Boris Johnson has said that Iran shot down the Ukrainian passenger plane in Tehran after Western intelligence agencies concluded that the downing of the jet was most likely an accident.
US satellites reportedly picked up two surface-to-air missiles being launched shortly before the accident and US officials suspect there are missile fragments near the crash site where all 176 passenger died.
After all, planes don’t normally just fall out of the sky.
Well, actually, we used to say that about Boeings, but now…..
They also don’t normally set on fire and gradually descend away from any reasonable flight path, and they don’t normally go completely silent as soon as there’s some sort of problem unless the pilots are either dead (Malaysian Airlines Flight 17), otherwise incapacitated (Helios Airways Flight 522) or on a murder-suicide mission (Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, Germanwings Flight 9525).
And the country it falls out of the sky over doesn’t normally declare it a ‘technical fault’ before the last piece has even hit the ground…
There are already people trying to pin this on Trump…
And the country it falls out the sky over doesn’t normally refuse to hand over the ‘black box’ to the manufacturer.
“Well, actually, we used to say that about Boeings, but now…..”
The more I read about the 737 Max, the more this feels like a stitch up as well. When something begins to go wrong in the cockpit of a large commercial aircraft, there are two types of actions performed by the crew:
– MEMORY items: things that the crew should do immediately that will help stabilise a situation so that they buy themselves some time to work out a proper fix. They should be expected to recite these items instantly without referring to any checklist at all.
– CHECKLIST items: things that should be done only once the memory items have been done. These will be more complicated and will take more time, and are about solving the problem rather than simply stabilising the situation.
In neither of the high profile 737 Max crashes did the crew perform the MEMORY items for the situation. Conversely, there have been multiple instances of AoA sensor problems that caused MCAS issues, where the crew simply disabled the system – by hitting the STAB Trim Cut Out, the very first memory item – and continued perfectly happily to their final destination.
Is there something wrong with the 737 Max? Yes.
Is there a bad case of regulatory capture? Yes.
But conversely:
– Did the Lion air pilots fly the max into the ground all on their own? Yes.
– Would I fly on a 737 Max? Yes, assuming it was operated by a sensible airline. (BTW, Air France would fall below the threshold for sensible)
– Is the Max a death trap? No.
Bellingcat have analysis of an amateur video apparently showing a missile hitting the plane. Probably, if there were two, the second one.
Here.
And the country it falls out the sky over doesn’t normally do this:
“Iranian TV pictures later in the day showed the crash site being bulldozed.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51055219
When did kiev become kyiv?
And lots of those made a real fuss of the US killing one Iranian general. Iran killing a plane load if people? Not so much.
Excellent post SE. Jesus i hope the camera operator has got the hell out of dodge.
“By using the Pythagoras theorem, we calculated the land distance from the camera to the event to be approximately 3.3 kilometers.”
Maths teachers rejoice.
How stupid do you have to be to fire at a airliner anyway? Or did they pick one to down out of a hat.
At least they had the sense not to push their luck with Trump–who had the sense not to push his own luck.
TWA 800, a 747, blew up and fell out of the sky all on its own, or at least that was the conclusion of the enquiry. There were missile theories then too. Although this one now probably is what it appears to be, an accidental shootdown.
“How stupid do you have to be to fire at a airliner anyway? Or did they pick one to down out of a hat.”
Probably some poorly trained 20 year old SAM operator saw the plane pop up on his radar, thought it was an American bomber and panicked.
Apparently its to do with “crossfire”, because the anti Trumpers can just use words to mean what they want to mean and crossfire sounds bad, even though only one side was firing.
And those same people were clutching their pearls when Trump announced he was pulling out of Syria.
“Probably some poorly trained 20 year old SAM operator saw the plane pop up on his radar, thought it was an American bomber and panicked.” Pimpled snowflake, eh?
There maybe some truth in some of the announcements, if the plane had turned back to the airport for some reason as claimed then it was possibly outside any safe zone flight path they had in place and then due to miscommunication some system flagged it as a target because it wasn’t where it was supposed to be
And the country it falls out of the sky over doesn’t normally bulldoze the crash site before any investigation
Half the passengers were Iranians – illegal emigrants?
Notable how BBC etc more concerned with diversion “It wasn’t a 737 Max” than Iran shot it down with two missiles and video footage of hit and on fire aircraft flying for several minutes
Accident? Ur avin a larf – Iran trying to impress/keep Russia by downing Ukrainian aircraft
I don’t know whether I’m more surprised by Iran finally admitting it or by the BBC news running it as top story.
@ rhoda klapp
Initially both are amazing but in the end the latter is more surprising since Iran’s top bods knew on Wednesday what had happened but only knew yesterday that the US had photographic proof so their best damage limitation exercise was to confess; the BBC could have downgraded it to small print below sopme trumped-up attack on Boris.
@rhoda
Iran: it was a spotty youth in control of SAM site when others on tea-break, his radio failed and he thought the big 737 was a little cruise missile..
The dog ate my homework
As I said: “Ur avin a larf”
@john77
BBC has long history of not reporting or burying news until it becomes untenable to keep pretending nothing happened
Talking of BBC
Anyone listened to World Service recently – their 0100-0500 has become Women’s Night: feminist giggling presenter & feminist giggling interviewee
Human Error. They mistakenly thought that the Ayatollah was aboard.