Russian A321 Down in Egypt

[J.O.]

By Staff writer Al Arabiya NewsSaturday, 31 October 2015

A Russian civilian plane carrying 224 people crashed in Sinai on Saturday, the Egyptian Prime Minister said, amid earlier conflicting reports that the plane was safely continuing its journey.

Egyptian air traffic control lost contact with the Airbus A-321, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia, shortly after it took off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to head to Russia, aviation sources told Reuters news agency.

The sources said the passenger plane was mainly carrying Russian tourists.

Security sources in the Sinai Peninsula confirmed reports that an aircraft was missing. But in a conflicting statement, Egypt's air accident chief had said that the missing passenger plane on its way to Russia had safely left Egyptian airspace and made contact with Turkish air traffic control.

"The ... Russian airline had told us that the Russian plane we lost contact with is safe and that it has contacted Turkish air traffic control and is passing through Turkish skies now," Ayman al-Muqaddam, the head of the central air traffic accident authority in Egypt, said in a statement.

But local Egyptian media reported the plane had crashed in Sinai, a claim later confirmed by the PM.

A Russian aviation authority source confirmed that radar contact was lost with the passenger jet, according to RIA news agency.

The source said the aircraft is an Airbus A-321 operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia and that it was carrying 224 passengers and crew. The source added that radar contact was lost in Cyprus' airspace.

[With Reuters]

Last Update: Saturday, 31 October 2015 KSA 10:54 - GMT 07:54

[J.O.]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russian-plane-egypt-1.3298193

[dagger]

Radar contact lost at 31,000 feet? A modern European-made aircraft, not some Stalinist piece of junk? Pardon me for having suspicions that there is more here than an "accident". It sounds a bit like an "incident".

[airt]

We have ISIS claiming they did it.

We have the Russians claiming it was a "technical fault" called in by the pilot.

Problem is , both sources are highly unreliable.

I agree with Dagger. A modern airliner falling from the sky at cruise altitude is highly unusual.

[Kip Powick]

I would suggest that it is best to wait HARD technical information before believing much written by any media outlet.

Speculation and hypothesis is just not warranted at this time.

Here is a quote direct from CNN ;

Russia 24 also quotes the FlightRadar 24 website as saying the plane was descending at a rate of 1,800 meters per minute, or 67 mph, before radar contact was lost.

while the mathematical conversion is accurate...it is meaningless. (should be approx 5905 fpm)

[Don Hudson]

My only comment would be the same caution as Kip's, particularly when it comes to Flightradar24 and other public flight-following websites using ADSB data and which purport to be providing flight data on the basis that can actually be relied upon. It most assuredly cannot.

ADSB data from such sites is for the light entertainment and momentary interest of the public. Where serious examination of what happened is being considered, such data should be dismissed outright, along with any "conclusions" derived thereby.

[Moon The Loon]

Time MAY tell, given the Egyptian government's history of air accident investigation.

If a rapid descent as described above occurred, this corresponds to an Emergency Descent, one that would be done presumably because of a loss of pressurization.

A bomb might have created this loss of pressurization. A misguided high speed descent may have exacerbated the problem. The debris field suggests an inflight break up.

I'm not convinced this was not a terrorist action. Yet.

Resting comfortably in my armchair with football in hand,

Yet deeply sympathetic to those who's lives were lost.

Nobody deserves a fate like this.

[GDR]

217 passengers on an A321. They must stack them.

[Kip Powick]

High Density (Charter) config is 220 Pax........s-q-u-i-s-h-y

[Fido]

Yet people complain about Rouge A321 with 200 seats

[Moon The Loon]

C3000 - 226 configuration; Overseas 757: 233 config.

Sardine can, yes.

[DEFCON]

News orgs are circulating footage taken from an aerial perspective at the crash site now. Just guessing of course, but It looks like the aircraft came down flat, maybe even in a bit of a spin and impacted minus the section of the fuselage aft of the wing. The tail section is in a fairly intact state, but located some distance from the main wreckage and seemingly absent the horizontal tail. From the photos available, it appears the horizontal was ripped away from the main structure earlier in the breakup sequence.

[Kip Powick]

CBC News reports that "some aviation expert (official) " in Egypt has stated that the aircraft did break up in flight

I don't think that was very hard to deduce when the wreckage was spread over 5 km.

[Moon The Loon]

CBC News reports that "some aviation expert (official) " in Egypt has stated that the aircraft did break up in flight

I don't think that was very hard to deduce when the wreckage was spread over 5 km.

Last report I saw had the debris field now spread over 15 km. I'm thinking the only way that would occur is a breakup much like the Pan Am in Lockerbie.

And the Egyptian officials are denying there was a call from the pilots and this was a technical problem.

