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Last ping remaining fuel
Hi,
Not sure if this has been discussed: what would be the maximum remaining fuel onboard at 08:11 (last ping) ? Knowing that: "The latest bloomberg article has the following: "The Boeing 777 was carrying 49.1 metric tons of fuel when it departed Kuala Lumpur, for a total takeoff weight of 223.5 tons, according to Subang Jaya-based Malaysian Air." and assuming it was still flying when last ping was made ? Thanks |
Donpizmeof
If in the cruise and the fuel starvation point is reached, one engine could fail before the other. In this case, autothrust (autothrottle? been a while since I was on the Boeing) would command the live engine towards climb thrust (max cruise setting), and the autopilot would look after the rudder to keep things straight and try and maintain level. As the speed decays, slow speed protection will then cause the aircraft to descend. When the other engine fails, the engines may be rotating fast enough to keep the generators online (if the Tas is high enough), if not the RAT will deploy to keep electrics. Hydraulic pumps too will keep working as long as the engines rotate fast enough. Either way the autopilot and flight controls will remain active until ground impact. I don't think it will be the dramatic departure from controlled flight that has been explained here previously. When the second engine fails the remaining generator and back up generator will drop off line and the autopilot will disconnect. The flight controls will then go into direct mode so you will lose a lot of the fancy stuff like bank angle protection and thrust asymmetry compensation. The rudder trim that was added by TAC to compensate for being on one engine may or may not have stayed in depending upon how quickly the generator dropped off line. The Ram Air Turbine will deploy (although it takes a while to speed up) and then the autopilot can be reengaged. However if the pilots are incapacitated the autopilot will not reengage on its own and the flight controls will remain in direct mode. With unconscious pilots at the controls, autopilot disconnected and untrimmed since the second engine failure I would not expect the impact with water to be survivable. However with empty tanks and a pilot flying it to a successful ditching, (much harder at night) I would have thought there was a fair chance of quite a few people surviving the impact. However the chances of getting into a slideraft and staying in it and detaching it in mountainous seas at night are probably not great. |
If both pilots became disabled, and unable to respond to calls from the cabin crew, would the cabin crew have any means to open the inviolate cockpit door Quote: Originally Posted by Hunter58 All you need is a Li-io based fire to burn the cables to the transponder and VHF3 antenna. Both go dead. And you certainly get some nice hotspot that potentially could burn a small hole into the fuselage. One thing I am learning fast reading posts on this unfortunate circumstance, that is there is more than just a few crazy people flying planes these days. |
@F-MANU
Well, if you take it as 'pinging'=flying, whereas 'not pinging'=not flying - which is the basis of the current search effort/area - then it matters not what actual fuel was at 08.11. Taking the above, you could assume, then, that the a/c had enough fuel to possibly fly until 09.10.59.9999....at which point, and most probably before that time, it was empty! |
Everyone seems to be assuming a magic fire that can take out all the alternate communications - avoid the SATCOM and anything that prevents the aircraft flying normally - but depressurize the aircraft - and all before the hold fire warning and before the pilots notice and squawk or transmit Mayday. The version of events in the media (lots of height, heading, and speed changes; avoids some radars; and then suddenly to make the data fit a straight flight to the southern ocean to finish on the same 40deg satellite contour as the beginning) is also hard to swallow. I'll agree that the "pilots aren't the bad guys" scenarios require a catastrophe onboard that prevents communication. |
He would have detected the fire before ATC and ACARS was lost and would not have flown 8 hours after. If there was a fire, we don't know where it was and how it developed. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate Well, if you cannot get past Navigate before whatever event it is kills you, even if your comms work, you cannot communicate. Helios did fly and none of the pilots did communicate. Fact is, we don't know ANYTHING about what happened on board. And unless you can absoluely exclude a possibility, it is valid. |
Inerting fault?
A bit of a long shot, but did MH370 have centre tank inerting fitted, and if so, do any pipes carrying nitrogen enriched air pass through the pressure hull? If a pipe were to fail, then the effect on those on board may be similar to a loss of pressurisation.
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ettore
the fire/incapacitation theory does not allow for subsequent control inputs read back over the aircrafts known route after initial diversion how and where it crossed the peninsula and where/what direction it was going when last seen... |
22m x 13m sounds a bit big for a piece of wreckage from an aircraft that supposedly impacted the ocean a couple of weeks ago. Red herring maybe?
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Hi,
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate |
I'll agree that the "pilots aren't the bad guys" scenarios require a catastrophe onboard that prevents communication. I cannot understand how eager so many people are to lay the blame for this tragedy on the pilots. |
Debris Spotted
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I've followed this thread from day one, initially I was of the opinion that it was a similar scenario to AF447 ie tech problem that overcame the pilots.
At this stage it would seem to me that the most likely scenario is that based on the assumption that the Inmarsat arcs are valid, this aircraft was flown to its final destination in the sea by someone. The fire theory doesn't stack up, if it incapacitated the pilots so quickly it would most likely brought the aircraft down sooner than several hours later. The location of the current search focus and the route that would have to have been flown to get there more or less undetected back up my theory that someone was flying this machine. Can anyone explain how it could have gone where it 'seems' to have gone otherwise? A truly awful event whatever the reasons |
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DEBRIS including a wooden pallet has been spotted by one of the aircraft searching for missing flight MH370, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has revealed. Mr Abbott said he was told late last night a civilian aircraft had sighted a number of objects within the search zone. It is the first direct sighting of debris and follows two hits by satellite in the past week. “Yesterday one of our civilian search aircraft got visuals on a number of objects in a fairly small area in the overall Australian search zone,” Mr Abbott said this morning. He said the debris was: “ A number of small objects, fairly close together within the Australian search zone, including a wooden pallet.” |
I mentioned a few pages back that during last nights press conference they said the atc transcript that is going around is false, this is to follow up on that post.
