The decision was made two days after the tragic collision of American Airlines passenger plane with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C.

In 1996, Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 was carrying 230 people when it exploded minutes after taking off, killing everyone on board. The plane’s wreckage fell into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island.

Had controllers been able to detect instantly the flight-path changes and other burgeoning ... grew in part out of the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, whose black boxes took over a week to recover ...