Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[PhilGSolent]

The weather was said to be good for the flight but at 35,000' was it possible the Jetstream was causing severe turbulence on the flight?

I cannot find a historic Jetstream map, but by reversing the time using the following link to 0.00 hours and assuming the trend continued since the early hours of March 8th then there appears the Jetstream was strong at the time.

Weather Model - Asia Jet Stream Wind and 250 mb Pressure (STORMSURF) (http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=nindi_250)

Maybe there was severe turbulence early into the flight once it reached its cruising altitude which seems to correspond to the strongest part of the jetstream (if I am reading this right)

Apologies if I am way off, but I at least have read this entire thread before dipping my toe in.

[Tu.114]

AVHerald (http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b&opt=0) writes that some flotsam apparently made from composite has been located and will hopefully be recovered at local dawn (in 2-3 hours).


If it can be shown to belong to a 777, the probability for a crash instead of an unexplained disappearance becomes rather high and the area for further search can be narrowed down a little bit.

[Ditchdigger]

No sign of a seismic event over 4 on the Richter scale in the South China Sea for the day in question:-


Seismic Monitor (Monitor Sísmico) - The Latest Earthquakes in the Indian Ocean Region (http://www.iris.edu/seismon/eventlist/index.phtml?region=Indian_Ocean)


I would have thought the engines hitting the seabed would have registered.


I was pondering the same thing, went researching, returned here and found that post. My research dug up this article about seismology and aircraft crashes:

http://www.ctbto.org/fileadmin/content/reference/outreach/spectrum_issues_singles/ctbto_spectrum_2/p1.pdf


It makes specific mention of Lockerbie, and Swissair. It does say that such events are typically equivalent to magnitude 2 or smaller though. It'll be interesting to see whether this incident will have left any seismological clues...

[tjcagney]

By Jim Clancy and Mark Morgenstein, CNN updated 3:19 PM EDT, Sun March 9, 2014.

One promising lead has turned out to be a dead end. A "strange object" spotted by a Singaporean search plane late Sunday afternoon is not debris from the missing jetliner, a U.S. official familiar with the issue told CNN on Sunday.:confused:

[MartinM]

F/As can get in.

Not on the Helios 737-300 I am afraid. The aircraft crashed after running out of fuel. Passengers were alive and making calls during the infinite holdings.

[luoto]

"There is an emergency code for access to the flight deck in case of both pilot incapacitation."
Yes, but if someone has gained control of the flight deck and knows what switch to toggle, that access is denied. It is just one position.

Looking around the internet tonight there are some fascinating, wild theories that sadly the longer the time to find the aircraft is, the slightly more believable they could be. The trouble is nowadays with governments, one doesn't always know what to believe and even stopped clocks can be right at times.

At the moment one shouldn't assume official intervention is the reason for delay when incompetence or just plain bad luck is the reason. Although as TWA800 and elements surrounding September 11 show, many people articulate reasoned counterpoints to the officially stated narratives. The real reasons? Way out of my league and knowledge just like most posters here.

[wiggy]

What's wrong with calling it a ap rudder channel.

Don't know, ask Mr Boeing, I only fly the things...

Does that mean it'll keep it straight in the event of an engine failure? Or just provide assistance

It provides significant assistance, whilst leaving the pilot(s) to do some of the foot work and any required trimming.

The bus will keep straight until alpha prot, then ap disconnect and a descent.


Excellent.....

Any triple drivers?

Err, Hello, .....or do you want another triple driver

[1a sound asleep]

The most useful piece of evidence is possibly the ACARS DATA. Why have we seen nothing of the ACARS info

For those that dont know what ACARS is - (ACARS) is a digital datalink system for transmission of short, relatively simple messages between aircraft and ground stations via radio or satellite.

[SaturnV]

Wrong. First confirmed aircraft pieces (multiple pieces with seats, larger parts, etc. plus oil slick) spotted on June 2.

That statement is wrong. These sightings were east of the track and south of the Last Known Position There were suggestions on PPRuNe that AF447 had turned around and was trying to land near the islands of the Arquipélago de São Pedro e São Paulo, off the coast of Brazil. These sightings turned out to be false; they had the effect of diverting SAR resources away from the actual crash location, which turned out to be a bit northwest of the track.

[LASJayhawk]

Is it within the realm of possibility to have severe clear air turbulence, combined with a structural issue with the repaired wing, and it just flat broke?

[Dumbo Jet]

Malaysia’s air force chief, Rodzali Daud, said radar indicated that the plane may have turned back, but did not give further details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course. (Source: National Post)

Air force chief Rodzali Daud said the investigation was now focusing on a recording of radar signals that showed there was a "possibility" the aircraft had turned back from its flight path. (Source: bbc.co.uk)

Is it not possible that an inflight disintegration may cause what seems to be a significant course change on a set of radar signals, due to parts of the aircraft falling in different directions?

I posted this question earlier - but no replies - was it really that dumb a question? I'm sure I've seen even less informed! Would appreciate a reply even a 'don't be daft Dumbo Jumbo!'

[tubby linton]

My initial thought when I heard of this accident was of Lauda Air 004 which had an in-flight deployment of a thrust reverser almost twenty three ago. The initial speculation was that it was a bomb. I hope that the recorders are found soon and that the speculation comes to an end.

[barrel_owl]

@1a sound asleep
The most useful piece of evidence is possibly the ACARS DATA. Why have we seen nothing of the ACARS info

For those that dont know what ACARS is - (ACARS) is a digital datalink system for transmission of short, relatively simple messages between aircraft and ground stations via radio or satellite.
Unfortunately I am unable to provide you a link, however it has been reported here and other forums that the Malaysian Civil Aviation General confirmed during a press conference that no ACARS message linking to malfunctions of the aircraft were sent to Malaysia Airlines Operations Centre.

It is unclear whether the ACARS downlink transmission suddenly stopped, as I am led to conclude based on this report, or not. MA and Malaysia authorities are being pretty tight lipped so far.

Based on this sparse information, I conclude that the ACARS downlink feed from the aircraft completely stopped at some point, which is consistent with the sudden disappearance of the aircraft at 35,000 feet right after changing its track from 25° to 40°.

As incredible as it may seem, after more than 48 hours the only valuable information we have so far come from flightradar24. Unfortunately, FR24 has no coverage below 30,000 over the ocean.

[Sven Sixtoo]

Having finally got to the end of the thread, another bit of data of dubious relevance.

I was part of the crew of one of the recovery helicopters at Lockerbie. The debris trail was 70 miles long, and notwithstanding that we knew where to start, bits were obvious all along it. I'm fairly sure that even crossing it at right angles, we would have picked it up in about one leg in three of a creeping line search. I've done a lot of searches over water, and looking for sunken ships that were actually sunk more-or-less where someone thought did tend to reveal debris fairly quickly.

So, if the search is anywhere near the right place, I would expect an in-flight disintegration at altitude to lead to discovery of wreckage / debris in fairly short order.

[MLHeliwrench]

What if someone (pilots or terrorists) pulled the comms breakers? In an area with poor or no primary radar coverage, the area of possible landing/crashing/ditching is quite large.

[3db]

Coagie,
I just looked up 40kHz in the Radio Regs, it is allocated to fixed maritime mobile - they would not be putting a distress beacon in that band without guard channels. Also, a google search reveals a circuit diagram which has a loudspeaker symbol as the "final bit" and not an aerial symbol, so my apologies, you are correct. Must google before posting for things I am not familiar with!

[WillowRun 6-3]

A Triple 7 is down. Or, presumably down. Maybe plausible is an air piracy and commandeering incident (after the World Trade Center, Pentagon and Shanksville PA, I decline to use the "h-j" word in this context). But if the plane landed safely someone - a lot of someones - are committed to some serious radio silence.

I start with the above modestly-pedestrian observation as a prelude to a sort of "point of order". The event is way, way high in profile (obviously) - meaning that lots of posters are drawn into the stream, not only because of the very significant Civil Aeronautics Authority-level of interest, and not only because of the intensifying SUSPENSE, but also because ... we like puzzles, mysteries. We just do.

And my point? I'm not justifying or clawing back at any one or any posts or certainly any Moderator. I'm advocating a modicum of restraint. If you are a wind-tunnel designing, computational dynamics and boundary layer equation semi-genius, and some guy posts something tongue in cheek, or wildly speculative, or a tad factually erroneous, or repetitive to prior posts, or otherwise unenlightened post, just shrug it off. This air crash ("if", see above) is likely to become quite historic. Let the thread flail and wail and hang-and-look over Wichita in a prototype YF-17 with 1974-era avionics, if it wants to do so.

And if you, on the other hand, are like me, a sub-sub to a wrench-turner's mate hard, hard below the conn aboard the Michigan, and have no idea how to recover from a spin, STHU [Shut The Hotel Up] (just jokin' about the USS Michigan part).

If it was a crash, may the airman's prayer to the Almighty, that the souls of the dead find peace, and more so the next of kin - be allowed some pace and place hereto, here too. Lord Wingspan Almighty, the Maker of All Lift, aeronautical, peace-loving... and at the bar (which is where yours truly usually ends up).

[mm43]

I just looked up 40kHz in the Radio Regs, it is allocated to fixed maritime mobile Please don't confuse the radio spectrum with the audio spectrum. In the context of the pingers, the frequency of 40kHz is ultra-sound.

[Greek God]

Mid Air?
Unannounced / unidentified military activity is not unheard of in this area.
For an established proven commercial aircraft to completely disappear without any indication, points to some sort of catastrophic instantaneous failure/ breakup.
That would indicate explosive, structural or midair.
Beyond that we just cant say.
Some of the drivel spouted here would be quite humorous if the situation was not so tragic.
The media frenzy of speculation, theories and fantasy is thoroughly distasteful but sadly a reflection on humanity (or rather lack of it)
I'm sure all will out eventually.

[Skipness One Echo]

A one tonne basketball and a normal basketball of same volume dropped in atmosphere won't hit the ground at the same time.
IF they're the same size and shape they abolutely will.

[PhilGSolent]

It is definitely in the fishermans favour to collect anything they find, I read in the last couple of days about a previous crash where a fisherman found what he thought was a piece of plywood that turned out to be part of a tail from a similar crash in the 90s.

Boeing rewarded the fisherman by paying him $5250 for handing it in.

It was the Adam Air Flight 574 crash:-
The fisherman received a reward of 50 million rupiah (equivalent to about $5,500) for his discovery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Air_Flight_574

[VH-Cheer Up]

Quote:
Quote:
Would not immigration officials at Schiphol receive a passenger manifest of the incoming flight, and check that manifest against a database of reported passport losses, and identify that individual for special attention on entry?
No they would not, there is no such requirement in Europe or anywhere else but the US.
But surely red lights would have flashed when those two passengers travelling on stolen showed up at the Schengen border at AMS - given that the passports produced to the immigration officer were registered as stolen with Interpol?
what makes you think they would present the same stolen passport on arrival at immigration? They may be carrying a dozen different, perhaps altered, passports.

[Kev738]

Distance between low and high speed buffet at FL350 is depending on the weight mainly, it is difficult to determine this without additional information.

It seems to me it's a tougher job to stall a tripple 7 all the way down in to the sea as you have a big control column in front of you. This makes it easier for the guy next to you to recognize what control inputs you are actually making and maybe even correct you from doing wrong.

However, anything remains possible.

[thcrozier]

Jack1985:


Please refer to Post 999 for a summary of what is known.

[Lancair70]

So where are these pics of wreckage that some on here are commenting on? I've scoured the news sites and cant find anything but pics of what looks like coral spawn or algae bloom on the water.

[flyingfox]

Australian ABC news reports are suggesting Malaysia is being very slow to release information about suspect passengers. In Western countries the mug shots of these passengers would be all over the media and investigative journalists would be hard on the case, regardless of the present state of knowledge. They seem to be reluctant to say anything which might point to deficiencies in their systems or open themselves up to litigation.
Apparently Malaysia doesn't compare passenger passports with current Interpol lists.

[LASJayhawk]

Phiggsbroadband

Please excuse me if this has been posted earlier.. But I cannot help thinking that the transponder return cannot go from 35,000ft to 0ft in next to no time.
Even with the nose vertically down it would take 40+ seconds, and more if you take the maximum possible curve into account. Freefall from that altitude would take over 3 minutes, and would be speed limited by the terminal velocity.
The FR24 trace continues several miles beyond the 0ft point. So either someone switched the transponder off, or it had a partial progressive failure.


Short answer, it didn't.

Long answer, that 35k to 0 is someone's less than fantastic software. It you turned off altitude reporting you would get an invalid not zero. And transponders altitude encoding starts 1200 feet below sea level anyway.

So the best guess is someone's code interprets no data as 0 feet.

[surfcat]

On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), t would be around 40s.

[golfyankeesierra]

Unfortunately I am unable to provide you a link, however it has been reported here and other forums that the Malaysian Civil Aviation General confirmed during a press conference that no ACARS message linking to malfunctions of the aircraft were sent to Malaysia Airlines Operations Centre.

It is unclear whether the ACARS downlink transmission suddenly stopped, as I am led to conclude based on this report, or not. MA and Malaysia authorities are being pretty tight lipped so far.

To all those people placing high hopes on ACARS, you probably don't know what it is..

It is only the datalink itself, just the system delivering a message, it doesn't make the message.
Messages can be directed (amongst others) at ATC, the airlines operations control or the technical department and it can be used to access external providers, for instance to get wx reports.
It can be uplinked or downlinked an can be automatically or manually.

Now the messages from AF447 originated from the ACMS (look it up) that reacted on several active faults that it sensed. ACMS downlinked those faults automatically to AF's tech department as it is apparently programmed to do.
That works in my airline the same but these are usually customer options, so who knows how Malaysian has set that up or what system they have in place.

Anyway you cannot conclude anything from the absence of downlink reports.

And for the conspiracy theorists suspecting MAS to keep messages for themselves, in my company it is not allowed to sent any sensitive information (like Creditcard numbers of customers) because it is easily intercepted (Get your free ACARS decoder on the 'net).
Would be something if it turns out afterwards that MAS had withheld information.
Don't think so!

[mm43]

Surface search ...

For those interested, the Sunrise Time is 2313 UTC at 7°N 104°E, and Civil Twilight is around 20 minutes earlier.

[c52]

FR 24 have an analysis of their data. They reckon it's sound above 30000'. Read it here: https://www.facebook.com/flightradar24

[TWT]

French accident board offers help recovering missing flight MH370 (http://my.news.yahoo.com/french-accident-board-offers-help-recovering-missing-flight-203706275.html)


"We have communicated to Malaysian and Vietnamese authorities that we are ready to assist with the underwater search operations or recovery of wreckage," a spokeswoman for the Paris-based BEA accident investigation branch said on Sunday.

[SaturnV]

The radar returns suggesting a turn back may be artifacts of large parts of the plane coming apart on different trajectories.

