Is it plausable ??????

Just in addition to this - the reason I think there is more to this than just explosive/rapid decompression is the event with a 737 which lost a section of its fuselage over Hawaii. In that case they would have been approaching cruise altitude and the whole roof blew off - only one person died. see www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/ot...essonsfromaloha.html for the report on this.

I agree with voyager above, if this did happen the pressure would have blown a hole much bigger than any object which impacted.

A failure in the pilots / main oxygen system is probably the main cause. The plane would have been on auto-pilot with altitude set to 34000 - if both pilots were able to don oxygen masks the next step would have been to dial in 10000 and dive to a lower altitude straight away. I think both of them were rendered unconscious by hypoxia (lack of oxygen), the dive to 10,000 ft never happened and the planes crew and passengers died from lack of oxygen. There are many unanswered questions such as why the one person allegedly had found the portable oxygen supply or why the plane ran out of fuel 25 miles from the airport.

Just did a bit of research and although most websites state huge odds against this happening - there is an article if you are interested which talks about a TWA flight 800 which 'fell from the sky'.

It might be an interesting read if you wish to read more about this...
www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?art...880000&ref=sciam

Shane et al,

The analysis of the flight recorders in Paris during the past few days confirmed that the cabin was never pressurized (for some reason). When the indicator lit in the cockpit, it was accompanied by another indicator indicating a problem with the flight settings. The crew pursued the second of the two and ignored the first and kept gaining altitude. All of this happened about eight minutes following departure.

It seems they were all rendered unconscious due to hypoxia (cabin never pressurized) and something which was was aggravated as they gained altitude. The autopsies revealed that all of them were technically alive at impact since their lungs and heart had circulation. For two or three of the autopsies, they found very slight traces of smoke inhalation which indicates that their last breath or two was at impact.

As for the F-16 pilots, they supposedly flew within a couple of meters of the cockpit and noticed at least one passenger trying to gain control of the aircraft (he was wearing an oxygen mask).

As for the crash itself, it was due to a lack of fuel. The first engine shut down about 15 minutes prior to the crash whereas the second one shut down minutes before the crash. All of this came from the flight recorder.

As for a metor(ite) causing this incident, I would not rule it out BUT there are confirmations from the flight recorder of multiple mechanical problems with the aircraft. It seems the whole thing was cast in stone as early as eight minutes following departure where the lights started to blink in the cockpit for various problems including thermal heating of the main control panels.

There have been years where I have flown over 100,000 miles annually during business trips and this kind of thing is/was always on the back of my mind. A flight is one of the rare experiences where your life is totally in the hands of someone else. Ditto for surgical procedures etc.

Anthony.

Thanks Anthony for the extra details - I hadn't heard the results RE: the engine shutdown - but I had heard initial info about the cabin never pressurinsing (pre BlackBox analysis), but wasn;t aware of the BB results.
Seems it was human error, and the sad thing is it was avoidable. I believe the procedure on a pressure problem is to decend to an altitude where oxygen is available (circa 10,000 ft) - they mistakenly persued the second issue.

Hi Shane,

Indeed it is something that was certainly avoidable and simply a series of errors led to this tragic event. As you note, the smart thing to do was to descend and not continue to ascend. However, it seems that the ground crews are responsible for this decision since the flight recorder has the (German) pilot informing the ground crews that there are various problems including the overheating of the control panels. He (the pilot) was told to look for some breaker behind his seat ... it is for this reason that the pilot was never seen in his seat by the F-16 pilots and the ensuing mystery as "to where is/was the pilot".

The ground crews also advised the pilot to keep his course and that Athens would be informed of the problems for addressing upon arrival.

We have a comedy of errors which led to the loss of 121 lives in a most tragic manner.

Anthony.

Thanks for the update Andrew.
I was wondering why the captain was away from the controls when the F16 was surveying the aircraft - I know it was on auto-piolt and it didn't matter but it was strange. I had thought he was investigating a breach of some sort and collappsed.
That explains things better.
Shane