BREAKING NEWS: airliner missing within Egyptian FIR

[henra]

Originally Posted by oleostrut

Would have sheared the wing off from overload, not broken the tail.

Not necessarily. At 280kts IAS at 30kft and ~Mach 0,75 it probably won't break off, no matter the AOA. Stall speed at that Mach number in clean config at the given weight should be at least 150 - 160kts. 280kts will give you between 3 and 3,5g. That shouldn't suffice to shear the wings off.

[funfly]

Apart from political influence, is there any suggestion that the final diagnosis might well be related to the costs and placement of liability?

[glad rag]

Originally Posted by dccdz

Reuters : Investigators '90 percent sure' of bomb on crashed Russian plane

[lomapaseo]

I note many folks trying to match a whole bunch of pieces together in order to complete the picture in their mind.


One thing to consider is that under wing pylon mounted engines don't break loose from pitch loads no matter how violent. They do break loose from side loads most commonly in a spin of some sort. Thus the engines have a tendency to be found relatively close together near where the wings end up.

[RTM Boy]

Exclusive - Investigators '90 percent sure' of bomb on crashed Russian plane | Reuters

When (and it's when, not if) the Russians, Egyptians, Irish, Airbus and all other parties to the investigation agree it was a bomb and say so, there will still be posters on pprune insisting it's all a conspiracy and the plane exploded in a fireball at FL310 because of a jackscrew.

[StuntPilot]

All this chatter about what various governments want, about 'agenda's', unnamed 'officials' speaking on condition af anonimity, conspiracies etc. is really affecting the signal to noise ratio in an otherwise interesting discussion.

Please post opinions that are disconnected from facts and tangible evidence, unverifyable claims, visions from a crystal ball and everything else that is out of touch with reality in the topic about the Metro Jet crash in the Jet Blast forum. Thanks.

P.S. The topic is here: http://www.pprune.org/jet-blast/5702...whodunnit.html

[CONSO]

re machinbird 7th Nov 2015, 23:40

#1748 (permalink)

.."This was not a location for a join of fuselage sections.

Please take a close look in the photo- a few inches to the right of the letters A321- there is a vertical line visible from there to the bottom. Also just belwo the two blanked windows is a horizontal line.

The vertical line IS a production join- The horizontal line is a doubler " plate" around the row of windows- typically riveted-bolted internal to the skin as a tear stopper. Where the horizontal and vertical lines visible on the skin join is slightly above where the red lines showing the ' tear" turn horizontal - and are all typical of where a failure in tension would take place. This supports a tension failure in upper half of body- with the section aft of red line being pushed downward.

[A0283]

@ Egyptian press conference and identification status

One of the things that surprised my is that the chairman did not give an overview of the official status of the number of passengers found and the number of passengers identified. Nor was there any mention of the crew.

Cause might be the fact that he expected these to be read by a Russian representative.

Does anyone know? The last number that i read was 163 bodies and 58 identifications. Perhaps Kulverstukas can pull them from the magic hat again. Preferable with a link to the site that is most directly connected to official announcements.

[gonebutnotforgotten]

Of course it was a bomb

I can't believe there is still discussion on whether this was a bomb, of course it was. check out the photos of the almost 'unrolled' fuselage sections posted on 5th Nov @ 19:19, or 6th Nov @17:01. (Sorry for some reason I don't seem able to attach images or files, anyone explain why not?) The second in particular shows skin deformed more away from internal stiffeners, and together they just shout 'internal overpressure'. You don't need to take it from unnamed 'intelligence' sources (the same as those who identified non existent WMD in Iraq...), just look.

[Bertie Bonkers]

HS

On a point of order, is it 100% nailed-on certain that the HS photographed is port/left side?

[Downwind Lander]

gonebutnotforgotten says:
"I can't believe there is still discussion on whether this was a bomb, of course it was. check out the photos of the almost 'unrolled' fuselage sections posted on 5th Nov @ 19:19 ... "

To save you the grief:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...an-fir-61.html

[AN2 Driver]

The one thing which does anger me is that the way these investigations are done in recent times, and that is not limited to this one, the tremendous pressure exercised via the press who will print just about everything regardless of quality in order to sell papers, via the internet, where people will do anything to get 5 seconds of fame or make a buck and finally via politicians, who will misuse such stuff for their own agendas, perverts the way these investigations should be done.

ICAO Annex 13 is the bible for that and it is via that excellent piece of regulation that an investigation and the communication about it has to be done.

I found the remark of the ENAC chair very much to the point yesterday, when he acidly remarked that those who have "facts" should forward them to the investigation team instead of politicians and the press.

What has happened here in this case is a total disgrace.
- It undermines the principles of civil aviation accident investigation
- It gives tremendous attention and ideological support to terrorist groups
- It undermines the authorities of the countries involved and forces them into totally unwarranted action
- It exposes the West as weak, without principles and without stamina.

If every time some guy posts a twitter that he sunk the Titanic or something else our governments react in the way they did and get people running like cockroaches from where ever things happen, we will see more and more such imagined or, worse, real attacks happen. Until there is no place left to to run.

Face it: If this turns out to be a technical structural failure caused by fatigue, engine trouble or whatever can cause a plane to come apart, the way British and US "intelligence" services have handled this case, it will have benefitted IS to no ends. It will make thousands of Joe Publics re-think their holiday plans and it will leave Egypt with mass layoffs and lots of people descending into poverty, right into the recruiting scheme for IS.

I do hope that if that were the case, that someone will take these guys to court. I would honestly wish that C.Y.A shots from the hip should be much more painful for the cowards involved than being prudent and very rarely wrong.

