Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[Jack1985]

Finally, I do not recall any ADR fault that has been found to be the primary cause of a hull loss.

That's very true.

[Stalins ugly Brother]

Simple questions:
1/ What's the flight time Kul-pek?
2/ Would there have been fuel in the centre tank?

[Jack1985]

Simple questions:
1/ What's the flight time Kul-pek?
2/ Would there have been fuel in the centre tank?

1 - 6hrs
2 - The MAS VP last night said it had over 7hrs of fuel

[virginblue]

there was also an Austrian passport involved, same story as per the italian one, stolen last year, passenger not on board but safe in is own house in austria .

Apparently now also some uncertainty whether the Russian passenger on the manifest was on board or not....

[golf yankee one one]

Fake/stolen passports

I'm only SLF, so I'm anticipating being insulted by the experts in the next few minutes.
I'm troubled and puzzled by the two passengers travelling on fake/stolen passports.
I think previous posters have suggested that the passport checks at the airport of departure are only to establish that you look like the picture in your passport and that you match the advance passenger information you supplied. Is there any check against the database of the passport issuing country - I don't think so.
There is also of course a difference in the procedure if you need to check a bag or if you go straight to departures with hand luggage - in the latter case it is only the airport that looks at your passport until you reach the departure gate.

No one has yet speculated on the possible significance of two rather than one false passport holders. If the false passports are merely a way of entering China illegally (possibly because of the visa rather than the passport) then this may be unrelated to the loss of the aircraft; if it is a way of getting bad guys on board to do harm or damage, then why two?

Could the fake passengers/passports be a way of disconnecting a passenger from their hold baggage?

All this meandering thought leads me to think that it would be interesting and possibly important to know whether the fake Italian and Austrian (a) came from a connecting flight, (b) was it from the same place and (c) did they check in bags or not?

I do hope as this speculation concerns passengers not the airplane you will forgive me for posting.

[Lost in Saigon]

Originally Posted by Stalins ugly Brother

Simple questions:
1/ What's the flight time Kul-pek?
2/ Would there have been fuel in the centre tank?

There probably was fuel in the center tanks at the time of take-off, but what difference could it possibly make?

What is your thinking?

[phiggsbroadband]

If you scroll half way down the following link, what is the 19:51 report, at N 22.6397 and E 114.0839? (somewhere in the HongKong area, doing 511 kts.


Flight Track Log ? MAS370 ? 07-Mar-2014 ? WMKK / KUL - ZBAA / PEK ? FlightAware

[Sop_Monkey]

Enos

"Does anyone recall if the guys in TWA800 got a mayday call out."

No call IIRC.

[Enos]

Stalins ugly Brother
777-200 Holds 28300kgs per wing tank total wings 56600 Sg .803 (correct me if im wrong) if the Sg is less than this you may get about a ton less per wing.


777-200ER Holds 29100kgs per wing tank 58200 total.


Anything above this goes in the CTR tank.


If it was RR powered, bank on a fuel burn between 7-7.5T per Hr so you would have about 7hrs gas, before you start putting fuel in the CTR tank.


Would think a sector like this is about 4 or 5 hrs long 37.5 ton, plus 3.0 ton reserve plus contingency say 1500kg and an alternate say 4 ton 700 kg taxi.


I don't think the CTR tank would have any fuel in it.

[camel]

A posting on Airliners.net saying that this was a code share flight with China Southern Airlines, and that only 7 pax were ticketed by them, including the 'Italian' and the'Austrian'

[Wirbelsturm]

Given that each wing tank holds 29.1 tonnes and the centre tank holds 79.3 and a published fuel endurance of 7 hours then I would estimate the fuel loading to be somewhere in the figure of 53 tonnes given trip, 3 tonne reserves, 6 tonne (guessed) diversion, 2 tonne contingency.


If so then the wing tanks would take that without using the centre tank.


Some aircraft (300 series definitely and some 200 series) have a nitrogen generation system to reduce the flammability of the centre wing tank fuel. I don't know if this aircraft had it fitted.


