Another 737 goes down, It's not a Max, so that's a relief.

Chinese plane with 132 people onboard crashes in Guangxi province

A passenger plane carrying 132 people has crashed in southern China, with no survivors announced so far, Chinese authorities have reported.

The China Eastern Airlines plane departed Kunming at 1pm, on route to Guangzhou. At about 2.20pm, according to data from Flightradar24, the plane, a Boeing 737, plummeted more than 20,000 feet in just over a minute. It then seems to have regained altitude momentarily, before dropping rapidly again. The plane crashed near the city of Wuzhou in Teng County, Guangxi province.

20,000 feet a minute is quite a rate of descent.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... 737-wuzhou

There’s a bit of chatter among our crews, here, about this. But initial information is spotty, and much of the interpretation and hypotheses are derived from Flightradar24, which is a bit of a blunt tool, in my not so humble opinion.

And then there’s this image.

Which lends an air of suspicion about claims of someone witnessing it, or the descent to impact being caught on camera.

Apologies- I got sidetracked with a report I’m meant to be focussing on.

So- not entirely conclusive, but in the photo (I’ve put 3 red boxes on the aircraft) the words China Eastern are a mirror image (backwards) on the fuselage, yet the aircraft registration (B-1719) on the wing is the normal orientation. The same registration on the tail of the fuselage forward of the horizontal stabiliser is also mirror image. But I believe the correct registration is B-1791.

In the 4th red box is what might be taken to be the winglet being detached from the aircraft, and debris at the crash site suggests that the aircraft may have started to break up prior to impact. A winglet was found among the few items of debris.

As I mention- it’s not entirely conclusive, and events like this also bring out a lot of false information. Some sort of ghoulish fascination with events, rather than interest from a genuine perspective.

For those with an interest, here’s a geeky spotter photo website which is sometimes interesting to see where particular aircraft may have been.

B-1719 belongs to 9Air
B-1791 is the accident aircraft of China eastern…

Detailed discussion here:

https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/645 ... 022-a.html

armchairlawyer wrote: ↑Wed Mar 23, 2022 12:15 pm Detailed discussion here:

https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/645 ... 022-a.html

When that Germanwings fruitcake pilot smashed his Airbus into the ground full of schoolchildren, the guys on pprune opened a thread, bashed afew ideas around with each other and had it nailed within hours. The final report a year later just echoed what they said but with more details. Those guys are smart.

Your pilots today: Captain Kirk and Captain Kirk
We still like the Star Trek jokes, siblings admit

In his nearly four decades of flying Captain Philip Kirk has heard every joke about boldly going where no man has gone before, the line made famous by his namesake, Captain James Kirk in Star Trek.

But as he took his Boeing 787 Dreamliner into the skies this week on a flight bound for Australia, the New Zealand pilot braced for a double round of jokes.

Beside him in the cockpit was his older brother, Captain Roger Kirk, 65, also a captain for Air New Zealand, and barely distinguishable from his 61-year-old sibling. A last-minute rostering gap had put the pair together on a flight deck for the first time in more than 15 years and their first flight together as Dreamliner pilots.

“They said, ‘Yeah, actually we’ve called your brother out,’” Philip Kirk told The Times. “I told the passengers, ‘It’s Captain Kirk here and I think there’s another Captain Kirk up here today and he’s in fact my brother’. ”

Philip, who flew the aircraft the three hours and thirty minutes from Auckland to Melbourne, added: “I didn’t notice a whole lot of people getting off, so that was a good sign — people weren’t suddenly saying, ‘Uh-oh, there’s going to be a family fight’.”

Just who was in charge for the day was easily resolved. Roger, as the more senior Captain Kirk, was pilot in command, and took the controls for the return flight.

Both pilots, the sons of an aviator, are used to being ribbed by Star Trek fans. “If I could have a dollar for every time I hear a Starship Enterprise joke, I’d be a wealthy guy. But that’s fine, we think it’s funny,” Philip Kirk said. He tweeted an image of the pair in the cockpit and has attracted 20,000 likes. And, of course, a fresh stream of Star Trek jokes.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/your ... -pwhpbtvw2

@Freightdog is this some of your handywork??

Cargo plane goes off the runway at San Jose in Costa Rica and splits in two. Nobody hurt. There is a great video on the link below showing the whole thing.



https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/dh ... li=BBoPWjQ