If I remember correctly, on TW800, after the center fuel tank blew, the fuselage was severed forward of the wingbox, the engines briefly continued to deliver thrust, the rear fuselage pitched up and forward in a parabola before arcing over.

[WillowRun 6-3]

A fairly significant proportion of this thread comments upon the aspect of the incident that involves use (evidently) of stolen passports. These subject-matter posts have been very largely factual. So I ask this question:

Is there a relationship between how passports are handled under the current ICAO civ av int'l legal and regulatory scheme, and the legal and juridical structures in place for the PIC to subdue, restrain, otherwise deal with "unruly pax"? Asking this because - as many posters know I suppose - ICAO soon convenes its Air Law conference to consider amendments of the Tokyo Convention to update or clarify juridical and jurisdictional provisions pertaining to PIC authorizations to control (& etc) unruly pax.

If a hard look at tightening up passport handling (broadly defined, as the facts of this incident still are being revealed) is in order, do you think it can legitimately be fit into the upcoming ICAO gab-fest on "unruly pax"? My legal mind senses a link between reforms on the conference agenda - about juridical structures and jurisdictional limitations and assignations of PIC authority to control bad-acting pax- and the emerging passport issues. Thank you for your attention to this inquiry.

[Global Warrior]

The lack of ANY debris field after an extensive search in a reasonable area could indicate that the aircraft was deliberately taken "offline",

OR

They are looking in the wrong place!!!

[RE Koyich]

Vietnamese Officials Say Airplane Debris Found in South China Sea - TIME (http://time.com/17248/malaysia-mh370-debris-found-vietnam/)

Vietnamese officials claim to have found fragments of an inner door and part of the tail from what might be a missing Malaysia Airlines jet

[DaveReidUK]

French accident board offers help recovering missing flight MH370Ditto the NTSB, who have a team enroute (probably in the region by now), including technical advisers from Boeing and the FAA, although of course they don't know yet which country's AIB will be leading the investigation as that depends on exactly where the aircraft went down.

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/2014/140308.html

[lakedude]

On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), t would be around 40s.Are you sure about this?

I don't see any provision for air resistance in that equation...

[barrel_owl]

@golfyankeesierra
To all those people placing high hopes on ACARS, you probably don't know what it is..

It is only the datalink itself, just the system 447delivering a message, it doesn't make the message.
Messages can be directed (amongst others) at ATC, the airlines operations control or the technical department and it can be used to access external providers, for instance to get wx reports.
It can be uplinked or downlinked an can be automatically or manually.

Now the messages from AF447 originated from the ACMS (look it up) that reacted on several active faults that it sensed. ACMS downlinked those faults automatically to AF's tech department as it is apparently programmed to do.
That works in my airline the same but these are usually customer options, so who knows how Malaysian has set that up or what system they have in place.
I am afraid you misinterpreted my post or deliberately tried to show your self-proclaimed ACARS "knowledge" to this community disqualifying my statement.

Where did I suggest in my post that I have hopes in ACARS?
Where did I suggest in my post that "downlink" is synonym of manual transmission? I simply didn't.
The aircraft is constantly in contact with the CPS through a bi-directional automatic transmission (uplinks/downlinks) based on "tech acks". The downlinks from the aircraft contain, among the others, positional data. This has nothing to do with manual messages and nothing in my post suggested this.

Anyway you cannot conclude anything from the absence of downlink reports.
Yes I can. If the CPS does not receive downlinks from the aircraft for a certain period of time, a failure report is automatically originated and sent to dispatchers (among others). What I tried to explain in my post is that, unlike the case of AF447, we do not have the logs here, only the word of the Malaysian Civil Aviation General stating that "no malfunction ACARS" were received. It would be interesting to analyze such logs, but they were not released so far.

And for the conspiracy theorists, in my company it is not allowed to sent any sensitive information (like Creditcard numbers of customers) because it is easily intercepted (Get your free ACARS decoder on the 'net).
Would be something if it turns out afterwards that MAS withholds information.
Don't think so!
Again, where did I suggest a conspiracy theory?

[A A Gruntpuddock]

Yes, 40s is about right for an object released with no initial velocity.

If an aircraft pitches down, however, some part of the horizontal velocity becomes the initial velocity (100% if it goes vertical) so it will take less time even if it breaks up.

[DaveReidUK]

I don't see any provision for air resistance in that equation... True - but it's still probably closer than the 3 minute figure.

For comparison, it took just under 50 seconds between the PA103 explosion (at FL310) and the wing impacting the ground at Lockerbie.

[VH-Cheer Up]

On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), t would be around 40s.

Based on the assumption the aircraft continued to accelerate in a uniform manner all the way down. That equation (better expressed as v^2=u^2 + 2as) gives a velocity after 8000 metres descent of 396 metres/sec or approx 900mph. Is it reasonable to assume that kind of velocity could have been achieved?

[fg32]

"Yes, 40s is about right for an object released with no initial velocity.

If an aircraft pitches down, however, some part of the horizontal velocity becomes the initial velocity (100% if it goes vertical) so it will take less time even if it breaks up."

Please stop using a formula for motion under gravity in a vacuum in relation to the descent of aircraft falling through the air.

Air resistance is the dominant factor, downward velocity will stop increasing once air resistance equals weight. Erratic of course if tumbling, but far far slower than in a vacuum, where speed keeps increasing until impact.

[slip and turn]

On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), t would be around 40s.Oops :hmm: Yes that logic you've used (with a=g=10m/s/s) also requires that the falling object hits the deck at 400m/s which ... er ... I fancy is a bit off for the reasons Messrs Gruntpuddock, dude, Cheer Up and 32 have gently reminded!

Terminal velocity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity).

[surfcat]

Lakedude: indeed no air resistance- this is the lower limit to freefall. But another alternative in the post I tried to quote was nose down. In that case, a>g, so t<40s.

[VH-Cheer Up]

Yes, 40s is about right for an object released with no initial velocity.

If an aircraft pitches down, however, some part of the horizontal velocity becomes the initial velocity (100% if it goes vertical) so it will take less time even if it breaks up.

That's not right - but the point highlights that if the aircraft is pitched down and assuming the motors are still running the thrust is added to the gravitational acceleration so a is going to be > 9.81 m/sec squared.

What's the terminal velocity of a 777 pointed towards the centre of gravitational attraction?

[Mr Optimistic]

Look up the 447 dynamics for the timeline of one trajectory from 35000.

[mseyfang]

On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), t would be around 40s.


It's been awhile since I took physics, but I came up with 46 seconds doing the conversion. Problem is, that particular equation does not take into account air resistance and terminal velocity (around 60 m/s). I'd say 3 minutes is probably closer the real answer. I found an equation that does take air resistance into account, but I don't feel like doing calculus today.

[andrasz]

@WillowRun6-3

ICAO/civil aviation des not deal with passports of passengers excepting that all international passengers must comply with immigration requirements of destination state to be permitted to board. The PIC has authority over all souls on board, irrespective of nationality. What is currently under some review is how to handle any possible conflicts between the law under which the PIC exercises authority (the law of the state of registry) and the law of the destination where anyone ordered to be restrained by the PIC is taken over by local law enforcement.

[henry_crun]

Searchers Report Spotting Plane Debris - WSJ.com (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304732804579427991198487418)

Report by Wall Street Journal, includes vid showing locations of last known position, reported oil slick and parts discovered.

[VH-Cheer Up]

447 hit the water at 10.912 ft/min = 124 mph. It went in almost flat pitched up about 16 degrees. The discussion here was about a nose-first trajectory to come up with a time of 40 seconds and a final speed in excess of 800 kt

[Lady Pterodactyl]

This is all desperately sad for everyone involved. It just seems so very similar to BOAC Flight 781 - the De Havilland Comet 1 crash off Elba. In that instance there was no apparent surface wreckage from the airframe but unfortunately the bodies of some of the passengers did stay on the surface. I don't envy the SAR teams their job one little bit.

[Ditchdigger]

Since speculation in some of the last few posts has included mention of speeds in the supersonic neighborhood, I'll ask a question that's been on my mind--Has there been any mention anywhere of reports of a sonic boom? How far across open water might one be audible?

[Lantern10]

For what it's worth, the two passengers travelling on the stolen passports were booked to fly out of Beijing and on to Amsterdam later that day.

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: What happened to MH370? (http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-what-happened-to-mh370-20140309-34fqa.html)

[tartare]

Have read through the previous posts - both informed and speculative.
All very puzzling.
The following questions meant in no way to distress, or cast aspersions on MH.
Fair to say that modern airliners usually only vanish during the cruise for one reason.
If there was an explosive device, then why no sign of a flash from IMINT satellites? I assume that thousands of pounds of Jet-A1 vapourising, even at that altitude would create some kind of instantaneous flash - or is a breakup in the cruise possible with no accompanying fire - I suppose it is?
And as yet, no revelations of primary radar trace of large parts of structure falling?
IIRC, one positive comment often made about the 777 is that it's a very strong air-frame. Even at circa 0.84 mach, air loads that might induce a catastrophic structural failure would surely still see large pieces left as part of the break-up sequence?
And no debris field yet.
Very strange.

[HIALS]

ACARS is not mandatory equipment. Aircraft can dispatch under the MEL with inop ACARS.

The information posted here so far does not categorically state that the ACARS was working prior to the event. The information I can see indicates that 'no failure messages were received' etc...

Was the ACARS operating normally prior to the event?

[jmmilner]

Submarines to search? :rolleyes: sure, the sonar may yield something but it's got to be a WTF moment here!Modern submarines are the best mobile platforms available for detecting sounds in the ocean. The whole front of a sub is a giant array of microphones coupled with major computing power all riding on a platform that itself is designed to be ultra-quite. AF447 included a French nuclear submarine in the initial search for the black boxes.

[SalNichols94807]

Probably because none of the three operational birds are looking for missile launches or nuke detonations in Malaysia.

[WillowRun 6-3]

@andrasz

Thank you; Sir. I understand that the legal scheme you described is what exists.

But the present legal system is set up from the inside looking out. That is, each nation state has its own system of identity controls and verification. And of dealing with all the fine-point particulars noted alluded to or otherwise mentioned on-thread. And from this, sort of like the UN, set of each nation taking its own approach (no pun intended), the international system is constructed. It looks from the inside (each nation) out (to the international, world-wide, global order of civil aviation).

That's why we have a "conflict" between the state of registry and the situs (legal word for, "place", one that is "formally identified by or with a juridical structure") where PIC's inherent legal authority is exerted in fact. In my legal opinion the ICAO governance system not only should be changed, but it MUST be changed so that the situs law yields to the authority of the PIC as articulated by such Captain's "rank" in the overall global civil aeronautics sector. It's a concept of "the legal right of way". The system needs to be re-done, looking from the outside (the global system perspective) in (into each country).

And as with collaring a stinking drunk, ordering my brother the rabbi to finish his prayers later and get in his seat (and belted) and so on and so forth - the civil aeronautics system globally has to impose some order on the apparent Swiss cheese paradise of passport laxity.

I was a student radical in the era of the SDS. Posters need not waste their fingers telling me 'things can't be changed'. I'm on the ORD perimeter - happy to chat over a brew with any and all four-stripers, oh and surely yes, I'm buying.

[SalNichols94807]

You understand that shallow water is a very difficult acoustic environment for a submarine, right?

[RobertS975]

Mid-air theory is bogus, and so is the bomb scenario at FL 350... there would be a debris field that would have been discovered by now. This plane hit the planet intact.

[andrasz]

2014, not capable to find a plane...

You cannot find something until you start looking at the right place. In this case, we only have the last known position, but theoretically the plane might be anywhere within a 5000km radius. OK, you can cross some areas off where you can certainly tell it isn't, but still its a huge area. In this case search starts from last known position, then goes outwards in expanding circles.

We do have very sophisticated remote sensing technology, but for that to work it also needs to be zoomed in to a small 'area of interest'.

[sdelarminat]

RobertS975 Mid-air theory is bogus, and so is the bomb scenario at FL 350... there would be a debris field that would have been discovered by now. This plane hit the planet intact.


Anybody remember how was the Alaska MD found? It hit the water nose first, was there too much debris, or was it difficult to find if it wasn't for the witness pilot reporting its position?

[golfyankeesierra]

I am afraid you misinterpreted my post or deliberately tried to show your self-proclaimed ACARS "knowledge" to this community disqualifying my statement
@barrelowl: I see a lot of uninformed comments here, including yours:
I conclude that the ACARS downlink feed from the aircraft completely stopped at some point
How do you know there is a "downlink feed"? In my airline if all is ok there is only an engine trending downlink around TOC and nothing else for the rest of the flight.
How does it work at MAS? I have no idea, do you?

[fg32]

For those keen to discuss shortest possible time of descent, and hence to assume a full throttle vertical dive, we can calculate very crudely, incorporating air resistance, thus:

Thrust to weight ratio of similar aircraft is given at about 0.2 to 0.3. Assume one third.
(A ratio of 1 would mean that sustained vertical climb was achievable).
So if the engines are achieving a certain stabilised speed in level cruise, then pointing the nose vertically down will in effect add three times as much thrust, due to gravity, giving four times the thrust.

The new stabilised speed will be such as to counter this 4 fold increase with 4 times the drag. Since drag increases with the square of speed, the speed will double.
So, very very crudely, the aircraft will stabilise its descent (terminal velocity) at twice its horizontal cruise speed.

We are ignoring:
A bit faster if we assume zero angle of attack (not actually flying).
And of course the air thickens on the way down, slowing us, and we should be talking actual speed, not IAS.
And the engine performance will presumably reduce in these conditions.

However, for these crude purposes I think we can say that the engines cannot drive us down vertically much faster than twice the speed they can drive us horizontally.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that this was in fact the mode of descent, just trying to get some idea of the fastest method imaginable.

Remember, very crude, ball park only. But it strongly suggests you can't get down vertically as fast 3 or 4 times cruise by running the engines.

And ignoring, of course the supervening break-up into slower falling bits

Not sure such a question is really very relevant, but the scenario intrigued me once posed, and I had to fiddle.

(Physics and math post grad, for my sins, so I shouldn't really do this in case I c**k it up, but I don't think it's wildly wrong)

[Mr Optimistic]

Oh, and when do the wings come off ?

[Toruk Macto]

Hats of to the governments and military of these countries to allow so many other countries to send in ships and planes . Let's hope the right equipment can be working in the search area ASAP no matter where its from .

[areobat]

BEA offers assistance
French accident board offers help recovering missing flight MH370 (http://apicdn.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&key=1e857e7500cdd32403f752206c297a3d&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pprune.org%2Frumours-news%2F535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-53.html&out=http%3A%2F%2Fmy.news.yahoo.com%2Ffrench-accident-board-offers-help-recovering-missing-flight-203706275.html&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pprune.org%2Frumours-news-13%2F)


"We have communicated to Malaysian and Vietnamese authorities that we are ready to assist with the underwater search operations or recovery of wreckage," a spokeswoman for the Paris-based BEA accident investigation branch said on Sunday. Isn't this the same group that couldn't find AF447?

