http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt ... SKCN1022PB

Evidence gathered in an investigation into the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 in the Mediterranean Sea in May shows the plane likely broke up in midair after a fire near or inside the cockpit that quickly overwhelmed the crew, according to Egyptian officials involved in the inquiry, the New York Times reported on Friday.

But the officials could not determine whether the fire thought to have caused the crash had been set off by a mechanical malfunction or by a malicious act, the report said.

The findings are based on information from the Airbus A320’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder along with an analysis of the condition and distribution of recovered debris, including human remains, according to forensic and aviation officials in Cairo, the report said.

The officials spoke this week on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly, the New York Times said.

The Airbus A320 from Paris to Cairo plunged into the eastern Mediterranean on May 19 and all 66 people on board were killed.

So it still could be a terrorist act. Huh, didn't see that coming.

Does anyone have the #'s on the causes of accidents that occur when the flight is at cruise? I suppose it is a fairly samll sample size but still would be good to see big picture.

OA940 wrote:

So it still could be a terrorist act. Huh, didn't see that coming.

Is it possible for aerodynamic forces to cause the breakup after loss of control of the aircraft?

hoya wrote:

Is it possible for aerodynamic forces to cause the breakup after loss of control of the aircraft?

Could be. Yeah you're right. I didn't think about that.

Does anyone have the #'s on the causes of accidents that occur when the flight is at cruise? I suppose it is a fairly samll sample size but still would be good to see big picture.

I'm not sure what you're asking here, but if you're talking about what can happen while a plane's in cruise:

Engine failure
Structural failure
Mechanical failure
Fire
Collision
Fuel starvation
Human error (wild case but still) (Example: 2002 Umberlingen Mid-Air Collision)
Etc.

hoya wrote:

Is it possible for aerodynamic forces to cause the breakup after loss of control of the aircraft?

Sure it is.
Especially important to remember that we are dealing with a possible fire in the electronics bay of a basically Fly By Wire aircraft that relies on electrical signals to operate the control surfaces.

So you can have either the fire damaging the structure of the airframe causing the break up or damaging the electrical source to operate the control surfaces causing the break up.

Chicken or Egg

The article linked and a few other articles related to the same source indicate that the CVR and FDR stopped recording either from loss of electrical or break up very soon in the event.
None of the articles put an exact time frame between the comment of fire on the CVR and loss of power to CVR.

Hopefully the investigation team will find something in the debris that will lead them to the cause.

Okie

Link to the NY Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world ... .html?_r=0

Some extra information not in the Reuters piece:

An Egyptian aviation official said the voice recorder from the cockpit indicated that the mood there was relaxed in the minutes before the plane veered off course.

Crew members were playing music and chatting amiably when the pilot, Capt. Muhammad Shoukair, 36, suddenly said there was a fire on board and asked the co-pilot, Muhammad Mamdouh Assem, 24, to get an extinguisher. That was the last human sound the recorder captured.

In flight aerodynamic breakup after loss of control is very possible. Especially at the altitude this aircraft was flying. It was over 7 miles/ 10 km high. That is a long way for a plane to travel if there is no control input.

Yes, planes are designed to fly at a basically aerodynamic position without human input. However without human input there is nothing to prevent over speed , a spin, a stall, etc.

It is not surprising that the plane broke up before hitting the water.

They will have to recover the cockpit and forward cabin sections for a complete examination of the cause of the fire. I have always been taught that fire is the single worst thing that can happen on an airplane. It brings to mind the lavatory fire on Air Canada's DC-9-30. The pilots made an extraordinary emergency landing but many lives were still lost. With the fire behind the walls or ceiling panels it is nearly impossible to get to the source with an extinguisher. Same with the Swissair MD-11. The fire was raging out of control above the ceiling before anyone noticed anything was wrong. I hope these poor people never knew what happened.

I highly doubt that the fire would have broken through the aircraft structure, causing a break up. More likely emergency maneuvers trying to get the pane down, incapacitated pilots, or damaged flight controls. And I'm pretty sure if there was such an intense fire/control situation that the passengers would have been well aware of it. After what we saw with Egyptair 990, not sure we'll get honest answers here from officials. There can be quite a bit of politics and money involved in crashes.

rfields5421 wrote:

In flight aerodynamic breakup after loss of control is very possible. Especially at the altitude this aircraft was flying. It was over 7 miles/ 10 km high. That is a long way for a plane to travel if there is no control input.

True

rfields5421 wrote:

Yes, planes are designed to fly at a basically aerodynamic position without human input.

Not exactly. As far as Boeing airplanes are concerned no matter how well trimmed they are for straight and level flight, within minutes the 727 thru 767 would be out of control without any pilot input. The 777 would maintain altitude but would roll off left or right until reaching BAP (bank angle protection).The 787 is the only Boeing airplane that would maintain straight and level flight with no pilot intervention. In a degraded flight control mode (direct) on the 777 and 787 they would behave just like the other Boeing airplanes without pilot input. I'm guessing Airbus airplanes in a similarly degraded mode would also go out of control with no pilot inputs.

7BOEING7 wrote:

Not exactly. As far as Boeing airplanes are concerned no matter how well trimmed they are for straight and level flight, within minutes the 727 thru 767 would be out of control without any pilot input. The 777 would maintain altitude but would roll off left or right until reaching BAP (bank angle protection).The 787 is the only Boeing airplane that would maintain straight and level flight with no pilot intervention. In a degraded flight control mode (direct) on the 777 and 787 they would behave just like the other Boeing airplanes without pilot input. I'm guessing Airbus airplanes in a similarly degraded mode would also go out of control with no pilot inputs.

