Trevor Collins

They don't know the ignition for certainty, but the most likely scenario was a combination of faulty indication systems on the fuel quantity combined with a short circuit or other faulty piece of technology outside of the tank.

This would result in a high energy electrical arc from the fuel tank, which would then ignite these flammable vapors.

If you don't know whether it's car gas or jet fuel, they're quite different, but they're also similar.

When they become a vapor, especially if there's oxygen in play, they become extremely explosive.

It's almost a misnomer to say that gas is flammable.

It is.

It's more explosive than it is flammable because it really wants to evaporate.

And so we're focused on the liquid part, but there's always fumes and those fumes want to go boom.

I should also say their assumption that some sort of fuel level gauge was faulty is kind of supported because we don't have any reports back to air traffic control as far as like concerns or anything.

But at 8.29 p.m., you have Captain Ralph Kevorkian, who can be heard saying on the radio or captured by the black box, I should say, quote, look at that crazy fuel flow indicator there on number four.

See that?

So if this...

meter is flipping around or showing a weird volume amount that is unexpected it could imply that maybe this fuel flow indicator was faulty i.e maybe that's where the spark came from

Oh, I should say, because I did put it here.

This comes from the cockpit voice recorder, and we also had flight data, which was recorded.

This showed the normal takeoff climb and all the way up until the time of the explosion at 831, when obviously it stops recording anything.

So all this to say, this is my kind of layman's understanding of it.

You have the central wing fuel tank.

It's the underbelly between the wings.

It's mostly empty with residual fuel.