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It would be possible for it to go down intact - if it had a relatively slow landing on the sea (A fast impact would most likely leave debris). But that would beg the question about the possibility of escape and the use of a liferaft.
It'll be a jobbie for magnetometer and sidescan sonar now to detect it.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/...-what-15731596
Inside the search for Emiliano Sala: What happened during three grueling days that ended in vain
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47013648
Emiliano Sala: 120,000 euros raised for private search
Yes there's a deep underwater trench north of Alderney called Hurd's Deep at over 600ft. Just reading the pilots forum and they were suggesting the aircraft could have crashed anywhere from Guernsey to Cardiff if it was flying low to avoid ice and too low for radar detection. There are some pretty remote areas on the route such as Dartmoor and Exmoor and of course the Bristol Channel.
Accepting it looks the pilot had been ticking enough boxes for an incident to occur I have not spotted in this thread any real discussion on other safety aspects, I have only P2'd a Malibu a few times but dare I say there is a chance its so much like the feel of a "proper" executive aircraft rather than the overgrown Arrow i.e a single engine piston I fly they were probably both up front where you have to climb forward from the rear stepped door and having got to the incident phase were they putting the limited survival odds in their favour? Such as already wearing life jackets but then assuming the 88% chance of surviving the water landing in very good conditions which they clearly wern't would a footballer be confident of opening a pressurised rear door having clambered from the front possibly wet, in shock and with head injury in the dark and losing valuable time to exit, at least a P28 series you can wedge the door open in flight so it does not jam. Someone above said it probably was not equipped with ADSB etc because of its age, my aircraft is 40 years old and I have had mode s 330 for many years and more recently ADSB in and out and FLARM in and out and its not all just for collision avoidance its all part of a safety attitude so a tad unfair to assume all owners are the same but if you are going to become a needle in a haystack of sea getting an accurate position report out is crucial as is wearing your PLB in advance and any passenger faced with any of this would not have a clue of what to do for the best. Add all this together with the comments above and I cant see that anything was in their favour from the start and sadly they will have perished, probably within hours. The FAT one above has made safety comments elsewhere with links and they are worth a read as that aspect of planning is as important as anything else. I am not in the camp of don't fly a single piston over water, yes there is a risk and we cant all afford to fly a King Air but this is unlikely to be an engine failure and the aircraft does not know if its night or over water and they don't fail very often, the last tragic Alderney ditching I believe was a PA28 a few years back who ran out of fuel, his wife survived by clinging onto a tyre but sadly but it was a whole list of ticking error boxes in advance and as we all know flying is completely unforgiving if the human input is all wrong. Here's hoping everyone here manages to avoid the same mistakes and fly's safe as about the only good that can now come out of this one and those two poor chaps, RIP, is that a few learn something new and others like me are very clearly reminded of the risks and do everything possible to minimise them. All very sad
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From the pilots forum
A few of those would have resulted in an emergency landing request, not a request to descend. If the plane had excessive icing it would have been difficult to control, and it could have been shaking quite badly. So we are down to icing and/or pilot error/decapitation, but the request to descend would suggest that icing was a factor. The lack of a mayday call could be a sign that things went out of control pretty quickly.
And the more I read the more reckless the whole flight appears. All the factors point towards a flight that should not have taken place. As one poster put it" taking off isn't mandatory, landing is". Also, Sala could have flown Nantes - Paris, Paris-Cardiff by commercial flight...... and paid a few quid extra for excess baggage if he was moving to Cardiff. Icing/loss of control still seems the most likely cause given the aircraft "felt like it was going to fall apart". No (activated) transponder track makes tracing the aircraft's final movements much harder to trace.
The investigators shouldn't construct a theory around the facts. 1st, they need to hypothesise on all possibilities, then, evidentially disregard each hypothesis until they are left with the most likely outcome.
For example, what could be the causes (These are my hypotheses, and I was never an Air Accident Investigator, so don't have the knowledge of how flights/ aircraft work) -
1. Icing
2. Engine failure
2. Other mechanical failure
4. Pilot error
5. A combination of all or some of the above.
As they investigate and compile the facts, one by one each of the hypotheses falls. However, there will need to be significant recovery of the aircraft to assist in this, and we may never know what exactly happened. Let's not forget, there is still no conclusive proof of what happened to flight MH370, an aircraft with 2 experienced pilots on board, transponders, flight recorders and cockpit voice recorders.
I wrote this on another thread:
As regards the second pilot it would appear from today's Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-10-HOURS.html
that Henderson's passport (the second pilot) was scanned at Nantes, the original flight plan filed in his name and Sala, Ibbotson and Henderson all passed through security at the same time. Henderson denies being there, refuses to answer questions and has deleted his facebook account. Furthermore his explanation is somewhat lame saying security must have made a mistake. These are factual matters that have yet to be fully explained but on the face of it must give rise to speculation.
One of the posts on the pilots forum got me thinking. It was something along the lines of all we know is that they dropped of radar near Cacetes lighthouse. It is 80% likely that they ditched there but the other 20% is anywhere from Northern France, Cornwall, Exmore, Dartmore or the Severn estuary.
Also ditches on water have an 88% survival rate on light aircraft.
Should the new search party follow the existing flight plan just to see if they made to land and crashed somewhere remote?
Had they made landfall there would have been time for a mayday call. Everything points to a sudden, uncontrolable, catastrophic event for which neither pilot, nor passenger, were adequately prepared. Even if there was a successful ditching, survivability, given the conditions and probable location, is close to zero without immediate rescue.