# Two planes disappear from radar over Russia **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 24, 2004, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360 "2004-08-24T23:54:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2004, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/41 "2004-08-25T16:52:52Z")
In related news: [Hamas appears to be scouting US bridges](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=272941). ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2004, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/42 "2004-08-26T13:07:23Z")
> [@](#): > > At any rate, I was by no means excusing their actions, let’s make that clear. Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone could have interpreted your post that way. IIRC the incident was pretty bizarre. There were at least two people who walked through the police barricade _into_ the theater. I believe one was deranged and one was very drunk. Both were shot and killed by the terrorists. I think one of the other hostages was killed also. My memory might be faulty. In this thread i refuse to call my posts a hijack. It would be in bad taste. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2004, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/43 "2004-08-26T17:40:47Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > If this isn’t terrorism, I will personally swim over to Holland and spit shine all of Coldy’s wooden clogs. Just so you are up on current events, the headline in Todays Los Angeles Times is: > [@](#): > > **No Terrorist Link found in Twin Russian Plane Crashes** Reports aren’t final yet, but you may want to start shopping for a new swimsuit. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2004, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/44 "2004-08-26T23:37:40Z")
[Thread on Airliners.net containing lots of news links, and interesting speculation.](http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/1715039/) Shot down by the Russian air force? :dubious: Either way, the response from Russian officials is strange. They say terrorism can be ruled out, yet they have no problem accepting two black boxes cutting out spontaneously at about the same time? I dunno. ---
**Author:** ![Jake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jake)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/45 "2004-08-27T00:05:58Z")
> [@Coldfire](#): > > [Thread on Airliners.net containing lots of news links, and interesting speculation.](http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/1715039/) > > Shot down by the Russian air force? :dubious: > > Either way, the response from Russian officials is strange. They say terrorism can be ruled out, yet they have no problem accepting two black boxes cutting out spontaneously at about the same time? > > I dunno. Coldie, my guess is fuel contamination and a cover up. Not subvervisive, but kinda hidden in a hurry to cover asses. I would like to see some records of the fueling procedures at the time. Jack ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/46 "2004-08-27T00:11:10Z")
When I read that both planes had been ad adjacent gates, fuel contamination again seemed a likely cause. So who knows. But, read the thread I linked to. Someone actually makes a good point: a plane without fuel, or with bad fuel, will simply flame out, and become a glider. Examples are the Gimli Glider mentioned before in this thread, or the Air Transat Airbus that landed safely in the Azores after an unpowered glide from 85 nautical miles :eek: away, back in 2001. A glider might still crash on landing, but it doesn’t just drop out of the sky like these planes seem to have done. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/47 "2004-08-27T00:53:13Z")
Contaminated fuel might lead to a crash if it gets sucked into an engine and causes the engine to quit at low altitude - but at the altitude these guys were at the plane should have just kept going forward. As long as the guys up front don’t panic you have a chance to make a landing. The fact transport size planes WILL glide is well known among pilots. If they screw up the landing I’d expect them to do it down low, just before touch-down - not way high up, high enough to build up enough speed to break up in flight. Also, you wouldn’t get an “explosion” with that sort of in-flight break-up, which, as I said, is pretty unlikely in the first place. Fuel contanmination is usually water, which doesn’t explode when sucked into a turbine. In fact, that’s sort of the problem - water doesn’t burn well at all, which makes it a really crappy fuel. Bomb? Well… bombs leave marks on the wreckage, and they say the wreckage doesn’t show signs of a “terrorist” activitiy 😕 OK, not a bomb… 😕 It’s also darn strange the black boxes don’t show much. That usually means a complete power failure… but that won’t necessarially lead to a crash. Might be scary as heck at night, you might screw up the touch-down, but again, a power failure doesn’t lead to an explosion nor does it inherently lead to an in-flight break-up (mishandling the airplane at night, with no or few instruments, could) Airplanes HAVE broken up in flight - the British Comet did a half dozen times before they figured out why, but they fixed that problem and it _shouldn’t_ be an issue anymore. Even if it was, having it happen simultaneously would be … peculiar. Very unlikely. Then there was that supposed distress signal - did someone take over and _delibrately_ cut power to the black boxes? Pretty much any pilot at all has some idea how to overspeed a plane into the self-disassembly range. Shot down? Hmmm… well, maybe, and maybe a government cover up - but why, and who would benefit? Tis very puzzling all around. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/48 "2004-08-27T01:07:43Z")
Ah yes, the Comet. Fantastic looker, crappy design, yet still one of the most important jet planes in history. First passenger jet, IIRC. It was the square windows on the first evolution that did it in, right? What’s really cool about them is that its decendant, the Nimrod, is still flying for the RAF today. 🙂 Still, though. Both these Tupolevs are trusted designs. Barring maintenance fuck-ups, there’s no reason they should just fall out of the sky, especially not in pairs. Thanks for the insightful post, Broomstick! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/49 "2004-08-27T03:24:13Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > did someone take over and _delibrately_ cut power to the black boxes? Can you do that? I would think designing them to be inaccessible during flight and running on batteries would be a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/50 "2004-08-27T05:00:06Z")
I think the two most likely scenarios are either a bomb onboard, or being shot down. Fuel contamination doesn’t work, because the airplanes would just flame out and begin to glide. From cruising altitude those jets can probably glide 80-100 miles. Plenty of time to contact ATC, declare emergencies, etc. And, the debris was found scattered over a large area. Definite signs of an in-flight breakup. The odds of a common malfunction causing two aircraft of this class to break apart at exactly the same time is very remote. So, sabotage, missiles, or bombs. That’s my guess, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/51 "2004-08-27T08:21:57Z")
