Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[bille1319]

Vanished into the ether.

Assuming wreckage is found, there are quite a few oil field construction type ships with deep water Robotic Vehicles in the S China Sea are which are capable of tying shoe laces at 1000m which could be called up. But as yet after an extensive day's searching both by air and sea search and rescue parties; mysteriously no debris has been sighted, not even a cushion or life jacket so no one knows for sure whether it has been hijacked to some where or vanished. I also note that Sky news stories about emergency beacon tranmissions have also fizzled out and oil slick sightings are perhaps another Red Herring.

[henra]

Originally Posted by philipat

OK, so you are insinuating that Pitos and the ITCZ are the issue here??

No.
But apart from that (which is indeed unlikely) we don't know anything at all yet.
I did not make any reference to AF447 (I don't know to whom your post Re AF447 referred), just to Adam Air 574. And that didn't require ITCZ and iced pitots either.
The point I was trying to make is that LoC can happen in different ways and we cannot even exclude that at this point.
That was my reply to a post which insinuated that since it was a Triple Seven, any kind of LoC could be completely ruled out.
It can not.
Which doesn't mean at all it was the case. It simply means: we don't know yet.
Can we put this to rest now, please?

[Livesinafield]

Statistical coincidence?
Were these unknowns trying to enter China for some other purpose there? And the aircraft loss was an unrelated coincidence?

Surely there are better passports to steal if you want to enter china, than an Austrian and Italian one....?

[mickjoebill]

I venture to suggest that the unfortunate promulgation of the manifest does indicate a scenario that has a higher probability than any other that comes to mind.

On the other hand, in previous acts of aviation terrorism were false or stolen identity documents used?

Surely there are better passports to steal if you want to enter china, than an Austrian and Italian one....?

If the pair were Chinese nationals whose real identities were on a watch list in China, then it would have been clever to choose to impersonate Europeans, even if risky, as their mission did not hinge on getting past immigration in China.

Mickjoebill

[readywhenreaching]

found this special site on jacdec


Ocean depth seems less than in the AF 447 accident

[butzii]

After all the Assumptions why no ELT-Signal............

[Midland63]

Hope you don't mind a question from an SLF ...

With aircraft navigating by signals from satellites and sending out ACARS messages [sorry if that's the wrong terminology], almost in real time although at a cost if I read correctly, does the technology not exist such that it should be mandatory (as with carrying an ELT) that an a/c broadcasts at least its lat/long, alt, speed and heading every 10 seconds (or other short period)? That would seem to me to give the powers that be immediate notice that something had gone badly wrong and greatly narrow down the area of search for survivors or wreckage.

If someone could manage a sentence or two explaining why things aren't as simple as I imagine, I'd be grateful. Ta.

[andrasz]

...yet after an extensive day's searching ... mysteriously no debris has been sighted...

Nothing mysterious, neither surprising. Communications was lost in the small hours, with ETA at 6am with an extra 2 hours endurance. In the first hours after loss of comms, an increasingly frantic exchange of messages with neifhboring FIRs. It probably took a good 3-4 hours until the grim reality started to sink in, and somebody plucked the courage to wake the CEO. It probably took another couple of hours to establish with a reasonable degree of confidence where to start looking (there was quite a bit of confusion at the beginning on exactly how far into the flight was communications lost).

All the involved countries are fairly rigid hierarchical societies, which means information must be passed up the chain of command, then down again on the other end. This is complicated by the disputed territorial claims on various parts of he South China sea, which means that the SAR process must have had to been coordinated an an unusually high level. I doubt that the actual search would have been launched before late morning, midday, with 5-6 hours of daylight left. Probably there were no more than a couple of sorties flown over a vague target area before it became dark. Daylight tomorrow will hopeful bring results, as the search can get better organized tonight, with well defined areas and responsibilities for participating aircraft and vessels. Remember that the first AF447 wreckage was only spotted 2 days later. Then we had the ACARS messages to chew on, while now if they do exist (probably they do, as all Malaysian gov't and airline officials seem to accept the total loss as fact) they are not in the public domain.

[Ivanbogus]

The Gamma Normids meteor shower is now at it's peak. Some fragments can penetrate the atmosphere and theoretically hit an aircraft, very unlikely though, but one can imagine the result of a direct hit.

