Machaca,
thanks for all the info.
There are a lot of things wrong with the images used to illustrate the supposed track. For example, they look as though they come from some sort of official publication, but the runway is oriented at about 40° to "upright" and the inbound course at about 60°. Whereas the runway is designated 05, which means it is oriented somewhere nearer 50° magnetic and the inbound course is 043° magnetic. The magnetic variance is 3.2°E, so the difference between magnetic and true does not account for this discrepancy.
Interestingly, the outbound course of the aircraft is shown on these images as more or less aligned with the Rwy. Which it wasn't, if the track data are to be believed.
If he wasn't on radar, I wonder how someone managed to reconstruct the track? And if he was on radar, how come nobody said anything to him as he proceeded outbound 30° off track into mountainous country? And if this is from the FDR, I guess all that "unusable" data somehow became usable.
The track doesn't cohere with md80Forum's observation that he reported overhead VOR at 23.18Z and inbound at 23.36Z (post of
[email protected]), according to MaxBlow's transcription of the Hurriyet report on 30.11@10:54PPRuNe. (Emphasised also by clearedtocross on 07.12q12:39PPRuNe. Note: I give PPRuNe time, because, despite claims, PPRuNe does not time posts at UTC. Neither does it maintain a constant offset to UTC: PPRuNe posting times changed by an hour when European daylight savings ended.) It would mean he took 18 minutes to traverse what looks to be about 24 nm, which does not compute given there was only a light wind.
Lomapaseo asked what critical data one expected to get answered only from the black box. I would have thought that the box's recorded heading, altitude and airspeed would be crucial info, whether it corresponds to real heading and altitude or not (nav equipment failure, for example, as suggested by clearedtocross on
[email protected]). Or is there some reason to expect these not to have been recorded?
Speaking of the boxes, MaxBlow was reporting on the day of the crash that they were said to have been recovered. I wonder why it took almost two weeks to figure out if the data were usable? Flightglobal (David Kaminski-Morrow) was reporting on 05.12 that the German BFU was expected to analyse the data (link from cwatters
[email protected]); it has still taken a week since then.
hetfield and Cyclone733 asked about radar and have not been answered. I don't know for sure yet. Given that the airport has virtually no facilities (no fuel, for example, and no jet starting unit) I would be surprised if it had radar. I doubt that en-route radar would be much help at approach elevations some 1000 ft above terrain: the procedure turn on the approach is at 7000 ft and there is 6000+ ft terrain some 5 nm left of the approach path and also at about double that distance right.
I don't see what relevance the list of nav problems apparently associated with decommissioning of ONS might have to this crash yet (listed by MachacA just now). This was a simple VOR-DME procedure, and they were supposed to have been following a VOR radial outbound at 223°. It is hard to see how one could be 30° off that unless one completely misread the chart (a mistake which has little to do with what kit is on board).
During the discussion about CFIT versus stall-in, there were various "if" scenarios involving hitting with one wing first, on rising terrain, and so on. Do we now agree from the pictures that the aircraft hit flat on the roughly flat top of a hill; that there appear to be gear traces in the impact point; and that the impact trace is unusually short for incidence parameters of (say) 140 kt at 3 degrees-ish?
I also noticed that a lot of posts have disappeared, expecially all those by BoeingMEL. I wonder if that is embarrassment or censure?
PBL