I heard a reporter on TV reporting that the airplane was doing cartwheels on the runway, and I pictured the semi-truck being flipped over in Batman. And then I thought what the hell could have done that? Fishtailed makes more sense, thanks for the clarification.
There were a lot of reports like these that were complete assumption based on the fact that one witness said the airplane had flipped over. It actually hadn't.
I don't think airframes have quite the strength to flip end over end from contact with the ground, even at landing speeds. I can grab this pen rom my desk and throw it on the carpet so it flips vertically end over end. A 777 airframe might do something halfway between that and crumbling as it bounces.
CNN just released video footage they have of the actual crash.
The plane (from what I see) after crashing does a near 360-degree turn with the right wing high up – in fact you can see that the plane is almost nose down-tail up which almost makes it look like it was cartwheeling.
Very surprising revelation, I really did not expect an airframe to remain as intact as it did after going through that.
I looked at the video again and again, and ironically, if the jet had done a 360 on the ground it would have broken into pieces, but this jet did a airborne near-360 after the wingtip dug in and the jet became airborne again for an instant.
With cameras everywhere on the streets, I am baffled that there aren't cameras on the runways. Many, many airplane accidents on runways would be a lot easier to investigate, including, for example, the one where the SST caught fire.
