747 Crash in Afghanistan Yesterday - Video!

Something appears to have gone seriously WRONG within that aircraft and/or it's departure. I've spent well over a year of my life flying out of that airfield, and have literally hundreds of take-offs and landings there. Aside from the somewhat high (4600 MSL) field altitude, and occasionally being the busiest single runway airfield in the world, its fairly mundane.

It's a little hard for me to watch something like this, and to some extent I wish people wouldn't rush to publish this stuff. Yes, a cargo shift may have been a factor, but the weather was bad that day (not really evident in vid). What you see is a classic stall close to the ground with insufficient space to recover. I really don't like to speculate, but a slow speed pitch up in response to a micro-burst, combined with a significant CG shift due to a moving load could cause such a stall. I wasn't there, and we may never know for sure.

Perhaps it's best to just raise a toast to the hard working crew members who gave it all that day, and not try to second guess a bad situation from half a world away.


Agree and thanks for your service