That matches the flight data posted from mlex reference:
Everything looks ok until:
6:19 AM UTC with the flight at 29100 ft (aprox 9 Km)
as of
6:22 AM UTC it's already at 9.000 ft (aprox 3 Km) dropping at vertical speed of -6,016 fpm
Excluding Terrorism, probably catastrophic Horizontal Stabilizer failure due to incorrect maintenance procedures.
Edit: Data available from past flights, shows this specific airplane in almost constant daily use, since at least Nov 2021. So it does not look like this was a flight after coming out of any recent major maintenance event.
If there is a lesson from the Boeing Max debacle, it is don't jump to conclusion of "incorrect maintenance procedures" like what Boeing did after the first crash with the Indonesian airline.
A lot of possibilities like Human/Pilot error, Equipment failure, Engineering design flaw, Freak bird collision accident, etc..
I agree with you. Since this is not a MAX just the most likely to cause this vertical drop. But yes, you are correct, lots of other causes need to be considered.
Saying it's "probably" anything based off of two lines of text (even with a correlating video) is ridiculous irresponsible, and will almost always be wrong. Not to mention the fact there are a whole host of things that can cause a 6kfpm descent, both controlled and uncontrolled, that are neither terrorism nor the horizontal stabilizer.
I already acknowledged this was a speculative line of thought. Don't think any air crash investigators are looking into a nobody on the internet for accident
clues, so it's a kind of very limited irresponsibility.
However there are actually not that many causes, that could explain the vertical drop either than, and in order of decreasing probability:
The accidental deployment of the reverse thrusters, is something
that requires multiple mechanical failures, is not supposed to happen
but Boeing already has a past history with it, although on a different model.
The Niki Lauda/Boeing controversy.
If the reversers open, wouldn't just shutting down the engines lead to a better scenario than this? I recall a 737 gliding too a nearby airport in Canada when it ran out of fuel.
I suppose it depends on whether the crew would have been aware of it.
Can the reversers be opened independently on left and right side? From some of the 3D plots on various threads it looks like the plane took a sharp left before diving. Could it be the left reverser malfunctioned or be accidently opened mid flight causing the plane to swirl left and lose the aerodynamic?
They can. Although incredibly rare. There are a few military airplanes that use reversers in flight to quickly drop altitude, but not used in any commercial passenger airplane that way. That scenario of only one opening, is also addressed in the video from Mentour Pilot that I linked. A few minutes earlier in the video. They have a checklist for it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Everything looks ok until:
6:19 AM UTC with the flight at 29100 ft (aprox 9 Km)
as of
6:22 AM UTC it's already at 9.000 ft (aprox 3 Km) dropping at vertical speed of -6,016 fpm
Excluding Terrorism, probably catastrophic Horizontal Stabilizer failure due to incorrect maintenance procedures.
Edit: Data available from past flights, shows this specific airplane in almost constant daily use, since at least Nov 2021. So it does not look like this was a flight after coming out of any recent major maintenance event.