The linked article has a photo of an A340 captioned with:
Air Algerie flight crashes in Africa
Air Algerie flight AH 5017 crashes en route to Algiers with 116 aboard, losing contact with officials shortly after departing Burkina Faso.
There is a photo down the page a bit of a Swiftair MD-83, the aircraft that actually operated the flight.
Some of the later verbiage is nonsense.
For example, sandstorms don't reach to the cruising altitude of even a DC-9 derivative, and the aircraft didn't crash shortly after takeoff. It had been aloft for fifty minutes. Covective thunderstorms can reach beyond the altitude limits of any aircraft in commercial serivce, though, and there were apparently severe thunderstorms in the area of the flight.
This aircraft had undergone an inspection in France just days before, so it was probably in good mechanical shape.
If you've flown either American or Delta much, you've flown on an MD-80.
These are aircraft of great structural strength that have cycle and hour service limits well beyond those of any Boeing or Airbus design. The engines are old-school low-bypass Pratts that are also quite durable and reliable.
This family of aircraft, from the first DC-9-10 through the last 717 (really an MD-95) were designed to have simple and robust systems that would offer durability and reliability in service, and these have proven to be durable and reliable transporst in use all over the world.
There were no anti-aircraft weapons in the region capable of hitting this aircraft at altitude.
The aircraft probably crashed as a result of an encounter with an active thunderstorm cell, which can and has caused actual structural failure of aircraft in commercial service, or crew inputs to try to maintain control resulting in exceeding the design loads of the aircraft, which has happened on commercial flights as well, or simply by being spit out the bottom of a cell in a high rate of descent with a severe nose down or tail down attitude and maybe inverted, also an event that has happened with aircraft in commercial service.
IIRC, this design can be irrecoverably deep stalled, so that's a possibility.
I doubt that whatever authority investigates this will come up with anything different from these three possibilities.
Air Algerie flight crashes in Africa
Air Algerie flight AH 5017 crashes en route to Algiers with 116 aboard, losing contact with officials shortly after departing Burkina Faso.
There is a photo down the page a bit of a Swiftair MD-83, the aircraft that actually operated the flight.
Some of the later verbiage is nonsense.
For example, sandstorms don't reach to the cruising altitude of even a DC-9 derivative, and the aircraft didn't crash shortly after takeoff. It had been aloft for fifty minutes. Covective thunderstorms can reach beyond the altitude limits of any aircraft in commercial serivce, though, and there were apparently severe thunderstorms in the area of the flight.
This aircraft had undergone an inspection in France just days before, so it was probably in good mechanical shape.
If you've flown either American or Delta much, you've flown on an MD-80.
These are aircraft of great structural strength that have cycle and hour service limits well beyond those of any Boeing or Airbus design. The engines are old-school low-bypass Pratts that are also quite durable and reliable.
This family of aircraft, from the first DC-9-10 through the last 717 (really an MD-95) were designed to have simple and robust systems that would offer durability and reliability in service, and these have proven to be durable and reliable transporst in use all over the world.
There were no anti-aircraft weapons in the region capable of hitting this aircraft at altitude.
The aircraft probably crashed as a result of an encounter with an active thunderstorm cell, which can and has caused actual structural failure of aircraft in commercial service, or crew inputs to try to maintain control resulting in exceeding the design loads of the aircraft, which has happened on commercial flights as well, or simply by being spit out the bottom of a cell in a high rate of descent with a severe nose down or tail down attitude and maybe inverted, also an event that has happened with aircraft in commercial service.
IIRC, this design can be irrecoverably deep stalled, so that's a possibility.
I doubt that whatever authority investigates this will come up with anything different from these three possibilities.
