Talk:West Caribbean Airways Flight 708

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Contents 1 Time 2 Number of Fatalities 3 Something's Up... 4 Age of copilot 5 Investigation

[edit] Time

Can the 2:00 a.m. time for the distress call be reasonable? From the Wikipedia coordinates for Panama City and Maracaibo, the distance is about 900km or of the order of an hour's flying time. I wonder if the 2:00 a.m. is actually the departure time. 213.162.103.78 16:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

The departure time has now been given as 01:00 local (UTC-4). Still it seems odd to me for an aircraft to be stooging around on one engine for an hour about an hour's flying time from its point of departure. I now wonder if the departure and initial distress call times are Panamanian times (UTC-5). Venezuela is on UTC-4. Or maybe I've got the distances involved totally wrong or something. EdDavies 10:03, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

I think it depends on what is meant by "local". Venezuela is on UTC-4, but Panama where the flight originated is on UTC-5. To avoid confusion, I will change the timeline to UTC. Myron 17:17, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Well done, that makes a lot more sense. EdDavies 07:21, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Number of Fatalities

BBC says 152 passengers adn 8 crew. Rich Farmbrough 17:29, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Some sources in Google news say 153 passengers, but this seems to be an earlier figure, now updated. -- Curps 18:00, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Something's Up...

There's been a lot of plane crashes as of late. First at Toronto-Pearson Interntnational, then Greece, now here. Don't you think something's up? Pacific Coast Highway 17:56, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

And the death toll keeps getting higher. Athens was 121. This time, it's 160. Acetic Acid 18:44, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't. Planes crash all the time. And the amount of people on a plane isn't based upon how many died in the most recent crash. --S.M. 01:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes something is up. It is called a poisson distribution.

Also, a descent rate of 7000 ft/min is staggering, that's not a glide - it's almost a nosedive (or yet another of those supposedly-impossible T-tail stalls). Perhaps the APU and RAT also failed, but what are the odds against that?. (ChrisRed 17Aug05 - 09:40)

[edit] Age of copilot

French television says that the copilot was only 21. Is it true ?Hektor 20:07, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe, but how is this relevant? What does the age of the copilot have to do with engine failure? mateo

It is relevant if lack of experience of the crew prevented them from reacting properly to an engine failure. Generally, if you have an engine failure, you don't get into such a nosedive.Hektor 22:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Investigation

I just heard in the news that it was because human error and overweight the main causes for this accident. where can we verificate this? Minako-Chan* 18:37, 18 May 2006 (UTC)