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Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

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Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

Old 23rd Mar 2014, 02:45
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Suicidal Pilot Theory

I'm with Ngineer on this one. One or other of the pilots has likely left the flight deck for one reason or another and was locked out by the other pilot. It would be a simple matter to disable the comms, don an oxy mask and depressurise the aircraft so as to render all other occupants unconcious despite the "rubber jungle" deploying as it has only limited duration. One pilot on 100% oxygen is going to have far greater supply than the supplemental pax system will provide.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 02:55
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I fail to find any supporting evidence for a suicidal Captain or FO. To be suicidal in nature, means that you will definitely have shown suicidal tendencies in the past.
A human being doesn't just snap and become suicidal within minutes - there's always a history of bouts of clinical depression, and quite often, suicidal thoughts communicated to others.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 03:10
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The suicide hypothesis is by far the likeliest.

Just google the words "suicide" and "disappear". It's not as weird as people seem to think.

Murdering 230 others in the process is also not unprecedented.

The likeliest hypothesis: he put that plane down gently in the roaring 40s, a la Sully in the Hudson, opened an aperture (say by lowering the landing gear, or similar) and then killed himself, maybe via a pill.

The plane would be at 16000 feet below sea level, with no debris.

Last edited by ensco; 23rd Mar 2014 at 03:26.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 03:23
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More civil aircaft have joined the search.

From the latest AMSA update:

The civil aircraft are two Bombardier Global Express, a Gulfstream 5 and an Airbus 319.


The A319 would be Skytraders and it normally flies between Australia and Antartica.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 04:16
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I have done the NZ-Antarctic trip by sea about 4 times - it is NEVER calm. If it looks calm there is always a huge swell which can be deceptive - like the Great Australian Bight - can appear to be calm but you can't see another ship a few miles away if you are in different parts of the 30-40 foot swell.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 04:34
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One pilot on 100% oxygen is going to have far greater supply than the supplemental pax system will provide.
About the 10th time the subject has been raised, but still it is not confirmed what type of emergency air the passengers had on this flight, bottled or chemical.
Also not confirmed how many portable bottles of air were available to cabin crew, (8 has been suggested)

Without answers to these questions it is not possible to say that the pilot supply would outlast one or two savvy cabin crew using portable supplies and (if chemical air was available) activating any unused chemical masks in loos or in areas where no passengers were seated. There were at least 50 empty seats although one chemical generator is shared between a few seats. (170 generators suggested)

However apparently not everyone can survive for extended periods at 35,000ft without a pressure mask.


So like all the scenarios and sub plots of this event, it is possible yet unlikely.
More detail in previous posts..

Last edited by mickjoebill; 23rd Mar 2014 at 04:50.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 04:40
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AMSA media page

Some interesting maps and graphics on the AMSA media page. They show the areas searched and locations of the sighted objects.

AMSA MH370 Search Media Kit

AMSA Newsroom
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 05:11
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Rubbish spotted in the water.

Anyone with SAR experience care to talk about the number of rubbish or other objects that are identified as not relevant to a search in open waters?
On land, a crashed aircraft looks like a rubbish dump on a farm. Sadly, there are lots of rubbish dumps. In land searches each search aircraft might further investigate (eg circle) 1-2 candidate crash sites per hour. 99.something percent of these are just dumped rubbish.

Over water off the Australian east coast, I did not see many items in the water.

In my experience: over land a search observer is constantly seeing stuff and deciding not to call it out because it does not meet some threshold of likelihood. Over water everyone is so "weary" that everything gets called out. "Weary" isn't quite the right word, there is a structure and discipline to observing from an aircraft without missing things. Observing is a tiring thing to do, especially when you see nothing.

Last edited by UnreliableSource; 23rd Mar 2014 at 05:23. Reason: Added extra paragraph at bottom.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 05:43
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About the "arcs"

Trying to read all posts, it seems that how the "arcs" were found from time data is a little deceptive for many of us. I have tried to make a diagram showing how time stamps can be converted in "arcs": time is a physical value which is measured with a very high precision (I do think it is the physical value which can be measured with the highest).
The sat is very high (35700 km) compared to the "thickness" of the flyable sky (~15 km). And the Earth is a pretty large body (~12740 km wide). From the sat, an even distance to the Earth is a circle, so, if you only know the distance of an object (flying or not), it could be anywhere on a circle. But even a small distance on the Earth surface outside a given circle can be known by the time an electric signal uses to go to this object and back because the time could be measured absolutly with a high precision: even for times as long as many days, you could "see" a difference of a fraction of a microsecond.

The sat is on the right (a very BIG sat), orbit and Earth the same scale. The black line around our blue planet is more than ten times too thick relatively at the highest an a/c could fly at this scale...



