Dear All,
So a week on and no comprehensive rebutal of the scenario I postulated.
Remember, I do not say that this definitely happened, but to find gross negligence you must be able to say that this definitely did not happen.
Walter raised some fair points which I will address:
if you look at the tracks, they were only closing with the shoreline at about 20 deg – only a slight turn left would have taken them up the coast – and presumably, being over the level sea, a lot less stressful control inputs were going on compared to when they were low flying over the 10 miles or so of Antrim hills that they had crossed earlier in the flight – such a coincidence that they should fail just there, surely?
I envisaged a progressive failure with the slight left turn merely being the last straw that caused loss of control.
It is also highly improbable that the engines would have been found closely matched and with no record of emergency power demands if they had been struggling with a control problem.
I have been in a pitching APC, where even with small pitches of 0.5-1 metre it was impossible to use the controls, so I do not find it that difficult to believe in a violently pitching aircraft, as postulated, it is impossible to manipulate controls effectively.
Regarding undemanded power surges – I have made the point before that had this occurred the obvious immediate response would surely have been to pull up so keeping the RPM within limits – this would have been to their advantage, a miracle if it had happened. Anyway, there are 3 things which I can think of which argue against any undemanded run-up: no history in the DECU of such; distance/time calculations by Boeing indicate that they had started to slow down (in airspeed) over the course of the leg from waypoint change to impact; the engines were found to have been at matched power (within limits normally requiring power trim by either the pilots or the FADEC and normally when in a steady state – I suggest such as level cruise, cruise climb, approach, etc).
In the scenario I postulated I did not mention any engine run ups. The consequence of the postulated decu failure was misleading information.
Not forgetting that unless they had a reason for going there, they were already imprudently close in, in the prevailing conditions, by
Could you explain this more.
EG