[Prada]

bomb or not

I can't believe there is still discussion on whether this was a bomb, of course it was.

I would suggest you to read TWA800 final report. The way all kind of theories were excluded.
It is not that you something "obvious" and jump to immediate conclusions and exclude all other theories. Instead it is about to exclude theories one by one after they become impossible due to revealed evidence.

So far, bomb theory is not excluded.

[ILS27LEFT]

Reaction of governments

The reaction of major governments, including significant powers like the US, UK,RU,NL and many more, proves that they are confident that this accident was caused by something sinister which could be easily repeated, the same threat is clearly still present at that airport and in the entire region, both in terms of culprit and technique used: this matches with the theory of an airport worker who successfully loaded explosive into the cargo hold of this aircraft. The terrorists, very likely belonging to ISIS in Sinai, did not know if their newly found technique would have been successful until the explosion was triggered hence the lack of further messages from ISIS, after they released their video, as they do not want to disclose any more info about the modality of loading and detonation, obviously they are fully aware now that they can do it again and very easily. Intelligence agencies were reported by the media to have listened into terrorists' conversations showing a sense of victory, similar to Osama Bin Laden when he watched the Twin Towers collapsing, no terrorist knew for sure that the explosion would have actually brought down the plane, they simply did not know if they would have been successful or not as it was something never tested before inside a real flying plane: imagine if the explosive was hidden inside a scuba tank, as a guess, this has never been tested before and maybe this is why the investigators will probably not find any unusual and unexpected material amongst debris on the ground nor signs of explosives as some types do not leave traces. A possible scenario in my opinion which would validate the unprecedented decisions recently taken by major governments against Egypt.

[flash8]

Egypt and Russia don't want this to be a bomb. People are circumspect about Egypt's expertise and agenda. People are circumspect about Russia's agenda. The bodies are all in Russia. Apparently debris samples are being tested for explosive residue in Russia. So what will we all think if Egypt and Russia say "no bomb?"

Like it or not, that video may (or may not) turn out to be the one piece of transparent evidence we have. And people call it irrelevant.

Egypt almost certainly. It will (going on previous form) never be admitted by them to be a bomb, that is the only certainty coming out of Egypt I'm afraid.

If MAK are involved (as they are) however I cannot see this situation happening, also recall BEA and IAA are there as well, amongst others.. this won't be swept under the carpet by the Egyptians no matter how hard they try.

And please, living in Moscow sixteen years (and having day to day contact with Russian officials nowadays) I can say I genuinely believe there will not be a cover up, not for this at least, although the Russian Government do themselves no favours dragging the obvious out.

[CésarVLC]

All this chatter about what various governments want, about 'agenda's', unnamed 'officials' speaking on condition af anonimity, conspiracies etc. is really affecting the signal to noise ratio in an otherwise interesting discussion.

Agreed. I've been following the thread since day one. It has got really valuable contributions, analyzing factual data, providing images as they were released, and posting news updates. But, for a couple of days now, it's become sort of a chat in the lines of "my viewpoint is right no matter what the final report will tell". Special thanks to the ones who tried to analyze the video (or videos if they're actually two) in a scientific way. Good work.

[RTM Boy]

AN2, I understand your unhappiness, the whole thing is far from ideal. But it's nothing new. With AA191 in 1979 when the port engine fell off on take off from O'Hare and the DC10 rolled to the left before crashing the NTSB initially put it down to metal fatigue in a bolt and showed it proudly to all at a press conference. It transpired to actually be due to a maintenance handling issue that damaged the engine pylon mounts through a combination of not following correct procedure and human error. This combined with in-flight emergency response procedures that turned out to guarantee a stall that led to the loss of the aircraft. The bolt was actually damaged during the crash. 36 years later we haver 24-7 rolling news. You just have to deal with it.

If the whole speculation thing is such a problem there is a solution of course; live video streams from all flights - cockpit, cabin and external. Technically easily possible, at a cost. That way at least we would know what the incident looked like almost immediately even with no living witnesses. It would not necessarily give you the exact cause, but would narrow it down considerably.

[_Phoenix]

check out the photos of the almost 'unrolled' fuselage sections posted on 5th Nov @ 19:19 ...

"Unrolled" fuselage is not relevant, since the aircraft at cruise altitude(inflated state) behaves as a punctured balloon.
At 90% level of confidence, the investigators might heard the explosion blast only which was not preceded by any decompression sound (structural failure). The rapid decompression sound is very distinctive, in video below at 0:33
https://youtu.be/m24Gr67i_7o?t=32
The explosion was not after PSB either, since the back box looks pretty good.
With, rupture before PSB, the tail should come down in one piece (including HS and rudder), since free fall doesn't exceed 120 kts < cruise speed < VNE.
We are still missing serious forensics expertise.

[RTM Boy]

Prada TWA800 is still plagued by all sorts of highly creative conspiracy theories asserting all manner of causes - even to this day! However, two things are indisputable; there was an explosion and the in-flight breakup was not initiated by a pre-existing condition resulting in a structural failure and decompression.

So, even with TWA800, structural failure was not the cause, which brings me back to the point I've been making all along; an in-flight explosion at FL310 resulting in a fireball cannot be due to structural failure. It must either be a bomb, or involve an engine explosion puncturing fuel tanks.

[Pontius Navigator]

Phoenix, that mirrored my experience. Rapidly reduced pressure leads to a much slower speed of sound and no explosive noise. However the key word is RAPID.

Whilst that is known colloquially as a Bang Chamber it is actually a RAPID decompression simulator and not an EXPLOSIVE decompression experience.

I think you are generally correct, any explosion noise does not come from the decompression.