MS804

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Oberon

An Egyptair flight from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar and has likely gone down in the Mediterrainean at some point between Cyprus and Egypt.

Live updates from the Beeb here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-africa-36328976

I have a horrid feeling that the mods will be able to roll this over into the 'All Purpose Terrorism' thread in the near future given the aircrafts departure and destination points, but for now I'll put this seperately.

Why is it a "horrid" feeling?

[Schroeder]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Why is it a "horrid" feeling?

The horrid feeling is that this might not have been an accident but a terror strike.

[Catfish]

^ Some egyptian officials have just said that, but no evidence published (yet).

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

The horrid feeling is that this might not have been an accident but a terror strike.

I misread it, my apologies

[Skybird]

Me too thinks a terror strike is the most likely scenario, for two reasons.

First, if there is no distress call that got sent, whatever happened must have happened very fast. Engine fires and malfunctions usually do not lead that quickly to penultimate desaster that pilot and copilt cannot even release an emergency call. Which leaves some kind of explosive decompression as the top explanation.

Second, we are approaching summer holidays slowly but surely, and a major international sports event. And Muslim terror is locked in a fight with the Egyptian state for which tourism is a major source of income. Any attack reducing that income, is a blow to the Egyptian state.

Also there already have been attempted and successful attacks on airliners in Egypt recently.

From a Muslim terrorists POV , the chosen target makes sense. Plus revenge for Mursi and the MB, and all that.

Russian FSB also claims it to be a terror strike, but gives no evidence.

Other scenarios are possible explanations as well at this point of time. But the terror theory has the highest realistic probability of all possible scenarios one could imagine, currently. And the aircraft model, an A320, has a remarkable technical reliability record.

[Oberon]

Yeah, I think that it is the most likely explanation, however there are a lot of questions which hold me off being absolutely sure, the descent spiral just before the plunge into the sea and the fact that it took off from Charles de Gaulle airport and headed towards Egypt rather than the other way around.
Given that France has received two terror attacks and there's been an attack on a European airport fairly recently you'd expect security to be pretty tight at Charles de Gaulle.
The descent spiral, as shown in this Beeb graphic:



seem as though perhaps someone was still trying to keep control of it, however it's equally just possible that this was just the way the wind was affecting the aircrafts glide path as it descended out of control.

Sadly terrorism is the most likely option, although it is strange that no-one has claimed responsibility for it yet, normally Daesh and their ilk are all over something like this but they've been quiet, I guess it's possible that they're holding back while their operative gets clear, but who can say?

Either which way, a very tragic day.

[Catfish]

There was that Air France Flight from South America. Ice had rendered all tachometer devices useless, and the autopilot tried to counter with the data it received. When the jet lost altitude it gave positive elevator control and the nose went up until stalling.
The pilots did not know what was going on and were not able to switch from automatic to manual steering. A stall, drop and circling could be a hint for a similar technical failure.
Just saying.

[Von Due]

Until they find some hard evidence, it might be a good idea, like been posted above, to think of all the things that can lead to something like this.

Deliberate actions by crew: A flight engineer attacked both pilots of Federal Express flight 705 with hammer and speargun in murder/suicide attempt. The pilots did successfully return though and the guy was arrested, tried and sentenced. Germanwings Flight 9525 saw the pilot commit murder/suicide.

Malfunctions. It is possible albeit extremely unlikely that the plane lost all electric power/radio/communications for some bizarre reason. Ice can cause sudden crashes. Ground maintenance errors like forgetting to remove duct tape covering the pitot tubes.

Structural: Airliners have disintegrated for no immediate apparent reason while in the air before. Comet, the first jet airliner (design flaw), China Airlines flight 611 (improper, previous repairs) and more.

Terrorism: Is a candidate too.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by Catfish

There was that Air France Flight from South America. Ice had rendered all tachometer devices useless, and the autopilot tried to counter with the data it received. When the jet lost altitude it gave positive elevator control and the nose went up until stalling.
The pilots did not know what was going on and were not able to switch from automatic to manual steering. A stall, drop and circling could be a hint for a similar technical failure.
Just saying.

There are three major errors in your narrative:
1) When autopilot does not get sufficient data to fly safely it disconnects. That happened on Air France Flight 447.

2) Change between flight control laws is automated process not manual one. However ff person knows what he or she is doing it can be intentionally triggered by shutting down some of flight control computers.

3) At time of the accident plane's captain was off duty. First officer was in captain's seat with second officer in FO's. When troubles started first officer tried to correct situation. However second officer was applying constant nost up command in his side stick which caused the orignal stall situation and as it overrode all first officer's control inputs also ensured first officer could not correct situation. However I do not know if first officer's intended actions were appropriate or not.

Air France Flight 447 crash was due pilot error with mechanical malfunction (frozen pitot tubes) and user interface design (presentation of information and lack of feedback via side stick controllers) playing secondary role. Procedures exist for flying aircraft without accurate speed information but those were not followed.

(Air France 447 and Air Transat 236 were used as examples in user interface design course when speaking about user interface design in safety critical applications.)