Maybe there was nothing at all wrong with the aircraft? Recall the speculation immediately after the Germanwings incident?

Well if that data IS accurate (and I'm not suggesting that it is) -
The profile looks rather like a phugoid oscillation.......

If the photos, ADS-B and FR24 data posted on this forum are anything to go by, it looks very much that the aircraft suffered a catastrophic event in the cruise. Perhaps brought about from a major fuselage rupture from an internal or external force.
With the TWA 800 crash, initially there was a big flap that it had been shot out of the sky by a rogue missile. In the final outcome it was attributed to the center fuel tank.

So Egyptians start reading flight recorders themselves, doesn't even waiting for Russian investigation authorities to arrive...

Not seeing a great deal of evidence that the aircraft broke into 2 pieces. If, as reported, bodies are over a 3km area, that is more likely to have broken in flight

According to Russian "Kommersant" newspaper the official representative of TH&C holding- the parent company of the perished charter plane said that the plane underwent a D-Check procedure last year (according to the rep D-check takes place every 12 years of service and takes 30-40 days in a special tech facility with all the major components and systems tested and replaced if needed). In addition the certificate (of airworthiness?) has been confirmed this year...

Remember what is pushed to the media may not be the truth.

Russian BUK missiles can reach around 70k feet (MH17).

Glide range depends on many factors, but I was taught a rule-of-thumb of 2 x the height in thousands....so, 31000 ft gives about 62 miles glide.

In unforeseen incidents such as this, the pilots' first reaction is, should be, FLY THE AIRCRAFT. Then navigate safely, and THEN communicate.....

from 31000 ft can only glide 15 miles
 

Surely you mean it can glide for 150 miles.

From the usual outer marker point of 10 miles most jets can glide all the way to the thresh hold provided they don't dirty it up with gear and flaps.

Gulfair, he was not making a statement but citing the authoritative statements from the instant experts.

Re the poster who stated that 'aircraft do not drop out of the cruise, with no calls etc. unless a catastrophic failure or something sinister' -

Actually, they sometimes do.

AF 447, Air Asia 8501, and Air Algerie (MD-83) are three recent examples.

The crew was far too busy "Aviating" (or trying to) -- to be bothered with step 3 "Communicate"

Unless a flight crew gets the plane back under control, there isn't much point sending a mayday call. There will be no one to rescue.

(Air professionals all know this, but others reading this thread today may not).

Assuming the following-A321 with 210 pax approx zfm of 68t, five hour flight plus reserves requires 18t ramp fuel, 3t burn to get to the point it all kicks off.
The Buffer onset is about where they were when this started according to FR24 data. Winds aloft have been westerly for a number of days so TAS =GS.

Then it's even less likely to be synchronised across different receivers. The basic ADS-B data that most of them supply to FR24 is timestamped by using the PC's clock. We all know how accurate those are.

How else do you account for the wild variations in speed and VS? For example between 04:13:00.0Z and 04:13:00.6Z the three sources reported the groundspeed variously as 404kts, 398kts and 347kts. That's a longitudinal deceleration of around 5g. :ugh:

Reroutes
 

Notice most flights are now avoiding this routing but on the other hand Middle East Aurlines are still routing out of Beirut and crossing Syria . Another tradegy waiting to happen ?

The 321 pilots I've spoken with say the plane, compared to the 319 and 320 is a real dog.

Wing area same as all 320 series Airbuses. 122.6 m².

Most modern Internet-connected PCs should be synched via NTP; my laptop claims it's within 25ms of the half-dozen NTP servers it's listening to. But, yeah, the XP machine at work only seems to sync every few days, so it diverges quite a bit in that time.

I know ADS-C has a timestamp, but I think you're right that ADS-B doesn't. Since it's immediately broadcast, you know the time it was sent when you receive it... there's no delay from sending it through ACARS. My ADS-B receiver is down with a bad PSU at the moment, so I can't check how it's timestamping the messages.

This might answer some of the questions that have been raised concerning FR24 data:

Source:
Crash of Metrojet Flight 7K9268 | Flightradar24 Blog

Major depress event? Emergency decent? Onboard bomb? Loss of control? Who knows. Find out soon enough with the boxes found. What's security like at Sharm?

Airport worker with ISIS sympathies?

One of our own pPruners giving a pretty balanced view on BBC news tonight.

ADS-B does have a timestamp:

Source:
Crash of Metrojet Flight 7K9268 | Flightradar24 Blog