If you watch the video is pretty obvious they were climbing at too steep of an angle and the plane simply stalled.
“If you watch the video is pretty obvious they were climbing at too steep of an angle and the plane simply stalled.”
Maybe. Maybe not so obvious.
I have watched a lot of take-offs and take-off video and it is very hard to assess from the ground at the end of a runway the angle of ascent of a jetliner.
The four engines on the 747-400 are extremely powerful and all jets taking off from Bagram depart at a high angle of ascent to avoid small arms and RPG fire.
Two things have been noted by expert observers about this stall:
1. The aircraft appears to have lost thrust and with resulting loss of airspeed at a rate greater than could be accounted for only by a stall caused by too high an attack angle.
2. The undercarriage appears to have been fully extended at the time of the crash when it would have been expected to have been fully or at least partially retracted a 1,200 feet that the aircraft is estimated to have attained prior to the plunge. This could indicate that an engine thrust malfunction occurred at or shortly after the “go-no go” point on the runway called V1 was passed and pilots are trained (drilled) to “take the problem into the air.”
Attempting to abort a take-off after V1 speed is attained will far more likely result in going off the end of the runway with loss of the aircraft and loss of life on the plane and on the ground. This is why the zone between V1 and VR (rotation for lift-off) has been called “The Runway Kill Zone” on the blog of that name. V1-VR is a zone where terrorists an knock out one or more engines using GPS guided drones and place the pilots in a situation that they cannot recover from.
The sad story of AWACS flight Yukla 27, which hit at least two Canada Geese in the runway kill zone (RKZ) can now be reverse-engineered by terrorists, as explained on the RKZ blog.
I don’t claim that the Bagram 747 crash was caused by terrorists, but, IMO, the drone technology now exists for terrorists to replicate this crash intentionally and steps must be taken to identify the runway kill zone (RKZ) for all flights protect all airfields from GPS-guided drone attacks in the RKZ.
The public needs to be alert to all suspicious drone activities near airports (no, not RC model enthusiasts at known model airfields even if near airports) and to report them to authorities.