third time NOT a charm

[= Buckeye Jess =]

Man.. WTF is up with a third commercial plane crash in what time frame... and a double strike on Continental at that. You almost have to wonder what the homeowners did to piss karma off bad enough to bring a commercial plane down on you too..
Sounds like Continental will be having their first press conference at 2AM. I'll be very interested in hearing what the pilots said right beforehand, b/c there isn't going to be much plane left to look for physical evidence on.

Prayers to the families.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,492164,00.html

[rforsythe]

You'd be amazed how much of that plane will get reconstructed in a hangar somewhere. Heavy rain wouldn't normally bring down a plane, so it will be interesting to hear what caused it. Definitely sucks though.

[= Buckeye Jess =]

That's what really bugged me about the deal at DIA... all of these people going nuts when the NTSB said that it would be at least a year for a final report. I'm amazed they can do it in that time frame to be honest. They turn a microscopic eye over every mm of these planes to find the tiniest crack on a turbine.. holy crap!

An update on an article I just read said there was heavy fog and a sleet/snow mixture in the area at the time.

[Snowman]

Do you think the NTSB wil be hiring?

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

Wow, that sucks! RIP.

Yes, they need to find that tiniest crack. You have to establish root cause for the failure before you can prevent another occurance.

[SamuraiX]

Great thing about DIA, we can still crash em' wherever we want out there!
Just look out for the giant garbage pyramid- Capt!

Sad to hear.

[rforsythe]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7889764.stm

Ice buildup raises the stall speed of a wing. The flap extension would have increased the angle of attack causing airflow separation, which probably induced a stall. At low altitude, especially if they had one wing stalled out more than the other, it was over as soon as it began.

Hard to nitpick with such limited info, but sometimes the best option is to abort and go somewhere else. The worst thing you can do with ice-loaded wings is to lower flaps and slow down; it's a very common cause of crashes in bad weather because it is usually not recoverable.

[= Buckeye Jess =]

Oh man.. that means that had waaaay too long to be scared witless and know what was coming - at least according to the recordings. Too bad this flight was just delayed 2 hrs instead of being cancelled...there were apparently a LOT of other flights that had to be re-routed b/c of wind and such in the area.

[DARK ANGEL]

god is angry at us...LOL