Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[arearadar]

id

Ty Pontious,
May be some answers but not to my satisfaction.
As an ATCO of 33 years experience it was really a statement rather than a question!

Regards, Dave

[holdatcharlie]

Would this be a good time - if they haven't done it already - to lower a duplicate ULB (preferably with a dying battery) to the sea bed where they got the original readings?

Then, a) see if they can detect it, b) if they can, compare the readings and waterfall graph with the originals and c) check any signal deflection which they can then factor in to a new search area.

It would give them confidence (or not) to pursue the search in the current area.

[Grumpi]

Surveillance UAV used in search?

Maybe it was mentioned, but I could not find it anywhere: Was any Global Hawk type aircraft used in the search? Especially for the more westerly search areas it seems like the right craft to use. Instead of just one or two hours, these could stay in the search area for many hours, almost the entire daylight period.

Of course that would be a different way of searching, which implies flying a bit higher than normal search craft, and taking thousands of pictures downwards like a satellite. Those you can then analyze later after landing. But since the resolution and color quality would be much better than that of a satellite (you can adjust it by choosing flight altitude) much smaller items would be visible (satellites really would require an oil slick, or a floating part the size of the vertical fin a la AF447 to be successful). And therefore also the analysis of such images could probably be highly computerized.

But there was no mention of the US deploying one or two of theirs as far as I know (though they have flown in Australia before), and the Aussie units are not yet ready, correct?

[Groundloop]

Assuming a controlled ditching is possible with minimal airframe damage, the airframe could float a long time (after all, it's a lightweight structure that's designed to be airtight - Sully's A320 started sinking relatively quickly because they didn't have time to do the checklist which would have had them close the outflow valve).

Have you never seen photos of the aircraft after it was lifted from the Hudson? The lower rear fuselage showed major damage. Pressing the Ditching switch would not have helped very much.

[SOPS]

There is no ditching switch on a 777.

[Northern Flights]

Razak says preliminary report will be released next week.

Malaysia to release MH370 report, Prime Minister tells CNN - CNN.com

[Grumpi]

Grumpi, one small issue with your ploy to use a high altitude search platform: clouds.

Well, it is not cloudy every day, and the search time is much longer per mission, so you will gain a lot even if just flying every other day. Plus, low level clouds, and clouds that it rains out of are a problem for regular search aircraft as well...

One day with a 12 hour "shift" in the search area is as much as 6 days with just two hours each for a regular search craft.

Plus the swath width can probably be larger. At these very low altitudes that regular SAR craft fly I think you cover not much more than half a mile either direction (looking for stuff the size of a flock of seat cushions, containers etc.), One mile at most. Consider also that a lot of objects like suitcases, composite components etc. (and bodies), will be mostly submerged, and therefore will be much, much easier to spot when looking straight down rather than at a shallow angle from a low flying craft.

So if the camera on a Global Hawk can take images fast enough and the harddisk is large enough, I think you could cover up to four miles swath width at a much more useful visual angle and very high resolution. From, say 10000 ft AGL. That would give up to 10 or even 20 times the area covered compared to a low flying search plane, per day! Plus the risk of an observer missing an object zooming by is much reduced if there is enough computer force / image analysts available.
(if lower res is enough, swath width can even be increased much more)

If there were a chance of metallic objects floating, the thing could even stay for the night time and during clouds, and radar search for >20 hours per mission, with possibly even larger swath width. But I am not sure if the RQ-4 radar would pick up an object such as a mostly submerged LD3 container. On top of the water definitely, but submerged, not sure.

[ZeBedie]

Ditching in the open ocean would be a totally different prospect to the Hudson ditching. You would have to collide with the swell.

[JohnH23]

ULB Signal Transmission Test

HoldAtCharlie wrote

to lower a duplicate ULB (preferably with a dying battery) to the sea bed where they got the original readings? Then, a) see if they can detect it, …

While it makes me fearful to see that idea published in the midst of a search (because of the confusion that it could cause), I admit that it could be useful if well thought out and monitored.

[sky9]

While doing the 767 course discussing the ditching scenario we were told that the first thing to hit the water during a controlled ditching would have been the engines that would then be expected to break way from the pylons (or the pylons from the wing).

[Shadoko]

Is anything from Malaysian "Officials" could be considered as a fact?

From CNN TV exclusive: Malaysian PM not declaring passengers dead - CNN.com (April 24th, Prime Minister Najib Interview):
(CNN) -- More than six weeks after Flight 370 disappeared, Malaysia's prime minister says his government is still not prepared to declare it -- and the 239 people on board -- lost.
"At some point in time I would be, but right now I think I need to take into account the feelings of the next of kin -- and some of them have said publicly that they aren't willing to accept it until they find hard evidence," Najib Razak told CNN's Richard Quest in an exclusive TV interview.

