Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[galaxy flyer]

DCRefugee,

Review ICAO Annex 13, then get back to us as to having the NTSB, AAIB, BEA takeover. That ain't happenin' due to international treaty.

rigby, is "yuk" a technical term or do you have something specific to say in that paragraph on "official sources"? You do know the legal relationship the US must abide by? If not, read Annex 13, too.

[DCrefugee]

Takeover

DCRefugee,

Review ICAO Annex 13, then get back to us as to having the NTSB, AAIB, BEA takeover. That ain't happenin' due to international treaty.

Under Annex 13, Malaysia can request/obtain formal assistance or delegate responsibility to anyone they want at any time.

[rigbyrigz]

RE: " is "yuk" a technical term or do you have something specific to say in that paragraph on "official sources"? You do know the legal relationship the US must abide by? If not, read Annex 13, too."

Of course the US "helpers" must abide by Annex 13 restrictions. It's YUK that the Malaysians, who obviously have the same info, or could have it from US analysis sharing, aren't bringing it out in a venue where it can be asked about, confirmed, have some semblance of reliable fact. And in a timely fashion.

[galaxy flyer]

True, DCRefugee, however care to bet on the Malaysians doing so in a public way, admitting defeat? I didn't think so.

[galaxy flyer]

They certainly aren't doing a great, or even fair, job of it and I wouldn't expect much seeing as they are facing an historically difficult task with little capability to work it. But, them's the rules; I'm sure the US and others are assisting in every way possible. This is hideously difficult search using the few tools available, mostly tools being engineered from systems never designed to be used in that manner. The BEA was criticized until they finished the job reasonably well, perhaps excellently.

[rampstriker]

Unless there's some Sekrit Skwirrel Blowing Snow going on preventing it, we'd all be a lot better off if Malaysia would turn this over formally to the NTSB. The incompetence is staggering.

That said, the previous ping plots won't be released until it's in someone's interest to do so. It's probably not Inmarsat's call.

But some people know where those pings were, and you can bet their surveillance satellites are burning some fuel to take a close look.

The thread search function is down now and I am unable to locate the superbly informative post from a satellite expert made here earlier today, but in it he said essentially that there is probably not a log of the earlier hourly Inmarsat pings. They are just written to an overwritable memory buffer and it's probably lucky the last ping had not been overwritten when Inmarsat searched for an MH370 record.

[papershuffler]

@MountainBear / Fire

Fire I was one of the first people to bring up the possibility of fire many days ago. i reject that hypothesis now. The problem is the simple and basic truth that at 8:11 AM, seven hours later, the airplane pinged a satellite. I'm convinced that this data is legit. I've looked into the computer side of it closely and it makes sense. There is no possible fire scenario that I can imagine that would allow power to that specific unit and not allow power to any other unit. For one, all the SATCOM share the same power circuit. If a fire took out ACARS and the transponder it took out all other SATCOM too. Since the SATCOM was live seven hours later, no fire. Not possible.

But, after initiating the left turn, could the flightcrew have been cycling through the XYZ checklists to eliminate the causes and switched it off themselves, and been overcome/forgetting before they were able to switch it back on? Then the fire goes out*.

I've seen very intelligent and well-trained people freak out at the sight of a small fire, and the smoke/smells can become worse after the fire is out. Forgetting to flip a switch or two back into place wouldn't be totally surprising in a high-pressure situation. Just that one action causing all this prolonged agony, and more holes are lined up...


No, I'm not a pilot but I am an ex-investigator, and my work wouldn't have sent people down if I hadn't bottomed out every line of enquiry and spent months going through and double-checking evidence. Despite all the depravities of human nature I've seen firsthand and the lack of evidence here, I'm still of the belief that this event was caused by some kind of malfunction. (I'm rather frustrated that I can't reference the technical work I read earlier which explained the changes of direction, and what systems would have been disabled/enabled as part of XYZ system actions, just so I could link to it for you to critique, but I cleared my cache earlier. Gah.)

So, I ask of any pilots still reading this, if you smell smoke on the flightdeck, (and it's not pax trying to have a crafty fag in the loo), what would your actions be? You have your checklists to go through, you want to get the plane down on the ground ASAP, so you decide and head for your chosen airport; you know where you're going. You suspect you know what's causing the smoke, do you try something a little off the wall (in any way, not necessarily approaching coffin corner** when your plane's fully laden), or stick to procedure? And all the time, the smoke's just getting worse...


