Some say it could have jet land 'safely' in sea. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...ht-qz8501-airasia-jet-land-4902658

The fact some max were found without clothes while it appears the aircraft aparently did not break info pieces in the sky could also support this scenario.

[Edited 2015-01-01 05:24:03]

Quoting Aither (Reply 100):

That "story" is garbage in a paper renowned for it. You can't land "safely" at a descent rate of 24,000 ft/min.

PiHero, spot on with your comments and thanks for your patience.

Mandala and other a.net greats, thank you for posting here and helping the rest of us make sense of this frightening event. I cannot imagine how busy you Mandala are as the man on the spot, and must be nice to see your own quotes in the Sydney Morning Herald today  

Happy New Year and best wishes for an accident free 2015.

Quoting Kaiarahi (Reply 101): That "story" is garbage in a paper renowned for it. You can't land "safely" at a descent rate of 24,000 ft/min.

Very true, but in the long run we'll find out if the aircraft 'pancaked' on to the water or went in nose first, etc. I can see how that would affect the nature of the injuries (all fatal) and clothing. In a pancake scenario, compression of the spinal cord is likely. Nose first, one expects impact with seats or seatbelt injuries.

The National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) chief, Air Chief Marshal FH Bambang Soelistyo, says that as of the fifth day of the joint search and rescue (SAR) operation, the mission has recovered nine bodies from AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed into the waters off Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan.

“By Thursday evening, we had recovered nine bodies in total; six have been sent to Surabaya [East Java], two are still in Pangkalan Bun, and one is still on KRI [warship] Yos Sudarso,” Bambang told the press at Basarnas headquarters in Central Jakarta on Thursday.

He said that the team had also recovered a number of items belonging to passengers and the aircraft, such as two black bags, one grey suitcase, an aircraft ladder and metal debris.

“We dispatched 19 ships, including ships from foreign countries like Malaysia and Singapore, and nine planes for the SAR operations today,” he said.

The team had suspended operations for Thursday by 7 p.m. and will continue on Friday morning.

He said that the joint team would be using newly arrived equipment from Singapore to detect objects on the ocean floor on Friday, as well as a surveillance vessel from the Indonesian Association of Sea Surveillance Contractors (AKSLI).

The equipment from Singapore would be available in the SAR area in the Java Sea by 2 a.m. Friday, he said.

“The [Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology - BPPT’s] Baruna Jaya research vessel has joined the operation now,” he said, adding that ships from the US would also join the search on Friday. (nfo)(+++)

- See more at: http://m.thejakartapost.com/news/201...as-chief.html#sthash.tbTHOPLe.dpuf

*****

We can also assume that the first autopsy is complete - as the body was released to the family.


******

The body of Hayati Lutfiah Hamid, the first victim identified from AirAsia flight QZ8501, was laid to rest at the Sawotratap cemetery in Sidoarjo, East Java, on Thursday, five days after the accident.

Hayati’s was one of the first two bodies recovered from the Java Sea by the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) near the Central Kalimantan town of Pangkalan Bun.

Her family received the body at the East Java Police headquarters and laid it at her mother-in-law’s house in Sawotratrap.

Her funeral service at the house drew condolences from neighborhood residents.

Hayati’s mother-in-law, husband and child also fell victim to the crash; the family was all travelling together on a family holiday to Singapore when the incident occurred.

She leaves behind her youngest son, Agung.

Her identity was successfully identified by the disaster victim identification team at the Bhayangkara Hospital in Surabaya by comparing post mortem data with ante mortem data from her family members.

- See more at: http://m.thejakartapost.com/news/201...sidoarjo.html#sthash.d4AH8KaP.dpuf

Quoting comorin (Reply 102): I cannot imagine how busy you Mandala are as the man on the spot

Yes, he's been a very busy bee since the accident, trying, as usual, to inform with accurate, factual data.
Only papers with the SMH quality would use him...
The rest is pure, unadulterated sewer waste... which is yet the main info source of A.netters.

