XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, rec.aviation, talk.politics.misc
XPost: alt.security.terrorism

In <d-2dnY4QAv-n7orDnZ2dnUU7-I3NnZ2d@supernews.com> "Byker" <byker@do~rag.net> writes:

[sniipppp]

Then again, there was TWA 800 just a few weeks after 9/11 which exploded >>>and crashed just after takeoff from JFK.

<

Point stands but you're thinking of AA 587.

Dammit, I conflated the two...

The TWA flight exploded in mid air. The AA flight had a catestrophic
failure of the rudder assembly. (Both scenarios were supposed to
be impossible, of course).

Interesting what-could-have-been:

Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was arrested on April 3, 1996.

TWA flight 800 blew up on July 17, 1996.

Had Kaczynski not been arrested, as he had been in the prior 19 years, guess >where the fingers would have been pointing? He'd tried but failed to take >down an airliner in 1979: >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_444

As a kind of related point, it was back in 1996 that the US Postal Service established new rules saying any package weighing more than 16 oz (one pound) could no longer be simply plastered with stamps and dropped in a pickup box.

Instead, they had to either use a fully trackable "meter strip",
or brought to a post office counter.

The reason was... that this was actually an FAA emergency regulation
designed to safeguard aircraft. They somewhat optimistically
figured that a plane could survive up to pound's worth of explosive
without falling to pieces and crashing.

The USPS, in turn, established their complementary regs.

(The cutoff point was later lowered to 13 ounces).

Given the time frame.. many people thought this was courtesy
of Ted Kaszinski. In actualit, it was because of the bomb that
blew up in, and brought down, TWA 800.

(Well, except that's not what happened to the airplane. It turned
out to be a fuel tank explosion. So of course, you're thinking,
the FAA and USPS rescinded those rules. Right? Wrong.)

No one's been able to explain to me why the USPS bans these
packages from neighborhood post office, that is, simple
truck routes that never see an aircraft. And simlarly,
why they won't accept 13 oz. plus boxes that have big
labels that say "Ground Transport Only". (Yes, there
are official USPS stickers with that advisory)


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