Originally Posted by
dsc810
The French/German/USA will be desperate for it to be a bomb so it can be blamed on 'terrorism' (that's freedom-fighters if you are on the other side) and that the aircraft is 100% OK.
To be honest, I've never really understood why people tend to make this assumption. Airliner manufacturers are insured up the wazoo for circumstances like this one, and I suspect that if the problem was with the aircraft, both Airbus and Boeing (in the event it's one of theirs) would rather know of a problem so they can fix it rather than pretend one doesn't exist. This hasn't always been the case of course, but every time an airframer has tried to sweep things under the carpet it has tended to blow up in their face - to the extent that it would have been less damaging just to find and fix the problem.
Originally Posted by
videoguy
It is possible on Airbus aircraft error of uncommanded thrust reverser deployment as happen on Boeing 767 flight NG004, 26 May 1991 (Lauda Air)?
Boeing had to redesign the reverser latching mechanism as a consequence of that accident, and I'm pretty certain that Airbus would have looked at theirs and fixed it where it needed to be.
Originally Posted by
PersonFromPorlock
Just a general observation that the ground investigation effort seems a little less than professional: the investigators have driven rather casually all over the debris field - note the wheel tracks across that long cable attached to the tail section, for instance - and when I see that, I wonder what other poor handling the wreckage has undergone that we haven't seen.
As long as the original positions were noted before that happened, I don't see that to be much of a problem. In accident scenarios with survivors, the rescue services will disturb the airframe wreckage as much as they need to in order to pull people out - and that's never caused a significant issue...
Originally Posted by
Ian W
While everyone is keen on the 'bomb theory' - remember that security services will immediately think was it a bomb - as that is what they do. Aircraft engineers will think break up and "where is the HS?" as even if the tail breaks off the HS and VS normally stay remarkably intact.
Sure, but as I alluded to earlier there has been a group of international accident investigators on scene for the best part of a week now - if it were simply a matter of security services exercising caution, then we'd have been hearing about the probability of a bomb being involved within hours of the crash. To my mind, enough time has certainly passed for the metallurgical specialists among the investigators to have found something troubling.