haddon90

agreed. any idea how long the analysis will last?

Deltus

How far from the main crash site was the tail section? If it was a catastrophic failure of the rear pressure bulkhead (like that JAL flight), presumably the tail would have blown off and fallen to the ground, and the pilots would then have fought to control the plane, changing altitude etc before crashing a few minutes later, miles away from the tail.

Does that theory work with the evidence we have?

Xyzzy

Aren't the FDR and CVR in the tail? If s, the recordings (the CVR recordings at least) likely end moments after the sudden catastrophic event that caused the crash.

Xyzzy

Yes - the tail is located about a mile from the bulk of the ther debris. There are links and a map a few posts back in this thread.

Guava

In the case of JAL accident, the pilots were able to communicate with the ground and fought to regain the control of the plane for several minutes though ultimately unsuccessful. If the tail section has simply been blown off, the Metrojet most likely would have had time to send out SOS call, so any similarity to the JAL incident stops here. Instead, initial reading from the black box suggests a catastrophic and sudden event, more likely some kind of explosive decompression. Whatever happened, it likely happened very quickly. But experts are confident that based on the sounds captured by the black boxes, they can discern whether the explosion is from a bomb or not, even if it only lasted a millisecond due to previous experiences from past accidents or cases.

I don't think what you said is accurate. The previous post suggested the tail is found further up north compared to other debris, contradicting that it came off first. Secondly, there is no such thing as "bulk" of the debris given that it is widely reported that the debris are scattered over 20 square KM or 8 square miles, a very very large area. There is not a concentrated debris field to speak of.

Exec_Plat

How long analysis will take? or how long until we hear?

The prelim analysis is done. Whether we hear any statements or leaks, who knows. Final report in a year.

Xyzzy

The airplane came apart several miles up and fell in two main areas that are about one mile apart. I don't think the tail ended up a mile in front of the rest of the fuselage. The BBC posted this map:

It does not show which part is which but it lists "Main crash site" which I'd guess is the fuselage. Also, the earlier post with the small map overlaid with the two main debris fields states that the tail was found ne mile behind the main fuselage along the line of travel.

Worcester

Possibly tax, the Irish standard corporate tax rate is 12.5% but there are various further exemptions. There are a number of air leasing companies in Ireland.

It may also mean that the aircraft was owned by an Irish companies, in which case any actions against the aircraft (such as seizing it in lieu of debts) may have to go through Irish common law rather than Russian, which if the Russian company was in trouble may have been a factor.

EsherFlyer

My original text there was potentially misleading. I've adjusted it to try and be clearer.

I think it takes about 3 minutes for something that is reasonably lumpy (rather than streamlined) to fall 30000 feet and encountering air resistance. So a mile or so of distance on the ground means a differential speed of 20-30mph. I'm surprised they are so close together if separation occurred at that height as I'd expect greater rates of deceleration and other effects to have dispersed them further.

An image of the debris field from Lockerbie or similar might inform. The Wikipedia entry for that incident says debris was spread across 2000sqkm, which would be about 50km diameter circle. Or 30 miles for those that think that way. That might be taken to infer that breakup was at around 1000 feet.

Alternatively, could a hard semi controlled landing lead to another tailstrike, separation, and the 'bounced' main section coming down a mile away? At 200mph it would only need 20 seconds or so of onward flight to cover the mile.

invisible

It seems that in the history of civil aviation, there were only four occurrences of bomb in cargo hold:

Air India Flight 182
Pan Am Flight 103
UTA Flight 772
Avianca Flight 203

Last three happened in 1989 and there was no single occurrence of such case since that.

GUWonder

There have been more than that. That's just a fraction of civilian planes that have had bombs in cargo holds.

Or do you just mean passenger airline service where the plane was destroyed by a bomb during the flight?

UrbanDweller

I'm not suggesting that material from the tail went into the engines but rather pieces from areas of the plane forward of the engines. I'm envisioning the decompression not just blowing the tail off but causing other parts of the plane to break apart as well. I think that's what happened in the China Airlines incident. (The wikipedia entry says "Radar data suggests that the aircraft broke into four pieces while at FL350.") I don't think it would take a very large piece to cause the engine to flare up as it did in the birdstrike test video. Just a theory. Just wondering if there can be a non-bomb non-strike reason for the satellite to detect a flash of heat.

UrbanDweller

Remember the bump in altitude before the Metrojet started to plummet? I was just reading about China Airlines 611. Here's what the wikipedia entry says: "The flight data recorder from Flight 611 shows that the plane began gaining altitude at a significantly faster rate in the 27 seconds before the plane broke apart, although the extra gain in altitude was well within the plane's design limits. The plane was supposed to be leveling off as it approached its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet."

If the cabin began to decompress slowly at first, could that somehow account for an increase in altitude? I realize that the pilots would want to descend, not ascend, but is there some kind of physical phenomenon that would occur which would cause the aircraft to ascend until the pilots realize what's happening and try to take corrective action?

(added later) Flightradar24 is saying that the altitude data is probably unreliable during that bump period because of the type of sensor. http://www.flightradar24.com/blog/me...-data-decoded/ Perhaps the same thing happened with the China Airlines flight, its altitude data came from the flight data recorder. Graphs of Flightradar24's data can be seen here: http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post9168286

invisible

Yes, that's correct.

luckypierre

On the B747..Probable loss of hydraulic fluid to the horizontal stabilizers from the lines being severed in the moments before the plane disintegrated..as the crack propagated from STA2100 area, it was significant enough to pull the tubing apart..the plane would immediately lose trim.