Russian civilian aircraft goes off radar, reportedly crashes over Egypt

originally posted by: Azureblue

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Azureblue

So which MANPADS can they use again? They have no known SAM systems so it must have been a MANPADS if it was shot down, so which one is capable of reaching that altitude, and causing an aircraft that size to react like the transponder showed again?

A few facts:

We have an aircraft type with a known issue with the pitot tubes that has caused one crash previously. We have an aircraft with reported technical problems for the week prior to the accident. The aircraft flew for an airline with a previous history of maintenance problems. The pilot reported it was in poor condition technically prior to takeoff.

so what evidence is there, at this point in time, of poor maninteance being the cause????

Moreover, what kind of poor maintenance would cause a passenger liner to explode and I mean expode not just catch fire, burn and then expode. According to the video I have seen, albeit poor quality, shows a large plane in the sky and then there is a big fireball. There is no fire preceeding the exposion. This is supposedly flimed by ISIS.

This plane contained only Russian people, no other nationalities were on board. It was within striking distance of Isral but I find it hard to believe it was within striking distance by ISIS when it was 10,000 metres in the air. How would they even know where the plane was in the sky??? How would they know where in the sky it was unless they have radar that they are not using to attack the Assad govt with??? Hihgly unlikly.

Isreal has the radar capacity, the military capacity to bring it down and the movtiation. They want Russia out of Syria so the US can continue to bomb Syria back into the stone age for them like they did to Iraq and Afghansistan.

Claims that the plane had problems before take off means nothing once it got up into the air and got to cruising at 10,000 metres. Again, what poor maintence would cause an immediate explosion?? If it were the engines catching fire and then the plance crashed because of it, well thats different.

The most likly thing that would cause and instant explosion is a missile. poor mainteance would in all likleyhood cause a fire first.

There are many maintenance failures that could lead to an explosive decompression and many instances of this happening. This was also an old plane and I was thinking erlier about Aloha 243 what if something like that happened to this plane?

Do you have a source confirming all passenger where russian? From what I have read 3 or 4 of the passengers where not Russian with at least one of them being from Ukraine possibly all 4 of them.

The video circulating is not even the correct type of plane.

The US satellites picked up some form of explosion around the time of the accident but they also state they would of picked up a heat trail from a missile which they didn't.

a reply to: Azureblue

China Flight 611. It was a 747 that suffered a structural failure in flight that resulted in the aircraft exploding after reaching cruising altitude.

There are no magic weapons that could reach that high and be undetectable. There are no indications of a weapon being used. There is even less evidence Israel was involved.

a reply to: dianajune

A military analyst is not an Aircraft Accident specialist. His skills revolve around analysing military situations. Part of that would include making things go boom.

While he would have the expertise to make the plane go boom, it is not his expertise to be able to determine if the aircraft actually did go boom. Only the AAIB has that expertise. You fell for one of the DM's usual tricks. Wheel out a statement from an expert, but said expert doesn't really have the relevant expertise to be making said statement.

Either way, this isn't the place to discuss the DM's tactics or reputation.

a reply to: absente

Current Russian-Egyptian relations would suggest that the 'crash' was indeed mechanical failure, or pilot error, and Not something more sinister and elusive. With the ouster of President Morsi, relations between these two countries have significantly improved, both politically, economically, and militarily, much to the admonishment of Western countries.

The possibility of a fatigue crack in the aft fuselage has been raised. The APU was found a pretty good distance from the impact site and looked like it had been removed by a saw.

m.sputniknews.com...

I had a thought about how to determine the cause of future crashes. I don't know if the airline industry considered this before, but what about cameras?

Cameras in the cockpit and cabin. And the cargo hold. And outside the jet. Each camera could be connected to the black boxes, so that in the event of a future crash they could see what happened.

This might sound simplistic, but it could help.

a reply to: dianajune

It's been looked into for a couple of years now. It takes awhile for a major change like that take awhile to go through. The pilots Union has fought the cameras in the cockpit though.

someone on AVHerald has stating they are interrogating the driver that delivered the food to the plane - this is pointing more and more towards a bomb.
Is the galley on this plane at the rear?

