Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[RetiredF4]

In one of the first pages of this thread the turn off course observed by military radar made me post my concern, that the military might know more than it is willing or allowed to share, as it proved that the defense forces must have made that observation on primary radar. The post is gone, no problem with that.

Two thousand posts later there is imho still little knowledge how air defense should be organized. The overall scheme is similar all over the world, also details and capabilities may vary a lot. I try to describe the overall systemic procedures how air defence works, limited to those points which could be relevant to this thread and in layman terms.

AD forces have to monitor the respective airspace, have to command control the assets available and have to train them to the required standard. For this discussion the assets Radar stations, Surface to air missile systems and aircraft are of relevance to this thread. Those assets are trained to cope with other intruding foreign forces to deny them entry or at least hinder them as long as possible. The training of those forces is an ongoing never ending process, updated and modified as necessary to reach the highest output for the ultimate task, the defence of the homeland.

Radar stations are active 24/7, monitoring the airspace from ground to the maximum altitude they are capable off. The radar systems are able to detect, analyze, track and record flying unstealthy objects with primary radar alone, although secondary radar is either on site or fed into the system from civil ATC stations. Radar sites on different locations and even airborne systems will feed their informations into a data processing system, and filed civil and military flightplans will go into this system as well. All those air datas are used to create an adapted overview for the command and control center, where decisions are made and ground based or airborne assets are allocated.

Aanalyzing all those data is at most an automated process, the individual sitting on a radar set like in approach control for monitoring purposes is the exception. He is there to get active when a radar return is flagged as unknown, as a potential threat or as an aircraft needing assistance. Then his status changes from readiness to active, and he will follow preset procedures using his skills learned in training. He then can manipulate his console to modify the information on his screen to get targets displayed at a special height, sector, with or without transponder, with or without flightplan, known or unknown.

Concerning our discussion here MH370 was on a filed flightplan, the primary radar return correlated with the secondary radar information from own or ATC sources and thus of no interest to the air defense system in a pure monitoring situation like during night, when no own aircraft are airborne and no conflicting situation between civil and military traffic can arise.

How come then, that the turn to a westerly heading reached the public and was denied at that time, but is now accepted as true by the military? When an identified target looses vital parts of the former identification information like planned track and secondary radar ident, the analyzing software will highlight the radar return somehow after a specified elapsed time and some alert will get somebody responsible to look after the developing situation. If primary radar contact with this target was uninterrupted, it will still be designated with the original identity, in our case the controller would still know that it is MH370 now on a different heading and altitude. He does not know the reasons though, except civil ATC would have told him, and he would not actively try to achieve this information except the new flightpath would lead MH370 in an area where conflicting military traffic is present or when approaching a no fly zone for civil aircraft. We also must consider that there is normally some kind of turf war between military and civil air traffic systems and therefore the communication between those parties is reduced to the necessary amount.
If the controller saw a situation developing, he would have informed the next guy up the chain and let him make the necessary decisions.

From the controversal statements we might assume, that the alert was disregarded on the way up the chain of command.

What would have been the options of the AD otherwise?
Use all available means of the radar systems to keep track on MH370, scramble fighters, alert marine forces in the surrounding waters for a lookout. Primary goal of getting fighters airborne in such situation in peacetime is helping in identification and monitoring of the rouge aircraft , thus gaining information and time for further decisions. In peacetime every airforce has some kind of readiness state active for a few aircraft, that might be from 1 hour to 10 minutes elapsed time to being airborne after an scramble order has been received. An aircraft the size of an B777 could not hide from an airborne fighter aircraft even when flying low level over sea or land, and there would be a greater possibility that the world would know about the fate of MH370 by now.

I keep out of the speculation what happened to MH370, but concerning the Air defense i think that the abnormality of Mf370 was observed, that the information was forwarded up the chain, but no action was taken and no communication with civil ATC took place. Now they have a real big problem to explain why.

[Evey_Hammond]

I read in a post waaaay back about some Chinese families getting angry with MAS staff and throwing bottles of water. I didn't (at the time) read the reason why... Link (http://therealsingapore.com/content/families-mh370-passengers-got-accidently-sent-india-instead-kuala-lumpur) to the reason why and an excerpt "The families of the Chinese passengers on the missing MH370 flight have reached their boiling point, as a flight arranged by Malaysia Airlines to bring them to Kuala Lumpur messed up in transit and landed them in India instead"

If true, you couldn't make this up! :ugh:

[Eclectic]

So many questions:

Why did MH370 turn off course?
Was there a decompression?
What stopped all electronic transmissions, including automated ones?
How did it keep flying with so many systems not working?
Who commanded the descent to 29,500?
Why no transmission from 200+ mobile phones?
If decompression, why not a further descent?
If on AP with everyone on board unconscious and 2,000+ miles range, will we ever find it?

Obviously there was some sort of event but really we have no clues until we have answered some of these questions.
If the primary radar comes up with an accurate heading then it might be possible to follow the track. But it would still be a needle in a haystack.
Maybe a submarine with a towed array listening for the FDR & CVR pingers could be tried.

[1stspotter]

It all looks like what happened to MH370 is very similar to Helios 522.

India joins the search for missing Malaysian jet | NDTV.com (http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/india-joins-the-search-for-missing-malaysian-jet-494868?site=classic)

and hindustantimes.com reports
India's coast guard joined the aerial search on Wednesday for the missing plane off the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, a senior officer told AFP.
A Dornier aircraft belonging to the coastguard set off mid-afternoon local time to scour the eastern side of the Andaman islands on orders from the Indian government, the inspector general of the coastguard service said.
"We were directed to take part in the search operations up to the eastern fringes of the exclusive economic zone of the Andaman islands," VSR Murthy told AFP. "We are looking into that area for any clues to the missing airliner," he added.
The Andaman and Nicobar islands are Indian territory, although they are at least 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from the mainland and are closer to the coast of Myanmar.
- See more at: Missing jet MH370 may have strayed toward Andaman Sea; India's coastguard joins search - Hindustan Times (http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/malaysianairlinemystery2014/missing-jet-may-have-strayed-toward-andaman-sea-malaysian-air-force/article1-1194185.aspx#sthash.QmLdEVEF.dpuf)

[fendant]

I am still puzzled about the two individuals with the stolen European passports being portraied by the Malaysian authorities as innocent refugees from Iran, one who was going to visit his mother living in Francfort.

a) They bought their tickets together in Thailand against cash paid by 3rd person, who has not been found and questioned so far.
b) They made their way into Malaysia well before the departure of MH 370.
c) They were travelling on fake European passports, supplied by " human trafficker ring" based in SE-Asia
d) They definitely would be immediately arrested when arriving in AMS showing their stolen passports which are in the Schengen database and possibly be sent back. Don't think that they were not aware of this. In short they would never made it to their final destinations in CPH or FRA.
e) Dutch border officers speak very well German and regularly extend a friendly greeting to you, so you must speak perfect flawless German ( Austrian ) to pass this hurdle especially using a surname which is only common in small area in Austia.

I think that wer are mislead by the authorities ( who admitted that they failed to connect into the Interpol database ) for reasons I don't know.

[Lonewolf_50]

Retired F4, your explanation aligns with my previous attempt some pages back, but with more detail. Well said, sir, about general AD procedures. :D

Martin M:
But even if these guys where close and having an eye on anything closing in onto the helicopter carrier they are protecting, they (DDG-100) would not be interested in an object flying at 29'000 feet.
You are mistaken, Martin. The CO of that DDG is the local anti air warfare commander. He's got the better Aegis system than we had on our cruiser (20+ years ago) but the role is the same. When you are the local Air Defense commander, every single air contact is tracked and of interest until you are certain that it is on a opening course and speed relative to the battle group you are protecting. IF this contact was being tracked (not sure if the ship was in a position to do so the evening it went missing) then its track would have been identified and tracked by the guys on the scopes in Tracker Alley in Combat Information Center. I've stood enough watches in CIC in an AAW command ship to know how this works. (Yes, it's been a few years!)
Why noone has asked the Indonesian guys yet to deliver any a radar data. It could be interesting to know if an unidentified object was flying over the area of Banda Aceh in direction of the indian ocean. Would this be the cased, you coud stop searching ... ... or look in a different place.

While I am not sure why you assume no one has asked the Indonesian guys, you raise a good point. Likely some info has been passed between Indonesian and Malaysian militaries. Perhaps no such track was recorded on Indonesian radar, or whatever they saw didn't fit into the other pieces in the puzzle.

[overthewing]

I think we've been spoiled by all the NTSB briefings, and Debbie Hersman's calm, clear delivery of information and faultless handling of journalistic queries.

When authorities can't even photocopy something without making a major mistake - and don't notice that they've done so till it's pointed out by world media - it doesn't give confidence that they can handle a really big emergency.

[wannagedoff]

I'm not too sure I give much credibility to the oil rig worker's email.

AS SLF I have no aviation knowledge but both myself and my spouse have been employed in the oil & gas industry for years.

Oil rigs aren't "oil rigs". They're generally drilling rigs that are used to drill for both oil and gas. Neither of us know anyone in the industry who call them "oil rigs", just rigs or drilling rigs.

[andrasz]

RF4,

Thanks for the very insightful post.

One thing to add, which I believe was not mentioned here before:
Malaysia being a predominantly muslim country, with bhoomis (ethnic Malays) favored to occupy govermment (including military) positions, essentially all government offices close at midday on Friday. A Friday/Saturday night shift is mid-weekend, and I can easily imagine the junior operator manning the radar station at the time to be very reluctant to call anyone higher up the food chain.

[Global Warrior]

It all looks like what happened to MH370 is very similar to Helios 522.

But that doesn't explain the loss of transponder info etc and why the aircraft just didn't carry on flying the route in the FMS until it ran out of fuel...Like Helios 522 :(

[island_airphoto]

QUESTION:
If I understand the timeline, the plane's last comm was leaving one freq for another. Given my experience with IFR flying, if I wanted to disappear with max time until someone noticed, that is when I would do it. Given the odds of random plane malfunctions right at that second, this seems to argue very strongly for human intervention by someone familiar with flying.

[MartinM]

You are mistaken, Martin. The CO of that DDG is the local anti air warfare commander. He's got the better Aegis system than we had on our cruiser (20+ years ago) but the role is the same. When you are the local Air Defense commander, every single air contact is tracked and of interest until you are certain that it is on a opening course and speed relative to the battle group you are protecting. IF this contact was being tracked (not sure if the ship was in a position to do so the evening it went missing) then its track would have been identified and tracked by the guys on the scopes in Tracker Alley in Combat Information Center. I've stood enough watches in CIC in an AAW command ship to know how this works. (Yes, it's been a few years!)

Thanks for the clarification. Always welcome to get a better understanding. :-)

[MyNameWasTaken]

Ok, I'll jump in.. I don't normally speculate (I'm a heavy Captain for a US airline with a lot of overwater experience in an ac like the 777), but I will add this, with CPDLC, HF, VHF, ACARS and SATCOM, I'll find some way to get a message out under duress.. especially CPDLC, for it's a couple of key strokes.. would take me.. 5 seconds, tops.

- Chances of complete loss of comm on the 777, very, very slim...

- Bomb explosion we would have found the pieces long ago...

- I don't like structural failure theory cause it would have led to disintegration of airplane and then aircraft pieces would have already been found...

my theories fall into these two areas:

1. Hi-jack (terrorism from outside or crew)
2. Hypoxia event leading to incapacitation of all life on board.. (has happened in the past)

I can see why you are arguing against either a complete systems failure or a bomb. I realise no-one has the answers, least of all me, I just have more questions. However...

If 1. Hi-jack is correct then why no distress communication from the pilot or indeed anyone at all on board during the take-over phase of the hi-jacking? If it was a hi-jack we have to believe it was sudden, total and prevented all communications capabilities of all passengers and crew. Even if part of the crew were responsible, would not the remainder of the crew or passengers have become aware at some stage that something was amiss and had time to send out a distress call of some kind before they could be stopped?

If 2. Hypoxia is correct then why did all means of communication manual or automated cease so abruptly? That seems to indicate either deliberate intervention by an experienced crew member or an immediate catastrophic event causing all comms on the aircraft to fail simultaneously at the last known point of communication. But then how come it either continued to fly, or else just as in your bomb scenario, why has no wreckage been found by 5 days of SAR?

It seems to me that we are left with one indicator of a catastrophic event at the last known civilian reference point (sudden cessation of all communication) but other indicators of continued flight (military primary radar possibly tracking to west, no explosion "flash" picked up on military satellites (as I understand it) and lack of debris in area that has been searched for 5 days now).

[repariit]

Is there any oversight to assure that such investigations are carried out in compliance with ICAO Annex 13 standards?

[rachcollins]

Here is a link to a Youtube clip of the Malaysian Military Commander discussing the returns received from Military Radar filmed at the latest press conference



71VJWs4_YTs#t=56


I get the feeling that the aircraft was not actually viewed via primary radar turning back near IGARI, but unknown returns found when reviewing radar data at a later date suggested that the plane had turned back.

He also mentions that they only have intermittent radar returns at present, hopefully the FAA and NTSB can shed some light on the data, it was stated that radar data would be released if either the NTSB or FAA could confirm that the contacts were MH370.

Last apparent position was 200nm NW of Butterworth FL295

[EDMJ]

Re Helios 522, this aircraft

- kept climbing despite the cabin pressure warning going off, and there was radio communication to the effect that not all was well > no communication of this sort here, apparently

- was intercepted when contact couldn't be established > didn't happen here (and I'm still asking myself why)

- had a history of pressurisation problems > doesn't seem to be the case here.

I think this comparison can be laid to bed.

What did the Thais see on their (military) radar? If it took up a western course after initial contact was lost it would have at least skirted their border with Malaysia or even entered Thai airspace. And the "200 NM NW of Penang" seems very close to Phuket in Thailand.

[DespairingTraveller]

If I understand the timeline, the plane's last comm was leaving one freq for another. Given my experience with IFR flying, if I wanted to disappear with max time until someone noticed, that is when I would do it. Given the odds of random plane malfunctions right at that second, this seems to argue very strongly for human intervention by someone familiar with flying.
I'm not sure they were simply leaving one frequency for another - I thought they were going out of range of the Malaysian ATC and would not be in range of Vietnamese ATC for some time.

Granted that makes it an even better window for any bad guys, but that possibility is not set against the unlikelihood of a "random malfunction [...] right at that second". There's a longer window for problems to arise.

(But I freely admit to having rather lost track of what are the established "facts" in the timeline, between the various versions and corrections in official announcements, confusion over time zones, and the amount of recycling of rumour and supposition as fact that has been going on here from time to time... :rolleyes:)

[WilyB]

Why no transmission from 200+ mobile phones?

