You know what is less plausible than determining and announcing mechanical failure immediately? Saying the US snuck into Iranian airspace, got over their capital and the only thing that was attacked was a third party airliner.
FWIW the Internet report I read claimed Iran is declining to make the flight reporting equipment available.
Next time spell out what you mean to begin with please. Don’t wait until someone has to ask. That’s not nice.
It was an official statement from the Iranian government that they will not turn over the recorders to Boeing. Whether they will allow some other third party to see the data is unclear.
AFAIK, they’re not under any obligation to do so. The crash happened in their territory, so they’re entitled to conduct the investigation as they see fit.
If their investigation revealed a mechanical failure that couldn’t be attributed to botched/skipped maintenance, it might be nice if they le the plane’s manufacturer know, but if I were Boeing, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for anything like that.
Agreed. I don’t get into conspiracy theories much, but didn’t we just go through a time of about 8 or 9 years with no airline fatalities worldwide?
But last night, just when the Iranians attack (or pretend to attack) U.S. military bases, an airliner crashes, 1) on that night, 2) right after the attack, and 3) outside of Tehran because of some sort of mechanical failure?
The coincidence seems incredible. More likely that someone manning the AA guns got a little itchy and thought that was an incoming U.S. bomber.
You mean the past 8-9 years (2011-2020?)
That featured the MH370 crash, MH17 shootdown, the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes, and a variety of other deadly crashes.
Not the past 8-9 years. There was a recent period of 8-9 years of no airline fatalities.
Thank you. I stand corrected. That was only for US carriers anywhere in the world.
However, my point stands. Commercial airliner crashes are very rare. It just so happened last night?
I don’t know much about radars, but if an air-defense crew cannot distinguish between an outgoing Boeing 737 airliner, and an incoming B-52/B-2/B-1/F-16/F-15, that seems to speak very poorly of either radar resolution tech, crew training, commands from leadership, or other/all.
Right, MAX’s are not flying (in regular commercial service) again anywhere. And price action on the stock was not that dramatic if you look at a several day chart. If there’s another MAX crash soon after it gets recertified, then you’d see a real drop in Boeing. This is an airline from a Former Soviet Republic (relatively weak safety records as a whole) taking off in a country in near war situation, thus possibly shot down by mistake (an a/c heading away from Tehran airport could still be mistaken for hostile if the situation is confused enough) or an accident but where conditions somehow compromised regular safety procedures as was suggested above (maybe that’s more likely though could also be an accident nothing to do with conditions in Iran). On a type of plane 737 NG type, with a huge fleet, excellent safety record over many years. That’s not a reason for a major sell off in Boeing and ‘stock tumbles’ headlines in some outlets notwithstanding, it didn’t really.
The type of non VLO plane isn’t necessarily relevant. In the USN downing of Iranian A300 airliner in 1988 the target was believed, by pretty sophisticated SPY-1 radar on the US cruiser, to be a possible F-14 (which in fairness had a big radar signature for a fighter), if you believe the USN’s investigation and I don’t see a real reason not to on that aspect of the incident. In limited cases of radar/target combinations an actual image of the target can be formed by signal processing and/or a particular signature in the return (like frequency modulation of return from the face of a particular type of jet engine’s compressor etc) can be matched with a particular type of plane: ‘non cooperative target recognition’. But not necessarily.
As to incoming/outgoing you’d really have to study the specifics of location of flight path v potential targets. And also consider that even a/c which qualify as Very Low Observable can be less so seen from rear aspect. So the appearance of a VLO plane only when it’s retreating relative to a particular radar’s position is possible, particularly the F-35 which is said to have more design compromises in rear aspect radar signature than the more all around stealthy B-2 or F-22. Also some a/c like second generation F-18’s are somewhat stealthy (though not comparable to F-35) in frontal aspect but basically not in rear aspect.
CBC reporting on the deceased https://youtu.be/WClwgeTBAEI?t=229
TWA Flight 800 comes to mind as an example of a passenger jet that burst into flames while still in the air, but without being hit by a missile.
CBS News is reporting that unnamed US officials are “confident” that Iran shot down the jet, obviously without intending to down a civilian airliner.
Most, if not all, of the reporting of “radar turned on” on anti-aircraft, and on “blips” representing 2 missiles picked up by satellites, seems to lead back to a single CBS report, in turn based on a briefing by an unnamed person to unnamed “federal officials”. It makes sense as an explanation: much tension, everything on high alert, oops the AA missile launches. But at the moment Iran seems willing to cooperate with Ukraine and Canada in the investigation, meaning those Iranians are not aware of the mistake, or the story is bogus. Given that the source is unnamed government officials, when I would doubt the word of certain named officials, doesn’t help either. Were I a betting man, my bet is it was a mistaken AA launch, but I wouldn’t bet anything particularly precious to me.
The amazing thing is that I hold the truthiness of Iran and the U.S. administration as at best about equivalent, which represents quite a change from years past.
I agree. Normally I would much more likely believe the US over Iran, but I don’t trust the Trump administration. However, I still heavily trust a US military official over an Iranian one.
CNN now reporting to have a video of something hitting it. I am not sure how they could ever validate the video.