Agree with both. The last flash could easily be landing lights from a taxiing aircraft sweeping past the camera. I'd say the video has zero to do with the downed aircraft.

For the first time, I agree with forget.

They are strobe flashes but was that a lightning flash as well?

I rather think that the two flashes as the a/c climbs out are the strobes.

Anti-collision light was my first impression and I still believe that's probably what we are seeing, despite the first two flashes not being followed at exactly the same time interval by a third which should have occurred just before the aircraft exited the frame.

Lightning strike with small fuel leak?
 

A wild theory maybe, but is it probable that a lightning strike with an unfortunate case of small fuel leak?

A former colleague had a suspected tiny fuel leak ( about 200-300lbs per hour ) and he told me that he refused company orders for him to divert back to home base and some nearer airports because there were lightning storms all over those places. He even decided to avoid clouds like plague as they might have electrical discharges that could ignite the fuel from a small atomising fuel leak.

@ace

I'm NOT a scientist, but I think that's highly remote.

What burns/explodes is not the fuel, , it's the fueel/air (gas) mixture.

So if you have a small fuel leak AND lightning happens, eventually you will have a torch like flame but no explosion inside the tank.

My 5 pence

saw the video in question on local tv.

obvious strobe lights during climbout...it seemed that visibility was good

as the plane left the frame of the camera, a few seconds later a huge flash of light...thought to be the plane.

I would not rule out an explosion.

I'm enjoying this one!
 

I've not seen an event which has pulled generated so much floating brown stuff from so many people so quickly. NDT inspections mishandled, lightning, fuel leak and lightning, company orders, bird strike, disorientation, windshear - the only things missing so far are little green men from Mars. Oh, and what really happened! I'm not even going to try and give it a go. Please, give it a rest.

And Brian, most pilots like me are wimps, we don't take off into thunderstorms. We can see them just like our friends in ATC and we either wait or route around them.

PM

Piltdown Man,

Thanks for that. I will use it to get out of my next SFAR 88 CDCCL training later this year. I can go back to my old understanding of fuel vapour and ignition sources; don't fly over Navy boats on manoeuvres.

regarding the video and the reports that the aircraft had reached 9000ft, at a normal rate of climb on the B738, then any vizible explosion would have only occured around 2 to 3 minutes later, not a mere seconds as depicted in the video.

At this stage nobody knows anything. Conjecture is just foolish talk and causes enormous pain to family members looking for answers. PPRuNe is exactly where they come looking for scraps of 'insight'. May I humbly suggest that at this point no one has any insight of any kind.

My guess is the large flash occurring several seconds after the aircraft departed the camera view, is a lightning flash. So far it looks like the only useful info that might be gleaned from the video, if it's indeed the accident aircraft, is that the departure looked pretty normal.

Sky News just reported Lebanese Military Spokesperson saying pilot ignored ATC instructions? Bit quick to apportion blame.

Speculation, but weather avoidance, perhaps?

Why not any info given on VHF?
 

If anyone is use to flying around severe weather it has to be the ET Pilots. After having been at their Flight Operations 2x in 2008/9 they showed no reasons to suspect any maint. or crew training issues on the 737 fleet.
Assuming this crew did not suffer sudden a loss of Comm. for various reasons- why does nobody not even send of a short brief one way broadcast of what is happening? "Maydayx3 / lightning strike loss of control / severe turb. loss of control / cargo fire & loss of pressurization / explosion on board / etc."?
Maybe we Pilots never assume that these situations will lead to such an event? A short message or burst of info that would have been picked up on either Dep. of 121.5 and avail. for immediate scrutiny. Now some of you will say the crew workload was too high, but then again on the CVR I would still expect to hopefully hear "Brace Brace Ditching" or similar from the Cockpit. Makes a big difference then just a splash! As with AF447 and dozens of other crashes this short info transmit would have helped the investigation a great deal?? Should this maybe become SOP?

The little regular flashes are the strobes, the big flash doesn't relate to the aircraft does it?, it would have had to have done a 180 off the end of the runway to be back in that position and certainly not at 8 or 9 thousand feet. I've had a few lightening strikes, particularly in the far east, they will knock out systems but usually only temporarily, probably a spike protection or surge facility that they don't bother to tell us pilots about!

How deep is the Med. there? Hopefully the boxes will be recovered soon.

Brookfield, you can't create SOPs for the crew that has just suffered a catastrophic failure, yes, messages do get sent, but not necessarily related to the aircraft and it's status.

AS to messages sent in the last seconds...

I recall a PSA (real PSA with the smile) after colliding with a C172 over San Diego (USA)...last transmission was: I love you mom.

Don't expect a pilot to correctly diagnose the cause of his plane crashing and transmit it.

Even Sully got his call sign wrong...

Does anyone know for sure what brought down KQ507? Were both black boxes retrieved intact from the swamp? Or were they badly damaged and not very useful for providing conclusive evidence?

Shouldn't be more than 100m, at a guesstimate.

Aloha,
T-01

pth, That was the first one I remember as an adult. I went over to LGB and stood there looking at a PSA 727 wondering how something that tragic could happen.

PSA Flight 182 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That was a bad day.

No matter what the end result of the investigation - I find the idea of pilot disorientation when hand flying very intriguing..

Pure speculation - but in the last few years we had first Kenyan into a storm in
Africa, then Gulf Air, then Yemenia in the Maldives, Turkish in Amsterdam, now this - all bad wx and possible AP disconnects/handflying/ stalls .... can it be that we are finally seeing the effects of years of depending on autopilots too much and struggling when they disconnect...?