Eyewitnesses + Engine noise
 

I'm not a pilot, but I know that sound travels at 340m/s (sea level)..
This means that for someone 1000m from the crash the sound and what he/she sees have a time diffirence of ~3 seconds...
With a vertical speed of 4000ft/min, 3 seconds is 200ft. Somenone reporting that he heard the engines 'reving up when the plane hit the ground', then in reality the engines reved up at 200ft.

Have it in mind when you think about eyewitnesses reports, eye witnesses are not flight data recorders, and I doubt that the accident board will ask them to testify.

Add to that that planes sound diffirently depending on the angle that you are(a bit extreme comparison, but have you seen an A380 slow flyby? You can
barley hear it from some angles)

Eltonioni
 

The mode S altitude reporting units normaly work to 25ft incriments. The +/_ 125 ft is the operational limitation.

Not much to go on so far. As far as I can gather the a/c was at flight idle (or close to it) and losing airspeed until the crew advanced throttles and the ground got in the way of the recovery from one or more of below g/s, low speed and high rod.

How long does it take in the 737-800 to get climb thrust in landing configuration after putting the throttles forward from flight idle?

Video seems genuine
 

Those claiming that the video is fake or made a day or two after the incident should note that in the video, only the left-hand front door is open (left, as seen from front of plane) whereas the later still photography published by the Dutch fire service of the rescue operations show that both front doors have been opened. This supports the fact that the video was indeed taken before the emergency services arrived. Plus, the fairly obvious fact that the video shows people wandering aimlessly all over the crash site - which would hardly be the case a few hours later...

There are plenty of cases where people have made a "little movie", in circumstances where some might expect everybody to be either in shock, or legging it, or both. When the London Underground was bombed recently, several mobile phone movies were made.

It would seem completely possible that everybody sitting in a section of the airframe might have walked out - the movie indeed shows this. It also shows the overhead lockers still in place (though open) so that airframe section did not come down that hard.

RatherBeFlying
 

From rusty memory (someone will correct me) I think the certification requirement is to get 95% of TOGA thrust within 5 seconds. We're not talking about climb thrust here.

quote] From rusty memory (someone will correct me) I think the certification requirement is to get 95% of TOGA thrust within 5 seconds. We're not talking about climb thrust here. [/quote]

Building on the above. I think that what is important here is the rate of change of thrust vs time, vs the rate of change of pitch (due to thrust changes) vs rate of change of airspeed.

In the long and short of it, in spte of the guesses, a little DFDR data could go a long way towards establishing if the aircraft had already reached a critical AoA before the thrust was changed or the thrust change preceeded it.

Some of the posts while intelligent and well intentioned are leading too far ahead of any confirmed useful facts.

An observation from the transponder data:

The aircraft descended out of cloud almost at the same instant that the groundspeed reached 120 kts, i.e. the indicated airspeed was then around 130 kts which I guess was fairly close to Vref. And it was practically on the glide slope.

Scenario: A quick glance at the instruments indicated everything was OK, so attention shifted to the runway ahead. But, as the data suggests, in fact the airspeed was decaying at a rate that only ~10 seconds later took the aircraft below 110 kts indicated, which is, I guess, about the stick shaker activation speed.

Is it plausible that the cloudbreak caused a diversion of attention at the critical time? Just asking.

Hmmm

The crew would presumably have had to not react to the following

1) Glideslope aural alert if GS was captured of course
2) EGPWS Terrain Terrain Warning
3) Possibly a stall warning
4) Possibly a radar contoller warning re altitude dme

So they ignored all of this or left it too late, and flew into the ground - all 6 eyes????

Come on, this would be very very unlikely. There must be more to this than meets the eye. I would not be too hard on the crew just yet....

video
 

The video is obviously genuine and taken soon after the accident. OK, so making a film on a mobile phone would not be the priority for most of us (I hope), but this guy just survived a plane crash and I'm sure had any residual sense shaken out of him. People act in different ways. Simple as that.

It must have been the most bewilderingly disorientating situation to be put through. I felt nauseous just watching it, let alone what it must be like to be there. The eerie calm captured on tape is surely what you would expect immediately after an accident and before the emergency services arrive. No need for conspiracy theories IMHO.

Dusttraces engines
 

Thx for pointing out the pic of the engines blowout smoke.
They has to be still going (few secs) while seperated from the a/c. So my withness that engines were still running during impact and after is most likely.
I was upm to 50 mtr from the a/c at the site. Engines were +/- 80-100 mtr in front of a/c almost parallel . The tailwing was +/- 100-125 mtr behind a/c. while tailsection was still attached (0r close to) at back of the a/c.
The degree of damage to the fuselage was not in the extend to think 50tn heavy a/c was hitting the ground fast. Pulling the nose high up with (max) power seems to me a controled crash landing.
http://photonews.hurriyet.com.tr/Liv...s/DSCN1122.JPG

Autothrottle "clicks out"
 

Regarding some earlier post about the auto throttle i would just like to mention the fact that i have experieced on 737-800 aircrafts how the auto throttle "clicks out". The so called "auto throttle arm switch" leaves its armed postion and goes to off. It does this without any warning. If this would happen during an ILS app while reducing speed, it might well go unnoticed and lead to a stall.

F/A's Action in this incident
 

I have seen some hint of people complaining of the lack of cc helping with the evacuation of the pax in this accident. Considering two would be in the very front between the cabin and flight deck they would have been very lucky to have survived seeing the state of others within that part of the a/c and were probably unconscious. As for the two at the rear, there whole world was ripped apart with the impacting of the rear fuse and they would not have been in a position to help either.
So come on people, think before you make these unfounded remarks.
I am not going to speculate on this accident, I do hold some views from what visible evidence is available to us all, but as an ex ground engineer with over 45 years experience I leave this to experienced pilots and the investigators. Time will tell.

"crashresident" ,

How long did you stay at the site? Can you confirm or disprove these statements:

No,this is just not correct.
If the localizer was captured above the path,the pilot(or trainee) may have not been able to program the automatics for a recapture.Perhaps then they took alll the automatics out.During the recapture,they get distracted(or rather fixated) and forget that thrust is manual.
Automation.Great tool.But you never ask of George what you cant do yourself.Pilots should be trained to fly the plane manually with raw data first then introduce the AFDS incrementally.Basics first.Airmanship.

The ground was presumeably still v. cold and wet. possibly not smoke from a (hot) engine but steam from the ground?

Status of flight attendents
 

Reports I've read indicate a total of 4 FAs. One was killed, one lost a leg (likely the two sitting directly behind the cockpit). One commented that she was glad she carefully explained to the passengers how to operate the exists as they were the ones who opened the exit and then carried her out of the aircraft. That leaves either one or two FAs who could have assisted the passengers after the crash, depending on if the FA who lost her leg was the same one who commented about the passengers assisting her.

Look at the photo again. It appears that most of the dust/smoke near the aircraft is rising almost straight up. The dust/smoke near the right engine is being blown back by something. I don't think it is the wind.

Crash-site
 

to LiS,
I arrived aprox 10min. (10.45)at the site. stayed there for 1 our 15 min.
Help arrived when aproached a/c. At that time volunteers rescueteams were helping pax.
It may take several minutes for medics to enter the a/c for safety reason.
So help was there, was quick and efficient.