Go figure.

[Edited 2015-01-01 06:05:26]

Quoting B2707SST (Reply 72): Still, the aircraft was recoverable for almost the entire descent. IIRC,

I thought that some of our online pilots said that the Air France plane in the nose up stable stall would have needed upwards of 10,000 feet, perhaps more, to recover.

Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini says the city administration has prepared special mass funeral services and a cremation area with the capacity of 80 bodies at the Adi Jasa Funeral Home for AirAsia flight QZ8501 victims.

Risma said the services would be offered to the passengers’ families.

“We have already set up special funeral services at Adi Jasa,” Risma said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com.

She added that AirAsia would help pay for the services at Adi Jasa.

Aside from the funeral and cremation services, the city administration has also prepared special burial grounds in the Surabaya Keputih area for the passengers.

Risma noted that 80 Surabaya residents were on the flight from Juanda International Airport to Singapore’s Changi International Airport.

When the flight was confirmed missing, Risma also moved to protect and secure the assets of the passengers.

Nine bodies have been recovered by the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) from the Java Sea as of Thursday evening, with four already in Surabaya for identification purposes. (dyl/nfo)(+++)

- See more at: http://m.thejakartapost.com/news/201...-victims.html#sthash.vUr0zGdt.dpuf

Quoting Airspeed772 (Reply 53): Thank you for all your response, but I specically ask about high altitude unrecover from unusual attitudes in the vicinity of thunderstorms. Some of you reference crashes of aircrafts flying approaches very close to the ground with very little or no room to recover

The post I responded to said nothing about high altitude. And how high is high enough? The Southern DC-9 was in cruise, as was the Air Algerie/Swiftair Mad Dog. Two is more than the zero you claim.

I understand the religious concerns for a quick burial but have the authorities really had time to do proper post mortem examinations as part of the accident investigation???

Ah, the human condition, we don’t like not knowing so rush to form a mental picture, rely on bias missing facts that would allow us to gain better understanding.

Overall still a good discussion.

Thanks to all the pros for info and the patience. And speaking of pros I found this little gem which while off subject seems germane just about now.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-air-crash-investigations-didnt-tell-you-qf32-airbus-hughes

So far, the authorities have done an excellent job at managing the recovery process and managing the news flow and we should assume that the post mortars are being carried out. Nothing the specific authority responsible has said was retracted yet - which shows you that they are on top of the communication flow - bravo to indonesia SAR in not buckling to the demands of instant news. They feel in control.

Bravo also to Air Asia Indonesia for their management on the ground - I hear it's compassionate and caring - they are also letting the SAR manage the news flow to ensure no communication mix ups.

The Jakarta post is doing a good job in being a newspaper of record these days too - diligently reporting the news and not making it up or filling acres of pages with junk.

Quoting ltbewr (Reply 112): What was the estimated rate of decent of AF 447 ?

See Mandala499 post # 57 above.
All you need !

Quoting Finn350 (Reply 92): It would be quite a coincidence if a bomb would go off at about the same time as the pilot requests altitude and heading changes... so it would appear logical that there was something either in the weather and/or pilot actions which caused unrecoverable structural damage to the airframe and subsequent stall/dive.

In 1962, a Continental Boeing 707 en route from Chicago to Kansas City was circumnavigating an area of severe thunderstorms at 39,000 feet when it suddenly vanished from radar with no distress call. Next day, the head of the FAA, Najeeb Halaby stated to reporters during the press conference "That's what happens when you fly into thunderstorms". The president of Continental, Robert Six angrily told Halaby afterward "You'll rue the day you said that!". He didn't have to wait long.

Flight 11 had crashed near Unionville, Missouri with no survivors. Within 48 hours, investigators had their answer.

It was a dynamite bomb.

Yes, it was quite a coincidence.

if the plane has made an emergency ditching (what might have happened) why hasn´t the emergency locator transmitter been activated? i have no idea if QZ also has portable ELTs on board, but at least the installed ELT must have been activated, right?

