Spanair accident at Madrid

[justme69]

It seems at some point politicians were advised by two pilots "experts" who were allowed to watch the tape. A reporter writes about one of them saying: "It had to be a chain of errors ... a miriad of factors such as wind, bad cargo distribution or some external element such a large bird or a bad reaction from the pilots"

This expert is very puzzled that the plane (in the words of the reporter) "fell to the right when it would've been normal to fall to the left if the left engine was damaged" (as originally rumoured ... I don't know who came out with that rumor to begin with ...)

Both experts agree that it was very unlikely that the earlier fault that prompted the return to gate had anything significant to do with the direct cause of the accident.

But one of the two experts (I'm quoting the reporter now) "insisted that the accident could have originated due to an excess of weight in the plane and cited that as the most likely cause".

Ground airport personel at Spanair Barajas think that it's unlikely the airplane was grossly overloaded, but it was likely indeed either full, close to full or slightly over full capacity.

Once more, it's not fully clear how the airplane "fell" shortly after wheels left the ground. Seems it rolled a bit and fell, with one wing briefly touching the ground. Obviously at over max landing weight it could've sustained some damage from the "fall" and possibly injure pilots as well and start fires, etc.

My take on things: The plane was fully loaded, perhaps a bit over specs (but not necessarily). Some configuration was off-mark (either flaps or, more likely, slats). Enviromental conditions were not too good for sustenability (low air density, little but significant tail wind). Vr calculation was probably a bit short. Pilots unadvertenly used up a bit more runaway than usual without realizing something was off and then tried to take off a bit abruptly (your usual "if you want to go up, pull the wheel towards you"). For reasons unkown the plane stalled soon after ground effect was over w/o the pilots taking inmediate correction measures (perhaps they didn't have time as it rolled a bit much during stall for unknown reasons) or the engines failing to produce enough thrust and the plane hit the ground bouncing around for a while (perhaps accelerating after additional thrust was demanded a bit too late trying to complete take-off) sustaining damage (wing touching ground, landing gear over max. landing weight) or pilot injuries that led to lack of control, perhaps a decission to try to brake, and made it ultimately deviate to the right of the landing strip (wing hitting the ground damage could've produced assymetrical aileron configuration) and onto adjacent terrain where it finally crashed at high speed.

The plane rolling while airbone a bit too much could also be due to an assymetrical thrust situation (single engine failure or assymetrical reverser deployment, i.e.) rather than a random product of the stall in low density air or pilot action.

All of that, pure and baseless speculation of what could've happenned, but it's the mental picture I came out with while reading all the news about it here, in Spain. No idea how that could've happened, but it is what we've ambiguously been told by the media that happened so far.