China Airlines goes down with 132 souls on board

This is entirely speculation on my part, but in one place I saw ADS-B data that showed what appears to be an attempted level off near 9,000. My early guess would be a depressurization issue that caused a rapid descent, perhaps one out of control due to panic, then a panic attempt to level at 9,000 that caused fatal structural damage.

Similar to this incident with a King Air near Cape Girardeau, MO. https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20070202-0
 
midwestpa24 said:
This is entirely speculation on my part, but in one place I saw ADS-B data that showed what appears to be an attempted level off near 9,000. My early guess would be a depressurization issue that caused a rapid descent, perhaps one out of control due to panic, then a panic attempt to level at 9,000 that caused fatal structural damage.
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I was gonna say, I wonder if they were doing an emergency descent. The first couple minutes are about 9k fpm, which is about what I fly does in an emergency descent.
 
An analyst on one of the cable news networks speculated (and it's all speculation at this point) that the pilot flying may have experienced an engine failure and yawed toward the dead engine instead of the operating engine without throttling back resulting in a rollover and uncontrolled descent.

Complete speculation, but...
 
Stan Cooper said:
An analyst on one of the cable news networks speculated (and it's all speculation at this point) that the pilot flying may have experienced an engine failure and yawed toward the dead engine instead of the operating engine without throttling back resulting in a rollover and uncontrolled descent.

Complete speculation, but...
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I'm not going to say it was aliens, but...
 
Stan Cooper said:
An analyst on one of the cable news networks speculated (and it's all speculation at this point) that the pilot flying may have experienced an engine failure and yawed toward the dead engine instead of the operating engine without throttling back resulting in a rollover and uncontrolled descent.
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Something like that has caused high-altitude upsets before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006

https://www.flightglobal.com/video-...rted-after-rudder-trim-blunder/102300.article
 
Sifossifoco said:
https://nypost.com/2022/03/21/the-moment-china-eastern-boeing-737-nosedives-before-fiery-crash/

"was en route to Guangzhou when it crashed at about 2:30 p.m. local time"
"Contact with the plane was lost at about 2:15 p.m."

It still looks like somebody wasn't talking on the radio for a while before the drop. Like everyone else I am just guessing and speculating, but it does look unusual to have no communication for 15 minutes. I apologize if it doesn't make sense to people with much more experience than me, and I would be very curious to hear the opinion of someone with solid knowledge of 737s.
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Do they mean "radar contact lost", or "radio contact lost", or is it a reporter talking out his/her ass?

It's not unusual to not talk to anyone for 15 minutes while in the high altitude structure.

I fly into and out of Guangzhou several times a month. ATC there can be a mess (I guess it might be better for Chinese speaking crews), and there's a lot of chatter on the radio, but sometimes it can be quiet.

I wouldn't read too much into "Contact with the plane was lost..." in a NY Post article.

Edit: I'm astounded the censor-bot allowed "ass." I'm going to try and use that once per post now.
 
midwestpa24 said:
This is entirely speculation on my part, but in one place I saw ADS-B data that showed what appears to be an attempted level off near 9,000. My early guess would be a depressurization issue that caused a rapid descent, perhaps one out of control due to panic, then a panic attempt to level at 9,000 that caused fatal structural damage.

Similar to this incident with a King Air near Cape Girardeau, MO. https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20070202-0
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My WAG is that they attempted to recover from whatever happened in the first place and ripped the tail off.
 
How does a black box withstand that kind of impact. Plus with that kind of impact I imagine death had to be as quick as it gets.
 
DavidWhite said:
I was gonna say, I wonder if they were doing an emergency descent. The first couple minutes are about 9k fpm, which is about what I fly does in an emergency descent.
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Whole thing lasted 150 seconds.

FOYZ31uWQAAo14M.jpeg
 
From Facebook. Take it with a huge-ass salt mine.

Edit: Removed photo to prevent misinformation.
 
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Stan Cooper said:
An analyst on one of the cable news networks speculated (and it's all speculation at this point) that the pilot flying may have experienced an engine failure and yawed toward the dead engine instead of the operating engine without throttling back resulting in a rollover and uncontrolled descent.
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Derived from the explanation of the TNA 235 crash where the pilot did that (with spectacular video).
 
