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As an example, let's consider something that has brought down several planes: a failure (usually caused by a crack that wasn't detected in time) of one of the turbine blades in an engine sending shrapnel through vital systems. Sounds easy, right? Just break the blade and wait for the crash. Except even if you can get access to the inside of the engine without anyone noticing how much damage do you want to do to that blade? Too much and it fails before the plane gets off the ground and all you've accomplished is making the passengers wait for another flight. Too little and you don't get the failure you need. And even if they do it's pretty much random what happens after that. It might cut all of the hydraulic lines to the controls and crash the plane, or it might just punch some holes in some sheet metal and scare everyone. Oh, and in case you think the engine failure alone will cause a crash, every modern airliner is required to demonstrate the ability to fly just fine with an engine shut down, it just reduces fuel efficiency.

So, could you theoretically come up with the right damage to inflict if you had a team of engineers, full access to all the manufacturer's data, and a saboteur able to cut metal with 0.00000001" precision? Maybe. Is it even remotely plausible? No.

 Henry wrote:

Sounds feasible - but is complete bobbins. Even if you've got access to an aircraft, with the right tools and a whole month of watching nothing but crash shows on tv, you're never going to be able to work out how to sabotage an aircraft to such an extent that pre-flight functionals won't pick up your work. On top of that, unless you have specific frame experience you're simply not going to have a clue where to start just from watching tv. (psst... Die Hard 2 wasn't a documentary)
Now if an experienced engineer with time and access were to do the deed you may have a point, but you can guess how likely that is to occur.

Edit - ninja'd by Peregrine

You are missing the point.

The saboteur possibly is pre-flight inspector doing the sabotage. Or can bypass him. You get technical preflight, who are based at the airport in question and are locallly employed staff who visually checklist the components, and the flight crew themselves doing press button tests.

A sabotaged component might operate to a press button test, but weakened significantly to fail in flight.

An alternative also assuming you have access to the aircraft is to damage the component in a way that a visual inspection could miss. Worn or sheared components are visibly seen as such. A component which has been dissembled structurally weakened then reassembled might not be detectable as such. The sabotage tool could be as simple as a saw job on a component that bears load during tail rudder maneuvers. The sort of thing you hear about breaking and fully described in technical detail on TV programme on aircrashes. They are just about every day. And no I wasnt referencing Die Hard.

 Peregrine wrote:

It's much harder than that. Most failures like that are things that looked ok on the ground and failed slowly over time, so you'd have to perfectly sabotage a vital component so that it will fail in a catastrophic way but will still pass the preflight inspections. And ideally you'd want it to fail immediately, it doesn't help as much if your target crashes a month later in some random part of the world, or if the sabotage is discovered at a later inspection. And honestly, if you have the level of access required for such a complex bit of sabotage you probably have the ability to put a bomb on the plane and make sure you have a disaster.

That isnt a problem, metal failure is not automatic or timeable, but should happen in a reasonable window. The stresses of aircraft in flight can be quite severe.
Also level of access to get a saw onto the airport past security is different from getting a bomb onto the airport.

 Peregrine wrote:
As an example, let's consider something that has brought down several planes: a failure (usually caused by a crack that wasn't detected in time) of one of the turbine blades in an engine sending shrapnel through vital systems. Sounds easy, right? Just break the blade and wait for the crash. Except even if you can get access to the inside of the engine without anyone noticing how much damage do you want to do to that blade? Too much and it fails before the plane gets off the ground and all you've accomplished is making the passengers wait for another flight. Too little and you don't get the failure you need. And even if they do it's pretty much random what happens after that. It might cut all of the hydraulic lines to the controls and crash the plane, or it might just punch some holes in some sheet metal and scare everyone. Oh, and in case you think the engine failure alone will cause a crash, every modern airliner is required to demonstrate the ability to fly just fine with an engine shut down, it just reduces fuel efficiency.

So, could you theoretically come up with the right damage to inflict if you had a team of engineers, full access to all the manufacturer's data, and a saboteur able to cut metal with 0.00000001" precision? Maybe. Is it even remotely plausible? No.

