Indonesian B737 runway overrun/crash

[theamrad]

PK’, thanks for the details on JOG approaches. I think your efforts at giving us information as accurately as possible may, unfortunately, be lost on some. Despite the compelling information so far indicating a probable course of events (and probably discounting others), some are still making suggestions in a surprisingly confident manner, when based on the most wild and tenuous of witness reports – akin to the remarks of the housewife that you mentioned. The media have continued in a similar vein: “jets of fire”, “series of explosions”, “’jumping the road’”, c**p, rubbish, waffle etc. As in common with many other disasters, yesterday’s event were big enough, dramatic enough and TRAGIC enough NOT to warrant the usual religious use of inaccuracy, over-emphasis, and over-exaggeration demonstrated by much of the press. Reminds me of: http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=265200…………

As for the report that the captain indicates encountering a downdraft, and resultant high sinkrate: PK – you indicated winds of around 20kts at the time – I presume, in the absence of a detailed weather report for the accident time, that it was Easterly. It makes me wonder; if we give him the benefit of doubt, with an Easterly airflow over the mountains/high terrain to the East, it seems to me that the possibility (even probability) for terrain induced turbulence is quite high. Maybe even to the point of rotor/vortex type structures being generated. I’m taking a stab in the dark here, but wonder what others might think. To date, I have a not too large experience base on Indonesian (spec. Yogya!) local weather/climate – I’ve noticed reports of deaths in recent days/weeks as a result of high winds etc, (Jakarta and Probolinggo) which make me wonder if the area around Yogya can experience the odd unusual ‘perturbation’?? After all, although a lot of the time we can consider ourselves smug in our knowledge of weather and aircraft performance – it’s not beyond the bounds of possibilities for something to jump up out of the blue occasionally and bite in the *ss!


While I concede that landing with flaps appearing to be deployed well above 30 would be a symptom of possible asymmetry, I personally think it can be discounted for the following reason: The captain is reported to have said they encountered a “minor” problem which was rectified before (attempted!) landing. If this report is accurate, would he have described flap asymmetry and possible drive stop at a lower setting as a “minor” problem, or that it had been rectified if (he felt) forced to land in a less than optimum configuration for runway length because of it?

Now I must resist the temptation for further speculation - like others have quite correctly said, the FDR readout should answer a lot of questions.