[QFBUSBOY]

Theories being looked at are terrorism, contaminated fuel and structural damage.

MAS are having their tech & maintenance engineers look and respond to these items for all future flights across all fleets prior to departure, with fuel samples being kept until completion of the sector.

[Bridge Builder]

Errr,,,it means the radar contact was lost in that position. I looked at the track and this is the exact position where radar contact was lost. Would be a good place to look, me thinks.

[LongTimeInCX]

I wonder if the fault lies with the airlines (Only ANA/JAL aircraft involved) training and maintenance procedures OR with Boeing who may have rushed to deliver aircraft because of previous delays?

So MickyMan you say we should not speculate?
Somewhat hypocritical when your post of 19 jan 2013 seems to be doing that.
This is after all a 'rumor network', so all theories should be welcome.
If you don't like to read them, then don't!

The sea state in the area this afternoon was quite benign, it begs the question why even some evidence of wreckage has not yet materialised.
It may transpire that the SAR effort was a little slow off the mark and possibly not even in the correct place in the few hours of daylight on this first day.
Tomorrow should at least confirm where.

[er340790]

The fact Boeing tweeted waiting for news reports suggests even they don't know what's entirely happened; suggestive of something happening very quickly with no trace.

Just out of curiosity, while we all wait for the facts, has there ever been a proven case of an aircraft being hit by a meteorite??? I mention this as, in the last 6 months flying in N. Canada, I have seen meteorites enter the atmosphere on 3 separate occasions.

[MrSnuggles]

mickjoebill

On the other hand, in previous acts of aviation terrorism were false or stolen identity documents used?

Yes, they were.

I mentioned the WTC-1993 bomber who did some trial/test runs using an Italian fake passport, who also had several other fake IDs laying around when police investigated. Air India bomber used a fake and/or incomplete name. Lockerbie bomber - I don't know what name was used for that, but it wasn't the man convicted.

Air France hijack in Algeria, the hijackers faked police IDs to gain access to the plane.

The new EU passports are hard to fake - much easier to steal and use, hoping for a sloppy bureaucracy to fail to nullify the passport ID number. Photos and person data is engraved into a special laminated paper, so IF you manage to get hold of such a passport AND it slips through the bureacracy I venture a guess that noone will suspect that the long-nose in front of them isn't the long-nose on the passport pic (which, btw, can be years old and very very very unflattering anyway).

[Hotel Tango]

Somewhat contradictary statement there SOPS. If it broke up into pieces midair I'd say there's even more likelyhood of debris floating on the ocean's surface.

If nothing has yet been found, maybe they're just not looking in the right place yet.

[Hogger60]

With aircraft navigating by signals from satellites and sending out ACARS messages [sorry if that's the wrong terminology], almost in real time although at a cost if I read correctly, does the technology not exist such that it should be mandatory (as with carrying an ELT) that an a/c broadcasts at least its lat/long, alt, speed and heading every 10 seconds (or other short period)? That would seem to me to give the powers that be immediate notice that something had gone badly wrong and greatly narrow down the area of search for survivors or wreckage

It is all about cost. Bean counters do a cost/benefit analysis, and come to the conclusion that crashes are so rare, the cost doesn't justify putting the equipment in the aircraft and paying for the satellite communications that would be needed. Sad, but very true.

[Simplythebeast]

Could somebody explain how contaminated fuel could result in the loss of an aircraft from cruise altitude with no comms?

[CaptainDrCook]

Some people here have suggested loss of control due to a stall. But surely, even at night time, with possibly no air speed info on the primary display, a stall (or even a spin) is recoverable from 35,000 feet.

A second point... given that this was on an IFR route, surely the wreckage can be found by flying the same route at 2000 ft, at 100kts?

If this was a squawk 7500 situation, surely secondary radar would have picked up the deviated flight path, even if all onboard comms were disabled?

[barrel_owl]

LAM470 similarities?

It sounds to me more like LAM470 than AF447. I just hope to to god it wasn't another deliberate accident by crew.

LAM470 vanished with no distress, squawk or maintenance messages sent and in the cruise in clear weather which is more similar to MAS370

Except that LAM470 was tracked on radar after it started abruptly descending from 38,000 feet.

Not here apparently. So I can't see any similarity at the moment.

[scoobys]

dont worry you've got a completely unqualified 21 year old a few posts back telling us how much fuel they had on..