PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Jet goes down on its way to Medellin, Colombia
Old 4th Dec 2016, 10:56
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A0283
 
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Update 2 - impact and break-up sequence based on publicly available photo and video material - status morning December 3rd.

The available material is limited and the quality if the photos is quite low. Video material is even more limited and of very low quality.

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Identification

In the hollow. Identified components (high probability) are the almost complete right wing plus engine number3 (completely stripped of the cowling). A significant part of the left wing. The left hand aft pax door with 5 1/2 window in front of it. One other pax door. One engine nacelle.

On the high ridge. One elevator half. The tail-mounted-speedbrake plus part of the vertical tail.

At this moment in time no trace of the other 3 engines. No trace of the cockpit section. No trace of the forward fuselage section. No trace of avionics 'boxes'. Limited wiring.

Which means 3 of the 4 corners can be identified.

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At this stage a very very premature guesstimate of a more probable impact and break-up sequence could be:

a. plane in a slightly pitch up attitude, pointing approximately in the direction of the VOR, at a relatively low forward speed,
b. hits the high ridge, which breaks off the tail section behind the aft pax door, and leaves the tail and elevator with the tailspeedbrake on top of the high ridge,
c. the front of the plane pitches forward and contacts trees and ground, which breaks off the cockpit section and fuselage section in front of the wing, the cockpit and front section (and maybe one or more engines) then sliding down the high ridge,
d. the center section plus wing plus aft section is projected forward and impacts the hill opposite (!??),
e. this impact breaks off the wing with part of the associated fuselage structure, wing plus flips over forward, the aft fuselage section continues the movement forward and slides over the wing and comes to a halt,

There are other possible sequences but with the material that i have this would be the most probable.

The question with this scenario is, how did anyone survive? At least two different answers might be applicable.
The first is - pure luck - there are a number of possible explanations that improve chances.
The second is - based on a maximum energy dissipation and lowest G's scenario - people sitting (probably on the left hand side) in the fuselage section aft of the wing and before the aft doorframe. Cabin crew having taken a passenger seat aft or in aft facing folding crew seat inclusive.

Finding photo's of the cockpit section would be priority1 if you would want to reduce the number of possible scenario's.
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