With crash of Russian flight, another airplane mystery to solve

Another airline crash, and another mystery. One thing is certain: Speculation today is only that. No cause of the disaster will be known for months, after the exhaustive and technically precise investigation is finished.

Even Vladimir Putin, no icon of moderation, has publicly urged patience for the probe to run its course. Of course, he was responding to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s statement that a bomb on board was the likely cause. Putin would not want a Russian airline to seem to have flawed security screening.

Flight 7K9268 crashed a bit more than 20 minutes after leaving the airport at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on route to St. Petersburg, Russia, with a load of 224 crew and passengers returning from holiday. The apparent disintegration of the plane at 31,000 feet left no chance for survival.

Officials from Metrojet, the company operating the flight, promptly (and prematurely) said there was no chance the crash resulted from problems with the aircraft or crew. Russian aviation officials quickly (and correctly) pointed out that it was simply too soon to say anything about a cause. Crashes like this are rarely the result of just one cause. Aviation is complex, and so are the causes of most accidents.

The break-up of an airliner in flight is exceedingly rare. An explosion inside the plane, like from a bomb in a suitcase, could do it, as in the Pam Am 103 crash over Lockerbie, Scotland. An exploding fuel tank in TWA 800 over Long Island Sound was behind that accident. A missile strike, as in the Malaysia Airlines 17 crash over Ukraine, could do it. Only thorough examination of the wreckage will tell.

Sudden structural failure without an external cause, although unlikely, also could be possible. The plane in this case, an 18-year-old Airbus A321, had flown only half its predicted lifetime, so a factor like metal fatigue is unlikely. Fatigue caused a couple crashes of the famed deHavilland Comet in the 1950s before the issue was fully understood by engineers and corrected.

More provocative is the idea that a tail strike by the plane in 2001 – seemingly properly repaired – led to the catastrophe. At least two airliners suffered tail strikes – when the tail hits the runway on landing or takeoff – and then, later (in one case seven years) had structural failure leading to fatal accidents.

Could a missile have hit the plane? After all, a surveillance satellite detected a heat flash around the time of the break-up. But the weapons available to the forces of ISIS cannot reach the altitude the plane was cruising at, and the satellite did not detect the heat trail from a missile’s exhaust.

Some have raised the chance that the plane hit a drone, but this also seems unlikely, for several reasons. No one has reported any drone components mixed with the Airbus’ wreckage. Few drones can reach that height, unless they are large military craft, which would have been seen on radar. And a drone strike likely would have damaged the nose, wing leading edges or engines. Principle damage to the Airbus was farther back in the fuselage, causing its tail break away.

It also is far-fetched to speculate that the pilots could have done this. The accident was completely unlike the Eurowings crash in March in the French Alps caused by the demented young co-pilot, who deliberately flew the plane to its shattered end. It also is highly unlikely that abrupt maneuvering would have caused the fuselage to break where it did, unless it somehow was connected to the repair of the tail strike.

The vast range of possibilities means that the only reasonable response right now is to wait for the investigation to run its course. This was a German/French airliner operated by a Russian airline crashing in Egypt, and according to international aviation agreements, each country, and the manufacturer of the plane, will have a hand in the probe.

The crucial data and voice recorders have been recovered and are being examined. Investigators will pore over radar tracking records, and meteorologists will study the weather conditions. Psychologists will study the pilots’ behavior, and pathologists will look for signs of drug or alcohol involvement.

Police investigators will check every passenger’s history for signs of radicalism or mental problems. And of course each shred of the wreckage, baggage and freight will be taken away and examined. All of this will take some time.

Given human nature, the desire to know right away what happened is strong, and waiting is hard. If someone asked me today what I think happened, I lean toward the theory of a bomb in a suitcase. But like Britain’s David Cameron, I’m only making an educated guess.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 5:58 PM with the headline "With crash of Russian flight, another airplane mystery to solve."