That’s a sickening video. I’m no commercial pilot, but if the “dive” video is authentic, that was a terrifying last few seconds for the poor souls on board.
No visible smoke I could see; some massive mechanical failure as a bomb would cause breakup at altitude? Or a suicide dive like the Egypt Air flight years back?
We might not ever know…
flight radar data indicates it went from 29,000 feet to ~8,000 feet in about 1 minute, briefly started gaining altitude, and then nose dived again.
read that this 737-800 was only seven years old, so catastrophic breakup due to airframe fatigue is probably an unlikely cause.
Without knowing anything about the cause of this accident, about 85% of all aircraft accidents involve pilot error.
The aircraft is the video is headed down like a lawn dart. I can't tell whether it is just the fuselage or whether the wings and tail are still attached?
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
I’m no accident investigation wizard, but I do turn jet fuel into noise for a living.
In the video from what I can and can’t see the jet don’t appear to be “apart” in the fall. No signs of trailing debris, smoke or fuel vapors. And the descent angle is pretty extreme for something in an uncontrolled descent. If catastrophic airframe failure was the cause the plane would most likely be tumbling with a trail of debris, smoke and/or fuel vapors behind it.
Honestly my first thought was the Egypt Air flight.
30,000 FPM rate of descent is incredible. The rapid decrease in VS towards the end with an indicated rate of + 10,000 FPM before the final plunge back to -30,000 FPM looks a lot like the plunge Egypt Air took as the two pilots fought each other. One trying to crash the other trying to save the plane.
I was thinking the same. The cabin must have been hellish.Originally Posted by 1Rangemaster
I am way out of my lane here, but I do recall decades ago the triple jet crash in France (L1011?DC10?) that was the result of explosive decompression (faulty hatch and/or not secured) resulting in loss of controls. Not sure why I remember this, but apparently towards the end of the dive, some aerodynamic force actually flattened out the dive.
But again-and I am by no means an expert-the dive is just a nose over from 30,000-ugly.
I hope the Chinese are forthcoming, but maybe not. Also, that kind of impact may have destroyed even the “black boxes”…
Edit to add: wouldn’t that descent rate screw up the controls and/or damage them at some point where they couldn’t respond? Or break trying to pull out?
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