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Many a commentator has lamented the instant gratification desires of current society. The drive to know what happened to Malaysia Airlines 370 is a pretty good example on Twitter. Rumors and speculation abound, but good people and organizations are working to do good things, too.
- @Av8rDan is calling them like he sees them and asking good questions
- @AviationSafety posted their record on an AdamAir 574
- @FlightGlobal posted a great video from David Learmount
- nytimes.com has a good article looking at the current state of affairs and some history on mysterious crashes of the past
While I am loathe to speculate, I think the final analysis will show
some sort of system failure followed by aircrew failure to aviate, navigate, communicate. AeroPeru 603, AdamAir 574, and Air France 447 are all examples where flying attitude and power setting would at least buy time to figure out what is going on.
AOPA’s Flight Training Magazine has a nice article by Pete Bedell on high altitude stalls. In short, the margin between stall and maximum airspeed is very small up there where the air is thin. Acknowledging the difficulty of hand flying at the altitudes where all but the Aeroperu flight were operating, I would think a powered descent to a manageable flight level followed by a divert would be achievable.
Do you think money would be better spent on getting pilots more actual stick time than on live black boxes? Any big wing guys care to comment on hand flying from 35,000 feet down to something more manageable?