GAC06 said:

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Sharpshooter said:

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Polaris75 said:

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AggieFlyboy said:

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DallasAg 94 said:

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EMY92 said:

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Looks like it went from 30,000 to the ground in 90 seconds. I wonder if it was intentional.

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If math is right, that's 227 mph. Seems kinda slow for 30,000'. Aren't they usually flying over 400mph at that altitude.

I get that the plane would likely be decelerating, but that would mean at a linear deceleration, that it was flying much, much, slower at 10,000 feet.

That would not seem intentional unless the engines were cut. I would think it was mechanical. I'm too lazy to calculate the freefall time for a plane.


Sad, none-the-less.

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A steep dive is anything over 10 degrees nose low in the airline world. The plane likely was continuing its forward path as it was heading towards the ground.

30000 ft to sea level in 90 seconds is a 20000 ft per minute descent; normally, I try to keep my descents at a max of 4000 rpm for passenger comfort for reference

Most likely, this was a slow speed event (a stall) that the pilots were unable to recover from.

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Accelerated stall as a plane can stall at any speed.

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I don't know Jack about piloting, but, can you explain this further? How does this happen?

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It's irrelevant to this situation

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I understand. However, the comment that you can stall at any speed piqued my intrest and was just curious how that happens at cruising speed.

I'll answer. A plane can stall at high speeds...Especially at cruise altitude if put in an unusual attitude (severe turbulence) and the recovery is done incorrectly (pull too many G's ie., pull back on the yoke excessively).

No telling what caused this but the -800 is extremely safe. I didn't read much about it, Did they make any radio comms? Suicide, fire, hijack, structural failure, could be 100 things

v1rotate92 said:

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A plane can stall at high speeds...Especially at cruise altitude if put in an unusual attitude. No telling what caused this but the -800 is extremely safe. I didn't read much about it, Did they make any radio comms? Suicide, fire, hijack, structural failure...

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Makes sense, thank you.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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You're talking about transitioning that velocity in the Y axis for velocity in the X vs just changing the orientation of a diving/falling object?

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Yes in a controlled manner..

I think commercial pilots practice these type dives. For example, at 43K', loss of cabin pressure, the pilot has just a few seconds to get his emergency mask on before he loses consciousness. Once he mask up, he may drop the nose for a fast descent with a calculated distance to start rolling out of the descent. These guys are trained professionals, most were flying at 15 yrs old around the country in small high wing airplanes. Skilled and above intelligence, brave folks if u ask me.

The Chinese don't have that kind of training, simulators I would bet. Smart but lacking those country boy skills of the America commercial pilot.

It wouldn't happen in normal cruise. Maneuvering hard can result in an accelerated stall. Loading up the wing will make a wing stall at higher airspeed than in 1g flight. In a fighter it can be a violent departure from controlled flight at high G and is bad news. In an airliner it's more benign

Nobody practices a dive like that. That was unrecoverable and probably had the aircraft coming apart

GAC06 said:

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Nobody practices a dive like that. That was unrecoverable and probably had the aircraft coming apart

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Speculating how he got himself in this pickle that he couldn't recover from.

He may have over compensated for his emergency descent. Just making conversation as I always wanted to be a jet fighter pilot but unfortunately it didn't work out that way.

Without further information I'm going with major structural failure, stall with botched recovery, runaway stab trim that was botched, or suicide. I guess the Atlas crash in Houston adds extreme incompetence as a possibility as well but that was low altitude not cruise.

Buddy tells me of a commercial pilot flying at 42K and hears a pop in the back of cabin. Instantly loses cabin pressure, reaches for his mask and it is defected due to how it was fastened. He has only a few seconds before he passes out so he pulled power and trimmed for glide and passed out.

Floated down like a leaf, woke up at 19K' and then back to sleep . Woke up at under 10k and landed the plane. The wings weee distorted and the plane was declared total but all lived.

I will see if I can find the story on the internet or was he pulling my leg?

Polaris75 said:

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Buddy tells me of a commercial pilot flying at 42K and hears a pop in the back of cabin. Instantly loses cabin pressure, reaches for his mask and it is defected due to how it was fastened. He has only a few seconds before he passes out so he pulled power and trimmed for glide and passed out.

Floated down like a leaf, woke up at 19K' and then back to sleep . Woke up at under 10k and landed the plane. The wings weee distorted and the plane was declared total but all lived.

I will see if I can find the story on the internet or was he pulling my leg?

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Sounds like BS. I've never heard of anything like that, and it would have been a major story.

Apparently the plane leveled out to some extent and then briefly ascended before diving again. That would rule out massive mechanical failure as the cause of the initial sharp descent (if the tail section snapped off or the plane lost a wing it would just clobber into the ground).

