Trying to summarize
A majority impression (but certainly not the only scenario) seems to be a baseline scenario consisting of:
- the plane almost pancaked the water (final situation being either in stall, or spin, or upset recovery), but a bit wing left, and a bit nose up,
-- nose up, leading to the breaking away of the tail, and of heavy parts breaking away from their mountings and expelled from it, including the FDR and CVR,
-- left wing based on missing one wing, and fuselage apparently torn open on one side (I add this last one - have not read it before - but looks a bit like that on the UW photo), and would explain a number of seatrows being torn loose and floating away,
-- nose up leads to break away of the radome, which starts float of 500+ km, carried by an on average 0.65 knots estimated surface current,
-- tail and aft section segment break off, float initially, float over the fuselage location with the prevailing NW to SE current, get waterlogged, incrementally sinks to the bottom a few hundred meters further,
What this does not explain is:
- why are we still missing the cockpit section?
-- one poster says he has already seen it on the UW pictures,
-- the NLG is quite big and has a strong mount, miss that too,
- why are we still missing at least one engine
-- buried in mud or covered by fuselage and wing perhaps,
- why are we still missing the THS?
-- large piece with 12.45 m span,
-- but flat, and lying flat (otherwise SS-sonar might have spotted it) so maybe buried in mud??
-- maybe detached in whole or part at lower altitude?, ref situation, ref damage of THS on China Airines plane,
-- did it float ...?
-- at this stage THS is the part that I am most interested in, the cockpit being next ... both representatives of the four corners by the way. We are in fact still missing three corners!
- why are we still missing the APU ?
-- buried in mud perhaps, or its smaller size,
-- what has the search/sonar prio of the SAR been till now?
Would you agree that this is the majority view, not necessarily your own view, of the baseline scenario. If you disagree with it, what is the piece of evidence (based on what is found and published till now) that makes you disagree.
Last edited by A0283; 24th Jan 2015 at 14:01.
Reason: Add seatrows.