Making a cell phone call in a jet flying over 8000 ft is virtually impossible.

1) Doppler induced loss-of-service (no bars) occurs at relative speeds (aircraft to cell tower) of 150 kts (nautical miles per hour) and greater.

2) Cell antenna radiation pattern makes voice call almost impossible above 2000 ft and data exchange impossible above 8000 ft.

[answer=42]

@repariit
Is there any oversight to assure that such investigations are carried out in compliance with ICAO Annex 13 standards?

What investigation? Apparently under Malaysian law, there is no official accident investigation, since there is no evidence that the aircraft has crashed on Malaysian territory / territorial waters. Hence no lead agency. Hence no powers to obtain information.

[dicks-airbus]

https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aero.de%2Fnews-19205%2FVermisste-Boeing-777-von-Oelplattform-gesichtet.html&act=url

[bono]

spmd11:

I don't normally speculate (I'm a heavy Captain for a US airline with a lot of overwater experience in an ac like the 777), but I will add this, with CPDLC, HF, VHF, ACARS and SATCOM, I'll find some way to get a message out under duress.. especially CPDLC, for it's a couple of key strokes.. would take me.. 5 seconds, tops
my theories fall into these two areas:
1. Hi-jack (terrorism from outside or crew)
2. Hypoxia event leading to incapacitation of all life on board.. (has happened in the past)


Could you please elaborate on Hypoxia (or for that matter aircraft air supply suddenly contaminated with some kind of life ending substance). I believe this is the only angle that has not been debated to death on this forum.

[Lonewolf_50]

ok, so the question is, are the m#pp&Ts covering something up, or just covering their own ass?
Perhaps they are in over their heads, in terms of the amount of experience they have in handling such an event. I find the vitriol directed at the folks dealing with public information release to be misdirected.

They are confronting a novel situation with the Information Age Jackals hounding them at every step. I think those gents are learning "on the job" what it takes to handle public information releases. The number of ways one can screw that up is legion! (Plenty of American politicians fall into that trap, "You're doing a helluva job, Brownie!" coming to mind in re Katrina).

If you look back a few dozen pages, a trained American PR official from US Seventh Fleet spouted a load of tripe about floating DFDRs and CVRs. It's not just that the Commander ought to know better. FFS, he's from an "open society" and was formally trained in how to do this ... and he still stuck his size nine and a half dress white shoe into his own mouth. :mad:

The gents from Malaysia are from a different culture, and IMO are doing the best that they can. It doesn't help that the amount of info they have isn't:

(a) helping the SAR effort produce a result
(b) making the Information Age Jackals happy

I sincerely believe that they want to find that airplane so badly that they can taste it. These guys are human beings, imperfect like all of us, with hearts.

[DespairingTraveller]

@ EdmundSpencer
Not sure quite what route the MH was flying but, usually, after departing KIA you are handed over to Singapore before being handed over to Saigon. If you are not CPDLC contact there is a requirement to make contact with Singapore radio on VHF followed by HF 8942. You then make contact with Saigon as directed.
Thank you - that is most illuminating!

Out of curiosity - why VHF with Singapore initially? Naively, I would have expected you to be out of VHF range with Singapore as it's further south than KL and you're heading north-east.

[DWS]

...Watching the news conference, it is blatantly clear the Malaysians are in disarray ...


AS I recall many years ago someone said "
Its almost impossible to resolve the difference between incompetence and mendacity in a news conference absent other clues "

[macilrae]

If we assume a hijacking and further assume those hijackers are not suicidal - perhaps having a mercenary rather than a political motive - where and how could they get the plane down in a deserted spot at which they could retain control over the situation: making a safe landing without a runway, albeit with with the aircraft a write-off? Shallows off some deserted island where a 'recovery' team is waiting? Or are there natural hard surfaces within that considerable range (similar to salt-flats) where such a landing could be made in relative safety?

[The Ancient Geek]

Given that no evidence has been found in the search areas we should consider the possibilities. Given that we have no real idea where the aircraft is, the potential location is limited only by available fuel and thus covers millions of square miles and we are looking for a very tiny needle in a very big haystack.

1) A crash into the ocean. The amount and nature of any surface debris will depend largly on the speed and angle of entry. Any floating debris will probably be small inconspicuous items such as seat cushions. These could easily have been missed by the existing search. If the crash was outside of the search area and on a busy shipping lane something may be spotted within weeks or months, away from shipping lanes something may wash up on shore eventually due to currents but may well be disregarded as junk. The seas are littered with flotsam and garbage so one bit of junk looks much like another.

2) A crash onto land. Any crash onto a reasonably populated area would have been reported by now but much of Southest Asia consists of forest and jungle. Any debris would be concealed by tree cover. Populations are mainly local tribes with little of no communications with the outside world.
Reports of a crash may filter out eventually but by then much of the evidence will have been recycled as free building material. Our best hope might be a painstaking examination of hi-res satellite images for evidence of recent fires.

From this we can conclude that without better evidence it is unlikely that the aircraft will be found soon. Eventually a fishermans nets may be fouled or someone may clear the right bit of forest but that could take many years.

[grizzled]

FWIW I tend to agree with the unofficial consensus that has arisen after five days of consideration by some very experienced contributors. In terms only of "likelihood" (meaning the actual scenario could indeed turn out to be something generally considered to be very unlikely) I suggest the following:


Interference (of which a "device" of some sort being onboard is more likely than physical interference, though it could be either).
Upset (originating from one of several scenarios, including severe turbulence for example) and unsuccessful recovery.
Intentional action of (one of) the flight crew

It is far less likely (for example), but not out of the realm of possibility, that a technical issue lead to a catastrophic failure and loss of the aircraft. Personally, I don't think so.

[StrongEagle]

Populations are mainly local tribes with little of no communications with the outside world.

I've traveled by motorbike all over Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and this characterization simply doesn't hold true.

Even in the smallest villages, there is electrification of one kind or another, and someone always has a dish and a TV, often communally shared. While Laos and Cambodia are probably the least connected, I stayed at only one or two villages, high in the mountains that didn't have communications of some sort.

True, there is plenty of open space and rain forest. But, there are also many. many tiny villages interspersed throughout the rain forest such that it is difficult to imagine that an aircraft crashing at night would not have been seen by someone.

[Feathered]

INTEL101 (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-60.html#post8369534),


DrudgeReport yesterday had posted the same federal register rulemaking notice that you did. It pertains to changes going into effect in 2014 and beyond, and would not have affected the MH370 airplane. It is worthy of a discussion, although separate from the MH 370 incident.

[Samehada]

Because WSSS FIR is right between WMKK & VVTS?
http://www.swld.com.au/images/air_asia_FIR.jpg
SWLD - Shortwave Listeners Delight - Civil Aviation HF Flightwatch Frequencies Asia (http://www.swld.com.au/pages/air_civil_asia.htm#SINGAPORE)_

[Bloxin]

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 makes it and generates some discussion.

*** Above info on position of fittings incorrect. Further research reveals... ***

TURIN

I noted your original post saying that the crew O2 bottle fittings were on the aft side of the bottle and thought that the the wind was blown out of my hypothetical sail.

However. I have done some more research on the QF30 incident and found in the Australian Transport Safety Bureau report that the bottle was propelled upward through the cabin floor where it damaged a door handle, some trim and then dove back through the hole in the floor and exited the aircraft via the hole in the fuselage... RUBBISH??? Thats what I thought.

However. There is a photo tab on the web page. The last photo of the set is of an O2 bottle sized hole in the floor panel directly above the hole in thefuselage.

The Pax O2 bottles in the 747 fwd cargo sidewall stand vertically. Plumbing on top.

The missing bottle was not found onboard.

Ref: Australian Transport Safety Bureau website

Aviation safety investigations and reports

Search: July 2008 and QF30 is top of the list

All. My hypothetical structure ofevents is purely speculative, as most here are, until we get some real facts towork with.

Thank you. Blox in.

[Flutter speed]

Which raises multiple questions of:

What O/S the server was running?
Was it properly patched?
Was it's Anti-virus up to date?
Could any of the pax hack in through their Wifi connections?

etcetc.

The 777 has highly specialized software running, not your typical windows desktop, or unix for that matter. It is in that sense a generation behind the likes of 787 and A380, which are running on more 'pc like' computers. While the 777 does have a sort of central computer (AIMS) it still is not much more than a rack of proprietary (Honeywell) avionics boxes which are more tightly integrated than previous generations (pre 777).

777 has no server really, it has patches but these are general software (Blockpoints) updates. Don't think virus are an issue. Hacking wifi (if installed, might require access to the maintenance terminals) is not an issue.

[Lost in Saigon]

It seems utter madness to have the aircraft's flight computers on the same network was the PAX WiFi.



Aircraft don't use the internet for navigation or communication. Some aircraft have internet capability for passenger entertainment only.

[XB70_Valkyrie]

0121 Last radio contact
0130 Last ATC Radar contact
- then onto Military Radar, turn west to west peninsular -
0215 Military Radar loses the unidentified aircraft 200nm NW of Penang at an altitude of 29,500ft (FL295)

You're assuming this transition from ATC too military was contiguous. I'm sure it isn't. The military have some returns along a westerly track at FL295. They may or may not originate with the ATC flight path (I would say likely NOT). They don't know what aircraft they are from, and that's the problem.

[Flutter speed]

any PAX with the right apps loaded onto a laptop or tablet would be able to hack into the flight computers.

Simply not true. Again, there is no central computer which 'controls' the aircraft. The FCS computers are anyway separate from the main AIMS (central) computers (and are triple triple redundant). The AIMS itself contains very important, but not critical avionics required for keeping the plane in the air.

[mabuhay_2000]

I've been out for a few hours and only heard snippets of news, but it seems that the Malaysian side are tying themselves in knots.

We have the RMAF saying they did track a plane that would fit the profile of MH370 flying back across Malaysia, then the head honcho said he didn't say that but didn't deny it was true, then he said that they actually had tracked a blip back across Malaysia. I mean, make your mind up!

The Vietnamese worked them into a corner by saying they had tracked MH370 turning west AND they told the Malaysians pretty much straight away.

Then the Malaysians said the tracked the blip some 200 (TWO HUNDRED!) miles past Penang, which would have them two thirds of the way to North Sumatra, with every indication that the blip was still flying and went out of range of the radar.

There is so much conflicting information that it's impossible to know what's really going on!

[VinRouge]

if the jet were fitted with internet suite, to be honest, thats one thing that even I would not have thought to disable never mind a hijacker. If there was any sign of kerfuffle, there would have been messages all over the place, a bit similar to the phone calls made on 9/11 by passengers on the final AA jet that went in.

As to the search area, one of two options. Its either close in to the point at which contact was lost (bomb) or its on the perimeter of a big circle determined by fuel remaining and global winds, IF, and only if, its suspected the jet flew on for whatever reason. We dont have a search area the radius of the max flight range, we realistically have those 2 options. As SAR have two potential directions, again, I suspect any wreckage left post crash floating will be found once some lateral thought has been applied to the problem. Together with satellite , if there is wreckage, they will find it soon enough.

[BOAC]

Its either close in to the point at which contact was lost (bomb) or its on the perimeter of a big circle determined by fuel remaining and global winds. - or somewhere in between?

Did the retired ex-BA F/O have any theories why a hypoxic crew would turn off the transponder?

[ShenziRubani]

Evenrude

Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Debatable
Posts: 9
Tomnod search
Interesting sattelite image found on Tomnod.

Malaysia Airlines MH370 / TomNod crowd-search - CNN iReport



this is a barge with a side boat.

[xcitation]

Could you please elaborate on Hypoxia (or for that matter aircraft air supply suddenly contaminated with some kind of life ending substance). I believe this is the only angle that has not been debated to death on this forum.

Slow pinhole leaks can be as dangerous as a rapid decompression. The resulting insidious onset of hypoxia on the brain can be similar to alcohol intoxication. The effects vary by individual: impaired cognitive function, euphoria and overconfidence, lethargy or angry and un-cooperative. There are sensors and alarms to warn of loss in cabin pressure which should result in immediate action.

Helios Airways Flight 522 is a tragic example.

[DarkStar]

Did the retired ex-BA F/O have any theories why a hypoxic crew would turn off the transponder?

If I remember correctly he said ....'that's a tricky one'

[Orenda]

I have seen numerous postings about whether the Indonesian military or civilian radars saw anything of MH370. Indonesia's military radar coverage is spotty at best and non-existant in many parts of the Archipelago unless a naval vessel happens to be in the area.

[Lost in Saigon]

Slow pinhole leaks can be as dangerous as a rapid decompression. The resulting insidious onset of hypoxia on the brain can be similar to alcohol intoxication. The effects vary by individual: impaired cognitive function, euphoria and overconfidence, lethargy or angry and un-cooperative. There are sensors and alarms to warn of loss in cabin pressure which should result in immediate action.

Helios Airways Flight 522 is a tragic example.


A slow pinhole leak is only dangerous if the crew allows themselves to become distracted to the point they ignore the aircraft's automated warnings.

When the cabin altitude reaches 10,000 feet an alarm will notify the crew. At roughly 13,000 feet the passenger oxygen masks will drop.

[paultr]

@RetiredF4
Your post regarding the way military primary radar works makes perfect sense. I can imagine that the identity of commercial air traffic is appended to its related target/return. As you say, the military radar operative would know exactly what the target was that had now turned around and was flying back over his airspace.

I have some experience of using primary radar in a recreational marine environment and when you are monitoring radar 'in anger' such as thick fog it is quite easy to work out what is what after working the set for a while. The system we use for secondary radar is called AIS and all commercial traffic is tagged with name/course/speed etc. The Malaysian military radar operative would have known what all the targets on his set were - otherwise what is the point of monitoring it at all ?

I realise this is more or less a repeat of your post but I find it staggering that 5 days on, the Malaysian authorities are saying it needs further analysis.

[mixture]

I have no experience with aviation technology, but with TTE it should be possible to run Inflight Entertainment on the same network as the flight-control system.

Read the description !

TEthernet® (SAE AS6802) is a scalable, open real-time Ethernet platform used for safety-related applications primarily in transportation industries and industrial automation

TTEthernet-based solutions provide:
determinism
availability
safety
fault tolerance
security
hard real-time operation
synchronization

None of those are features you need for IFE systems. Its quite obvious from the manufacturers description what it's for !

[golfbananajam]

BBC "expert" apparently researched this a bit earlier today and the oil company operating the rig claim to have no employee of that name on that rig

Possibly another red herring

[VinRouge]

A slow pinhole leak is only dangerous if the crew allows themselves to become distracted to the point they ignore the aircraft's automated warnings.