Quoting maxpower1954 (Reply 114): thunderstorms

Agreed- it may turn out that actually the ATC communication and request was coincidental.

I'm seriously saddened by the thought that this could've been a bomb... Who would be targeted and by whom?

Sticking to the idea that it was more likely a natural phenomenon... Has an engine ever been damaged to the point of being ripped off a wing and damaging it?

With only one engine could that account for a constant left turn? (I have no idea about actually flying a jet...i can't even fly a kite... So my question is to the pros, thank you for your patience!)

From the Sydney Morning Herald and MM Bachelard and Soejatman article :



I heard that Airbus is sending one of their structure specialist engineers to Indonesia to participate in the investigation.

Article is found here as :AirAsia flight's behaviour 'on the edge of logic


Excerpt : "Mr Soejatman, a respected analyst in Indonesia, said the extremity of the forces on the plane meant the "black box" flight recorder would be of less use in explaining what happened than forensic examination of the pieces of wreckage currently lying in about 50m of water in the Karimata Strait between Borneo and the Belitung Islands off Sumatra."

[Edited 2015-01-01 08:20:29]

[Edited 2015-01-01 08:20:52]

Quoting bestwestern (Reply 71): Boy, is Indonesian TV news sensational - not only is the subject sad, but they use dramatic music behind the news reader also - and really - do we need to know who does the hairstyling of the beautiful newsreader when she's discussing floating dead bodies.

One of the most sensationalistic one keeps calling me to appear... I thought they'd hate me for being boring and straight when it comes to accidents... but they keep calling me back...
Oh, do you want the phone numbers of the newsreaders?   

Quoting wjcandee (Reply 73): In case nobody noticed, Tony Fernandes officially debunked the rumour that someone was found in a life vest. They definitively were not, as I expected was the case.

BASARNAS has also debunked this, but yes, there was a mixup on this earlier.

Quoting Pihero (Reply 91): or instance in Mandala499's case, I haven't seen any other site with such information close to the official / technical side of the beginning investigation.

Too close for comfort sometimes...

Quoting Pihero (Reply 91): No, they have not referred to CNN

CNN called me today...  Seems that they are having difficulty in differing between reasonable opinion and polished junk... At least they appear to be trying when they called me.

Quoting Kaiarahi (Reply 98): All the checked baggage was in hold position 3, immediately behind the wing box.

Here's another revelation...
All the escape slides found were from the rear doors, and no evidence of having been inflated.

Quoting comorin (Reply 102): I cannot imagine how busy you Mandala are as the man on the spot, and must be nice to see your own quotes in the Sydney Morning Herald today

I could write my schedule since morning of aircraft disappearance today, but it would be a loong post... Let's just say I've been to the doctor 3x since the airplane disappeared, in between all these mayhem, to make sure I'm OK.

---
Some idiot is now trying to accuse that the airplane/crew did not carry the right documentation regarding the recent emergency AD issued by Airbus, but they cited this was because the dispatch release said specifically, the aircraft did not carry the "Emergency Response Plan"... (these guys don't understand that the stuff from the eAD would be in the QRH, which was carried).

Another idiot tried to say that Air Asia dispatch did not pick up the relevant weather information from Surabaya's airport met office, which the information was available only at 7am... D'OH... the met office emails the airlines at 00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC.

Then I was surprised to be asked on air about drugs and pilots, just because an Air Asia pilot was positive on the inaccurate drugs card test (he's on medication), and that further tests at the lab was needed... am like... WHUDDAHECK?

OK, enough of me ranting...

Quoting Pihero (Reply 117): Excerpt :

Don't forget the following:
We are fortunate that it crashed in shallow water so we can find physical evidence outside the black box. It puts great emphasis on the importance of recovering pieces of the wreckage," he said.

In another update...
the NTSC will commence search for the blackbox tomorrow...
Why?
Coz the ULB locator has arrived in Pangkalan Bun...

