Another one down in Central Asia.

With witnesses describing an in-flight breakup, I'm really curious to see what might have happened.

Completely tragic. Nickel on the grass to my tanker brethren!

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The crew entry chute is the emergency egress exit. You pull the chinning bar and it slices open the hatch. You toss on your chute and your helmet then jump in the hell hole and pray. Theoretically the metal slicing open the hatch then acts as a mini barrier in the airflow to allow to one get down the chute and out the bottom of the plane.

Ahhh gotcha.....thanks for the info!
 
What a really unfortunate week.
3 weeks ago we had a bad week between the Boston bombings and the fertilizer plant in Texas, both happened in the same week. Now this and the NAC this week...RIP to the crews.
 
What a really unfortunate week.
3 weeks ago we had a bad week between the Boston bombings and the fertilizer plant in Texas, both happened in the same week. Now this and the NAC this week...RIP to the crews.
...and the MC-12 crash just a few days before the 747.
 
Sucks I found out today on facebook it was one of my Academy classmates who was a pilot on this aircraft. I think this is the first death for the class of 2008. :(
 
We don't even keep the the emergency escape accumulator serviced anymore. They're really serious about fuel savings. We used to fly around at 10k per hour on the fuel flow and now it's planning for landing at min fuel and a much more economy fuel cruise. Parachutes are gone. Our crew chief tables are gone. Cargo compartment configurations immediately go to minimal, called "training config", layouts when the airplanes get back from trips. It's about being light weight now.
 
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