NEWS: Medan Indonesia Air Crash - Over 100 Dead

Further Updates

Fuel problems and a blocked fuel line causing engine failure is now being blamed for the cause of the Medan plane crash which has killed over 150 people. Personally I find it suspicious, the crash happened straight after take off, so there is a strong possibility that there would have been issues on warm up and thee trip down the runway. The pilot would have aborted take off. It is also simple to rig a blocked fuel line.

INDONESIAN investigators probing the crash of an airliner in northern Sumatra suspect engine failure may have caused the disaster in which 150 people died.
Workers combing the wreckage of the Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-200, which crashed in a Medan suburb on Monday, found a damaged fan blade, a fault that may indicate problems with the plane's fuel combustion process.

"We found that the fan blade engine was in a damaged condition visually," Setio Raharjo, who heads a team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Committee, said.

However, Reharjo said it was too early to reach a conclusion, and he warned that analysis of the 'black box' flight recorders would take time.

"No conclusion can be drawn yet," he said. "We are still conducting the investigation."
www.news.com.au...

It could have taken a bird on take off, or it could have had a catastrophic blade failure after they got airborne. United 232 in Sioux City had been flying for a couple of hours when a flaw in a fan blade the size of a grain of sand caused it to blow apart which subsequently caused it to crash on its attempted landing. There is a lot of stress on the fan blades, and occasionally they just fail with no warning. If there was fan blade damage I am more likely thinking either a blade failure or some kind of FOD, probably a bird.