Lets for example consider the French resistance. they committed acts of sabotage that work as I envisaged by having a basic understanding the mechanical components they were weakening, and were adept at concealing their work. Many mechanical parts are greased, grease is great for covering up deliberate weakening.

You call it far fetched. I call it recorded history.

The French Resistance would sabotage torpedoes in a way so they wouldn't operate and even though the Germans would have time to dissemble and reassemble torpedoes to check for faults prior to launch didn't find the faults. Saboteurs in slave labour maintenance facilities in the late war sabotaged tank engine maintenance literally but cutting metal replacement parts with 0.0lots precision off specification so that gearboxes were just out of true and thus wore out very quickly, or jammed, without appearing to be malfunctioning to all but the most stringent tests. Though this was an example of long term failure being desired.

Again history.

Yes a saboteur could cause mechanical damage to an aircraft that would allow to to get airbourne but be very unlikely to survive the flight. However without a timed explosive device they couldnt dictate when the failure would result.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just to confirm, I am keeping an open mind about sabotage. Not saying its what happened.

An ISIS opportunist propaganda communique to claim a victory to bolster flagging morale due to Russian airstrikes is also likely.

 Orlanth wrote:
hat isnt a problem, metal failure is not automatic or timeable, but should happen in a reasonable window. The stresses of aircraft in flight can be quite severe.

And the stresses on the ground can be severe. If your sabotage causes the tail to fall off while the plane is sitting in the hangar then all you've done is warn everyone that there's a sabotage plot. There is a very fine line between "will fail in flight" and "will fail immediately", and you'd need a ton of specialized engineering knowledge to tell the difference. If you just walk into a hangar and start smashing and cutting stuff you're unlikely to get the results that you want.

Also level of access to get a saw onto the airport past security is different from getting a bomb onto the airport.

In this situation you're assuming that the terrorists control airport security. You know, so they can have some time alone with a plane and nobody will ask any awkward questions.

The French Resistance would sabotage torpedoes in a way so they wouldn't operate and even though the Germans would have time to dissemble and reassemble torpedoes to check for faults prior to launch didn't find the faults.

Yes, but that's a very different situation. Making an airplane fail to operate at all (like the torpedo example) is trivially easy. Making it operate as expected for an hour and then fail catastrophically is much, much harder. And you need that second situation, if all you do is prevent it from working then your "terrorist attack" consists of costing the airline some money for repairs and making some passengers angry that they have to wait for another flight.

Saboteurs in slave labour mAIntenance facilities in the late war sabotaged tank engine maintenance literally but cutting metal with 0.0lots precision so that gearboxes wore out very quickly, or jammed, without appearing to be malfunctioning to all but the most stringent tests.

Ok, but now you're talking about manufacturing, not spending a few minutes alone with a plane and breaking something. And you're talking about a situation where it doesn't matter how long it takes for that gearbox to fail as long as it's short enough to be a maintenance problem. If it fails the first time anyone tries to drive the tank, great. If it fails an hour into the first use, great. If it fails while driving to the battlefield, great. That's a lot less of a demand for precision.

Yes a saboteur could cause mechanical damage to an aircraft that would allow to to get airbourne but be very unlikely to survive the flight.

Again, they coulddo it. But it is much more complicated than you think, to the point where it isn't really plausible.

However without a timed explosive device they couldnt dictate when the failture would result.

Timers are trivially easy if you have access to the kind of engineering knowledge and skill required for your supposed sabotage plan. As are altimeter triggers, GPS triggers, etc. In fact, the only plausible reason to sabotage the plane instead of putting a bomb on it is if you want to hide your involvement. But ISIS very clearly wants the world to know when they kill people.

I don't think, if I was an average Joe Isis in the field, I would appreciate the propoganda arm taking credit for murdering 200 citizens from a country renowned for going Scorched Earth in those kinds of situations.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Henry wrote:

Sounds feasible - but is complete bobbins. Even if you've got access to an aircraft, with the right tools and a whole month of watching nothing but crash shows on tv, you're never going to be able to work out how to sabotage an aircraft to such an extent that pre-flight functionals won't pick up your work. On top of that, unless you have specific frame experience you're simply not going to have a clue where to start just from watching tv. (psst... Die Hard 2 wasn't a documentary)
Now if an experienced engineer with time and access were to do the deed you may have a point, but you can guess how likely that is to occur.

