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Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

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Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

Old 2nd Apr 2014, 00:10
  #8961 (permalink)  
 
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funny to see the official narrative coming out of Malaysia focusing on the criminal act. They are over it, want this story to be gone and what best than "lost at sea at the hands of a criminal".

watching CNN is sadly too funny.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 00:17
  #8962 (permalink)  
 
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A question which has not been raised, if the airplane goes missing, or radio contact is lost, then why no aircraft painting occurred immediately upon loss of communications. Seems that if ATC is unable to contact the airplane via radio, then their tracking becomes key in where the airplane might be. Since they had confirmed transponder contact, then loss, some passive contact would have still been possible. I would think that any thing being painted at or around this time would be of extreme interest.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 00:43
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Originally Posted by wes_wall
if the airplane goes missing, or radio contact is lost, then why no aircraft painting occurred immediately upon loss of communications. Seems that if ATC is unable to contact the airplane via radio, then their tracking becomes key in where the airplane might be. Since they had confirmed transponder contact, then loss, some passive contact would have still been possible. I would think that any thing being painted at or around this time would be of extreme interest.
In this case the flight did not go missing for Malaysian ATC - they had handed the flight off to Vietnamese ATC. The Vietnamese did look on primary radar once they determined it was missing from their ATC radar; they saw what could only have been MH370 headed west, back towards the Malaysian landmass - and they reported this to Malaysian authorities (we don't know exactly when or how but they have said that they did do so.)

Interestingly enough, the Malaysian military much later acknowledged tracking a flight on primary radar at about that time and on about that course until it went out of their range somewhere in the Malacca Strait at 2:40 am local time.
A week or ten days later the Thai government piped up and said that their military had also tracked (apparently) this same flight at that time.

The interesting part is that on March 8th, in the first reports of a plane missing, the Malaysian government issued a statement that the last sighting of MH370 was at 2:40 am on the 9th. We know this for a fact!
So we know that the Malaysian government was aware of MH370's filght path out of the South China Sea from the very beginning of this event.

Now, why did the Malaysian government let 8 nations search the South China Sea looking for an airliner they knew wasn't there for the next week??

Can anybody answer that question?
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 01:15
  #8964 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by joe_bloggs
Having read the radio transcript something is not right. All the conversations prior to contact with departure radar use MAS370 not Malaysian 370.

But after radar contact the transcript show Malaysian 370 being used by both ATC and the aircraft.

It doesn't appear to be an accurate transcript. Or am I missing something?
Many airlines require the captain to handle the aircraft on the ground. RT would be covered by the PM. Perhaps the co-pilot took over and the subsequent RT was handled by the captain could be one theory. Also, generally ATC will often parrot a crew's phraseology and vice versa.

Point of interest: It is a transcript, so I would imagine there are no shortcuts and what is written is exactly what was said.

How common are garbled radio communications?
Quite common in my experience, 2dpilot, particularly at a large airport with many A/C on the same frequency.

Originally Posted by papershuffler
Is there any way anyone could possibly have known how poor/switched off the primary radar coverage for that part of Asia and Australia (especially considering all the hype regarding JORN) actually was, prior to this event?
A quick gander at a map tells the story very well - track is well out of radar range because it is far from any populated land masses.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 01:28
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Coastal evidence

A few posters have mentioned the possibility of some items of wreckage washing up on West Australian beaches.

We have some very isolated areas where debris items could remain undiscovered for long periods of time before anyone ventured there. It would depend entirely where the items were carried to, but we can only hope that if this does turn out to be the case, something lands in a more populated area where people frequent the coastline on a regular basis. This is a very big state with a small population.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 01:54
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Partial Ping and Fuel Starvation

I noticed there was a dispute a few days ago about the "partial ping" and fuel starvation and I agree with Porterhouse that this is unlikely. The reason is that even assuming there was enough residual power from the ram turbine or some other source to power the SATCOM the fact is that the firmware of the terminal has to go through a boot sequence when it is powered on again--the length of time which is unknown. The boot sequence could be as little as a few seconds or as long as a minute or two. As an illustration: when the power flickers on and off in one's home the refrigerator powers off and then immediately powers back on again. On the other hand, when the power flickers on and off one's computer simply turns off an does turn on again until one presses the power button and goes through the entire boot sequence.

So it would be a hell of a coincidence for the power to go off from fuel starvation, come back on as the result of the ram turbine or something else, the boot sequence in the SATCOM firmware to comeplete, and just at the precise millisecond it is sending a ping to log-on to the system again the power dies again.

Last edited by MountainBear; 2nd Apr 2014 at 04:10. Reason: clarity
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 02:18
  #8967 (permalink)  
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In the 777 at least, the door unlocks if the aircraft depressurises.

And to the person talking about biz jets and cloaking the radar...please....
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 02:25
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In the 777 at least, the door unlocks if the aircraft depressurises.
Wow. That certainly throws some water on the whole "intentional depressurization to knock out the passengers" theory. Although - is that just the "standard" door lock? Can someone on the flight deck still override that?
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 02:35
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"In the 777 at least, the door unlocks if the aircraft depressurises."

Any 777 drivers or techs able to advise at what cabin altitude this mechanism unlocks the cockpit door?

