A321 breaks up over Egypt, no survivors.

[stu7708 244]

Looks awfully much like shrapnel damage yes, but would that completely rule out a hull failure due bad repairs to the tailstrike?? 

 

I'd assume there would be a lot of debris flying around in such an event as well, although I guess most of it would be propelled outwards from the fuselage....

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

I agree too; this does look like shrapnel,
id expect to see more of it instead of one panel footprint,

 

I’ve been watching footage from the site; what strikes me odd is the layout,

There are no drag mark anywhere on this very soft sand; and there are no dents on the ground from 30k ft drop Impact,

 

even the heavy parts seem as they were placed there; the fuselage pretty much dropped in one piece and burned on the ground for hours,

if you watch the drone footage; there is nothing dragging anywhere around; if this dropped straight out of the sky there are no ground dents either,

[Christopher Low 63]

It almost looks like it belly flopped onto the ground.....

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

exactly!

both wings are in one piece almost intact!

while the rest of the fuselage is disintegrated beyond recognition,

i can’t imagine how inertia just stops within 60 seconds drop in full forward motion,

there is not even a slight drag on the ground as if it was just dropped straight down with zero forward motion what so ever?
something doesn’t smell right here at all!

 

you all know that there is a very good possibility that there is a live video feed of what happened there from the moment it exploded till it  hit the ground!

 

[allardjd 1,853]

I don't think the ground is all that soft - the vehicle tracks seem to be ON the ground, not in the ground. As far as I know, most of the pieces fell in flat with very little horizontal velocity component.

 

As for the limited "impact area" of the shrapnel on the door panel, I suspect "shadowing" by other objects/structures took the brunt of it and this part of this panel just happened to be in direct line with the explosion site, which might well have been on the opposite side of the aircraft. Since there's no burning evident, it might have been quite a ways away. The left side of the fuselage aft of the wing is more or less shredded - no large pieces identified yet, so it seems logical the "event" site is to port. This is a starboard door.

 

Maybe that damage is not explosive shrapnel at all but it sure looks like it and is certainly hard to explain any other way.

 

John

 

EDIT: This photo illustrates that it's not soft ground...

 

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/05/13/2E095BBB00000578-3304921-A_US_intelligence_source_has_claimed_a_bomb_planted_by_ISIS_or_a-a-5_1446729823906.jpg

[J G 927]

Just because it is desert dosen't mean it is sand.

 

I have been into the Sahara Desert and a whole load of it is just hard rock flat plain. There is some sand or grit over the rock but mostly not enough to make a tire rut unless it gathers in a sheltered hollow. The rest is just blown away. What you can see in the photos is not soft sand. it is a very very thin layer of sun burned grit. Dark in colour until disturbed when it shows it's true lighter colour. So you not seeing tire dents in the surface, but just the turning over of a less than one millimeter of grit.  

 

What is weird is when it does get sandy.  Its not gradual, its sudden. The dunes rise up like hills on a plain one minute you are standing on a rock, the next you are climbing up a hill of soft fine sand. the windward sides of the dunes are an easy climb, but the leeward side are like cliffs. 

 

Personally I found the desert a very very hostile and dangerous place. it was 50 degrees C when I was there, when you were on a dune you could feel the heat of the sand through the bottom of your shoes, I just couldn't drink fast enough, I started to get headaches and feel nauseous within twenty minutes of stepping out of an air-conditioned car. Without water your life wound be measured in hours, not even days. I don't ever want to go back.

 

EDIT:

 

From what I can see it does look like a flat landing.  The black surface to the left of the debris hasn't been disturbed except for vehicle access although things are more confused to the right of the crash site, What is interesting is the impact crater just under the Door label, which would imply a high angle impact.

[SEATAC 400]

A desert is not necessarily a warm place either. It is simply a barren area of land with very little precipitation. Much of the polar regions are classifies as deserts. Though this doesn't apply to the area where the plane went down, obviously.

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Something that cropped up today in conversation:

 

http://press.thomson.co.uk/information-regarding-hold-and-cabin-baggage-for-customers-returning-from-sharm-el-sheikh/

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sharm-el-sheikh-flights-to-the-uk-from-egypt-resume-on-friday

[allardjd 1,853]

Most outbound flights from UK to SeS are being waved off and diverted to Cyprus; one has turned around and is approaching Manchester; some have arrived in Sharm as intended but most have not. It appears Egypt is throwing a wrench in the works of the rescue/recovery effort, possibly in retaliation for the "premature" acceptance of the terrorism angle by Western countries.

