Originally Posted by
Rananim
The Flight Radar data fits another MCAS event and not much else.
I will comment on your "not much else" line.
(1) This was mentioned
some pages back, but ... given the altitude, "high hot heavy," and location, another possibility is a bunch of birds being eaten by two engines.
Crew is playing catch up the whole way down, high task saturation, very little altitude to work with. (And I think it's rising terrain? Not familiar with the area).
That's a guess, since there's not a lot of supporting information. The FDR would be able to identify that kind of thing early in the analysis.
(2) Here's another one that is
far less likely, but that also fits: bad fuel. (Didn't they just fill up after unloading from the previous flight?)
Lose one, lose two, and now you have to do your best-ever engine out drill at high gross weight and (I think?) rising terrain. (If that part is wrong, rising terrain, map study failure on my part).
Why I think it wasn't that second one.
The reported radio call about "return to field" ... but that could be for a variety of things going wrong.
More detail hopefully soon.
I don't make this post to belittle your analysis, because I think that in the main you are thinking the problem through.
I am jumping on the band wagon with lomapaseo: we might be dealing in a little bit of confirmation bias in the early reaction to this tragic loss of life.