A LAWYER who claims he knows what caused TWA Flight 800 to explode, has filed a £65 million lawsuit, accusing the airline and Boeing of failing to design and maintain the plane properly.
Federal investigators have not yet determined whether a bomb, missile or mechanical malfunction caused the Paris-bound plane to explode on July 17th shortly after take off from New York, killing all 230 people on board.
But Mr Lee Kreindler, an aviation lawyer who won £300 million for victims' families after the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, said his experts have figured out the cause - from press reports, as they have not been allowed to examine the wreckage.
Mr Kreindler filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the family of Leonard Johnson of Virginia, accusing TWA and Boeing of wilful misconduct and negligence.
TWA spokesman, Mr Mark Abels, said he found it incredible that a lawyer would declare the mystery solved before investigators had reached a conclusion. He also said the plane was well-maintained.
"Top experts around the world have been spending thousands of man-hours trying to determine what caused this crash, and they have been unable to come up with any conclusions," said Mr Abels.
"They can't pinpoint a cause, and it seems inconceivable that someone can come up with what happened without even reviewing anything from the flight."
Mr James Kallstrom, who is heading the FBI's criminal probe into the disaster, said he finds speculation and guesswork discouraging.
"We've had hundreds of dedicated experts working on this since the night of the tragedy and we still don't know what caused this crash."
Mr Kreindler's theory was largely developed by Mr Peter Jorgenson, a former Boeing engineer who worked 7475, whom he hired as an expert witness.
Mr Jorgenson concluded that a fuel pump on the centre fuel tank exploded during the flight, causing burning fuel vapours to travel through the vent lines of the right wing and out the right wing tip.
He said the explosion was followed by a chain reaction of structural failures and fires, eventually causing the plane to break up in mid-air.
Mr Kreindler and his investigators presented their theory to the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington. But NTSB spokeswoman, Ms Shelly Hazle, said the board heard nothing "that made us slap our foreheads and say, `Oh, so that's what happened'". Mr Kreindler won £300 million for 225 families of victims of Pan Am Flight 103 after arguing that the airline should have detected the bomb on the plane.
The suit filed yesterday was on behalf of one victim, but Mr Kreindler said he expected to file at least four more suits, and that in all, his firm represented the families of 25 victims of TWA Flight 800.