[Edited 2015-01-01 08:29:22]

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 118): Let's just say I've been to the doctor 3x since the airplane disappeared, in between all these mayhem, to make sure I'm OK.

Take care, buddy.

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 118): Oh, do you want the phone numbers of the newsreaders?

To spam them?

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 57): Now, AF447 had peaks of +9500, and -16500fpm... this -24000fpm baffles me at the moment...

I've read (source wikipedia) that in 1985 China Airlines flight 006 experienced up to 30'000 fpm descend on a nose down dive before the pilots managed to save the flight. If AirAsia went nose down on the sea we wouldn't be seeing intact bodies. If a nose down dive is the scenario to explain such 24'000 fpm descend I can imagine a recovery attempt that was unsuccessful by a short margin, meaning the plane landed belly first on the water.

Quoting loalq (Reply 121): If AirAsia went nose down on the sea we wouldn't be seeing intact bodies.

Unless they were sucked out before it hit the water. Intact bodies were found after both MH17 and PA103.
There have only been 9 bodies recovered so far, and there's been no official report on their state.

Quoting Kaiarahi (Reply 122): Unless they were sucked out before it hit the water. Intact bodies were found after both MH17 and PA103. There have only been 9 bodies recovered so far, and there's been no official report on their state.

Agree.

Also the aircraft could have broken up close to impact and some Pax got out by the aerodynamic forces.... until we have the wreckage and the Air data recorders an cockpit voice recorders...all this speculation, the only hard data is what Mandala and Pihero have posted.

TRB

Quoting Pihero (Reply 91): Mandala499's above post depicts an altogether different scenario : fast climb to 36 000 ft +, followed by a rapid - very rapid descent, a continuous heading variation to the left.

So, I have three questions:

1. Can an A320 experience such a descent rate without breaking up, or is breakup assured?

2. If it can survive during such a descent, can an A320 be pulled out of such a descent without breaking up?

3. I've probably missed it, but what was the lowest/last altitude recorded, and were the air- and ground-speed known at that altitude? Was the below the last known data?

"mode-S data showed it was at FL240 at -11000fpm and just over 60kts ground speed."

[Edited 2015-01-01 09:46:24]

Quoting liquidair (Reply 116): Sticking to the idea that it was more likely a natural phenomenon... Has an engine ever been damaged to the point of being ripped off a wing and damaging it?

yes.
infamously with an AA DC10 in Chicago, and i remeber a DL 737, where The crew savely turned around and landed. Both instances were at/ shortly after take off.
And then there is the 707 at mt. Fuji, and certainly more

The engine pylons are designed to enable a clean separation , but bad things can happen.

[Edited 2015-01-01 09:49:51]

From the SMH article:
Leaked figures show the plane climbed at a virtually unprecedented rate of 6000 to 9000 feet per minute, and "you can't do that at altitude in an Airbus 320 with pilot action".

The most that could normally be expected would be 1000 to 1500 feet on a sustained basis, with up to 3000 feet in a burst, he said.

Could the recorded radical vertical speeds be accounted for by a combination of a pilot/the flight control system commanding a steep climb (for whatever reason) and a fairly severe -- but not at all unprecedented -- vertical shear or updraft?

Quoting lancelot07 (Reply 125):

Also, notably, don'tnforget ElAl 1862!

Quoting CO953 (Reply 124): Can an A320 experience such a descent rate without breaking up, or is breakup assured?

Descent rate per se will not break anything. Acceleration / load factors will.

We have, if I may say, to ponder some definitions :
- *break up* : is it of the fuselage / cabin or is it of the flying surfaces and attached items : wings / elevator / fin and engines.
- *intact* : is it taken as * identifiable *, *slightly broken* as opposed to *smashed* ?

We have also to consider during salvage operations or pictures of the debris field at the bottom of the sea :
- are the wings still attached to the fuselage ?
- are the engines still attached to the wing or is only one missing ?
- is the tail still attached to the fuselage ?
- what is the state of the flight controls : ailerons and elevators and rudder ?