Yes, but in this case the situation is more likely to be no electronics or systems left to do anything. So no protections of any sort. How stable does the airframe itself fly, if the control surfaces are left without any active control? There's obviously also the possibility that the failing electronics or desperate pilots induce control inputs other than leaving everything to neutral.

7BOEING7 wrote:

Not exactly. As far as Boeing airplanes are concerned no matter how well trimmed they are for straight and level flight, within minutes the 727 thru 767 would be out of control without any pilot input. The 777 would maintain altitude but would roll off left or right until reaching BAP (bank angle protection).The 787 is the only Boeing airplane that would maintain straight and level flight with no pilot intervention. In a degraded flight control mode (direct) on the 777 and 787 they would behave just like the other Boeing airplanes without pilot input. I'm guessing Airbus airplanes in a similarly degraded mode would also go out of control with no pilot inputs.

There is a difference between B&A FBW output. B are designed to be speed stable so in response to a gust the aircraft FBW will return to the same speed without pilot input. A are trajectory stable so if for example a gust raised a wing the FBW will return the wing back to resume the same trajectory.

With loss of communications from the FBW computers such as a catastrophic failure with hydraulics still available I would need to think about it further but I guess the spoilers would start to float up after a period of time and the aileron actuators would go into a free dampening mode so it would be at the mercy of the atmospheric effects.

I'm going with the small meteorite hitting the cockpit theory

I still think that the time frame is very short for a technical fault Everything in a plane is some form of fire protected and this has been tested over and over again. Even the 787 battery failures did not cause a big fire and that was a lot of energy. Imho it needs very unlikely conditions to be a technical fault. For example a device with a battery fault and a fault in the oxygen system at the same time. Imho the most likely reason is an incendiary explosive device planted in the plane. Something like a white phosphorous grenade. This burns so hot and ignites on its own, that the fire protections in place are unable to control it, it creates lots of smoke in a short time and it burns hot enough to quickly cause critical damage to structures.

There is nothing to suggest that a fire associated with the onboard oxygen supply could not have been the cause. It is a far simpler explanation than many presented, and there have been previous instances on other types. It possibly can happen, and happens very rapidly.

http://avherald.com/h?article=44078aa7/0000

smokeybandit wrote:

I'm going with the small meteorite hitting the cockpit theory

Please tell me you're joking.

I still think that the time frame is very short for a technical fault Everything in a plane is some form of fire protected and this has been tested over and over again. Even the 787 battery failures did not cause a big fire and that was a lot of energy. Imho it needs very unlikely conditions to be a technical fault. For example a device with a battery fault and a fault in the oxygen system at the same time. Imho the most likely reason is an incendiary explosive device planted in the plane. Something like a white phosphorous grenade. This burns so hot and ignites on its own, that the fire protections in place are unable to control it, it creates lots of smoke in a short time and it burns hot enough to quickly cause critical damage to structures.

Yes, but keep in mind it may have been slowly burning for hours. The avionics bay doesn't have smoke detectors (I think). So it may have been burning lightly and spreading slowly, and then it may have reached some sort of material that can be burnt quickly, and then it would go to shit. Swissair, UPS, AC all had that point where the fire became a full emergency from a minor problem. But still, Valujet was burning for only a few minutes. So it very well could be something like that.

There is nothing to suggest that a fire associated with the onboard oxygen supply could not have been the cause. It is a far simpler explanation than many presented, and there have been previous instances on other types. It possibly can happen, and happens very rapidly.

http://avherald.com/h?article=44078aa7/0000

Image

Exactly. At this point though, nothing can be ruled out.

OA940 wrote:

The avionics bay doesn't have smoke detectors (I think).

There is a smoke detector in the outflow duct from the avionics that will pickup smoke in the cockpit or avionics bay.

Air is drawn past the the displays and controls in the cockpit before going into the avionics bay for cooling the cockpit instruments etc.

In regards to zeke's post where fire burned a hole in the fuselage. Early in the threads there was link to video showing a streak of fire going across a dark sky that happened on the night and claimed to be video of MS804. Others said it was flying too straight to be anything but a meteorite, but the burn on the object was much more orange yellow ad you could see that in the burn it was moving much slower than a meteorite. I mentioned in the thread shortly after viewing this that it was entirely possible that fire could have burned downward under the cockpit, puncture the skin and burn brightly while still in level flight for some time until the burn completely compromised its aerodynamic integrity and fell apart in flight.

No one really reacted to that post and I don't blame any one of you. That's about the worst way to go in an airplane - knowing it's happening and nothing you can do about it at all. To even fathom the what ifs are such that have occasionally haunted me since this has happened. It explains the sudden loss of comms and cut off of cvr/fdr, and the turns are radar as well depending on what parts/pieces of the aircraft were giving a return when it deviated. Should this have come to pass, the only thing for the living to discover would be what caused and how the fire started to begin in the first place.

I pray that whatever God you believe in has delivered these souls and had mercy on the majority of them.

Respectfully,
Pohakuloa

zeke wrote:

OA940 wrote:

The avionics bay doesn't have smoke detectors (I think).

There is a smoke detector in the outflow duct from the avionics that will pickup smoke in the cockpit or avionics bay.

Air is drawn past the the displays and controls in the cockpit before going into the avionics bay for cooling the cockpit instruments etc.

Well I tried. At least I clarified my uncertainty.

Maybe people will finally come round to the likelihood of something like this happening on MH370 instead of all the silly "pilot did it" nonsense...