Somewhat reminiscent of Silk Air Flight 185. My guess is crazy pilot suicide, seems to be one of those every several years. Maybe someone was fighting him for the controls at the end like Flight 93.

There's a story similar to that involving a King Air and it was gross negligence from the pilots. It's not what happened here. "Trimming for glide" isn't a thing for the 737 and especially not at cruise. Roll the altitude to 10k and hit level change. Takes 3 seconds.

Polaris75 said:

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Buddy tells me of a commercial pilot flying at 42K and hears a pop in the back of cabin. Instantly loses cabin pressure, reaches for his mask and it is defected due to how it was fastened. He has only a few seconds before he passes out so he pulled power and trimmed for glide and passed out.

Floated down like a leaf, woke up at 19K' and then back to sleep . Woke up at under 10k and landed the plane. The wings weee distorted and the plane was declared total but all lived.

I will see if I can find the story on the internet or was he pulling my leg?

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And the other pilot was doing what?

Rapier108 said:

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Polaris75 said:

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Buddy tells me of a commercial pilot flying at 42K and hears a pop in the back of cabin. Instantly loses cabin pressure, reaches for his mask and it is defected due to how it was fastened. He has only a few seconds before he passes out so he pulled power and trimmed for glide and passed out.

Floated down like a leaf, woke up at 19K' and then back to sleep . Woke up at under 10k and landed the plane. The wings weee distorted and the plane was declared total but all lived.

I will see if I can find the story on the internet or was he pulling my leg?

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Sounds like BS. I've never heard of anything like that, and it would have been a major story.

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I don't know flight procedures but I know a thing or two about getting choked out.

It is absolutely feasible for it to occur as happened. Not saying it did.....but perfectly feasible.

Polaris75 said:

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Buddy tells me of a commercial pilot flying at 42K and hears a pop in the back of cabin. Instantly loses cabin pressure, reaches for his mask and it is defected due to how it was fastened. He has only a few seconds before he passes out so he pulled power and trimmed for glide and passed out.

Floated down like a leaf, woke up at 19K' and then back to sleep . Woke up at under 10k and landed the plane. The wings weee distorted and the plane was declared total but all lived.

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And then had a conversation with the Feds about why he wasn't wearing his oxygen mask above 41K ft.

Quote:

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And the other pilot was doing what?

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Don't have to have two in all 'commercial' situations.

Interesting theory, anyway. As usual, the early theories about these sort of crashes wind up being…wrong.



https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/engine-part-from-crashed-china-eastern-737-found-as-search-for-flight-data-recorder-widens/148030.article

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Aircraft components from the China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 that crashed in central China have been found more than 10km away from where the aircraft is said to have gone down, say investigators on the third day of search and rescue operations.

The update, disclosed at a daily press conference, comes as recovery teams begin locating larger aircraft parts, including what is believed to be an engine component.

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By no means does this rule in/out terrorism/a bomb etc., but it is interesting/a substantive data point if validated/true. Also, I read that China Eastern commonly has 3 or 4 pilots in the cockpit due to hiring so many low hour folks, needing hours/experience etc. So maybe suicide is…less likely than suspected.

CFM56 engines don't have many uncontained failures, though.

An engine coming off would qualify as a catastrophic event.

I'm still curious about that brief recovery. Since this is reported through the transponder, is there any way that the black box shows they never actually pulled out of that dive?

Alternatively, there's not a lot of ways an airliner just goes down. However there have to be even fewer ways that it goes down that severely and still makes a short recovery just to crash anyway... right? Or is that just a layman's view? If you take that kind of descent, even if you recover, is airframe just one more bump of turbulence from going down?

A dive like that could easily result in stuff flying off the airplane, in fact I'd expect it. I'd also expect the engines to be among the hardest components to rip off the airframe but that's just my hunch.

Straight dive from 30,000 feet? My guesses would be:
-Structural failure, e.g., wing, tail
-Bomb
-Suicide

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Fenrir said:

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EMY92 said:

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Looks like it went from 30,000 to the ground in 90 seconds. I wonder if it was intentional.

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That would be something like twice the speed of sound.

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30,000/90=333 ft/sec=227 mph

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There are two types of people in the world. Those that can do math.

