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Old 13th Mar 2014, 08:16
  #2635 (permalink)  
threemiles
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: btw SAMAR and TOSPA
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Conspiracy or catastrophe?

What else we know or guess?

1) COM: The crew saluted the Lumpur ACC when requested to switch frequency to HCM. Normal procedure. They never contacted HCM. Optimum point of time to take control of an airplane as the next sector would not immediately start asking . Catastrophe? Could be, but coincidental. Conspiracy? Needs support from the cockpit crew to hit this spot in time.

2) Transponder: went off at about the same time (obviously a little later than COM). Catastrophe? Could be, but airplane and debris should have been found. Decompression theory would leave transponder uneffected and on. Conspiracy? Crew needs to be involved or very smart hijackers as 9/11

3) ACARS (airframe): only two packets were sent on and after departure. Correlates with limited VHF ACARS coverage in the area. Also depends on the ACARS reporting settings if more was to expect. Every airline has its unique scheme.

4) ACARS (RR engines): packet(s) were received up to 4 hours after last contact. These packets come every 30 minutes. If the airplane had SATCOM AND ACARS via SATCOM was enabled (I doubt) these packets could be sent from elsewhere. A SATCOM antenna does not mean data can go via SATCOM! If the airplane had VHF only the associated ground station may be known, but it may take days to identify it or the data has been overwritten already.

5) Why is RR so late? a) Weekend. b) It takes time to crawl through the data, when they do not popup because of a technical anomality. c)It may be late, they may be archived.
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