*Is there any record of inflight fires burning themselves out, or have they all escalated? Is it possible for the crew to have located the problem, acted correctly, and then been overcome? How fierce/smoke-heavy must the fire have been if flight crew, cabin crew and all pax are incapacitated, yet the plane continues flying? Any precedents?

**many opinions I've read find those FL readings dubious or likely to contain a high error ratio due to the methodology used to calculate, or as the 'US source' says 'may not be wholly reliable'. I'm taking most of the other readings, unless they are tested in the same circumstances and proved to be both reliable and accurate, with a pinch of salt.


Fire > action taken for landing > partial checklist completed > incapacitation of all > fire extinguished > plane wanders undetected.
It almost fits, but not quite. Total incapacitation and the generation of no additional ACARS messages seem a little hard to believe.

Bloxin's exploding oxygen bottle seems a better fit, apart from whether the aircraft would still 'ping', and no additional messages...

Hypothetical
Hello.
This is my third attempt to make a post here. Maybe, as I'm new here I'm doing it wrong.
I am a licenced engineer, B747.
This post attempts to describe, with precedents, a possible single failure that would cause loss of coms, depressurisation and crew disablement due to hypoxia.

Precedent: QF30 25 July 2008 Pax oxygen bottle "explodes" tearing a hole in fuselage.

Ref: Please google "Qantas oxygen bottle explosion" and view photos of damage.
The picture taken inside the fwd cargo compartment shows one bottle missing.
there is no evidence of shrapnel damage in the photo. Therefore, no eplosion.
The bottle appears to have detached itself from its connections and propelled itself down through the fuselage skin.

777: The crew oxygen bottle is mounted horizontaly on the left aft wall of the nose wheel well structure with the fittings (propelling nozzle) facing forward. This aims the bottle, in the event of a QF30 type failure, directly into the MEC containing all boxes concerned with coms and a lot more.
Before all of its energy is spent, an huge amount of damage could be caused to equipment and the bottle could, conceivably, cause a decompression.
When the crew respond by doning oxygen mask, there is no oxygen and hypoxia is the next link in this proposed chain of events.
This link is entitled "Hypothetical" and is only that. I believe it ticks a few boxes.
Hoping this post make it and generates some discussion.
Bloxin.

I wonder what the maintenance records say, what tyre maintenance was or wasn't done recently, or oxygen bottle servicing (remembering that lack of evidence is sometimes as important as the presence of evidence, as per 'the Curious Incident...') and so on. Was the runway at KL ever checked for debris from MH370?

[OldDutchGuy]

tankering fuel

It is perfectly logical that Malaysian would be tankering fuel running up to China. It is a govt-owned carrier that reportedly is running well into the red. For all we know, the fuel guys up there will not extend credit, or keep a tight leash on the outstanding receivables, or are demanding a prepaid surety account, or have cut the carrier off completely. TWA got into that bind in its last days (actually, the last year). Nobody would sell them fuel on open account. Since Malaysia is a "producer," and the govt has its fingers in that pie, likely some brother-in-law has the supply contract and gets the fuel at say 17 cents a gal. and re-sells it to the Carrier at say $2.20. Meanwhile the Chinese guys are demanding cash up front at (pick your number) $4.00. The solution is driven by the economic realities: they tanker.

I noted that everybody was being very cagey about saying "the normal fuel load was taken on." Normal for what? Normal for the flight parameters, or normal for their not having open-account credit in Beijing? Or, normal for the brother-in-law? Nobody knows. Hey, it's Asia; things are opaque as a matter of course.

[femanvate]

From my angle, I’d feel a wee bit safer if I thought that my flight was always broadcasting its location.

When your "always on" device shorts and catches on fire, you'd wish it had a breaker to fully disable it...

[Sheep Guts]

Maybe the Satellite antenna on B777 is smart in itself and can send basic handshake pings to the Satellite. Only a B777 avionics guy could tell us any takers?

[twotigers]

CX/KA normally tanker fuel to PEK too.
It's super expensive to buy it there.
I see no issue if this was MHs practice.

[GarageYears]

Once more the lowdown on SATCOM

Please read the following for a very clear and understandable explanation of the INMARSAT <> aircraft linkage:

TMF Associates MSS blog » Understanding ?satellite pings??