 

"Rescue" airlines not accepting checked baggage - pax being told hand-carried luggage only and the rest to be shipped home "later". Egypt raising hell over this, saying they do not have facilities to store so much baggage. Russia has also cancelled flights to SeS.

 

So far, US, France, UK, Ireland, Germany, Russia and now even Egypt are behaving as if there is at least some reason to believe terrorism is the cause. Whether that's "officially" known and by whom is open to conjecture - some may simply be acting from an abundance of caution.

 

LATE BREAKING NEWS: Egypt not happy, though one "official" Egyptian source now acknowledges that a bomb is the most likely explanation.

 

My own opinion is that the intelligence agencies and governments involved know a lot more than what they are saying and they have proof or are at least firmly convinced that it was terrorism.

[wain 879]

Have to agree with your last paragraph John...thing is sometimes they may be aware of other things and dont want all the trails they are on to go cold...

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

at the end of the day; the people living in SeS aren’t all bad;
they are just a weaker layer of the society that’s easier to exploit due to economic stability;
that doesn’t make them all bad people; even if we disagree with their opinions or some way of living; it is their choice,
international security may keep things under wrap for a good reason; releasing such information could be catastrophic to the local economy;
which most likely have nothing to do with it, but they are already paying the price; which in some cases is part of the terror intensions,

[allardjd 1,853]

This is no doubt an economic disaster for Egypt in general and SeS in particular, and frankly, Egypt doesn't need any more economic disasters - it was already bad enough. At some level, I can understand Egypt's government wanting to suppress the truth if the truth is that an act of terrorism killing 224 innocent travelers was committed there. Not saying they would be right to do that but it's not hard to understand the motivation to do so if that were the situation.

 

That said, it's not wrong for other nations to take precautions to protect their citizens from terrorism and their airlines from unreasonable risk if they have reason to believe that this was an act of terror.

 

John

[allardjd 1,853]

I wrote a column about aviation terror attacks back in January 2010 and just went back and re-read it. You might find it interesting - or not....

 

http://forum.mutleyshangar.com/index.php/topic/3766-aviation-terror-january-2010/?hl=terror

[hurricanemk1c 195]

From this morning's Guardian e-mail

 

"Russina plane crash: flight recorder captured 'sound of explosion'" - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/putin-suspends-russian-flights-to-egypt-after-sinai-plane-crash?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

 

"Sharm el-Sheikh flight from Stansted dodged missle last August" - http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/06/missed-by-a-1000-feet-how-british-holidaymakers-came-close-to-being-hit-by-a-missile-in-august?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

Just heard from a mate of mine on FB who works for an American airline, apparently the latest scuttlebut is that the aircraft was brought down by a Drone! Either a middair collision or a stray missile strike. This has not been confirmed however, but if true then this could open a whole new can of worms!  The reaper can reach altitudes of  around 50'000 ft and slightly less if fully loaded, that would put a small hard to see aircrft at the same height as a cruising airliner. Niether would nescacarily see the other until it was way too late, if indeed they saw at all. If it was a rogue missile then that would lead to some very difficult questions.

[allardjd 1,853]

The PPRUNE thread has been shut down (suspended pending new developments - they seem to be saying it will be re-opened when there's something new) but not deleted.  It happened a couple of days ago.  Missile unlikely.  Israel, Egypt and likely the US would have known that instantly and it's hard to see one of them covering up for the other.  

 

Damage seen so far is inconsistent with a missile - nothing like what was seen in MH-17 in the Ukraine, for instance.  The damage to that one was unmistakable, undeniable.  Nothing like that seen here.  Internal bomb, probably somewhere near the auxillary centerline tank aft of the wing, remains the best explanation to fit what is known so far but no theory yet has been publicly proven.  

 

Whatever happened killed the CVR almost instantly, within a second, even though the device itself was not fire affected or heavily damaged.  Possibly no more than severed cables - data, power or both.  