Edit - ninja'd by Peregrine

You are missing the point.

The saboteur possibly is pre-flight inspector doing the sabotage. Or can bypass him. You get technical preflight, who are based at the airport in question and are locallly employed staff who visually checklist the components, and the flight crew themselves doing press button tests.

A sabotaged component might operate to a press button test, but weakened significantly to fail in flight.

An alternative also assuming you have access to the aircraft is to damage the component in a way that a visual inspection could miss. Worn or sheared components are visibly seen as such. A component which has been dissembled structurally weakened then reassembled might not be detectable as such. The sabotage tool could be as simple as a saw job on a component that bears load during tail rudder maneuvers. The sort of thing you hear about breaking and fully described in technical detail on TV programme on aircrashes. They are just about every day. And no I wasnt referencing Die Hard.

 Peregrine wrote:

It's much harder than that. Most failures like that are things that looked ok on the ground and failed slowly over time, so you'd have to perfectly sabotage a vital component so that it will fail in a catastrophic way but will still pass the preflight inspections. And ideally you'd want it to fail immediately, it doesn't help as much if your target crashes a month later in some random part of the world, or if the sabotage is discovered at a later inspection. And honestly, if you have the level of access required for such a complex bit of sabotage you probably have the ability to put a bomb on the plane and make sure you have a disaster.

That isnt a problem, metal failure is not automatic or timeable, but should happen in a reasonable window. The stresses of aircraft in flight can be quite severe.
Also level of access to get a saw onto the airport past security is different from getting a bomb onto the airport.

 Peregrine wrote:
As an example, let's consider something that has brought down several planes: a failure (usually caused by a crack that wasn't detected in time) of one of the turbine blades in an engine sending shrapnel through vital systems. Sounds easy, right? Just break the blade and wait for the crash. Except even if you can get access to the inside of the engine without anyone noticing how much damage do you want to do to that blade? Too much and it fails before the plane gets off the ground and all you've accomplished is making the passengers wait for another flight. Too little and you don't get the failure you need. And even if they do it's pretty much random what happens after that. It might cut all of the hydraulic lines to the controls and crash the plane, or it might just punch some holes in some sheet metal and scare everyone. Oh, and in case you think the engine failure alone will cause a crash, every modern airliner is required to demonstrate the ability to fly just fine with an engine shut down, it just reduces fuel efficiency.

So, could you theoretically come up with the right damage to inflict if you had a team of engineers, full access to all the manufacturer's data, and a saboteur able to cut metal with 0.00000001" precision? Maybe. Is it even remotely plausible? No.

Lets for example consider the French resistance. they committed acts of sabotage that work as I envisaged by having a basic understanding the mechanical components they were weakening, and were adept at concealing their work. Many mechanical parts are greased, grease is great for covering up deliberate weakening.

You call it far fetched. I call it recorded history.

The French Resistance would sabotage torpedoes in a way so they wouldn't operate and even though the Germans would have time to dissemble and reassemble torpedoes to check for faults prior to launch didn't find the faults. Saboteurs in slave labour maintenance facilities in the late war sabotaged tank engine maintenance literally but cutting metal replacement parts with 0.0lots precision off specification so that gearboxes were just out of true and thus wore out very quickly, or jammed, without appearing to be malfunctioning to all but the most stringent tests. Though this was an example of long term failure being desired.

Again history.

Yes a saboteur could cause mechanical damage to an aircraft that would allow to to get airbourne but be very unlikely to survive the flight. However without a timed explosive device they couldnt dictate when the failure would result.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just to confirm, I am keeping an open mind about sabotage. Not saying its what happened.

An ISIS opportunist propaganda communique to claim a victory to bolster flagging morale due to Russian airstrikes is also likely.

Or, it's a Russian operated plane, and Russia is well known for having rather poor safety standards when compared to every other G8 nation...

