Originally Posted by
EDLB
Complete rubbish.
Did you ever cross mountains in a piston engine? The Ju52 will go up to 18000 feet outperforming a typical C172 and any Homo sapiens not on oxygen. 12.000 feet density altitude is nothing special. You can go to 14.000 feet without oxygen for half an hour. You will feel a bit tired and that improves with every 500 feet you go down.
Here two experienced captains where faced with a problem they could not solve and that was definitely not a density altitude problem. It might be one additional hole in the cheese but not the definite one for the outcome.
From what I see on the terrain, they could have maid it to an emergency landing even without any power. So there is more to the story.
Thank you for the flowers, dear EDLB. Yes, I did cross the mountains many time on a piston engine. Thats why I consider myself as qualified to talk "rubbish". What's really rubbish is the ceiling cited in Wikipedia, at least for the JU-52 operated nowadays.
Let's see what the accident investigation has to say about this.