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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I've not seen any video of the crash. Usually, when there's a crash, dash cam or other amatuer video caught it.

Which leads to my repeated bafflement as to why there are no video cameras constantly pointed at flight ops at the airport.

If every 7-11 can have a security cam recording hi-def 24/7, why can't a couple of these be mounted in the tower pointed at the tarmac?

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There absolutely are cameras recording the entire airport surface. The people in charge of them don't usually have "I should post this to the internet" as their first thought. Some airports do stream them though.

Nor do they have permission to do so.

It's like that footage you see of crowds of people standing around videoing someone in trouble rather than actually attempting to help or even use that phone to call for help. Nope. Gotta get those hits on their social is their primary function. I don't care if you think someone else has already called for help, make the damn call. If it was you that needed the help, what would you want someone else to do for you?

Video is making the rounds on Reddit now. https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1irzxq...

Standard UFO-sighting footage.

"If it had any less pixels it would be radio"

I mean, it's someone leaking footage by videoing another screen. I fully expect a clearer version to be released officially later.

Just think, people used to watch entire films this way.

And we liked it

Look out: If you criticize the video quality you'll get downvoted. See above.

It -is- pretty pathetic. My floodlights have better resolution, and I'm just a nobody consumer interested in watching wildlife move about.

There often are surveillance cameras on the tarmac. I’ve been involved in many airport surveillance projects with cameras covering the perimeters and operations areas. They just might not want to publicize the camera coverages.

Pretty sure the video exists, it just hasn’t been released to the public.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/s/GtFe8WfUQO

It came down really, really hard, gear collapsed asymmetrically it seems, causing it to roll to the side and sheer one wing off then start rolling.

And FWIW, the conditions of the runway were, by all reports, excellent. It was considered "dry" conditions.

ATC calls out gusts at 33kts on his clearance call.

Not excellent, especially if it's cross.

Runway conditions and landing conditions are not the same. The landing conditions were challenging. The runway conditions were considered dry. This is in contrast to various comments, including in here, bizarrely claiming that the runway had inches of "packed snow" and so on, apparently based upon a final crash scene that wasn't actually on the runway.

Ok but 1) both are critical and 2) if it's been snowing and there's 33kt gusts idk how the runway stays snow/ice/moisture free.

Looks like security cam footage. Not one set up to view the flight ops, as the view is obstructed by a building and a fence.

You said "I've not seen any video of the crash. Usually, when there's a crash, dash cam or other amatuer video caught it.". This is video of the crash. What's the problem?

Airports have cameras of course, though they have no obligation or value in providing it to placate social medias rush for content.

The problem is relying on incidental random footage, rather than an organized system that monitors the flight ops 24/7.

> they have no obligation or value in providing it to placate social medias rush for content.

That's correct, it is not about social media clicks. It is about gathering evidence properly to determine the cause of the crash.

How do you know there aren’t any?

It seems a lot more likely the security managers aren’t in a hurry to release them to the public.

> How do you know there aren’t any?

Have you ever seen one?

If you mean in the terminal, then yes?

I’ve been to Pearson plenty of times. They could all have malfunctioned at the time, but I doubt it.

At an airport? They’re everywhere. Even the little tiny general aviation ones.

My dad flies out of I69. Their tower & ramp cameras are broadcast live. https://www.sportys.com/webcams

Sure, the Aeroflot Sukhoi crash a few years back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgWSwbXMehI

Or last year's crash in Japan when an airliner hit a coast guard plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7IEaHTlaTU

Ok, that is one, that's what I'm talking about.

It's a tower video, but we also see the operator moving the camera to catch it. I would expect to see cameras passively covering the entire runway, and not needing an operator to frame it. The reason is the operator may miss something else happening, or may be distracted at the critical moment.

I'm pretty sure it's a very wide angle camera and the operator is panning through the recording in a software viewer.

You’re right. Toronto is a small village, like a exurb of Irkutusk. They may not have electricity yet.

It also just takes time for those videos to get uploaded and spread. We already have 2 good videos from the approach end of the runway; one released by TMZ from a CCTV camera and one from a pilot waiting for their turn to take off.

Best one so far is this one from the next in line plane that would have taken off next: https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1isabv4/another_a...

Usually the video is shot on a phone with the camera oriented the wrong way, and the plane always goes behind a structure just before impact.

But that doesn't stop breathless click-bait headlines proclaiming that the crash was "caught on video."

If SpaceX can put rockets that produce live feeds of a craft re-entering the atmosphere, we should definitely have dashcams in every cockpit. Wing/tail tips would be cool too even if just to have those seatback screens have actual images. Then again, we still can't definitively say what happened to MH370.

Seems like it crashed pretty far away from any residential areas

It's also been snowing in Toronto all day with high winds and heavy snow squals. If you were standing in the huge pile of snow outside with a camera you probably wouldn't have seen it.

It was on the runway

This is decent.

https://x.com/Tr19192/status/1891579967042908439/mediaViewer...

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