Dr Anu

What is the chance the flight recorder was destroyed in the Florida jet crash? The odds of recovering data from this crash are slim. In 2012 there was a similar crash of a learjet 25; its data recorder was destroyed and cockpit voice recorder never found.  They did recover the FDR from flight 93, but that was a bigger plane that crashed on to softer soil. We know some things already and things point to icing conditions. From all the data we have, it seems like they tried to climb to avoid weather, but had already picked up significant icing causing one of the wings to stall. The aircraft started plummiting from the stall, and if the vertical stabilizer wasn't already broken from icing, it seems from all the images and video we have, that it was ripped of the tail at some point during the crazy 20,000 feet per minute dive. Icing conditions is a fairly common thing, but there is a limit to how much icing is manageable. An oversimplified analogy would be like your car windshield wipers in the rain. Rain occurs all the time and light to moderate rain is easily managed with the wipers, but in a heavy downpour they can't quite keep up and create a possibly dangerous situation. Even with anti-ice systems severe icing poses a threat to aircraft. The 737 would have been better off honestly. It just would have had more time to diagnose and deal with the problem. Problem is the learjet was so sleek that an over speed in it just twenty seconds into the event caused it to reach the edge of the sound barrier. Too sleek, too fast. Even if there was no ice anymore and the surfaces weren't damaged from the over speed. The air was being moved out of the way fast enough that the surfaces had no authority anymore. Theoretically recoverable above 10000 feet or so. But once they reached those speeds at that attitude they were pretty much dead already. Not much to be done. At overspeed even if the stabilizer was still there and the ice was gone. If they only had power management left, whether at idle or full throttle, they were already riding a jet-powered lawn dart and likely had no idea that their horizontal tail surfaces were missing entirely. It's proximity to the storm. It appears that they had altered their route to just miss a large line of storms but ended up encountering a small, intense storm cell that was some distance from the main weather event. Such a storm cell could have developed in just minutes. One thing to note are that icing is more of a problem at high altitude--like, too high for a prop-driven plane to cruise at. However, going over a storm is one way to avoid it if the aircraft is capable. That appears to be what the pilots tried here. But a very intense storm can throw liquid water very high into the air so quickly that the water doesn't freeze till it hits a solid, very cold object. This is how hail forms, for example. Once there's one ice crystal, any water that hits it will freeze and form a hail stone. By the same token, a jet cruising at 35,100 feet is going to be very cold and any liquid water will freeze to it instantly. The pilots here seem to have tried to fly above the storm but it may have been too little, too late. Now, why were they still so close to the main storm system? We may never know. The most charitable explanation is that the pilots did their best to avoid a storm cell that arose directly in front of them and was intensifying and/or expanding at an unknown rate. Their options to dodge around it were somewhat limited by the much larger storm they had just passed, and perhaps by an unknown amount of other traffic and airspace restrictions (that will come out in the investigation). Maybe they could have diverted farther around the main storm in the first place, but maybe there's a compelling reason not to have. After hearing the atc recording I am impressed with the professionalism of this pilot. She seemed to be effectively communicating through the whole thing. I don't care these she screamed at the end. I would have been screaming the whole time in those conditions. Respect!