Initially, the Federal Aviation Administration did its due diligence: It worked deliberately and didn't jump to conclusions. But pressure mounted on then-FAA chief Langhorne Bond to take drastic action; he was called to testify at a House hearing. The public was hungry for a culprit.
In June 1979, Bond dealt the DC-10 what many consider a deathblow: He grounded all 138 DC-10s in service in the U.S.; the order was lifted 37 days later. All but a handful around the world also were grounded.
What was lost in the outcry was the FAA's final conclusion: American Airlines' maintenance was mostly to blame for the Flight 191 crash -- not McDonnell Douglas' design. In fact, of all the fatal DC-10 accidents before 1980, only one crash near Paris was blamed on a design flaw (which McDonnell Douglas and airlines quickly fixed).