I'm about to offer a number of educated assumptions:

• Some thing/one Tripped off the autopilot at 29k. But that is well inside the safe operating altitude envelope of a 737, at ANY weight.
• The airplane became very unstable, but was likely intact based on comparing the Amazon IAH 767 last few seconds video and the China Eastern video. I lean against a jammed control because it's unlikely a jammed control would point you, AND hold you straight down. The airplane was likely intact for the same reason and the engines are helping drive the plane into the ground. There are no separate pieces that appear to follow.
• Disorientation is a possibility as they are coming out of the clouds close to the ground. The FAA mandates recovery from these "unusual " attitudes in all Airline Pilots annual training since AF447 to protect against this scenario.
• I suspect they recovered briefly where the ADS-B data showed a climb, but that likely was a transient condition, not an actual recovery.
• The Black Boxes should confirm, or disprove most of this list.

YMMV

Jetpilot86 said:

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I'm about to offer a number of educated assumptions:

• Some thing/one Tripped off the autopilot at 29k. But that is well inside the safe operating altitude envelope of a 737, at ANY weight.
• The airplane became very unstable, but was likely intact based on comparing the Amazon IAH 767 last few seconds video and the China Eastern video. I lean against a jammed control because it's unlikely a jammed control would point you, AND hold you straight down. The airplane was likely intact for the same reason and the engines are helping drive the plane into the ground. There are no separate pieces that appear to follow.
• Disorientation is a possibility as they are coming out of the clouds close to the ground. The FAA mandates recovery from these "unusual " attitudes in all Airline Pilots annual training since AF447 to protect against this scenario.
• I suspect they recovered briefly where the ADS-B data showed a climb, but that likely was a transient condition, not an actual recovery.
• The Black Boxes should confirm, or disprove most of this list.

YMMV

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Exactly the kind of things I was wondering, thanks. So I guess we just have to wait for the investigation to finish.

_mpaul said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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Fenrir said:

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EMY92 said:

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Looks like it went from 30,000 to the ground in 90 seconds. I wonder if it was intentional.

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That would be something like twice the speed of sound.

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30,000/90=333 ft/sec=227 mph

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There are two types of people in the world. Those that can do math.

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227 is the downward vector of the total velocity. It had a forward vector also for total airspeed. Probably only approximately double that though.

Decay said:

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Jetpilot86 said:

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I'm about to offer a number of educated assumptions:

• Some thing/one Tripped off the autopilot at 29k. But that is well inside the safe operating altitude envelope of a 737, at ANY weight.
• The airplane became very unstable, but was likely intact based on comparing the Amazon IAH 767 last few seconds video and the China Eastern video. I lean against a jammed control because it's unlikely a jammed control would point you, AND hold you straight down. The airplane was likely intact for the same reason and the engines are helping drive the plane into the ground. There are no separate pieces that appear to follow.
• Disorientation is a possibility as they are coming out of the clouds close to the ground. The FAA mandates recovery from these "unusual " attitudes in all Airline Pilots annual training since AF447 to protect against this scenario.
• I suspect they recovered briefly where the ADS-B data showed a climb, but that likely was a transient condition, not an actual recovery.
• The Black Boxes should confirm, or disprove most of this list.

YMMV

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Exactly the kind of things I was wondering, thanks. So I guess we just have to wait for the investigation to finish.

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Always. Sometimes you can make an easy speculation and hit the cause.

Quote:

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The Chinese airliner that crashed into a mountain in March was put into a near-vertical nosedive by someone in the cockpit, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The late March crash killed all 132 passengers on the plane, a Boeing 737-800. Investigators uncovered both black boxes on the plane soon after the crash, and they indicate the plane's controls were used to pitch the aircraft into a dive, according to U.S. officials who spoke with the Journal.

Searchers uncovered the plane's cockpit voice recorder on March 27, sending it to Beijing. China then transferred the device to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in early April. The NTSB also sent investigators to China to assist in the inquiry.

The contents of the voice recorder have yet to be publicized, however.

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China Eastern Airlines crash that killed 132 may have been intentional: report | Fox Business

Rapier108 said:

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Quote:

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The Chinese airliner that crashed into a mountain in March was put into a near-vertical nosedive by someone in the cockpit, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The late March crash killed all 132 passengers on the plane, a Boeing 737-800. Investigators uncovered both black boxes on the plane soon after the crash, and they indicate the plane's controls were used to pitch the aircraft into a dive, according to U.S. officials who spoke with the Journal.

Searchers uncovered the plane's cockpit voice recorder on March 27, sending it to Beijing. China then transferred the device to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in early April. The NTSB also sent investigators to China to assist in the inquiry.

The contents of the voice recorder have yet to be publicized, however.

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China Eastern Airlines crash that killed 132 may have been intentional: report | Fox Business

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Woah.

Voice recorder will be telling here. The Atlas crash near Houston was commanded into a dive but due to incompetence, not suicide. Need to hear what was being said and heard.