As I already mentioned, this wasn't their plane. The Russian company was renting the airplane from an Irish company.

Experiment 626 wrote:

Or, it's a Russian operated plane, and Russia is well known for having rather poor safety standards when compared to every other G8 nation...

Well, the problem is not with Russian safety standards, which are the same as in the West, the problem is with the companies. Competition between aviation companies in Russia is very fierce, and to survive, they do everything to save money, including on maintenance costs. It works pretty well, until the plane actually crashes of course... This particular company, Kogalymavia, had already been warned by the inspection several times, altough the safety breaches were supposed to have been fixed. Also, the vast majority of crashes happen with ancient, ill-maintained Soviet aircraft. It is pretty rare for a modern Western aircraft to crash.
I think this crash was due to maintenance problems, altough we will have to wait for the official investigation to be certain.


Vyechnaya Pamyat.

I am very sorry for the loss of your countrymen.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Well, the problem is not with Russian safety standards, which are the same as in the West.

No offense to your national tragedy, but this statement is complete BS. Russian safety standards are, and always have been, SUPER lax compared with the rest of the world. Doesn't matter if you're talking civilian airliners, war doctorine, or nuclear submarine (or even graphite moderated reactor core!) construction....ya'll got a rep for slipshop workmanship.

In this case though, I'm still going with "jihadi sabatoge."

I'm betting mechanical failure, not sabotage.
Sharm El Sheikh is a small airport ,I've flown in and out of there a few times.
Aircraft generally aren't on the ground for very long, and usually are there only long enough to unload, refuel and load a fresh crop of tourists.
It would be really difficult to sabotage an aircraft there.
Also the method used is tricky.
I've been working on aircraft for 25 years and while I could certainly do serious damage to an aircraft quickly, I can't think of much you could do in that timescale that would have the desired result whilst in flight and would still bring the aircraft down.
A bomb, yes that'd be doable, but the pilot reported mechanical problems and diverted to Cairo before the crash.

 Peter Wiggin wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Well, the problem is not with Russian safety standards, which are the same as in the West.

No offense to your national tragedy, but this statement is complete BS. Russian safety standards are, and always have been, SUPER lax compared with the rest of the world. Doesn't matter if you're talking civilian airliners, war doctorine, or nuclear submarine (or even graphite moderated reactor core!) construction....ya'll got a rep for slipshop workmanship.

In this case though, I'm still going with "jihadi sabatoge."

To be fair, there a lot of Boeings and airbuses failing in the last few years, not maintained by Russian companies. Yet the companies flying and maintaining them had to abide by international standards in aviation.

Finding the black box early on should see things getting clearer in the next week or so.

 Peregrine wrote:

And the stresses on the ground can be severe. If your sabotage causes the tail to fall off while the plane is sitting in the hangar then all you've done is warn everyone that there's a sabotage plot.

Actually that depends on what you do. Things can fail on take off, you can minimise that rick and even so a take off disaster can still cause casualties. Only by being a doob will you cause things to fall off in the hanger. adn the analogy of cutting the tailplane mostly off would be detected by just about everyone, including passengers.

 Peregrine wrote:

There is a very fine line between "will fail in flight" and "will fail immediately", and you'd need a ton of specialized engineering knowledge to tell the difference. If you just walk into a hangar and start smashing and cutting stuff you're unlikely to get the results that you want.

No you don't. Sabotage in this respects is quite easy. Weakening applies metal fatigue which cascades. There is a verifiable track history of this type of sabotage being accomplished by amateurs.

As for gong in and smashing stuff you are mistaking sabotage for vandalism..

 Peregrine wrote:

In this situation you're assuming that the terrorists control airport security. You know, so they can have some time alone with a plane and nobody will ask any awkward questions.

Think it through, please. You dont need everyone in on it. You need one person, or a few at most. A lot of security problems occur because one person on the inside is paid to look the other way. Security is a good as its weakest link. It is not far fetched that one or two memembers of airport security with access to aircraft hangers gets radicalised, in Egypt.