Slow pinhole leak? Have you seen the size of the outflow valve?!

[Ian W]

A slow pinhole leak is only dangerous if the crew allows themselves to become distracted to the point they ignore the aircraft's automated warnings.

When the cabin altitude reaches 10,000 feet an alarm will notify the crew. At roughly 13,000 feet the passenger oxygen masks will drop.

Not only that but ACARS would have issued a message with the Cabin Altitude warning. This would occur before anyone was affected. No such ACARS has been admitted to.

[hogey74]

I wonder if something like this could be a factor ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)

The email from that Kiwi engineer reads pretty credibly so I took it seriously enough to plot his position on Google Earth and do some Googling on things that might affect perceptions of distance and how he reported that the burning stopped mid-air. I've wasted enough time on youtube to have noticed that nuclear explosions often seem to have strange light propagation effects. I googled the good old Min Min light and found the above effect. This situation while obviously uncertain, seems to at least not rule it out.

Just wondering if maybe the bearing is close but the distance isn't? The strong light of a bright fire bouncing off layers might account for the fact that the burning stopped mid air?

[LASJayhawk]

Is it really that ridiculous? Maybe you should look up Hugh Teso on Google and read about what he did. You might be surprised.

And, for the sceptics, he demonstrated the hack in action with real aircraft computers.

It's actually a pretty simple exploit, using ACARS to substitute data from base with data he sends from the smartphone. He was able to also heading and altitude via the exploit. He also managed to hack the ADS-B transmitter.

Any system that transmits data wirelessly can, eventually, be hacked. All it needs is access to the OS used and, eventually, the hacker will find a way in. It's a matter of 'convincing' the aircraft's systems that you're giving it the real data.


It made an impressive display, but I highly doubt you could pull it off in the real world.

While there is a "master" buss that most everything talks to, most boxes output multiple busses, some of which only go to 1 place. For example an ADIRU may have 1 talk to everyone bus, 1 that only talks to FMS 1, 1 that only talks to ADIRU 2, etc.

If the FMS sees different data from the master buss, and different data from it's protected bus, it will raise its BS flag. I have seen this real world in a Hawker, the MFD symbol generator was spitting out mismatched data, and both Universal FMS's refused to go into approach mode. (I found the fault, by pulling breakers one at a time till they went into approach mode)

Upshot is, in the real world, you could make the avionics throw a temper tantrum and give the pilots a headache, but you couldn't turn the bird into your own personal drone.

[Old Boeing Driver]

Take a look at Bloxin's very first post here. # 2370 He may be on to something.

I know the O2 bottle stuff has been discussed, but follow this.

The O2 bottle lets go, and renders transponders and comms inop. Maybe started a decompression.

The captain starts an a/p descent an hits the nearest TRN waypoint, which was shown by Tarzanboy, to be on the north end of Malaysia.

The plane turns, descends some, and tracks to TRN, then westward. The crew passes out due to no O2.

Maybe pax, cabin crew as well? Don't know where their O2 is located, or could be damaged by the original problem.

Just another set of ideas.

[GarageYears]

@ mabuhay_2000:

Which you now know is not true...

[Nightingale14]

The Telegraph correspondent in Malaysia put out a short video update earlier, pointing out that all the countries in that area are busy watching each other and carrying out naval exercises but not letting on to each other. So several countries may know more than they are letting on via local radar and shipping capabilities. Maybe this is why the Malaysian military backtracked over the radar tracking of MH370, did not want to nearby countries know their capability. Maybe also they tracked it further than they are letting on?

[givemewings]

Pax o2 on the 777 is chemically generated, (unit at each row/section) therefore should still work even if the flight deck o2 doesn't... So theoretically the masks should still drop on auto at 14000'....

[mabuhay_2000]

Actually, I have no idea whether it's true or not.

[MPN11]

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.
Thank you. You answered some of the questions I wanted to ask.

An 'event' in that underfloor equipment bay (posted earlier with a YouTube link, and with diagrams) suggests there is a lot of collocation of equipment.

Would someone with relevant expertise advise on the consequences of a major event (deliberate or accidental) in that compartment? What equipment might be disabled as a result? Consequent Cabin depressurisation? A simple list rather than a dissertation might suffice for now.

I'm specifically thinking of SSR, Comms, FD Crew oxygen. Could that allow normal Autopilot operation whilst the FD becomes incapacitated? Thus permitting the aircraft to proceed on its way (whichever that may be) until (whatever) finally destroys flight integrity? In other words, an airborne "Marie Celeste"

[despegue]

Regarding the transponder OFF reason...

One of the tasks by the PNF/FO ( company dependent) in various emergency QRH procedures, including emergency descend, is to put the Transponder to TA on a lot of types/ airlines. ( can anyone confirm this for b777?)

I have seen multiple times that the PNF in high stress situations selects the transponder from TA/RA to OFF instead of TA.

By the way, FL295 is a non normal FL, and could have been flown to avoid other traffic as described in various contingency procedures, albeit in non-radar environments.

[FlyingOfficerKite]

I will always remember talking to a female project manager who worked at GCHQ.

She said that you could be tracked when your mobile phone was switched off.

We all laughed - but later I wondered if that was in fact true?

I don't know whether you can or you can't, but the point is who knows what is possible?

I've heard stories over the years from various sources about what was possible and what they have seen done. All of this is commonplace now - but seemed like science fiction 15 years ago.

[ATC Watcher]

not been trough all the 120 pages, so bear with me if discussed before.

I am wondering if it was carrying cargo and if yes what was in that cargo.
That might give a new way to look at it ,especially if it was carrying something highly valuable.

[HighWind]

@Mixture
None of those are features you need for IFE systems. Its quite obvious from the manufacturers description what it's for !
I know, I'm familiar with use of the system in an application with SIL requirements.
This technology makes it possible to mix tree types of traffic on the same network with special network switches:
- BE: Ethernet/IEE802.3
- RC: AFDX/ARINC 664
- TT: TTEthernet/SAE AS6802
Best Effort Traffic (BE) could be used for IFE, while TT (with byzantine fault-tolerance) could be used for flight-control systems. The BE traffic class does not have safety properties, and gets the remaining bandwidth of RC and TT.

If TTTech's claims is correct it should be possible to route 'hostile' BE traffic on a network with TT SIL3 traffic. (But it might still be good to separate this in separate networks)
http://www.tttech.com/fileadmin/content/aerospace/files/secure/pdf/TTTech-TTEthernet_Aerospace.pdf

An old version of this technology (that is incompatible with std. Ethernet.) is in use on the cabin pressurization system on A380.

[nomaknatunk]

Radar slant angle has been mentioned a couple of times (maybe more). I think the effect of slant angle may have a greater significance than many think. Quick recap: Radar slant angle refers to the fact that a primary radar measures the distance from the ground up to an airborne target, not the "map" distance. This means that a falling (or rapidly descending) target may appear to move toward the radar location.

To visualize this, I did a quick simulation of what happens if an aircraft goes ballistic (literally, i.e. a ballistic trajectory from stable flight after some instant event) from FL350, and how that will look on primary military surveillance radar from the Malaysian coast (not knowing exact radar locations, I had to do some guesswork)

http://i60.tinypic.com/s1hh81.png
The plot shows what happens to the aircraft crusing at FL350 heading 25 deg, ground speed 470 kts, and then some catastrophic event happening as it passes through the lower left corner. Assuming the drag does not increase (i.e. not significant breakup of the fuselage), the A/C initially continues at the same airspeed, but then picks up a downward component (ballistic trajectory).

On the radar, as the trajectory gets more and more vertical, this looks like the A/C is turning back (the dots are 6 seconds apart, consistent with a typical military search radar's rotation rate). The last 4 returns before the A/C goes below radar horizon appear to move in the opposite direction, consistent with a stable heading of ~220 (directly toward the radar site), albeit at a low speed.

All of this assumes, of course, that the radar has no accurate means of detecting altitude at this range. And what is a highly unusual manoeuver may well be seen as a sharp turn by radar operators.

Now for the speculation: This may have caused the Malaysians to start thinking the A/C turned around, which in turn may have led to some questions to the military about why an "incoming" target was not seen again on radar, face-saving cycle begins, etc...

Bottom line: I don't think the search between Malaysia and Vietnam should be given up just yet.

[Lonewolf_50]

She said that you could be tracked when your mobile phone was switched off. We all laughed - but later I wondered if that was in fact true? I don't know whether you can or you can't, but the point is who knows what is possible?
If you don't want your cell phone to be trackable, you have to remove the battery.
Source: federal agent who goes to my church.

[GarageYears]

@ mabuhay_2000:

I've worked with computers for... hmm... all my working life, in the aviation industry, one way or another, and some things are plausible, while other not. The idea that a T7 "computer system" could be hacked is, shall we say, less likely than the idea that this aircraft was hit by a meteor in my opinion. At one point I worked on a T7 flight simulator that used the entire aircraft AIMS system avionics boxes, and despite full access to the source code, those boxes were basically impossible to interface to, other than via their intended interfaces. As you might know, one function of flight simulators is to allow certain malfunctions to be introduced, to allow fault conditions to be trained, but this was extremely difficult in this case.

[xcitation]

Slow pinhole leak? Have you seen the size of the outflow valve?!

Yes. Have you?
Are you thinking of the external cover on the fuselage - that is not the valve.
The actual valve/actuator are internal and much smaller!

[SLFplatine]

Retired F4
Perhaps it was a slow trip up the chain of command to someone authorized to initiate action and at that point the plane was over the Straits of Malacca heading west at flight level 295 at which point command may have decided it is Indonesia's problem not mine.

[TURIN]

Pax o2 on the 777 is chemically generated, (unit at each row/section) therefore should still work even if the flight deck o2 doesn't... So theoretically the masks should still drop on auto at 14000'....

Not all of them.

Some 777s have pax O2 from multiple bottles in the sidewalls of the cargo hold.

[aixois]

You wrote : " Where I asked the clearly stupid question: What were they even doing in the middle of a severe thunderstorm. I was just asking pertinent questions, IMO. "

but can you kindly (at least) read the final (actual) report :

http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/vol.af.447/presentation.rapport.final.05juillet2012.en.pdf

as it was an usual weather in the F.I.T where, from dozen of years, planes go through (and I went through by 1972 / 1978 on planes such as DC-10.30). Now I am an old retired one ....

for your information too, the final technical report is the one on the url (I put the English version for you) and there is a trial going on in France which will be before court in some months for this case.

[TURIN]

Crew O2 bottles end fittings face aft not fwd.

[bono]

One unfortunate side impact of missing 777 is that it has revealed just how pathetic military radar coverage is in the region. Nations are naturally reticent regarding what their radars can see or not, but in this case it has become apparent that Vietnam, Malaysia have at best spotty military radar coverage and poor Indonesia is not even bothering to claim any capabilities. Indians who are never shy of emphasizing just how sensitive Andaman sea is to their national security have not come forward with any radar data which they should have, had their radars been "looking" east as they claim to be.

[OleOle]

@TURIN

On the pics of the cargo bay pointed to by bloxin there is also visible damage on the "nozzle end" of the exploded oxygen bottle. Of course this damage may be more a result of decompression than of the explosion itself.

On the other hand if the thread of the bottle fails, the outlet connector and the valve would give a pretty good projectile. Here is a picture of that potential projectile.

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/336528-qantas-744-depressurisation-35.html#post4297606

[Old Boeing Driver]

That's somewhat of the direction I was going.

I doubt they crew forgot, or were unable to don their masks.

They probably got them on, but had no O2.

In the meantime, they selected a lower altitude and a point to navigate to, then passed out.

There seem to be some variables as to how crew and PAX O2 setups are arranged.

[KingAir1978]

Lost in Saigon, that would depend on how long the descent took... Maybe they kept the same speed due to structural failure, they would then descend at let's say 2500 fpm? It would take them a good 10 minutes...

[phil gollin]

I ASSUME that Boeing and Rolls-Royce have representatives with whichever organisation is in charge of the incident investigation ?

Does the FAA also have have representatives there ?

And, again, does anyone know the nominal duration of the Sonar locator beacons ?

Thanks

[Old Boeing Driver]

That's not necessarily true. If the descent was very slow, and high altitudes maintained a long time, they would not wake up.

Also, the latest is that they remained at 29,500

Without O2 there, they would not wake up.

If the crew rolled off a few thousand feet in the altitude select and got the plane startd down, that's when they MAY have passed out.

[Monsun]

As one of the possibilities in this case has to be pilot action, I seem to recall that the captain had a simulator at his house. Would it be possible that the software on this could show what flight profiles the pilot had been practicing?

[Blondie2005]

Humble Pax here, sorry if this post has no place here, I do respect leaving it to the experts on here generally. However, I am absolutely flabbergasted that my phone and tablet can be tracked by GPS if they go astray, but according to an article on the BBC planes cannot, and black boxes cannot. Sorry if I have misunderstood and mods of course please delete if this is an unhelpful/useless post.

BBC article (http://http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-26544554)

[xgjunkie]

Good grief.

I and others have said quite some time back that this plane caught fire in such a way, rapidly and severely that it overwhelmed the crew eventually.

We now have a rig worker claiming to have seen an aircraft near its track on fire at the time of disappearance and yet people on here still keep going on about depressurisation, hijacking, terrorism and mobile f***ing phones!

I believe you will find this aircraft went into the sea within 10nm of track relatively intact but probably near vertically and at high speed.
There will be very little left.

See Valujet 592 for an almost exact replay.

And before the pedants say yes but Valujet talked to Atc, yes they did but not every major fire sequence starts the same way and yes it is entirely possible for all communications to be interrupted by fire before the reporting systems were aware of it.

Quite some posts back somebody suggested that they knew this flight was loaded with a large cargo quantity of Lithium batteries? Is that correct?

[Aisle2c]

Apologies if this has been answered already.
When the flight lost contact at 1.30am, it was tracked on primary radar for a further 70 mins. #


With all this military/airforce, have the Malaysians been asked if they scrambled military aircraft to intercept the unidentified flight which actually flew over the peninsula ? If not, why not ?

[FREDAcheck]

Quote:
If you think that man has built a computer system than cannot be hacked, given enough effort and determination, you are deluded.
I have a lot more experience than you do in the IT industry my friend. Please don't try to teach granny how to suck eggs.

As Bruce Schneier put it (he's one of the world's top security gurus): "Any competent security expert can build a system so secure that he or she cannot think of any way of hacking it." But someone else will.

Even if the system isn't connected to anything else, it can be hacked by manufacture/maintenance/user subversion. The most dangerous security error is to imagine your system can't be hacked.

