TWA Flight 800

TWA (Trans World Airlines) Flight 800, a Boeing 747-131, exploded over the Atlantic in 1996, en route to Paris from New York. It was the second-deadliest airline accident in U.S. history, killing 230 people.

According to the official accident report, released in 2000, the plane went down after a fuel tank exploded, most probably as the result of a short circuit. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and 6 former NTSB investigators dispute the claim that explosion was an initial event.

Conspiracy?
The event became the subject of a conspiracy theory, perhaps the first one to gain popularity by means of the Internet.

The official investigation of the accident was the most costly and largest one of its kind. Some conspiracy theorists question the findings of the NTSB report and allege that the plane was brought down either by the US Army or by terrorists, by means of either firing a missile at the plane or exploding a bomb on the plane. Eyewitnesses claimed that they saw a streak below the jet that they thought could be a trail of a guided missile. The streak is also visible on a low-quality film footage of the explosion. There is otherwise no evidence to suggest that any missiles were involved in the accident.

In 2013, as a documentary film about the investigation was being released, a group of former investigators was working to re-open the investigation into the causes of the crash, claiming that the original report had been falsified. While it is entirely possible that something other than or in addition to the fuel tank explosion may have been involved, this would likely have been the result of a mistake in the report rather than a conspiracy.