They were all killed. Bombings by the IRA, the PLO, Weatherman, Folks killing each other, kidnappings. 's Rome office said the plane's last radio contact was with Kerkira airport on the: Greek island of Corfu.Authorities on Corfu, about 100 miles north of the crash site, said fire engines were lined up along the airport runway and incoming and outgoing flights were temporarily halted —indicating the airport had received a distress signal.BEIRUT, Lebanon, Monday,. The crew claimed that such failures had happened on other 727s prior and subsequent to this incident.The flight crew testified that they had not engaged the flaps, and the NTSB concluded that "if the flightcrew's recollections are accurate," the slat extension must have been caused by a mechanical failure or defect.While cruising at Mach 0.816 and 39,000 feet pressure altitude and with the autopilot controlling the aircraft, an attempt was made to extend 2º of trailing edge flaps independently of the leading edge slats, probably in an effort to improve aircraft performanceWhen retraction of the flaps was ordered, the Number 7 leading edge slat failed to retract, causing the uncommanded roll to the right. TWA Flight 841 (1979): On April 4, 1979, a Boeing 727-31 (tail number N840TW) operating as TWA Flight 841 took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, en route to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport in Minneapolis, Minnesota.At around 9:48 p. m. local time, over Saginaw, Michigan, while the plane was cruising at 39,000 feet (11,887 m) and Mach … and the National Transportation Safety Board were on their way to Athens to’ aid in the investigation.Two of the passengers believed killed in the T.W.A crash were a New Jersey business executive and his‐ wife. He said representatives of T.W.A. "Pilot Says Extending Landing Gear Was Near Last Resort to Stop Dive." ATHENS, Sept. 8 — A Trans World, Airlines jet bound for the United States with 88 persons aboard crashed today in the stormy Ionian Sea off Greece.
Barry Werth, 31 Days : Gerald Ford, The Nixon Pardon and a Government in Crisis (New York: Anchor Books). 7 slat which, when combined with the cruise condition airloads, precluded retraction of that slat. The headline read: Bomb on TWA Flight 841 Kills 88. The company manufacturer of blood diagnostic reagants, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. After stopping for 68 minutes in Athens, it departed for Rome.
The TWA Flight 841 had stopped in Athens for 68 minutes and then departed for Rome. Four rescue ships and a seaplane were reported sent to the crash site.The first ship to reach the… site, the Greek freighter Hellas, reported recovering seven hodies from the sea.The Greek merchant marine said the pilot of an Alitalia plane reported seeing a 707, “plunging steeply into the sea with one engine on fire” 40‐minutes after the T.W.A.
Sept. 9—A Palestinian youth group claimed last night thatit had sabotaged the jet that crashed off Greece yesterday,The Arab Nationalist Youth,Organization for the Liberation of Palestine made the claim telephone calls to newspapers and news services here.The anonymous caller said that a member of the organiza tion—a Chilean of Palestinian descent—blew himself up with the passengers on board the plane, which he said was carrying Israeli secret service’ squads.There is no way of confirming such claims, which in the past have often proved to be false.Lebanese journalists were saying earlier in the evening that it would not be long before some person or group would‐say it had sabotaged the plane because it originated in Tel Aviv.No information is available about the youth group, but it is believed to be a faction hoping to emulate the Black September organization, which carried out the Munich massacre in Septemoer, 1972.Franklin J. Parisi, director of public information for Trans World Airlines, saidhere last night that the airline had no information on the cause of the crash, but that it was “highly unlikely,” in view of airport security measures in Tel Aviv and Athens, that the plane had been sabotaged.But he added that the airline could not rule out anything until the completion of an accident investigation. My very best high school friend was an exchange student from Greece.
An Associated Press investigation revealed that Al-Jawary may have been involved in a murderous letter-bombing campaign and the bombing of a 1974 TWA flight that killed 88 … In this case, the cause was a terrorist bomb in the cargo hold. The NTSB rejected this as improbable and attributed the extension of the flaps to the deliberate actions of the crew. The plane left Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, with its destination being JFK International Airport in New York City, United States, and a Palestinian youth organization put a guerrilla on the plane with a bomb. Witkin, Richard. In New York, however, a spokesman for T.W.A. The airline's Tel Aviv office said 49 …
So much for the argument that airlines always retire flight numbers after a crash.