Doesn't look like that was the case here:
Posted on 03/24/2015 9:51:17 AM PDT by Red Badger
FULL TITLE: Search aircraft find the remains of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 scattered all over an alpine mountainside: Riddle over why pilots didn't send SOS despite taking eight minutes to fall 32,000 feet
The final moments of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 were shrouded in mystery today after air traffic controllers claimed they received no SOS despite the jet nosediving 32,000ft in just eight minutes.
All 144 passengers and six crew were today presumed dead after the Airbus A320 crashed in a remote region of the French Alps en route from Spain to Germany.
Two babies were among 45 Spanish on board and 16 children from the same school on an exchange trip were among some 100 Germans also feared to have died.
Images from the first rescue helicopters to reach the crash site showed wreckage scattered across hundreds of metres of mountainside, with some debris the size of a car.
Earlier reports quoted aviation sources in France as saying the pilots issued a Mayday distress signal and requested an emergency descent minutes before it hit the ground.
However, civil aviation authorities later denied that air traffic controllers received any such call.
'The aircraft did not itself make a distress call, but it was the combination of the loss of radio contact and the aircraft's descent which led the controller to implement the distress phase,' a spokesman for the French civil aviation authority said.
Germanwings chief executive Thomas Winkelmann said the aircraft began descending at 10.45am, a minute after reaching cruising height of 38,000ft.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
On what basis are you saying that it was far off course?
Agree. Does not look like an intact impact.
There aren’t many events that would cause a plane to suddenly plummet thousands of feet while cruising. Not that it can’t happen, but considering most accidents are upon landing or take-off, the odds are against accidental failure, I would think. But, I guess we shall see.
Doesn't look like that was the case here:
After watching the video, it appears to have exploded and is scattered over 15-25 acres. Nothing large left. Looks like bomb effect. Worse than the Lockerbie bombing, no central impact point. Egad, that looks really bad.....
The debris field looks very different from an impact. That type of field projects in the direction of flight. This is scattered across ravines, with no “shadowing” like happens in an impact (where the debris is not found in lower places in the direction of flight).
A vertical impact shatters like this, but it stays very confined. 2km is too big for vertical impact, and this shows the small pieces that only disintegration can achieve.
So, if not vertical, it disintegrated in flight. For disintegration it has to be enough energy to shatter most, if not all, close to the same time. Based upon the radar returns (which might simply be an average of the flight path, and if so invalid), a moderate explosion that took out the nose of the aircraft would allow it to continue flying, and eventually in thicker air the airspeed would “peel back” the remainder of the aircraft in very small pieces like this.
That is just a theory, but most certainly this is not an impact debris field.
If there was a high altitude explosion the plane would segment not fragment. You would tend to see large identifiable elements of the plane spread over a large area. Usually the empennage, wings and engines would be identifiable as well as large portions of the fuselage.
The impression I have with what I see is that this may have been a collision. We need to wait and see more pictures.
This may also add some insight as to what happened to Malasian Air over Indonesia. This plane also went off course descended and crashed. The crew did not communicate anything unusual. If the FDR did survive we have clues.
This is also has some similarities to the Air France crash in the Atlantic. You couldn't pay me enough to fly on any Airbus product.
Sudden loss of cabin pressure at 38k altitude is immediate blackout............
One news source reports that the ‘black box’ has been recovered. Given the debris field that’s somewhat surprising.
Unlikely with crew O2 masks inches away. At 38,000 they would have time to don masks even with an instant depressurization.
It would seem unusual that it would lose speed in a uncontrolled decent.
Good points.
If true, that leads me to believe there is more to the debris field than shown. There are no pieces big enough for the FDR to have survived. They aren’t indesrtuctable.
It wasn’t off course. It flew the exact same course the day before. How about a passenger list?
The crew, yes, but the passengers would be incapacitated probably.........
Post 29 explains why. It was apart and “fluttering” imo.
If they have already found the black box, that, in itself, is a miracle.
Thanks, hadn’t seen the data.
Nationalities per BBC (take with grain of salt given early reports are often wrong):
Germany 67
Spain 45
Turkey 39
Belgium 1
Netherlands 1
Total 150
I agree, pfflier. You might expect terrorism under all the circumstance, but you certainly can’t rule out normal Airbus (SCAREbus)operations.
Oldplayer
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.