Hacker News Reader

With all respect to the witnesses, early eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable. I remember reading the exact same thing about the plane that crashed in NYC shortly after 9/11. There were also many ‘eyewitnesses’ claiming to see the crash of the Malaysian airliner. This report may wind up to be substantiated, but I wouldn’t put any weight on it until then.

View on HN

See also the multiple eyewitness accounts of what brought down TWA-800, many involving a surface-to-air missile. The most likely explanation supported by evidence turned out to be faulty wiring igniting fuel vapor in the center tank. However, it took years of investigation and evidence gathering to finally put that initial speculation to rest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800

Also TWA 800, where many eyewitnesses saw a missile that was never there.

not sure if citing that as an example is such a good idea, considering everything surrounding it. You do have to reject an awful lot of evidence to claim with certainty there was never a missile.

They spent 4 years and $40M on the investigation which including recovering most of the fuselage from the Atlantic and reassembling it in a warehouse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com