[TxAggie94]

So, to help locate this aircraft, you'd be willing to put future flights in danger by removing the ability of the flight crew to address a problem?

I'll wager as an industry we've seen more unit malfunctions, fires and overheated equipment than we have rogue pilots/terrorists turning systems off to intentionally hide.

[MountainBear]

But, after initiating the left turn, could the flightcrew have been cycling through the XYZ checklists to eliminate the causes and switched it off themselves, and been overcome/forgetting before they were able to switch it back on? Then the fire goes out

Sure, anything is possible. It also possible that the disconnection of the transponder and ACARs is a red herring. After all, it exists within the realm of imagination that both the transponder and ACARs could fail independently of each other for mechanical reasons. The odds that two robust systems failing independently of each other within minutes is miniscule but it is non-zero.

The problem is that one begins to pile one miniscule probability on top of another miniscule probability in an additive fashion hoping to get to one (certainty). But in fact statistics multiplies probabilities. So the odds of one rare event followed by another rare event is more rare, not less rare. So the odds of the transponder failing followed by ACARs failing, then a fire breaks out, then the crew is overcome by smoke just as the fire burns itself out is to be so wildly improbable that it beggars belief. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. Even one in a trillion odds will come to pass sooner or later over an infinite number of trials. But speaking only for myself I would not be dedicating scarce resources on such scenarios.

The other poster is correct when they said I was being "too dogmatic" by saying a fire is "not possible" because anything at this stage is possible. But it's way down of my list of likelihoods.

[md80fanatic]

With 50 m or more of water over mud. Nope. The plane ail fragment if it hits the water at high speed. Some of these pieces will be small with little momentum. Some won't be very aerodynamic (? hydrodynamic). Can you see a detached aileron flying through this much water and digging itself into the mud.

There are some "out-there" theories present, this is NOT one of them. All you say is absolutely true and provable 100% of the time. I always wonder how people, en masse, can be under such a wrong impression about how matter interacts in our world. This one, for me, needs little investigation. There was a crash of a airliner in the early part of this century that contradicts this physically sound concept. That event did little to reinforce what we should understand about impulse and momentum. On this point then I am willing to give the public a pass, considering ...

The other wild threads that are being pulled though really do deserve to be examined on another forum. IMHO of course.

[Lazerdog]

GarageYears... Thanks for that article. Makes sense that the protocol to keep the satellite link subscribed is in the satellite transceiver itself so it will ping as long as it has power, even without incoming data.

Hopefully someone is looking into how ARINC 629 cables failing could make it appear that ACARS and Transponders were turned off by a human. Failure of that buss would also mean that the VHF and HF control heads (as well as others) on the flight deck could not connect to their LRUs. Even a short duration fire could cause a real mess in a hurry.

[CowgirlInAlaska]

This just in!!!

Time of India reports: Practice runways for Male, Indian, Sri Lankan airports and 1 US military base found on seized flight simulation software.

What do you all make of this??

[nitpicker330]

Look, let me put to bed the tyre failure/overheat/fire scenario.

The 777 is fitted with:

1/ TPIS, which stands for "Tyre pressure indicating system" which is monitored by EICAS, the crew WILL get a message if a tyre deflates. If they suffered a major tyre failure on takeoff they would have felt the problem ( especially if it was a nose wheel tyre ) and then received an EICAS message.
2/ if there was a Wheel Fire in the main Wheel Well they would get a EICAS Fire Wheel Well Warning and they would have followed the QRH procedure and then declared a Pan or Mayday as required. This would certainly NOT include climbing to FL450 to put out the Fire!!!
( the QRH from memory says to slow below MLO .82/270kias and extend the gear, if the warning continues LAND ASAP. )

I've had tyres deflate on T/O at MTOW on a 77W out of LAX, no big deal. We had a slow deflation and nothing found on the runway, we continued. Tyre was flat on landing.

[mrangar]

Time of India reports: Practice runways for Male, Indian, Sri Lankan airports and 1 US military base found on seized flight simulation software.

What do you all make of this??

Probably that the Flight Simulator had a thorough database?

[India Four Two]

Please read the following for a very clear and understandable explanation of the INMARSAT <> aircraft linkage:

TMF Associates MSS blog » Understanding ?satellite pings??

An excellent article, as is the follow up:

TMF Associates MSS blog » Locating ?satellite pings??