[tartare]

Sal - are you sure?
The NYT is quoting a source specifically saying that systems designed to pick up such flashes have not done so.
I would have thought that the whole of South East Asia would have been a prime area for the US DOD to be looking for flashes, given the proximity to at least three nuclear armed states, and others who have ambitions to be?
The two SBIRS birds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBIRS) in orbit are geostationary, and I would assume have sensitive enough detectors with wide enough fields of view to pick up a fuel-air explosion at that height and location?
Particularly given that it was dark at the time?
My apologies - it seems those satellites operate in highly elliptical orbits, so might not have seen any explosion - if there was one.
Returning to the topic now, and thinking of the relatives of those who are missing...

[andrasz]

Hats of to the governments and military of these countries to allow so many other countries to send in ships and planes

I think you somewhat misunderstand the situation. Parts of the South China Sea are claimed by all surrounding countries. Last known location was in international waters, so all nations having a territorial claim frantically sent off vessels to join the chase and "show the flag" to demonstrate that the area is (in part) theirs. I'm afraid in SE Asian politics taking advantage of such a situation is considered fair game.

[SalNichols94807]

You're presuming that there was: a) an explosion, and b) that if there was an explosion that it met the intensity, duration, and wavelength criteria to not be rejected as noise.

[Australopithecus]

Tartare, I think that a fuel explosion from a ruptured wing would certainly be picked up as it would be larger than a missile exhaust plume which is what those satellites are looking for.

But...it is difficult to imagine a plausible scenario that ends with an ignition of a ruptured wing tank. Well, its not, but I will leave that to the speculatti.

[fg32]

And of course, we can extend my previous crude argument to an engines-off perfect nose dive. The thrust provided by the weight will be three times that previously provided by the engines, giving a descent 1.7 (square root of 3) times faster than speed in level flight.
So the engines wouldn't really add much (1.7 to 2)
Once again, presumably break-up would supervene, making it all academic ?

[rh200]

Also, I too find it rather baffling that a 20 foot Great White can be tracked to the nearest metre and that a plane can't, even in the event of catastrophic break-up.

I think some basic googling will help you there.

Happy for someone to provide some corrections , but I think you will find they only send data when the tag pops off, or the shark is at or near the surface.

Again electromagnetic waves don't go so well under water. (frequency dependence aside)

There are all sort sof 'add ons" that could be made to aircraft to enhance the "findability" in case of circumstances such as this. But it comes down to a cost analysis of what actual advantage you get in the rare circumstances that these things happen versus the pain in the @rse of setting them up.

[Toruk Macto]

Ships will need to call in to port to re supply , equipment sent from not so friendly countries will be shipped to HCM . Information needs to be shared amongst the many countries taking part in the search . International waters or not its a recipe for a lot of tention in this part of the world . Generals of all nations will be looking to protect their interests or press for advantage . It appears like cooperation is happening and long may it continue . What's going on behind the scenes is another story .

[tartare]

Australopithecus - you sound like you know what you're talking about.
Could you elaborate a bit more please?
My assumption was that a catastrophic airframe break up would see fuel lines and tanks ruptured, fuel vaporised and that with hot engine cores in close proximity, some sort of flash fire albeit very brief, very similar in IR signature to a rocket exhaust plume, would happen, which is why I wondered aloud.
But then I suppose it may be possible that air frame failure at 0.8 mach might just generate a lot of large pieces, depending on the modes of failure and the breakup sequence.

[Passagiata]

Just to keep the humanity here, in among the tech discussion:

Danica Weeks anxiously waiting for news of husband on missing Malaysia Airlines flight - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-10/danica-weeks-anxiously-waiting-for-news-of-husband-paul-weeks/5309360)

[Australopithecus]

Tartare...thanks. Its an illusion.

As someone else already mentioned the satellite data is filtered for characteristics, otherwise there would be a flood of data from lightning, gas flares, fireworks etc. But I believe, based on an article years ago, that the data stream can be retroactively inspected without the filters.

WRT to tank rupture/ignition. It takes a lot to get jet fuel to ignite...atomisation, lots of heat etc.. Cruise speed at FL350 would present a much smaller possibility of ignition than speeds, pressures and temperatures typical in landing accidents.

[Dai_Farr]

Modern submarines are the best mobile platforms available for detecting sounds in the ocean. The whole front of a sub is a giant array of microphones coupled with major computing power all riding on a platform that itself is designed to be ultra-quite. AF447 included a French nuclear submarine in the initial search for the black boxes.



As SalNichols94807 commented, shallow water makes for a notoriously difficult acoustic environment. People familiar with the (wider) geographical area have stated on here that those waters are chock full of fishing vessels. Man made noise and natural noise in the water adds to the ambient noise, which will be much increased over that of an open ocean environment. Reverberations will be rife. There will be surface reflections and bottom bounce (depending what the bottom is made of). In deep water, sounds spread spherically, greatly dissipating the intensity. Shallow water, constrained by the surface and sea bed, causes the sound to spread cylindrically, meaning in a given volume the noise is greater. It's logarithmic and I can't be 4rsed digging out my old notes! 10Log versus 20Log.

That said, the shipping noise is low frequency whereas sonic locators on Flight Data Recorders is not. I hope the frequency will not be discussed. Ambient noise is still a factor.

In the Air France 447 case, the location was open ocean; much quieter acoustically and a submarine could manoeuvre in the deep water there. Submariners are notorious liars about where they are and where they've been but if they tell you they are loath to go anywhere a prang might ensue, I'd (guardedly) believe them. They don't like shallow water. I was about to quote Lance Corporal Jones but thought better!

They could use a surface vessel with a decent SONAR suite to listen for the location device. To cover any area AND listen is almost mutually exclusive. They may need to sprint and drift, otherwise their Own Ships Noise (OSN) may mask what they're listening for.

Otherwise, drop sonobuoys from fixed or rotary-winged aircraft. That might do it. I flew SAR on Air India 182 back in 1985. I was an acoustic specialist on my Nimrod Maritime Reconnaissance crew. We dropped buoys but heard nothing. The water there was over the 1000fathom line and was "quiet". Plus we dropped buoys at each of the 2 datums of wreckage so we were as near to the source as one could be, under the circumstances. We heard nothing. To be fair, sonic location devices then were in their infancy and I've no idea if the Air India 182 aircraft had been fitted out with such a device.

Other commentators here have questioned whether there COULD be wreckage and/or oil/fuel. All I can add is what I saw: In the case of the Air India182, each of the 2 datums (60 nautical miles apart) had an oil slick as a huge "lead-in" feature. At each datum there was a large collection of jumble; all that could float. That's all I'll say on that matter.

I used the word "oil", in all probability for convenience. Some people might nit-pick but such fluids from an aircraft wreck will come from a variety of hydrocarbon, mineral and synthetic sources. On that day, on the surface of the ocean, there was a very obviously "oily" film. The sea was calm. In fact it was a beautiful day and those facts messed with our heads in looking at what we were seeing!

There might be major differences in this particular sad case, today. And so, for what it's worth, I offer these recollections in the hope that they might help!

[Australopithecus]

Dai Farr, your signal to noise ratio is very very high. Thanks for the insights.

[Typhoon650]

Can we please stop talking about submarines being used in the search? A conventional, military size submarine will NOT be operated under the surface in 50-100m of water. It would be akin to trying to stay VFR in a widebody with a cloud ceiling of 2500ft. A typical submarine is at least 20-25m in height from keel to top of conning tower or periscope. Even running at periscope depth would be far too risky due to chance of collision with surface vessels.
Submarine sonar systems are specifically developed to be used when running submerged, surface turbulence renders them useless, so they will only be used as another vessel running on the surface searching if they are even deployed.
Specialist vessels such as hydrographic or exploration vessels with accoustic/sonar/MAD technology will be far more effective.
Having said that, as these systems search on a cone (and will be lucky to be travelling at 6-12 knots), and that the water is so shallow, they will be greatly reduced in their effectiveness to cover a reasonable area.
Given that the water is so shallow, the most effective thing if no visible debris is found would be specialist aircraft such as the Orion if fitted with the MAD booms. They will also cover much more area much more rapidly than any surface search using this technology.

[mickjoebill]

On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), would be around 40s.

But real world examples seem to tell different stories.
The Space Shuttle Challenger cockpit detached at 45,000 feet continued to 65,000 feet then free fell, slowly spinning for 2 min 25 seconds. Challenger 1 (http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm)

Footage of a go pro falling from 12500 feet, it fluttered and spun at 7 revs per second and took 2 minutes to hit the ground. A Go Pro weights 100 grams. (Note that the footage isn't verified)

Footage of HALO skydivers in free fall from 30000 ft reveal that they free fall for a few minutes before they deploy chutes at 5,000 feet.

Surely the aerodynamics of unknown shapes are impossible to factor?


Mickjoebill

[7x7]

As has been mentioned before here, given the huge number of fishing vessels in those waters every night of any given week, I find it hard to believe that someone (quite a few 'someones' in fact) didn't se or hear something if the aircraft crashed in the immediate area.

I would imagine that part of the SAR effort would be patrol boats going from fishing boat to fishing boat - (and I'm not exaggerating when I say that that could take *** weeks, if not months) - asking if the fishermen saw or heard anything unusual on the night in question.

[Beausoleil]

On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), would be around 40s.


40s accelerating at 10 ms^-2 is a final velocity of 400 ms^-1. Terminal velocities are typically less than 100 ms^-1.

[thcrozier]

It is definitely in the fishermans favour to collect anything they find, I read in the last couple of days about a previous crash where a fisherman found what he thought was a piece of plywood that turned out to be part of a tail from a similar crash in the 90s.

Boeing rewarded the fisherman by paying him $5250 for handing it in.

Having spent a good portion of my life in countries where people live a hand to mouth existence, I have witnessed many times the looting which occurs after a tragedy. It's sad that some people live in conditions where an airplane crash represents the opportunity of a lifetime, but it's true for a large part of the world's population.

From what I've read here, the area is filled with small fishing boats, and my opinion is that no one would report a crash before scavenging whatever debris was left on the surface.

[VH-Cheer Up]

Evey Hammond, I just got a price for a non-stop flight Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam on a Malaysia 777, departing 11;59 PM on March 15 : $780.

So why fly via Beijing? At a higher price?To avoid the requirement for a Chinese visa. If using a stolen passport the traveler is unlikely to want to drop it off at the local Chinese Embassy for 24-48 hours then return to collect it in case they check its legitimacy. As noted earlier if transiting China for up to 72 hrs you don't need a China Visa.

Question is, were these miscreants anything to do with the disappearance of MH370? Or were they just criminals looking to obfuscate anyone trying to track them?

Hell, it could have been a couple of Jason Bourne types...

[StormyKnight]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BiUsUpRCQAAS4Sn.jpg

For Reference, example of debris from Swissair111- crashed at full power.

Source: https://twitter.com/search?q=mh370%20debris&src=tyah&mode=photos

[DWS]

mseyfang (http://www.pprune.org/members/282592-mseyfang) POSTULATED that perhaps some sort of flutter issue may have led to instant disintigration.

Theoretically possible- but not probable.

Flutter testing is standard in the industry, and FBW can automatically reduce such possibilities. helicopters are a different animal.

One known case of disintegration re flutter/harmonics of as fixed wing is the early Lockheed electra- several were lost. After finding out what really happened, the related problem was fixed- and a few dozen/hundred are still flying after 40 50 years - they afre called navy P-3.

The onset was due to a faulty engine mount design which came loose after hard landings. This allowed the turboprop engine- turbine to go into a whirl mode ( via gyroscopic action) at what was the natural frequency of the wing. In a few seconds, the wing ( VERY STIFF ) disintegrated.

That was in the late 50's as I recall.

AS to 777 - not impossible - but IMHO VERY unlikely !!

Simply too much redundancy and a flexible wing.

And NO its NOT like galloping gertie issues...

[etudiant]

An environment filled with active fishing boats in relatively shallow (<100m)
water sounds to me like a nightmare environment for any type of sound detection.
Just because the noise clutter from these ship is principally at lower frequencies does not mean the higher frequencies are clear. Rather there is a comprehensive fog of noise that blurs everything.
Imho, they cannot locate anything using the pingers on the ELTs unless they are really close, within a few miles at most, so finding debris visually is an essential prerequisite to knowing where to look. The range could be increased if the authorities can enforce a fishing holiday, but that would be unprecedented afaik.

[Stanley11]

Pointless post but can't resist speaking my mind and I'm sure many professionals here are equally puzzled as to how come the debris field is still not found. Considering the number of assets, very crowded waters, commercial sea traffic there are surely on the look out. Based on the last known location on radar, the aircraft couldn't have done a number that defies conventional wisdom and logic. "looking at the wrong area" might be the only explanation now but we are talking about many experienced Navies here.
It's truly bizarre.

[thcrozier]

It's only 3 or 4 degrees north, so I would assume someone's intelligence agency has a satellite parked on geostationary orbit over the area looking for unusual congregations of anything. When they find it, they won't announce it publicly, but it will be quickly investigated by surface and air assets.

[Ida down]

Aterpster, it was not long after the Qantas A380, nearly another terrible statistic, dropped her engine parts onto the country below, that some turned up on ebay. You cannot blame people who have nothing, from trying to get a dollar, can you, not at all.

[YRP]

YRP, People like you have to have facts spoon fed to you. Won't this make you fall prey to propaganda? I could spend a time finding the reference from a while ago, but if you're wondering, why not look yourself? I poured over thousands of facts about AF447, over the last 5 years, and if I happen to dig it up, I'll let you know. Maybe someone else remembers the French having to review the sonar tapes? It wasn't a secret, but since it was such a big mistake, they didn't exactly shout it from the treetops!


Coagie, there is a big difference between not knowing what signal they were looking for vs reviewing the tapes afterwards to glean more information.

Anything real time is never going to be as thorough as throwing some bright engineers, time, and decent computing power at the problem. Give them some months to try out whatever clever signal processor techniques they can think of (and experiment through trial and error) and just maybe they can find a signal previously masked by noise, distortion, etc.

That is not a screw up, rather it is following up every possibility.

If you are ignorant of communications engineering (which is ultimately what signal detection is), easy to say they screwed it up the first time...

[jugofpropwash]

First confirmation I've seen that the bearers of the stolen passports were Asian in appearance:

Missing Malaysian jet may have disintegrated in mid-air: source (http://news.yahoo.com/missing-malaysian-jet-may-disintegrated-mid-air-source-002831393--sector.html)

[Ida down]

thcrozier, the most sensible blog of the day, so far. A Satellite, of course.

[Dai_Farr]

From earlier reports on here there appear to be many assets out there. I have no doubt they are all very busy. But with nothing found at this late stage, they MUST ALL have been looking in the wrong place (or, and this doesn't bear thinking about) someone's search has been compromised.