Until we have these answers, all we have is possible scenarii...

All of them tragically lethal / unsurvivable.

One question here a bit outside of the ongoing discussion for the ones who know. Who are the decision taking members of orgs like IATA and the likes, are they mostly ex airline employee/managers, or do we have to a certain extent political independency here?

Thanks.

Alfons

Quoting Pihero (Reply 128): Descent rate per se will not break anything. Acceleration / load factors will.

right.
but then this rates of ascent followed by descent are obviously figures on average.
Between ascent and descent there must have been acceleration - if forceful enough for breaking anything is not out of the question.

Quoting lancelot07 (Reply 130): Between ascent and descent there must have been acceleration - if forceful enough for breaking anything is not out of the question.

You probably are onto something important.
It's one of the possible scenarii I mentioned... but it depends on what we find from the wreckage.

Do we have any confirmation about the body found with a life vest on and the two found holding hands?
If true, both point towards a gentle enough descent that those on board had time to prepare and at least two survived whatever happened.

I'm leaning toward misinformation on these two "discoveries" though.

When the first ten bodies are Identified, it would be interesting to know where they were seated. One item recovered was a door. Has it been confirmed which door?

Quoting aerodog (Reply 133): One item recovered was a door. Has it been confirmed which door?

No doors have been recovered as yet.
They mentioned doors and emergency exits, but these turned out to be escape slides.
These slides have been identified as from both rear exists and they have not been inflated.

Quoting garpd (Reply 132): Do we have any confirmation about the body found with a life vest

This have been discussed in the previous threads and the official information says so far none
of the recovered bodies have been wearing a life west.

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/articl...wreckage-after-debris-bodies-found

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...image-believed-to-be-missing-plane

[Edited 2015-01-01 10:56:42]

Quoting aerodog (Reply 133):

One of the first identified, is seated on 23B , according to this list

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 134):

Gerry, do you have any more information about that weather phenomenon you mentioned a couple of threads ago?

Quoting flyenthu (Reply 86): Due to two recent losses, AF447 and QZ8501, I can make one inference which is high-altitude-stall in a thunderstorm is a real aviation problem. This needs to be addressed immediately. Two extremely capable modern airliners have been lost now within a relatively short span of time, with several hundreds of lives lost between them. Better cockpit technology to assess the severity of thunderstorms especially by increasing the capability of detecting supercooled moisture, ice, wind shear and any type of frozen precip is urgently needed.

AF447 was not in a thunderstorm and the storm did not cause the crash. Fundamentally poor airmanship and a breakdown in CRM did. Even if you allow that "weather was involved" because the pitot tubes iced up, it still didn't cause the crash because it was cruise...it went into the stall because of bad decisions by the PF, who then simply "froze" and couldn't break away from his only thought of "I'm losing altitude, so pull up" when it should have been "I'm falling because I'm in a stall...because I'm pulling the nose up". If you're an anxious flyer, that kind of scenario should cause far more anxiety than something like merely flying through weather.

One body was reported to be from seat 23B. Here is the seat guru chart:

http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Air_Asia/Air_Asia_Airbus_320.php

Rows 1-8 forward of wing
Rows 9-15 over wing
Rows 16-31 aft of wing

Don’t know the specifics of what may have occurred with Flight 8501 regarding a thunderstorm encounter or proper avoidance, just noting the (very wise) rules.

