Bob CollinsIt’ll be a year before the National Transportation Safety Board releases a full report into what caused the weekend crash of an airliner approaching San Francisco. But there’s not a lot of mystery about the substandard approach, a plane that was allowed to get too slow and “behind the power curve,” the point at which all the engine power you’ve got isn’t going to stop the rate of descent and prevent the crash. James Fallows has about as good an assessment of the scenario as I’ve seen.
If you’re particularly interested in the aerodynamic and technical side of this, this article provides a particularly good description of the dangers of the drag induced when airliners deploy all of their features to slow a plane for landing.
Late today, the NTSB released these photographs.
