Birds/Undercarriage
Re birds, I've seen a great deal of the TV coverage on Sky and BBC today and concentrated on the pics rather than the supposedly informed verbal speculation.
There doesn't look to be any blood evidence of birdstrikes on the fuselage from close up stills BUT during some of the live coverage and the filmed loops shown I noticed two swans flying across the field between the camera position and the aircraft, a further flock of 4 or 5 swans (could have been geese) at greater distance beyond or over the motorway (difficult to tell due to camera effect) and some - and probably insignificant - small bird activity.
The presence of large birds in the area of the accident may be of no significance but we have seen twice in recent months what birds can do to airframes.
The question of the position of the undercarriage has been answered by a clip shown on Sky this afternoon which showed a main undercarriage wheel pair standing in the field to the right hand side of the aircraft as seen from the nose, some distance behind the wreckage. This would be the left hand main gear and, as it was standing upright and the main gear on a 737 retracts sideways through 90 degrees, it would seem to indicate the gear was down and was ripped off on contact with the soft clay.
Edited for clarity 20:44
Last edited by philbky; 25th February 2009 at 19:44.