Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Varche]

Surprised no comment here.

Standard terrorist attack? Waiting for maximum confusion before claiming responsibility? Lone operator.?

I always wonder about the security of duty free type shops after security

[Kevin Wood]

For an aircraft to disappear with no mayday call it has to be an explosion onboard or a major mechanical failure causing the airframe to break up. We won't know which for some time.

Actually: In the light of MH370, we can perhaps add sabotage by flight crew to that.

[05omegav6]

For an aircraft to disappear with no mayday call it has to be an explosion onboard or a major mechanical failure causing the airframe to break up. We won't know which for some time.

Actually: In the light of MH370, we can perhaps add sabotage by flight crew to that.

Egypt Air have form for that...

There was that 767 from New York to Cairo which crashed shortly after reaching cruising altitude. One of the flight deck put the nose down and held it there...

Sure, terrorists will get, and take, the blame....

Varche, your concerns regarding duty free shops etc are unfounded. Certainly here, everything being delivered airside goes through security, same as everything/one else... gets delivered to a building, unloaded, screened and is reloaded into vehicles airside. Shop staff do the restocking, but the deliveries are ALL carried out by/in the control of the airport authority.

I would be more concerned about the loaders overseas loading mobility scooters which are still powered up, especially those which still have thier lithium batteries attached. The really worrying part of that is that the crew don't always know that they even have them loaded

As I type, this could even be a cause in this case

[baggers]

The crash not to long ago, it was the pilot that intentionally crashed it. Was it into the Alps?

[05omegav6]

The crash not to long ago, it was the pilot that intentionally crashed it. Was it into the Alps?

Not that one...

This one... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990

[Drewomega]

This is interesting.

http://avherald.com/h?article=4987fb09&opt=0

[tigers_gonads]

Sound to me that the pilot was having a crafty fag in the toilets 
I always said that smoking is bad for you and your passengers 

[Rods2]

Incendiary device, lithium-ion battery fire or an electrical fault are all possibilities.

[tigers_gonads]

Incendiary device, lithium-ion battery fire or an electrical fault are all possibilities.

If i'm been serious for a minute, I do wonder what these chemical detectors which sniff out explosives actually look for 

For instance, would it be possible to construct a device which would fail the sniff test and still burn quickly / fiercely enough to cause terminal damage to a fly by wire control system 

[Entwood]

As in the usual way in these matters, the more we learn the more questions arise .....

ACARS shows data transmissions continued for 3 minutes from the first "window overheat" before all power was lost (to ACARS)......

90 degree turn is a standard procedure to leave an airway if you wish to make an emergency descent - it gets you out of the way and avoids you flying into someone below you - tight 360 degree turn at high bank angle is also a standard procedure to lose height rapidly in an emergency descent.......

Smoke/fumes/fire would all instigate an emergency descent........

So, it appears possible that an emergency descent was commenced due to smoke/fire in the cockpit/toilet/avionics area ..... BIG question that doesn't compute .... why no radio calls The avionics bay was powered - to ACARS - for 3 minutes, the aircraft was flyable and under control as it did those two manoeuvres so the pilot (s) were conscious and operating effectively, but no emergency radio call, no IFF/SSR emergency squawk, nothing ......

3 minutes is a LONG time in an emergency situation to NOT instigate a "mayday" call or to NOT press the 7700 squawk button on the IFF/SSR box ... even if only one pilot was working, training and instinct would suggest those calls would be made ....  but they were not .... most odd .... 

Rest in Peace all those lost ... we will learn what happened eventually.

[Kevin Wood]

Can only assume that "Aviate" (and possibly "fire-fight") was taking 100% of their capacity during those 3 minutes.. 

Then again... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/egyptair-flight-ms804-pilot-spoke-with-air-traffic-control-for-several-minutes-before-crash-a7041936.html

[05omegav6]

Incendiary device, lithium-ion battery fire or an electrical fault are all possibilities.

My money is on a mobility scooter(or other electrical device) being improperly/inappropriately loaded... it would have been loaded last in either front or rear hold, almost 50/50 as to which... if in the front hold, it's next to the avionics bays and they're just under the toilet/flight deck bulkhead...

And if you want to know how quickly a hold fire can bring down a plane, read this...

https://aviation-safety.net/investigation/cvr/transcripts/cvr_vj592.php

Refers to the Valuejet flight 592... First sign of potential problem was 6"31 after starting the take off roll. Fire declaration follows 18 seconds later... last communication from the crew is less than a minute later. A further three minutes after this, the plane had crashed.

Consider that although an archaic pos, the DC9 is pretty rugged yet only took a minute and a half for fire to bring the plane down.

An A320, by comparison, is almost utterly dependent on electronics... which might make it more susceptible to sudden and catastrophic in flight fires.

[05omegav6]

Incendiary device, lithium-ion battery fire or an electrical fault are all possibilities.

If i'm been serious for a minute, I do wonder what these chemical detectors which sniff out explosives actually look for 

For instance, would it be possible to construct a device which would fail the sniff test and still burn quickly / fiercely enough to cause terminal damage to a fly by wire control system 

In a word no... simply because prohibited hold items, such as lithium ion batteries, lighters etc ALL have to be loaded as hand luggage... and even then, there are somethings that are prohibited to put on a plane, no arguments. This allows individual items to be scanned one by one, and makes them far easier to be pulled for closer inspection. This is why ipads and laptops must be place in separate trays by themselves.

Don't forget too, that although you don't see it happen, hold luggage is also xrayed and if needs be searched manually When people are asked to identify a bag at the gate, it isn't because the tag is missing...

[Entwood]

Can only assume that "Aviate" (and possibly "fire-fight") was taking 100% of their capacity during those 3 minutes.. 

Then again... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/egyptair-flight-ms804-pilot-spoke-with-air-traffic-control-for-several-minutes-before-crash-a7041936.html

Accepted .. but the 90 degree turn and the 360 turn "shows" they were "aviating" .. and the rapid height loss agrees .. an emergency descent in progress, .... one pull of the transmit trigger with one finger and yell "mayday" .. they would have done it a thousand times in the simulator ... even if the cockpit was full of smoke, with a "sweep on" mask the message gets out ...

As for fire fighting .. extremely limited options ... tiny extinguishers and all the ignition sources in remote locations ..... very little chance of achieving any worthwhile result TBH ..

As to that report ... every source has said "not true" .. and you would have to be a conspiracy theorist of the first degree to explain the cover up needed to hide something like that !!

[aaronjb]

This was all over the news while I was standing in Chicago O'Hare waiting to catch a flight back to Heathrow with my girlfriend, who is petrified of flying. So that went well.

Thoughts are with the souls lost, of course.