From a SAR standpoint, is there ONE AGENCY in overall command and control? If you're about to say yes, think very carefully about the question. There are very great difficulties with this particular SAR effort and more so than with any other I have known. It is not only multi-national but the forces also cross ideological divides. Trying to coordinate different forces from ONE nation can be fraught with difficulties, but in this case, in addition to coordinating egos, forces from many nations bring different priorities, manifestos and other differences. The whole operation risks being thwarted by inability and unwillingness to fall in line.

The effort in theory is relatively simple: Construct a grid based on a variety of last known positions, CAREFULLY calculated forward throw ballistics, etc, etc. Then, "You, you and you look HERE... and you lot and you look THERE." etc, etc. With creeping line ahead and expanding square search patterns sweeping into the less plausible grid squares, something must be found soon given a sufficiently large number of suitably-employed assets. And whoever finds something first becomes Scene of Action Commander. Because time has gone by and we're now into replacement of search personnel, a team is needed to compile and maintain a roster. Diplomatic effort, particularly, is needed here to smooth the way for effective command, control and communications. Without a competent central command centre, everyone will continue to rush around like headless chickens.

Sure, under the status quo, eventually, something will be found. It could be better than this.

[Livesinafield]

first confirmation I've seen that the bearers of the stolen passports were Asian in appearance:

when he refers to this morning... is that now today as in 10th march?

so means no debris found...

[RiverCity]

>>>If vertical to surface below in a dive the wings would have stayed attached ... it is indeed probable in this theory that the wings are beneath the water ... Due to the energy and shallow water they could be buried in the mud?<<<

I posted to this possibility many pages back. More than a possibility, perhaps.

[Dungdang]

Hi all,

Just curious, in the case of AF 447 the first clues was technical data the plane sent automatically...

Any info about similar data stream from the missing plane?

[mickjoebill]

Interpol sounds alarm on passenger checks - FT.com (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/91edf988-a7a8-11e3-9c7d-00144feab7de.html)

"In a stinging criticism issued on Sunday, Interpol said both passports had been added to its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database almost immediately after they were reported missing in 2012 and 2013, respectively. "

“This is a situation we had hoped never to see. For years Interpol has asked why should countries wait for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates,” said Ronald Noble, Interpol’s secretary-general.

So the secretary general of interpol is claiming a direct connection between the two passengers and the cause of the tragedy?


Report also says that UK and the US make most use of the Interpol passport database and one billion passengers travelled last year "without passports being checked".

[baron_beeza]

Honestly there have been some really bizarre and batty posts here. Many of the writers have knowledge of the area, some fly the 777. Some have experience of the waters and even recovery methods. On the flip side we have many, many posts from guys that have little knowledge or experience.

One thing we all have in common, - none of us has any idea what happened to the aircraft. We have an interest, most have theories, and without exception we are all awaiting the next step.
How can it possibly take days to find a machine that at the time was apparently flying along perfectly normally ?

Politics, cultures, defence secrecy, media reporting are all working against us in so many ways.
Given the craziness displayed in some of the previous posts I don't see extraterrestrial intervention, of some form, as the most stupid of suggestions.

There are people on this planet that actually do believe in some pretty bizarre stuff. That extends into the aviation industry as well.

Indeed what does happen if there is no trace found of this aircraft ?

[Passagiata]

If the search has widened as far as the Straits of Malacca (as has been reported on reputable news sources) - does this mean that "saving face" has been happening at the official level for some time now, while they bought time, and that a LOT more has been known than has been reported, all along? Seems likely, given the cultural context ...

[jpinx]

Dai_Farr (http://www.pprune.org/members/152866-dai_farr)
regrettably the chances of a co-ordinated SAR effort are remote. Given the mutual suspicion verging on hostility and the asian mind-set of not going into a position where they might lose face, I reckon each country is searching it's "patch". Now the USA will arrive, along with Oz patrol planes and they'll probably co-ordinate between themselves, but just tell the locals what they're doing. Don't under-estimate the need to maintain face. I live in Asia and that aspect has to be understood well.

On another idea - is anyone looking on land ? If the plane continued northwards it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that it ended up in the Vietnam/Cambodian mountains.

[Livesinafield]

No technical data i am afraid....that is all being kept from us

[FIRESYSOK]

It will be found. Even if it takes months or years, requiring the full-court press of all capable countries, they will find it.

I'm of the same opinion that this plane went into the water relatively intact. The 777 is a large aeroplane, but in the context of the Gulf of Thailand, it is but a drop in the bucket...so to speak.

[RatherBeFlying]

Given the large number of low income folks on the water, distributing multi-lingual leaflets promising rewards for any found debris from the flight would get a lot of experienced folks looking for unusual flotsam.

The longer we go without turning up debris, the more other scenarios increase in probability.

You would think a high speed impact would produce waves that would get the attention of boats in the vicinity.

[Seven]

Malaysia's state news agency quoted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying the passengers using the stolen European passports were of Asian appearance, and criticizing border officials who let them through.

As far as stopping passengers of Asian appearance with European sounding names is concerned, it is really a slippery slope to go down.

I know a number of people from Asian backgrounds, particularly places like the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka, with names that may be construed as French, Spanish or even British, and who are citizens of European or other western countries. Conversely, Oriental and Indian sounding names (particularly female) are now gaining popularity in the west.

Do we really want to add another layer of complexity to airport security by necessitating that anyone who has a name that does not "match" their appearance, in the security officer's opinion, be singled out for greater scrutiny?!

Perhaps, it's time all countries expend the resources required to ensure better co-ordination with Interpol databases, which in this case had flagged both travel documents as stolen shortly after they were reported missing.

[Passagiata]

In the same vein, IF the plane had turned around, would that mean it's possible the Malaysian authorities are the sole holders of radar/tracking information? I haven't the know-how to track the very technical radar/tracking etc discussions, but if the garnering of that information is "owned back home" in "at home" airspace, perhaps some form of official face-saving might go some way to explaining this "disappearance", and they are bent on having a full explanation when they declare the facts? Remember, there are very fraught stakeholdings here.

[wd-15717]

Would Malaysian government officials be willing to admit that (a) KLIA security had been compromised (allowing potential weapons of terror on board) and/or (b) the plane had been diverted somewhere (and potentially crashed there or en route)?

The repeated suggestions of a "turn" on radar, a sudden drop, a supposed intent to return towards land, and now the business of searching the Strait of Malacca are leading me to think Malay authorities have a different idea of where the plane was headed than we have been led to believe.

Either that, or they are drawing at straws as much as we are.

[WillowRun 6-3]

Question about this type of multi-national search effort at sea. Dai Farr points out the coordination challenges. Can anyone describe antecedent examples? In other words, where SAR at sea consisted of several nations not aligned or in synch, participating in a large-area search? Realizing the AF 447 search might be a prior instance, but if so, did it entail such a divergence of nations? And it did not include an assertion of airspace control rights such as PRC has asserted in some regions of South China Sea?
I'd like to think that a fleet CVN of the U.S. Navy could oversee and execute such a search, with or without deployment of aviation and surface assets of other countries, but that thought might tend to be off-topic. Even if popular below decks.

[thcrozier]

You would think a high speed impact would produce waves that would get the attention of boats in the vicinity.

Agreed, but that doesn't mean they would tell anyone before scavenging the debris.

The multilingual reward offer idea is great:D

[onetrack]

So the secretary general of interpol is claiming a direct connection between the two passengers and the cause of the tragedy?

@Mickjoebill - You're reading a lot more into Interpols secretary-generals statement than what meant. What he was getting at, is that Interpol have a very good, up-to-date stolen passport database, with easy and immediate access - and very few countries are making use of it.
Stolen passports make their way onto the database within hours of being reported stolen - but too many countries are just plain lackadaisical about implementing tighter passport security.
It will take another major disaster for tighter passport controls to be implemented in the Asian countries where lackadaisical attitudes, corruption and personal fiefdoms rule.

@Dai Farr - No, there is no over-arching central command for SAR in a search like this. The reasons being - we're talking a couple of different countries jurisdictions, several different military heirarchies controlling their military equipment, multiple language problems, and a rush to show who can produce the best SAR results.
My money is on the Vietnamese Navys near-new DHC-6-400 Twin Otters producing rapid results today. These aircraft were purchased specifically for maritime patrol and maritime SAR.

https://malaysiaflyingherald.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/the-first-twin-otter-delivered-to-the-vietnam-navy/

[Stanley11]

The multilingual reward offer idea is great:D

Happened for the MI185 crash at Palembang. Once the investigators started to offer rewards for the pieces, the villages started coming out with the wreckage.

[CodyBlade]

A imm officer sitting at his/her booth stamping passports in routine 8/9hr shifts will not have enough wherewithal and gumption to flag Asians travelling with European sounding names.

[cressidom]

Just seen on Bernama News, apparently 2 fisherman who were out in the water near the area of concern had seen a low flying aircraft 'below the clouds'.

might turn out to be nothing.

[sevickej1]

It must be interesting at sea with the RMN, RSN and RTN trying to work together. The animosity runs deep from a cultural point of view - 'face' is VERY important. I ran the sea-going side of the RSN 71-73 and had a mixture of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Thai crews. Huge competition especially with the RMN. One has to question as to why a country with no international waters has a submarine fleet. Answer - simply to keep up with the neighbours.
From experience the Malaysians are not telling the whole story - they hate being wrong - and the witch hunt regarding the passport debacle will have already started.

[Dai_Farr]

Interesting responses from onetrack and Stanley11 here:

onetrack: No, there is no over-arching central command for SAR in a search like this. The reasons being - we're talking a couple of different countries jurisdictions, several different military heirarchies controlling their military equipment, multiple language problems, and a rush to show who can produce the best SAR results.
My money is on the Vietnamese Navys near-new DHC-6-400 Twin Otters producing rapid results today. These aircraft were purchased specifically for maritime patrol and maritime SAR.
and

Stanley11: Politics in this area is indeed complex but typically the Armed Forces work very well at the ground/tactical level. Multinational search and rescue efforts happens quite regularly around here due to natural disasters.

If a global UN Search and Rescue organisation were considered unpalatable, might REGIONAL SAR Coordination Centres, each with the authority to control assets from member's forces/emergency services be a better (less sensitive) option than an all-out UN umbrella organisation?

Might UN control of such centres help in the international political arena whilst giving smaller nations a feeling of autonomy at least on a regional level?

Look, joining a "club" is never easy - look at the EU!!!!! Look also at the struggles in and around the former Soviet Union. But human disasters, at least in times of (relative) peace have at least a tacit desire to pull people out of the deep brown sticky stuff. Might such an organisation help in the future?

If, in doing what we have always done, we shouldn't be too surprised that we get what we always got! Change is needed.

[Earl]

I worked and lived in BKK for a while.
Thaisky. Skyeye, Phuket Air Etc.
Tristar and 747.
Was always known and quite common that you should always secure your passport in the hotel apartment safe.
Well know they will take and sell on the black market.
Tourist maybe not as much aware , but working there we know.
Pain in the ass when you have to fly but safer this way.
Not saying in anyway that some one took these that was brought back to a hotel room.
But it happens often.
Really hoping that the bad ones did not take advantage of this.
Time will tell.
As of now all speculation here.
What is known as all of us pilots are aware of this happened fast and was devastating.
But we all know and suspect the bad ones and what they did before.
Yes they are all over Asia also.
Even the best consulates one are now saying criminal act probably.
Sulley etc.
Hope all this is proven wrong soon for all our flying ones sake.
But is starting to smell like a rat.

[repariit]

RE HARMONIC VIBRATIONS
mseyfang (http://www.pprune.org/members/282592-mseyfang) POSTULATED that perhaps some sort of flutter issue may have led to instant disintegration.

Theoretically possible- but not probable.

Flutter testing is standard in the industry, and FBW can automatically reduce such possibilities.Since the Electra, flutter has become a well understood and well tested aspect of the aircraft certification process. Designers are capable of specifying proper mass balance of control surfaces. The experimental flight test process verifies that the product is flutter free throughout the envelope, and beyond Vmo & Mmo.

If anyone wants to learn more about Boeing's activity in this area on all of its jet airliner models, read this. It is a well written history of flight testing of B47, B52, 367-80, 707, 727, 737, 747, 757, & 767 aircraft. The T7 had similar testing. It also discusses flight test anomalies that have not been widely published, such as the deep stall of the T-tail 727, asymmetric and unintended slat deployment on the 737 at speed above Vmo, and another leading edge surprise on the 767. If you understand what the aircraft you fly have been through before you get in them, you will know that MH370 did not break up inflight without some extraneous catastrophic event. The anomalies were addressed with design fixes prior to their being placed in airline operation.

[thcrozier]

There are some good people but they are stymied by complicated racial politics and a culture of deference and venial political maneuvering.


Exactly. The cultural and political issues are huge. Careers will be made or destroyed by this. Not to mention the !@#$% money.

[mickjoebill]

You're reading a lot more into Interpols secretary-generals statement than what meant. What he was getting at, is that Interpol have a very good, up-to-date stolen passport database, with easy and immediate access - and very few countries are making use of it.

I'm fishing, if we believe the quotes, either he knowns more about the linkage between the passport miscreants and missing aircraft than he can say in public or he is in the dark and has seized the rare moment of international focus on his organisation to promote Interpol's database by saying passport checks will prevent airline crashes..

To put it in perspective, until we know that the passport miscreants took down the flight he should be saying that passport checks will help prevent people smuggling, criminal activities and drug smuggling, the never ending trail of human misery and death toll of which is probably comparable to an airliner crash, just not as newsworthy.

[Aisle Dweller]

@ Stonevalley - I lived and worked in Malaysia for 3 years and only partly share your assesment. Malay politics are dirty at times, no doubt, and face saving is as everywhere in Asia a big issue but the people I worked with were all highly competent and professional.

We here in Australia should be very careful accusing officials in other countries being corrupt.

Regardless I believe that the Malay Authorities are holding back information. (wrote it before).

[Ida down]

Ever seen a F18 pilot use his afterburners at night? For a airline pilot standing on the ground, it made my blood run cold. It would be impossible not to see a explosion like the B777 going up, if indeed she did. Impossible, not with so many boats around as there are there.

[Stanley11]

They are incompetent by First World standards. Not bigotry but fact.

Wow, I'm not sure how you can come to such conclusions. Sure, they (not sure who you are implying here) may not do everything to YOUR first world standards but why don't you list down what you would do if you were in charge?
The efforts the region banded together to get through the Boxing day Tsunami disaster was nothing short of impressive, 1.5 world standards? Who would you classify as first world? USA? Western worlds? What was the rescue efforts like at New Orleans after Katrina?

Goodness...

