Not if they are flying the plane properly like professionals should.
You know, 1 pilot flying, 1 pilot monitoring. !!

To save time, with currently no technical information available, why dont we ALL just make a list of everything everybody and his dog thinks could have happened and then we can have a sweepstake with £100 an entry, and whoever is the closest gets the kudos and we send the pot to the families of the passengers. !!!

Just one question, does the Stick Shaker and Stick Pusher take into account the angle of bank, which increases the stall speed exponentially, or does it still use pitot airspeed as the measurement.
From the original video, I did notice the tail went down ( = nose went up.) about 2 seconds before the plane started to bank.

Neil Hansford, an aviation consultant from Strategic Aviation Solutions, said the black box was typically the first point of call when seeking information about plane crashes that occurred in remote areas. .....

.................

"I think this one is going to get down to what's called a stall," Mr Hansford said.

"[The pilot had] been coming in too slow.

"As soon as you bank to the left, then obviously you lose all the wind lift and it goes down like a stone.

"Once you get into a stall at low altitude and low speed, there's generally only one consequence."

He said the aircraft would have given the pilot stall warnings, and he believed the crash was due to human error.

"When you're at low speed, you don't start making heavily banked turns," he said.

"I think [the pilot's] level of competence had been reached."

Here's an aviation 'expert' quoted on ABC News in Australia. Since we have no evidence of anything other than the aircraft stalled on approach, I think it says more about the competence of Mr hansford to comment on this incident than the competence of the pilot(s).

The cabin video is fake.

I flew in there a few weeks ago on a Yeti ATR 72 - they take a pretty tight turn from the north onto the old runway, but I'd imagine they're pretty used to it given how the old runway is positioned in the valley vs the approach from Kathmandu direction - it's the typical approach into Pokhara from Kathmandu.

I commented to my wife how crazy the approach was landing on that old runway - low, tight turn, and dropped straight down onto the runway in a pretty short time.

Looking at the video from that poor mans phone, it looks to be a very similar route they took in yesterday, just at a slightly higher altitude as they weren't landing on the old runway. By the time they get down to the stadium, they would be about to land within seconds onto the old runway. In the vid they were clearly a few hundred feet up and were likely lining up for their next turn.

There appears to be theory floating around about them approaching the new runway from the wrong side against instruction / guidance from ATC.
The new runway would enable them to fly straight in without any significant turns at all coming straight in from Kathmandu ( unless there was a compelling reason to go around and do a wide 180 to approach from the western side.)
Why they went all the way around for that westerly instead of the simple easterly approach may prove to be important here.

Landing on the old runway they would have been a lot lower but the route itself and the initial tight turn into that line isn't unusual for those guys - the turn after that to the new runway would be relatively new.

I've done up a graphic and the turn into the gorge would have been the exact route to get them to the new runway - they simply appear to have dropped on the turn, but directionally the turn was exactly where they needed to be by the looks of it.

I can't post the graphic as I'm a newbie but above there's a graphic above from Yo You Not You which I did a version of based on the video before I saw that, and mine is pretty much identical to that. I'd say it's 95%+ accurate .

And for proof you offer up the following factual information.

Unless you have evidence of that, why do you come to that conclusion?

The only aspect of the video people are doubting is what happens to the phone post impact.

All other things add up:

- The approach
- The progressive left bank
- The weather conditions match
- The time frame
- The transition from left bank to the incident
- The sound and time of the PAX reaction

So, what you are suggesting is - Someone had free access to those exact chain of events, the exact footage, passenger reactions AND released the video mere hours afterwards?

Versus the counter

- The phone would of went “flying” - It did
- The fire looks too real - Fire does tend to look real when it is.

And your conclusion is that it is fake?

OK then.

The deceased gentleman was filming from the left, rear side of the aircraft. That section of the aircraft clearly hit the side of the gorge ( as can be seen by the large remains of the fuselage still up on the side of the bank). Fire damage can be seen on the side of the fuselage, but remains relatively intact - again, lines up with the immediate post crash fire before most of the airframe went into the gorge. See the latest scene videos from the BBC

This again is consistent with the video. The video then captures some movement, before another drop - when the phone went over the gorge, presumably with a fair chunk of the wreckage.

