As the helo crash begins to settle into the quietude of investigation, I’ve turned my attention to the crash of the Mexican AirAmbulance with the strangely odd identifier of XAUCI.
Flying with patient oxygen in HP bottles can be tricky is all I can say.
Especially when you load enough bottles for the entire trip plus back-up.
First look says “bad load in of HP-bottles and a valve got opened”
Boom.
This too will be cozy and warm in the investigation phase now.
that would lead to an explosion in the air, though ... it didn’t appear there was any fire before the crash, just the lights on. Then it dove like a missile and exploded on impact.
I’m with you on the Lear Jet wreck. Waiting for someone to prove me wrong. There shouldn’t have been much of an actual medical need for extra Oxy on that flight. The kinds of work that Shriners does simply wouldn’t require a whole lot of it, especially after discharging the patient.
But it would take only one leaky bottle. That Lear cabin is not large. An Oxy rich atmosphere in it could make it explosive especially since they just re-fueled and kerosene fumes could have made for a nasty mix. A spark from even an ignition switch could be explosive.
My theory is that an internal explosion knocked one of the pilot’s/seats forward, shoving the yoke forward. At 400 MPH or so, going nose down just briefly, even, at only 1600 ft AGL will leave zero time for recovery. The engines were full power and the hole in the ground reflects that much speed/power.
I still want to know if that Oxy bottle they found a quarter mile away was full or empty? Any other flammables on the plane? The NTSB is maintaining its standard of useless information so far. I nominate them for a spot on that old TV show The Weakest Link.
Knocked off I could buy, but a valve on something like those isn’t going to vibratorily or otherwise open. It would have to be manually opened, or the valve knocked off. Those things are tight, and heavy duty. Plus the whole air transport circumstance has got to be filled with special loading and handling circumstances.