Hope I didn't make errors there and this could help!

EDIT: after MM43 post (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post8395701) and remarks by MP, I will add this :
BEWARE: The purpose of this post is just to show the order of magnitude of the travel time of the signal between the sat, the a/c and back. And what could be the time difference for localisations distant of 1/360 of the Earth circumference (that is ~111km).
The 40° on the drawing is not the same 40° of "the arc" from Inmarsat data (but not very far) because the 0° is not the pole but the place from where the sat is view on the horizon.
Sorry if I have confuse somebody for that: I just wanted to show it was very possible to extract something useful from this data. For many of us, just thinking, it could be appeared largely too small according to sat distance. But it is not.

Last edited by Shadoko; 26th Mar 2014 at 00:14. Reason: CORRECTION
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 05:49
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James7: Lithium Fire that is the number 1 suspect. Just how many Lithium batteries were on board. Why the secret!
I had a recent post throwing out food for thought, that Halon may have been deployed as a fire suppressant, putting out the fire, but somehow it got into the cabin or cockpit and displacing the oxygen, but it apparently was taken out by the moderator. I had a link to the Boeing website, so maybe that's why they took it out. Anyway, just like in the AF447 search, you have the cat guarding the canary scenario, because the Malaysian airline is mostly owned by the Malaysian government, and since it was their aircraft, they take the lead in the investigation. If Lithium Ion batteries were illegally shipped knowingly on MH370, and those batteries were involved with MH370's demise, Malaysia would have all the liability, so the Malaysian government would go through the motions and do what they think is minimally required in an investigation, but not with any special insight or focus, hoping that emotions cool off after a couple of years, so they could settle much cheaper with the families of the victims. France didn't bring the US into the search for AF447, except to borrow some equipment, but a couple of years later, an American contractor practically went right to the wreckage. Who knows? Maybe, maybe not on this scenario for both AF447 and MH370, but nothing surprises me anymore.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 05:53
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Here ya go; this is the standard of media reporting: seaweed has been found (see image down page) Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Abbott flags breakthrough hopes.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 06:01
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The suicide hypothesis is by far the likeliest.
You are obviously not a pilot with a major airline.
If you were you'd seek help before you LOST that job.
It is simply the most rewarding career.

Edit:

I might add, to the best of my knowledge the two occasions this has happened the crew members job was at risk.

Last edited by Graham321; 23rd Mar 2014 at 06:14. Reason: Added comment
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 06:49
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Originally Posted by Shadoko
Hope I didn't make errors there and this could help!
Looks good to me. You have the radius of the geosynchronous orbit off by about 100 km, but it does not affect the results in any significant way. Intermediate calculations can be reduced to a single formula through "law of cosines".

And, just to be clear, yes, it's entirely possible that the satellite has a clock that could measure signal travel delay down to a fraction of your 620 microseconds. But that assumes the signal being reflected back in a passive way or by a "dumb" device. You can bounce a laser beam off a reflector on the surface of the Moon and use it measure the distance with sub-meter accuracy. That's because the reflector is passive. If the reflector is a computer system that needs to "think" about the answer, that's a source of uncertainty which may or may not be longer than 620 microseconds. Or maybe there's no reflector at all, we just have a transmitter on the aircraft with its own clock that is used to timestamp the transmission, and we're making deductions based on the timestamp and the reception time. Then we also have to wonder how accurate the clock in the transmitter is.

So, the "geometry" of the process, so to speak, is pretty clear, but there are other things which are not.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 07:11
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My point is that the extra memory required isn't an unbearable cost, and many investigations need much more recording time. The requirements were laid down when aircraft flew into hills; now human interference is something to be taken into account.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 07:16
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Originally Posted by UnreliableSource
Anyone with SAR experience care to talk about the number of rubbish or other objects that are identified as not relevant to a search in open waters?
On land, a crashed aircraft looks like a rubbish dump on a farm. Sadly, there are lots of rubbish dumps. In land searches each search aircraft might further investigate (eg circle) 1-2 candidate crash sites per hour. 99.something percent of these are just dumped rubbish.

Over water off the Australian east coast, I did not see many items in the water.

In my experience: over land a search observer is constantly seeing stuff and deciding not to call it out because it does not meet some threshold of likelihood. Over water everyone is so "weary" that everything gets called out. "Weary" isn't quite the right word, there is a structure and discipline to observing from an aircraft without missing things. Observing is a tiring thing to do, especially when you see nothing.
^^ accurate post. To be able to get 'eyes' on anything in rough ocean conditions and be able to differentiate 'something' from 'nothing' requires two conditions...the aircraft needs to be close to the surface (< 2000ft AMSL) and even then the observer needs to be switched on! The seas in the Southern Ocean are equal to the roughest anywhere (Google 'roaring 40's'..), so swells/white caps/breakers are constantly in the line of vision. Aircraft paintwork is predominantly white...this does not assist.