[SLFinAZ]

Lot of misinformation regarding what a "hack" actually is. The ability to secure root access is largely a function of a true operating system allowing you to reach a command prompt that will accept an executable file. On a system like an avionics "computer" you have a fundamentally different purpose and architecture entirely. As mentioned by those with an intimate working knowledge even with full access and source code the system is not easy to manipulate.


Certainly not an expert but I'd wager very few entities have the combination of specific system knowledge and expertise to accomplish this, basically it would take major resources at a governmental level.


The real question is would access enable someone with lesser experience to degrade or destroy the system or interfere with the genuine inputs in such a way as to render the system inoperable. This is entirely different then actually hacking the system.

[Old Boeing Driver]

According to governments monitoring the area with sophisticated satellites watching for flashes, explosions, etc....none seen

The scenario is possible that the plane came apart with no fireball and is near where you say.

Never has been a verification about batteries. Just questions

I just don't think so.

[calippl]

FREDAcheck, as an IT professional I agree completely with that statement.

Some systems are more robust than others but none anr beyond compromise. As you correctly stated the human who build these systems are a security risk/weak point in their own right.

[Lost in Saigon]

Lost in Saigon, that would depend on how long the descent took... Maybe they kept the same speed due to structural failure, they would then descend at let's say 2500 fpm? It would take them a good 10 minutes...

"If the aircraft descended to FL100 the crew and all the passengers would have recovered from the effects of hypoxia"

Even a slow descent to FL100 would be recoverable.

What part of that is incorrect?

[Rain dog]

Has the recording of supposed contact with the Naritan bound pilot been examined?
From my understanding this has not been convincingly ruled out as a vital piece of evidence.
Why?

[mover625]

Start with a circle centered on KUL and radius A/C endurance.
Now eliminate areas covered by other states civil radar if they confirm no radar trace.
Do the same for other states military radar.
Ask neighbouring states for any reports of A/C wreckage reports on land. This is not a sparsely populated area.
Continue in this vein until most likely area for search established.

An empirical method like this is more likely to produce a result than grasping at straws of 'possible turns' or 'fire in the sky' reports.
At the moment it seems the Malaysian authorities are jumping to solutions and that's never a good thing to do.

[LASJayhawk]

even more ominous thought. What if the hijackers need an airplane for some terrorist mission. Possibly something as horrible as loading a nuke on the plane and flying it into some city. That would also explain why no one has claimed the hijacking, they would want to keep this quite until their plan is carried out.

I just can't see that as a possibility. Just grabbed a trade a plane and looked. B747-200 combi $2 million US. Last time I looked 727's were going for under $250K. I would think that anyone that could come up with a nuke would have the scratch to just go buy a plane, and not draw the attention a hijacking would bring.

[MG23]

However, I am absolutely flabbergasted that my phone and tablet can be tracked by GPS if they go astray, but according to an article on the BBC planes cannot, and black boxes cannot.

Your tablet can't be tracked if the wi-fi is turned off. Your phone can't be tracked if it's in 'airplane mode'. Neither can be tracked if they're 2,000m underwater.

Similarly, you can't track an aircraft by ADS if it's not sending ADS messages anywhere, due to transmitter failure or whatever. Had they continued sending ADS messages, we'd already know where they were to within a few tens of miles.

[FlyingOfficerKite]

If you don't want your cell phone to be trackable, you have to remove the battery.
Source: federal agent who goes to my church.

Hmmm ... thought so - last time I'll question what a woman tells me, no matter how ridiculous it seems!!! LOL

[mixture]

As Bruce Schneier put it (he's one of the world's top security gurus): "Any competent security expert can build a system so secure that he or she cannot think of any way of hacking it." But someone else will.

Even if the system isn't connected to anything else, it can be hacked by manufacture/maintenance/user subversion. The most dangerous security error is to imagine your system can't be hacked.

Yes I know who Bruce Schneier is, and yes I agree with the general statement that nothing is unhackable given enough time.

However the basic sanity test of viability still very much puts WiFi / remote control of a Boeing 777 firmly into the Hollywood fiction category. I doubt Mr Schneier would disagree with me there.

[Lonewolf_50]

I ASSUME that Boeing and Rolls-Royce have representatives with whichever organisation is in charge of the incident investigation ?
Yes. It was so reported in the news. (Boeing, Not sure of RR).
Does the FAA also have have representatives there ?
NTSB has a team either on the way or already there. Also reported in the press.
And, again, does anyone know the nominal duration of the Sonar locator beacons ?
The acoustic beacons should last about 30 days underwater. You can find info about them here (http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/pdf/na68-7.pdf).

EDIT:
More info on TSO-C121 spec beacons here ....
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-03-05/html/2012-5213.htm
http://estock.aviall.com/pdf/catpage/1991.pdf
http://www.sea-avionics.com/lc/cart.php?target=productDetails&model=DK-100&substring=DK-100

[calippl]

"Yes I know who Bruce Schneier is, and yes I agree with the general statement that nothing is unhackable given enough time.

However the basic sanity test of viability still very much puts WiFi / remote control of a Boeing 777 firmly into the Hollywood fiction category. I doubt Mr Schneier would disagree with me there."

mixture, what you say here is true however, a hacker doesn't have to take control of the aircraft to cause an incident.

They could just target specific components of the system (for example disable comms) and cause an accident without actually trying to fly the aircraft.

[VinRouge]

worth pointing out pax oxy pointless above about 25k.

[INTEL101]

Maybe not, but laptop based scanning & sniffing tools will soon expose open ports and capture and analyze traffic going in & out of the server including interfacing app ID's and passwords (even if encrypted). Non-mainstream O/S's did not stop Flame or Stuxnet which were specially crafted to target SCADA systems. It is not beyond the bounds of probability that sooner or later the bad actors will figure out how to craft malware that has been specifically tailored to interface with aircraft borne servers such as the T7.

The prospect of Windows like O/S's being used on the 787 and A340's is even more scary.

[Lost in Saigon]

worth pointing out pax oxy pointless above about 25k.

Please explain what you mean.....

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/msowsun/photo%20stuff/Photo14/Clipboard02a-1.jpg~original

[SeenItAll]

This news report states that Malaysian Airlines does receive ACARS data from its Boeing jets, but that it declined to have these data shared with Boeing. Further, it cites Malaysian Airlines as stating that it received no ACARS data from the missing jet.
Malaysian Air Said to Opt Out of Boeing Plan to Share Jets? Data - Yahoo Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/malaysian-air-said-opt-boeing-021431881.html)

Of course the problem with this whole situation is that other than for knowing that the jet has not landed at any major airport, we are sure of absolutely nothing else about this flight. So much has been stated and retracted, nothing can be relied upon.

[wiggy]

truckflyer (and it seems others)

From I recall in decompression you should switch TA/RA to TA - is it not plausible that in error they instead put transponder into STBY mode?


No, that's not in the Boeing procedure for a rapid descent.

General point and as I believe has been stated - on some 777's (if not all, customer option's and all that) the passenger oxygen is supplied from bottles located under cabin floor and aft of the wing.

[LASJayhawk]

PA28Viking AND then my question is: Would there still be logs of that aircraft-DME communication?

DME is a very old system. All the ground station does is listen for a pulse pair and sent out a reply after a fixed delay (50uS for X channel 56uS for Y channel) it has no idea what interrogated it.

[Lost in Saigon]

It is not pressurized oxygen, which is needed above 25,000 feet to get into your lungs.

So you are saying the B777 does not have the correct Pax O2 masks?

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/msowsun/photo%20stuff/Photo14/Clipboard02a-1.jpg~original

[SteveZRH]

I will not add anything to the speculations on this thread, and I am for sure not suspecting that computer security issues are the source of the problem.

I am not a pilot, but I am an active researcher in the area of computer security, and I want to add my two cents. While it may be science fiction to think of a plane being remotely controlled by an attacker, the possibility of vulnerabilities allowing for serious damage to a modern aircraft is a serious possibility.

Our community has been very successful in surfacing a number of vulnerabilities in modern cars. It is for instance possible to seriously endanger the safety of the occupants by using the embedded GSM connection used for diagnostics by car manufacturers. Similarly, the brakes could be disabled via the audio system. These and many more attacks have been widely documented in the academic research community (and tested on actual cars): Some more information can for example be found on the webpage of a joint research group established by the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego -- cf. CAESS - Home (http://www.autosec.org/index.html)

With airplanes being far more complex systems, it would be pretentious to expect the absence of vulnerabilities. The only barrier preventing us from finding security issues is the simple unfeasibility of obtaining a whole 777 to play with, rendering it unusable via different types of attacks. But the consensus is certainly that there has been a lack of interaction between the computer security community and the aviation industry -- add to this the fact that the 777 is an older design (in IT years) and we learnt so much about security vulnerabilities over the last 15 years.

Overall, I would never confidently claim such vulnerabilities do not exist, as such claims have always proved themselves wrong in the past. The car industry made at first similar claims, but has in the meanwhile undergone massive investments to improve the situation after the above attacks have been exhibited 4 years ago.

Hope this puts things into perspective a bit better.

[isca]

Quote:
Satellites can be hacked, missiles can be hacked, cars can be hacked, ATMs can be hacked. ANYTHING computer based can be hacked.
Not strictly true at all. I have a fairly old car. It has an engine management computer. It cannot be hacked. Why not? It has NO external interface, except for a single WIRED connector. It cannot be reprogrammed through this connector. The only way to re-program it is to replace the internal EPROM with another. Sure there are NEWER engine management computers in newer cars, that have DIFFERENT architectures, that may not be so robust...

My point is it is NOT true that ANYTHING with a computer in it can be hacked. Only systems with open interfaces can. Some of the most unhackable computers are old MS-DOS machines (remember 386 CPUs. eh!), with NO Ethernet or similar network interface. Hack that.

I've worked with the T7 avionics....

Yes you are right you cannot reprogam an eprom without removing it because you have to UV erase it, and the eprom essentially is the computer in a simple bit of kit.
However we have progressed most modern ECU use an FPGA which is reprogram in situ and these have been in common use for over 10 yrs. If the aircraft system didn't have them originally you can bet it has been upgrade because program changes become quicker and cheaper than box swapping.

Now that means there is an external access to them so plugging into the PC port or wireless may well make hacking possible.

I subscribe to the belief if you can build it someone will hack it, look at the so say secure financial systems that have been hacked. To see IT guys believing that a system is unhackable is frightening with it's complacency. Do you remember stuxnet?

[mixture]

They could just target specific components of the system (for example disable comms) and cause an accident without actually trying to fly the aircraft.


Well, sure they could perhaps do something to something.

But how much could they do to safety critical systems ? I suspect the numbers plummet dramatically, if not to zero.

How much could they do to safety critical systems that the flight crew could not overrule by flicking a switch or pulling a CB ? I suspect the number is exactly zero.

[Ka6crpe]

Lost in Saigon, Unless you have been trained in high altitude breathing then even if you are receiving oxygen, you still wont be able to breathe. At high altitude you must consciously inhale and exhale, there is insufficient air pressure for your body to exhale automatically.


Think of the acclimatisation periods required by climbers ascending Everest, they are training their bodies to breathe with reduced air pressure.

[isca]

back on page 112 DYE wrote in post 2234 (now 2230)

Checked FR24 at 07 MAR 2014 - 18:10 UTC (08 MAR 2014 02:10 local time)

FR24 shows SQ68 FL300 SIN - BCN B777W approx 200 miles north-west of Penang.

I have tried to reproduce this using flt SQ68 and MH370 and can't anyone else tried

Going to very embarassing if this is true

[jugofpropwash]

As fr a standby list on a plane that appears not to be full- it is possible they were operating a restricted passenger load due to cargo/weight restrictions. Any T7 drivers care to comment?

My lot do this regularly but it is usually on much longer routes...

There still has been no release of a cargo manifest, correct?

[wiggy]

worth pointing out pax oxy pointless above about 25k.

Must admit I thought (from AvMed lectures at North Luffenham in my fast pointy aircraft days ...) that you can breath pure oxygen oxygen at ambient pressure at up in the high 30,000's of feet....not to be recommended I'm sure but the partial pressure was enough to ensure survival....

The unpressurised 25K limit was, I thought, due to issues with decompression "sickness"...

[mixture]

secure financial systems that have been hacked. To see IT guys believing that a system is unhackable is frightening with it's complacency. Do you remember stuxnet?

There is somewhat a bit of a difference between aircraft systems and financial systems. Financial systems are not safety critical, you won't kill anyone if someone gets into a bank account.... so the ultimate design goals are very different.

And a difference between aircraft systems and stuxnet. You only need to go read up a bit on stuxnet to realise how "special" it was for many reasons (i.e. highly likely to be a well funded, "western" government project with specific targets in mind that they had evidently done much research on before). A LOT of money and manpower went into stuxnet .... more than any tewwowist organisation could ever dream of !

I'm not saying aircraft systems are invincible, I'm just saying its utterly ludicrous to say someone can get 100% remote control over an aircraft, even more so in a manner that the flight crew can't overrule. The chance of an aircraft being hit by a meteorite is far more likely !

[givemewings]

Wiggy, it definitely seems like a customer option. Every Boeing I've ever worked on (737, 767, 777) has had a fixed chemical system, another poster pointed out that some have bottled.

In my outfit they are chemically generated.

I was under the impression that bottles were an add-on option for airlines who mainly fly through high terrain alts on a regular basis (i.e. QF 747s to UK) Seems I was wrong on that.

But it's definitely varying between operators because mine uses individual generators. They are also one of the largest 777 operators so this may have something to do with it

[Lonewolf_50]

So you are saying the B777 does not have the correct Pax O2 masks?
No! 777 has to have compliant masks or FAA would never have certified them.
Go play your games with someone else.

[Old Boeing Driver]

Unless the National Reconnaissance Office or the DOD itself whose SBIRS satellites are lying to us, just not saying, there were no flashes, explosions, or bright lights in the area being discussed at the time being discussed.

[Lost in Saigon]

Lost in Saigon, Unless you have been trained in high altitude breathing then even if you are receiving oxygen, you still wont be able to breathe. At high altitude you must consciously inhale and exhale, there is insufficient air pressure for your body to exhale automatically.


Think of the acclimatisation periods required by climbers ascending Everest, they are training their bodies to breathe with reduced air pressure.

If what you say is true, why are airliners required to have passenger oxygen?

[rigbyrigz]

Andrew Stevens in Malaysia just reported on CNN that the police there have gone to the pilot's home and his simulator was examined by experts. No news on what was found, if anything, of interest.

(Police there are busy, now also just interviewing the friend of the 2 Iranian fake passport PAX)

[isca]

Hypothetical by Bloxin page 119 #2370
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.

This is the only hypothesis I have seen that gives a feasible single source failure that could cause all of the electronics failures and fire and/or decompression.