[onetrack]

Would REGIONAL SAR Coordination Centres, each with the authority to control assets from member's forces/emergency services be a better (less sensitive) option than an all-out UN umbrella organisation?

Might UN control of such centres help in the international political arena whilst giving smaller nations a feeling of autonomy at least on a regional level?

Look, joining a "club" is never easy - look at the EU!!!!! Look also at the struggles in and around the former Soviet Union. But human disasters, at least in times of (relative) peace have at least a tacit desire to pull people out of the deep brown sticky stuff. Might such an organisation help in the future?

If, in doing what we have always done, we shouldn't be too surprised that we get what we always got! Change is needed.

A fine ideal - but in the harsh reality of the cold light of day, and the prickly attitude of most of the worlds countries as regards control of territory within their Maritime boundaries, it just ain't gonna happen. Who would finance such an organisation and who would be given over-arching control? Have you ever tried to organise and take control of a bunch of free-will volunteers? It's impossible, everyone just does their own thing.

A co-operative SAR effort as is now being carried out, will produce the same result as a centrally-co-ordinated SAR, because each group of searchers is homogoneous, with a common language, a disciplined force, and a recognised chain of command. If different SAR groups are searching the same area, even without a central command, any wreckage will be discovered more quickly.

The offering of a wreckage reward to the fisherman and locals is the soundest idea yet produced.

[Aisle Dweller]

Exactly Stainley 11 ! Well written

[Ida down]

If Singapore is running the show, it will be run well. They don't muck around those blokes.

[jugofpropwash]

If the report that they're expanding the search area to include the Strait of Malacca is accurate, then they must think there is a possibility that the aircraft not only turned, but that it was aloft for some distance after it turned, correct?

[stonevalley]

Stanley11/Aisle dweller

You are gentlemen and give people the benefit of the doubt. There are many good people there but the problem is the political and organisational culture.

I've worked in this region for a decade much of it in Malaysia and quite honestly people are feathering their nests, risk-averse and reluctant to make waves. That is my general assessment

Whether the MH370 is being handled well or not is far too early to say but I will be watching it with interest

[Tfor2]

Would it be an exaggeration to say that that part of the ocean may be teeming with small fishing boats? And if so, many would not have radio? And if so, then some of them will know something that they can't report until they return to port.

[RJM]

Re Interpol's database, and apologies if this has already been answered here:

Are all reports of stolen passports logged by Interpol?

[Stanley11]

If a global UN Search and Rescue organisation were considered unpalatable, might REGIONAL SAR Coordination Centres, each with the authority to control assets from member's forces/emergency services be a better (less sensitive) option than an all-out UN umbrella organisation?

There is a international Maritime SAR document but indeed loosely worded. More importantly, ICAO does spell out the authority and responsibility for SAR in maritime disasters.

The countries here Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, US, China (source: The New Straits Times, not sure why they left out Vietnam), had worked closely before in such or similar situations (Boxing Day Tsunami). Perhaps only China is the 'new player' but a good 85% do have past experiences. Sure, people rotate out but certain SOPs do get passed down. Additionally, most of these countries have conducted rescue exercises together, one of this is a submarine rescue exercise (not sure of it's frequency).

So to reply to your suggestion, there are sufficient multi-lateral / coalition / UN tasks out there for the Armed forces of modern countries to work together. The framework to cooperate is usually very standard and there isn't a dire need for more organisations. Hope this helps.

[GlueBall]

Just curious, in the case of AF 447 the first clues was technical data the plane sent automatically... Any info about similar data stream from the missing plane?

AF447 bus was intact and powered until impact. MH370 appears to have had sudden in-flight electrical power loss at FL350.

[India Four Two]

And if so, many would not have radio?

Tfor2,

You are right. I know from personal experience, that very few Vietnamese fishing boats have radios. They may have walkie-talkies for local communication with other boats and they all will have mobile phones, but those are no use 100 miles from shore.

During offshore seismic operations, we employ chase vessels to keep fishing boats out of the way. The chase vessels often have to close withing hailing distance.

[thcrozier]

Would it be an exaggeration to say that that part of the ocean may be teeming with small fishing boats? And if so, many would not have radio? And if so, then some of them will know something that they can't report until they return to port.

No it would not. But in my opinion they would not want to report anything at all. After scavenging the debris, the crews will wait for investigators to offer reward money.

[Stanley11]

Here's a comment that may ruffle some feathers. Look at the FIR of the region and you may have an idea of the SAR capabilities of that country. Compare not only in terms of geographical location but also in size.

http://www.swld.com.au/images/air_asia_FIR.jpg

[CodyBlade]

"If Singapore is running the show, it will be run well. They don't muck around those blokes."

That's true of 'Old' Singapore.

[thcrozier]

Having not flown myself around for a number of years, I had to look this one up. Also, I'm sure an unusually large number of folks with no aviation experience at all are watching this site at the moment.

Flight information region - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_information_region)

[thcrozier]

Question for India Four Two:

Do your seismic sensors stay on the bottom and relay information to the surface via laser, sonar, or other transmission; or do they have to be retrieved? Also, would they register an event such as an airplane crash?

[Ida down]

Well the report is just in, from Malaysian airlines on Sky (Australia). No aircraft parts have been found, the oil slick has been sent to a Laboratory be checked out, but so far nothing. They also said they are perplexed, indeed shattered, as we all are. Terrorism is now being considered, so they must have something. They are looking at all angles, and named all the countries that are now searching, but no signals are being received which makes it difficult to find wreckage, if indeed there is wreckage. So back to square one, people. And just appalling for the families.

[Hansol]

If there is no wreckage (so far) could that be an indication that the aircraft has remained intact? Or is that doubtful?

[Coagie]

Slip and turn Coagie makes a good point. If you are seriously interested in effective research I recommend learning a few quick-win effective research techniques so you don't have to bash fellow PPRuNers for their sources! E.g. start with Google and a few well chosen search words like AF447 acoustic locator sonar frequency.

Then in seconds you might easily stumble over stuff like:
BEA to examine why acoustic sweep missed AF447 recorders - 5/5/2011 - Flight Global (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/bea-to-examine-why-acoustic-sweep-missed-af447-recorders-356286/)
https://fenix.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/dow...issertacao.pdf (https://fenix.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/downloadFile/2589871808139/dissertacao.pdf)
Thanks, Slip and turn.

I have to correct myself. I kept writing 43khz, but I meant 37.5khz, for the frequency of the pinger. Anyway, here's a quote from Slip and turn's first link: While a nuclear submarine was enlisted to assist the search, its sonar interceptor was not originally designed to pick up the 37.5kHz beacon signal. Lower-frequency transmissions, around 8.5-9.5kHz, would have improved the chances, says the BEA. But improved sensor settings enabled the maximum distance for detection to increase from 2,000m to 3,200m during the last 10 days of the acoustic search. Anyway, the "not originally designed" part is what popped into my head from the very first I heard of the French sending the Nuclear sub to try and hear the pinger. Running the signal through a heterodyne circuit, where they listened only for 37.5khz, would have helped tremendously. That's pretty much what the purpose built listening for pinger equipment does. The sub didn't have equipment purpose built or modified to listen for 37.5khz pingers.
I haven't yet read the dissertation, that the other link connects to, but wouldn't be surprised if it should be a "must read" for anyone thinking of locating a, downed in the water, airliner pinger.

YRP If you are ignorant of communications engineering (which is ultimately what signal detection is), easy to say they screwed it up the first time...
YRP, The Albert Michelson Interference Theory is actually some of the only stuff I'm good at! I'm apologize if I've changed your whole paradigm on believing that authorities are infallible, and it makes you feel uncomfortable, but, in truth, a little cynicism and experience is a good thing!
If the sub had the equipment mods it needed, AF447 may have been found 2 years earlier. Since it didn't, the area should have been searched by vessels with purpose built equipment, instead of being checked off the "Areas Already Searched" list. YRB, A physics course could help you a lot. I'm sure there are some good, as well as interesting, ones online. I had to learn mine in the olden days, where it was a bit dry. Anyway, good luck, and hope you're melancholy goes away.

[jasper19]

Its a shame during the press conference, the journalists were more interested in the 2 passports, instead of probing into why they are searching the malacca strait, as the explanation given for searching the malacca strait was in my opinion vague at best. It just feels like they know something more than they are letting on at the moment.

[StormyKnight]

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Vietnamese searchers on ships worked throughout the night but could not find a rectangle object spotted Sunday afternoon that was thought to be one of the doors of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that went missing more than two days ago.

Read more: MISSING MH370: Vietnam says cannot find object from missing jet - Latest - New Straits Times MISSING MH370: Vietnam says cannot find object from missing jet - Latest - New Straits Times (http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-vietnam-says-cannot-find-object-from-missing-jet-1.505573?cache=golhyfvvipwqzn%2F7.14219%2F7.14219%2F7.244828 %2F7.294473%2F7.308059%3Fkey%3DKuala+Lumpur%2F7.557712%2F7.5 57712%2F7.557712#ixzz2vX0nV8Dj)

[mickjoebill]

Terrorism is now being considered, so they must have something.
Whilst it could be true, I would disagree that he inferred this in the press conference, as they said they looking at all angles. I didn't hear the word terrorism mentioned.

Chief of Malaysian CAA, press conference he did not take questions which were unrelated to SAR.

At the moment they do not have anything that they can confirm as wreckage.

Vietnamese report regarding a floating door is not verified by Vietnamese authorities today. (reading between the lines, it may have been a valid report but either it or what it related to can't be verified at the moment)

A search radius of 50 NM from last point of contact has been conducted/completed

The search North of Malacca straights was done because of the chance the aircraft may have begun to turn and for no other reason.

40 ships searching 24hours per day and 34 aircraft 7am to 7pm.

Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Philippines Thailand USA involved in search.

FAA arrived this morning.

All bags on the flight were X-rayed according to international standards.

Offered to fly 5 next of kin from each passenger to KL.

They are looking at all angles for the cause.

No signals detected from the aircraft after the initial lost contact.

Oil slick amples sent to lab.

Report of tail wreckage was found to be logs tied together to form a pontoon.

They are puzzled and perplexed.

He deferred numerous questions regarding security and the two fake passport holders, quoting it could interfere with investigations and it was a matter for the investigators, not him. Bear in mind English is not his first language but he appeared calm in control, fluid and open.

[nojwod]

compare the photo of the door that was touted as possibly from the aircraft with photos of the B777, looks nothing like it. The photo showed a large central (window) in the door, all the Malysian B777 doors have a small window at the side and the colour stripe paint along the bottom.

[ChicoG]

Just for reference MS990, which descended rapidly nose down in to the sea at night, left very little on the surface:

"At sunrise, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy training vessel Kings Pointer found an oil sheen and some small pieces of debris."

[Tones]

I put the last known latitude and longitude according to Flightaware 4.7073N 102.5278E into Google Earth and it came up with a Malaysian mountaintop in the flight path of the plane not middle of ocean.

I assume this is because Flightaware coverage is incomplete?

See

Flight Track Log ? MAS370 ? 08-Mar-2014 ? WMKK / KUL - ZBAA / PEK ? FlightAware (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA/tracklog)

[davidash]

There now seems to be speculation that MH 370 may have "disintegrated" at FL350. I cannot imagine what would cause it to virtually evaporate so that no debris could be found. Surely even a very large explosion would blow some parts off the aircraft that would remain intact?

[thcrozier]

Welll, it could be false, it could be true...i dont know either...but weird

My friend who knew a lot about intelligence satellites would have said "Probably disinformation", but that wouldn't have stopped him from following up. :cool:

[India Four Two]

Do your seismic sensors stay on the bottom

thcrozier,

No, our hydrophone sensors are in a towed-cable array, up to 8000 m long by 800 m wide, moving at 4.5 kts. That's the reason we need fishing boats to keep out of the way, for our mutual benefit. We don't want to tangle with their drift nets and they don't want to lose their gear.

The hydrophones have a bandwidth of less than 10 Hz to 200-300 Hz. They would certainly register the low-frequency noise from an ocean impact in the vicinity - we pick up ship's propellor noise from quite long distances.

However, as a practical matter, there are no seismic vessels operating at the moment, since we are still in the NE Monsoon. Although this is the dry season in southern Vietnam, the winds and waves are too high for us to operate - too much wave-induced noise in the sensors.

[Frenchwalker]

A group that calls itself the Chinese Martyrs' Brigade has claimed responsibility for crashing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which has remained missing after losing contact with ground control at 1:20am on Saturday.


Chinese group claims responsibility for flight MH370?Politics?News?WantChinaTimes.com (http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1101&MainCatID=11&id=20140310000042)

[Sawbones62]

The impact-detachable, floatable external ELT has been available for turboprop aircraft and helicopters for years (i.e. look at the RCAF fleet). Had something like that been adopted for airliners, it would be worth its weight in gold right now...

[thcrozier]

Thank you, I42..


By the way, my family has been in the O&G business for 4 generations, but it was only in last month's JPT that I learned of exploration in Vietnamese waters. Obviously I haven't been paying enough attention. :)

[Capt Kremin]

I posted many pages ago that the lack of wreckage or even reports of an explosion in such an area, populated as it is by some of the most intensive marine traffic in the world, is the most perplexing part of this.

Every hour without a sign of wreckage deepens the mystery further.

I do not believe that terrorism is necessarily involved simply because fake passports were being used. There is a myriad of reasons why that could be so and conversations with officials in the know about such things confirms it is not necessarily unusual.

A break-up at 35,000 feet would have left a large identifiable debris field. Something would have been found by now.

That is has not suggests either they are looking in the wrong place, or the debris is in a very localised area, possibly due to the aircraft going vertically into the water.

I find it difficult to ascertain why the searchers would be looking in the wrong place, considering the plethora of primary and secondary radars that would have tracked the aircraft.

An aircraft going vertically into water at high speed would have a limited number of causes.

Pilot disorientation following some malfunction - similar to Adam Air Flight 547. (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Final_report_blames_instrument_failure_for_Adam_Air_Flight_5 74_disaster)

Terrorist Action - similar to 9/11

Pilot suicide - similar to Silkair 185 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185) or Egypt Air 990 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990)

In the light of the increasingly weird lack of debris/mayday calls/ACARS info/visual sightings by witnesses of explosions or fire on a dark moonless night, the options are becoming limited.

[Hempy]

Just for reference MS990, which descended rapidly nose down in to the sea at night, left very little on the surface:

"At sunrise, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy training vessel Kings Pointer found an oil sheen and some small pieces of debris."

And therein lies the difference.

[hamster3null]

Sorry if this has been answered before (looked through several pages, don't see the answer):

What is the exact extent of ATC primary radar coverage of the Gulf of Thailand?

If the transponder of MH370 was turned off or otherwise disabled at the last known position, 40 min after takeoff, but the aircraft itself remained in one piece at that point, would the aircraft still be visible on any radar afterwards?

