Video of 737-800 China Airlines Crash.

[Nigel H-J]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDDiB1dOGgs

No reports of why it crashed!

Regards
Nigel.

[fran65]

vertical! Poor souls and families!

[Vancouver]

Truly awful.

[FlyTexas]

Horrible. I can't imagine any mechanical issue that would cause an aircraft to fly straight into the ground like that. Very strange.

Brian

[Nigel H-J]

Brian, I did not like to speculate but thought it could have been something To do with either stab trim malfunction as in the crash of an Alaskan Airliner that crashed off shore of San Franscico or the pressure bulk head giving way due to corrosion and the last thought human action!!

Wild guesses, but the above causes have happened for real.

Regards
Nigel

[cstorey]

The film is not of great quality, but I cannot see a tailplane . The loss of the downforce is about the one aerodynamic feature that inevitably would result in this dive. The last time this happened to my recollection was to the ATR42/72 which suffered tailplane icing

Edit : I'm completely wrong about the ATR which was aileron icing rather than tailplane

[Kevin Farnell]

Firstly, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those who have been lost.

Regarding the rapid nose down descent, I recall a B707 crash at Lusaka, where one of the tailplanes separated on approach resulting in a loss of downforce on the rear of the aircraft, which suffered the same fate. Looking online, I've found several people mention that the dive occurred at about the same point as where the previous days flight had initiated it's descent. So, it appears that something occurred as the aircraft went form stable straight and level flight and into it's descent.
I've also seen it reported that the aircraft was just seven years old, but it's important to remember that age is less of a factor than hours/cycles flown and maintenance.
Hopefully, the two 'black boxes' can be found (and in working order) and rule out any structural/technical problems with the B737-800 series.

Kevin

[TSR2]

Thoughts and prayers to all who have suffered loss.

I seem to recall old 737 classics suffering from a rudder issue where the valve controlling the rudder would lock in a position causing full scale deflection, and depending on the phase of flight, send the aircraft into the ground. I think there were several accidents and it was only after several years they asked BA, who had a large fleet, if the had any issues. Fortunately BA were able to pull up data from their aircraft that showed the part was replaced frequently. They were able to identify it because BA collected all sorts of data every day from their aircraft on computer tapes. These would be downloaded to a mainframe every night, and fed into the preventative maintenance schedule.

[Nigel H-J]

Just watched a video relating to this terrible crash. The aircraft was at 29,000ft when it suddenly went into a vertical dive but recovered at 8,000ft and climbed 1,000ft before going back down.

No black box found yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoQbVdjJt48

Regards
Nigel.

[Kevin Farnell]

I believe that the information that the plane climbed 1000ft before the final impact comes only from Flight Radar 24 and as such should be treated with caution at this point. If the CVR and FDR can be found (and are in working order), then these will give the true picture. But even if this data is unavailable, the aircraft will have been sending a continuous stream of info back to the airline regarding it's flight parameters.

Kevin