Radar plots are not milimeter accurate - apparent sharp movements could simply indicate sections of the aircraft being out of control during or following a very rapid break-up. No conclusions can be drawn about it being anything to do with the cockpit crew.

rideforever, give this thing a little more time to unravel. We'll get there eventually.


If we stick with the known facts as they come in, then the cone of speculation can be advanced and restricted. At the moment there are so many possible reasons for a plane to describe such uncharacteristic movements, that percentages and likelihoods are going to vary radically with each commentator here.

Most probable reason for such data is trying to draw a curve through random, scattered points created by pieces of debris flashin up on the radar on their way down...

Someone mentioned "kumbi" earlier.... Oh how I don't miss the nightmare that is the terrible RT by the Egyptians in this area, if they managed to get a call out of any nature odds are Egyptian RT will have ignored it or someone else stepped on it, Egyptian RT has IMHO been an accident waiting to happen for some time, this may not be attributable in this incident but I pity and investigators listing to Egyptian RT tapes, it must be a form of torture !

Will be interesting to see if once they checked in if they were given any clearance to change level, as in the barometric change theory posted earlier.

Russia - yes, since Metrojet crash

I'm quite convinced that there was no fireball. History is littered with examples of people seeing flames when they never did. In fact, a rig worker claimed to have seen a fireball in the sky when MH370 went missing when in fact the plane was hundred of miles away. When the track of the jet proved it was nowhere near, the fireball sightings were quickly forgotten.

The video I have seen is clearly space junk burning up.

My thoughts go out to those involved. Whilst it's easy to jump to the terrorism or deliberate crashing, recent history shows that several fully serviceable planes (both Airbus and Boeing before anyone goes down that route) have come to harm due to handling issues.

Meanwhile 12 hours in and there's still no sign of it. Not acceptable in 2016!

Not seen the video but three satellites passed overhead within 20 minutes of the time when it's reported that contact was lost. None of them see fireballs, smoke trails or anything like that.

Mr Gardner may be jumping the gun a bit in that 0600 comment/twitter quote(??), but he is cited with a more measured analysis that gets at security and "we don't know yet." (I'll side with mockingjay on "fireball?" with MH370 as a reference).
EgyptAir flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo crashed - Hollande - BBC News

I noted on the BBC link that included the sound byte that the French authorities are (reportedly) already investigating the ground crew at CDG.

Sadly, contra the little quote, planes do sometimes "just fall out of the sky." In the not too distant past ... AF 447(upset) Air Indonesia(upset) , Air Algerie(upset), Germanwings(Upset FO, and it flew down rather than fell), Metrojet(bomb?) and so on. But in the larger sense Mr Gardner is correct. Flying is still a very safe way to travel and planes generally don't just fall out of the sky. Embedded in that little bon mot is a core point -- there's a reason for the rare and tragic events like this. Confident that the reason will be found in due course. I heard about this crash on the radio this morning ... plane missing between Paris and Cairo ... seen descending by Greek radar ... (I thought, jumping to a conclusion, shame on me, A320? OCF?) ... later heard it was A320 ... a bit later logged on to PPruNe to see what folks have so far. Thanks for realigning my brain, all and sundry: look at the conclusion I jumped to from a brief radio report? :=

Regarding the posts from folks covering maritime search efforts: thank you.

Originally Posted by DavidReidUK
I don't entirely disagree however, the ADS-B data being received before and after the incident position in the days before the incident are almost entirely from one site either near or on LTFG Gazipasa-Alanya airport on the SW Coast of Turkey. This site is consistently recording ranges of up 260nm which is a good range for ADS-B receivers and easily covers out to the LKP. So in fact there is no blind spot and the flightpath is consistently covered by the LTFG Rx. I agree a precise point cannot be inferred by this especially since there was almost three minutes from the last transmission from the aircraft until Flightawre software began posting estimated positions but, I suggest the Flightaware position is very close.

Suggestions that ADS-B coverage is poor, that its flakey and that it cannot be relied upon are misleading. ADS-B is an important part of the ATC system as another poster has pointed out, but in terms of enthusiast coverage that could be correct except in this case LTFG has this flight route well covered.

MSR804 did not land at its destination. LTFG suddenly stopped tracking. I'm saying there is a very strong correlation between these two events and that the final Flightaware data while not precise, is close.

Debris found.
http://s32.postimg.org/z157vnu81/image.jpg

http://s32.postimg.org/g7jeynw01/image.jpg

http://s32.postimg.org/y7sm31o75/image.jpg

Just like every other major airliner crash, then. Deep breaths...

