I have not contributed to this thread given the lack of facts. I am increasingly irritated by the assumption being made by some posters that a professional crew somehow flew the aeroplane in a not-sensible environment, 'or had the weather radar brilliance turned down!' Can people just shut up from making daft assertions until more facts are known? And PLEASE stop whinging for the flight recorder! How many times do people have to call for it? It will eventually be located- if it humanly can be, it will be retrieved. There is no point people banging on about it. We all know when it is retrieved, we will know more- we don't need to be told by one more poster! There is no point people accusing the crew of anything at this stage- we just don't know what happened. There is no point analysing made-up fiction to the nth degree at this stage, or peoples' pet theories.
This is meant to be a Professional Forum with sensible contributions. It looks whenever there is a big incident like an extension of airliners.net! What a cocophany of stupidity these threads become! There is no reason this thread should be more than 5 pages at this stage. The one positive thing is we seem to have gotten over having to give mawkish condolences every post.