RIGHTSEATKC135,

Nice tale except a KC-135 doesn't have an engineer on the crew and doesn't have a F/E station "four feet" behind the co-pilot.

According to Wikipedia, there were some KC135's fitted with Flight Engineer positions.

KC-135D
All four RC-135As (Pacer Swan) were modified to partial KC-135A configuration in 1979.[42][43] The four aircraft (serial numbers 63-8058, 63-8059, 63-8060 and 63-8061) were given a unique designation KC-135D as they differed from the KC-135A in that they were built with a flight engineer's position on the flight deck.[44] The flight engineer's position was removed when the aircraft were modified to KC-135 standards but they retained their electrically powered wing flap secondary (emergency) drive mechanism and second air conditioning pack which had been used to cool the RC-135As on-board photo-mapping systems.[45] Later

You lost me at "According to Wikipedia"

Military surveillance systems
 

Or more specifically "all these military air-surveillance radars and satellite-born radars and optical systems never have anything to say PUBLICLY ....".
What those systems actually see, and what their operators actually pass to the civil authorities and when they pass it is something that we, as mere mortals, will never fully know.

May have missed it in all these recent posts, but no-one has mentioned the Daallo Airlines event in Mogadishu back on 2 February this year, where a hole was punched out of the fuselage, supposedly by a laptop device. They got the timing and the placement of the laptop and the airline wrong, (last minute swapout of aircraft, see link) but it must have been a learning experience for whoever built it.


https://www.rt.com/news/331800-somal...omber-turkish/


Since at present almost any theory is valid, just throwing this into the pot to bear in mind.

Some very interesting speculations. Like to see a post from A320 driver as to what happens with AP in and #1 eng fail at cruise alt. Memories of China 006 and AF 447. If ac can wind up in unusual attitude w tired pilots, could recovery induce structural failure? No evidence yet of in flight explosion but we shall see.

I think we have found a poser in our group. No flight engineers or for the matter first officers
on any RC135's. Now back to our story of the day.

Kind of strange that no one has stepped forward with a claim for this accident. Also if it was a bomb, there seems to be a lack of any Mayday calls which seems strange as well? Your thoughts?

...

At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious ..... if a bomb causes an almost instantaneous decompression, break up, call it what you will, how long do you think you might have left to make a radio call after your initial comment of "WTF was that ? "

It's been a while since I flew into Cairo (767) from the North-West, but I remember plenty of lost comm events. I always had a list of appropriate frequencies handy in case it was necessary to go searching around for someone to talk to.

The Airbus has little by way of mechanical design problems. There does appear to be a confusion in understanding how the computerisation is controlling the aircraft when an unforeseen event happens. That confusion largely relates to adequate training of the crew - and how closely the crew do follow their training, when an emergency is upon them.

Overall, though, the reliability of the Airbus is proven, by the tens of thousands of uneventful flights carried out on a daily basis.

So the likelihood of this event being a terrorist attack is far higher than any aircraft or crew failure.

The terrorists learn from every attack they carry out. They have found out that bombs in the centre of an aircraft do not always work effectively. They have found out that the weakest part of an aircraft is in the tail region. Damage the tail region, and the aircraft falls uncontrollably.
Sharp turns at cruise or near-cruise level, possibly in the region of 90° and 360°, as mentioned by officials, indicate to me, an aircraft with a seriously damaged tail.

Terrorists rarely brag loudly and publically about their successes today, because they know that in this electronic age, it means that they will be promptly located, and will rapidly receive on their heads, a laser-guided missile from a great height, that they don't even see coming.

What's sad is that some news channels have such poor analytics when it comes to these incidents. For example i just watched a news channel talk about how this was the 5th flight for this plane for 20 minutes....relevant? Yes but if you talk about miniscule facts to make them bigger to make news you create misleads. Its really unfortunate...then we have other news outlets declaring "wreckage found" when in fact it wasn't. Millions of ships pass through these waters every year. ..just because cargo ship disasters don't make headlines don't think a life vest or container debris can only come from 1 aircraft.

The fact that there was no response from the crew during ATC's attempts is very odd and decompression sure looks culpable however hears hoping they find the location of the plane so we can know more.