Did this happen in Egyptian SAR region. If so, its going to be all the more difficult to get any accurate information.

Mo122, do you have a source for this information please? That looks like a liferaft rather than debris.


Edit: According to Twitter, both Greek television and SKy news are reporting debris has been found.

Mo122, sources please.

Crash 'probably a terrorist act' - Russia
 

Quote from BBC Monitoring: EgyptAir Flight MS804 latest updates - BBC News

Saw only 2 ships that made a 90 degree turn and are around 5 knots. The Oceanic and the Jork. Other ships were still 'cruising' through the area though at 10-20 knots. Also no 'special' vessels apparently on their way to the area. Or these have shut down their 'transponders'. Have not seen a restricted area yet. Based on this only, you would not even be able to say that any search was going on.

Best information till now appears to come from the translations of Greek officals statements by ThinkRate (thanks for those, hope you post some more).

Interesting to see the 'usual' statements about fire balls, satellites that should have spotted something, and all-seeing radars.

FR24 gets a lot of criticism, but at this stage it is all the general audience has. You have to be very careful, as some point out, with the interpretation of such data. First is that you have to separate received data from extrapolated data. And also the data it self might be suspect. A few weeks ago i was following a flight over the Java Sea on FR24 which suddenly jumped over to the Indian Ocean ! and took quite a few minutes to jump back. Next to that there are many gaps in coverage. But still, it is much better than nothing.

@LBCI_News_EN
Missing #Egyptair aircraft debris found south of #Greek island of Karpathos in southern Mediterranean - Greek state TV

Greek state television now reporting that Greek planes taking part in the SAR have spotted debris in the form of "large orange chunks" that are thought to belong to the missing plane. Similar reports are coming from the Greek SAR Coordination Center and the Hellenic Coastguard. The MOD has not yet confirmed the report.

Edited to include Hellenic CAA statement, which just confirms times and actions (all times local, Greek local time is UTC+3):
0224: entry into Athinai FIR
0248: handoff to next Athinai sector and clearance for exit point. The pilot was cheerful and thanked ATC in Greek.
0327: ACC tries to contact the plane for handoff information to Cairo ACC. Plane non-responsive, call is repeated on emergency freq.
0329: Plane crosses the FIR exit point
032940: Plane trace lost, approx 7nm SSE of KUMBI, within Cairo FIR. Military radar raised, negative return.
0345: SAR activated, Cairo notified.

If I understood correctly, Mo122 is on board Maersk Ahram in the search area, and the photos are his. The only poster here who has access to authentic and reliable information. Thanks Mo for sharing.

Sources captain on board ahram maersk

Thank you very much, Mr. Mo, your information is highly appreciated.

Updates from same source progress of s&r
http://s32.postimg.org/imw3pjjyd/image.jpg
photo hosting sites

No am not on board any vessel , am connected through maersk ahram captain and the photos and updates are his. I am just sharing the info

OTH radar at LCRA would cover area and Troodos would listen. I note AAIB have offered assistance to Egypt
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a...r-flight-ms804

I do not normally comment at such an early stage because it is speculative and ghoolish but what possible benefit would realtime telemetry bring in this situation? The motivation is clearly morbid curiosity rather than safety because in this as in almost all cases the data recorders will be recovered and any lessons that can be learned will be. However even morbid curiosity woudl almost certainly not be satisfied as in all probability the telemetry broadcast would simply have halted when whatever occured occurred.

The reality is that realtime telemetry would need to be backed up by data recorders to ensure data communications problems did not result in lost data. The safety value is only in those cases where the recorders cannot be recovered which is rare. Rather than safety it is the cost of searching for and recovering data recorders that needs to be balanced against the cost of implementing such a system. If it existed the data should not in any case be released until after an accident investigation.

It *is* interesting that all these military air-surveillance radars and satellite-born radars and optical systems never have anything to say about planes that go down, at least in time to help S&R. AF-447 and MH-370 were a real disappointment in that regard.

It appears that the search area details available at the present are in good agreement with the last positions on the ADS-B data in this FlightAware log:

Flight Track Log MSR804 18-May-2016 CDG / LFPG - CAI / HECA FlightAware

Flightradar24, FlightAware, and RadarBox24 should all have more detailed ADS-B data on their servers.