From Transcript of Press Conference, 31 March 2014 (March 31st, Press Conference):
Question: Prime Minister, no wreckage has been found. Was your Malaysian counterpart, Prime Minister Najib, too hasty in announcing that everyone has died in this incident?
Tony Abbott: No. The accumulation of evidence is that the aircraft has been lost, and it has been lost somewhere in the south of the Indian Ocean. That's the absolute overwhelming weight of evidence and I think that Prime Minister Najib Razak was perfectly entitled to come to that conclusion and I think once that conclusion had been arrived at it was his duty to make that conclusion public.

Above clearly after an official statement:

From MH370 Lost in Indian Ocean: PM Najib Razak?s full statement - Latest - New Straits Times (March 24th, PM Najib Razak’s full statement):
.../... It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.../...

Let hope the anounced-next-week-preliminary-report (MH370 Tragedy: Malaysia to release preliminary report next week: PM - Latest - New Straits Times) will not vanish

[Zorin_75]

Originally Posted by Propduffer

You can vector thrust by increasing the angle of attack from level flight. There is a power off stall speed and there is a power on stall speed, with power on, the stall speed is lower because a portion of the thrust is being vectored down. You claim to be a pilot, you should know that.

Uhm. As much as I'd like to see a T7 doing a cobra - the wing will stall at a certain AOA, thrust or not. That angle is obviously A LOT lower than your 45 deg. So your downward component of thrust is the sine of maybe 15deg. Multiply that again with the p/w ratio (~0.3) and you've reduced the lift you need by some whopping single digit percentage.

[rampstriker]

Sea state, character and winds on March 8?

What were the sea state and wind conditions of the current underwater search area on the morning of March 8? Anybody know where to google this?

[MELT]

Ditching switch

I cannot tell you what the ditching switch does on the A320 family of aircraft. However, I do know that it doesn't activate the Automatic Fixed (AF) ELT. Other than activation by the "g" switch, only other activation is from the control panel in the cockpit. Normal position on this switch is armed, after lifting a guard it can be moved to reset or on.

Without going into the exact parameters for the "g"switch I can advise that a simple way it is tested by avionics engineers is to hold the ELT like a rugby ball and do a gentle "dummy pass". This is sufficient to activate the ELT, hence my reason for stating in an earlier post that even a controlled ditching would generate sufficient longitudinal de-acceleration forces for it to activate.

[Uplinker]

I think you would have to be incredibly lucky to be able to accurately fly onto the downside of ocean swell without getting it wrong - given that it is something we never do, and the fact that the ocean swell is constantly changing.



The ditching switch on an Airbus closes all the doors below the floating line; pack doors, outlow valves, avionics cooling doors etc.

[Jetset 88]

IF ONLY.......

Now that there are no more signals from the FDR/CVR, it seems that they won't be found for a very long time, if ever.
Surely there is a now a case to fit the FDRs and CVRs higher in the tail or rear bullet of ETOPS and LROPS over water flights that go outside radar coverage. They could be barostatically detached at a specified depth under water and fitted with a hi-vis, flotation device that has a solar-powered ELT. Regardless of cost this must surely be designable to avoid the anguish of the relatives after such an event.
The technology exists to also equip the kit with a simple gyro device which could show its postion of retrieval compared to that of release.
Or are we to assume that this was such a rare event that it is unlikely to ever happen again? Hmmmm.

[Carjockey]

HMS Tireless stands down...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/h...ssing-aircraft

[cwatters]

The majority of the latest posters on this forum appear to believe that 370 went down in the area which is currently being searched.

But where is the solid evidence to support this belief?

As far as I can see there is none...

Well they did use satellite data to predict where to search and when they looked in that area they heard locator pings. I'd say that was reasonably good evidence certainly worth following up for perhaps two years bearing in mind they can't actually search all year round due to weather.

As stated previously, I believe that it is time for a review of all available data and a total re-think of the entire situation.

What makes you think that investigators haven't been reviewing all the data made available to them on a regular basis? Someone is signing off £million bills and I doubt they would be doing that without regular reviews.

[MG23]

Originally Posted by cwatters

Well they did use satellite data to predict where to search and when they looked in that area they heard locator pings. I'd say that was reasonably good evidence certainly worth following up for perhaps two years bearing in mind they can't actually search all year round due to weather.

I think that's the fundamental issue here. If the sounds heard underwater were the recorder pingers, they shouldn't be too far from where they were heard, and we just have to find them. Which may still take months if the sound was bouncing around underwater, or prove impossible if they're not with large pieces of wreckage that can be seen on sonar.

If they weren't, all bets are off, and we may never find it.

[Ian W]

Originally Posted by Carjockey

@propduffer
I have not discounted InmarSat's conclusions. But since this method of tracking is previously untested and has never been used before, I do question it's validity and I stand by my statement that no solid evidence of the track and final location of 370 exists.

On the contrary - INMARSAT did some live validation testing using an Malaysian Airlines aircraft and showed that their system was tracking it. They didn't fly the test all the way to the South Indian Ocean, they didn't need to as their tests validated their approach.

What _is_ obvious from this is that the ULBs should be encoded somehow so that there is no doubt what is being heard is a particular aircraft. This is not difficult it could be a modulation or a pattern of pings - that would prevent all these rumors and doubts.