Originally Posted by takata
What to do now?
1. aviate: avoiding stall?
2. navigate: where we go?
.. Cap Verde: ahead but too far
.. Brazil (Fernando Noronha) turn needed without colliding an active cell
3. communicate: Mayday? we'll see later, hands full now
and...
Originally Posted by OleOle
I see the logic in your conclusion, but how long would it take to glide down from FL350 over a distance of ~100 nm ? (15-20 min?). I think the closer they would get to the surface the higher their priority to communicate would become. Taking into acount that in this scenario they would have had sufficent time (and a crew of three) one would expect distress calls to be made on 121.5 and to be picked up by nearby a/c.
Before completely ruling out the possibility that the aircraft may have glided or attempted a controlled descent/diversion and ultimately compromised ditching, is it worth considering again that the report mentions the swapped RMP1 at Rio?
I dont mean to introduce any extra area of unecessary speculation, but can we rule out
takata's scenario purely on the basis of assumed certainty that comms were
fully operational on the A/C? - whether post upset or for that matter during the whole flight?
Is it possible that all the radio calls leading up to the incident were made using RMP2 up until the initial point of the scenario developing; and that thereafter the person operating RMP1 subsequently took charge of putting some emergency calls in, possibly on several occasions? With a rapidly developing situation and the knowledge that they were in the midlde-of-VHF-nowhere... can we rule out the possibiility that even in a controlled emergency descent, the crew may have overlooked a function check / repeat calls on RMP2, feeling that calls had been made as per procedure?