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Sinai Crash Caused by “External Influences”
The Russian airline Kogalymavia has blamed “external influences” for Saturday’s Sinai plane crash which killed 224 people, reports the BBC:
A senior airline official said: “The only reasonable explanation is that it was [due to] external influence.” …
At a news conference in Moscow, the deputy director of the airline, which was later renamed Metrojet, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error.
“The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft,” Alexander Smirnov said.
“There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air,” he added.
Beats me what that means. Beats me what it implies. Your best guess?
Published in Foreign Policy
Claire & all.
UPDATE:
US government now thinks a bomb “likely” brought the plane down.
Russian plane crash: ISIS bomb likely brought down jet, U.S. official says
Regards,
Jim
Consequences:
Item 1. will require Israel allow remilitarization of the Sinai.
Unless Israel and Egypt agree to joint surveillance. Israel could maintain full overflight control, and Egypt on the ground….
Russia does not have the resources to do much more against ISIS.
There was no missile. You’d need a “double digit” SAM (SA-10 or bigger) to hit an aircraft at that altitude. The SA-8 might make it. There have been reports from the usual unnamed suspects that a heat signature was picked up by an infrared satellite, but it was too brief to be a missile. It looks like they are focusing on a bomb. There is still a chance that it was a structural problem, but if that were the case, what was the heat signature about?
I don’t know enough about how jet fuel burns in those conditions. Does it “BLEVE”? And if it does would it show up as a heat bloom to a satellite ( I would think so but…)?
Jet fuel does not explode easily. It will burn, if it gets quite hot, obviously. But as I wrote in the other thread, one can drop a lit match into a vat of Jet A, and it will not ignite.
So the fuel would not have been the origin of the heat flash.
Ok, that’s what I had thought. Wasn’t sure if conditions in a plane at altitude changed that somehow. Explosive breach of air pressure from the cabin certainly wouldn’t do it either. There just aren’t that many options up there for a short heat bloom other than an explosion.