Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[dabrat]

Questions

1. What was the last radio transmission received from aircraft? If an aircraft goes more than 5 minutes (40 miles ) without a radio transmission someone will key the mike and ask where are you? Where they called on 121.5?
The tapes should be played.
2. What cargo was the plane carrying? Anything of interest? Precious cargo, dangerous goods? Etc?
3. Background of pilots and crew?
4. Cellphone signals can be traced. Last known position of any of the phones of the passengers?
More questions than answers. The Malaysian authorities need to answer .

[Stanley11]

Air interdiction

To the guys with the shoot down theory:

Hamster3null: Modern air force now SHOULD have their procedures squared away now. Sure, they can't protect everywhere in a big country but they will have their procedures oiled out to protect the really sensitive areas. Protocols are in place for all types of timelines.

Onetrack: Totally agree with you

I suspect the simple answer to the RMAF angle is they simply do not know. Perhaps they have a scheduled maintenance of the radar, perhaps they have an operator who forgot to turn on the 'recording' function, perhaps there is just a gap in their radar in that region. Again, not that Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are expecting some conflict of any sort requiring a high level of surveillance. However, it would be too embarrassing to admit to it.
Sometimes the most likely answer is the simplest answer. They simply do not know. Just check out what the Pakistan Chief of Air Force said when the Air Force failed to detect the helicopters going in to get OBL.

[Tarzanboy]

PlatinumFlyer, their route was planned just east of CAN THO VOR towards Hochiminh TSN VOR according flightaware.

[clint_y]

Questions from a "lay man."
How long does the flight recorders continually record data before recycling? I've seen reports of the last 30 minutes of the flight?

If there was a depressurization event and the pilot lost conscious after setting the AP to the new course. The plane would continue until running out of fuel correct? Is there a "deadman" switch similar to a train? If the recorder only records the last 30 minutes and the plane continued for 2-3 hours after the "event" would the recorders even be useful?

[thcrozier]

Time to remember once again that in spite of media reports, the situation is not unprecedented.


Adam Air Flight 574 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[metro301]

Tarzanboy!! Bravo.....

Ref post #2063

That is actually the first bit of realistic speculation that I have read in 2100+ posts.

[Matvey]

@tarzanboy

In 104 pages, this is the first post that's made me think "hey, that might be something." If I remember correctly, the AA in Cali featured an FMS input of an identifier that was not the intended waypoint and it commanded a turn off the correct flightpath. While I doubt an erroneous FMS input was the cause of this crash (not much CFIT at FL350!), it's a good hint at a plausible answer to one of the many, many unanswered questions we all still have.

[hkgman]

Could this happen again?! Unreliable Airspeed=nightmare for pilots!!

http://www.pprune.org/spectators-bal...-incident.html

[A A Gruntpuddock]

Now they seem to be saying that there is no radar record of the flight to the West of the mainland?

MISSING MH370: RMAF chief denies military radar report - Columnist - New Straits Times

If this was a film script, it would be discarded as just too incredible!

[XB70_Valkyrie]

Given the arguably chaotic S&R response thus far - with zero results - you'd think it might be worth at least one attempted ariel or surface sweep along that path... if not already too late.

It is possible the SAR response is orderly and logical and they're doing terrible job with the public information side of thing.

[SICKorSKI]

Sat tracking

Does anyone know why in this day and age why an airliner would not have an ISAT system?
With nearly every offshore helicopter operator monitoring all flights in real time with a instant database cache of position reports its ridiculous to think an airline has no idea where thier assets are!

Also for the crew an instant flip of the switch to "emergency" to indicate distress!

Hopefully a wake up call to airlines to look at systems such a skytrac!

[Teal]

The latest expansion of the search area vindicates my thrice deleted posts suggesting searching along the extrapolated IGATI - Pulau island track (basically extrapolate the last known track westwards until fuel exhaustion).

That, and post from @Tarzanboy most plausible to date....

