Thx xolodenko and others for your comments.
Very few news these past days. An article describes the last minute inside the plane as recalled by the survivors and the moments right after the accident. Not much new to say on the probable causes, but could help someone studying the safety aspects.
-Everyone onboard was aware the plane was going to crash (i.e. panic screams, someone shouted to hunch down, someone screamed the wing was going to hit the ground). No PA, though.
-At least one survivor assumed a safety possition, head between his legs and he decided to firmly hold on to the head rest of the seat in front of him.
-Whole raws of passengers' seats detached and flew around inside the cabin, as did hand luggage, with each hit on the ground.
-One survivor hit his head on the ceiling.
-At least 3 injured owe their lifes to the extremely fast rescue effords (2 were rescued by firefighters right before they drown on the water, as they couldn't talk to ask for help as the water was at chin-level, were trapped and couldn't undo their safety belts). First pair of firefighters reached the scene in less than 4 minutes.
Sidenote: I was reading somewhere how at the "higher" airport management level there was some hesitation or small delay (say 1 minute) to start emergency protocol as the very first voices of alert may have not been "believed". May I suggest that those in charge do never hesitate upon declaring full emergencies and then looking like idiots for being a false alarm rather than the other way around. Always better safe than sorry, and speed is critical in increasing the chances of survivors. Even after seeing the smoke, many workers etc thought it was some training session going on, etc.
-The fire, as sadly expected, was a direct reason to raise the number of deceased that initially survived the impact itself. The water fully covered at least a few victims also, but most or perhaps all under the water were thought to have already passed away before that.
-Only one adult and two children survivors were really in a possition to walk on their own.
-Each time an injured minor was found, the rescue worker had to stop going back and continue effords since they couldn't be left alone. Eventually, two children were left by a firetruck at the care of the survivor women with minor injuries (she was fully mobile) while they resumed the rescue and fire extingusing. She was the one that helped them earlier on, taking one to the bank of the creek (water was shallow enough to walk above it) and pulling another who she left with her father, another survivor.
Out of the 11 survivors still receiving medical care, only 6 remain with medical issues of relevance, one of those still in serious condition, but all doing better. The other 7 (18 total) are already recovering at home or fully recovered by now.
And the last piece of news is that in some two days it is expected that the judge makes public to the families of victims that have requested it the whole (over 1000 pages) of the judiciary investigation proceedings so far, which probably will have more details about the accident and likely will leak to the press.
The Civil Aviation Accident Commission, of course, is not giving out the tiniest detail about the accident until their required factual report "suppossely" one month after the accident (they have a backlog of accidents for which they haven't even published that on time, against their own regulations). If it was up to them, they wouldn't publish anything at all for 3 years, I'm sure.
Last edited by justme69; 12th Sep 2008 at 11:12.