THE PRECISION AIRCRASH: WHAT WE KNOW
While most social media pundits are quick to point accusing fingers to the haphazardly, slow and shambolic way the rescue teams had conducted itself but the real reason 19 lives were lost lie elsewhere.
Nobody can claim with certainty that how many minutes had taken before the dead were overwhelmed by water. Looks like it is the technological deficiencies that contributed to the deaths more than the lack of swift response of the rescuers.
If for instance it took let say for the sake of argument 10 minutes for the fuselage to be filled with water obviously the response of rescuers alone would not have been enough to save lives. For it takes a few minutes of suckng water before the lungs are overwhelmed leading to fatalities.
In comparison with the Hudson River plane accident, there are many similarities and there are many differences too. In Hudson River water landing, the plane floated while in the precision Air case the plane took few minutes before it submerged in water what were the explanations?
It is true we are devoid with the Precision Air fatal landing to compare with the Hudson River plane landing and that can also have contributed to the fuselage water absorption rates. If the tail of the plane is used as brakes less damage to the fuselage is expected than when the bottom of the plane is applied to create the inertia to slow down the plane.
For the sake of argument, let us assume both pilots had used plane tails to generate the drag as the brakes so all planes were horizontal by the time they stopped on waters. The question we need to ask ourselves why Precision Air plane absorbed so much water in a relatively short time?
The answer lies in technology not the efforts of the rescuers. The Precision Airplane in question is old technology nobody these days make fuselage which sink anymore unless the plane is damaged by the impact of landing in water which is not the case were dealing here.
Poorly or no insulation of the fuselage narrates why the plane sank few minutes after landing in the Lake Victoria shore lines. Rescuers had very few minutes to save the lives and there is little they could have done, really.
This is no way endorses the sheer incompetence which we have witnessed where untrained sailors attended the fated plane and its passengers before the official rescuers or it was considered more important to fetch the PM using the military helicopter rather than deployng the same chopper as part of rescuing efforts or even a strong chain was not available to pull the plane out of water till it was too late.
Please watch this CNN video for more illustration.
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