If no one has jumped up hollering, “We did it! We did it!” I’m going to wait to see what they find.
Everyone’s first thought is Terrorism, and then followed by mechanical failure.
I’m gonna go on record, and say it was shot down by a Nato aircraft. That swerve is a new wrinkle.
Declan
- Why would a swerve suggest it was shot down?
- Why would a NATO fighter fire on an aircraft in Egyptian airspace?
I was thinking of this after I had heard the news.
A swerve might indicate that the pilots knew they had been lit up by someone and may have been taking evasive maneuvers.
Declan
There was an aviation expert being interviewed about this incident on NPR this morning. He noted that, when Egyptian airlines are involved in crashes or other incidents, Egyptian officials have a pretty clear track record of doing everything possible to reach a conclusion that does not reflect badly on Egypt or its airline industry.
Not that it’s not possible. Mistakes happen.
But I very much doubt they would know that they where targeted (lit up) if it did.
The wreckage spotted earlier is now reported not to be from the missing plane. Moreover, CNN is using a Malaysian Airlines plane model in their giant newsreader standing on map CGI reconstruction…
It all depends on the BB being recovered and any wreckage being forensically analysed to determine what brought it down. If the plane and the BB cannot be recovered for what ever reason, then usually it falls to radar tapes of the area, and any other aircraft that may have been flying in the same vicinity.
In the case of Itavia 870, the data was suppressed to avoid proving that an air battle had taken place between two libyan mig 23’s that had permission to transit Italian airspace to Czechslovakia for aircraft maitenance, and various allied aircraft.
Could that happen again, who knows.
Declan
You mean they finally found it?!? Why weren’t we told!
There’s also the possibility of suicide.
“Fly Egypt Air, get blown up” does not reflect well on Egypt or their airline industry either.
The latest updates say that they have found wreckage and luggage from the flight. The original announcement on thursday was retracted but they are now saying they have found some debris.
Regarding the “swerve,” there have been several accidents where loss of control stemming from mechanical failure (most notably, the vertical stabilizer and/or tail assembly) led to violent maneuvers.
The 360 turn under rapid descent might also be an emergency descent - if, as a completely hypothetical example, the airplane was on fire the pilots might opt for a descent far faster than might be otherwise considered in the interest of ditching with some small hope of survival for some, rather than burning alive at altitude.
Or, yes, it could have been a mechanical failure leading to loss of control.
I eagerly await the black box data.
Can they descend more quickly in a 360[sup]o[/sup] turn?
Civilian aircraft don’t carry classified military electronic warfare equipment, including RADAR warning receivers, so if they were targeted by any anti-aircraft weapon their first indication would be either a near-miss or a hit. And with modern SAMs and AAMs, there’s no such thing as an ambush near-miss. If the missile comes close enough for you to notice, it’s already bursting and you’re eating fragments.
The 90 degree turn is interesting as it’s not a typical manoeuvre for a commercial airliner to make. One suggested explanation is a struggle in the cockpit. However, I’ve also read that it’s a standard emergency descent manoeuvre, when faced with an incident such as depressurization. If it was a true 90 degree turn that might suggest more towards it being a controlled action (and so the latter explanation).
The timing and location of the incident is also slightly curious. It looks as though the aircraft disappeared from radar just after it had crossed from Greek into Egyptian airspace.
It’s more a matter of being able to make a tighter turn while you’re descending than when in straight and level flight. Maintaining a steep bank in level flight imposes more stress on a plane than the same bank while descending.
If - totally hypothetically, may not apply at all in this case - the airplane was on fire a steep turn at a high rate of descent may help keep the flames from spreading to more of the structure while getting everyone down quickly in hopes of it all somehow being survivable after a ditching at sea. Very slim hopes for that, but if the alternative is certain death why not clutch at straws?
If - totally hypothetically, may not apply at all in this case - there was a mechanical failure of some sort they may have been only able to make a turn. In which case they’re probably screwed anyway but see prior comment about clutching at straws.
If you have to ditch a tighter turn would keep you closer to the track you were following prior to all hell breaking lose, which would simply the problem for search parties later, either to find survivors (there I go with the straw-clutching again) or the wreck.
Or something else I haven’t thought of. I’m very interested in what’s on the black boxes as it will almost certainly shed more light on what happened.
The (unconfirmed) automated ACARS messages are suggesting a fire on board.
Yes I realize that, but with the Italian flight in the 80’s, it was not directly targeted but was the next available target for that matra missile. So if a dog fight did occur in the present time, and the same thing happened, one of the military pilots giving a heads up on guard channel to break , ya got a snake heading your way.
The question I am gonna be looking at is what was the flights original track, if the plane turned 90 degrees to that, may indicate that the plane was breaking right. The majority of pilots that are right handed, tend to break right when warned, and then the flight resumes its original track or close to it, coming back to 0/360.
If that happened, then there should be a radio transcript as well, as what the voice recorder might say. If the Acars data is showing a fire of some kind, its not out of possiblity for that to have been caused by an air to air missile.
As always, until the recorder and forensics guys can get in to see, cause of crash is still unknown.
Declan
Airbus has gotta be like, ‘Why is it always our planes that crash? Why can’t it be Boeing?’