And the video footage out of the window matches exactly where the plane would have been in the seconds leading up to the stall, wing drop, and crash.

So gearlever are you saying there was another flight on another day in exactly the position at the same height and the same weather conditions and somebody on board just happened to be filming out of the window and then somehow that video got out into the public domain and then somebody saw it, and heard about the crash (and worked out where the plane was and which direction it was going in, which was unknown at the time) and then had the genius thought, you know what I can use that video I saw to make a fake video about the plane crash.

Get a life.

Aircraft on approach stalled followed by incipient spin into the ground.
Black box now found.
Await results should be interesting.

Uplinker - thanks, missed that one :-)

Tu.114 - as I say, all causes are unlikely but remain possible until ruled out. - fuel contamination, see Cathay Pacific 780 into Hong Kong April 2010 - autothrottle failure or mismanagement (or a combination of both) not unheard of by any means. Fuel starvation yes, I give you that by itself seems unlikely.

“The ATR does not have auto throttle. In the 72 and 42-500 it has a notch in which you place the power levers - in this position the TQ is controlled by the PWR management selector.”

Thank you

What is not being mentioned is that the 72 was being flown much as one might fly the 42. In terms of handling, they are chalk and cheese.

I'd have had no problems with that horizontal profile in the 42, but with this aircraft, with the load we see, I'd have insisted on a good length stabilized approach.
With plenty of height and the nose comfortably pitched down a tad, this profile was doable, despite being not acceptable in principle. However, what I see is quite the opposite - a totally unacceptable flight profile for a 72 at that guessed weight. Now tankering fuel is being mooted.

Going back to my former post and the puff of grey smoke behind the port engine. Is there any reason to believe the fuel may have been contaminated?

People on the video confirmed on that flight by local police and friends.
Source,The Guardian

aviationdreamer
If you are in a left turn, your right wing has larger airspeed for the same AOA, so how come that outer wing would stall first? In all stalls I did in a turn (as instructor, etc.), the turn continued to a stall/spin into same direction as original turn, with one exemption: some airplanes have very large ailerons, and bringing wing AOA in a shallow turn to critical angle, THEN increasing bank with ailerons will bring OUTER wingtip to a stall, as down deflected aileron increases AOA beyond critical and airplane in a left bank will suddenly turn into right bank and will flip on its back if pilot insists by applying opposite aileron. (I can demonstrate that beautifully on a FOX aerobatic twin seater) But this phenomena I observed only on aerobatic airplanes with large ailerons and no wing twist.

All Stick shakers use Angle of Attack sensor as primary input (plus airplane configuration etc)
When I do aerobatic training, I announce this on first class: There is no such thing as Stall speed. There is only Critical Angle of Attack. Stall speed is only a derivate from critical AOA under certain conditions. Then I demonstrate stall/spin at speeds way above published "Stall speed". - and the plane spins like a propeller!

Why would they change runway, if this is true?

I wondered if this implies a crosswind of significant strength, and swapping from say 120 degrees to 60 degrees angle

Can't find metar, but an ordinary weather website (wunderground) with archive has 6 mph SSE at 9 am, 2 mph S at midday

If true, that's barely enough to bother about the difference of direction.

Would it be about taxying distance, or practising another runway after they'd done the other a couple of times?

Or can the weather I've found so far be inaccurate, and it's actually 30 or more knots, and turbulent gusts from the mountains 2 miles upwind?

Which airport were they trying for? The one with runway 04-22 or the one with 12-30?

BBC reporting that "The pilot asked for a change from the assigned runway 3 to runway 1, which was granted by the airport, Mr Joshi said."

Given the rough track that some folks have deduced from landmarks in the video, and the height, it seems likely that this was similar to earlier reported flight(s?) with circuit to the north of the new airport, base leg coincidentally approximately on a line of the old runway, 90 degree left turn to line up on 12 (new)