Not a lot known. It was a 737-800, and was cruising at altitude when it dropped from the sky.
This is an odd one. Most times when there’s a problem it’s during take-off or landing. This plane took a nosedive midway through the flight.
Some security cam footage of the plane falling: https://streamable.com/g6h6jd
Hope it’s not a MAX.
Reminds me a lot of Silk Air 185, the Indonesian 737 that also plummeted straight-down to its demise in the 1990s. It turned out to be a case of pilot suicide.
737-800 is a predecessor to the max.
If that is accurate, the plane was lawn-darting in. That was nearly vertical. Not typical for an accident.
I’m calling shenanigans on the story. It’s almost impossible for a plane to go straight down due to some mechanical. This looks more like a missile gone bad and not a plane.
Also, if it did lawn dart into the ground from 29,000 feet it would have easily broken the sound barrier and failed structurally. the wings and tail would have separated. The 350 speed is complete nonsense.
Why does the video not show the impact explosion? It breaks to a view of a billowing fire but it’s not the same view.
Here’s a different perspective from a dashcam to show the aircraft going in at a steep angle but not verticle. https://twitter.com/ChinaAvReview/status/1505856305495351296?s=20&t=qnCmTTBNbuXHM32JtWCjaw
I’ve seen reports of signs that the aircraft broke up at altitude as parts of what could be the empennage are being found far away from the main crash.
There was a world wide air directive on the 737-800 regarding cracks in the “pickle fork” connection between fuselage and wing.
I heard on NBC News this evening that the plane dropped from cruising altitude to about 7,000 feet, where it briefly stabilized, and then nosedived to the ground.
I just hope that the passengers didn’t know what was happening to them.
I really can’t imagine how they wouldn’t.
Maybe the plane depressurized, or the G-forces rendered them unconscious/killed them almost immediately.
I just hope this wasn’t a worst-case scenario: pilot suicide .
Not to get into a one-ups game of horribleness but I’d say an organized terrorist attack would be worse. An equipment failure or single deranged pilot is unfortunate but a single one-off thing. But an organization of plane crashing terrorists would force the CCP’s hand into harsh measures.
Good point.
They were falling. They were probably experiencing somewhere between 0 and 1 g. (Even if the pilot was actively plowing them towards the ground with everything the engines could give, I don’t think a 737 could pull off multi-g acceleration.)
Difficult for a commercial passenger jet to pull enough Gs to induce blackout before the wings fall off.
It’s been reported that they descended very rapidly from cruise altitude and restored level flight somewhere around 7,000 feet before resuming their rapid descent to the ground. The video footage from a surveillance camera and a dash cam shows the plane in a very steep dive, perhaps 60 degrees down, shortly before impact; this is consistent with the wreckage observed so far at the crash scene, which is mostly tiny pieces, very little that’d you’d immediately recognize as a part from an airplane. Unless there was a prolonged depressurization at cruise altitude, it’s almost certain everyone on the plane knew what was happening during that final steep dive.
As for what’s worse or worst, I doubt anyone on the plane would have felt better/worse knowing they were about to die because of a mechanical failure, pilot error/suicide, or terrorist intervention.
Depressurization would render them unconscious, but it’s almost impossible for G-forces to knock you out - especially since these would be negative G’s, not the positive G’s fighter pilots get. AIUI it is essentially impossible for G-forces in an aircraft to kill you.
Chinese searchers have found one black box, but it’s so badly damaged they couldn’t tell initially if it was the voice or the data recorder. They’re not sure if they’ll get anything usable from it.
Holy crap. It takes a LOT to damage those boxes, too.
But once they got below 15000 feet, they would have started waking back up.
I’m sure there’s going to be a ton of youtube videos coming out over the next few days with people attempting to figure out what happened (some more knowledgeable than others). And once the accident report comes out, I’m quite sure that, they’ll be even more videos.
FWIW, Mentour Pilot does a really good job with these types of videos. Just as an example, there was a plane that literally fell out of the sky a few years ago in Afghanistan. Here’s his video on that. I could be wrong, but wasn’t a Doper’s sister on that plane?