Originally Posted by
booke23
I made the above statement 2 years ago at the beginning of this thread. The CAB must have measured the cut cables to make the 70 degree statement in the report and they certainly noted the witness marks on the AI.
There are two reasonable ways the CAB might have come to make that statement. They may have decided the plane was rolling into a vertical bank, and therefore it would have been at about 70 degrees when it hit the power lines. They may have measured the power line breaks.
Compare that to the Chicago Trib image from the next day, which shows the vertical bank. They had decided on the vertical bank on the day of the crash, too soon for any power line measurements.
If we're guessing what they knew and what they measured, consider the CAB report on page 134. They measured the HEIGHT of the power line breaks. If they had measured the ANGLE - the relative distance along the strands at the different heights - that was the place to show it. But it's not there.
To say they measured the angle at the power lines is conjecture. Opposing that view is the fact that the descent was measured at 5 degrees, and if the plane was at 70 degrees or more it would have been in free-fall.