SEPANG: The communication transcript that allegedly took place between the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) MH370 and air traffic control (ATC) the night it was reported missing on March 8 has been classified as inaccurate and "tidak sahih" (invalid). "The transcript is invalid and inaccurate. I have to inform that the transcript between the tower and the aircraft is not accurate," stressed the Department of Civil Aviation Director-General Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman. He rebutted the transcript which was published today by a foreign media 'The Telegraph' during the daily media briefing on the search and rescue operation for the unfortunate aircraft that entered day-15, at a hotel here, today. Also present were Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and MAS Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya. When asked to explain further which part of the transcript was not accurate, Azharuddin refused to comment, adding that: "The transcript by standard procedure cannot be publicly released." The Telegraph in its exclusive report entitled 'Revealed: the final 54 minutes of communication from MH370' published the cockpit communication from its taxi on the runway to its final message at 1.19am of 'all right, good night'. The transcript allegedly between the co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid and ATC started at 00.25 with general instructions from the control tower to the pilots. The detailed conversation began at 00.36. Earlier Hishammuddin said that the original transcript of the conversation between MH370 and ATC had been handed to the investigation team, where it was being analysed. "As a standard practice in investigation of this sort, the transcript cannot be publicly released at this stage. I can however confirm that the transcript does not indicate anything abnormal," he said. The issue on the lithium-ion battery which was carried in the cargo area of the aircraft MH370 was again raised by the media today, but Ahmad Jauhari had explained in detail on the matter at the media conference yesterday, besides issuing an official statement. "The battery as cargo is not dangerous. Actually it (the battery) is not dangerous as long as it is handled according to the guidelines specified by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA)," he said. MAS Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about an hour after taking off from the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8. It should have landed in Beijing at 6.30 am on the same day. The fate of the passengers is unknown as the multi-national search for the aircraft has drawn a blank so far. Latest Media Release From AMSA During Saturday’s search activities a civil aircraft tasked by AMSA reported sighting a number of small objects with the naked eye, including a wooden pallet, within a radius of five kilometres. A Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) P3 Orion aircraft with specialist electro-optic observation equipment was diverted to the location, arriving after the first aircraft left but only reported sighting clumps of seaweed. The RNZAF Orion dropped a datum marker buoy to track the movement of the material. A merchant ship in the area has been tasked to relocate and seek to identify the material. The search area experienced good weather conditions on Saturday with visibility of around 10 kilometres and moderate seas. The Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, two chartered civil aircraft and two merchant ships supported Saturday’s search effort in a 36,000 square kilometre search area in the Australian Search and Rescue Region. Since AMSA assumed coordination of the search on Monday 17 March, 15 sorties have been flown and more than 150 hours of air time has been committed by the air crews to the task. Four military aircraft assisted in today’s search, as well as two ultra-long range jets. Ten State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers from Western Australia were tasked as air observers today, along with two AMSA mission coordinators on the civilian aircraft. AMSA runs a training program across the country to train SES volunteers in air observation for land and sea searches. The Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Success has arrived in the search area. Two merchant ships are also in the search area. The search will resume tomorrow and further attempts will be made to establish whether the objects sighted are related to MH370. This evening China provided a satellite image to Australia possibly showing a 22.5 metre floating object in the southern Indian Ocean. AMSA has plotted the position and it falls within Saturday’s search area. The object was not sighted on Saturday. AMSA will take this information into account in tomorrow’s search plans. |
AMSA has the same on it's media release this morning
http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/documen...ate10MH370.pdf During Saturday’s search activities a civil aircraft tasked by AMSA reported sighting a number of small objects with the naked eye, including a wooden pallet, within a radius of five kilometres. A Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) P3 Orion aircraft with specialist electro-optic observation equipment was diverted to the location, arriving after the first aircraft left but only reported sighting clumps of seaweed. The RNZAF Orion dropped a datum marker buoy to track the movement of the material. A merchant ship in the area has been tasked to relocate and seek to identify the material. |
"the search effort has been hampered by the reluctance of all parties in the region admit to what they have actually seen on radar."
To state the obvious, various countries in that part of the world don't want to admit that: (a) the radars may not be operating all the time. (b) they may have missed something even when the radars were operating. For example, India was forced to admit that its radars around the Adaman Islands were not actually on all the time in order to save money. |
"Apart from hypoxia, are there any other scenarios that would account for the crew and passengers being incapacitated AND the plane being able to fly for another 5-7 hours?"
rabidstoat: "Surely there are. Off the top of my head, hijacker(s) with threat or use of force." What I meant was: are there any other scenarios apart from hypoxia that don't involve foul play of some type. I'm struggling to think of any. |
There is no way you will have network coverage on your phone at 35.000 ft
Still for me there are to many coincidences that and chain of events must have been really overwhelming, that the failures caused the aircraft to become invisible and silent, at the most convenient moment of the flight! I do not believe the pilots are at blame, maybe it is a combination of unknown factors, as I can't see how a modern T7 could suffer such a failure - in that case it will be a latent failure, also existing on other T7's, and there will be no rest by the authorities and Boeing until something has been found! There is no way with current available information to put together any even remotely satisfactory chain of events that can explain what happen, based on the facts that we are aware of at this moment. I do believe some more information is known, and I also believe at the moment we can't even be certain of the current search area being the correct one. All this uber-info about Pings and Arcs and various explanations means very little, as we have not been presented with all the data required to make such analyses. |
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