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CCIP · 03-25-15, 01:56 PM

Now, obviously a lot of things could've incapacitated the pilots, so I'm not jumping the gun on anything, BUT - here's something to consider: again, the 9-minute descent where there's no evidence of any control inputs or heading changes, and the aircraft's vertical path is consistent with a fairly normal descent at idle thrust and spoilers out. The most similar suicide-by-pilot incident would be the recent LAM 470 crash, but even there the aircraft was going down at rates in excess of 6,000fpm, not the 3,500fpm that you had here. And that one's still under investigation. PSA 1771, the most famous cockpit invasion/suicide incident, went supersonic before crashing, and all the 9/11 planes were going at substantially more erratic paths and extreme speeds/descent rates than this one.

I think it's just really unlikely that anything other than a decompression and incapacitated pilots would've done all these things to make this accident happen. If someone was trying to crash the plane, they probably wouldn't have been going down with spoilers out and at idle thrust. It's hard to see why that descent would've been initiated that way in the first place except a decompression. If something went wrong with the plane's controls, it's unlikely that the pilots would've kept silent - and unlikely that something would've gone so wrong as to completely prevent the pilots from making any input. Except a sudden loss of consciousness.
But let's wait for the investigation.

03-25-15, 01:56 PM	#19
CCIP Navy Seal Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Waterloo, Canada Posts: 8,700 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 2	Now, obviously a lot of things could've incapacitated the pilots, so I'm not jumping the gun on anything, BUT - here's something to consider: again, the 9-minute descent where there's no evidence of any control inputs or heading changes, and the aircraft's vertical path is consistent with a fairly normal descent at idle thrust and spoilers out. The most similar suicide-by-pilot incident would be the recent LAM 470 crash, but even there the aircraft was going down at rates in excess of 6,000fpm, not the 3,500fpm that you had here. And that one's still under investigation. PSA 1771, the most famous cockpit invasion/suicide incident, went supersonic before crashing, and all the 9/11 planes were going at substantially more erratic paths and extreme speeds/descent rates than this one. I think it's just really unlikely that anything other than a decompression and incapacitated pilots would've done all these things to make this accident happen. If someone was trying to crash the plane, they probably wouldn't have been going down with spoilers out and at idle thrust. It's hard to see why that descent would've been initiated that way in the first place except a decompression. If something went wrong with the plane's controls, it's unlikely that the pilots would've kept silent - and unlikely that something would've gone so wrong as to completely prevent the pilots from making any input. Except a sudden loss of consciousness. But let's wait for the investigation. __________________ There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers. -Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)