Spanish media speculates with the investigation concentrating in just about anything. Let's assume the plane stalled soon after leaving the ground, as the video tape and witnesses account seem to indicate.
Depending on what press you read/watch, even as today, still each claims the investigation is concentrating on one of different scenarios (pick your choice):
-Sudden engine failure. But there is no hard evidence on noises, fires, recovery procedures failing (full thrust on the other engine, etc), reliable witnesses, etc, prior to the airplane hitting the ground. Of course, it could've still happened and could be a likely cause, but shouldn't have been enough of a single cause to stall so early on and pilots not be able to recover. Also, doesn't quite fit the picture of the reportly somewhat long taxiing, etc.
-Others, on engine "lacking thrust". But surely crew felt it all seemed good enough to reach V1 and trusted it was enough to become airborne. Compressor(s) may have stalled etc, but likelihood of both engines failing to produce V2m after V1 w/o pilots being to do anything about it and no "loud" (i.e. explosion, etc) signs while still deciding to try to become airborne ...
-Others yet, on assymetrical reverser deployment. But the airplane showed no signs of difficult yaw/roll while on-ground, only shortly after it became airborne at enough height to roll both, to the left and to the right according to witnesses/survivors (pilot could probably over-recover, but still kind of unlikely) before the wing hitting the ground. Reverser seemed fully and properly deployed in at least one engine, but nobody has authoratively stated (some have, but never mentioned sources) that the second reverser was or was not deployed.
Still, having one or both reversers getting accidentally fully deployed, apparently after V1 but before V2, is a long strech. But it could've happened, of course.
Nonetheless, chances are that, once it became clear they were gonna crash, pilots probably tried to deploy them, but perhaps damage to the plane at that point or other factors (such as pilots being already injured from the first/second/third "fall" while bouncing around up to 6 times during about 500m before final explosion) made fully deploying succesfully only one of the reversers possible.
-Very few media is emphasising flaps/slats mistake or malfunction or speed/thrust gross miscalculations, coupled with alarms performance malfunction (i.e. plane thinking it was in air mode due to other sensors malfunction) or alarms de-activation (from earlier aborted T/O and/or repairs).
The likehood of this, I'll leave to each one of you to decide. How this could've happened w/o the pilots noticing on time, or the alarms failing to warn on time, or the pilots being unable to recover from stall on time, I'll also leave to each one of you to decide.
Let's remember this was likely a plane loaded on the heavy side, on lowish-density air and that it possibly did take some extra (grossly estimated) 500m than usual to become airborne and that it reportly hardly left ground-effect area with two (let's assume properly working) engines. There is some vague reporting on nearby witnesses thinking the "angle" of attack during roll was also "unusual" (i.e. either too steep or too shallow).
Many other scenarios are, of course, possible (sudden cargo imbalance, etc) or could've helped with the accident, but there is little hard evidence on just about anything other than the plane rolled and fell shortly after a T/O maneuver that looked to several witnesses (on video or survivors or external witnesses) like didn't have enough "power" to be completed successfully with no other apparent (visible or audible from the outside or the PAX inside) warnings.
Last edited by justme69; 26th Aug 2008 at 15:06.