I’ve heard contradictory statements from ‘seasoned professionals’. Some say it probably is sabotage; others claim it probably isn’t a terrorist act, though admittedly, the evidence either way is very scant.
Now, they’ve established that birds weren’t a factor.
And I’ve read that even if one engine goes out for one reason or another, the plane can still be controlled and brought to the ground. If that’s the case, then what happened in this case?
According to the NTSB, initial evidence suggests that it was not sabotage. The black box recordings seem to indicate that the wake of another aircraft may have contributed to the malfunction. But they’re not ruling anything out.
Short answer: what happened was the plane broke up.
The real question is why it broke up.
The loss of an engine, just by itself, is not enough to cause such a thing. Jet engines do fail and every year there are a couple instances of this happening and almost always everyone gets back on the ground safely because passenger airliners are designed to fly minus an engine (in many cases, minus all but one engine). This does not mean it’s a fun ride when it happens, just that the odds are that you will land in one piece if an engine quits.
The in-flight break-up is unusual. In fact, it’s nearly unheard of. In 1979 a DC-10 out of O’Hare in Chicago had an engine fall off and, although that did end in a crash, the rest of the plane remained intact until impact.
There are various other possibilities. I heard today there was a possibility of wake turbulence, which can cause major problems. Now, if you were down and engine AND hit wake turbulence…
Well, we just don’t know. Let the NTSB get what they can from the black boxes and various pieces.
Too early to tell. The NTSB investigators are very good at figuring out why airplanes crash; but they need some time.
I heard about wake turbulence today. Generally I’ve thought that was primarily (notice the qualifiers in this sentence!) a danger to small aircraft. My dad flew into some once and said he was flipped over, and that he was flipped back before he could do anything. The “heavy” was miles away.
How’s this for a non-sabotage scenario? An engine mount fails (extremely rare, but it does happen). At the moment of failure, the Airbus flies into wake turbulence from the 747. Asymetric thrust and drag meet an unusual attitude caused by wake turbulence and put the pilots into a sudden position from which they can’t recover. I have no idea if this could happen, but I suppose it could.
The evening news showed an animation that suggested the vertical stabilizer departed the airframe, leaving the aircraft uncontrollable. Again, I suppose it could happen; but structural failures are extremely rare, especially on large aircraft.
IIRC, the Airbus 300 is a “fly by wire” aircraft. A computer failure? Maybe. But I think they have triple redundancy. Unlikely that all of the control systems would fail at once.
Or it could have been sabotage.
I think sabotage is unlikely though. Airplanes do sometimes crash. Not very often, but it happens. It happened before September 11th, 2001. Just because four airliners were hijacked and crashed intentionally does not mean that aircraft will suddenly stop crashing for other reasons. Yeah, it could have been sabotage; but there are other reasons that may be more likely. The flight could have crashed (and probably did) for very unlikely reasons. “That’s the breaks of Naval warfare.”
Could have been sabotage. Probably wasn’t. It’s too early to tell. It may take a year or more before we know for sure (although with the public interest I’ll bet we get an answer sooner), but we will eventually get an answer.
Well, there hasn’t been any substantial evidence, or let alone, any evidence to suggest that it was in fact an act of sabotage. An engine falling off could happen and the plane coming apart also could happen, without any form of sabotage. We’ll just have to wait for the NTSB’s ruling.
There is, however, one thing that sticks out in my mind – the fact that the plane was inspected a day before, then, on the very next day, it crashes. I don’t know, it just leads me to side more on the fact that it was indeed sabotage.
Not necessarily. I’m always a bit wary when I rent a helicopter that has just had maintenance (like replacing rotor blades or something). Something was taken apart, and I’m very careful about the preflight inspection to make sure it was put back together correctly before I fly the thing.
I’ve read account of people who have taken off in an airplane right after it has been returned to service and bad things happened. Like the student pilot whose landing gear fell off when she took off because the A&P forgot to install the bolts. Or the safety wire that was left off, which let all of the fuel or oil leak out, or let some important bit depart the aircraft. Rags have been left in places they shouldn’t have been by mechanics. When I was at Edwards AFB a mechanic left a wrench in the intake of a B-1, which was promptly sucked into the engine. I’ve read (but I don’t remember where) that the first few hours after an aircraft (and in the account I read, they were talking about GA aircraft) has been returned to service are the most dangerous.
The Airbus having crashed so shortly after having had maintenance leads me to suspect that a bolt was left out, a nut was untightened, a safety wire wasn’t installed… anything but sabotage. But that’s just me playing Amateur Sleuth. We need to wait for the experts to finish their examination.
The really weird thing is it now seems that the tail fell off before the engine.
From what I understand is the aircraft didn’t have any major work for over a month previous. The “maintainence” that was done just that day (or before) was just a visual inspection.
I am curious to find out what the deal was though. Even if the rudder took flight on its own, I don’t think that would account for the rest of the wing/engine/nacelle falling off. It’d be one hell of a ride, but I don’t know if it’d be that violent.
My God, how’d you know that?? :eek: