[belter]

Speculative yes. Highly speculative maybe not as much. You need to explain a 20,000 feet vertical drop in less than 2 min. Might not be the fault of the airline. Could be Boeing unclear instructions or a Supplier providing a faulty piece.

[GekkePrutser]

I bet that kind of drop will inevitably exceed the Vne because this plane does not have adequate speed brakes for this kind of maneuver (and why would it). I'm surprised it was still even intact when it hit the ground but according to the dash cam videos it was.

But I also think there's many things that can cause this. A terrorist taking over, the FBW system seriously messing up.

Anyway the investigation will tell us. Maybe soon because the black boxes won't be far away.

[belter]

Not sure if they black boxes survive this type of drop. On the Air Lauda crash one could not be recovered.

[GekkePrutser]

Good point. This was really extreme. I hope for the families that they will be found and everyone will get closure soon.

[jacquesm]

Not such a good point, given that one indeed survived, and that in that particular case it wasn't the impact that destroyed the other one but the post crash fire.

[belter]

Black Boxes are designed to stand 3,400 Gs what is about 300 Mph. Maybe the airplane did hit the ground at close to those speeds.

And the fact that the second one did not survive the crash due to fire, shows they are not indestructible. Fire is actually what they are supposed to survive for at least 1 hour.

[jacquesm]

This is a very simplistic view of an airplane crash. The whole airplane is the crumple zone for the black boxes mounted in the tail of the aircraft, that's for a pretty good reason so there goes one assumption, it's not like they are in the nose. And for another, those black boxes that were lost usually were lost either because the whole airplane was lost or because of the post impact fire.

There are some instances of flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders that were destroyed but not a whole lot of those. That said, this was an exceptionally violent impact and it remains to be seen if there is anything usable.

But - again - speculation is utterly pointless there is simply no information to go on other than the angle and speed of impact, which definitely isn't giving hope, but it doesn't rule anything out either. So let's just be patient until there is actual data. Nobody ever said that black boxes are indestructible.

[jacquesm]

> Could be Boeing unclear instructions or a Supplier providing a faulty piece.

What is it with the senseless speculation?