China plane crash

[red750]

A China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board has crashed in mountains in southern China on a domestic flight following a sudden descent from cruising altitude. Media said there was no sign of survivors.

 

There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash, in which the plane descended at a final rate of 31,000 feet a minute, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

 

Video on Sunrise showed aircraft in nosedown highspeed vertical dive.

 

[red750]

Screen shot taken with iPhone showing diving aircraft.

 

[FlyBoy1960]

it was just reported on another website that the exact location that the aircraft started its descent yesterday into an airport before landing is exactly the same spot that today it went into a vertical dive.

 

Sounds like they screwed up something with the programming of the flight and it went from 29,000 feet to ground level based on a flight it did the previous day. Of course I'm not an expert on this on just repeating what it said somewhere else.

[APenNameAndThatA]

Pretty sure that programming the autopilot wrongly would not cause this. Disclaimer: I don't know what I am talking about. 

[facthunter]

Apparently there was a part recovery but planes cannot descend that fast without bits coming off. It has to be some kind of control malfunction. Hope the "boxes" are intact enough to yield the information. The plane is not a MAX. It's an 800 and China has had a good record for a while now. Air travel is commonplace within China to day. Nev

[F10]

One interesting comment on the 737, from the Max disasters was the fact the 737 airframe has ben pushed possibly...beyond it's capabilities. This is interesting because to me, the best airliner Boeing ever made, was the 727. Now yes, it may not look as pretty with two turbofans on the rear end, (I think because of the size of the high bypass fan, the third engine would have had to have been ditched). But the 727 had more sweepback than any other Boeing, giving it a cruise speed of 0.9 Mach due to the sweep delaying local Mach shock wave development on the wings. The airstairs at the back, no airport equipment required. The grouping of the engines in the tail meant an engine failure on take off, only resulted in the VSI sagging by 300Ft/min, in the cockpit all you heard was the hiss of airflow over the windshield. It handled like a fighter, no heavy engines on the wing to dampen roll rate......Cool machine!

 

Just seems strange Boeing didn't look at developing the 727 rocket ship. Maybe with the 737 issues, a big mistake?   

[lee-wave]

Looks like a suicide dive ... similar to the Silkair 737 dive on the West coast of Sumatra some years back....

[onetrack]

The rapid change from controlled flight in cruise at 29,000 ft to a nearly vertical descent indicates catastrophic airframe damage to me.

The crash signs are similar to the near-new 737, GOL Flight 1907, that had the mid-air with the Embraer Legacy 600 over the Amazonian jungle in Sept 2006.

If it wasn't a mid-air with a drone or something similar, I'd have to opine major structural failure caused by poor maintenance procedures - possibly exacerbated by COVID-19 staffing problems.

I've neither heard nor read anything about crew radio transmissions during the rapid descent. You'd think someone on board would've at least got out one Mayday.

[kgwilson]

The SBS Doco of 2011 highlighted a number of quality issues with sub contractor suppliers, one of which was supplying the main fuselage ribs that were sub standard for this model 737. When they visited the manufacturing plant they found that the expensive CNC machines were out of service in need of repair and the parts were being fabricated by hand. The ribs had to be modified at the Boeing assembly plant so they would fit. There were 3 instances when these model 737s had crashed during bad landings and over ran the runway and the fuselage broke into several pieces. Luckily all passengers & crew survived. In earlier deliberate crash testing the fuselages had remained intact.

 

If there had been a failure in the integrity of the fuselage framework there would likely have been instant decompression which could have severed control systems causing the aircraft to do what it did. Complete speculation but a possibility.

[pmccarthy]

Apparently a plane with wings intact will not dive like that unless controlled. Instead it will porpoise due to wing lift as speed varies up and down. In other words, it tries to pull out of the dive repeatedly.

[facthunter]

Depends what range the stab trim operates over. The horizontal stabiliser has far more authority than the elevators.  Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

Looked like suicide to me...I dunno what I hope for tho.

[spacesailor]

NOT ANOTHER

Screw stabiliser malfunction .

spacesailor

[Blueadventures]

One report says corrected early in dive,  could be one pilot trying to correct the dive input by the other pilot.  The flight recorder and CVR are needed to reveal their record.