Professional pilots (are to) consistently adhere to thunderstorm avoidance per the below professional aviation authority’s recommendations and requirements (and of course proper and detailed training in onboard WX radar interpretation, etc.):

With reference to:
US Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Advisory Circular AC No. 00-24C, Subject “Thunderstorms” (and which is also equally noted in the FAR/AIM Section 7-1-29 “Thunderstorm Flying”):

Paragraph 10 a. (14) “Do avoid by at least 20 miles any thunderstorm identified as severe or giving an intense radar echo.”
Paragraph 10 a. (15) “Do circumnavigate the entire area if the area has 6/10 thunderstorm coverage.”
Paragraph 10 a. (17) “Do regard as extremely hazardous any thunderstorm with tops 35,000 feet or higher whether the top is visually sighted or determined by radar.” (it was reported that Flight 8501 was in an area where t’storm tops were reported at 50-53K feet).
Paragraph 10 a. (19) “Do divert and wait out the thunderstorms on the ground if unable to navigate around an area of thunderstorms. “

The common theme is avoid at all costs entering a potentially hazardous situation in the first place (i.e. circumnavigate, ground hold, deviate with proper safe distances, etc.), as opposed to getting into a hazardous situation and then being faced with high stress, crisis level decisions and maneuvers allowing little room for error and little time for proper recovery and resolution.

Quoting brewfangrb (Reply 138): who then simply "froze" and couldn't break away from his only thought of "I'm losing altitude, so pull up"

How do you know what he was thinking?

Quoting frmrCapCadet (Reply 106): I thought that some of our online pilots said that the Air France plane in the nose up stable stall would have needed upwards of 10,000 feet, perhaps more, to recover.

I posted the following back in 2011 in the "BEA: Total Data Extraction From AF447 Boxes - Part 6" thread:


The question of the altitude required to recover from the stall has come up several times. So time for a bit of math.

First, let’s round their rate of descent up to 12,000ft/min (note: all calculations rounded in the “worse” direction). Then let’s assume that to yank the power back and pitch over ~35 degrees takes five seconds (which should generous). During the pitch over the airplane’s vertical speed will increase, and it’s hard to tell exactly how much without of detailed aerodynamic model, but we *can* put an upper limit on it. In short the aircraft cannot accelerate vertically by more that 32ft/s/s, unless the engines are producing useful power while the nose is pointed down (which they should not be in a stall recovery), or the wings are producing negative Gs (since the aircraft had an alpha of ~45 degrees, that’s impossible). And it actually has to be less than that, because no matter the attitude, there would be air friction.

5 seconds at 32ft/s/s leads to an increase of about 9600ft/min, for a final descent rate of about 22000ft/min. The 12000ft/min (200ft/s) base descent would have caused an altitude loss of 1000ft in those 5s, the 32ft/s/s acceleration during that time would have increased that to 1400ft. So getting the nose down to less that 10 degrees alpha would cost less than 1400ft.

At that point, assume a 2G pullup (well within the capacity of any airliner, if a bit more energetic that you’d usually fly with passengers). To scrub off 22000ft/min (367ft/s), in a 2G* pull up would take a bit under 11.5 seconds (call it 12s). In that 12s, your vertical velocity would go to zero, and you’d use another 2300ft.

So a grand total of 3700ft.

Assuming a horizontal velocity of 150kts true (it appears to have been slower), and assuming none of that is burned off during the pushover, plus the 218kt descent, would have resulted in a maximum velocity of around 265kts. Again, very generous assumptions - reality would be considerably lower.

If you instead assume a 10s pushover, and a 1.5G pull up (fairly preposterously slow/gentle numbers), with the other conditions the same (including the seriously unrealistic 32/ft/s/s acceleration), you get a maximum descent rate of 32,000ft/min (316kts), an altitude loss during the pushover of 3600ft, and a pullup taking 17s and using 4700ft of altitude, for a total 8300ft. The maximum velocity would have been 350kts, high but manageable (Vmo for the A330 is 330kts – remember indicated, not true).

Again, both of those assume *way* more vertical acceleration than is realistic during the pushover. It also assumes that the wings start flying (and producing lift) rather later than they would (they’d do as at about 14 degrees alpha, and would start slowing the decent, to say nothing of the vertical acceleration well before the “hard” transition between pushover and pull up I described above). So those numbers should be *very* generous overestimates.

