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I saw something about it being closed.

If they made no distress calls, what the heck? Then I’m thinking they didn’t know where they were. Was this the same crew that flies regularly from, to KY, and back? If it was, what the heck?

Was the flightaware data correct about those last few minutes in which there were some HUGE drops in altitude? If so (data correct), weird, and why would that not be troubling to the pilots/tower?

Why would they lose lift while landing? Instrument error or pilot error or ?

Very sad.

I think you're way off target.
When you're upo to you @ss in electrical problems (think lightening strike and both engines flamed out)
and you're trying to restart the engines before you smack the ground,
a radio call is the least of your concerns.

I didn't see anything abnormal about the altitude data for the Airbus 300, except that it stops at 1,500 feet MSL and the Birmingham Airport is at 650 feet MSL.
There's 850 feet of data missing.
Now, the question might lead to "Did the pilot RESET the aircraft Altimeter to Birmingham's LOCAL ALTIMETER SETTING when he was handed off from Atlanta Center to Birmingham Approach Control ?
Did the pilot report the current Birmingham ATIS Code and fail to RESET his Altimeter ?
But the Birmingham METAR reports the Altimeter at 29.99 at the time of the crash.
Since Center runs all traffic on a standard day Altimeter of 29.92, that's a difference of 700 feet, and a pilot can have an Altimeter difference of 250 feet without correction.
Normally a noticed difference of 75 feet from the field elevation when the aircraft is parked on the airport would be reported by the pilot.
But there could have been an uncorrected altimeter that needed replacing, or failure to change the altimeter setting to the Birmingham airport setting.

"Why would they lose lift while landing?"

How much do you know about micro-burst?

What makes microbursts so dangerous? Many things, not the least of which is that they have the potential to swat airplanes out of the sky. Piston-powered airplanes seem to have a slight advantage since they do not experience a power-lag or spin-up time on the engines as do turbine-powered machines, but they usually also have less power and less inertia to start with than does turbine equipment. One of the sneaky things about microbursts is thatif you're a little short on situational awareness, the apparent performance increase that can be the first sign of a microburst in progress is sometimes ignored and the flight presses on to further danger. Take a look at the graphic to the right. This is the classic microburst diagram we've all seen. Notice the airplane at position A. It's just beginning to feel the effects of the outflow from the microburst. This sudden increase in headwind will cause an apparent increase in performance. The airspeed will increase, the rate of descent will decrease and the almost overwhelming urge of a pilot at this point is to pull the throttles back and push the nose over. Bad mistake. This is the time to get out of Dodge. Microbursts are like everything else associated with thunderstorms —there's no way to judge how bad they are from looking at them and by the time you find out just how bad it is, it's too late. The proper action at this point is to push up the power and abandon the approach. If you press on, you will find yourself at position B in the graphic. You will fly out of the headwind and into the tailwind. The suddenly decreasing headwind and increasing tailwind will cause degradation in performance equal in magnitude to the increase experienced at point A. You can see that if the headwind portion of the microburst caused a 30-knot jump in airspeed you're now going to lose 30 knots. If you pulled the throttles back in response to the headwind increase, you'll be in real trouble now. This is quickly becoming an unrecoverable situation. When all the talk about wind shear started in the late 70s, I had a real problem understanding how this happens. After all, we've all had it drilled into our heads since that first hour of dual thatairplanes only "feel" wind on the ground and that once you're airborne the airplane moves in concert with the air mass it's in. We've been taught to apply windspeed to airspeed to arrive at a groundspeed figure. The thought that wind could have an effect on airspeed was a hard one to swallow — and still is for many.