Assuming of course the crew bottles are aligned fore and aft not vertical

[LASJayhawk]

Just to clarify what Yancey posted. The spacing between the 2 pulses sent be the DME is fixed (12 uS in X and 30 or 36uS in Y Y I can remember the Y spacing from the aircraft...I'm old and forgetful) but the timing between the pairs being sent out is somewhat random. In general a single channel DME interrogates the ground station a little over 100 times a second till it locks on, then 23 times a second thereafter.

[awblain]

At high-altitude - above about 30,000 feet - you need to have pressure, and not just funny diaphragm things going on, or you'll die. You don't breathe by atmospheric pressure - not at sea level and not higher up. Given sea level atmospheric pressure is equivalent to a water column of 10m, even 5% of that is quite adequate to fill your lungs.

Pressure and oxygen content both need to be adequate: if the pressure drops quickly while you're full of nitrogen, you can get the bends too.

[Tim Hamilton]

In what may yet be a critical issue in the disappearance of MH370, Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya could not last night (12 March) confirm that a vital airworthiness directive concerning metal fatigue cracks had been carried out on the missing Boeing 777-200.
Were it not for the airworthiness directive concerning possible fuselage failure points on older 777s, it would probably never have been given a second glance.

It could be that Ahmad Jauhari was simply unprepared for the question as to Malaysia Airlines’ compliance with the airworthiness directive, and that the checks and any necessary repairs stipulated by Boeing had in fact been carried out before the jet that operated MH370 took off.
Or, it might be that this work wasn't done, or done properly, with terrible consequences for the 239 people on the missing 777-200.
It is a question that Malaysia Airlines should answer. - Plane talking.

Full piece here Malaysia Airlines CEO unsure if vital repairs done to MH370 | Plane Talking (http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2014/03/13/malaysia-airlines-ceo-unsure-if-vital-repairs-done-to-mh370)

[VinRouge]

tell you what, anyone who thinks you can sustain 40k continously on an unpressurised emergency oxy system needs to read the books again. time of useful conciousness without pressure breathing at that level is not particularly long...

[Backseat Dane]

Re: Oxygen - there's a world of difference between what's "enough" for the PAX and what's enough for the crew. The PAX merely has to be kept alive semi conscious without the risk of brain damage until a safe altitude has been reached where the oxygen masks will work for sure, while the crew has to be in a state in which it can carry out it's duties (is the flight deck O2 supply under pressure or flowing free?) At least that's what I'd be thinking as an engineer designing the systems.

No need for the O2 partial pressure for the PAX to be high enough to keep them alive at 40.000 ft for a sustained amount of time (i.e. under pressure) - if the plane's descending at 3000 ft/m it'll reach an altitude where the partial pressure of O2 will be high enough to ensure survival for all but the the weakest relatively fast. If the crew's incapacitated at that altitude then the flight will be doomed anyway.

[Lonewolf_50]

If what you say is true, why are airliners required to have passenger oxygen?
To breath in an emergency.

[Ka6crpe]

Lost in Saigon, On any flight where depressurisation occurs an emergency descent is likely to get the aircraft down to an altitude where the passengers will be able to breathe with the aid of the masks. On large aircraft there are bound to be a few passengers who have taken an hypoxia course at some stage in their life, even if it was more than 40 years ago.


I give my wife an additional safety briefing over and above the one given bt the CC. I tell her that if the masks fall, get it on asap, breathe in normally, then immediately exhale fully. Breathe in normally, but forcibly exhale.


It should only take about 10 - 15 breaths before the aircraft is down to an altitude where normal breathing is possible.

[MPN11]

Could it be helpful to focus on what might have happened to the aircraft somewhere NE of KL, instead if endless debate on SAR issues,or diversions on pax breathing advice? That expertise is not necessarily located in R&N, although there are some here who can contribute.

IMHO, the former might possibly lead to the latter. In other words, start at the beginning, instead of charging off in all directions and making this thread almost incomprehensible?

I believe we should be covering all bases, but please avoid a high-sprited chase down random alleys. If PPRuNe can be helpful, it's proclaimed professional focus would be a strength. Random chat isn't doing that.

[Chronus]

In our hitech world of today, where military sats in their geo stationary orbits around the planet and sophisticated radar heads covering every avaiable square foot of terrain can spot even a mozzie on the loose, with the seas patrolled with nuke subs and sewn with sonoboys that can hear a flatus of a mariner at a distance of 50 miles, how can it be possible for your every day , run of the mill variety type airliner to go into stealth mode for so long. That is what puzzles me most.

[Ida down]

Tim Hamilton, it would be handy to know, when that aircraft last had a D check. And at 14 years, she would have had a couple, and what were the results of her last D check.

[Weary]

VinRouge wrote;
What if they were already on the flight deck?
Still very iffy methinks. As soon as the flight crew reached for their quick-donning masks, so would the hijacker - for every flight deck jump seat there is a corresponding mask, and the pilots would not be able to disable them in-flight.
Plus, to depressurise the aircraft, you would either have to turn off the aircon packs or engine bleed valves (slow decompression), or deselect the automated system and manually drive the outflow valve open (depressurise as fast as you like).
Whilst I fly 767s and not 777s, so the details are likely a little different, but the basic system architecture would be pretty much the same. Playing with the aircon/pressurisation system on the overhead panel is not going to go unnoticed by the highjacker who would be watching the pilots like a hawk.
Any triple 7 chaps reading please do confirm or correct.

[NamelessWonder]

Isca
back on page 112 DYE wrote in post 2234 (now 2230)

Quote:
Checked FR24 at 07 MAR 2014 - 18:10 UTC (08 MAR 2014 02:10 local time)

FR24 shows SQ68 FL300 SIN - BCN B777W approx 200 miles north-west of Penang.
I have tried to reproduce this using flt SQ68 and MH370 and can't anyone else tried

Going to very embarassing if this is true Yes, it is possible, though it appears on FR24 as "SIA68"

There are, however anomalies with the data as presented - for an example, set the time to 17.00 on March 7 and watch what KAL672 (and the neighbouring CCA970) do whilst MAS370 is heading for the Malaysian coast. Perhaps anomalies are to be expected, given that this is unofficial data, but to see 2 reciprocal tracks in the surrounding area of the event under question, AND within a few minutes of the disappearance seems somewhat . . . . odd! :confused:

Bear in mind you will not see MAS370 heading NW of Penang as (allegedly) it's transponder is off and therefore there is no ADS-B data to superimpose on this image.

[Edmund Spencer]

The hand over on this route is usually KL to Singapore on VHF followed by a short period on Singapore HF/CPDLC followed by a hand off to Saigon on VHF. The communications and ATC are, in my experience (25 years) usually excellent.
Singapore Radio on HF 8942 is one of the better in the region.
Of course, we don't usually keep a listening watch on HF as mostly we use HF Selcal. However, any distress call on VHF 121.5 would have been heard by any aircraft in the area.
Even at that time of night there are dozens of aircraft on that airway. If an emergency transmission was made it must have been heard by someone!
An absolutely catastrophic flight deck event IMHO.

[dsc810]

FYI the UK glider altitude record is just under 39000ft.
Whether this was done with a constant flow O2 system or a diluter-demand system I've no idea - but is was not using any form of pressure breathing O2 equipment or suit.

My own system says that it is rated up to 40000ft

[severidian]

ADS-C and CPDLC used in this region ???

[SLFgeek]

The radio horizon at 35,000 ft is about 230 nm for a ground ATC. At its last reported position, this plane was beyond the Line of Sight (LOS) radio horizon for all ATC systems and ground radio.
For VHF/UHF I agree. For HF comms, there should have been much longer range/coverage. Question is, was there any guard channel on HF, in that part of the globe, that would been monitored.

[isca]

Ok Mixture, now the statement is clearly qualified I am happy.

I was not suggesting aircraft hackers could use stuxnet, merely pointing out with determination (and resources) anything is possible.

I would not think it beyond the ability of a well financed terrorist group to invent a hack that allows them to disable an aircraft comms/electronics, maybe even screw autopilot and fly by wire (you can't pull every breaker or you can't fly it manually.

I agree a bit far to fly it from your seat or the toilets.

[threemiles]

The hand over on this route is usually KL to Singapore on VHF followed by a short period on Singapore HF/CPDLC followed by a hand off to Saigon on VHF. The communications and ATC are, in my experience (25 years) usually excellent.
Singapore Radio on HF 8942 is one of the better in the region.
Of course, we don't usually keep a listening watch on HF as mostly we use HF Selcal. However, any distress call on VHF 121.5 would have been heard by any aircraft in the area.
Even at that time of night there are dozens of aircraft on that airway. If an emergency transmission was made it must have been heard by someone!
An absolutely catastrophic flight deck event IMHO.

You fly elsewhere. The airspace of that route in SIN FIR is delegated to Lumpur and the handover is directly from Lumpur to HCM on VHF.

[bille1319]

In our hitech world of today, where military sats in their geo stationary orbits around the planet and sophisticated radar heads covering every avaiable square foot of terrain can spot even a mozzie on the loose, with the seas patrolled with nuke subs and sewn with sonoboys that can hear a flatus of a mariner at a distance of 50 miles, how can it be possible for your every day , run of the mill variety type airliner to go into stealth mode for so long. That is what puzzles me most



Probably because the hi res surveillance satellites as used by defence agencies were not operating over this part of the eastern block at the time of the incident and the best images are taken in good daylight.

[mm43]

Ntsb updates statement on missing b-777 investigationmarch 12, 2014
national transportation safety board investigators who traveled to kuala lumpur over the weekend are assisting malaysian authorities who are leading the search efforts for the boeing 777 that went missing five days ago.

Investigators with expertise in air traffic control and radar are providing technical assistance to the malaysian authorities who are working on locating the missing jetliner.

The ntsb plans no further releases of information on the investigation.

[threemiles]

Quote:
Originally Posted by michael0658 View Post
The radio horizon at 35,000 ft is about 230 nm for a ground ATC. At its last reported position, this plane was beyond the Line of Sight (LOS) radio horizon for all ATC systems and ground radio.
For VHF/UHF I agree. For HF comms, there should have been much longer range/coverage. Question is, was there any guard channel on HF, in that part of the globe, that would been monitored.

IGARI is well inside ATC VHF coverage of Lumpur, there may be a small occasional gap (a few minutes) until HCM can be reached.

However, which has not been pointed out anywhere, there is not necessarily VHF coverage for ACARS as SITA and ARINC do not provide full coverage. As Boeing Health Management via SATCOM was not subscribed (most major airlines do not do that due to costs), the airplane was most probably out of ACARS range.

[ve3id]

Almost the same wording was used in the documents relating to the design of the 787. I use this document in a college course I teach in systems integration. However, they were published effective 2008 -02-01 for the 787. Why so much later for the 777? Was this in response to some incident?

Here is what they said about the 787...



SUMMARY: These special conditions are
issued for the Boeing Model 787–8
airplane. This airplane will have novel
or unusual design features when
compared to the state of technology
envisioned in the airworthiness
standards for transport category
airplanes. These novel or unusual
design features are associated with
connectivity of the passenger domain
computer systems to the airplane
critical systems and data networks. For
these design features, the applicable
airworthiness regulations do not contain
adequate or appropriate safety standards
for protection and security of airplane
systems and data networks against
unauthorized access.

[OPENDOOR]

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.

Assuming this hypothetical situation happened, what would follow?

Aircraft continues on autopilot maintaining heading and FL set until fuel exhaustion at which point 1st then 2nd engine stops. What sort of descent would ensue? I assume the autopilot doesn't stick the nose down and trim for best glide.

[Edmund Spencer]

in an absolute emergency you will transmit on the VHF frequency in use.
For example, these people would possibly have been directed as follows:
"Contact Singapore Radio on 8942".
However, they would have maintained their previous VHF frequency on their ACP. (Audio Control Panel) Most probably Singapore VHF.
On this route we usually hear Singapore VHF almost up until we contact Saigon on VHF. (Depending on your altitude)

[TwoHeadedTroll]

In fact the same article states that pressurised breathing is only required over 40,000 feet:

Oxygen Delivery Systems
Continuous flow.
This system delivers a continuous flow of oxygen from the storage
container. It is a very economical system in that it doesn’t need complicated masks
or regulators to function. But it is also very wasteful—the flow of oxygen is constant
whether you’re inhaling, exhaling, or pausing in between breaths. This system is typically
used at 28,000 feet and lower.

Diluter demand.
The diluter demand system is designed to compensate for the short-comings of the continuous-
flow system. It gives the user oxygen on-demand (during inhalation) and stops the flow when the demand ceases (during exhalation). This helps conserve oxygen. Additionally, the incoming oxygen is diluted with cabin air and provides the proper percentage of oxygen, depending on the altitude. This system is typically used at altitudes up to 40,000 feet.


Pressure demand.
This system provides oxygen under positive pressure. Positive pressure is a forceful oxygen flow that is intended to slightly over-inflate the lungs. This will, in a sense, pressurize the lungs to a lower altitude, thus allowing you to fly at altitudes above 40,000 feet, where 100%
oxygen without positive pressure will not suffice.

[andre1990]

Apparently the Chinese have just released satelite images showing debris floating in the ocean.

Seen the shots on the news - not 100% sure but worth finding these objects...

[barrel_owl]

There are, however anomalies with the data as presented - for an example, set the time to 17.00 on March 7 and watch what KAL672 (and the neighbouring CCA970) do whilst MAS370 is heading for the Malaysian coast. Perhaps anomalies are to be expected, given that this is unofficial data, but to see 2 reciprocal tracks in the surrounding area of the event under question, AND within a few minutes of the disappearance seems somewhat . . . . odd!
Can you please elaborate?
Which exactly is the anomaly you see with KAL672 and CCA970 at that time?

[Weary]

Finally - BBC reporting that Chinese officials have released satellite photos of what they claim are large floating objects in the South China Sea - east of last known position.
I must say the photos look fairly promising, albeit not good news.

[Troo believer]

Not sure if already discussed but did they have CPDLC capability and were they logged on?

[Old Boeing Driver]

Early posts indicate this part of the world is watched by the satellites constantly.

[VinRouge]

do civil airliners not have a big red do not flick depress switch that does the packs off outflow valve stuff for you? my type has one on the centre console next to auto/semi/man selections and is one of the biggies not to miss on preflight checks.

[threemiles]

There is no CPDLC with Lumpur and HCM.

[MPN11]

Barrel_owl ... The likelihood of China revealing its overhead imagery capability online is minimal.

Please consult Google Earth instead. :p

[Lost in Saigon]

How high could a 777 actually fly? If for what ever reason, the aircraft was climbing, how high could it physically go before (presumably) a structure failure?

