according to the news reports, it took 8 minutes to descend 32,000 feet before hitting the mountain. That’s a rate of 4,000ft/min. That’s a very steep decent. What I would like to know is at what speed would the plane break up in midair. The debris field looks too wide for a mountain impact.
Is that based on personal expertise?
I've seen car wrecks at about 1/3 the speed that have scattered parts for a quarter mile and of course 3 times the speed is 9 times the energy.
There was a fighter plane by the airplane. That pilot saw exactly what happened.
The article linked in Post 36 suggests an A320 is at risk of structural failure at about 380 knots “Indicated Airspeed”.
Indicated Airspeed explained here:
Good question does anyone know the answer?
And note the intriguing clue of an impact before the main impact.
Did the plane clip the top of an earlier mountain? But then wouldn't they have noticed that by now?
Or did it hit another object before striking the mountain? A bridge? It doesn't look like there are any bridges in that area. A tree? Would it be big enough to cause that impact noise? Or another airplane? Another airplane couldn't be civilian because we would have noticed the disappearance so it would have to be military. Was that the object?
“The debris field looks too wide for a mountain impact.”
Where did you get that? It looks exactly like ground impacts look.