Sounds like the Egyptian Egyptair 990 accident investigators are back at work...

[Don Hudson]

Moon, perhaps it doesn't matter who's back at work.

Hopefully the Irish (the lessor, now on-site I believe), BEA and Airbus will help get any meaningful investigation past the palace gates so we can at least rule out a latent technical/mechanical problem that could apply to the type.

[Mitch Cronin]

C3000 - 226 configuration; Overseas 757: 233 config.

Sardine can, yes.

But with cookie-chuckers such as those..... sigh.... lots of guys didn't care!

[dagger]

This is circling around to a bomb on board bringing the plane down. A missile signature would have been apparent from the get-go. And a plane just breaking up from structural failure, at 30,000 feet? How likely is that. That would be an egregious maintenance failure or fraud, as in "we really didn't send it out for that C check, we only said we did."

[blues deville]

This is circling around to a bomb on board bringing the plane down. A missile signature would have been apparent from the get-go. And a plane just breaking up from structural failure, at 30,000 feet? How likely is that. That would be an egregious maintenance failure or fraud, as in "we really didn't send it out for that C check, we only said we did."

It wouldn't be the first time this has happened. A faulty bulkhead repair due to a tail strike on a JAL 747 ( (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123) caused their airliner to crash in 1985. The repair did not include the required rows of rivets and after seven years of cycles it finally failed.

Apparently this particular A321 had a tail strike in 2001 with a previous carrier.

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20151031-0

If you look closely at the time line on the Vertical Speed graphic, the ADS-B information appears to show steady level flight until 06:12:35 where this line seems to be less smooth indicating some disturbance and then the extremely large changes at 06:12:57.

[Woody Pusher]

If you look closely at the time line on the Vertical Speed graphic, the ADS-B information appears to show steady level flight until 06:12:35 where this line seems to be less smooth indicating some disturbance and then the extremely large changes at 06:12:57.

There is a small problem with the ADS-B reported info you refer to, i.e. the Time Stamp of each message can't be relied on as it hasn't been generated at its source, but appended by the receiving equipment. Some of that equipment has GPS timing and others don't, but there is a way round it, and that is to use the source generated position data as the reference points and append the resulting averaged times to it.

I haven't actually tried it, but it is a valid way of using aircraft generated references to get around a dubious timing problem.

However, if the tail section of the aircraft had parted company at the onset of this incident, the ADS-C, ADS-B data may be the only post separation data available.

[blues deville]

There is a small problem with the ADS-B reported info you refer to, i.e. the Time Stamp of each message can't be relied on as it hasn't been generated at its source, but appended by the receiving equipment. Some of that equipment has GPS timing and others don't, but there is a way round it, and that is to use the source generated position data as the reference points and append the resulting averaged times to it.

I haven't actually tried it, but it is a valid way of using aircraft generated references to get around a dubious timing problem.

However, if the tail section of the aircraft had parted company at the onset of this incident, the ADS-C, ADS-B data may be the only post separation data available.

ADS-B provides ATC with accurate/real-time position information and perhaps better than radar in some areas. So I don't see how this time stamp could not be accurate as well. However, my observation was more to do with the line on the profile graph before the excess climb/descent paths. Was this the initial breakup of the aircraft and then followed by a more catastrophic event?

[boestar]

Flight radar 24 adn others use some of their user base to provide data. the users are traded a small cheap ADS-B receiver to attach to their computer in exchange for free access to the "premium" features of the site. In some areas the data is somewhat less than perfect.

[dagger]

So it's boiled down to this.

Officials say there was no missile. And I believe that, since the plane was flying close to Israel and the Israelis have extremely sophisticated radar, so if there was any sign of a missile, we'd have heard about it. Also, the plane was out of range of shoulder-launched missiles, and the Egyptian government is not known to have lost control of any of its truck launched or land-based anti-aircraft missiles.

Airline officials say there is no chance of structural failure beginning by itself. There had to be an "external" influence. They didn't explain what external means, whether that's something alien to the aircraft like a bomb, or that they believe it had to be a missile (or meteor for that matter). "We exclude technical problems and reject human error," Alexander Smirnov, a Kogalymavia airline official, said at a Moscow news conference as he discussed possible causes of the crash.

Air traffic controllers didn't receive any distress calls.

[boestar]

"No Chance of a Structural Failure Beginning by itself"

That is a bold statement considering it has happened several times in the history of the Jet age.

Never say Never

[DEFCON]

Is anyone up to calculating the G loading the aircraft would have been exposed to during that 25 second period?

[Kip Powick]

My WAG.............explosive decompression in the aft section of aircraft, (possibly the repaired area of the previous tail-strike..Tail rips off). (probably why the tail was found so far from main wreckage) Go to AVHerald and see photos/diagrams/maps.

As posted...just a WAG