An Egyptian friend of mine told me today that back home the airline is under immense pressure from various news and foreign media outlets... lots of info coming in and they're trying to be very careful in what they let out..let's all take a deep breath and think positive and hope for the best.


Onetrack - well said and don't forget with current technology there is no requirement for terrorist to travel physically anymore. ..they can communicate freely electronically as well. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the airport /airline routing someone was sought out and convinced. But then again we have 0 proof so let's focus our efforts in supporting the families and finding this plane. Not wreckage yet!

Regarding the military air defense radars, I believe that the standard "export version" air defense systems have a surveillance range of 170-200mi. How far off of the Egyptian coast did this event take place? It might have been out of range of the nearest military primary radar...

An entire day of searching,several assets,good Wx/vis,no chop,fairly defined area and still no debris?.

This may have been stated, but if so, I missed it. Do we know if the flight was on time? Assuming a timed device, a flight which was ahead or behind schedule could affect where the device went off. This incident seemed to be relatively close to land - wouldn't a terrorist prefer to blow up a flight further from shore where presumably the water would be deeper, and it would be more difficult to recover evidence?

jugofpropwash

FWIW you're never that far from land in Med (as in a couple of hundred miles), especially at the eastern end and regarding depth of water according to previous posters here this aircraft disappeared over the deepest bit.

The schedule was for it to depart at 10.45pm, the info on the CDG website said it left at 11.09pm.

The LKP is about as far from land as you ever get when flying from Paris to Cairo.

I'm puzzled by media reports that the search seems to be focused on Karpathos, a Greek island to the ENE of Crete. The likely crash site, based on what we know from flight tracking sites, must be 250km or more SSE of there.
I'm sure there are folks out there who know where to look and are doing it right now - but at the risk of courting controversy, I don't trust the Greek or Egyptian authorities or the international media to provide reliable information.

SL, the story was fed by the reported finding of life jackets and other debris near Karpathos (which should have been treated as a red flag), later confirmed to be not from the aircraft. The real search is centered on the LKP, around the position of m/v Oceanos.

I suspect the aerial ballet manoeuvres theory may turn out to be, like the Greek Defence Ministry's statement yesterday that wreckage had been found, nonsense.

What evidence is, so far, that this aircraft has actually crashed?

Sure it is overdue and the radar return ceased over the Med but take a look sideways....

Turn off the transponder at the know area of poor RT coverage, make a spiral descent to low level over the sea then head for another destination as opposed to Cairo.

None. All we know with reasonable certainty is that after an uneventful cruise at F370 with normal communications, ADS-B signal was lost just inside Cairo FIR, no further communication was received from the aircraft, and if we can trust the Greek minister's statement, primary radar tracked its descent to FL100 after which it was lost over the horizon.

Everything else at present is extrapolation/speculation.

While an unlikely scenario, the point of disappearance is exactly in the middle of the "blind spot" for both Greek and Egyptian primary radar below FL100, and there are plenty of runways in Northern Libya within expected endurance where an A320 could land. Hiding it after daybreak from prying satellite eyes is another story, and were this the case we would probably have heard the demands by now...

Very surprised we still have no wreckage, being such a busy area i expected it to be found very quickly, if its not found soon the headlines will be starting to see it like MH370

Is it possible that the US and/or Israel have AWACS monitoring this area ?

Today's papers all point to an explosion and IS attack again from
Point of origin in Paris
The US are convinced there was an explosion whether caused by terrorism or mechanical failure
It is also claimed that the aircraft went into a spin and crashed

Summary time
 

Signal to noise on these threads becomes a problem very quickly.

Declaration: interested civilian with no qualifications to propose theories.

But, can anyone state for certain:

1). Is the rapid descent and turns a fact? Does anybody the source? e.g. the location of the radar - was it radar or a trace of transponder or other transmissions?
2) Last know definite position - not based on tracks that have been through software and are prone to extrapolations between updates.

3) Media sources state the flight level as 370 but have various times to run until landing, ranging from 20 to 30 mins. AT what point would you expect a descent to start? Is the flight level and last know position what you would expect on this flight plan?

Thanks in advance.

The US Navy certainly has a presence in that area, with ultimate tracking abilities.

I think Israel will have the best coverage TBH..................

