Hmm, from a double flameout, it sounds like one of two things: fuel starvation (running out of fuel) or fuel contamination. If it's the latter, then there would likely (not definitely) been more than one crash/incident involving a departing flight from the same airport that this flight departed from (Panama/Tocumen/MPTO)...although a 757 made it to Miami alrighti, so it doesn't sound like fuel contam. It's been mentioned that the engines were recently hushkitted, although this sounds like an attempt at the media to pick on anything recently done on the engines in an attempt to blame it for the crash - - unless some lines in the engines (both of them, dammit) were actually severed, the engines would be just fine - - the hushkit nozzles would just blow away (a la the Air Tran/Ryan International A320 that lost its engine nacelle/covering from Atlanta last year, it made a full recovery/landing with no adverse effects). The only other thing that I can think of that would cause a dual flameout would be flight through extremely heavy precipitation, although none would be found at flight level (which for the MD-82 is around the region of FL350, or 35000 feet), EXCEPT in the case of a severe thunderstorm. If the airplane did indeed penetrate one, then it's not too hard to see why this happened. Other things I can think of are fuel leaks handled the wrong way (a la Air Transat A330 in the Azores), wrong oil in the engines (causing them to seize up and fail), bad seals in the engines, failure of one engine with the crew pulling the wrong fire bottle (and killing the other engine too), and bad engine indications, causing the crew to shut down the engines by mistake. Compared to other causes, there isn't much that'll cause a dual flameout. A few are saying "well, maybe it's just really bad luck that both of them quit". To that, I say 'What's the odds of losing one engine? Now square that number. That's the odds of losing both at once'. As usual, here's the airplane that crashed, HK-4374X. Nice looking bird...my thoughts go out to the families and friends of the victims. The usual gamut of theories can be found at the Anet thread on this. Myself, I'm leading towards fuel contam or starvation.
I am so sad.In two days almost 300 people killed in aeroplane crashes [/b][/quote] Unbelievable, isn't it?