 

There is also reason to believe that the aircraft came apart very quickly, with the main damage being on the left side, aft of the wing box, forward of the lav/galley area.    That's thought to be the initial site of whatever happened.  Whatever happened, whether initiated by an explosive device or structural failure of some kind, broke the tail off the aircraft with a strong downward force since cabin roof failed in tension.  Both horizontal stabilizers were torn off, seemingly but not quite certainly, from aerodynamic forces.  It's generally acknowledged that the HS failures occurred before the tail section separated because the falling tail section would be too light to generate enough aerodynamic pressure to cause such a failure of those VERY strong surfaces.  

 

My personal feeling at this point is that it's going to be proven to have been an internally placed bomb, probably introduced by an airport worker in a critical place, though possibly just in checked luggage and placement was a matter of luck.

 

I've followed every bit of the 105 pages of posts at PPRUNE and though there's a few wacko theories and some of the usual endless bickering, it's not hard to see that there are only a couple of credible, plausible scenarios in there.  Security at SeS was a joke.  If someone had a device and wanted to plant it in a plane, it would not have been terribly difficult at that place and time.  It's not much of a stretch that there may have been such a someone in the Middle East who would have wanted to do just that.  This MAY have been technical/mechanical/structural, but if so was a nearly unprecedented sudden and violent event.  Nothing quite like this has been seen before, with an AC over land, in radar coverage, under ATC control.  Over-water events have occurred but almost always when found, the recorders indicate that it was not like this one.  

 

John

 

EDIT:  Can't speak much to the drone theory.  If a Reaper, it belonged to us and as with a missile, I can't see other entities involved covering up for us.  If a Reaper, some interesting pieces are going to be mixed in with the wreckage that won't match anything on the A321 drawings.  Russia, if they could prove it, would shout that from the rooftops of the world.  I suspect Egypt would too.  Neither of them wants it to be their fault this happened.

 

JDA

[allardjd 1,853]

The head of the Russian Security Service has said unequivocally that a planted bomb brought down the Russian airliner over the Sinai.  He says they have found evidence/residue of "TNT" in the wreckage.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/17/egypt-plane-crash-bomb-jet-russia-security-service

 

John

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

I was just going to say the same, definately confirmed as a bomb. I think ISIS may have just woken a very angry giant! They may have been complaining about Russias air raids already, but I suspect they will get a whole lot worse now, now, coupled with the French raids, they are going to have a whole new heap of pain poured down on them!

[SEATAC 400]

At least Putin and Hollande have the balls to do something. Obama is such an arrogant, egotistical president that he refuses to deal with it or take advice from his advisors. He thinks ISIS is contained. They are not contained. He lives in fantasyland. We don't want to contain them. We need to eliminate them.

[allardjd 1,853]

At least...Hollande [has] the balls to do something.

 

 

Even a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist like him can smell the coffee when the entire pot of boiling liquid is poured into his lap.  He's got a great grasp of the obvious when it can no longer be denied.

 

John

 

 

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

On the news tonight, Russia has stepped up operations, footage of TU160s and TU95s in action launching cruise missiles and heavy bombs over Syria. They have also been instructed to work with the French to basically flatten the place!

[allardjd 1,853]

The French sent 12 aircraft, 10 of them fighter types. Twelve!  They dropped a total of 20 bombs.  Hardly a massive response, except perhaps in comparison to what had been done up to that point.  So far it looks to me more like posturing and creating the illusion of a serious retaliation than anything substantive.  12 sorties?  Really?  

 

They pretty much telegraphed what they were going to do in Raqqa allowing the ISIS operatives to evacuate their primary facilities.  It's all better than nothing but nobody is serious about this yet, except Putin, who is always serious and his primary objective is to keep Assad in power in Syria.  He's going to get his pound of flesh from ISIS for the airliner bombing, however.  I think we can depend on him to do that.

 

John

[SEATAC 400]

U.S. F-15 fighters dropped leaflets, prior to bombing ISIS trucks telling people to leave so they would not kill anyone. WTF?

[brett 2,315]

Bad business killing civilians Richard although terrorists tend to surround themselves with them. We are not the only ones they terrorize.  I would guess that breaking up their infrastructure is the main objective during the bombing and with boots on the ground watching or picking them off when they are on the move.

[SEATAC 400]

Yes. Bombing civilians = bad. Warning terrorists they are about to be bombed = stupid