So this is what happened in my humble opinion. I’m not a pilot nor an expert but I’ve watched a ton of video on this and evaluated this from every angle I could find, etc.
Here’s what I think happened (and it’s slightly different from what the press has been reporting):
1) There was a bird strike but not just a normal bird strike…a really bad one with 10s or 100s of birds and not just small birds but medium sized birds. Not just one engine that you see in the pictures but both engines. So we had 50-100+ birds go through both engines which totally brought down one engine (likely the right engine) and the other engine while not totally down was severely compromised and got worse the next few minutes. This caused the hydraulics and such to malfunction on the plane. This also caused a lot of smoke in the cabin, cockpit, etc.
Bird strikes are common but usually they are small birds and just a single bird. When you have many birds like this, it’s not as common. If the birds are big (eagles, hawks, etc.) then it also causes a lot more damage, etc. but I don’t think it was an eagle/hawk type of birds but rather just many birds in volume which clogged up the engines, etc.
2) The pilot descended to land and then turned around and wanted to go back up to re-do the landing but when the pilot tried to ascend for another go-around, was unable to because of the severely compromised engine. The engine that was remaining got worse over time and since the plane wouldn’t go back up anymore to increase elevation, the pilot was forced to just land the plane immediately. The plane was also going fast because initially the pilot wanted to go back up but when couldn’t, just had to land at that high velocity. If you watch navy planes, when they land on ships, they actually accelerate in case the rope thing doesn’t catch the landing gear because if the rope thing misses, they need to ascend for another go-around. The pilot accelerated to try to ascend but when couldn’t had to land after already accelerating so plane was way too fast.
3) Since the hydraulics didn’t work and the landing was unexpectedly immediate, there was no time for any manual deployment of landing gears, etc. No time for anything really other than just to land. Reverse thrusters, etc. weren’t working or were working at severely reduced capacity.
4) Pilot had no idea that there was a concrete structure. Pilot just saw a big dirt mound so didn’t try to turn the plane. ATC didn’t warn the pilot. Pilot either couldn’t think fast enough to try to steer the plane while belly landing (which is tough/virtually impossible anyway) or thought plane would just go through the dirt or over but didn’t know a concrete wall would be there.
So what’s at fault? Root cause? Well, everything…a combination of bad events that happened to come together to cause a tragedy. We can play the what-if game and if any of these hadn’t happened or happened to a lesser degree we would likely have 179 people alive today.
But if I had to pinpoint any one thing? It’s the concrete structure. They need to get rid of these everywhere (if any still exist).
submitted by /u/throwaway_gyopo
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