Based on available information, is it possible that MH370 had a massive electrical failure and/or was hijacked 40 min after takeoff and eventually was ditched into the ocean, say, in South China Sea halfway between Vietnam and Philippines (1000 miles from the last known position), thus explaining why no one saw an explosion and no one seems to be able to find any debris?

P.S. And while we're at it, how far would a 777 glide if (worst case scenario) a power failure shut down all electronics and all engines at the altitude of 35000 ft and airspeed of 470 knots?

[thcrozier]

Anyone else get the feeling that we're never going to know the true cause?Not me. The cause will be found, but first the aircraft or wreckage must be found. In spite of all the tongue in cheek space alien Twilight Zone references here, I think those are just from people frustrated by the lack of data. Both inside and especially outside this forum, there are a lot of highly intelligent, capable, talented, and experienced people working on this; and they won't stop until they find an answer. I'm also sure that assets we can't even imagine are being brought in by various intelligence agencies.

[red_october]

@ Andrias - The longer it takes to find the aircraft, the harder it gets to find the cause.

[Coagie]

3db Coagie,
I just looked up 40kHz in the Radio Regs, it is allocated to fixed maritime mobile - they would not be putting a distress beacon in that band without guard channels. Also, a google search reveals a circuit diagram which has a loudspeaker symbol as the "final bit" and not an aerial symbol, so my apologies, you are correct. Must google before posting for things I am not familiar with! 3db, I messed up as well. I kept writing 43khz, when I should have written 37.5khz. I work off the top of my head too much without double checking. Anyway, thanks.

[jugofpropwash]

There was a suggestion made regarding rewarding fishermen for finding pieces of debris.

How about going one further? Supposedly they have video of the two (or more?) passengers flying with the stolen passports. How about publishing their photos, and offering a reward to anyone who can identify them?

If they were non-terrorists simply attempting to immigrate, then most likely they had family members or friends who knew it. Even if they were smugglers, someone might well recognize them who knew what they were involved in.

Identifying the men and ruling out (or ruling in) their possible link to terrorism could help to narrow in on what actually happened.

[porterhouse]

And while we're at it, how far would a 777 glide if (worst case scenario) a power failure shut down all electronics and all engines at the altitude of 35000 ft and airspeed of 470 knots?
The possible glide distance would be approximately 20 times the altitude, hence about 20*6 = 120 miles but not at that speed, to achieve this maximum glide distance pilots would have to lower the speed.

[Stanley11]

instead of probing into why they are searching the malacca strait, as the explanation given for searching the malacca strait was in my opinion vague at best. It just feels like they know something more than they are letting on at the moment.

They are just going on every possible lead, as would anyone. Soon, as the search grid grows, they'll simply draw a circle centered about the last known position and range based on the fuel remaining and search.

Disintegration in flight might be an explanation but no comms? One of the steps in an emergency is to 'call'. But then again, sometimes in the heat of an emergency, pilots may be too engrossed in handling the emergency. For the crash at Bagram, Afghanistan last year, the pilots only called out 'Weight' at the last moment before they crashed.

My best guess now:

Flight experienced some total electrics failure, somehow inclusive of batteries. No possibility of comms (perhaps 777 pilots can share on this possibility). Tried to turn back and some how mishandled due to disorientation and descended rapidly enough to lose radar line of sight/range. Somehow aircraft leveled off at low levels (no radar contact) and tracked in some direction until they crashed. Crash site no where near the last known position.

- one problem with this scenario is total E plus batt failure. Again, not sure the set up on 777 and how likely is this.
- another problem is if they fly low enough to evade radar, then those on the surface should have seen something.

Just trying to connect the dots:
a) loss of radar contact very quickly from FL350
b) no comms
c) no debris field in the region of the last known position

[ChicoG]

@ Andrias - The longer it takes to find the aircraft, the harder it gets to find the cause.

That depends on the cause. If they find the FDR and CVR all could be revealed, as it was in AF447.

[Hempy]

ffs once and for all..

There are essentially four common types of ATC surveillance. Primary radar requires a return off the skin of the aeroplane = heaps of power out for a tiny reflected return = very limited range (< 100 nm). All other forms of surveillance (secondary radar/ADS-Broadcast/ADS-Contract) require a transponder in the aeroplane in order to get s return. SSR and ADS-B are ground based, so they are limited by line-of-sight rules (i.e range ~ 300nm), ADS-C is via satellite return and has essentially world wide coverage. No return on anything except Primary simply means the transponder is u/s

[Ollie Onion]

Have a look on the Flight Radar print out, a number of acft where in the general area, I find it hard to believe that between these aircraft and the number of boats around, no-one saw the supposed 'explosion / disentegration'. It does make me wonder if this was a controlled deviation and deliberate act which would mean that the search area could be out by hundreds if not thousands of Kim's. Surely if it had been a technical problem the Malaysian would have some info to back this up, even the Air France incident resulted in ACARS error messages being sent back to maintenance.

Why all the speculation about military radar showing the acft plunging to the sea whilst authorities denying all knowledge. The total lack of witness accounts and reliable radar traces and an apparent flow of misinformation makes me very suspicious of what has happened here.

[red_october]

What's this businessman doing @ 1.45 in the morning?

[jugofpropwash]

In a case like this, how long does it usually take to find out what sort of cargo might have been on board?

[B772]

With 50 years of flying experience and 15 of it in South East Asia the loss of MH370 worries me. I know the Andaman Sea, South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand like the back of my hand.

I can not believe a B777 can be 'lost' without trace. There are many Radar installations in the area, both Civil and Military that could have been tracking the a/c. I am not surprised the Chinese Foreign Minister is frustrated and becoming impatient with the Malaysians due to questions being asked but being fobbed off.

After watching the latest press conference I am concerned the Malaysian DGCA is 'hiding' something.

[philipat]

I agree with the earlier post that if they are searching The Straits of Malacca, they must have something else which they don't want to release. That would be 1.5 flying hours back from the Southern tip of Vietnam.

The other thing not being addressed (Excuse me if I missed a discussion, this is a long thread) is the missing 5 passengers. Malaysian went out of its way to confirm that the checked bags of these passengers were offloaded. But FIVE no-shows is an awful lot? Who were these people and what was the routing of their tickets? Did they turn up to claim their checked bags or did they "Disappear". If so, what was in those bags?

[Psittacine]

No return on anything except Primary simply means the transponder is u/s
It seems whatever happened in MH370 at the time of the incident happened in such a way that precluded electronic information transmissions from any of the following devices:

ELT-failed/turned off
ACARS-failed/turned off/MEL unserviceable
AIRCRAFT TRANSPONDER-failed/turned off
PRIMARY & SECONDARY RADAR-failed due no primary paint or secondary transponder reception
RADIO-no comms by either crewman

For all items to fail seemingly instantaneously seems to indicate either the purposeful opening of their controlling circuits or their loss during a massive single electronic failure. The second is indicated due to the loss of secondary and primary radar contact. In the case of 9/11 the aircraft were taken over and flown by the terrorists to their conclusion within hours. There is no indication of this with immediate radar loss. Wouldn’t this indicate that cause is a catastrophic failure?

[hamster3null]

fs once and for all..

There are essentially four common types of ATC surveillance. Primary radar requires a return off the skin of the aeroplane = heaps of power out for a tiny reflected return = very limited range (< 100 nm). All other forms of surveillance (secondary radar/ADS-Broadcast/ADS-Contract) require a transponder in the aeroplane in order to get s return. SSR and ADS-B are ground based, so they are limited by line-of-sight rules (i.e range ~ 300nm), ADS-C is via satellite return and has essentially world wide coverage. No return on anything except Primary simply means the transponder is u/s

Right. Now, the question becomes: what primary radar ATC stations are there along the route of MH370, and what were their actual effective ranges? And, when newspapers say that the plane disappeared from the radars, do they mean that the primary return was lost, or that the transponder had stopped transmitting and the primary return wasn't there to begin with?

The possible glide distance would be approximately 20 times the altitude, hence about 20*6 = 120 miles but not at that speed, to achieve this maximum glide distance pilots would have to lower the speed.

OK, good to know - 120 miles is not a lot but would probably take the aircraft out of the search area.

[philipat]

I'm not defending security at KLIA because if they were not screening against the complete security database, that is a problem.

On the other hand, on the surface at least security at KUL appears very good. I recently flew to LHR and back with MH on a A380 and, out of KUL, we were asked to produce Passports and Boarding Cards for checking before Boarding. My wife was taken aside for about 10 minutes for further Passport inspection because she did not look British (Whatever that means these days!!), despite the fact that her Passport picture matched her physical presence and that we were travelling together in First Class. I thought that suggested quite a high security alertness.


If this IS terrorism, wouldn't such a "Flagship" flight with 500 passengers have made a more "Attractive" target. I keep wondering WHY Malaysian (An Islamic country) and why a flight to PEK?

[Capt Kremin]

There are several airports capable of taking a B777 on the east coast of Malaysia that would have been in gliding range from position IGARI.

[jugofpropwash]

KELANTAN: A businessman in Ketereh claimed that he saw a bright white light, believed to be of an aircraft's, descending at high speed towards the South China Sea via Bachok airspace about 1.45am on the day flight MH370 went missing

If this guy is right - interesting wording. Descending at high speed - not plummeting out of control, not crashing. A white light - not flames or a fireball.

[ve7pnl]

There have been such a wide range of theories, many of them reflecting a lack of aviation knowledge that I've decided there is room for one more.

Perhaps some triple 7 experts can rule out this scenario.

The big puzzle here is: what could possibly happen at cruise speed at 35000 feet that would not result in a very large and dispersed collection of pieces of airplane that would easily have been noticed in a couple of days of daylight? And if there was a high energy breakup at sea level there would be a more concentrated collection of debris.

What if:

A massive electrical disturbance that took out all of the communications and much of the control electronics right down the line. Leaving the pilots with a basic panel and difficult to handle controls.

Assume the electronics are fried - without considering how this disturbance crossed over between the several buses. So, eventually they would engage the RAT and maybe get some useful hydraulics (if needed), but the RAT electrical power would not be very useful because of damage already done.

Faced with that an experience aviator might be able to control the aircraft and ride it down with or without engine power... possibly idling. Not sure what the engine control electronics does if it loses command signals.

So, with the basic panel they keep the airplane flying - possibly gliding - watch the altimeter, and hope the standard setting for FL350 is not crazy wrong at sea level. Or maybe they even had data on more local altimeter settings. As they get to 500 feet - they taper off to V1 or thereabouts and slowly descend until they hit the sea. And then float there for a short time. As sea water flows in through a few cracks in the fuselage.

And then sadly.... the aircraft sinks.

What's missing - floatation rafts getting deployed - maybe not practical.
406 MHz beacon... why is it not being heard?
Could this scenario require manual deployment?

Many years ago when I was active in small aircraft flying and airline and military avionics design the activation rate of ELTs was very poor in many crashes - the TCO got revised and the g switch specs and orientation made a great improvement. But automatic activation on nasty landings would make a lot of people unhappy.

So - could a 777 water landing leave the g detect switches untriggered?

Crazy? Impossible? Or just implausible.

So far the limited fact set seems to not produce many possible solutions.

In this scenario there might be an almost total absence of debris.

Enough...

[Bravo Romeo Alpha]

A previous poster has provided an extract from the Malaysian AIP showing radar coverage up to 200 nm. This radar is located at Kota Bharu (WMKC), and the normal configuration of Malaysian DCA radars is a co mounted PSR (60 nm range) antenna with a MSSR antenna , range 200 nm. This is the nearest radar to the last displayed position (N6.97 E103.63) on FR24.


As this location is 93 nm from the Kota Bharu radar, it is outside PSR coverage, so no primary radar returns would have been seen. However the position is well within SSR coverage with a lowest coverage height of about 5000 ft at this range. At 200 nm the lowest coverage height is about FL270.


The SSR data from this radar is sent to the KL ATC center at Subang, which provides enroute ATS for the KL FIR.


As for other radars, the last position is about 190 nm from the Hat Yai radar site in Southern Thailand, and 290 nm from the Ho Chi Minh radar, so no other radar coverage was available.


However there is an ADS-B site on Con Son island, about 130 nm south of HCMC. This is at a elevated site of 1500 ft, so has very good coverage, and is 200 nm from the last FR24 position. The lowest coverage height is about FL220 at this range. The Con Son ADS-B data is also sent to Singapore ATC to enhance surveillance of the ATS routes in the adjacent Singapore FIR


So its likely that the various ATS providers had good position data - but entirely dependant on the aircrafts transponder/s. Without that no data at all. There could of course be military radars providing PSR coverage of this area - but that has not been disclosed as yet.

[sarge75]

Sorry if mentioned and correct me if I am wrong but....

The plane was airborne 6 minutes after it's scheduled departure, yet there were 5 people who checked in but didn't board.

I find it hard to believe that after waiting and waiting for 5 people, you would then be able to find all of their luggage and remove it without delaying the plane.

[philipat]

"I find it hard to believe that after waiting and waiting for 5 people, you would then be able to find all of their luggage and remove it without delaying the plane".


It's quite possible they could have been ready to close the doors 10--15 minutes ahead of scheduled departure time. All checked bags can be traced to a loaded container so the time taken would depend to some extent on the loading sequence of the containers, but it can be quite quick. And taxi doesn't take long at that time, after all the heavy longhauls have already departed.


Of far more interest is the matter I raised on the last page. FIVE is a lot of no-shows for a single flight, even if their bags were offloaded, which MH went out of its way to confirm. Who were these people and did they later claim their checked bags? What was their flight routing and where were the tickets purchased. etc.

[lc_461]

Sorry if mentioned and correct me if I am wrong but....

The plane was airborne 6 minutes after it's scheduled departure, yet there were 5 people who checked in but didn't board.

I find it hard to believe that after waiting and waiting for 5 people, you would then be able to find all of their luggage and remove it without delaying the plane

I don't find this suspicious at all. KUL is MH's hub, and as such people most likely connected to this flight from all over South East Asia/Europe/Australia/India etc.

It is possible that the these passengers were proactively denied boarding by MH in advance due to missing minimum connection time (eg if a connecting flight from BOM was delayed - pax would be offloaded).

I haven't read anything to say that this isn't the case. Likewise with many MH flights departing from KUL around the same time, I doubt 5 pax failing to board is statistically significant. They may have been simply fallen asleep etc.

Regardless, due to security reasons of course bags must be offloaded if passengers are not travelling, and it sounds like they were.

[jugofpropwash]

So its likely that the various ATS providers had good position data - but entirely dependant on the aircrafts transponder/s. Without that no data at all. There could of course be military radars providing PSR coverage of this area - but that has not been disclosed as yet.

So, if the transponder was inop or disabled, then civilian radar would have been unable to track the aircraft? And we don't know if there was any military coverage?

I'm more and more convinced that they're looking in the wrong place.

[mm43]

They were quick to release the passenger list - where's the cargo manifest?One Chinese national had their name redacted from the pax manifest. The cargo manifest is made up in "good faith" and therein lies a potential problem.

