How do other 8-passenger private jets compare? Three I'm aware of are the Embraer Praetor 500, Cessna Citation Latitude and Bombardier Challenger 350. If you're a wealthy dude, which do you want to own and/or fly when flying near (or to escape) such weather? If I had to guess, notwithstanding Bombardier's ownership of Learjet, I'll take the made in Canada option.
I'm very suspicious of that apparent level off. Just looking at the video of ADSB data, altitude reporting stops at 8750', which suggests the last couple of datapoints are artifacts rather than actual altitude. The elevator being missing at impact (both visual and where the pieces ended up) strongly suggests structural failure in flight, and the obvious place for that to happen was the thunderstorm penetration (or shortly afterward because of ice buildup/airfoil flutter/overspeed). That's just a guess, though, and the engineering investigation will give much more data (eventually).
A hurricane is nothing like the convective activity in a thunderstorm cell.How do those research planes that fly into storms remain free of ice or otherwise flyable?
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they were only 60 miles from the destination. That descent would represent a normal profile, and as you also pointed out it is important to keep the engine power up to keep the bleed air up for anti-icing. It is a tricky balance.
I saw that destination discussion in some of the coverage, but I'm pretty sure it's wrong. The NTSB preliminary statement said the destination was in the Bahamas, and one of the last requests they made was for direct Freeport:they were only 60 miles from the destination. That descent would represent a normal profile, and as you also pointed out it is important to keep the engine power up to keep the bleed air up for anti-icing. It is a tricky balance.
60 miles out is only 8~10 minutes out and 41000/8 is 5000 FPM!
So you start down.
35000/8 is a slightly more sedate 4400FPM < sarcasm intended>
"the last couple of datapoints are artifacts rather than actual altitude"
Those are not ballistic telemetry systems.
That pre-crash profile was far outside the predicted operating conditions that the static system was designed for.
ADS-B is reported by equipment on the aircraft. It was having a bad day by then.
Pilot error comes in all sorts of flavors.
Get there-itis will cause all sorts of poor decisions. You see what you want to see on the airborne radar so you see a way through where none exists.
I also want to point out that the 6000 feet difference from 35K and 41K is nothing in convective activity. It will move 6000' while you watch, in just a few moments not minutes.
That delivery flight I took down there was a combo mission. I picked up the son on the way through in PHX to bring him the plane to build hours in. I was getting him familiar and we did a bunch of approaches while a line of storms approached his home base. He was familiar with how it went, and he peeked out from the hood to say "we have time for one more".
West Palm Beach to Eleuthera is 198 NM. Standard gouge 3:1 rule, start down from 410 at 123 miles, which is right around Freeport.
I can't say it is/isn't an artifact. I figure one possibility would be to use a combination of aerodynamics, ballistics, and known meteorological data to figure out where the surfaces fell.
Would crew normally report the radar is inoperative?
I'd almost swear I heard they started their descent simply because they were starting to get fairly close to the Bahamas and wanted a gradual descent. They did apparently request climbing to FL370 however shortly before the descent began.
