Pilots in Mo. Jet Crash Wanted to Have Fun

I'm not so sure I would call this stupid, but it wasn't really that wise...

Yeah, I just read about that on MSNBC. I agree, not really stupid, sense 41,000 ft is supposed to be the service ceiling for that aircraft, but not wise either.

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Hard to prove what were the immediate conditions at that altitude, what were the guys doing - given that they were "celebrating" and "having fun" could they have inadvertently done something horribly wrong?

Yeah, they were already having "a little fun", who knows what manuevers they might have pulled up there.  I'm not refering to 5 G turns, of course, but even shallow s-turns could create problems.  Too bad about the crew though.

I hate to speak ill of the dead, but it's amazing nobody on the ground paid for their foolishness. To take that aircraft on an impromptu flight test at the extreme edge of its performance envelope ("service ceiling" means the point where a plane will not climb more than 100fpm; at 41,000 they were probably near "absolute ceiling" where plane will not climb at all) without any idea how to do so (not a jet jockey, but I'm sure, as others have pointed out, that the care and feeding of the engines is quite different up there), then fail to make a safe emergency landing despite all that altitude to work with... just dumb, if you ask me. It boggles the mind to hear of these kinds of accidents- these guys were smart enough to make the cut, and had probably received good training. I feel bad for their friends and loved ones, but I can't weep for these pilots- they were practically asking for it, and risking who knows how many lives on the ground. Perhaps they were never trained for ops at the service ceiling, but no doubt they knew 40,000 was the limit (hence their celebration), and they should have understood that there was a good reason such a limit was published!
  I'd also question the common sense of the controller who cleared them for FL41, when there was clearly no legitimate reason for it...

Hey, this just occured to me. Why dont we try to re-create this incident in FS? I will try it once I get home, but I'm going to need some specifics. I know that they were flying from Little Rock, Arkansas to Minneapolis Min. But I can't seem to figure out what type of plane it was. The news reports I've seen say that it was a 50 seat Bombardier RJ. does anyone know what model? I dont fly jets to often, but I think I can manage.

Tacit: I had the same thought about recreating the accident in FS9, but tonight I'm going flying for pretty screenshots.
Regarding service ceiling: in props and jets, the lack of climb power is due mostly to the limited oxygen getting to the engine; in jets I'd guess ram air pressure might figure into it also. At the absolute ceiling, I believe the efficiency of the lifting surfaces actually becomes affected (the best technical description I know is that climb is zero, and the plane will only fly at one speed- the performance envelope shrinks down to almost nothing). In any type of aircraft, it's not a place you wanna go just for fun.

OK, so I tryed it in the POSky CRJ 200. One problem is that the engines didn't fail on their own, so I had to cut the fuel to shut them down. I guess FS dosn't provide a failure unless you tell it to  . I figured at that altitude the engines would suffer flame-out. Anyway, it wasn't that hard to climb at 41,000 ft. I could have maintained 1000 ft. per minutes, at 190 something knots. slow yes, but thats to be expected. Once I leveled out, the airspeed topped out at 295 on full throttle. I after I shut down the engines I glided for hundreds of miles, I dont see why they couldnt have landed it. Unless they did what I did, and over shot the runway (which they didn't) but that was my fault, and I'm not a prfessional jet pilot.

On the other hand, we have no way of knowing what really happened up there, or where exactly ATC directed them after they declared an emergency.