[ChicoG]

What's this businessman doing @ 1.45 in the morning?

Well, Red October, why not read the article and find out?

Alif said he was in the compound of his home when he saw the bright white light, which he described as similar to the ones used by airplanes during night flights.
"I was walking towards my back door when I caught a glimpse of the white light.

Never been up at 01:45 in the morning to get a drink or take a pee? What's the point of your question? You think he made it up?

:confused:

[lateott]

The article linked on the previous page might suggest they are looking in the wrong place.

I have an annotated map of the search area but can't post the image, but if this was a true sighting they need to search right off the coast of Bachok, Malaysia (near Kota Baru). Though it is hard to believe the Malaysian search parties would close their eyes for the first 50 miles of feet wet on the way to search their designated area...

KELANTAN: A businessman in Ketereh claimed that he saw a bright white light, believed to be of an aircraft, descending at high speed towards the South China Sea about 1.45am on the day flight MH370 went missing.
Alif Fathi Abdul Hadi, 29, told the New Straits Times what he saw after lodging a report with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) in Tok Bali earlier today.
Alif said he was in the compound of his home when he saw the bright white light, which he described as similar to the ones used by airplanes during night flights.
"I was walking towards my back door when I caught a glimpse of the white light.
"It was moving towards the sea, towards Bachok area, which was unusual.


From New Straits Times Latest - New Straits Times (http://www.nst.com.my/latest/)

[Clear_Prop]

I did initially promise myself I wasn't going to get involved in this discussion, but I must admit I too am becoming quite perplexed by the lack of any wreckage in the expected area. There was one small fact that I observed at the start and quickly disregarded as meaningless, but as this situation is dragging out, I am beginning to suspect it may be more of a clue.

It is to do with the Transponder, or more to the point what we know has been received from it by the FR24 data. Or more to the point what hasnt been received. The very last report in the FR24 data chain lacks any altitude data. For it to have been processed, a recognisable message must have been received by the servers, otherwise the message before would be the last data we would see. What strikes me as noteworthy about this is that the most obvious sequence of events I can think of where this data output would be recorded, would occur when the transponder was deliberately cycled from Mode C (S) through Mode A (no alt) on the way to STBY (Off).

I might go one step further and suggest I am struggling to imagine any other set of events where this pattern of signal output would be observed.

Your thoughts?

[Ida down]

A Question for Malaysian LAMES, or someone in the know. When did this aircraft last have a D or Phase Check?

[tartare]

Clear prop, if I have understood you correctly you are suggesting that the lack of data seems to indicate the transponder may have been deliberately switched off?

[hamster3null]

The very last report in the FR24 data chain lacks any altitude data. For it to have been processed, a recognisable message must have been received by the servers, otherwise the message before would be the last data we would see. What strikes me as noteworthy about this is that the most obvious sequence of events I can think of where this data output would be recorded, would occur when the transponder was deliberately cycled from Mode C (S) through Mode A (no alt) on the way to STBY (Off).

As I understand, FR24 saves one report per minute, even if reports come in more often than that.

Assuming that your premise is correct (this is the first time I hear about this), what are the odds that the last report saved by FR24 just happens to be the one when the transponder was passing through mode A?

[VH-Cheer Up]

One Chinese national had their name redacted from the pax manifest.I noticed that. What's the reason? Who edited it? MAS? Or...

[dk88]

As I understand, FR24 saves one report per minute, even if reports come in more often than that.

Assuming that your premise is correct (this is the first time I hear about this), what are the odds that the last report saved by FR24 just happens to be the one when the transponder was passing through mode A?

How long does it take to switch from Mode C to Mode A and to STBY?

[snowfalcon2]

Very briefly:

- Square orange object, buoy suspected, spotted by DHC6 at 1020 local time (UTC+7 i.e. 0320Z), position N074730 E1025712. Investigating.

- The suspected "window liner" object spotted yesterday evening (widely reported as a suspected "door" in international media) has not been found again by 1130 local time.

- Search area possibly to be extended to South China Sea by afternoon.

Search continues, no confirmed debris so far.

source Dan Tri via Google Translate

[red_october]

I'm starting to agree with Clear Prop. Either it was deliberately switched off, or there was a serious electrical malfunction / fire in the business end.

[toffeez]

We are told that when SR111 hit the water "seismographic recorders in Halifax and in Moncton recorded a seismic event".

Does anyone have the expertise to confirm that, and to say whether the same could be expected of any large aircraft hitting the ocean (intact I presume)?

[Bobman84]

I'm starting to agree with Clear Prop. Either it was deliberately switched off, or there was a serious electrical malfunction / fire in the business end.

A fire in the cockpit (which cut communication) is not implausible and the second last hull-loss involved a cockpit fire of the 777 (albeit zero fatalities).

That might explain why it's difficult to find as well.

[Nikai]

Sailing through the search region several years ago showed a lot of fishing activity, but in addition to this there was significant floating debris, floating islands of rubbish and discarded junk. Whilst it may seem strange to some that a definite debris field hasn't been found, in the context of the area, it makes sense that they are being careful to verify any possible sightings. Plus, bearing in mind that much of the fishing in the area is small operators, with varied nationalities, operating to their own rules (rather than large companies), it really could be some time before feedback comes from these sources. Hoping that further news comes soon for the loved ones of those on board.

[Passagiata]

We are told that when SR111 hit the water "seismographic recorders in Halifax and in Moncton recorded a seismic event".

Does anyone have the expertise to confirm that, and to say whether the same could be expected of any large aircraft hitting the ocean (intact I presume)?

Don't know the answer there, but I do know there have been many more tsunami warning seismographic recorders installed since the 2004 tsunami, all over the SE Asian region ...

[yssy.ymel]

Yes tartare, thats exactly what I am suggesting.

The more this goes on, my thinking about this incident is leaning much further towards this. I was only speaking with a colleague about this today - total silence from the incident aircraft with no obvious signs of debris with 40 odd aircraft searching and enough boats in the water to walk from West Malaysia to Vietnam is suspicious

Not to mention no radar being able to track it past the time the squawk was lost? Hmmm.. There is more to this than meets the eye I think.

Time will tell.

[thcrozier]

And to think I've been wasting my time here

That's Okay. A lot of us find it intellectually stimulating, even if we have learned nothing more than the topography of the seafloor and that seismic studies in the area use towed-array detectors 8,000 meters behind the boat... :)

[hamster3null]

So, with 50,000kg on board, you could fly for about 7 hours (and reserves) and go about 2000nm.

This mental exercise seems fairly pointless to me. If you want to hide from the radar, you only need to stay low when you're near ATCs. Presumptive hijackers could stay at 600' for 300nm and that would put them on the other side of Malay peninsula, at which point they could regain altitude and they'd have several million square miles of the Indian Ocean at their disposal. (But they probably wouldn't make it to any "really interesting" places like Afghanistan or Somalia, not without refueling.)

[hamster3null]

I appreciate there are fine differences in the scenarios of disappearance, but do the media seem to be making more of the issue of a/c or debris not yet being located yet than in previous similar incidents?

I'm pretty sure in time gone by there have been aircraft lost at sea that have taken a little while to find (it was about five days for AF447?); and it just strikes me that the mainstream news outlets are more than ever - even by their standards - making an issue that 2.5 days in there's still no sign; like it's completely unprecedented and totally incomprehensible.

Is it me, or maybe there's a Moore's Law of media flabbergast?

In case of AF447, even though the location of supposed incident was poorly known, pieces of wreckage were spotted from the air during the second day, before any ships even had a chance to get to the site, and first bodies were being pulled out of the ocean in 5 days.

In case of TWA 800, a large piece of the wing was found in the ocean the day after the incident.

Finding no trace of the aircraft at 60+ hours after it goes missing, in a densely populated region, is quite unusual and the media is justified in making it an issue.

[Stanley11]

Some of the assets sent to locate the debris are pretty advanced. The anti-submarine assets have the means to locate targets as small as a periscope.

[Anti Skid On]

Make of this (http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-man-claims-possible-sighting-of-airliner-1.505683?cache=03%2F%24m.local.facebook_userInfo.pic_square% 3Fkey%3DKuala+Lumpur%3Fpage%3D0%3Fpage%3D0%3Fpage%3D0) what you want

Getting his 15 minutes of fame, or, something the authorities should be looking at?

[Global Warrior]

After finding cracks in the Wings on the 787 production line and added to the 787 Battery issue, this couldn't have come at a worse time for Boeing. The last thing they need is for this to be blamed on the manufacturer. Could they survive an additional crisis?

Conspiracy Theorists.... Over to you

[thcrozier]

jugofpropwash:

There was a suggestion made regarding rewarding fishermen for finding pieces of debris.

How about going one further? Supposedly they have video of the two (or more?) passengers flying with the stolen passports. How about publishing their photos, and offering a reward to anyone who can identify them?


Good idea. Could be that they have already been identified though. If that's the case, you are faced with the benefits of confirmation vs revealing your capabilities, and no doubt other strategic issues. Flyers to Fishermen, on the other hand, reveals nothing about the hand you hold.

[snowfalcon2]

This is still Google translated so careful...

1400 local: Singapore's C130 is said to have sighted "a suspected lifeboat-like object" at N081605 E1025111, 140 km SW of Tho Chu island.

"Physical comfort is detected lifeboat gray striped red and blue (the color logo of Malaysia). "

[The report appears to suggest the object is emergency chute size. But I have never heard chutes are be painted in airline livery colors....]

Surface vessels on their way to investigate.

[bille1319]

KELANTAN: ''A businessman in Ketereh claimed that he saw a bright white light, believed to be of an aircraft's, descending at high speed towards the South China Sea via Bachok airspace about 1.45am on the day flight MH370 went missing''

Sorry this does not add up either; a bright white light is not a burning aircraft; always bright red/orange unless magnesium? Perhaps a meteor but astronomers could verify this.

[red_october]

If MH370 suffered an incident like Egyptair SU-GBP @ FL350, they had no chance. Might explain the quick descent and if the fire took out the power to the comms, no way they could send out a mayday even if they had time to.

EDIT - And they'll be heading towards land.

[A Squared]

Or...maybe 2-4 terrorists, 1-2 of whom are basic pilots armed with a Glock “plastic gun” style weapon ...

Ahhh, yes, the famous Glock radio-invisible plastic stealth gun. As a point of fact, a Glock contains a great deal of metal and is readily identifiable on x-rays as exaclty that; a handgun. And it has more than enough metal to activate a magnetometer.

[thcrozier]

So we started at 3N and now we are up to 8N. How many NM is that? I imagine 300 at least.

[jcjeant]

Hi,

Terrorism ...
Why a terrorist will take the risk to use a stolen passport ..
It increases the risk to be arrested at the control post .....
Logic ?

[dk88]

Hi,
Terrorism ...
Why a terrorist will take the risk to use a stolen passport ..
It increases the risk to be arrested at the control post .....
Logic ?

If he is on some kind of No-Fly list - or equivalent, using a stolen passport (if he knows there are no checks if it is stolen) is less risky.

[givemewings]

If there was terrorist involvement, who says they had to be travelling on stolen or false documents? Those could be coincidental (people smuggling or other) and the party involved boarded under their real name and document? Just a thought...

[ETOPS]

I'm convinced they are looking in the wrong place.

Regardless of "what" happened on board, if the flight continued for any length of time the search area becomes vast. If it came down at fuel exhaustion then the crash site could be nearly 3000 miles away - in any direction.

[ChrisJ800]

12:40 -depart KLIA
1.22 -Fail to chk in with HCM
2:41 -Subang ATC 'lost contact'


Time-line is not right

Vietnam is 1 hour behind Malaysia so 1:22 is 2:22 Malaysia time.

[andrasz]

Sixty hours on my post #999 summarizing what we know (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-50.html#post8362282) has not changed one bit...

I would not want to venture out to any speculation based on zero facts, but every passed hour without any wreckage sighting reduces the likelihood of some catastrophic event at/near point of last contact, and increases the chances of the aircraft having continued under some degree of control away from that point. Of course the latter if true eliminates several of proposed scenarios and raises a whole lot of uncomfortable other questions.

I'm sure a lot of heads are stuck together right now pouring over primary military radar and satellite surveillance data, but I'm sure they will not tell us what they see (if anything). However given the location of last contact, after only a little altitude loss even the primary signals would have been lost. Now if one plots the potential area outside the coverage of any primary radar station and within six hour's range, that is a sizable patch to comb through...

[FlyingTinCans]

[The report appears to suggest the object is emergency chute size. But I have never heard chutes are be painted in airline livery colors....]

The emergancy slides which can be detached and used as a life raft are normally grey or yellow in colour. The purpose built lift raft that all over water ETOPS aircraft carry are illuminace yellow or orange to make them easier for SAR to spot, international regs would not allow them to be any other colour.

Could possibly be a slide that inflated on impact or by a survivor...

[uksatcomuk]

12:40 -depart KLIA
1.22 -Fail to chk in with HCM
2:41 -Subang ATC 'lost contact'


Time-line is not right

Totally agree Codyblade.
This is something I commented on immediately the details were released.

Our system shows it at 35000 feet around 1710 GMT other trackers continued to see it until around 1720 by which time it was out at sea.

Official reports say it was lost around 1840.....but by that time it would have been 4-500 miles north of where they are searching.
The search area correlates with a time of around 1720-30 GMT.


Of course trackers only track the avionics , not the a/c .... so the a/c may well have continued having suffered a systems loss , but this is an area of intense military interest . DSP satellites watch this region closely for flashes and bursts of radiation relating to missile launches etc....and there
may well have been operational ocean bound radar platforms

It seems pretty obvious to me that military observers know much more than they are letting on.

[ekpilot]

What if;

- Top of climb, cruise checks done, either pilot goes to the lav for a long overdue, midnight
pee.

- Said pilot disabled in fwd galley, flight deck access obtained by accomplice.

OR, access gained when coffee being brought up front with insufficient vigilance....

- Disableing of pilot(s).

From there on only a very basic knowledge/training should enable these perps to deactivate the two major systems that actively send signals to the ground with position and other data.

- Descend/climb 500' and set a heading of choice. Only method of detection would be
primary returns.

There could be numerous reasons for wanting to keep an aircraft flyable for several hours and the end game could be either a 9/11 type scenario, an opportunistic attempt at kidnapping, extortion, theft, industrial sabotage etc. However, while the initial few minutes of the takeover could be achieved with little or no aviation knowledge the guys now at the controls might be in over their heads and not able to get to their end game...

[ManaAdaSystem]

Despite the traGedy, I am enjoying this thread and this mystery. The most entertaining posts are the ones writing novels about MH370, "below 500 ft they slowed to V1, landed and water seeped in through the cracks in the fuselage, then they sank".