Having said that, anything that is 20+ meters long would certainly be spotted on the first pass.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 07:17
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Your phone may be good, but has been stated many times before, your phone is not certified to withstand the G's or the temperatures and pressures that a CVR is expected to withstand.
I think one way or another, the outcome of this will be that the powers that be will come up with some way to more definitely track airliners. Yes, it may involve more significant costs - but when you look at what this search has already cost, and what it's likely to cost in the future - some sort of GPS tracking device is going to be a bargain.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 07:24
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Quote:
*In my experience: over land a search observer is constantly seeing stuff and deciding not to call it out because it does not meet some threshold of likelihood. Over water everyone is so "weary" that everything gets called out. "Weary" isn't quite the right word, there is a structure and discipline to observing from an aircraft without missing things. Observing is a tiring thing to do, especially when you see nothing."

Couldn't agree more. Was an observer with Surveillance Australia and participated in several searches, including the Malu Sara boat that went missing in the Torres Strait.

We found nothing...no debris, no oil/fuel slick. Half a body washed up on a reef a few weeks later in Indonesian waters, found by Indo fishermen.

There are specific visual scan techniques you employ to maximise effectiveness, but agree, it's a very tiring thing to do. We generally swapped places every hour (front to back) to make sure we didn't start to "fixate", especially when there was nothing to see except water.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 07:27
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It shouldn't take more than a few lines of code and $10 worth of memory to change the box: my phone can record 200 hrs of speech!
Your phone may be good, but has been stated many times before, your phone is not certified to withstand the G's or the temperatures and pressures that a CVR is expected to withstand.
Agree that $10 and a phone is not a viable option.
SSD using NAND flash is being used in CVR's and which are many times more resistant to shock (G's), can be fully encapsulated (potted) to withstand great temperatures, be waterproof are not sensitive to pressure.
Besides, if worries, use the same enclosures as is currently used.
The only question is how much memory to stuff in the recorder, but I will venture that $1000 will give you many thousands of hours.

If the recorders of MH370 are found and it proves that only the last two hours of (possible) silence is available, when the first two hours of flight may be the most critical, then I hope the industry and regulatory agencies will recognize that improvements are in order.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 07:34
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ping times


If they have ping records covering the start of the flight, would they have a good idea of te turn-around time and its variability from the initial flurry of messages as the flight became established?
Also if they have done some test flights with a MAS B777 which I'm assuming they have done now( if not why not) they can verify position and signal strength and see if it matches the data they have now. Surely they would have done this before sending everyone on these large area searches. Also to prove the initial turn back and military primary radar hits. Lets hope they have.
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Old 23rd Mar 2014, 07:37
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You are obviously not a pilot with a major airline.
If you were you'd seek help before you LOST that job.
It is simply the most rewarding career.
Hmmm. Are you a 'pilot with a major airline'?

Anyway, I would think that many of us have known occasional instances of pilot suicide in both the civilian and military world. And, sometimes even pilot murderers.

I had a squadron commanding officer who was killed in a 'gun cleaning accident'. More than one pilot has had his wife mysteriously found dead after she said she was leaving (Richard Crafts comes immediately to mind). Wasn't there a case at FedEx in recent years where the pilot was acquitted?

I'd sure like to think pilot suicide/murder couldn't happen with MH 370 but it is a possibility that needs to be explored.

Here's a case years ago from 'a major international airline':

In at least one case, a major international airline allowed a pilot who had expressed suicidal thoughts to continue flying. He flew nearly three more years, without incident, before he resigned in 1982 with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported that the Workers Compensation Commission heard that the Qantas pilot struggled several times to resist an overwhelming urge to switch off the plane's engines. Once during a flight to Singapore, the pilot's hand moved "involuntarily" toward the start levers and he was forced to "immobilize his left arm in order not to act on the compulsion." [shades of Dr. Strangelove]

"He left the flight deck and, once he felt calm enough, returned to his seat," the newspaper reported.

After telling his colleagues of his urges, the newspaper said, the pilot was examined by several doctors and ultimately declared fit to fly.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Pilot suicide a taboo topic in past crash probes - CBS News

Any Ozmates remember the details on this one?

In the U.S. if you express suicidal ideations, your professional flying career is probably over (unless you somehow make it an alcohol or gender identity issue). If you keep the thoughts to yourself, you keep flying.
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