Originally Posted by
KoruPilot
The RAT can been seen but if it was deployed it would have been spinning and the blades would have been gone. They at least look quite intact in the picture.
I saw the YouTube video of the approach and I was interested to see if the RAT had deployed - I really couldn't tell. Which photo did you see that showed the RAT?
I'm a strong advocate of waiting for the formal report too. There are reports out today suggesting that fuel temp/contaminates could be an issue.
upper air temperatures over Russia and northern Europe were extremely cold on the day of the accident. Information from other crews coming from Asia on Jan. 17 encountered extremely low temperatures in the -70 to -75 degrees C. range, resulting in fuel temperatures dipping into the -40s. European upper air temperatures also indicate the last 6.5 hours of the inbound China flight would have been flown at an outside air temperature of -60 deg. C. or lower. Although this would have resulted in fuel temperatures on approach in the -35 degrees C range, this would not normally constitute a problem unless, potentially, contaminants were present.
Just goes to show that it's really difficult to predict the exact cause of an accident by only looking at the debris field.