This obviously assumes that there was nothing preventing them from pushing the nose down at a reasonable rate. But with that assumption, recovery should have been eminently possible at 10,000ft, and well below that.

Wouldn’t hurt for someone should check my math…


*that’s one G for gravity, and one G for reducing your vertical velocity

Does the 6k-9k fpm ascent rate work against the on-board-explosive theory? I have a hard time seeing how an explosion would be followed by a climb rate 3-4x greater than can be commanded.

Quoting ltbewr (Reply 112): What was the estimated rate of decent of AF 447 ? Was it similar to the estimates for QZ8501 ?

Quoting Pihero (Reply 113): See Mandala499 post # 57 above. All you need !

To elaborate a bit, AF447's peak descent rate was about -15,000 ft/min but ranged between -15k and -10k. From the onset of fully developed stall at about 02:11:42, the aircraft descended from FL350 to impact in 166 seconds, for an average descent rate of -12,650 ft/min. See the FDR data here:

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/annexe.03.en.pdf

Since QZ8501's descent rates were up to twice those experienced by AF447, it seems unlikely that the aircraft was in a similar descent profile (nose high stall). This sounds more like a nose-down dive.

Just speculating, but failure of the horizontal tail could cause the rapid climb rate (loss of downforce), stall, and rapid descent (no pitch control) that Mandala is reporting. Failure of a wing would generally cause corkscrewing and in-flight breakup (e.g. GOL 1901), which could have happened here too, but that initial climb rate is hard to account for even with a monster updraft.

Quoting Pihero (Reply 91): Therefore there are two probable causes left : 1/- A freaky, violent encounter with a monster updraft which is not backed by study of the ITCZ weather in the zone at the time of the accident... 2/- An explosion / sudden violent fire... We might well be seeing the effects of a bomb here.

Though I'm sad to likely fall into the "unworthy" category of those you mention, I'm still heartened to read that 'those who should not be questioned' are coming around to the possibility that the aircraft may have had an "unheard of" weather related encounter that broke up the aircraft. If you look back over the thread from the beginning, the very people you judge were just attempting to introduce that as an idea. No apology necessary.

It's a New Year, let's all be friends and have a fresh start. I think we all want the same thing. To understand what happened and prevent if from happening again. As "they" say, there are many roads to Rome - just as long as we get there!

Quoting B2707SST (Reply 144): Just speculating, but failure of the horizontal tail could cause the rapid climb rate (loss of downforce), stall, and rapid descent (no pitch control) that Mandala is reporting.

Would an on board explosion (bomb perhaps) that caused the tail/rear fuselage to separate have the same effect?

Quoting TCYVR (Reply 35): Has AirAsia retired the flight # QZ8501 or are they still using that?

No change so far. Still showing 8501 in their website schedules and departures/arrivals info.

Quoting B2707SST (Reply 144): Just speculating, but failure of the horizontal tail could cause the rapid climb rate (loss of downforce), stall, and rapid descent (no pitch control) that Mandala is reporting.

Loss of the horizontal stabilizer would result in an immediate and severe pitch down.

Quoting Pihero (Reply 91): 2/- An explosion / sudden violent fire... We might well be seeing the effects of a bomb here

Quoting maxpower1954 (Reply 114): It was a dynamite bomb.

Quoting Kaiarahi (Reply 122): and there's been no official report on their state.

Quoting bellancacf (Reply 143): Does the 6k-9k fpm ascent rate work against the on-board-explosive theory? I have a hard time seeing how an explosion would be followed by a climb rate 3-4x greater than can be commanded.

Quoting LovesCoffee (Reply 146): Would an on board explosion (bomb perhaps) that caused the tail/rear fuselage to separate have the same effect?

I will not claim to be a forensic science expert, but I would like to think that if the presence of an explosive device were considered to be a credible theory, then forensic investigators would/should be swabbing the victims for traces of explosive material. Haven't heard anything to that point mentioned in media reporting thusfar.

- 777fan