Reasonable to assume the centre tank was empty at take off.


I personally will happily wait for the official report on this one.

[AN2 Driver]

It's correct that in the case of AF447 the crew did not have time to communicate. But the aircraft did, via ACARS. There were several status messages sent during the upset which were recovered right away and communicated pretty fast. The aircraft was able to "communicate" due to the fact that its systems worked until impact.

In the case of the 777 we have no such indication so far. While I don't know if the 777 has the same kind of capability to send out ACARS maintenance status messages, it would surprise me if not. And, assuming it can, if nothing has been received, it would be one more indication that at least some of the the aircrafts systems ceased to work instantaneously.

From where I am sitting, whatever happened to this airplane was totally unexpected to the crew and catastrophic enough to prevent any coms. WHAT that was, we won't know until the aircraft is found and recovered.

[Lost in Saigon]

Originally Posted by NAROBS

Looking at FlightRadar, most of the aircraft outbound for Vietnam from the Malaysian peninsula are doing about 450-500Knots over the sea. So how, does an aircraft allegedly 2 hours out from KL only end up in the 500 miles tops from that place ? The current search area must be wrong.

The search area is correct. The "2 hours out of KL" is wrong.

[Enos]

AN2 Driver


The T777 sends all sorts of messages back to the company and definitely sends system status messages when things are wrong.

[Propellerhead]

I assume they were outside VHF comms at the time? Would they have been CPDLC at the time? If so you can declare mayday via datalink using satcom. If not then its possible to lose HF contact or at least make it difficult to put out a mayday. As you say though, if decompression etc then would probably expect maintenance messages to have been sent.

[Andy_S]

Originally Posted by NAROBS

Looking at FlightRadar, most of the aircraft outbound for Vietnam from the Malaysian peninsula are doing about 450-500Knots over the sea. So how, does an aircraft allegedly 2 hours out from KL only end up in the sea 500 miles tops from that place ? The current search area must be wrong.

More likely the "two hours out" statement.......

[Capot]

I'm troubled and puzzled by the two passengers travelling on fake/stolen passports.

Just as an aside, on a course in the '80s about dealing with major incidents with numerous fatalities, one of the lectures was by Kentons, who at that time, and perhaps now, undertook the task of identifying victims from whatever remains were available at most of not all such events in the UK.

One of the many memorable things we learnt was the fact that in every such event, about 5% of the victims will be travelling under false identities, or secretly under their own identities, or otherwise are not quite what they appear to be. The speaker cited an amazing dance troupe of young girls, who turned out to be entirely male. Others were travelling on false passports, and on every flight, it seems, there is at least one gent with a lady not his wife/partner, who was supposed to be somewhere else entirely (the gent, not the lady).

So I wouldn't be too troubled or puzzled by this (I'm puzzled about why you are "troubled"); it's pretty much normal and doesn't mean anything.

[AN2 Driver]

Enos,

The T777 sends all sorts of messages back to the company and definitely sends system status messages when things are wrong.

That would be my expectation, thanks for confirming that. So far however, nothing along these lines has been stated, while Malaysian has been pretty open with information so far.

I do wonder if that may be an indication that there are no data. In which case, the indication would be towards an event which cut power and datalinks pretty instantaneously.

[enola-gay]

Passports

There cannot be as many as more than 1% of fake passports in use around the world. So having more than that number on one flight looks like an organised event. How many more PAX from codeshare CSA booking will turn out to be bogus. How many bags transferred at KL?


This event looks like it originated in Southern China.

[MountainBear]

Could the fake passengers/passports be a way of disconnecting a passenger from their hold baggage?

In theory, no. Those bags are supposed to be removed if the passenger doesn't actually board the airplane. But if one of the ground crew were to "look the other way" then it might be possible to sneak something on that way.

The one aspect that causes me to discount the terror possibility right now is that there has been no public claim of responsibility. Difficult to advance a cause through terror when no one knows who did it!