Time someone mentioned a few things that appear to have been lost in the verbal fog
From today's RTE news coverage, there are several factors that I suspect will be significant to the eventual report outcome.
When the remains of the aircraft were being lifted for removal, a number of relevant things became clearer.
There is no apparent damage to the landing gear, the mains are pretty much where they should be, and there is no apparent tyre damage, or contamination with mud or grass.
There is significant displacement of the nose gear towards the starboard side, but I get the impression that this has been caused by significant structural distortion of the fusleage remains, the nose gear leg does not appear to be bent, and again, there is no evidence of contamination on the tyres.
Having said that, given that there was a post crash fire, it's possible that the water and foam used to extinguish the blaze may have washed any contamination off.
In terms of the possible cause of the inversion, it was very clear from pictures on the news report that the outboard starboard wing section has detached from the aircraft a few feet from the engine. It is not clear from the pictures if that section was torn off by impact damage, or if it failed for some other reason. It (for me) certainly explains why the aircraft became inverted.
The port engine is displaced from the thrust line in an upward direction, which gives an indication of the speed of the rotation.The damage to the blades that is visible in the picture posted above suggests that they were turning at a significant speed on impact, and that they were close to the feather position when ground contact was made, by virtue of the shape of the deformation.
There have been no suggestions of a reason for this. It was not possible to see any details of the propellor on the starboard engine.
No information has yet been given of the fuel uplift prior to this flight. The media in Ireland have reported that the expected alternate of Shannon also had poor conditions at the time of arrival at Cork, but no details have been given, and no aviation sources have confirmed this.
This evening's News report (Link below) added information that the aircraft had made ground contact on the runway, but the AAIB were at pains to make it clear that while they have a "reasonable understanding" of the sequence of events, they are not prepared to comment further until they have the data from the FDR.
No mention has been made of the experience levels of the crew, but it has been stated that the First Officer had only been working with "Manx2" for 2 weeks.
There is also a comment that has not been qualified that the aircraft has only just returned from a maintenance inspection in Spain, The implication was that the inspection was a major inspection.
The video reports that gives some of these views can at present be found at
Cork Airport to resume full service tomorrow - RTÉ News
I do not know how long this link will remain valid, or know if it can be accessed from all locations.
Another piece of related news is that the Deputy First Minister of the North, Martin McGuinness, had been booked to travel on the flight, but cancelled his trip shortly before departure.
All in all, some of the factors revealed in these snippets appears contradictory. If the port engine had for some reason failed, that would be more likely to produce a wing low scenario on the port side, but the aircraft has rolled starboard.
Whatever the final report conclusions are, this has been a sad event that has caused much pain to many people. There are still 4 people in Cork Hospital with serious injuries, although they are said to be "stable".