Talk:United Air Lines Flight 553

Weasel words and unsourced claim on FBI
I propose deleting the unsourced statement that "some claim" the FBI destroyed evidence in the crash. There is no source for this phrase, and I would also say that this page adequately addresses the fact that there are conspiracy theorists who believe this crash was caused by the U.S. government. At the same time, the page sources and adequately covers the fact that the crash was extensively investigated, and links to the findings of that investigation.

I would also join those who would oppose cluttering up this article with unsourced conspiracy theory statements, or those sourced to websites that are of questionable verifiability. Let's keep this page, like all of WP, appropriately encyclopedic.NYDCSP 15:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. The unsupportable comments about conspiracies should be eliminated. EditorASC 09:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The US federal government is behind everything . 2601:192:100:3DD0:B4CC:2A54:99F5:BE87 (talk) 09:46, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Investigation credibility
I don't believe there's a reliable source provided to conclusivley state that "the official cause reported by the NTSB above cannot be regarded as credible", as changed from "the official cause reported by the NTSB above are not regarded as credible by some parties", per this edit (which I also believe is a non-neutral point of view). Hence, my revision, per WP:BRD. JoeSperrazza (talk) 23:29, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Doubts about Oglesby
I was in two minds as to whether to include references to the Oglesby book. On balance I decided to do so, despite the following concerns:

82.1.57.194 (talk) 18:46, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
 * He questions "why flight 553 was reassigned to runway 31L, which is shorter [than runway 13R] and lacks a glidescope".
 * In fact 31L and 13R are exactly the same length because they are the same runway, just used in opposite directions. This shows a less-than-rigorous attitude to fact-checking.
 * Both runways 31L and 13R had glideslopes. A very simple fact to check from available publications such as Jeppeson.
 * He misinterprets the Ruckelhaus letter "Approximately 50 FBI agents responded to the crash scene, the first ones arriving within 45 minutes of the crash" as "50 FBI agents arrived at the scene within an hour". A careful reading of the source can only justify the conclusion that at least two agents arrived within 45 minutes and 50 in total attended within 20 hours.
 * He describes Skolnick as having been confined to a wheelchair from birth. In fact his disability came about after he suffered polio at age 6. Obviously this is unimportant to the accident, but it further undermines his "reputation for fact checking" per WP:RS, especially considering the two were once colleagues.
 * Most disappointing of all, is the lack of a clear description of the sabotage theory (who/why/how).


 * Carl Oglesby seems to have checked the facts, because he is right in both cases.
 * The official (declared) landing distance available (LDA) of RWY 31L was shorter than the LDA of RWY 13R.
 * RWY 31L did lack a glideslope indeed. This is why the flight had to perform this non-precision/localizer approach to RWY 31L in the first place. (The absence of the glideslope signal was acknowledged by two crew members during the approach.)
 * --195.246.100.57 (talk) 19:14, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on United Airlines Flight 553. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090617092346/http://bjo.bmj.com:80/cgi/issue_pdf/admin_pdf/57/4.pdf to http://bjo.bmj.com/cgi/issue_pdf/admin_pdf/57/4.pdf

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 23:48, 13 January 2016 (UTC)