It's certainly clear that the front 3 quarters of the plane ended up somewhere where the back quarter didn't, suggesting a major break near the rear of the plane, though there could be a number of causes for that (including a rapid descent if it's spiraling etc).

I have no idea. But these elements of this photo get my attention.



A clean "splice" around the fuselage, an inward dent (granted that one could be from upward force on crashing), a splice down the tale and a splice across the tail.

What these indicate to me is an impact with another plane (Hughes Airwest Flight 706 being chopped up by a fighter jet as an example). Granted there is no visible paint transfer but those splices on the tail look suspicious to me. And that would certainly account for why this a) went down over a military controlled area and b) why African authorities and PM were on the scene so quickly. What prevented this plane from having a "missing" period, cos it landed in a remote desert area didn't it? They could easily keep us from knowing about any second crash site, get us all looking in one direction etc.

It's also noticeable that the main section managed to belly flop. From 31,000ft you'd expect it to nose dive, create a crater and be indiscernable, but there in the photos, you can clearly see half-three quarter typical plane shape on the ground. A belly flop would perhaps mean a stall, but that wouldn't account for the tail being elsewhere, so it's all pretty odd...

Anyway that's again just speculation I have no freaking clue. They can call me a wild conspiracy theorist for having an opinion before the facts, but something feels off, it did when the story first broke. Sue me for making discussion...!

Why did they say it had hit rocks? Where in any of the pictures is anything near a rock? Why did they initially say it had perhaps tried to make a controlled landing? Maybe I misread something originally but I'm sure the story changed over the first couple of days.

Hughes Airwest Flight 706 accident:

a reply to: dashrunner

They want to know of he saw anything around the tail, especially where the tail strike repair was performed. He may have seen something and didn't say anything.

a reply to: markymint

If the repair from 2001 let go the tail would have peeled and snapped off. That's one of the things they're looking at.

True. But then, JAL 123's entire tail section didn't rip off, just the tail fin. And these are newer jets, surely that part is even more sturdy now. Yet here you have a large gash (just above the M of Metro) that, if that was an impact point, would absolutely create what seems to be the tear pattern visible here. The top bit seems to have done a clean separation, the bottom bit is the bit that tore off messy.



Also how could that leading edge of the tailfin get such a clean scalpel style incision in it, when this tale section has apparently just gone woompf into the ground bottom first. Flight 447 belly flopped into the sea, which they say is often just as powerful an impact as hitting land, but no strange incisions on that tail when it impacted, the whole thing just clean came off and stayed in shape.



Dunno, I agree the tail section is probably the key. But it's hard to believe an insuficcient tail strike repair caused the ENTIRE tail (rather, entire back of the plane) to rip off, as we see here, it's come off in one big chunk, and it doesn't even seem to have started where a typical tail strike would occur, but rather at the top section (the bottom section being the latter stage of the peeling effect hence there being more of that part of the fuselage attached still to the tail than the top part).

Wouldn't a typical tail strike happen a bit further near the back, perhaps where that little thing is jutting down to the right of the 2 in the photo above?

Just my opinion!

a reply to: markymint

Because JAL 123 blew out the aft bulkhead, it didn't have an external repair let go. That was China 711. When the aft bulkhead on JAL 123 went, the decompression event blew the tail cone off, which took most of the vertical fin with it.

By contrast, when China 611 crashed, the outer skin where the tail strike was repaired let go. When it split open the aircraft broke apart in flight and came down in pieces similar to this.

Air France was intact when it hit the water, so there was more structure around the vertical fin to absorb damage from the impact. This aircraft lost the APU when the tail let go, so there was less around it to spread any impact and it was subjected to more impact. Impact angle also played a role. If it was broken like that as part of the initial breakup of the aircraft or should have come off prior to impact with the ground as it tumbled.

Where the tail strike happens depends on how hard it hits the runway. The tail skid will alleviate fairly light strikes, but if it hits hard it's going to cause quite a bit of damage. Again where the break occurs depends on where the damage is from the strike.

We may be witnessing a fatal UFO - Civilian Aircraft crash.

Reference: drone video.

Personally, i doubt it was fatigue, more in line for me is a weakened structure of the fuselage due to heat from a fire which was either inside the forward cargo compartment or below the cargo compartment.

Unbelievable that they have not talked about it or looked at it apparently while the signs of an in flight fire are clearly there.