Would radar contact etc be lost if the aircraft went above a certain height?



43,100 is the certified maximum altitude, but it could fly higher. There would not be structural failure. It would simply stop climbing at the limit of its performance for the power and weight. There is also a possibility of the wing stalling or aerodynamic buffet due to the speed of the air flowing over the wings.

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_corner_(aviation)

Radar contact would not be lost at high altitude.

[Lost in Saigon]

Assuming this hypothetical situation happened, what would follow?

Aircraft continues on autopilot maintaining heading and FL set until fuel exhaustion at which point 1st then 2nd engine stops. What sort of descent would ensue? I assume the autopilot doesn't stick the nose down and trim for best glide.

The autopilot would not be able to maintain the desired flight path and would then automatically disconnect. At that point the aircraft would be uncontrolled and would eventually crash.

[NamelessWonder]

BarrelOwl
Can you please elaborate?
Which exactly is the anomaly you see with KAL672 and CCA970 at that time?At 16.55, KAL672 previously heading 054, turns to an apparent heading of 234 for a full 10 mins (until 17.05). It then Reverts to a heading of 041 before racing across the page (presumably in some sort of data catch-up). At all points in between, the data reports its heading as 234, which, if FA24 is to be believed, is data coming from the ADS-B transponder, itself reflecting the GPS coordinates of the aircraft.

CCA970 "appears" to do something similar for approx 2 mins at 17.01

Presumably this is corrupt/misinterpreted data, but perhaps goes to show just how (in)accurate FR24 is. Perhaps something else is going on - your guess is as good as mine, what that might be.

[VinRouge]

the sat recon birds which were alluded to are typically on very high apogees, and may (or may not) work in the visible spectrum.

geostationary is pointless for a recon sat (unless its a weather bird) as you can only take a picture of a limited area. so unless you want to look at a particular area constantly for a long time, most of the sorts,of assets that would be useful would be non geostationary.

[DB64]

Memories seem to be very short, hull losses over ocean are very rare and in two of the most recent it was some time before wreckage was found. It is also worth remembering that it took 22 months to locate AF447 on the ocean floor, despite the location being very close to its last known position.

[Chronus]

What is the B777-200ER`s endurance/range at 10,000 feet, at say 75% MTOW.

[Old Boeing Driver]

You may be correct, but a couple of thousand posts ago, so very knowledgeable posters were very sure the area was watched 24/7, especially watching for flashes (missiles), etc., etc.

There have been no other sea, ground, or air witnesses to any type of explosion or fireball.

[Old Boeing Driver]

Early posts indicated they would burn 50% more at 10K.

That would have given MH370 a 3 to 4 hour range at that altitude at a TAS of about 340Kts.

[Old Boeing Driver]

As I recall form when this first started, the ocean is about 30 to 100M deep.

Retrieval would be possible

[Interested Passenger]

IF you had excellent radar coverage, or satellite images of a neighbours territory, but didn't want to reveal that, maybe using a shaman to reveal the location of the wreckage would be one way of doing it.

[jcjeant]

Hi,

It is also worth remembering that it took 22 months to locate AF447 on the ocean floor, despite the location being very close to its last known position.

This is normal
The zone near the last know position was the first zone investigated but with no good search devices ..
Two years later they find it because the US investigation company used good devices ....

[hamster3null]

It's time to summarize again.

* All transponders were lost or shut down in the middle of Gulf of Thailand, at N6.92 E103.58, at 1:20 local time.

* No debris related to the plane were found anywhere near the spot.

* Shortly thereafter (~1:45), multiple witnesses saw a large plane flying at low altitude above Kota Bharu, 90 NM southwest of last known location.

* Shortly after that (~2:15), Malaysian air force reports tracking an unidentified radar target at FL295 in Malacca Strait off the coast of Phuket, 320 NM west-northwest of last known location.

* We know about a report by a Kiwi rig worker who saw a burning plane. He is unsure about the range, but his observation puts the plane roughly at N8.3 E107.5, or 250 NM east-northeast of last known location.

* Chinese satellites picked up large floating objects at N6.7 E105.63, or 120 NM east-southeast of last known location.

[xcitation]

Having read the Mike McKay eye witness email it appears to fit with the scant info we know. He would not at the time be able to see the a/c (night) or have known its flight path. Seeing a cruise altitude flame trail would I think be possible given dark, clear skies and if he had his night vision.
A 10-15 second time frame makes it sound like a single catastrophic failure took the a/c down which would agree with the total lack of comms. This is probably the best (only?) available evidence so hopefully they will trawl/sonar the reported area.
Given that his identity has been released it is unlikely to be a hoax.

[LASJayhawk]

I hope the latest news leads to finding the aircraft. Honestly, as scattered as the search has been so far, they are about as likely to find Amelia Earhart as the 777. :{

[VinRouge]

if i were a betting man, the chinese naval exercise around taiwan may have already picked up a pinger from the fdr. as alluded to, it looks as if the chinese know where it is, as the organisation they used to release the sat pics is probably state run.

matter of time before they find the wreckage.

[hamster3null]

With the SAT images posted on the always well informed avherald, China shows both its irritation and supremacy, albeit with respectable restraint. Under the guise of the Chinese science services, some low res pictures are shown for where exactly to look. No doubt our friends already know beyond doubt that this is where things ended up, because they surely have high res pics from other native sources than the science ones..... Good show ! It would make sense, after total comms/energy failure from FL 35 to end up gliding some 120 nm towards the right turn planned for 045 that had just been commenced from 025....

I'm not sure if I'm buying this. Object dimensions they are reporting are too big to be pieces of the 777. Its fuselage is only 6 m in diameter. First two could be the large pieces of wings, third one would have to be the tail section with a chunk of fuselage, and even then it wouldn't get to 22x24 m.

[andrasz]

It's time to summarize again

* All transponders were lost or shut down in the middle of Gulf of Thailand, at N6.92 E103.58, at 1:20 local time.

* No debris related to the plane were found anywhere near the spot.

* Shortly thereafter (~1:45), multiple witnesses saw a large plane flying at low altitude above Kota Bharu, 90 NM southwest of last known location.

* Shortly after that (~2:15), Malaysian air force reports tracking an unidentified radar target at FL295 in Malacca Strait off the coast of Phuket, 320 NM west-northwest of last known location.

* We know about a report by a Kiwi rig worker who saw a burning plane. He is unsure about the range, but his observation puts the plane roughly at N8.3 E107.5, or 250 NM east-northeast of last known location.

* Chinese satellites picked up large floating objects at N6.7 E105.63, or 120 NM east-southeast of last known location.


From your six points, 1 & 2 are verified.

3 is hearsay, based on unverified news reports which have been neither confirmed nor denied by any competent authority

4 was hinted, confirmed, denied and admitted in this order. Make of it what you like.

5 was pretty convincingly discredited by a number of posts on this forum

6 seems to be from a credible source, let's see...

So far aside 6, not much new if compared to my summary in post 997 (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-50.html#post8362282) on page 50.

(Original post quoted in full in case server mis-behaves again)

Along the same lines, an exceptionally good summary of what we know so far from the Straits Times: http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/missing-mas-plane/story/possible-sighting-mh370-north-west-penang-mystery-and-confusion (http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/missing-mas-plane/story/possible-sighting-mh370-north-west-penang-mystery-and-confusio) (They even explain the difference between primary and secondary radar, something 99% of the word press failed to comprehend. Only in Singapore...)

[pax britanica]

It has puzzled me throughout his thread that there has been little focus on the Vietnam aspect. After all it now seems likely that it is Vietnam who lost contact not Malaysia since the last words from the plane were to acknowledge a 'contact Vietnam on xxx.yyy.After that its goodnight as far as The Malay or Singapore area controller is concerned isn't it? So now we have an ATCO in Vietnam no doubt with a flight strip or electronic equivalent telling him MH370 is going to check in any moment.-Trouble is , it doesn't ,so what does he do-since an Atco needs decent English as well as an ability to work with complex equipment he is probably a young and keen and therefore alert guy since that's probably a good job in 'nam. He waits and waits and then starts calling MH370 gets no reply and then contacts the handing over party to say-where is MH370 . and given Vietnams status and history he probably has a Mil controller to hand who he can talk to in order to see if he can spot MH370 on his Mil kit. How long does all this take because it seems to me it could easily take 15-20 mins which is about 150 miles further down whatever track MH370 was headed and if the comms went before the plane headed downwards for whatever reason the real search area is pretty huge. And as has been suggested if the Chinese military have good satellite imagery coverage of the area they are not going to immediately blurt out 'guess what we have just seen' are they.

In addition some posters way back suggested that the engine parameter monitoring by RR was not continuous in terms of reporting but only when thrust levels change. If the 'transponder off-dive to 500' asl people are to be believed surely the engine thrust has to be substantially reduced (this triggering another set of engine data) to avoid the plane just wildly over speeding by diving with cruise thrust settings. What link is used to send the engine data to RR

[mm43]

Re Chinese satellite images -

Depth of water at 6°42'N 105°38'E is 45 meters

[Lost in Saigon]

The largest piece spotted by the Chinese satellite is 79 feet by 72 feet.

My first instinct is that it seems too large to be from a 777. Especially since it is floating on the surface.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/msowsun/photo%20stuff/Photo14/777exterior200_300lr.gif~original

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/msowsun/photo%20stuff/Photo14/001m.jpg~original

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/msowsun/photo%20stuff/Photo14/001m3.jpg~original

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/msowsun/photo%20stuff/Photo14/001m2.jpg~original

[thcrozier]

geostationary is pointless for a recon sat (unless its a weather bird) as you can only take a picture of a limited area. so unless you want to look at a particular area constantly for a long time, most of the sorts,of assets that would be useful would be non geostationary. Maybe. All I can tell you is the US launches a lot of highly classified satellites from Vandenberg AFB, California directly to the south. Those go into polar orbits as you describe, and as the earth rotates underneath them, they are able to "mow the lawn" every 24 hours.

We use that location because there is only ocean south of Vandenberg for 1000's of miles, so if the booster fails, their is a low probability of damage to anything on the surface.

We also send up a lot of highly classified birds out of Cape Kennedy, Florida. There are 2 reasons to use Kennedy. First, you've got about 1000mph of speed because of the earth's rotation, and that saves a lot of fuel. The other reason is that it's the most efficient base we have from which to launch satellites into geostationary orbit. Geostationary orbits have to be about 25,000 miles above the planet, far higher than the polar orbit birds launched out of Vandenberg.

Geostationary does not mean it cannot be moved and parked over a specific area. It can, depending on what you want to look at. But it does have to be near the equator. South or north of the equator the angle of view becomes more oblique, and the light passes though more atmosphere, causing increasing scintillation and a corresponding degradation of the image.

[widebody69]

Tail, one wing and then everything else? As was said it would be surprising if the fuselage would still float.


The 2nd picture does look like a fuselage with wings or a tail section if you take away the cloud in the middle.

[thcrozier]

If the water is only 40 meters deep, some of what you see in the images might be sitting on the bottom.

[MartinM]

Image 2 looks like tail and fuselage, is it possibly underwater ?

Looks like, yes. I would have said the same. Tail section with elevators

[Weary]

What about a partially inflated escape slide-raft?

[scoobys]

First thing I thought was "sitting on the bottom of the ocean" when I saw picture 2

[drdino]

Looks like, yes. I would have said the same. Tail section with elevators

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p39/drdino1985/001m3.jpg (http://s124.photobucket.com/user/drdino1985/media/001m3.jpg.html)

Not entirely similar... :confused:

[jmmilner]

Quote:
Originally Posted by mabuhay_2000 http://www.pprune.org/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-post8369558.html#post8369558)
It seems utter madness to have the aircraft's flight computers on the same network was the PAX WiFi.


Aircraft don't use the internet for navigation or communication. Some aircraft have internet capability for passenger entertainment only. I believe the point being made is that connecting non-flight critical systems to the same common communications network is a bad idea. Once such a system is connected to an aircraft data bus, it becomes possible to jam the bus with traffic that disrupts flight critical communications. This can be done in any number of ways and has been an issue in telecomms (we called it "the babbling bus problem" back in the 1960s), RF comms ("being stepped on", jamming, interference), and the internet (DOS (Denial of Service) attacks, SYN flooding, etc.). One can design ways to address these issues but it adds complexity and is difficult to test, as you must prove nothing bad can possible happen.

Reduced to the absurd, it is the same as connecting the highways at an airport to the runways with paved roads and trusting the planes and cars to play nicely - what could go wrong?

[JimNtexas]

Forgive me if this has already been posted, but when the server is not melted down anyone can help search for MH370 with current satellite photos at:

Tomnod (http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014)

[learjet45]

My guess is that this is 370. Chinese imagery is much sharper
resolution than what they're showing for obvious reasons so they
must be confident. Image is from Sunday so backtracking water and wind currents will lead to underwater material. But, the way this mess has gone
it could be another false lead.

[nitpicker330]

A poster asked about CPDLC.

Yes SINGAPORE AND HOCHIMINH both have and use CPDLC ADS-C

However on the flight plan MH370 used they would have gone straight from Lumpur Control to Hochiminh and NOT spoken or logged on to WSSS.

They may have logged on to VVTS....? VVTS ATC haven't said.

But yes VVTS CPDLC does work and I use it all the time.:ok:

[FE Hoppy]

Guess the Gmail from the rig worker could have been correct based on the position of the chinese images.

Well, just measured it on google maps and it's not that close after all. over 20° error. The distance is a moot point as he didn't really know.

[NicholasB]

I'm quite curious about the very time of the obviously (and clearly documented) first incident (all other data are speculative/non-confirmed, as of right now):

that was right after the pilot said 'good night' (verbally) to KL/Subang via VHF and before saying 'hello' to Saigon/HCMC, which obviously never happened.

What would be a reasonable time gap between such messages on a 'normal' flight on this route? 2 minutes? Is that a fair number?

Instead of this, the flight disappeared at the (almost) very same time on secondary radar.

Coincidence?

Given the standard route from Lumpur to Beijing, that point in time / position would make a perfect time stamp to make the flight 'vanish' to primary and secondary radar for whatever reason.

Any 'takes'?

[Old Boeing Driver]

I hope this is a find.

I wonder why, with all the other eyes on land, air, and sea, that he was the only one to come forward.

Not saying he isn't truthful, but there are thousand of other eyes that saw nothing.

[Contact Approach]

It may not disrupt the avionics bay as I well know; it may have however created an environment in which the capacity of both crew members was heavily overloaded. After all, aviate - navigate - communicate.

