Re: “...early reports mentioned several times that he’d declared “Mayday”.”
Now that’s the first time I’ve seen that significant bit of information. It does indeed alter our speculations a bit, and after the investigation is completed I’m sure that I’m not the only one who will be proven to have been way off the mark.
A lot more data and evidence will need to be collected and carefully analyzed before anyone really knows for certain what caused this tragedy or how it might have been prevented... if they ever know.
Sometimes you never can tell for sure, and an educated guess or speculation is what you’re left with.
It is one conceivable scenario however, lacking any preceding transmission. I rather doubt that any of these airplanes had a “black box” data recorder on board.
That’s why the mods killing these breaking news threads is ridiculous. It’s impossible to cross-tab important pieces of data when you have threads appearing and disappearing. Best wait until the dust settles before downgrading threads because you lose the crucial ‘my friend saw’ or ‘I heard’ which pan out often to be facts.