 Peregrine wrote:

Yes, but that's a very different situation. Making an airplane fail to operate at all (like the torpedo example) is trivially easy. Making it operate as expected for an hour and then fail catastrophically is much, much harder.

Never specified a time, I specified in flight. That is most much harder, metal fatigue is your friend. There can also be sabotage of pressur sensitive components. If you drill a hole in a pressure sensitive components casing and disguise the hole it will depressurise and thus fail at altitude. A good way of ensuring it fails in midair and not on the ground.

 Peregrine wrote:

Ok, but now you're talking about manufacturing, not spending a few minutes alone with a plane and breaking something. And you're talking about a situation where it doesn't matter how long it takes for that gearbox to fail as long as it's short enough to be a maintenance problem. If it fails the first time anyone tries to drive the tank, great. If it fails an hour into the first use, great. If it fails while driving to the battlefield, great. That's a lot less of a demand for precision.

One its manufacturing and maintenance, either or. Second the point was made to counter the claim that a saboteur couldn't make precise sabotage. Saboteurs could, and did.
To counter your claims:

and a saboteur able to cut metal with 0.00000001" precision? Maybe. Is it even remotely plausible? No.

 Peregrine wrote:

Again, they could do it. But it is much more complicated than you think, to the point where it isn't really plausible.

So implausible its considered a major contributing factor?

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-sabotage-most-common-factor-in-en-route-a-396830/

 Peregrine wrote:

Timers are trivially easy if you have access to the kind of engineering knowledge and skill required for your supposed sabotage plan. As are altimeter triggers, GPS triggers, etc. In fact, the only plausible reason to sabotage the plane instead of putting a bomb on it is if you want to hide your involvement. But ISIS very clearly wants the world to know when they kill people.

This assumes the people who could hypothetically do this had access to explosives, or timers or training in such matters. A lot of amateur terroists blow themselves up. If a component can be sabotages with a drill or a saw that is safer and having a drill or saw on ones person doesn't attract undue attention if you have a pass to be there. Bombs are harder to explain away.
Sure bombings serve a purpose, but are not always a viable option. Also a bomb might be detected, a sabotaged component not necessarily so. Yes bombs do end up on aircraft, but airport security the world over knows about this. I am sure if ISIS could bomb an airliner they would do so, but opportunity might not be there.

There was that plane in the 80's that had its engine just straight up fall off during take off and it severed the electrical systems leading to no pilot warning on the problem. It was later found it, that it was due to a ground crew/company short cut to change out the engines that weakened the coupling points to the point where they would shear off.

Breaking:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34697416

The Russian airline Kogalymavia has blamed "external activity" for Saturday's Sinai plane crash which killed 224 people.
One airline official said: "The only reasonable explanation is that it was [due to] external activity."
An investigation by aviation experts using data from the aircraft's "black boxes" has yet to give its conclusions.
A Kremlin spokesman has told the BBC terrorism could not be ruled out as a possible cause of the crash.
At a news conference in Moscow, the deputy director of the airline, which was renamed as Metrojet, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error.
"The only explicable reason for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft," Alexander Smirnov said.
Another airline official acknowledged that there had been previous damage to the plane's tail in 2001 during take-off.
But he said that the damage had been repaired, and was not thought to be a factor in the crash.
Saturday's disaster happened shortly after the Airbus 321 took off from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The sooner the flight recorder is processed the better.

I've just seen the bodies of a lot of the victims are being repatriated to their relatives,

now while that's good to help them with their grieving and moving on it seems insane from the point of view of actually figuring out what has happened to the plane

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34697745

A Russian plane that crashed in Egypt killing 224 had passed a safety review carried out by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) earlier this year.
The Airbus A-321 had just left Sharm el-Sheikh and was bound for the Russian city of St Petersburg when it came down in the Sinai peninsula on Saturday.
It was registered in the Republic of Ireland through a leasing company but was operated by a Russian airline.
The IAA said the plane's certifications "were satisfactory" on its last review.
An IAA spokesman added that oversight of the operation of the aircraft, including daily and monthly checks, was Russia's responsibility under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules.
'External activity'
Two inspectors from the Republic of Ireland's Air Accident Investigation Unit and an expert from the IAA are expected to travel to Egypt on Monday to join the investigation into the cause of the crash.
An inquiry by aviation experts using data from the aircraft's black boxes has yet to give its conclusions.
But the Russian airline Kogalymavia has blamed "external activity" for the crash.
All 217 passengers and seven crew died when the plane crashed.
The bodies of 144 of those killed have been flown back to St Petersburg

I hope the investigation is allowed to run its course and they find the real root cause (external activity, catastrophic malfunction, or whatever).