[deadheader]

We've had lots of geopolitical pussyfooting from the authorities up to this point, no state willing to reveal the extent or accuracy of their radar/tracking capabilities and/or the range of operation. Of course we've also had the yes/no/maybe/confirmed/denied mystery track to the west.


Enter China with a long-awaited solid lead.


It is virtually inconceivable that China would risk embarrassment on the world stage by releasing these satellite images without being absolutely certain they are highly relevant to the search for MH370. That alone ought to tell us this is the approx. location of the missing aircraft.

[PlymouthPixie]

According to various news sources (CNN & Daily Mail) - the debris and oil slick is in the area initially searched after the crash and is floating.

If that's the case, why wasn't it noticed before?

[slats11]

Can't make out too much of these images.

Pieces seem pretty big.

However China would probably not release this information unless they were certain. They certainly would have the means to have a much more detailed look before releasing these low res photos.

Direction is right. Unlikely plane turned around and overflew land. Cell phones are often left on, and do work just fine at cruise levels. Certainly good enough to be tagged by network. Certainly good enough for SMS or data. And sometimes good enough for voice. If it had reversed course and pax concerned, someone would have got a message out.

All the stuff to the west is confusion, random "noise" and some rumors.

[Biggles1957]

@jimNtexas et al

Can anyone convert the coordinates [N6.7 E105.63 ] of these Chinese sat images into tomnod map number(s)?

[FE Hoppy]

According to various news sources (CNN & Daily Mail) - the debris and oil slick is in the area initially searched after the crash and is floating.

If that's the case, why wasn't it noticed before?

Who did the search?

[Montgolfier]

Out of interest: there seems to be plenty of precedent to suggest that if an aircraft hits the water hard and fast it breaks up a lot and leaves smaller fragments of floating debris. Does anyone know what the situation would be likely to be if you managed to successfully ditch - or almost successfully ditch - a T7 at low speed? If it remained in one or two pieces, how long could you reasonably expect it to float? I know the safety cards in the seat pocket tend to show a lovely, stable floating aircraft buoyed by the escape slides with pax disembarking in an orderly fashion, but is that plausible?

[thcrozier]

Why did it take China 48 hours to release those pictures??Because they don't want to reveal their full capabilities, and second, as mentioned above, they would not risk embarrassing themselves unless they were virtually certain. I imagine if they had thought there was any chance of survivors, they would have somehow directed SAR assets to the area much sooner, and become international heros.

[Nightingale14]

I am also wondering, surely they already searched that area? Seems quite large to miss, if what we are seeing is the wreckage. And are we now being told the oil rig worker actually exists? i thought this was disputed earlier?

[anengineer]

Apologies if this has already been raised, but... is there any practical reason why manufacturers don't fit EPIRB devices to airliners ? I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to engineer an impact-triggered release system that, in the event of a mid-air explosion or impact with water, would release a floating radio locator beacon (epirb). The cost of these devices are pennies in the grand scheme of things and would have been invaluable in this case, as well as AF447.

Does anyone know ?

[mercurydancer]

The Chinese are not stupid and have a vested interest in finding the aircraft. It would suit their political purposes to release satellite imagery if they thought there was a high probability that it was the downed aircraft, not only to show the Malaysians that they arent doing a good job of SAR but to reassure their own citizens that they are on top of things.

As for the Chinese being reticent to release images showing their satellite capability - anyone who doubts that if the Chinese can soft land something on the moon, and start off a space station and dont have high res imaging on a satellite are not being realistic.

[andrasz]

I know the safety cards in the seat pocket tend to show a lovely, stable floating aircraft ...

In the old piston days with much slower touch-down speeds successful ditchings were almost a commonplace. However I am not aware of any successful intentional night-time ditching of any large jet airliner (approach undershoots and runway overruns don't count).

[BJ-ENG]

Quote: T7 at low speed? If it remained in one or two pieces, how long could you reasonably expect it to float?




Even at relatively low speeds, the effect of hydraulic surge will rip away sections of fuselage, as was the case with the underside of the Airbus that ditched on the Hudson river. High impact crashes will result in fragmentation in water, and buoyant debris on the surface – Swissair Halifax, and the Air NZ A320-200 Airbus in the Med in 2008.

[Milwaukee1]

Transponder's fate may prove key to solving Malaysia Airlines puzzle - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-transponder/)

The electrical system aboard the plane is so robust and the transponder draws so little power that it would be one of the last pieces of equipment to go dark, even after a catastrophic event like an engine explosion or a breach of the cabin and rapid decompression, he said.
"I'm in a head-scratching mode," Nance said. "The most likely probability is that a human hand turned that off. Then you get into the logic tree of who and why and there aren't that many channels in that tree." He added, "This is beginning to look very, very much like a hijacking."

A former Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector agreed. David Soucie, author of "Why Planes Crash," cited the redundant electrical, charging, battery and communications systems on Boeing 777s. Much had to go wrong for the aircraft to lose its transponder and then to veer off course, he said, adding that it stands to reason "that someone forced those pilots to take control of the aircraft and take it off course."

Turning off a transponder requires a deliberative process, said Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board. "If someone did that in the cockpit, they were doing it to disguise the route of the plane," he told CNN. "There might still be mechanical explanations on what was going on, but those mechanical explanations are narrowing quickly."

[OleOle]

IMHO various chunks of debris with an aproximate size of 20 by 20 meters pretty much rule out a high speed impact.

But:
- There was no communication during descent.
- ELT wasn't activated.
- If there may be survivors, why would the chinese "hold back" the images for 3 days ?

[mm43]

Regarding the debris identified by the Chinese; it must be noted that the images were retrieved some time on Sunday, and the debris will have since moved due to a surface current flowing in a SSE/SE direction at up to 0.25 m/s from the location given, i.e.

6°42'N 105°38'E

I daresay that aviation and marine assets will take the above into account when they go searching shortly after sunrise in about 30 mins.

[Five Green]

RE: The photos from the Chinese sat. The second photo looks like the centre fuselage section still connected to what is left of the wings. It looks to have separated from the nose and the tail leaving only the section attached to the wing root. The areas where the fuselage came apart may also correspond with the areas that the fuselage is mated during construction. The object appears to be facing towards the 1' oclock position. The wings appear to have large sections missing on both sides.

[Lost in Saigon]

@Lost in Saigon

What I was trying to ask is how would the airframe behave with no control input and what would be the likely impact speed?

The 777 is fly-by-wire and even with the autopilot disconnected it has some authority over the flight controls. These "protections" are over-bank, over-speed, and stall protection. That would help keep it stable for awhile, but I would expect that the aircraft would eventually enter a turn, begin a shallow dive, and impact at high speed.

[Gary Brown]

Chinese media were giving the debris as found at 6°42'00.0"N 105°37'48.0"E (https://www.google.com/maps/preview?q=6%C2%B042%2700.0%22N+105%C2%B037%2748.0%22E&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&ie=UTF-8&ei=H-UgU578JsHG0QHxyYCYDw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ). Given that Tomnod (http://www.pprune.org/www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/) was making public high res images taken at the same time as those of the Chinese, is there a way of plugging those coordinates into the Tomnod system? I can't find one.

[VinRouge]

Does the 777 have a reversionary mechanical mode for battery only power supply (yaw damper only)?

Wait and see tomorrow morning. Be interested to see what is what.

[Golf-Mike-Mike]

Patience will be rewarded.

Having crossed the Atlantic and other seas several times by ship, I can only say that I found it virtually impossible to see anything of note from that level other than the "white horses" of the wave tops and occasional algae so the SAR ships may be more concerned with picking up bleeps than visual clues. But I accept they will be trained in what they're doing so let's leave them to it.

Similarly looking down on the Atlantic (North / South / Mid) from 35,000 feet I've never seen a single yacht, container ship, tanker or cruise ship - and only occasionally another aircraft - in dozens of flights. Maybe I'm unlucky but the seas are awfully large, empty and unforgiving places, the South China Sea included, so you have to hand it to the Chinese if they have discovered something significant from satellite images. For the families' sakes I hope this is some concrete news.

[Oldmate]

One poster did touch on this earlier. If the information from the military radar indicating westbound at fl295 is accurate, the level itself could be significant. It suggests the aircraft is being flown in a deliberate manner, and has selected 295 to minimise the chance of collision while crossing the north-south air routes over the peninsula. Particularly if you had the TCAS and transponder switched off.

If whoever was flying had done some homework and decided that primary/military radar would only see them above fl300, this could be another reason to select that level. Obviously if trying to avoid radar detection lower would be better, but lower could also increase chances of visual sightings. It would also burn more fuel, if you happened to be trying to maximise range.

[JanetFlight]

There was indeed in the past an airliner Ocean-Ditching at night for many hours with reasonable success and survivors until the SAR teams arrived:

ALM Flight 980 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALM_Flight_980)

[FE Hoppy]

Patience will be rewarded.

Having crossed the Atlantic and other seas several times by ship, I can only say that I found it virtually impossible to see anything of note from that level other than the "white horses" of the wave tops and occasional algae so the SAR ships may be more concerned with picking up bleeps than visual clues. But I accept they will be trained in what they're doing so let's leave them to it.

Similarly looking down on the Atlantic (North / South / Mid) from 35,000 feet I've never seen a single yacht, container ship, tanker or cruise ship - and only occasionally another aircraft - in dozens of flights. Maybe I'm unlucky but the seas are awfully large and empty places, the South China Sea included, so you have to hand it to the Chinese if they have discovered something significant from satellite images. For the families' sakes I hope this is some concrete news.

Having spent thousands of hours flying maritime patrol and SAR I can tell you that you can see a lot more from 1000' and below.

[Whiskey Papa]

How can a roughly rectangular piece of wreckage 20 metres by 22 metres fit into a B777 with a fuselage diameter of 6 metres?

[deadheader]

@ Nightingale14


I agree it is puzzling nothing was found previously by the SAR crews in that area, if indeed this turns out, as I suspect it might do, to be MH370.


In maritime SAR, skippers are taught to use the reliable 'expanding box' search pattern from a last known position, e.g. for a man overboard at night etc. I'm sure there'll be time for analysis & questions/learning later but it certainly appears that had the authorities conducted this methodical proven SAR technique commencing from the last known position of MH370, with all the resources/assets involved the operation, they would have reached the location shown in the Chinese satellite images much, much sooner.


Unfortunately it looks as though spurious/unidentified radar tracks and/or other distractions led them to search elsewhere...

[rjtjrt]

Red Chilli post 2241 wrote Thus it would appear no Mayday call was transmitted, which suggests catastrophic failure or deliberate action as the only plausible options (IMO).

Not necessarily.
AF447 no Mayday, and it did not have either of the 2 scenarios you suggest.

[clayne]

Still do not understand how no one found it before, if it is such large pieces and so near the original site where contact was lost? Anyone care to offer an explanation?

Who's to say this 'debris' isn't actually one of the SAR vessels or who knows what? At this point, with the amount of false alarms and other sea junk in the region, basically any account of potential debris has to be taken with a grain of salt.

[LASJayhawk]

I agree with 5 green. That looks like the center section with the lower 1/2 of the fuselage still attached.

Remember, items underwater look larger than they are...

[500N]

With so many sources of info in different timezones, is any SAR asset likely to get to the debris during daylight today to confirm or otherwise ?

[VH-XXX]

If that is the wreckage in the image, it rolled into a ball when it smashed in. Wing folded over the wreckage etc. I wouldn't hold my breath, count my chickens or otherwise.

[Mahatma Kote]

There was indeed in the past an airliner Ocean-Ditching at night for many hours with reasonable success and survivors until the SAR teams arrived:

Remind me to never call in SAR then.

[training wheels]

How can a roughly rectangular piece of wreckage 20 metres by 22 metres fit into a B777 with a fuselage diameter of 6 metres?

Obvious answer to that is that it's probably an external part of the aircraft, part of the wing, fuselage or horizontal stabilizer perhaps ..

[hamster3null]

Chinese media were giving the debris as found at 6°42'00.0"N 105°37'48.0"E (https://www.google.com/maps/preview?q=6%C2%B042%2700.0%22N+105%C2%B037%2748.0%22E&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&ie=UTF-8&ei=H-UgU578JsHG0QHxyYCYDw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ). Given that Tomnod (http://www.pprune.org/www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/) was making public high res images taken at the same time as those of the Chinese, is there a way of plugging those coordinates into the Tomnod system? I can't find one.

AGB


As I understand, Tomnod releases their imagery in blocks, roughly 10x30 miles each, and has people pore over those until they are fully explored. Unless the coordinates given by the Chinese just happen to fall within the current block, there's nothing you can do except wait.

[henra]

Here's those pics. Seen on Crash: Malaysia B772 over Gulf of Thailand on Mar 8th 2014, aircraft missing (http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b)



I have the feeling, now we are getting somewhere.

I still have the distinct feeling the flight did not continue long after the event that caused loss of all comms.
To lose all that equipment at once requires a significant (read: catastrophic) event.
The Story of the O2 bottle in the MEC could be onto something.

Personally, I'm not too convinced of this being any kind of (external) Hi-Jacking. Simply not the ideal target and no claims, no emergency. Nothing.
Passenger lists will have been reviewed against all known Terror Databases. No indication so far which would point into this direction.
Suicide of a Cockpit Crew Member might not be so easy to rule out, although it seems no indication in this direction have been identified so far.
This is all obviously completely out of the blue just based a bit on Occam's Razor.


The Radar return thing on the other Hand sounds rather bizzare to me.
I took it as if they did not have continuous coverage after loss of comms, but rather an unidentified return coming out of the blue at some point in time after 1:30. They just assumed it may have been this flight.

[xcitation]

Still do not understand how no one found it before, if it is such large pieces and so near the original site where contact was lost? Anyone care to offer an explanation?

The large pieces could have all sunk in the days since the images were taken.
Keep in mind the satellite images appear to be taken directly overhead whereas a ship is viewing them in profile from the side. This profile might be close to zero if the object is partially submerged and rough seas.

[howiedart]

Perhaps confusion between metres and feet.

[papershuffler]

Is anyone with knowledge/experience aware if SAR would discard again any sea trash that they locate and examine, or would it all be gathered to be 'officially' dismissed?
(Bearing in mind if there are many large pieces floating around out there, they could cause successive false alarms...)
Thank you.

[JamesCam]

Trouble is, these were taken 3 days ago, so presumably the wreckage may have sunk by now? At least the co-ordinates will provide a marker for listening for the pingers.

[LongTimeInCX]

GolfMikeMike - Similarly looking down on the Atlantic (North / South / Mid) from 35,000 feet I've never seen a single yacht, container ship, tanker or cruise ship - and only occasionally another aircraft

I fly over the approximate suspected crash sight regularly. I can also say I frequently see many aircraft (the airspace is busy), plenty of ships -both very large and normal size - and even the odd brave yacht.
You may not see comparatively very much because a) I enjoy looking out, but more likely b) the average sea state in the South China Sea is more benign than the North Atlantic you are used to.

