Egypt Airliner CRASHED in Egypt

KINGTV News-Seattle | 1/2/2004 | ME

[Gorons]

Local news just flashed that an Egypt Airliner has crashed in Egypt...

Reporting majority of ~135 passengers are French tourists....

[beaversmom]

Oh they tried to make the U.S. look stupid saying that we cancelled those flights because of a 5 year old boy and some other equally non-terrorist types. I don't believe anything I hear from the French government. To me they are the enemy.
I do feel bad for the people that died on this plane crash. It may not be terrorism but then again. I really don't understand why any westerner unless in the military or a businessman would go to the Mideast however. I know they've got some great places to see but there is too much evil there for my taste.

[stlnative]

Local news media reported Saturday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was vacationing at the resort, was to meet there later in the day with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20040103-0030-egypt-planecrash.html

[Prodigal Son]

Tony Blair is in that area???

Aye, so he is.

[Central Scrutiniser]

If it was clear, so be it, it counterdicts earlier info, which is why making conjecture from afar is not too reliable.

Planes crash, often on takeoff....

[texasbluebell]

Tony Blair is in that area???

That kind of makes me pause to reflect too...

[Gorons]

Regarding the Pittsburgh 737-300 crash;

The jet that crashed outside Pittsburgh was a Boeing 737-300, a model nicknamed the "Quichewagon."

It's called that because it has computers that let the plane practically fly itself. Pilots who rely on the high-tech devices are less macho. They are "quiche-eaters."

The stubby two-engine plane has all the sex appeal of a four-door sedan. Other jets have mean-sounding nicknames like Mad Dog, Mega-Dog and Yard Dart, but the 737 names are wimpy: Fat Albert, Guppy, Fat Little Ugly Fellow, or FLUF.

It is dull but efficient, the world's most widely used airliner. As you read this, more than 700 are in the air. The plane accounts for 40 percent of the flights from Tampa International Airport, far more than any other plane.

The question facing Haueter was whether the Fat Little Ugly Fellow had a hidden flaw, a gremlin that had gone undetected since the first 737s began flying 30 years earlier. If there was a flaw, it would be like Russian roulette: Countless 737s could fly without a problem, but some day, another one would go down.

A lot was riding on the investigation: the safety of passengers boarding 737s every day; the fate of the airplane itself; the fortunes of USAir and Boeing; and the reputation of the NTSB.

Most crashes are solved within a few weeks, but this one would defy explanation. It would become one of the greatest mysteries in the history of aviation.

Haueter's detective work would require a combination of amazing science and luck. His team would explore everything from whether a hydraulic gadget failed to whether a terrorist blew up the plane to whether it crashed because a fat passenger stepped through the floor.

Finding the truth would be especially difficult because of the raw politics that intruded on the investigation. Boeing, in particular, would play hardball to keep the government from blaming its airplane.

It took 28 seconds for the plane to flip out of the sky and crash into the hill in Hopewell. It would take more than four years for the NTSB to decide if it could explain why.

* * *

The plane's black boxes – the voice and flight recorders that really are bright orange – were found a few hours after the crash and flown to Washington.

Technicians in the NTSB lab pried open the battered flight data recorder, transferred the data into a computer and zapped it back to the Holiday Inn in Pittsburgh within a few hours. The first person to see it was John Clark, a silver-haired NTSB engineer. He sat on the floor, studying the numbers on his laptop computer.

The newest recorders take more than 100 measurements of a flight, but the box in the USAir plane took only 11 basic measurements, giving only a rough picture of what happened to Flight 427. Still, the box gave Clark an important clue. The numbers for compass heading showed that at 6,000 feet above Hopewell, the nose of the 737 had abruptly moved left, like a car starting to skid sideways on wet pavement.

Many things can make a plane do that, but one was most likely: a sudden move by the rudder.

"There is something going on here with the yaw," Clark told Haueter. "It looks like this airplane had some type of rudder event."

It was an encouraging lead. But NTSB investigators have an old saying: Never believe anything you hear in the first 48 hours. The first few theories about a crash – the causes du jour – typically don't pan out.

Back in Washington, the voice recorder team was meeting in one of the safety board's listening rooms, replaying the final words of pilots Emmett and Germano. The rooms have thick walls and insulated ceilings so screams and dying words won't be overheard by people passing in the hallway.

The tape from the USAir plane made one thing clear: The pilots never understood what was going wrong.

The engineers played the recording over and over. And over and over came Germano's dying words: "What the hell is this?"

[11B3]

Time will tell.....

In your travels if you get a chance to go to Sharm, by all means do. You know how to get along with others no matter where you are, and the people there are not anti-American. Most of them want to practice their English on you. It is far cleaner than Cairo, that's for sure!

Oddly enough, I was thinking about Zappa and Joe's Garage just the other day.

[stlnative]

yep... it sure makes you go hmmmmmm!

[Prodigal Son]

It will be interesting to hear what France says about the USA telling them to cancel flights to America now.

FWIW:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-01/03/content_1258816.htm

PARIS, Jan. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday the United States had the right to demand an ally deploy elite gendarmes aboard certain US-bound flights for security concerns.

"When a friend country demands that we reinforce the security measures on our part, nobody could blame. I prefer that we blame for too much control instead of for insufficient control," said Sarkozy during a security inspection at the airport of Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle in northeastern Paris.

"The Americans know what the competence the French services have and they know exactly what measures we are taking," said the minister when inspecting the baggage checking process.

"France will do what she should do," he said, adding that the elite security men aboard Air France flights carry a special weapon representing no risk to passengers.

The security aboard flights to the Untied States was highlighted during the Christmas and New Year festival season.

At Washington's request, the French government last week decided to cancel six Air France flights from Paris to Los Angeleson Dec. 24 and 25 because the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suspected some of the passengers were would-be terrorists.

However, the FBI confirmed Friday that it had made a mistake over the identities of their suspects. Enditem

[Central Scrutiniser]

Well BBC says 244 GMT, so who knows, which is important, we all don't know the particulars. What we do know is that a 2 plane charter company crashed a 10 year old plane. For the most part, charters are not the best at maintaning their planes, and have had many crashes versus their total number of flights.

Who knows? What is not good is when the conspiracy monkeys go nuts trying to twist tiny amounts of data into their preconcieved notions of how the plane crashed.

It was ever thus....

[Rokurota]

In London, a spokeswoman at Blair's office said neither Blair nor any members of his family were aboard the Air Flash plane....

Was it it necessary for them to say that? Does the PM ever take a chartered flight like that?

[Central Scrutiniser]

Yeah, who cares about 140 innocent dead people?

Remind me to mock you when one of your relatives dies, I'll come up with the appropriate ethnic slur to try to make it funny.

[Central Scrutiniser]

The reason I chose Hurghada instead of Sharm was that I only had flight bennies on Egypt Air, and if I got bumped in Hurghada, it was a 4 hour bus ride to Cairo, where I could fly the wonderful and sorely missed TWA home! The drive from Sharm to CAI was much too long!

I retired from the biz, I can fly my airline for free (no flights to Europe, just Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica), but I still have the itch to travel. In Nov, I went to Cambodia and I loved it, along with a trip to Thailand, my favorite spot on earth. Travelling on a positive space ticket is a different experience!

Joe's Garage rocks!

[SwordofTruth]

So who cares about the French surrender monkeys!

God cares about them, just like he cares about you. They are no more monkeys than you are.

[Prodigal Son]

[Sarkozy added] that the elite security men aboard Air France flights carry a special weapon representing no risk to passengers.

LOL.

LOL, I know. I was scratching my head over that as well.