Estimating the search area may be not governed by altitude and glide ratio, but more complicated by the sea currents in the channel. The few minutes in the air from 2,000ft are less challenging to determine the site as is the tidal current there. But, given the mathematical models are quite well now, it should not take long to define a detail search area based on the assumptions.
Other than bereaved relatives, who understandably would like closure and recover the body where possible for a proper fatewell and burial, and who have all my sympathy, why would anyone else be interested in expending a huge effort on this?
When an airliner crashes for non-obvious reasons, there are very good reasons to spend resources on finding out why, so one can learn and prevent.
There is very little to learn from an accident like this – even if it wasn’t VFR into IMC at night (by far the most likely), or loss of control after an instrument failure or an engine failure or in an icing encounter (all a lot less likely, but plausible), preventing whatever it was would not appreciably reduce the accident rate.
Did the N147KB organised boat pickup mid channel?
There was a lot of speculation at the time along those lines, triggered by the police stating they are looking for him. He had good reasons to do a John Stonehouse. He was also a rock climber and there was much discussion of how feasible it would be to pull the chute and climb onto the roof, then cut the chute off so the plane falls down, you float down and get picked up in a boat. That fitted the evidence because the chute had been activated (the floating hull pics showed it), was never found, and the plane was smashed up.
For absolute position, ATC radars are accurate to about 0.5-1nm at 30nm.
why would anyone else be interested in expending a huge effort on this?
Probably the value of the passenger, and the unusual (controversial) arrangement of the transport operation. In these sorts of cases the family of a wealthy deceased tends to put a lot of pressure on the accident investigating body to “do something”. And the said body doesn’t want to be put in the shade by a private recovery operation finding something interesting, after they themselves told everybody it’s a waste of time. In some countries there is also obvious political interference.
This is the IR chart on Monday 21 Jan at 20:00UTC which I understand is 30 mins before the accident. Too dark for visible picture.
Somebody happen to have an email to send confidential information to the investigators of the accident?
Snoopy wrote:
http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/modalapplication.aspx?catid=33&pagetype=65&appid=43
The CAA is not investigating the accident. The AAIB is.
Yes, 24h number AAIB 01252 512299
My understanding, if you crash with an aircraft one would call aaib/emergency services if injury then police if criminal, in that order, later insurer, your club and finally caa, but as one aircraft syndicate partner put it: one would call his mum first :)
