planeandpilotmag.com 7campaigning trip; and the biggest of
them all, the disappearance of Amelia
Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan
over the Pacific Ocean on the penul-
timate leg of an ill-fated around-the-
world flight attempt in 1937.
While these mysterious mishaps
have captured the imagination of the
mainstream media and non-aviation
onlookers, there are many accidents
that get only local attention, if that.
A Cessna 150 that went missing near
Brownsville, Texas, with one dead. A
Luscombe 8A that crashed, killing
the sole occupant while en route to
somewhere, claiming the life of the
only person aboard. A Cherokee 140
that crashed on takeoff from Canon
City, Colorado, killing one of the
three aboard the plane. In many of
these accidents, the cause remains
unknown or, as the NTSB puts it, “under unknown
circumstances.” Some of these accidents will even-
tually get statements of probable cause—an NTSB
investigation typically takes more than a year. Others
will remain mysteries.
As far as the public’s fascination with aviation mys-
teries...that’s a very old story. Stories that generated
enormous amounts of media attention included the 1938
trans-Atlantic flight of Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan;
the 1947 disappearance of BSAA Avro Lancastrian
“Stardust” in the Andes; and the deaths of Buddy Holly,
Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson in
the crash of a Beechcraft Bonanza in 1959. The fascina-
tion with the Kobe Bryant crash is nothing new. People
have been speculating on crashes for as long as there
have been crashes.
INFORMATION
The biggest difference between mysteries of yore, even
unsolved accidents a couple of decades ago, and today's
mishaps is that we have tons of data on which to base our
theories. If anyone doubted this fact, the Kobe Bryant
crash hopefully disabused them of it. After it was revealed
that Bryant had been killed in the crash, within hours
we had a moment-by-moment track and altitudes of the
flight, and recordings of the interactions between the
pilot and air traffic controllers as the flight progressed.
With the advent of ADS-B, we’ll soon have access to
even more data. And at some time in the not-too-distant
future, who knows, we might have real-time video of the
pilots doing their thing, as well as the plane’s flight data.
One of the main reasons anti-speculation adherents
give for their stand is that the NTSB might have infor-
mation that we don’t know about. They might, true. But
the point is that even before the NTSB arrives on the
scene these days, we know a lot of the details associated
with the mishap. This is not to say that there won’t even
be mysteries waiting to be discovered by professional
investigators...there will be. And it’s not to say that some
mysteries, like Malaysia 370, won't remain unsolved, or,
like TWA 800, contentious. TWA 800, of course, was
the Boeing 747 that exploded over the Atlantic in 1996,
which some contend was an accidental shoot down.
With the Kobe Bryant crash, the facts early on pointed
to continued VFR into IMC, which more than ever looks
to be the case. So, does the NTSB have information
outside observers don’t? Yes. But that special informa-
tion is often not particularly relevant in a segment in
which a handful of common accident causes continue
to cause tragedy. Finding out that the pilot who flew into
a thunderstorm was taking an over-the-counter antihis-
tamine sheds zero light on that particular accident cause.
We should avoid reckless speculation. We should
avoid floating theories about the skills of the pilot or
the condition of the aircraft, that is, unless there’s ample
reason to believe that the theory is a reasonable one.
Another thing is, we need to leave names of victims
out of it until officials have released those names. In the
Bryant crash, there were several victims falsely named,
leaving loved ones to believe they had perished in the crash.
Finally, as much as I sympathize with the desire
to enforce an ethic of conservative discourse when it
comes to aviation accidents, the truth is, the internet,
and the behavior of people on it, many of whom are
anonymous, is for all intents and purposes impossible
to control. The best we can do is spread the truth as
effectively as we can, expose irresponsible theories and
statements for the junk they are, and hope that over time
the truth will emerge, which, almost without exception,
it eventually does. PPOne of the few major accidents whose cause remains controversial is the explosion of TWA
Flight 800 over the Atlantic Ocean in 1996. In many cases today, the public has plentiful data
days or sometimes mere hours following an accident.