Just skimming through. I don’t envision much of a ‘coffin corner’ at 30k, likely somewhat lite also.

Most any system problem/failure will give you notice in the cockpit, pitot heat failure & such.

I’m still in the ‘human factors’ camp at this early point. Even with most any system or aircraft deficiency, with redundancy & intervention, no reason to nose dive.

I saw cloud cover in the video, no mention of extreme weather in the area.
 
Sluggo63 said:
From Facebook. Take it with a huge-ass salt mine.

View attachment 105633
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For all I know that picture is legit. But it surprises me that the airplane would <seemingly> come down like a lawn dart if most of the empennage was missing. You'd think it would be pitching and yawing all over the place.
 
benyflyguy said:
How does a black box withstand that kind of impact.
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Only the armored part of the 'black box' can withstand the impact (the rest of the unit will be demolished) - but even the 'crash protected memory' has physical limits. It's typically a very heavily constructed assembly. [Generally speaking, withstanding a 4-hour post-crash fire is the harder thing to do, as it pushes the flash memory chips to their thermal limits.]
 
kyleb said:
For all I know that picture is legit. But it surprises me that the airplane would <seemingly> come down like a lawn dart if most of the empennage was missing. You'd think it would be pitching and yawing all over the place.
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I'd have to agree. I have no idea what a 737 would do with no rudder or horizontal stabilizer, but I wouldn't think straight flight is very likely.
 
donjohnston said:
I'd have to agree. I have no idea what a 737 would do with no rudder or horizontal stabilizer, but I wouldn't think straight flight is very likely.
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If you loose the elevator or horizontal stabilizer, or at least a reasonable bit of them, there is only one way that nose can go, since the stuff on the back is pushing downward to keep the nose up.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
If you loose the elevator or horizontal stabilizer, or at least a reasonable bit of them, there is only one way that nose can go, since the stuff on the back is pushing downward to keep the nose up.
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Until it slows and starts to fall, then the sweep of the main wings is going to put the nose down.
 
JAL 123 lost the vertical stabilizer and stayed airborn a bit. The horizontal I'd imagine the inevitable happens a lot quicker.
 
Well... don’t all airplanes REQUIRE the horiz stab to provide down force to balance nose in a stable condition? So when it’s gone, the plane goes STRAIGHT down. I’ve seen this in practice with model airplanes A LOT.

Not like sort of start diving, but STRAIGHT down, right now. Lawn dart.

The bleriot might have been a “lifting tail”, but all “normal” airplanes are not. The tail works basically against the “spring” of gravity. In other words, down pitch is achieved in a controllable fashion with less down force... Never actually up force, unless you’re doing weird acro or flying upside down, which really doesn’t count.

So that straight down condition makes perfect sense (in my tiny pilot brain) without a horiz stab.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
If you loose the elevator or horizontal stabilizer, or at least a reasonable bit of them, there is only one way that nose can go, since the stuff on the back is pushing downward to keep the nose up.
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I'm in no way an expert, but if there's no tail, what keeps the nose pointed in the direction of flight. When I was a kid playing with RC planes, once you lose the tail, all bets were off with respect to direction. If the motor was on the front and providing power, that helped to keep the general direction but if you lost power, they would spin around the center of gravity until the wings were ripped off.

With wing mounted engines and no tail, I don't see how the pointy end would stay pointing forward.
 
dmspilot said:
From a Google Image search, it's allegedly Silk Air 185, but in any case, the image existed before China Eastern.
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Well done. I did a google image search before posting it originally, but all it came up with was fighters, so I figured it was a new photo. Thanks for finding that.
 
DavidWhite said:
Is it a computer simulated thing or from a different accident?
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From a documentary of the Silk Air accident, I believe.

donjohnston said:
I'm in no way an expert, but if there's no tail, what keeps the nose pointed in the direction of flight.
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The better question might be, what forces displace the nose from pointing in the direction of flight?

If you lose the horizontal stabilizer, the nose will pitch down uncontrollably due to the wing's center-of-lift being behind the CG.

But, at this point, there's no evidence that the tail was detached.
 
Bill said:
Until it slows and starts to fall, then the sweep of the main wings is going to put the nose down.
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It will happen essentially instantly, wing sweep or not. That's why a CG aft of what is permitted is quite dangerous.
 
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