The reconstructed TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 that has been housed for 20 years in the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Training Center and used in countless accident investigation training sessions, is being decommissioned later this year, the NTSB says.
The board says it will stop using the reconstruction on July 7 and use 3-D scanning to document the reconstruction. The scanned data will then be archived.
The decommissioning decision comes as the NTSB prepares for the expiration of its lease on the Training Center, located in Ashburn, Virginia, U.S., and also as new investigative techniques have made large-scale reconstructions less relevant, the NTSB said.
Flight 800 crashed July 17, 1996, shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport in New York for what was to have been a flight to Paris. The crash into the Atlantic Ocean off New York’s Long Island killed all 230 passengers and crew. After a four-year investigation, the NTS…
