What baffles me is. If Helios Airways flight 522 ran out fuel, how did it explode, when it hit the ground? It makes no sense to me?

Some of you may remember the crash of Helios Airways flight 522 on August 14, 2005, but what I still don't understand is if the plane ran out of fuel and lost power in both engines, you d think when it hit the ground there would be no post crash explosion or fire, You d think it would ve just broke apart and large parts of the fuselage would be intact, but for some reason despite it not having any fuel at all it still exploded on impact, it's a question that baffles me to this day. I hope someone who's an expert on airliners or airplanes in general can answer this one, But I watched a documentary and red articles clearly stating that both engines had flamed out before the crash, so I wouldn t be questioning it if I one engine quit, and one wing still had fuel. But if both sides are empty of fuel, then It seems it should be physically impossible for the plane to explode with empty fuel tanks.

Vapors explode, not the fuel. Fuel just feeds the fire.

An "empty" fuel tank is still full of explosive vapour

The clueless are easily baffled. The others have provided you with the proper clue.

An empty fuel tank in an aircraft doesn't mean it has no fuel in that tank! There's always some amount of fuel that is unusable in an aircraft fuel tank. That leaves lots of "VAPOR" available to explode! In fact most explosions of fuel in most events is because there's a small amount of fuel and plenty of air available. Read this one
Or this rather good one

Liquid fuel won't burn, vapor will.

Add Comment