Wreckage of T.W.A. Flight 800 to Be Destroyed Years After Explosion The National Transportation Safety Board said it no longer needed to use a reconstruction of the plane brought down in one of the deadliest crashes in U.S. history. Wreckage recovered from T.W.A. Flight 800 was assembled inside a hangar on Long Island in 1997.Credit...Vic DeLucia/The New York Times Feb. 25, 2021 Twenty-five years ago, a Boeing 747 flying from New York City to Paris exploded in midair and broke apart just off the coast of Long Island. All 230 people on board the plane, Trans World Airlines Flight 800, were killed, and the wreckage plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean.