Challenger down in Mountains of Mexico

No skid marks, all four corners present, debris appears in the pic I see to contain everything in a very small area. Arrived upright. Fire, guessing post-crash.
 
Very strange. It looks the like the aircraft fell straight down and hit with no forward movement. A flat spin from FL30-something?

Apparently there was no radio communication with ATC according to news accounts, although I have no idea about the structure of Mexican ARTCCs and their procedures.
 
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Very odd...
Hope the US investigates this.
 
Last radar ping near FL400? That’s some awful tall mountains for CFIT? The crash photo also looks rather flat. They just happened to be near some serious convective activity, possibly boxed in by the ‘coffin corner’ in some fashion.

Looking at flight data, maybe a bit lower altitude with a right deviation was called for? OTOH, what do I know.
 
Wow! Looks like it just fell straight down. I don't even see any rotational skid marks like a flat spin. Strange.
 
Maybe the battery was low on water.
 
Not suggesting it’s the case here but a high altitude low speed event not properly recovered from can quickly turn into an unrecoverable stall. The crash site would probably look very similar to this one and sink rates would be very high. Probably roughly 3 mins from 40k to sea level.
 
If it wasn't for the lack of tire marks or slide marks in the sand I would guess this plane landed, came to a stop and then burned.

Hopefully the investigation will tell us more of what happened.
 
Apparently there was no radio communication with ATC according to news accounts, although I have no idea about the structure of Mexican ARTCCs and their procedures.
ATC had us try to raise that aircraft and check for an ELT. During that time there didn't seem to be any significant TStorms at or around FL400 in the northern Mexico area. RIP to those lost.
 
News say, they contacted ATC to request higher altitude and thought that FL380-FL400 would have them out of the storms.

2 families: parents and their children

On a separate note, one of the pilots had some history with law enforcement in 2006.

They recovered both black boxes so let's hope Bombardier and NTSB (I don't know if they can do it because it was a US-registered airplane) they can come back with a report
 
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