First, there was a clarification about the data which is deemed unreliable.
So the aircraft most likely did not descent and ascend at such a violent rate before it disintegrated.

Important Notes About Data Validity

I share a few more pictures and will make an extensive post in the evening because i have to go now.

It's pretty easy to connect the dots here, just by looking at the who, what, where and why aspects.

It's also possible to launch a manpads from a helicopter at high altitude. Haven't don't it yet myself, but I see no reason it's not possible if you had the airline's flight plan...again, no big deal to obtain that info, and even to target certain individuals.

The alleged video is a poor fake.

I'm going with hijack/suicide bomb.

originally posted by: ashpack

originally posted by: Azureblue

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Azureblue

So which MANPADS can they use again? They have no known SAM systems so it must have been a MANPADS if it was shot down, so which one is capable of reaching that altitude, and causing an aircraft that size to react like the transponder showed again?

A few facts:

We have an aircraft type with a known issue with the pitot tubes that has caused one crash previously. We have an aircraft with reported technical problems for the week prior to the accident. The aircraft flew for an airline with a previous history of maintenance problems. The pilot reported it was in poor condition technically prior to takeoff.

so what evidence is there, at this point in time, of poor maninteance being the cause????

Moreover, what kind of poor maintenance would cause a passenger liner to explode and I mean expode not just catch fire, burn and then expode. According to the video I have seen, albeit poor quality, shows a large plane in the sky and then there is a big fireball. There is no fire preceeding the exposion. This is supposedly flimed by ISIS.

This plane contained only Russian people, no other nationalities were on board. It was within striking distance of Isral but I find it hard to believe it was within striking distance by ISIS when it was 10,000 metres in the air. How would they even know where the plane was in the sky??? How would they know where in the sky it was unless they have radar that they are not using to attack the Assad govt with??? Hihgly unlikly.

Isreal has the radar capacity, the military capacity to bring it down and the movtiation. They want Russia out of Syria so the US can continue to bomb Syria back into the stone age for them like they did to Iraq and Afghansistan.

Claims that the plane had problems before take off means nothing once it got up into the air and got to cruising at 10,000 metres. Again, what poor maintence would cause an immediate explosion?? If it were the engines catching fire and then the plance crashed because of it, well thats different.

The most likly thing that would cause and instant explosion is a missile. poor mainteance would in all likleyhood cause a fire first.

There are many maintenance failures that could lead to an explosive decompression and many instances of this happening. This was also an old plane and I was thinking erlier about Aloha 243 what if something like that happened to this plane?

Do you have a source confirming all passenger where russian? From what I have read 3 or 4 of the passengers where not Russian with at least one of them being from Ukraine possibly all 4 of them.

The video circulating is not even the correct type of plane.

The US satellites picked up some form of explosion around the time of the accident but they also state they would of picked up a heat trail from a missile which they didn't.

they also state they would of picked up a heat trail from a missile which they didn't.

good point, I overlooked that, thanks for mentioning it.

originally posted by: earthling42
Personally, i doubt it was fatigue, more in line for me is a weakened structure of the fuselage due to heat from a fire which was either inside the forward cargo compartment or below the cargo compartment.

Unbelievable that they have not talked about it or looked at it apparently while the signs of an in flight fire are clearly there.

First, there was a clarification about the data which is deemed unreliable.
So the aircraft most likely did not descent and ascend at such a violent rate before it disintegrated.

Important Notes About Data Validity

I share a few more pictures and will make an extensive post in the evening because i have to go now.

I agree metal fatigue is unlikely this plane had done 56000 hours over 21000 flights which sounds alot but it is not excessive in terms of the life span of a well maintained airliner. It's possible something was not picked up during maintenance so you couldn't rule it out.

I do not believe fire bought this plane down in fact I think the chances are quite minute. The pilots would know about any fire/smoke very quickly and take action. There is no doubt there was a fire (inevitable with a high fuel break up) but secondary to whatever initially happened like a decompression or explosion.

a reply to: FlyingFox

Except for two major problems. Where did they get the helicopter and pilot? The backblast from the launch would probably kill everyone on board when they fired.

a reply to: ashpack

Fatigue around the repair is very possible, especially if it was a faulty repair to begin with.