Also Con Pilot, don't fool yourself. If these two aluminum airplanes hit, doing a closure speed of around 800 tas (one is doing 400 kts + the speed of the other) It wouldn't take much to structurally damage a wing so that cannot support weight.
There was no intent to minimize the possible damage resulting from the mid-air collision of these two aircraft. That the two aircraft collided I believe there is no doubt. Two undamaged aircraft took off, were operating in the same general airspace, one damaged aircraft landed and the other crashed out of control into the jungle.
As I have attended and completed Phase I and II of the NTSB Accident Investigator School I am very cognizant of the fact that the failure of an extremely small part can cause a accident of disastrous consequence when compared to the size of the aforementioned minor/small part.
After viewing the pictures of the Legacy with the minor damage of the missing wing-let, consisting of mostly fiberglass with a metal reinforced leading edge and the minor damage to the left outboard section T-tail consisting of a few mm of missing structure I was left with a quandary concerning the loss of a much larger, just as well built, if not better build airliner after what appears to be a very minor collision with a smaller aircraft. The closure speed or angle of impact of this accident is unknown at the present time, at least to my knowledge. If you have such information available I would greatly appreciate you sharing this information with us.
A case in point is the loss of the PSA Boeing 727 after colliding with a Cessna 172 in California many years ago. And as I am sure you are aware of there have been other collisions involving smalled piston engine light aircraft with much larger aircraft resulting the total loss of both aircraft. However, in the PSA accident and other similar type accidents the
smaller aircraft was totally destroyed by the impact of the mid-air collision. In this incident the smaller aircraft landed with very little relative damage.
The fact that the two aircraft collided there is no doubt. Someone was in the wrong airspace at the wrong time, this is not in dispute. The smaller of the two aircraft landed safely with minimal damage and the larger new (less than 200 hours) Boeing 737-800 crashed out of control into the jungle is the tragic result of the first two facts.
That the airliner involved was a new Boeing 737-800, I am sure that the new style flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder was installed. The fact that the Embraer Legacy was a brand new aircraft should indicate that the same recorders were on that aircraft as well.
It is very possible that the Legacy collided with the 737 is such a way that the vertical stab and rudder were lost due to the collision, resulting in
the loss of control of the 737.
It is also very possible that the crew of the 737 lost control of the aircraft trying (unsuccessfully) to aviod the collision with the Legacy and were unable to recover.
In summary there are three key questions that need, and I feel will be, answered.
1. Who was in the wrong airspace and why?
2. Was the impact damamge to the Boeing 737 so sever that the aircraft became unairworthy after the mid-air.
3. If the collision dammage was
not sufficent to cause the loss of control of the Boeing 737, what did cause the loss of control?
Only time will tell and don't believe anything from the media.
