Thanks blackburn, goodnight. Well i have a favourite year, not decade and its France not Britain...1874 in Paris and the first impressionist exhibition.
Its been all downhill since then

Blackbarn is a typical Liberal,hates his own history,hates his own culture but has this love of the strange with the obligatory soft spot for the religion of peace.

^ The decade starting from  30 January 1649 (the execution of Charles 1st)....would be a good contender.

Depressingly perhaps not too far from the truth.

Hmmm - beginning to look like it's nothing to do with terrorism. I did have my suspicions when the story first came out. This time the terrorist organisations have kept stuum about the whole thing which is unlike them as the perpetrators usually admit to their actions soon after the incident first happens.

Also, the latest news is that there was a fire (electric it seems) minutes (not seconds) before the aircraft plummeted. If the electrical wiring burnt through, then that could cause a loss of communication from the outside world (radio would go dead). If the main control wiring was destroyed (melted) then it's likely the pilots would have little or no control over the aircraft's handling after that.

I was wondering if these new Lithium batteries are playing up again. They can, on rare occasions, have a propensity to suddenly without warning burst into flames.

Even with all this aircraft's back up systems in place, if critical wiring is destroyed, these fly by wire control systems become ineffectual and there's nowt anything the pilots can do about it.

This might explain the uncontrolled turning descent that this aircraft seemed to experience.

I not buying the fire thing. A fire wouldn't cause all that catastrophic events so quickly on a plane. A bomb of cause causes smoke fire so all this stuff happening close together is just signals from a plane that has just exploded and sending bits of data falling from the sky.

The sharp turn to the left was probably a deliberate move by the pilots. Its a procedure in an emergency situation if you want to drop altitude quickly........turn 90 degrees left and then you can exit the traffic corridor ready to descend. The 360 loop right is indicative of a quick way of loosing a lot of altitude purposely. These moves to me suggest the pilots handled whatever happened very well and were trying to get their aircraft down quickly. What they know so far indicates i would guess either a rapid spreading fire in or around the cockpit or maybe a small explosion, either way, it eventually it seems, robbed the pilots of control. RIP to all those poor people.

Its looking more and more likely that it was a fire though Sonko and probably not as a result of terrorism, although yes, they ought to atleast keep it open.

very, the CVR and FDR will hopefully reveal all so future flights can be made safer.

rom the NY Times
¨ First, there was a problem with the autoflight control computer. The jet would have been flying near its maximum speed and elevation at that time. That is the most efficient way for jetliners to fly, and it is safe, but pilots prefer to rely on autopilot systems in those conditions because if they were to ever lose control of the plane, it could be hard to regain, Mr. Mann said. The last message had to do with the spoiler elevator controller, which essentially controls the flaps responsible for pitch and roll control. The computer controlling these failed as well.

“It looks to me like you have a progressive flight control system failure,” Mr. Mann said. It is over the course of two minutes, which might have seemed like an eternity on that plane, but is relatively fast.This is also the moment that the plane left Greek airspace, and at 2:29:40 a.m., Greek controllers lost the aircraft’s trace, just inside Egyptian airspace, about halfway between Crete and Egypt.

Around this time, the plane made a 90-degree turn to the left and then a full circle to the right, dropping precipitously to 15,000 feet from 37,000 and then plunging again to 9,000 feet before it disappeared from radar.


The crew never gave any indication of a technical problem or other difficulties on board, even during the final, fatal minutes when the plane itself was transmitting data indicating a catastrophic failure.

One former crash investigator said that radar evidence pointing to a series of sharp maneuvers in the moments before radar contact was lost suggested that the plane was almost certainly not under the control of the pilots. Whatever upset the Airbus was so sudden and violent that it could not be compensated for by the plane’s automated safety systems.

“In my mind, this basically opens two axes of possibility: either a sudden technical problem or some kind of illicit or terrorist act,” said the expert, Alain Bouillard, a former chief investigator for the French Bureau of Investigations and Analyses.¨

Kids & matches ay!

The sharp turn to the left was probably a deliberate move by the pilots. Its a procedure in an emergency situation if you want to drop altitude quickly.

You read that rubbish on the BBC didn't you? They didn't issue a mayday, they most likely weren't in control when these sharp turns happened, it's just the plane out of control and falling from the sky.

As above I believe we are pointing to a device in the cargo exploding causing a hole/fire.

A fire on it's own is a possibility, but everything happened so quickly I find it unlikely.

that rubbish that was posted was nearly as bad as your attempt Hamsterdam

People that know sfa about aircraft or remotely understand the systems their fault codes and what they could mean should not say anything ,a lot of stuff being reported about wiring causing fires and the like is so insulting to the people that design ,maintain and repair aircraft .
Of course most of it comes from pilots that themselves dont really understand the finer detail or  used to fly a long time ago and should not be saying diddly squat .

'no mayday' call doesn't debunk that theory Hamsterdam. In an incident the pilots priority is to fly the plane NOT communicate. Granted, you would expect a mayday call but the lack of one doesn't eliminate the theory. What if the a fire had disabled the radio ect. I still think initially after whatever occurred, that the pilots had some level of control and maybe those turns were deliberate. Depending on the size of any 'bomb', they normally result in the plane explosivelly decompressing and breaking apart almost instantly......this doesn't appear to have happened here.

That was a Somalian plane as i remember and the person killed was the bomber. That bomb was detonated at 10,000ft which is why a single hole in the fuselage was the outcome. At 37,000ft, the result of that bomb would, almost certainly, have been the death of everyone onboard.

They dont NEED to to turn left to descend.......what i said was that it was, i believe, a sometimes known practice to get out of a traffic corridor, prior to an emergency descent......i.e, if you have planes at altitudes below you in the traffic corridor, it might not be a great idea to suddenly start plunging downwards.

From what i read, the plane made a precise 90 degree left turn followed later by a full 360.......to me, this indicates they had a level of control for some time after whatever incident started. The CVR and FDR will tell the story hopefully but for me, the bomb scenario at the minute is no more likely than an onboard fire.

So boxes recovered ,one slightly damaged (cvr) but other is about to reveal the  parameters/variables shortly .

Apparently there is reports of smoke and heat damage to the front of the aircraft ,bodies are being recovered and hopefully as many as possible are returned to their loved ones .

Was going to return to this thread a  while back as the conflicting info being put out was shocking ,although when i read the stuff about north african naval exercises and then meteor shower warnings followed by ufo's a thought it maybe better to wait a bit .

Hopefully getting closer to the truth emerging now ,although dont hold your breath .