Again, I'm sorry for the loss of your countrymen, Russian posters.

 kronk wrote:
I hope the investigation is allowed to run its course and they find the real root cause (external activity, catastrophic malfunction, or whatever).

Again, I'm sorry for the loss of your countrymen, Russian posters.

Agreed. I doubt we will really find out if it turns out to be poor maintenance or practices from the Russian airline itself.

Well it obviously suits the airline company to quickly blame external forces before the black boxes are even examined. I'd rather wait for someone more independent to make an assessment.

There will be no one independent I'd wager.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Well it obviously suits the airline company to quickly blame external forces before the black boxes are even examined. I'd rather wait for someone more independent to make an assessment.

It seems a pretty reasonable thing to say, given the pattern of debris over a 10 mile stretch is indicative of high altitude break up. There are I guess a few purely mechanical faults that could cause the fuselage to come apart, but they're exceedingly rare and belong more in the "manufacturing fault" category than anything.

On the other hand, my understanding is that the flight was well above the effective engagement range of the type of MANPADs that ISIL has access to, so unless they smuggled something like a BUK into the Sinai without anyone in the world finding out about it, it's a head-scratcher.

Seaward wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Well it obviously suits the airline company to quickly blame external forces before the black boxes are even examined. I'd rather wait for someone more independent to make an assessment.

It seems a pretty reasonable thing to say, given the pattern of debris over a 10 mile stretch is indicative of high altitude break up. There are I guess a few purely mechanical faults that could cause the fuselage to come apart, but they're exceedingly rare and belong more in the "manufacturing fault" category than anything.

On the other hand, my understanding is that the flight was well above the effective engagement range of the type of MANPADs that ISIL has access to, so unless they smuggled something like a BUK into the Sinai without anyone in the world finding out about it, it's a head-scratcher.

A bomb, fuel tank explosion... I don't know.

 LethalShade wrote:

Seaward wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Well it obviously suits the airline company to quickly blame external forces before the black boxes are even examined. I'd rather wait for someone more independent to make an assessment.

It seems a pretty reasonable thing to say, given the pattern of debris over a 10 mile stretch is indicative of high altitude break up. There are I guess a few purely mechanical faults that could cause the fuselage to come apart, but they're exceedingly rare and belong more in the "manufacturing fault" category than anything.

On the other hand, my understanding is that the flight was well above the effective engagement range of the type of MANPADs that ISIL has access to, so unless they smuggled something like a BUK into the Sinai without anyone in the world finding out about it, it's a head-scratcher.

A bomb, fuel tank explosion... I don't know.

Fuel tank explosions are extremely hard to come by, but can happen if one of the tanks is low on fuel and the plane is sitting on the runway for a long time with the electricity on.

Given the wide spread of debris. I'd say an explosion is the most likely cause. Given that there was no time for a mayday alert.

Wide spread of debris?
The aircraft came down in two parts (granted they are three miles apart, but the debris field for the airframe is almost nothing). The tail almost perfectly intact and the rest of the body, also almost perfectly intact.
Now I'm no spotter, so can't say exactly where the fuel tanks are on an A321, but they're going to be in the wings, belly, maybe a couple aft of the wing roots and possibly one in the stabiliser. The only one close to the point of separation would be in the stabiliser (if there is one on this frame type). And guess what - the stabiliser was also almost perfectly intact!

Nothing about this crash suggests a bomb, explosion or impact from an external explosive. Everything suggests that the frame tore itself apart near the tail.

 Frazzled wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I hope the investigation is allowed to run its course and they find the real root cause (external activity, catastrophic malfunction, or whatever).

