Hi folks,

It has recently been reported that flight 990 went into a steep dive, pulled up, and had its engines shut off. Might this have been done to get to a safe altitude for parachuting? The engines being shut off would support this as you would risk being sucked into them. Maybe someone left that plane that fateful night.

Remember that radar picked up what looked like the plane was falling apart? That was your boys jumping outta the plane.

Does anyone know the safe altitude for parachuting without oxygen?

Have I watched too many movies? :-)

Just some amateur sleuting :-)

-- Sherlock (Holmes@Iam.Not), November 17, 1999

Answers

Not at all likely.

First, parachuting without oxygen is typically done at 10,000 feet or less.

Next, at 16,000-24,000 feet, a depressurization of the cabin would require anyone in the cabin to get to their oxygen quickly.

Next, the rear door would be the only possible exit point. I seem to remeber that after the antics of 'D.B.Cooper', Boeing implemented a change that prevents these doors from being opened in flight. Don't know if this applies to the 767 but suspect it does.

Last but not least, jumping out of an aircraft while it is in a steep dive or climb is not the best way to live to see tomorrow.

Maybe in a James Bond movie but unlikely in real life...

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), November 17, 1999.

Damn, I guess I better keep my day job (I'm the manager at Y2K Pro's Burger King).

-- Lurker Back (Under@My.Rock), November 17, 1999.

Seals do this. It can be done. Was it done this time? Maybe but probably not. I suspect that someone (the Captain maybe) tried to take control back and eventually lost.

-- anonymous (anonymous@anonymous.com), November 17, 1999.

Actually, most parachuting without supplemental 02 is done at 14,000 feet above sea level. How do I know this? Because I run a skydiving business in Tennessee. I take up twenty loads a day on the weekends and every time I shout "EXIT EXIT EXIT" my altimiter reads 14,000. So to Arnie I say... go back to sleep.

-- (nickjones@lunaweb.com), November 17, 1999.

http://www.sightings.com/politics5/990new.htm

Check this article out , if your interested in a real strange sernario,but still possible.

-- Cymchenry (cymchenry@seidata.com), November 17, 1999.

Parachuting? not likely, they're not standard equipment. The thing that most reports seem to ignore is that any of several things could have happened causing the 2nd or 3rd pilot to force the plane into a dive. Cabin depressurization, engine fire, cockpit fire, cabin fire. So far, none of this has been ruled out.

If I were the 2nd / 3rd pilot in that aircraft (yes, there were 3, one in the jump seat riding along) and there was an depressurization event, the first thing to do is take the plane off of autopilot, 2nd, dive quickly to below flight level 15 (15000 feet) then level off. However if I overzealously dove, I might decide to turn off the engines if we were going faster than the plane was rated for.

Oh and by the way, at some point I would have been praying out loud.

For a fire, the best way to put one out is to dive, go fast enough and the flames will go out due to a lack of oxygen.

--Andy

-- Andy Hughes (hughesa@open.org), November 17, 1999.

During the first dive everything loose would be floating around the cabin. Pretty hard for anyone to get much done who didn't have considerable experience in free fall. Not to mention navigating thru a cabin full of floating people and luggage.

Bailing out at (as reported) Mach 0.8 to 0.9 is suicide. You wouldn't even clear the airframe. That's why military ejection seats have boosters. Opening the door at that speed would create a giant venturi and suck out everything loose inside -- including the passengers. Who (in this case) never got a chance to belt up.

And the timeline says the engines were cut off before the plane finished its first dive, before it went up again to 24000 ft. or so (if it actually did). At the top of that rise, it would be going slow -- but the air's pretty thin.

Not likely, all around.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), November 17, 1999.