Each time I run it for the radio it inches further toward the sea – the brakes are fading because I am losing hydraulic fluid out of the damaged left gear. Finally, no control on forward motion when I run up the engine and there-she-goes.
I would not imagine the accident that way, for I cannot imagine that AE would have left the plane inch toward the sea every time she ran the engine without having tried to stop it with whatever she could find to be put in front of the wheels.
I would imagine instead that for all but the last of her emission days, everything runs OK, the Electra remains stable. On the fourth or fifth day however (sorry, I did not take the time to check that in the post-loss radio-call journal), may be because the high tide is everyday a bit higher (isn't it ?), maybe because she runs the engine everyday a little faster to compensate for the decreased efficiency of battery charging due to the salt water spray that progressively shortens out the electrical circuit, maybe because the brakes have been weakened by their stay in water, maybe because of all causes together ... Suddenly the plane leaps forward and turns left to the open sea before she can stop the engine. Accidents of that sort may happen so suddenly that even professionals get trapped (Airbus broke an A340 that way in Toulouse only three years ago!)
It may be at this very time that Noonan gets hurt. I cannot easily imagine that a landing so successful that it left the plane able to operate one engine would hurt anybody who had his or her belt fastened. In contradistinction they probably did not have their seat belts fastened just for making radio calls ...
It may be on this day that Betty hears what is actually AE’s last call. Doesn’t the info stand somewhere on the forum that there was no engine noise in the background? Anyway Betty hears AE crying. That does not seem consistent with the attitude of an aviation pioneer, but would be the reaction of anybody who has just made his or her plane fall from the coral platform where it had safely stood since its so successful landing. The catastrophe has just happened! Now the plane maybe hanging on the coral edge just by one wheel, with only a few hours of emission left depending on the charge of the batteries, if it does not slip completely into water before that time. And the rising tide (which should not be a problem if the plane was still on the coral plateau) makes things worse: Betty says she hears AE ‘having trouble getting water so high the plane was slipping’.
Finally the coral edge acts as a saw that separates the plane in two parts, one that remains on coral, progressively torn to pieces that will give the few aluminum artifacts found ashore and eventually the ‘wheel of fortune’, and the other that sinks down the coral cliff, where we all hope to find it in a not too far future.
Christophe (who, as a glider pilot, will not blame anybody for the way (s)he runs his or her engines)