Sounds like explosive residue has been found in the wreckage of one of the planes. [From CNN:](http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/08/27/russia.planecrash/index.html) > [@](#): > > Traces of explosives have been found in the wreckage one of the two Russian passenger jets which crashed Tuesday, killing 89 people aboard, the Federal Security Service tells CNN. > > The FSB said it had identified some suspects, without elaborating. > > The two planes crashed within minutes of each other Tuesday night after departing Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, killing all aboard. > > The FSB – the country’s top intelligence agency – said it believed terrorism was to blame for the crash of the Siberian Airlines Tupolev 154, bound for the Black Sea resort of Sochi, killing all 46 on board. > > […] > > The incidents also took place just days before a regional election in the rebellious southern territory of Chechnya, where Russian troops have battled separatist guerrillas for the past five years. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/52 "2004-08-27T10:09:16Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Can you do that? I would think designing them to be inaccessible during flight and running on batteries would be a good idea. I’m not conversant with the exact design specifications and locations of block boxes. I know they’re almost always in the tail. Since they’re connected to microphones in the very front (among other sensors) that implies some sort of wiring running the length of the airplane. It is conceivable that you could - IF you know the location - cut into the wall of an airplane and through the wiring to the black boxes. IF you knew where to cut. And if you had suitable tools. It doesn’t matter if you cut power or cut sensors, the effect is the same - lack of information. But, to be honest, I don’t know how feasible that would actually be. It’s a very theorectical stab in the dark. I’d expect the BB system to have the same sort of redundancy as anything else in the airplane, and they’re built extremely tough so they will survive crashes. Once in awhile they malfuction or are destroyed, but the odds of that happening twice in one night are about as low - if not lower - than having two airliners crash three minutes apart by accident. So you’re looking at several highly improbable events occuring all together. And you actually don’t want the BB’s to run on batteries… they record in a continuous loop. If they ran on batteries they might keep running after a crash, and if it took more than a half an hour to find it (and it usually does) the darn thing would have recorded over the data you wanted to see. You want it to _stop_ recoriding after the crashing part is done. Having it dependant on the on-board power systems works pretty well, since they generally stop working at about the same time the last airplane part stops moving. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/53 "2004-08-27T10:19:38Z")
Anyhow - you have to remember that the Russians have a history of being less than forthcoming in disasters. (Radioactive cloud? What radioactive cloud? We don’t see any radioactivity over Chernobyl…). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/54 "2004-08-27T13:49:07Z")
[insert mini-rant] KIRO-7 keeps saying that investigators “checked the plane’s **manifesto** ”. What? “It is the intention of this aircraft to carry the passengers of the Great Country of Russia…”? Newsies: It’s _manifest_; not “manifesto”! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/55 "2004-08-27T14:12:11Z")
An Islamic group is reportedly claiming that they brought down the planes in revenge for the Russian killings of Chechen muslims. > [@](#): > > [Seattle Post-Intelligencer](http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Egypt%20Russia%20Claim) > The statement, which accused Russians of killing Muslims in Chechnya, was signed “the Islambouli Brigades.” A group with a similar name has claimed at least one previous attack, but the legitimacy of the group and the authenticity of such statements could not be verified. > > “We in the Islambouli Brigades announce that our holy warriors managed to hijack two Russian planes and were crowned with success though they faced problems at the beginning,” the statement said without elaborating on the problems. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/56 "2004-08-27T21:03:16Z")
> [@Philster](#): > > So far, not alot of coverage (far as I can tell). > > Possible Chechnyan terror in Russia doesn’t rank just yet in the USA. Huh? The OP cites CNN. Coverage has been handicapped by the lack of information coming out of Russia on this. To further the terrorist angle, NPR reported today that two Chechen women were on the flights (one each) and they were the only ones amongst the dead that were unclaimed by their relatives. The nature of the apparent suicide attack, striking two targets at the same time, seems to be taken right out of the Al-Qaeda playbook. AQ involvement in the planning stages is a possibility. FWIW, Chechen terrorists have killed a number of Russian civilians even before the _Nord Ost_ attack. A series of bombings of apartment buildings in 1999 widely attributed to Chechen terrorists killed about 300 people. Additionally, a bombing at a parade two years ago killed dozens of people including 17 kids. On a personal level, one of my best friends and her husband flew through that same part of Russia on Sibir air two days before this. She’s going back next month and bringing two little orphan boys back with her. Needless to say, I’ll be a little anxious until they get back. Of course, the same thing could happen here. ---
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/57 "2004-08-27T21:28:17Z")
> [@Captain Lance Murdoch](#): > > On a personal level, one of my best friends and her husband flew through that same part of Russia on Sibir air two days before this. She’s going back next month and bringing two little orphan boys back with her. Needless to say, I’ll be a little anxious until they get back. Of course, the same thing could happen here. My wife is visiting family and vacationing with them in Russia right now. She does not return until the 2nd week of September and this already has me worked up into one big ball of stress. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2004, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360/58 "2004-08-28T13:48:14Z")
According to CNN, traces of explosives have been found in both jet wreckages. The idea of both these jets going down at the same time accidentally is the same as two planes hitting the WTC towers accidentally within 20 minutes of each other. So much for clog spitting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-planes-disappear-from-radar-over-russia/261360.md?page=2)