The National Transportation Safety Board has rejected a petition asking the agency to revisit its findings in the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, which exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 12 minutes after takeoff from JFK during a flight to Paris, killing all 230 people aboard.
The petition was filed last summer by a group known as the TWA 800 Project in conjunction with the release of an Epix documentary that drew renewed attention to the high-profile accident. The documentary features NTSB and TWA investigators who allege the airplane was shot down by Navy missiles, as opposed to experiencing an explosion in the center fuel tank, as the NTSB said in its final report.
A team of NTSB investigators who did not take part in the original TWA Flight 800 investigation were selected to assess the petition, which received 1,552 signatures.
NTSB representatives say that after meeting with the petition’s representatives and listening to an eyewitness account of the event, they denied the petition in its entirety “because the evidence and analysis presented did not show the original findings were incorrect.”
In the wake of the denial the TWA 800 Project said the NTSB’s decision comes days after the group protested and said “subordinates of people implicated in the petition are involved in its review.”
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