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On that humid Wednesday evening in New York, total strangers gathered to share a common fate, waiting outside Gate 27 to board a 7-hr. 15-min. flight to Paris. There was the contingent of high school kids from Pennsylvania off to France for a field trip; there was the 11-year-old exchange student returning home after collecting loads of Chicago Bulls and New York Knicks basketball memorabilia; the Connecticut engineering manager planning a romantic interlude for the woman he hoped would agree to become his fiance; the mother who overcame her fear of flying so she could tour medieval castles in a "bonding" trip with her daughter; the couple who fell in love as flight attendants 21 years ago and worked side by side on the New York-Paris route; the insurance-company executive who hoped to finally strike it rich by cutting a deal in Europe; the French "flat-picking" guitarist, a protege of Chet Atkins', who was on his way home after being honored at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame. The other passengers ranged from TV producer to unemployed construction worker. All their lives, however, had come to a final intersection.
Jack O'Hara, the TV producer, hated to fly. In May, to cover the Preakness for ABC Sports, he drove 170 miles from New York to Maryland to avoid traveling what would have been a short hop by plane. But last week O'Hara had to go to Paris for the Tour de France--his last assignment after being pink-slipped by the network. To help ease his anxieties, ABC threw in two free tickets for his wife Janet and their daughter Caitlin, 13.
Salvatore Mazzola, 36, the construction worker, was homesick. For the past two months, he had lived with an uncle who owned a pizzeria in Brooklyn. Laid off in March, he had disliked being idle back in Palermo, Sicily, but now he had had enough of America. He missed his wife Angela, 26, and their sons Giuseppe, 7, and Giorgio, 19 months. On Wednesday morning, he called Angela to ask for Giuseppe's shoe size and to tell her to expect him soon. He couldn't get on a direct flight to Italy, however; he had to go by way of Paris.
The plane designated Flight 800 was one of the oldest Boeing 747s in use. N93119 was the 153rd 747 to come off the Boeing production line in Renton, Washington, in 1971. At one point, it had been set aside for Eastern Airlines; then it was supposed to become part of prerevolutionary Iran's official fleet. But it ended up with TWA. N93119 has flown all over the world, but in recent months it has served as a transatlantic carrier, flying mainly from Washington and New York City to Paris and points in the Mediterranean, including Tel Aviv and Athens. A TWA employee who was supposed to serve as first officer on Flight 800 Wednesday night says that N93119 was "flawless" on its Tuesday touchdown at J.F.K. He acknowledges that individual planes have their quirks, but N93119, which he has flown about 60 times during the past 10 years, did not seem to have any. Indeed, there are only minor infractions on its Federal Aviation Administration record: a blown tire on takeoff in 1987 and a leaky oil line that resulted in an engine shutdown in 1988. And thus, at 8:02 p.m. on Wednesday, N93119 left the gate and taxied toward the runway. A few minutes later it would be in the air, flying eastward over the narrow, ragged strip of Long Island on the way to Europe.