Candair CRJ200 from Heathrow Declares then Disappears

Even an emergency descent will have a significant horizontal component. This thing looks like it went straight in. They got the memory of both boxes and seem optimistic that they'll be readable. In the meantime I think we are all going to have to be satisfied with scratching our heads.
 
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I'm not even going to speculate on this one. The CRJ-200 has a very good safety history with regard to mechanical failures. If it is mechanical related it will likely be something that none of us could have guessed.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
Maybe a depressurization, rapid decent, and forgetting that they were over mountainous terrain?
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I could imagine if the sky was a white overcast, spatial disorientation could allow the terrain to "sneak in" quick. An emergency descent over an area you never planned on descending into probably wouldn't leave much time to take terrain into consideration. Perhaps that would have been a better way to go than an uncontrolled dive, at least it would just be over.
 
ChasenSFO said:
I could imagine if the sky was a white overcast, spatial disorientation could allow the terrain to "sneak in" quick. An emergency descent over an area you never planned on descending into probably wouldn't leave much time to take terrain into consideration. Perhaps that would have been a better way to go than an uncontrolled dive, at least it would just be over.
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Spatial disorientation of airline pilots, on an airliner, with an EFIS, which is probably on autopilot above 1000agl anyway?
 
On saturday, one of the black boxes (FDR) was found. It is heavily demolished and SHK technical investigators are working to determine whether the memory device is intact. The device will then be transported to a laboratory where the information can be read out. It may take some weeks before this has been done.

Parts of the second black box (CVR) were also found on saturday. The unit was, however, not intact, and the part that contains memory functions were missing. On sunday, the missing parts of the CVR were found.

Since the aircraft's two black boxes have been found SHK believes that it will be possible to determine why the aircraft crashed. To extract the information and analyze it could take a few weeks. The investigation will then continue and SHK plans to publish a full report on the accident within twelve months of the event.

http://www.havkom.se/en/investigati...d-flygplanet-se-dux-av-typen-canadair-crj-200 The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (Statens haverikommission, SHK) is an independent governmental authority under the Ministry of Justice that investigates all types of serious civil or military accidents and incidents with the aim of improving safety, regardless of whether they occur on land, at sea or in the air.
 
thevideographer said:
I mean, that's gotta be pretty far down the list of possibilities. We're not talking about going below mins on an approach, it went down from cruise right?
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And we know they had the auto pilot on during that very abrupt and rapid descent into terrain and knew exactly where they were in relation to all terrain thanks to their spiffy EFIS panel, right? I don't see how it is far fetched, considering as far as I know, a CRJ has never nosed in with a mechanical either. But somehow they ended up in a crater, in terrain, in the snow, after falling out of cruise.

Leave it up to the investigators, but keep an open mind. Don't fool yourself, spatial disorientation has brought down several airliners in just the last decade. Throw in an abrupt inflight emergency, and I don't see why that is hard to fathom in potential white out conditions. Not saying that is what happened, but its certainly plausible.
 
ChasenSFO said:
And we know they had the auto pilot on during that very abrupt and rapid descent into terrain and knew exactly where they were in relation to all terrain thanks to their spiffy EFIS panel, right? I don't see how it is far fetched, considering as far as I know, a CRJ has never nosed in with a mechanical either. But somehow they ended up in a crater, in terrain, in the snow, after falling out of cruise.

Leave it up to the investigators, but keep an open mind. Don't fool yourself, spatial disorientation has brought down several airliners in just the last decade. Throw in an abrupt inflight emergency, and I don't see why that is hard to fathom in potential white out conditions. Not saying that is what happened, but its certainly plausible.
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If you look at the crater you can easily see there was no horizontal component at all. You can tell they were not in a stall, or at least not with the bottom(or top) side down. It did not pancake for lack of a better term like Air France and the more recent Asian Airbus. It really rules any kind of controlled flight out. In other words it was not a CFIT.
 
z987k said:
If you look at the crater you can easily see there was no horizontal component at all. You can tell they were not in a stall, or at least not with the bottom(or top) side down. It did not pancake for lack of a better term like Air France and the more recent Asian Airbus. It really rules any kind of controlled flight out. In other words it was not a CFIT.
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Most likely, unless they were in (very)steep nose down controlled or semi-controlled descent and smacked the terrain not realizing they were nearing any rising areas. Just to play devils advocate.

