Shades of EgyptAir Flight 990, on which co-pilot Gamil el-Batouty in 1999 dove the New York to Cairo flight into the ocean just off New England. Killed 217.
That particular Airbus is subject to detachment of the rudder if full rudder is suddenly given at above a certain airspeed. This does not mean it is a bad aircraft.
If a Jihadist pilot wanted to take an aircraft down this is the way to do it. A high speed rudder input could account for the initial 90 degree turn, which would follow with the loss of the vertical stabilizer and a uncontrolled spiral dive of which it would be impossible to recover. If this happened we will find at least one and perhaps both turbines detached from the aircraft and some distance from the main wreckage.
1. Give full rudder input and yaw the aircraft to maximum
2. Give the opposite full rudder input
This will swing the aircraft past the critical point of structural failure and the vertical stabilizer will detach. Game over.
I beatd the news report it as a forty mile debris field.
It was a bomb. I don’t care what any official agency says
