Originally Posted by
B2N2
That’s a lot of people and potentially a lot of luggage.
What appears to be the pickup flight with presumably the same load two days before was flown at FL300 according to FlightAware and the return flight at FL370 then 390 and a brief climb when in the vicinity of a late afternoon thunderstorm.
High altitude upset of an airplane that may or may not have been outside of its envelope to begin with.
Good info about the previous flights. I looked at the last flight track and noted they had just reached FL430 and then started descending. I would think that even at light weights it would be a struggle to be at FL430 in that airplane. The least amount of turbulence might cause an upset.
Not sure how close they were to the weather, but it looked like they had none to the south.
On the other hand, they would have had a lot of altitude to recover.