Onetrack, in post 213, makes sense. A well built aircraft can withstand a rupture in the hull, even with explosive decompression. But the elevator and the rudder if damaged could lead to unusual attitudes. The flight path described certainly looks like a spin, the turn one way, then the very rapid spiral descent. As for no communication, we all know the rules. Com comes last on that list.

The Med must be the worst place to search for floating evidence, it must be full of rubbish of every sort, especially life jackets near Greek islands....seems to me the sooner they can try to locate the ping from the recorders, the sooner they may find the wreckage.

HH, the point of disappearance is 600km from the Israeli shoreline, too far for any land based radar even at FL370.

Radar coverage : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Akrotiri : see recent operations.

juristriction
 

if the Greeks couldn't raise the crew for a period of time why is it being handled by the Egyptians ? had it actually crossed Into their airspace confirmed by transponder returns or is this all based on expected position from flight route ?

I'm sure the world would rather this was handled by European investigators, rather than a country that is adamant that its security is sound and trying to convince the flying masses that it is a safe country to be bringing visitors to following the unfortunate Russian incident last year.

What Mary Meagre says makes most sense to me i would just add that the A320 is fly by wire so we don't know what was damaged in the explosion which gave the crew little or no control

@kbootb

1) No. It is inferred from the statement of the Greek minister of transport, but we have seen many such statements in the past from unqualified officials quickly changed or revoked.
2) Confirmed by both Greek ATC statement (can be taken as authentic) and also Egyptair. Also as seen from plenty of past events, FR24/Flightaware data are pretty reliable as long as real data are received, and in this case it does appear to be in agreement with official sources.
3) Fits perfectly, top of descent into Cairo along this route is usually just before the Egyptian shoreline, with 20-25 minutes left to landing. At their LKP they still had at least 35-40 minutes flight time left.

visibility
 

According to my interpretation of the moon calculators, the moon was 90% (nearly full) and 20-50degress above the horizon at 270degrees.

If the weather was clear, I imagine it would be visible from copilots seat?

Mickjoebill

I'm shocked that in 2016, we can't pinpoint to a fairly decent degree of certainty where the aircraft could be after 24hrs of daylight since it went missing.

The aircraft went missing in what was primarily 'European' airspace, so we are not talking Pacific Ocean or vast areas of dead zone radar coverage here.

I've avoided phrases like crash, downed, blown up etc because we don't know what happened here and my thoughts go out to all the families and friends of those onboard who must be going through hell at this very difficult time.

Just to re-iterate the loss of RT here is entirely normal. I've flown this route for over a decade and Greek ATC fades about 10 minutes from their FIR boundary. I always ask them to give me the expected Cairo freq beforehand so I can change over when crossing KUMBI. It can take a couple of minutes before you can hear the Egyptian controller but this is again entirely normal.

Was there an ELT signal following the disappearance? How is it known the plane crashed?

Global Pilots on missing Egyptair flight MS804

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MONTREAL - The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) is closely monitoring the developments related to the disappearance of Egyptair flight MS 804, an Airbus A320 en-route from Paris (CDG) to Cairo (CAI).

Our thoughts and best hopes are with the 66 crew and passengers onboard the aircraft, and their families.

Whilst the search and rescue efforts are taking place, IFALPA stresses the need to avoid speculation as to what happened to the aircraft. The Federation has reached out to the Egyptian Air Line Pilots’ Association and will offer its expertise to the Egyptian Accident Investigation Agency in order to help gather facts and any other information which may be pertinent to this event.

For further information, please contact Captain Martin Chalk, IFALPA President, at +44 7432 616 119 or [email protected], or Mrs. Anna Lou, IFALPA Communications & Marketing Coor- dinator, at +1 514 419 1191 or [email protected].
###
Note to Editors: The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations represents in excess of 100,000 pilots in about 100 countries around the globe. The mission of IFALPA is to promote the highest level of aviation safety worldwide and to be the global advocate of the piloting profession; providing representation, services and support to both our members and the aviation industry.
See the Federation website Home - IFALPA
©2016 The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations
In the interests of flight safety, reproduction of this Press Release in whole or in part is encouraged. It may not be offered of sale or used commercially. All reprints must credit IFALPA.

Are you referring to the air to ground direction here too because, if so, any mayday call may not have been picked up.