The (apparent) lack of transponder data and comms means one of two things:

-MH 370 suffered a catastrophic failure taking out all electrics. Fast. What are the odds? Cockpit fire? No, not that fast. Not a decompression. Not a flight upset. A bomb, a missile or a midair.

-MH 370 was hijacked and systems switched off. By passengers or by the operating pilot(s). What happened after is anyones guess.

My money is on option #2.

[dowot]

08:25 UK time.

BBC radio has just said that SAR helicopters have been scrambled as there has been a possible sighting of a yellow object.

Maybe a liferaft?

Not much other information given as yet.

08:36 update, Vietnam waters and helicopters. Object reported seen with-in last hour. BBC saying liferaft.

[Capt Kremin]

12:40 -depart KLIA
1.22 -Fail to chk in with HCM
2:41 -Subang ATC 'lost contact'

ATC will exercise all possible contact options before they declare a distress phase. That is the most probable reason for the delay.

[Lancair70]

My bad re old news!.:ouch::ouch::ouch:

The cockpit fire scenario ? How long would the plane fly on with all electrics disabled, Cockpit crew incapacitated or deceased?

[andrasz]

12:40 -depart KLIA
1.22 -Fail to chk in with HCM
2:41 -Subang ATC 'lost contact'


Before this post goes into another 50 replies cycle as it already did twice on this thread:
Loss of transponder signal at 1:21 (closer to 1:22)
Subang center INFORMED MAS on loss of contact at 2:40 (2:41 by some sources)

In the intervening 1 hour 20 minutes both Sebang and HCM were trying to make contact with the aircraft. Only when the aircraft did not appear in range of Vietnamese primary radar was the alarm raised. Loss of transponder signal and communications happens on a daily basis somewhere in the world, with the aircraft usually appearing further down it's flight path and the crew mumbling a faint sorry to ATC.

[Hempy]

12:40 -depart KLIA
1.22 -Fail to chk in with HCM
2:41 -Subang ATC 'lost contact'


Before this post goes into another 50 replies cycle as it already did twice on this thread:
Loss of transponder signal at 1:21 (closer to 1:22)
Subang center INFORMED MAS on loss of contact at 2:40 (2:41 by some sources)

In the intervening 1 hour 20 minutes both Sebang and HCM were trying to make contact with the aircraft. Only when the aircraft did not appear in range of Vietnamese primary radar was the alarm raised. Loss of transponder signal and communications happens on a daily basis somewhere in the world, with the aircraft usually appearing further down it's flight path and the crew mumbling a faint sorry to ATC.

In all fairness, SAR action should have commenced no later than 01:37. It wasn't just a Comms failure, they disappeared off the screen!

[Lone_Ranger]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Psittacine http://www.pprune.org/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-63.html#post8363428)
Or...maybe 2-4 terrorists, 1-2 of whom are basic pilots armed with a Glock “plastic gun” style weapon ...

Ahhh, yes, the famous Glock radio-invisible plastic stealth gun. As a point of fact, a Glock contains a great deal of metal and is readily identifiable on x-rays as exaclty that; a handgun. And it has more than enough metal to activate a magnetometer.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with the inference
I presume he was referring to this....

How Mail On Sunday 'printed' first plastic gun in UK - and then took it on board Eurostar without being stopped in security scandal | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2323158/How-Mail-On-Sunday-printed-plastic-gun-UK--took-board-Eurostar-stopped-security-scandal.html)

[philipat]

"12:40 -depart KLIA
1.22 -Fail to chk in with HCM
2:41 -Subang ATC 'lost contact'


Time-line is not right"


HCM is on the same time as BKK/CGK, which is one hour BEHIND KUL/HKG/SIN time. These times could be LOCAL, which would make the time lines very different.

[kenjaDROP]

I've just watched the main BBC News this morning. Roving BBC reporter just fresh out of press conference in KL. Quote: "........the plane was 2 hours into its flight....". Doh!
How many hours since the flight and they still can't get it right?!

[dowot]

Re earlier reports of a yellow object being spotted.

Latest is that it is not connected to the current search.

BBC radio 08:55.

Sorry if I raised anyone's hopes. I rather hoped it would be a positive sighting.

[armchairpilot94116]

Nearby countries all seeming to be sending assets to assist. Hope they don't trip over each other, especially in this sensitive maritime area. Even Taiwan is sending vessels to assist.

Hard to believe a plane would turn to dust at high altitude (as someone previously suggested ) with anything short of a nuclear explosion. And for sure one of those would NOT have gone undetected. So that basically rules out that theory.

They just need to expand their search area. Especially if the plane was hijacked and flown at low levels for hundreds of miles over water.

[beamender99]

As I cannot read the last page I can only guess this has not been reported.


BBC radio 4 has just reported that the " life raft?" spotted is nothing to do with the MH aircraft.

[ettore]

A fairly good "round-up" of the situation by Reuters press agency :

http://reut.rs/1naDv9xe

[Evenrude]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pz5lankzacvptt2/MAS%20slide.jpg

Malaysian Airlines evacuation slide in their training building.

[snowfalcon2]

New information dated 1520 local (UTC+7 i.e. 0820Z) says a Vietnamese search vessel HQ637 has identified a "cable roll cover" or "mossy fiber roll lid" at the position where a suspected "liferaft" or "emergency slide" was earlier sighted.

So yet another false indication. Search continues...

source: Dan Tri via Google Translate

edit: apparently same info as beamender99's 5 minutes ago

edit2: new update but very hard to make sense of. We'll see...

[givemewings]

A side note re: sliderafts. The B777 operator I fly for has silver colored sliderafts. It's the CANOPY which gives an orange/red color. This is separate to the slideraft and is to be installed by the crew for use on water (for obvious reasons) Anyone's know if MAS are different?

IIRC the only rafts I've ever used which themselves were yellow were those carried on B738 or supplemental carried in cabin on paxseats as part of overwater operations for aircraft normally limited to closer to land...

ETA: Evenrude's pic confirms same

As you can see they are pretty stinking big when inflated, certainly larger than the "door"-like object spotted earlier (which to me looked more like the plastic lav surround than a 777 door)

[Acute Instinct]

Where is the plane? Without other evidence found, on the ocean floor.
How many pieces is it in? At least two, to facilitate it sinking.
Is the fuselage still intact? Substantially, yes, as typical floating debris such as clothing, cushions, life jackets may still be contained in the largely intact closed on impact cargo compartments and cabin areas.
Are the wings intact? No evidence of fuel slick found.
Why were there no communications made? Instant G load and rapid decompression.
Could the tail section have departed company?

[ana1936]

KL Insp General of Police says one of the users of a stolen passport has been identified.

Not Malaysian, no record of entry into Malaysia.

Nationality being kept secret.

[Sober Lark]

I gathered wreckage from 182.


07.14 GMT at alt of 9,400 m, 190km off Irish coast. First wreckage discovered same day 09.13GMT. Even though it broke up in cruise, large pieces were quickly located floating on the surface and days later washed up on beaches.

[India Four Two]

Even Taiwan is sending vessels to assist.


So now every nation with a "South China Sea" claim is involved. I'm not surprised. Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, China, Taiwan plus interested third parties - US, Australia, Singapore(?)

As I mentioned before, I wonder who is the On Scene Commander? Who is co-ordinating the search effort?

The Reuters link didn't work for me. Here is another: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-malaysiaairlines-flight-idUSBREA2701720140310

[mcloaked]

Surfcat's estimate using the simple schoolboy physics equation:

"On the freefall time, the 3+ minute estimate is a bit off.

s=ut + 0.5at^2, assuming an initial vertical velocity of 0, and initial height s=8000m (I can't be bothered to convert 35,000' to m), t would be around 40s."

Is going to be a huge underestimate since air resistance is not taken into account. So the original estimate may well be not far off but for a debris field with large variation in the sizes of the pieces then there will be a range of descent times and pieces will hit the surface over an extended period of time over several minutes.

[amos2]

So, let's apply Ochams razor... "the simplest theory is usually correct".

1. An inflight loss of control/structual failure.
2. A deliberate vertical descent into the ground/ocean.

[fg32]

According to China.org.cn, 19 families have signed a joint statement saying that their family members' cell phones connected, but the calls hung up. The relatives have asked Malaysia Airlines to reveal any information they might be hiding, seeking an explanation for the eerie phone connections. The relatives have complained that the Malaysina Airlines is not responding as actively as it should.

[golf yankee one one]

The possibility that the transponder was switched off deliberately has been raised. The only reason for doing this would be to conceal where the aircraft is going next.

Either the flight crew or others who overpowered them are the only two agents who could do this.

The commander of the flight has been widely reported to have a "flight simulator" at his home.

Might be interesting to see what scenarios he has been running recently...

[SaturnV]

Anti Skid On, the page numbering slips a bit as posts are deleted.

To correct for the record,

Hamster3null wrote:
In case of AF447, even though the location of supposed incident was poorly known, pieces of wreckage were spotted from the air during the second day, before any ships even had a chance to get to the site, and first bodies were being pulled out of the ocean in 5 days.

In case of TWA 800, a large piece of the wing was found in the ocean the day after the incident.

Finding no trace of the aircraft at 60+ hours after it goes missing, in a densely populated region, is quite unusual and the media is justified in making it an issue.

No wreckage that proved to be from AF447 was found on the second day.

The center tank explosion on TW800 was witnessed by many.
Image below is a reconstruction of the sightlines of various witnesses. See image at:

http://twa800.com/images/witnesses-sightlines.jpg

SAR knew exactly where to look immediately.

[BDiONU]

So, let's apply Ochams razor... "the simplest theory is usually correct".
1. An inflight loss of control/structual failure.
2. A deliberate vertical descent into the ground/ocean.
1. But why were all of the electrical items 'off' at the same time? Radios, ACARS, SSR, ADS B squitter. I cannot believe that there is a single point of failure on the electrical system, nor that these devices don't have redundancy in the form of battery back up built in.
2. Why?

I would suggest a Pan Am 103 situation but the curious bit is lack of wreckage so far.

[andrasz]

I presume standard ICAO SARPHASE procedures where followed?

Precisely. The uncertainty phase commenced soon after Subang was unable to make contact with the aircraft. After all communication attempts failed, the alert phase was issued at 2:40, pretty much an hour after the start of uncertainty phase, and I'm sure all relevant authorities started preparing for a SAR mission. Full scale distress phase was probably declared at/around ETA BJS.

The same timescales happened with AF447, SAR was only launched after the aircraft failed to make contact anywhere beyond its remaining endurance. An overwater SAR mission is a very costly exercise, and diverts scarce resources which potentially might be needed for another emergency. Such resources are not sent off on wild goose chases until at least the basic facts are gathered and analyzed.

[SRMman]

100 miles is low, in my experience going back to the 70's the detection range for our search radar was in excess of 200 miles. Of course modern civil radars are quite different and may not be designed to have a very long range capability.

[SaturnV]

For What Its Worth

In Taiwan, the head of national intelligence said a telephone call had been received on March 1 suggesting that an extremist Muslim group from China’s ethnic Uighur minority would mount a terrorist attack on Beijing International Airport – but added he did not believe the call was linked to the vanished airliner.

Police told local media the caller had rung from the southern Chinese city of Guangdong. He had spoken first in French, claiming to be an anti-terrorism official from that country, and then switched to the southern Chinese dialect of Cantonese. But Tsai De-sheng, the head of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, told state media he did not believe the warning was “highly correlated” with the vanished airliner.

Similarly, a Chinese Internet activist and journalist based in New York said he had received an email claiming the plane had been attacked in protests at Chinese “oppression and persecution” of its Uighur minority. The email, sent from an untraceable hushmail account, said the attack was also a personal act of revenge against the Malaysian government, which has “cruelly persecuted me before.”

Wen Yunchao said he had given the email to U.S. authorities, but had received an avalanche of attacks by email and Twitter for releasing it to the media.

In February, Human Rights Watch criticized Malaysia for repatriating to China six Uighur refugees seeking asylum there, saying it had put the men’s lives in danger; Malaysia also sent back 11 Uighurs in 2011.

Earlier this month, knife-wielding assailants killed 29 people at a railway station in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, in one of the worst terrorist attacks in the country’s history. The Chinese government said the perpetrators were separatist Uighurs from the western province of Xinjiang.

Nevertheless, to move from knife attacks to international terrorism and downing airliners would be a massive leap for Uighur extremists, who are not thought to have strong links to the global jihadist movement.
Debris may be from missing Malaysia Airlines flight - The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/debris-may-be-from-mssing-malaysia-airlines-flight/2014/03/10/2669f16a-a822-11e3-b61e-8051b8b52d06_story.html?hpid=z1)

[Stanley11]

Starting to look this way. Could the Malay Govt be covering up the fact that they took this plane out, because it was a security threat (hijacked, full of fuel, heading for KL)??:eek:You can almost rule this out for the following points:

1) Having an interdiction of this kind is a very messy event. There will be repeated comms challenges, fighters being scrambled, fighters challenging the flight crew (even if no reply), firing warning shots, and then finally shoot down.

2) All these will be done in air traffic radio frequencies and emerg freq such as 243mhz and 121.5. There will be a lot of aircraft that will hear these calls.

3) The determination of that it is a rogue aircraft, scramble aircraft for intercept, attempt to force down and finally shoot down will take a long track. It should also be very visible. Trust me, no one would want to shoot down a commercial airliner unless absolutely necessary and that would mean that it is reaching a no-penatration line.

4) Finally, a shoot down is really messy. And there is no silver bullet. Despite what you think about modern air to air missiles, they are not that fantastic. Where do you want the impact point, left or right engine, fuselage, etc. You are very limited in controlling that, unless you use guns.

I think I'd better stop with these details. I would like to kill speculations on this part because if this kind of scenario gets to the families, it'll just hurt them more.

PS: To add a point. If it is really this scenario, the govt would now be showcasing the reasons for the take down and not cover it up. Post 9/11 era, the logical explanation would be to minimise collateral damage on the ground, etc and painting themselves as possible victims whose hands were forced by the ones who commandeered the aircraft.

[John Hill]

Vietnam airspace had just been upgraded to latest ADS-B ATC monitoring. Flight data is downlinked twice every second. Where is the data at time of disappearance?

If I recall correctly (back about 50 pages) the last data packet reported 0 speed and 0 altitude which were obviously impossible but there must be an explanation.

I suspect the ADS-B transmitter had enough time to send just one packet after the sensors for speed and altitude stopped sending data to the ADS-B box which tends to indicate the sensors did not fail from the exact same cause as the ADS-B box.

[awblain]

Big bits of wreckage sink and small bits of wreckage spread over large areas. There's nothing sinister in not finding any bits yet.

Look at AF447, it took two years, but the wreckage was eventually found and the events (if not an explanation for the causes) was found. The experience of searching for that will surely help here, and a good part of the South China Sea is relatively shallow.

The "door" seen floating in pictures yesterday looked nothing like a 777 door. It didn't have a slot "window", it had a square "window".