To Post or Not to Post
Mr. Ali Germano is quoted as saying the “aircraft plunged suddenly into the ocean“.
In the photographs, the seats in the crew area were folded with the seatbelts hanging down, which "suggests that the crew was moving about the passenger cabin. If there had been an alert or a warning about a pending risk, the crew would have been seated," he said.”
So . . . Mr. Germano (who has apparently written a book about air crashes) says the fact that the recovered crew seats were apparently unoccupied means there was no warning of an impending risk, i.e. if there was turbulence, or an emergent situation, they would have been in their seats.
Before I decided to post I took some deep breaths; then had a glass of pinot grigio; then waited awhile.
Mr. Germano’s statement, and his logic, are perfect examples of an important point some have been trying to make on this thread -– and on earlier threads related to other accidents. Investigators (be they aircraft accident investigators, homicide cops, pathologists, insurance investigators, or whatever) look at evidence and say “what is this and what does it tell me?”
In this case, if and when it is confirmed, after extensive examination, that the seats were unoccupied at the time of that structure’s failure, then an investigator will note that those seats were unoccupied. He/she will NOT then make any another conclusion as to why the seats were unoccupied (which is what Mr. Germano and others have done). What he will do is ask himself, “What else (if anything) does this tell me?”
In this example it certainly does not tell him that there was “no warning” or “impending risk”. If one did a brainstorming exercise as to the reasons that cc seats might not be occupied, one would of course come up with some benign reasons (as Mr. Germano is thinking). Those could be things like, “beverage or meal service”, “routine duties”, “chatting with pax in the galley”, “resting in crew rest area”, and the like. But, one would also come up with reasons such as, “attending to injured pax”, “answering many button calls from pax for sick bags”, or even “assisting pax with oxygen masks”.
In essence, all we know at this point (re those particular seats) is: the pix appear to show the seats in the stowed position and the seatbelts hanging loose. That, in the eyes and mind of an investigator, does not lead to statements about “plunging suddenly into the ocean”.