What if MH370 wanted to perform an emergency landing for whatever reason. Close to IGARI point the crew entered a possible airport to land in their FMS which could be VVCT CAN THO with VOR "TRN", because this one has a 3000m runway which is close to the intended route ahead. But, there is another "TRN" VOR closer by, guess where: TRANG VOR close to the Andaman sea. The crew under severe stress executes the top TRN (closest by) in the FMS and the plane turns immediately to that point. Could this explain the hard left turn after IGARI point towards the Andaman sea?

I once watched a BA 747 turn 50° after an incorrect waypoint input. It occurred in darkness and the flightcrew were completely oblivious until asked to confirm their position (heading east to the South Pacific off the New South Wales coast when they should have been tracking to Sydney over land). I can imagine a crew under pressure easily making a similar mistake with no visual references to alert them to a navigation error.

[XB70_Valkyrie]

Thats the most important question: What are they covering up and on whose behest?

In addition to cover-up, why are they misleading the entire world. They knew all the time that plane is not anywhere in or near gulf of Thailand / south China Sea. Then why did they mislead?

I certainly think there is some awful media relations work at foot there, but I've managed aviation SAR incidents (post Sep 11) where we could not disclose information from classified military assets that were being factored into our search plan. Some of these assets make the oft mentioned here "primary ATC radar" look like a joke.

We had to be circumspect to avoid a public disclosure rabbit hole... it was also an incident that was subject to a lot of media coverage.

I almost accidentally mentioned one element during a media interview, it would have created a major issue in terms of cross jurisdiction cooperation for the future. It is possible either their own military or foreign military has provided them information on the condition that the source and type of information not be disclosed, hence the skewed search area (from day 2?) with no explanation. The SOP is to say "we've received information from a variety of credible sources that has led us to move our search in this direction".

The standard SAR methodology is to work from your highest probability of detection areas down. It appears they are doing that. This is usually based on imperfect information, e.g. they have a military track but it is partial and may not connect with the ATC track (and therefore identity of a/c). Or they have clues that are credible but wrong, which misdirect resources.

Ironically we were going to be meeting soon with one of the government SAR departments involved in this search, I assume due to this incident those meetings will move out a bit. Of course I'm going to try to get the scoop on what went on (when all this is over), but it will be the very last thing I ask them in the meetings; I'm sure there will be reticence to discuss.

[porterhouse]

The auto pilot in some Cessna Biz jets will detect depressurization and will automatically turn 90 degrees and descend and level off at 15000 feet.

No, it isn't designed to turn 90 degrees, it simply maintains 25 deg bank and Vmo all the way down to 14000 ft.

[StormyKnight]

Originally Posted by Teal

I once watched a BA 747 turn 50° after an incorrect waypoint input. It occurred in darkness and the flightcrew were completely oblivious until asked to confirm their position (heading east to the South Pacific off the New South Wales coast when they should have been tracking to Sydney over land). I can imagine a crew under pressure easily making a similar mistake with no visual references to alert them to a navigation error.

Oddly the passengers watching the inflight map, would see the plane heading out to sea. Human mistakes are made, when the information they see in front of them they have mentally checked it off as OK. Once checked off, it takes fresh eyes or very good training to reassess the data to reconfirm it is actually correct.

[XB70_Valkyrie]

NineMSN reporting Vietnam has suspended air search and scaled back marine assets until better explanation from MY:

Vietnam suspends air search for missing plane

[rampstalker]

reported cracks

Just to put my bit over.

If the Feds issued an AD then they would have put a time line for it to have been done. For sure MAS would have stayed with in the stipulated time frame as would most responsible operations.

[marconiphone]

'Now they seem to be saying that there is no radar record of the flight to the West of the mainland?'

No they aren't. They are saying there is no CONFIRMED record. Quite a different thing. The lack of confirmed information is why they continue to search over such a huge area. That's what anyone sensible would do.

[nick murry]

Yes you can depress manually. About half an hour in a 772 at FL350 until O2 depletion Give or take. That's by memory as they have removed the figures from our manuals now .

No you must make a manual rapid decent.

[StormyKnight]

Originally Posted by porterhouse

The masks would automatically deploy, why someone would not be donning one?

But they only last a few minutes, if the pilot stayed at altitude, they would have been next to useless in short time.