[Golf-Mike-Mike]

Having spent thousands of hours flying maritime patrol and SAR I can tell you that you can see a lot more from 1000' and below.

of course, fair point :-)

[WillFlyForCheese]

I am near certain that the actual Chinese satellite images are at a significantly higher resolution than those that they've provided to the rest of the world. They are, more than likely, reduced resolution versions so we are not aware of the actual satellite capabilities of the Chinese. It only makes sense . . .

My guess is that they've released these images based upon a detailed and thorough review of a much higher resolution satellite image. I don't think they would waste time and face embarrassment looking as incompetent as the Malaysians . . .

[wlatc]

Here's an AD published last November. It "fits" this situation - loss of pressure + loss of SATCOM.
http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_assets/main/lib91207/2014-05-03.pdf

[Wantion]

Bob Woodruff ABC News Reporter has verified the validity of Mike Mckay the oil rig worker and his witness account.


https://twitter.com/BobWoodruff/status/443726108513411072

[Old Engineer]

At 2203 Z today, FE Hoppy quoted Pixie:

Quote:
According to various news sources (CNN & Daily Mail) - the debris and oil slick is in the area initially searched after the crash and is floating.

If that's the case, why wasn't it noticed before?
Who did the search?

Now I'm uncertain this comment is referring to the Chinese satellite pix set (@3 wavelengths?)--may due info overload reading most of the posts. But it's in context to mean that.

Is it possible the grey Chinese pix images the seafloor at a shallow depth and not the surface as seems to be assumed generally? The background surrounding the object(s) suggests current ripples on a sandy seafloor. In addition, a windrow seems to have been plowed up in direction of flight-- assuming onward w/o deviation and north at top of pix-- just ahead of the objects.

At this time of year, the sun at local noon would have been within 15-deg of the zenith. Has the image captured a sunlight reflection off of aluminum surfaces, perhaps the tail? Due surface curvature, the reflections would be smaller than the entire surface. Is the water sufficiently clear and shallow that, with image enhancement, this could happen? Do the pix have an associated date and time (particularly time) stamp?

It is fairly well known that aerial images looking straight down can show a overview which shows with some clarity what cannot be seen at all from directly on the surface. And, of course, the non-significant debris found may have-- indeed probably was-- been not at or even very near the aerial reporting point.

Does anyone know what visual/infrared frequencies the Chinese satellite might have used, and if one might have some water penetration ability? Or is it possibly a radar reflection image... or even one such processed to determine seafloor contours by measuring the exact elevation of the sea surface due to the gravity effects of exactly how high the solid seabed is? We all know that the seafloor is now mapped by this gravity effect; I just don't know what precision can be obtained.

Obviously the pix are rendered in false color. Is it possible different types of return in one frequency can be rendered in a second color scale? Or superimposed from another pix frequency? FWIW

[Bleve]

Location of the objects in the Chinese satellite pictures:

http://s27.postimg.org/p15z4qfr3/photo.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/p15z4qfr3/)

[SierraTango1]

Can we ascertain the ocean depth at the co-ordinates given by the Chinese satellite?

[ianwood]

Are you suggesting that the mystery blip on the primary radar return at FL295 was a military interceptor aircraft who shot down MH 370? If so, then your post and mine will probably be deleted by the mods ...

Not quite that specific, but yes. It could be pure coincidence that a short while after the 777 disappeared, the Malaysian military tracked something in level flight with no transponder ping crossing the peninsula on a track that potentially intersected the 777's last known location.

[Acklington]

Using this animated map of the area you can pinpoint the reported position of the debris and see the relationship to the surface sea currents as of 7/3


earth :: an animated map of global wind and weather (http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/03/07/0000Z/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=106.39,8.57,3000/grid=on)

[rh200]

I am near certain that the actual Chinese satellite images are at a significantly higher resolution than those that they've provided to the rest of the world. They are, more than likely, reduced resolution versions so we are not aware of the actual satellite capabilities of the Chinese.

You may also find they might have done some extra modifications to make sure that there can be no extrapolation from the reduced resolution images. so as to not infer what the true capabilities are, if that is even possible.

[auraflyer]

How can a roughly rectangular piece of wreckage 20 metres by 22 metres fit into a B777 with a fuselage diameter of 6 metres?

Maximum width you can get from a cylinder (excluding deformation) is its circumference (obtained by slicing along the long axis, then opening up flat).

Diameter is (I think) 6.19m, so circumference and hence max width of a piece of fuselage itself is 2 * pi * r = 19.45m

[olandese_volante]

Here's an AD published last November. It "fits" this situation - loss of pressure + loss of SATCOM.

The Grauniad had this to say on today's news blog:
Boeing said it worked closely with the FAA to monitor the fleet for potential safety issues and take appropriate actions. But it said the 777-200ER Malaysia Airlines aircraft did not have that antenna installed and was not subject to the FAA order.

[mickjoebill]

Whilst it is highly unlikely something sitting on top if the water would have been missed, the image could also depict a circular life raft tied to one or two escape slides.

A previous false alarm raised by aerial SAR was discovered to be logs tied together to form a pontoon.

[RichManJoe]

I am not an aviation person, although I am a retired aerospace engineer having wored in satellite design many years.

I find it interesting that the dimensions of the three objects observed in the PRC images are approximately equal to the fuselage circumference. Just an observation as I have no idea how this could physically happen.

When enlarged, the object on the basically black and white image is quite interesting. On one end there is what appears to be four or five short pieces sticking out of the object which could be an indication it was torn from somehthing else. The other end of this object could be a distorted cockpit, the black areas being the windows.

Probably just more wild speculation, but it seems like it will fit right in with other comments on this thread. NOTE: There are some very intelligent and knowledgeable comments here, which I appreciate.

[papershuffler]

Chart 93010 (http://www.charts.noaa.gov/NGAViewer/93010.shtml)

cross ref with:

View image: photo (http://postimg.org/image/p15z4qfr3/#30530746943860660)

looks like 35-50m, but that's not necessarily where the plane went down, just to where debris may have drifted.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

https://www.airforce.gov.au/Technology/Surveillance44-Command-and-Control/Jindalee-Operational-Radar-Network/?RAAF-dq9yQKwX6WliV2hNVcj38sG4oMWiAMtQ

Almost, but not quite as far as Malaysia.

Jindalee Operational Radar Network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Network)

[SMOC]

Could we not keep hearing about the Chinese 'sitting back & taking... Oh! So long, 3 days to publish these Sat Images'

Exactly and they probably wouldn't have even looked had in not been for the already mentioned incompetence of the Malaysian run effort.

[BreezyDC]

New York Times notes in an article: Online and Onscreen, Disappeared Malaysian Flight Draws Intense Speculation

"Some of the most technically informed comments were posted on Professional Pilots Rumour Network (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-118.html), a Britain-based chat room that, despite its name, is widely read in the aviation world and is one of the few 'pilot chat room' sites that is not actually a matchmaking service."

If these are "some of the most technically informed comments," I'd hate to see those that are not... but at least the moderators are recognized for keeping the matchmakers out!

[win_faa]

So i guess the chinese where just merely waiting for the malaysians to come up with the answer. China does not want the whole world to know their technological capability. But pressure broke their silence... :=
I wonder what uncle sam is thinking now that they know that the chinese have these kinds of imaging capabilities.

[500N]

But pressure broke their silence... :=
I wonder what uncle sam is thinking now that they know that the chinese have these kinds of imaging capabilities."



Re Pressure, China getting pissed off with Malaysia and so releasing images to show how inept they are ?

Capabilities ? I think the US knows what they have !

[RobertS975]

Here is my question... if the Chinese are so fearful of disclosing their satellite resolution capabilities, why didn't they just go out and find the crash site on their own without ever disclosing how they happened to find it? They end up looking competent and besides, aside China has a huge stake in this with so many of the pax being Chinese citizens.

[TheShadow]

There'd appear to be a lot of CNN and "expert" agonizing over the apparent size of the objects constituting the satellite imagery of the possible debris field SE of the MAS370 track. Apart from it conceivably being a partially deflated/inflated escape slide, it could also be a concoction of wreckage linked by wiring looms. You only need a few wiring looms to remain partly intact and interweaved to keep a debris field together in one clump.

The flotation could be explained by the characteristics of the new insulation that replaced metallized mylar (MPET). There's quite a lot of it and it'd be capable of keeping lighter debris on the surface. And of course there'd be a lot of water white-foaming around any such debris and thus enhancing its apparent size in an image.

[LASJayhawk]

Does anyone know when a boat will get to the locations of the debris in the photos?

[win_faa]

ICAO Annex 13 tells us that the State of Occurrence has primary jurisdiction of accident investigation, second would be State of Registry and final is State of Design. I think one reason behind this chaos might be is up until now nobody knows who has jurisdiction of the accident because the wreckage hasn't been found yet.

There is an ongoing territorial dispute among Asian and Chinese right now about who owns the south china sea so this might also complicate the matter... just my two cents:confused:

[PAXboy]

NamelessWonder commented about FR24
Perhaps anomalies are to be expected, given that this is unofficial data, but to see 2 reciprocal tracks in the surrounding area of the event under question, AND within a few minutes of the disappearance seems somewhat . . . . odd.
Not for FR24!! Bear in mind that the data may be aggregated from more than one source and the processing, with time delays can give variable output.

When watching friends aircraft leaving/arriving, I have often seen the track suddenly jump ahead of the a/c and make it look as if the a/c has done a complete circle and come back to the identical position. Also, when an aircraft does circle. the tracks recorded by FR24 is jagged. Looking at at short time periods of FR24 data may not be helpful.

[tartare]

Willow - move the birds?
Assume you're joking - a re-task is a big call.
This region is covered by all sorts of IMINT and ELINT assets in highly eliptical orbits.
Some are Lacrosse/Onyx type radar birds as well, so night or bad weather presents no problem.

[olasek]

Does anyone know when a boat will get to the locations of the debris in the photos?
Malaysia stated they are ready to send airplanes/vessels provided they get info directly from their Chinese counterparts in this search effort, not from the media. Another reason why this whole 'satellite find' may turn out to be a dud.

[piedmont1984]

I wonder, how large do weather balloons get, how high would they rise if they broke their tethers and did any agencies have any deployed near the aircraft's last known position?

[tdracer]

If you were correct there would be no need for this FAA special directive (https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/11/18/2013-27343/special-conditions-boeing-model-777-200--300-and--300er-series-airplanes-aircraft-electronic-system)


220mph - the Special Condition is issued as a pre-requisite to certifying a new system (generally Special Conditions are issued when the FAA believes that the existing FARs are not adequate for certification of new or novel technologies - the 787 had a boatload). The 777 system that the FAA issued SC against is still in development and won't enter service for some time.


The current 777 does not yet have an "Onboard Network System" (ONS), and the flight deck avionics are not linked to the passenger accessible systems in any way. There is simply no way for someone sitting in the back to access the flight deck avionics - there is no link they could use.


There is a terminal for doing s/w updates - but it's in the flight deck. If a hacker has made it onto the flight deck, I think there would be easier ways to take over the aircraft than to download something into the avionics.

[Lost in Saigon]

Does anyone know when a boat will get to the locations of the debris in the photos?

The debris in the photos is no longer at that location.

[Dai_Farr]

Just back on here after several hours. My sincere apologies if this is yet another repetition!! Before going to bed I read someone asking for something on hypoxia. From my own experience, here goes...

Hypoxia means low oxygen, a gas we all need in order to live. Whereas all pilots are required to know about hypoxia, all aircrew in the RAF and, I expect, most western-aligned armed forces, are subjected to it in a barochamber.

There is a world of difference between learning something from a book and experiencing it. Sure, civvies will react as well as military-trained colleagues in a given situation. It is in not detecting hypoxia where there is a potential for major error. Experience must trump anecdote.

An explosive decompression gets your attention, make no mistake! The first reaction, instilled many, many times in every pilot's life, is to get on oxygen. By far the most dangerous situation derives from a slow leak of cabin pressure because all the clues can be rendered subtle enough as to pass the detection threshold unnoticed.

Aircraft are designed to fly high but humans are not. Unpressurised flight would require so much oxygen for everyone to breathe that it would be impractical. Plus, the pressure changes, particularly in the descent would deliver so many nose bleeds, ear drum ruptures and blown sinuses in a sufficient number of the population that the experience would render the prospect of air travel too unpleasant.

Aircraft designed for high altitude flight are designed to operate with a cabin pressure as close as practicable to mean sea level pressure. Were they designed to operate AT mean sea level pressure, the extra strengthening would render them too heavy. And so, as with most things in aviation, we have a compromise. Airliner cabins operate at a pressure differential that the structure can cope with, while keeping the air inside at a pressure which most people can cope with.

Aircraft pressurisation systems work, not by shutting the air in, but by controlling the flow of cabin air out to atmosphere. Were something to create an extra hole where the outflow defeats the pressure regulator, the net result must be a reduction in cabin pressure.

At all altitudes where current airliners fly, the atmosphere is a gas whose composition is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% other gases. Air pressure reduces with altitude. In your lungs, whilst alveolar gas still contains 21% oxygen, the number of molecules decrease as the pressure decreases. Fewer molecules of oxygen deprive the brain from functioning correctly - including the ability to process information and act on it!! Yes, including the ability to recognise the symtoms of hypoxia!! Well from here it gets messy!

In a slow leak, if you're busy, there will be too many distractions for you to notice the symptoms, either in yourself or in the pilot in the seat next to you. You might grumble at the First Officer for missing a radio call. Or for fumbling a simple calculation or (and don't jump on this one because it needs to be looked at in the round) mis-setting some equipment. You feel tired. But it is 1am! You have a headache. But ATC have been a pain, the ordinarily switched on First Officer is still making mistakes!! Was that radio call for us? Where's that glass of water you asked for AGES ago?

If you were alerted to the possibility of hypoxia, you might, given adequate cockpit lighting, wonder why your First Officer's lips were blue - not that you ordinarily look at them! Or that your finger tips had a blueish tinge!

I just think that it would be useful for all airline pilots to experience hypoxia, as we did in the RAF. There IS a difference between experiencing it and reading about it. Some will argue it is a small difference. But what if the "feelings" a pilot were feeling triggered a memory? It's busy. There are distractions. It is easy to pass tiredness, making basic mistakes that everyone makes from time to time and having a headache, to perfectly reasonable causes. But hypoxia is a perfectly natural cause, too. Of course it is money!! In the end, you only get the safety you're prepared to pay for.