The third photo in Machaca's series shows what looks like the left wing, pylon and crushed engine. Would that not indicate that the aircraft came down almost wings level and with little or no forward speed?
The third photo in Machaca's series shows what looks like the left wing, pylon and crushed engine. Would that not indicate that the aircraft came down almost wings level and with little or no forward speed?
indeed, however, the difficulty/danger with remote speculation and review of evidence is that without scale or immediate location plotting and alignment is the understanding of how each photograph relates to another.
Are you sure that the crash site on Wikimapia is correct? Wikimapia - Let's describe the whole world! It seems not to be in accordance with photos and videos. There are missing trees there. I supposed that the crash site was rather somewhere here:
First and second pictures in Machaca's series seem to be the cockpit, laying not on a field but among bushes/trees, relatively close to a blue building. The green-yellow part standing vertically (inside the cabin?) looks in another picture (not in this series) like it had been cut open by rescue workers to take the crew out.
Note the building with the blue roof off in the distance of the 8th pic posted by Machaca with the line of brush and small bushes in front. This would seem to be roughly due North of the crash site.
KP.RU reports the VS being recovered with a crane from nearby marsh/bog, and that 61707 was flying with 61708 at the time of the incident and summoned resue services to the site.
There appears to be enough evidence from the AVHerald website, specifically showing the location of the debris trail, horizontal stab, left wing, and internal cabin debris, to offer the following speculation:
The only information about the phase of flight is a reference to being "in route" at the time of the event, suggesting the cruise phase of flight. If so, then this might have been an explosive decompression event. I say this because cabin debris like the food cart 3km (near the head of the debris trail) from the main wreckage suggests the main cabin ruptured, which might also account for the horizontal stab being detached (also near the head of the debris trail). Perhaps a pressure bulkhead rupture? The left wing coming off roughly halfway between the first debris in the debris trail and the main crash sight, suggests further breakup (and not the precipitating event) due to aerodynamic loads after the first event. However with that said, the debris trail is small enough to suggest that the aircraft might not have been that high when the event occurred.
Another possibility is suggested by the fact that the detached left wing has significant burn marks, and it came down about 1km from the main wreckage. This suggests the possibility of a fuel or other chemical explosion as the precipitating event. Or maybe the aircraft just caught fire as it was breaking up.
Very hard to say at this point.
Last edited by Flight Safety; 8th Mar 2011 at 18:30.
New info just published. From the FDR there is evidence that speed sensor (?) malfunction resulted in untrained PF, thinking that speed too low, added speed when descending 9000 to 5000 m. This resulted in engine catched fire (? engine surging) and plane begin to break apart in the air.
I am afraid, that final position, referenced on Avherald, is also not accurate N 50.473 E 38.743 - Mapy Google Houses nerby looks completely diferent then that on photos.
Scenario - bad IAS measurement -> PIC accelerate to transonic range -> transonic overstressed engine blades and parts of planes - it gives a sense...
From the very first news there was rumour that in this flight testing of "de-icing malfunction" will be conducted. And that constructors claimed that icing will be no problem for this plane.