Again, I'm sorry for the loss of your countrymen, Russian posters.

Agreed. I doubt we will really find out if it turns out to be poor maintenance or practices from the Russian airline itself.

You have Russian aircrash investigators there.

You also have Egyptian ones, and the Egyptian government. You now also have Irish ones, plus whatever ones are present from international monitoring bodies. It might not be easily whitewashable.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I hope the investigation is allowed to run its course and they find the real root cause (external activity, catastrophic malfunction, or whatever).

Again, I'm sorry for the loss of your countrymen, Russian posters.

Agreed. I doubt we will really find out if it turns out to be poor maintenance or practices from the Russian airline itself.

You have Russian aircrash investigators there.

You also have Egyptian ones, and the Egyptian government. You now also have Irish ones, plus whatever ones are present from international monitoring bodies. It might not be easily whitewashable.

The same RUssians who said the Malaysia shoot was the Ukrainians and ponied up a kid's photobucket version of a picture? They have a vested interest in saying it wasn't the Rooskie's fault.
I trust the Egyptians more, but they also have a vested interest in saying its not terrorism.

The only ones I would trust are Airbus itself actually.

 Henry wrote:
Wide spread of debris?
The aircraft came down in two parts (granted they are three miles apart, but the debris field for the airframe is almost nothing). The tail almost perfectly intact and the rest of the body, also almost perfectly intact.
Now I'm no spotter, so can't say exactly where the fuel tanks are on an A321, but they're going to be in the wings, belly, maybe a couple aft of the wing roots and possibly one in the stabiliser. The only one close to the point of separation would be in the stabiliser (if there is one on this frame type). And guess what - the stabiliser was also almost perfectly intact!

Nothing about this crash suggests a bomb, explosion or impact from an external explosive. Everything suggests that the frame tore itself apart near the tail.

Just to play devil's advocate, it could have been a small bomb only intending to rip a hole in the fuselage or weaken the structure and then let the flight forces rip it apart.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I hope the investigation is allowed to run its course and they find the real root cause (external activity, catastrophic malfunction, or whatever).

Again, I'm sorry for the loss of your countrymen, Russian posters.

Agreed. I doubt we will really find out if it turns out to be poor maintenance or practices from the Russian airline itself.

You have Russian aircrash investigators there.

You also have Egyptian ones, and the Egyptian government. You now also have Irish ones, plus whatever ones are present from international monitoring bodies. It might not be easily whitewashable.

The same RUssians who said the Malaysia shoot was the Ukrainians and ponied up a kid's photobucket version of a picture? They have a vested interest in saying it wasn't the Rooskie's fault.
I trust the Egyptians more, but they also have a vested interest in saying its not terrorism.

The only ones I would trust are Airbus itself actually.

This is not a state airline. Trust me, the Russian state wants nothing more than to shut down another of the myriad of small private airlines in Russia. There really are way too many airlines in Russia, which is a big cause of problems in Russian aviation. The state normally has no way to just shut down airlines, but this crash could be a nice excuse.
It is probably only a matter of time until everything will be Aeroflot again, which is not that bad, because at least using Aeroflot gives you a chance to survive...

How did you manage to go from "Russian safety standards are just as good as the west" to "these airlines will kill you"?

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Henry wrote:
Wide spread of debris?
The aircraft came down in two parts (granted they are three miles apart, but the debris field for the airframe is almost nothing). The tail almost perfectly intact and the rest of the body, also almost perfectly intact.
Now I'm no spotter, so can't say exactly where the fuel tanks are on an A321, but they're going to be in the wings, belly, maybe a couple aft of the wing roots and possibly one in the stabiliser. The only one close to the point of separation would be in the stabiliser (if there is one on this frame type). And guess what - the stabiliser was also almost perfectly intact!

Nothing about this crash suggests a bomb, explosion or impact from an external explosive. Everything suggests that the frame tore itself apart near the tail.

Just to play devil's advocate, it could have been a small bomb only intending to rip a hole in the fuselage or weaken the structure and then let the flight forces rip it apart.

If you are trying to sneak a bomb onboard, it would have to be pretty small.