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Old 02-25-2009, 07:15 PM  
WeirdHomer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DutchTeenCash View Post

they have this rumor going on now the plane left with not enough kerosene - im sure they'll find out soon
Well i have been hearing the same here in Belgium but i'm 99% sure this isn't what happened. This was a scheduled flight with IFR flight plan so the aircraft took on enough kerosene to reach his destination + alternative + 30 Min's flight time which is the standard rule.

Facts: - Tail struck ground first - the aircraft didn't slide allot, it "dropped" onto terrain - eye witnesses report it having an abnormal "pitch up" attitude

Two possible scenarios from a pilots point of view:

A - The aircraft was very low on airspeed on final approach and started to stall due to pilots failure to keep enough airspeed, pilots tried to recover the stall but didn't have enough altitude. In this case it's a pilot error. I have my doubts about this scenario because the one engine i saw in the news pics and clips still had his basic structure and all blades so i doubt it was still running when it hit the ground else it would have destroyed the blades and the basic structure when the blades disintegrate on impact.

B - The aircraft suffered a loss of engine power, this can have many causes but again, i don't think running out of fuel is one of them. This would explain the extreme pitch up attitude, when you loose airspeed you have to add energy to keep flying, you add this energy by pitching the nose up but this also means you have to take the energy somewhere and this energy comes from the airspeed. So nose up -> slower descent but loss of airspeed -> finally you stall and drop. Also the aircraft crashed into a muddy field which i personally think was a pilots choice, so a controlled crash because the aircraft turned away from it's normal approach path to reach this field. The pilots never called out an emergency according to news reports, this would also indicate to me they had enough fuel else they would have asked for an emergency landing due to fuel starvation.
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