[onetrack]

The aircraft went into a ravine almost vertically, into what appears to be relatively soft soil, and it is totally shredded.

 

Now it's started to rain in the area, and the crater is filling with water, and the searchers have been warned to be careful of landslides around the crater. What a mess, it will take weeks to find the FDR and CVR.

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1505824466433060864

 

Flightradar preliminary information shows an almost vertical descent profile followed by an arrest at relatively low altitude, then a rapid vertical descent again.

 

I cannot see many alternatives to a determined control event to keep the aircraft in a vertical dive, with one pilot then fighting to regain control, but the originator of the dive overwhelming the recovery effort.

The simple fact that the aircraft recovered and gained altitude again is ominous - it shows control surfaces were working and controllable.

ATC tried to contact the crew repeatedly during the dive, and received no response - seeming to indicate a purposeful effort to avoid communication.

 

[kgwilson]

The CVR has been recovered & it is apparently "relatively intact". They are still looking for the FDR. They had to pump water out of the crater the aircraft made as the weather has been terrible since the crash. They have found bank cards, IDs, wallets & some human remains.

[Cosmick]

Some news in Asia isn't so censored. I will say however some persons could be upset viewing this Video. If real the Cabin would be intact without loss of pressure.

 

https://www.facebook.com/somprasong.pandum/posts/7827489657265000

[onetrack]

I don't believe that TikTok video is genuine. The forces generated by the B737's dives and pull-up would have pinned passengers to seats or thrown them to the ceiling.

It's highly unlikely any passenger would have taken a video of the dive that would have survived the impact, and still be able to be viewed immediately after the crash.

In every crash involving major impacts, electronic devices are shredded and PCB's need to be found, and components examined, to see if data can be drawn from them. That involves a lot of work.

There are plenty of attention-seeking people with much time on their hands, that can create very good fake videos. They turn up by the dozen immediately after a major air crash event.

[onetrack]

The Chinese have released a video of the ongoing recovery that is over 6 hrs long, and it's quite astounding the effort the Chinese are putting in, with transparency obviously being high on their list.

You have to admire these people, when they get into it, they're like ants eating an elephant.

 

The working conditions are beyond atrocious, they resemble some of the worst conditions of the Vietnam War, with the added requirement of having to excavate and carefully examine every handful of mud.

Their organisation and thoroughness is commendable, even to the extent of organising the firefighters to cut down all the bamboo surrounding the crater so that every possible shred of the wreckage is recovered.

 

 

[Rotorwork]

Second black box found

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-28/second-black-box-found-from-china-eastern-airlines/100940364

[onetrack]

Unconfirmed reports are coming in, that U.S. investigators who are involved the examination of the FDR and CVR are now becoming convinced the aircraft nosedived solely due to pilot control inputs.

Whether that was due to a cockpit intrusion, a medical event or events, a suicidal pilot, a fight between pilot and FO, is yet to be determined.

The investigators have simply said, "the aircraft responded as designed, to control inputs, when it was placed in a steep dive". As to why those inputs were initiated and stayed there is the $64 question.

The investigators noted that no response came from the cockpit as attempts were made to contact the crew, as ATC noted the aircraft leaving its flight level.

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/18/someone-in-cockpit-behind-china-eastern-plane-crash-reports

[onetrack]

The deathly silence from China as regards this crash is interesting. But the following article, which appears to be largely based on writings by bloggers within China, sheds a lot of light on what likely happened on the crashed Boeing, and what happens within China, and in particular, what happens within the Chinese airlines. They are obviously not a nice place to work - especially if you make a mistake, or criticise authorities.

 

https://gnews.org/articles/75685

[facthunter]

80 day course at Seattle. That's got to be a record. CVR's are installed on all airliners. There's an erase button bit it's probably not connected to anything. . Constant monitoring from the ground will become more widespread. Brave New  World.  Nev

[Yenn]

I can't believe that it dived nearly vertically for 20000" and then pulled up and then dived again.

The first pull up from the speeds generated by the dive would have demolished the airframe in my opinion. I think the published manoeuver is incorrect, so all the other info is suspect.

[facthunter]

There's an  emergency descent dirtied up and a clean one depending on airframe integrity and planes will do the 20,000 feet loss of altitude in under  2 minutes without exceeding allowable stress figures.  Nev