning zone occurs inside US territory—either on land or on
ocean waters directly touching the coastline—the letter "R" for
"Restricted" is used, for example, to denote a circle of airspace
around Camp David. (back)

⁴⁴ The sentence is printed, for example, inside warning areas
W-103, W-104, W-105, and W-506 on the "World Aeronautical Chart" for
the New York-New England area (Section map CF-19), (Department of Commerce:
Washington, D.C., 1997). (back)

⁴⁵ "Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility, Virginia
Capes (FACSFAC VACAPES) Message, 26 August 1998" (giving day-by-day
outline of planned exercises along the Atlantic seaboard for week of August
31- September 5, 1998); and "Fleet Area Control and Surveillance
Facility, Virginia Capes (FACSFAC VACAPES) Message, July 15-20, 1996"
(again giving day-by-day outline of planned exercises). (back)

⁴⁶ Confirmation
that Swissair 111 traveled on the Bette route is present in four documents:
the Flight Progress Slip, the transcript of conversation between the pilot and
"clearance delivery" controller at the airport prior to takeoff, the
transcript of conversation between the air controller in the Kennedy tower and
the New York air controller in Sector 57, and the transcript of conversation
between the pilot and the Kennedy tower departure controller as the plane
lifted into the air (Documents and letter responding to author's Freedom of
Information request from Franklin D. Hatfield, Manager, Air Traffic Division,
Eastern Region Air Traffic Division, FAA, JFK Airport, June 4, 1999). (back)

⁴⁷ Letter to
author from W.A. Peters, Captain, United States Navy, Chief of Staff for
Commander Submarine Group Two, April 21, 1999. (back)

⁴⁸ Letter and
accompanying documents from Mark E. Newcomb, Commander, JAGC, US Navy, Force
Judge Advocate, by direction of the Commander Naval Air Force, United States
Atlantic Fleet, Norfolk, Virginia, February 8, 1999. (back)

⁴⁹ Patrol Squadron
26, "Patron Twenty-Six Flight Schedule, Wednesday 02 September
1998," Event 4 (taking off at 4:50 and landing at 9:55), and Event 5
(taking off at 6:30 and landing at 9:55). (back)

⁵⁰ Patrol Squadron
Ten, "Patron Ten Flight Schedule, Wednesday 02 September 1998,"
Event 8 (taking off from Brunswick, Maine, at 7:20 PM and landing back at
Brunswick at 11:30 PM). (back)

⁵¹ The electronic warfare EP-3s for the US East Coast and Europe
have their home base in Rota, Spain, but sometimes operate out of Brunswick,
Maine. According to a knowledgeable military expert, the surveillance
equipment on Squadron 10 P3s may be "passive"and may not actively
transmit signals that could be harmful to other planes; this is the kind of
question that should be explored. (back)

⁵² On the Red Lancer P3s' "multi-sensor surveillance
payload" in Operation "Eagle Eye" in Kosovo see Jane's Navy
International, Sept. 1, 1999; and
International Defense Review, November 1,
1999; and on the reception of the Patrol Squadron 10s as returning war heroes,
see Portland Press Herald, June 26, 1999, p.
2B, and August 10, 1999, p. 1B. (back)

⁵³ Virginia Capes (FACSFAC VACAPES) Messages 162000Z August 98,
Item E. (back)

⁵⁴ The memo
specifies the use of "two Lear [jets] with pods." On the day TWA 800
flew (July 17, 1996), an exercise was also scheduled in "W-72"
involving "two Lears." (back)

⁵⁵ The package of documents sent by Commander Newcomb includes a
schedule of flights that occurred during the hours Swissair 111 was in the air
but not the mission statements from those flights (which often contain brief
narratives of what occurred). He did, however, include a mission statement
from a flight earlier in the day.

If the three P3 flights that took
place during Swissair 111's flight carried out missions like those that took
place earlier that day, then zones W-104, W-105 and W-107 (as well as the
civilian corridor running beside W-107) are the most likely locations. As the
map on page 94 indicates, W-104 and W-105 are close to Swissair 111's flight
path. Although W-107 is off the coast of southern New Jersey and therefore
farther south, a plane traveling between the Brunswick, Maine, air base and
W-107 might cross paths with a civilian flight coming out of JFK (as occurred
in the case of TWA 800). (back)

⁵⁶ It is primarily the air- and seaborne craft that the NTSB needs
to identify by further research, since the Joint Spectrum Center already has
on file all the fixed ground transmitters along the American and Canadian
seaboards. But because the Air Force and Navy sometimes carry out highly
unusual experiments at these antenna sites involving transmitters that are not
permanently installed (and therefore are not part of the fixed record), the
NTSB should make specific inquiries about events taking place at these fixed
sites as well. (back)

⁵⁷ At the October 1, 1999, sessions of the Technical Interchange
Meeting held at the Nuclear ElectroMagneticPulse Laboratory of the Swiss
Defense Procurement Agency in Spiez, Switzerland, Mr. Giri and his colleagues
discussed the question of whether the Swissair 111 accident could have been
caused by electromagnetic interference of unknown origin. Giri concentrated on
the radio blackout and the overlaps in the timing of the Swissair 111 and TWA
800 flights. The consensus of the group was that this was a realistic
possibility deserving further investigation. (back)

⁵⁸ D.V. Giri,
conversations with author, September 1999, March 24, 2000. Although the F-106B
is primarily used to test the effects of lightning, it has also been tested
for high-altitude EMP (nuclear-electromagnetic pulse) effects. A particular
sensor on the nose boom of the F-106B was designed by Mr. Giri (who has also
designed microwave antennas and has helped to build EMP simulators in many
different countries).

The modified F-106B has been described by pilots
and scientists as a "flying laboratory" containing many measuring
instruments in its weapons bay. It also has "sensors for measuring the
current, the rate of change of current, and the rate of change of electric and
magnetic fields" in the "nose, the vertical tail, under the forward
and aft portions of the fuselage, at the base of the vertical tail, and under
each wing." Though the plane is highly shielded, it has "a few
internal wires" that can pick up induced voltages. (Felix Pitts, Bruce D.
Fisher, Vladislav Mazur, Rodney Perala, "Aircraft Jolts from Lightning
Bolts: A Milestone NASA Study Based on Actual Airplane Data Spurs the FAA to
Set New Standards for Protecting Airborne Electronic Systems," IEEE
Spectrum, July 1988, p. 36). (back)

⁵⁹ Conversation,
August 20, 2000. (back)

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