I do agree that my first thought would be an uncontrolled plummet, but I do agree with @Screaming_Emu that at least semi-CFIT could have been a factor. Though obviously this wouldn't have been what lead to the mayday and descent to begin with.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Most likely, unless they were in (very)steep nose down controlled or semi-controlled descent and smacked the terrain not realizing they were nearing any rising areas. Just to play devils advocate.

I do agree that my first thought would be an uncontrolled plummet, but I do agree with @Screaming_Emu that at least semi-CFIT could have been a factor. Though obviously this wouldn't have been what lead to the mayday and descent to begin with.
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Even crazy high descent rates above 6000fpm, even at "low" airspeeds like 200 knots, have a pretty substantial forward velocity component. This crash scene does not appear to have any forward velocity associated with it.

Hopefully the FDR or CVR will have enough data on them to be useful.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Most likely, unless they were in (very)steep nose down controlled or semi-controlled descent and smacked the terrain not realizing they were nearing any rising areas. Just to play devils advocate.

I do agree that my first thought would be an uncontrolled plummet, but I do agree with @Screaming_Emu that at least semi-CFIT could have been a factor. Though obviously this wouldn't have been what lead to the mayday and descent to begin with.
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I mean unless they intended to be in a straight vertical dive.... We're not even talking 60 degrees nose down here. It was 90.
 
I looked but can find any news since the 8th. I've been wondering if there was more than one debris field?

It's hard to make an aircraft go vertical for more than a short period. Did the tail section depart the aircraft causing the accident?
 
ChasenSFO said:
Most likely, unless they were in (very)steep nose down controlled or semi-controlled descent and smacked the terrain not realizing they were nearing any rising areas. Just to play devils advocate.

I do agree that my first thought would be an uncontrolled plummet, but I do agree with @Screaming_Emu that at least semi-CFIT could have been a factor. Though obviously this wouldn't have been what lead to the mayday and descent to begin with.
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12,000 FPM is not anywhere close to a controlled decent. Power idle boards out in a very very light CRJ you can MAYBE get 5,000+ FPM without over speeding. Based on the descent data, and crator alone it just doesn't look like they had any control at all. We can speculate all day, but with the data presented I think something bigger than a pilot initiated descent with loss of SA resulting in CFIT was the case.
 
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We don't know whether or not the airplane came in inverted or right side up. The apparent descent angle hides this very important bit of information, because how it got there: from inverted flight or from a more normal attitude, could be key to determining probable cause.
 
Obviously this flight was out of control in all likelihood, I was just playing devils advocate to the "modern jets don't ever CFIT due to spatial disorientation" comment, not suggesting that this was the cause of the impact. Not that I ever really trust data from online flight trackers right after an accident, but if those numbers are by now confirmed legit, yes, it doesn't look like the trajectory of a jet under control.

Anyway, I had figured it could have hit around 75-80 degrees nose down and had the debris travel very slightly forward.
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Looking at the area on the right, that is zero forward motion and has to be 90 degrees straight into the ground? The burns don't seem 100% centralized to me, not that I'm an expert or anything close to one, but we can look at this and write-off any forward motion of the energy from the photos?
 
ChasenSFO said:
Obviously this flight was out of control in all likelihood, I was just playing devils advocate to the "modern jets don't ever CFIT due to spatial disorientation" comment, not suggesting that this was the cause of the impact. Not that I ever really trust data from online flight trackers right after an accident, but if those numbers are by now confirmed legit, yes, it doesn't look like the trajectory of a jet under control.

Anyway, I had figured it could have hit around 75-80 degrees nose down and had the debris travel very slightly forward.
svarthal2-jpg


Looking at the area on the right, that is zero forward motion and has to be 90 degrees straight into the ground? The burns don't seem 100% centralized to me, not that I'm an expert or anything close to one, but we can look at this and write-off any forward motion of the energy from the photos?
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The FPM read outs on the flight tracker seems pretty accurate. I sometimes go back and look at my own tracks on flightaware to kind of analyze how I flew an arrival or something.

Yeah it looks pretty nose down I agree. The crazy thing is I can't find anything in the photo that resembles a plane. No fuselage sections, no mangled up jet engines no pieces of wings or tail. Sorry to be morbid, but it's just astounding what a horrific impact that must've been. The fact that they're working to recover parts of the FDR/CVR also suggests a high speed impact.
 
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