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ethiopian airlines aircraft down near Beirut

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Old 27th Jan 2010, 07:50
  #121 (permalink)  
 
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Ryanair 'used Ethiopian crash jet in Dublin last year' - Local & National, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

The journalists are really clutching at straws here, but thankfully MOL puts them straight at the end of the article.
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 07:58
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Any news about the CVR/FDR recovery ?
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 08:18
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Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary said: “It's a bit like you selling your car and 11 months later the new person driving it has a crash. It had nothing to do with us.”
Did anyone say it was Mr O'Leary?

SoS
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 08:27
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Threemiles:
Flight plan was via CAK, then Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. Long way around east of Israel.

Other traffic was two approaches to runway 16, that's why vectored away from.

BOD 1 then:


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Old 27th Jan 2010, 08:35
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'I fly on the area quite often. I was also flying there last night. There is a NOTAM of UNIFIL exercises in the area between Cyprus and Lebanon in areas called BARBARA 1 and BARBARA 2 for the last few weeks. I believe there were exercises going on that night as well. You can find this NOTAM in the Nicosia FIR notams. How about a rocket flying loose tha night from all those ships that are in the area???? No surprise they were quick in attending the scene of the accident to help out. We've seen this scenario in the past.'

Just say something like this did happen. Would the pilot have any warning a rocket or missile of some kind was accidently heading for the aircraft? Could the unexplained turn actually have been an attempt to avoid it? The plane is consistently being reported as being on fire before impact and there are also suggestions it broke up in the air. The injuries to the victims recovered from the sea so far are horrific. Wouldn't some of this point to at least the possibility of an explosion?
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 09:21
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Air Transport Intelligence reports:

Beirut centre discussed navigating towards the VOR beacon identified as CAK, which lies on the Lebanese coast north of Beirut. But he says that air traffic control needed to ensure separation between ET409 and two aircraft which were on approach to Beirut's runway 16 at the time.

In order to maintain separation, he says, ET409 was instructed to turn left onto a heading of 270° but the crew apparently failed to comply.

"Instead it turned left, further," says the source, adding that - as the heading wound down to 140° - controllers became alarmed that the aircraft was turning back towards land and high terrain.

Controllers tried ordering the aircraft to turn right, warning the crew of the mountainous area, but the source says that radar contact was lost with the jet shortly afterwards. It came down off the Lebanese coast south of Beirut.
That will get the inner ear fluid spinning!

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Old 27th Jan 2010, 09:33
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I flew over northern Lebanon a few hours before the crash occured. There was a SIGMET issued for the Beirut FIR advising of CBs and although it was only valid until 1500Z we (and indeed the aircraft just ahead of us) needed to take avoiding action over the Lebanese coast in the vicinity of the CAK VOR. I haven't read all the threads on here so haven't seen if anyone has mentioned which runway was in use for departures at Beirut but I can say that if you were lined up on runway 21 to depart via CAK, you could have an awful lot of weather behind you that the radar obviously won't pick up until you've made the turn to the north.
Just found the SIGMET:
OLBA SIGMET N01 VALID 241100/241500 TS OBS AND FCST SW OF OLBA FIR TOP CB ABV FL240 MOV NE 14KT INTSF

In any case, it's a terrible tragedy to all involved.
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 10:00
  #128 (permalink)  
 
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BOD 1 then:
I understand the message from Flight Global that a direct CAK was negotiated soon after departure. This would cross the final Northwest of BOD. Therefore the controller may have been concerned about separation from ILS 16 traffic. Though a take away on heading 270 is quite rude, I feel.

I believe your red circle brings it to the point.
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 10:26
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I believe your red circle brings it to the point.
More or less... but the plane came down much closer to the shore. The impact point (2 NM W Na'ameh) is on a line about 15 degrees to the right from the direction of rwy 21, i.e. the plane crossed its initial outbound track at some point. Flight path might resemble the "&" character

Does not alter the conclusions anyway, I guess....
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 11:51
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60 bodies found so far, according to this:

Walta Information Center - Ethiopia: 60 confirmed dead in Ethiopian Airlines crash

That could mean the hull broke up at some point, but no way to be certain, of course.
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 12:03
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That could mean the hull broke up at some point, but no way to be certain, of course.
Aircrafts usually break at some point when they impact the sea at high speed...
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 13:09
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Does his track not suggest he was turning back towards the field?
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 13:35
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Does his track not suggest he was turning back towards the field?
Aviate.....Navigate.....Communicate

The lack of a reported radio call suggests the crew was overwhelmed.

The red circle in a post above is interesting if only altitude loss was known.

Has any coments been said about altitude changes over time from radar returns?
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 13:50
  #134 (permalink)  
 
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Has any coments been said about altitude changes over time from radar returns?
Not literally, as far as I've seen, but...
From two different news posts in Flightglobal:
-------
Chamieh says that the jet climbed to 9,000ft before contact was lost.
"The aircraft was called several times but it did not respond," he says
-------
ET409 was instructed to turn left onto a heading of 270° but the crew apparently failed to comply. "Instead it turned left, further," says the source, adding that - as the heading wound down to 140° - controllers became alarmed that the aircraft was turning back towards land and high terrain.
Controllers tried ordering the aircraft to turn right, warning the crew of the mountainous area, but the source says that radar contact was lost with the jet shortly afterwards.
-------

One way to interpret the above is that the aircraft reached 9000 ft at the point when its was heading west, and everything still looked OK on the controller's screen. Then when it continued its left turn it would have descended - prompting the terrain warning from the controller.

There has been no mention of possible technical communication faults, so presumably the ATC radar data is good including altitude data, until contact was lost. But this is still speculation.
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 14:07
  #135 (permalink)  
 
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If the red drawing is correct, one would think that they were trying to turn back to the airport!!!

They probably realized something went terribly wrong and were trying to make the airport again...
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 17:31
  #136 (permalink)  
 
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They probably realized something went terribly wrong and were trying to make the airport again...
Assuming they still had the ability to communicate you would have expected some attempt to inform ATC of their desire to do that and ask for a runway.

Even Sullenburger had time to do that in NYC and he was much lower and still very busy.

Whatever happened seems to have been both quick and unexpected.

SoS
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 17:43
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Maybe they tried. We dont know what their comm system status was at the time, and we also haven't heard tapes yet.

I think that it's more logical to err towards the notion that two competent pilots sat at the controls and did a "pilot act" rather than the opposite notion that they had no idea what they were doing.

Air france never communicated anything either. El-Al in AMS communicated very little. Aloha Air back in the 80's tried to communicate but came out very broken.

When structural damage occurs, sometimes time is limiting and communication very unreliable.
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Old 27th Jan 2010, 21:08
  #138 (permalink)  
 
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BBC reporting recorders found.

BBC News - Ethiopian crash jet flight recorders found off Lebanon
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Old 28th Jan 2010, 00:53
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wondering:

is there a cycle of testing for electrical continuity of the airframe to ensure that a bolt of ligtning can pass from one point to an exit point without creating a spark gap which might trigger a fume explosion?
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Old 28th Jan 2010, 01:44
  #140 (permalink)  
 
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Hornet

C & D checks cover electrical bonding and static dissipaters.
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