If it doesn't activate until (say) 15-20,000 feet, a gradual cabin depressurisation would likely go unnoticed & generate no response.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 02:38
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After what looks like roughly 9,107 posts talking about this mystery with the 777, and only now somebody just happens to mention this about the flightdeck door???
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 03:04
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Personally, I’m thinking a power interrupt to explain the partial ping is plausible. If shortly after the 0811 ping the left engine were to flame out, that would cause a momentary loss off AC power to the left AC bus (Satcom unit powered by the left AC bus) would it not, until auto AC crossfeed joins the AC busses.
A momentary power interrupt could cause the satcom unit to reboot and re-establish the satellite connection, this could be interrupted by either a steep bank to the left shielding the antennae or a flameout of the right engine removing all AC power available to the satcom unit.

What do you think. plausible and worthy of a forensic investigation or impossible.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 05:04
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777 door unlocks when depressurised? Really?

None of the aircraft I have experience with do. Even if it had this feature it would not unlock the manual operated mechanical lock.
Security doors have a blow out panel for rapid depressurisation but (afaik) no unlocking feature I am aware of.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 05:13
  #8973 (permalink)  
 
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Turn at IGARI

While pondering why a turn back to the mainland at IGARI would not have reentered KL FIR I came across the following tidbit dated 2007:

"KUALA LUMPUR FLIGHT INFORMATION REGION
CHANGES TO AIRSPACE STRUCTURE OVER THE EASTERN PENINSULAR...

1.3 Under this improvement, a new surveillance radar has been installed at Kota Bharu and this will enhance radar coverage (expected to be commissioned in July 2007) and provides redundant surveillance coverage to the current radar networks.

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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 05:36
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I think it can be taken as a given that if/when the drift calculations show that debris from the search area could have drifted onto a coastline, the RCC will task aerial littoral search missions.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 06:38
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Originally Posted by hamster3null

We already know that the aircraft missed its regular check-in at 23:41 UTC and only got through at 00:11.
The timing of the AES interrogation is set by the GES software; dependent on packet traffic.

In other words, the GES polls the AES.
Originally Posted by TerryB

My guess from what has been stated in other posts and my experience with computer systems is that the aircraft sent a login type message to the satellite to say "I'm active" (presumably after some type of reset which we are guessing may be due to a power off/on event).
That is valid following any short-term power outage or loss of the GES P channel signal.

Last edited by mm43; 2nd Apr 2014 at 06:49.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 06:46
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The special closed briefing for Family that traveled to Malaysia (video-conferenced to China) is over; no news yet on the result of the Powerpoint presentation of the Family Committee "loop map" that showed 270 degree turn. (They submitted it for "consideration").

News will probably "leak out" soon enough, although Civil Aviation Director-general Rahman said a report would be given out later.

The PM and trans minster were out of the country, but the meeting included several biggies:
"It is learnt that the briefing was also attended by Malaysian prime minister's special envoy to China Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting, China ambassador to Malaysia Dr Huang Huikang, Royal Malaysian Air Force chief General Tan Sri Rodzali Daud and the investigation team."

Last edited by rigbyrigz; 2nd Apr 2014 at 06:53. Reason: change was to were
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 07:27
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Originally Posted by mm43
The timing of the AES interrogation is set by the GES software; dependent on packet traffic.

In other words, the GES polls the AES.
I stand corrected. In either case, after successful interrogations at 19:41, 20:41, 21:41 and 22:41, the gap at 23:41 is at least curious. Especially since 23:41 is middle of the night for most of the coverage area of Inmarsat 3-F1, and traffic should be at the daily low.

Although, if I'm reading the spec correctly, failure to respond to an interrogation (due to LOS or for whatever other reasons) is supposed to result in attempts to resend it every 10 seconds until either the AES comes back or it misses 5 requests. At which point it would be kicked off the table and there would be no 0:11. So maybe the satellite was just too busy. (Or maybe I have an outdated spec.)

Incidentally, do you have any idea what, if anything, other than temporary loss of power / reboot, could cause the aircraft to send 3 packets in 18:27 to 18:29 as it was turning?
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 07:35
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It seems unlikely that both Captain and First Officer would conspire to bring about the vanishing act. Have the Malasian police turned up any evidence of collusion? We know the Captain was concerned about recent political events; he may not have intended a fatal outcome.

The first officer was handling the RT, and all seemed routine up to the incomplete handover. If the captain was acting alone, what excuse could he make to the first officer for turning off course? a technical failure that required a return to base? a call from the cabin crew that somebody was setting fire to the waste bin in the WC and the First Officer was needed to sort things out? This could leave the captain alone locked in the cockpit to carry out his plan, which may not have included vanishing at sea. Apoxia leads to inappropriate decisions.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 07:54
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Gaps in Radars?

Still puzzled by the lack of detection by radar. Malaysia has a new very sensitive radar system, procured among other thingsfor the purpose of detecting intrustions by the Singaporean Air Force:
the Defence Ministry admitted that between 2008 and mid-2011, there were a total of 2,508 Malaysian airspace intrusions by the Singaporean air force
Air Force caught napping, MH370 could have been saved | FZ : Malaysia News - General, Political, National, Business, World

If they were able to detect airspace instrusions by medium sized fighter aircraft, presumably in real time, why would they not detect the B777?
Does Malaysia lack active real-time air defences?

Perhaps similar gaps exist in the radar systems of other countries - nothing is 100% perfect after all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/wo...path.html?_r=0

Which means that it may make sense to search the northern route.
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Old 2nd Apr 2014, 08:09
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why would they not detect the B777?
Maybe they were told to ?
I'm usually quite reluctant to follow conspiracy theories, but this event is quite special. Don't forget that some Malaysian officials publicly stated that there were some informations that could not be made public.
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