I am surely not going to speculate about the actual cause of this tragedy but I have seen several posts saying that it must be somethig terrorist related because airliners do not drop out of the sky like this.
Fact is they do, last years we have had some airliners down due pilot error, malfunctions, weather.... So a terrorist atack is just a possibility among other.
With the information avalaible for this accident, I have just remebered the Indonesia Air Asia A-320 that crashed on the sea after droping from its cruising altitude of FL320 due a combiation of mecanical troubles and pilot error.
Accident Report
I do not mean this accident may have anything with todays tragedy but I would like to point out that other causes other than terrorism could be involved. It has happened before

vmandr,

clear,

important i think to keep in mind that there are such jumps ... and other 'anomalies' that are related to the tool,

i dont know the extrapolation algorithm used by FR24... next to jumps there are also very significant turns that you would not expect ... if you look at the North Atlantic for example, you can see a plane symbol ('inside' the purple line, so not on a changeover point from a "loss of coverage ---- line" to a "solid purple line") ... change heading in an instant from say 270 to 0 and shortly thereafter to 180 before turning to 265 ...

so be careful with interpretation is the message,

According to Flightaware, the accident aircraft flew to CDG/LFPG direct from Cairo prior to the last flight.

MSR803 departed Cairo 1727, arrived Roissy 2153.


There was a round trip to Tunis from Cairo prior to this.

Before an item is associated with the missing aircraft it is probably worth considering the amount of debris floating in the Mediterranean from the many migrant vessels that have sunk in the area.

I very much doubt it. FL370 will be well below RECMAX toward the end of a flight with little fuel and a poor load. Besides high speed protection would have kicked in and even if they were in alternate law there's still a speed stability that would have lessened the likelihood of a repeat. A Jetstream could easily cause an upset but not a catastrophic loss of the hull.

If there was indeed an explosive device on board, then it is likely to be similar to the one onboard Metrojet, which means quite simple device and not necessarily accurate.

Maybe it was just put there in Cairo and supposed to detonate after takeoff or later in that flight and just... didn't.

From a political standpoint I'd say that the impact for Egypt would be the same if the plane had crashed near France, given it is an Egyptian flight.

It would simply have added a political impact in France, just like metrojet which point was to destroy Egyptian tourism & to adress a political message to Russia. But again, endless speculation.

UK HMS Defender is in the area now close to the Maersk Ahram and other vessels. Maybe this is the start of defining and outlining a search area.

Surprising that speeds are between say 5-16 knots ... no vessels at 0 knots yet.

Have to note that at this stage i have no information about what these vessels are searching for. There is more going on in the Med at the moment.

From CNN:

The cause behind the disappearance of EgyptAir Flight 804 is more likely to be terrorism than a technical issue, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sharif Fathi said.

"We do not deny there is a possibility of terrorism or deny the possibility of technical fault," Fathi said at a Cairo news conference.

Arabic broadcaster Al Arabiya Tweeted that two bodies were seen floating in the search area.

EgyptAir flight MS804 missing: live updates as bodies and wreckage found after plane vanishes with 66 on board - Mirror Online

Actually, there is. The Egyptians have proven very clearly with the 767 flight out of New York and the Russian flight earlier this year that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the cause of an accident.

A number of vessels in the area were increasing speed to 11 knots.
As far as i know there are no photos in the public domain now that show identified aircraft components.

I don't know how you came to this conclusion (or the earlier poster), the Egyptian minister simply stated the obvious without putting a bias in favor of either. If we look at the history of accidents over the past few years involving a rapid descent from cruise without any pre-warning, I believe pilot induced loss of control is by far the leading cause, followed by deliberate pilot action, terrorism coming third. Obviously none of them can be discounted at this stage, and this is exactly what Fathi said.


If I remember correctly, the first 50 pages of the Metrojet crash thread were filled with speculation on the various possible failure modes of the HS, until grim reality started to set in.

How is that interesting?
The military radars had info on MH370 (it was found in due course) but people didn't manage to put two and two together ... and initial SAR effort was victim of a red herring.
What mil radar need is there for where AF447 went down? (Note that the satellite ACARS info did provide some information early on). Why would a mil satellite be looking at that spot when AF447 went down?

In this current case, it looks like there was a fairly quick response from the Greek defense side
so I'd like to know: what's your beef?

There's an entire reporting and tracking structure in place for Commercial air. The military stuff is built for a different purpose, not as a back up to the civil system, even though sometimes it can be helpful when called up to supplement the existent civil structure. (If that report is from solid info, it looks like the Greek military radar was helpful to me).