Thailand will not be wasting their tax payers money over Malaysia authority blame game, sending them to search South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand, Andaman sea, and probably Indian Ocean next.

Missing MH370: Thai Navy may cease hunt for plane

All this transponder talk is silly. Why would anyone try to select 7700 and not tell ATC anything?

We won't know what happened until they find the black box…if ever.

this may go down in history as just one of those accidents where you never find the wreckage.

Its a huge ocean…..won't be the first or last time a plane disappears.

Yes:

1) Unable to transmit voice (headsets failure, radio failure)
2) Unable to speak - loud cockpit noise such as canopy failure, partial pilot incapacitation, cannot speak audibly due to 3rd party (terrorist situation)

we even have codes following 77xx, to mean other failures, Hydraulics, Electrical, oxy, etc...

Jet, it is possible a transponder failed (it happens) Unless ATC yelled at them or the failure caused a TCAS error message they may not have noticed.

The point is, no reply from the transponder does not mean someone switch it off on purpose.

@Weary

It is not easy to do this in the dark and cover it up. The hoops to go through are very complex. No one would want to do that. Trigger happy loose cannons just do not sit around waiting for opportunities like this. If ever this scenario even happened, the authorities would be very quick to spin it to their advantage, saying that they need to protect the ground from a larger collateral damage. This is not a region where people are staring down each others' barrel. There are just so many ways to disprove this theory.

I've seen little information about the pilots, other than that the copilot was transitioning. Does anyone know if the pilot regularly flew this route? Seems like someone who "knew" the area well might react differently than someone who didn't in the event of a com and nav failure. He would, perhaps, be more able to determine his position visually based on ground lights, and would be more apt to know of other (even disused) airports. Also, did he usually fly at night? He had a high number of hours and presumably seniority?

Continuing Transponder Saga
 

On the 777, if a transponder fails, will it auto transfer to another transponder, or is there a message of failure and a manual transfer to an operating transponder?

The last airplane I flew auto transfered, and gave an advisory message and chime.

Checking the back weather data, both KL and Penang were essentially calm and partly cloudy all night during the hours when this flight could possibly have been returning in that direction. Broken cloud layers were reported at or near 3000 ft. From what I recall of the satellite imagery (but I was then concentrating on areas further north) there were tropical thunderstorms quite a bit further south (probably south of Singapore) but as usual in this part of the world, dissipating and remnants drifting west. I think we could rule out weather as any kind of a factor in this event, even some theoretical last stage return to base.

Old Boeing Driver. I have never seen a setup on an American built plane that auto switches. Doesn't mean there isn't one....

Most failures will trip a fault that will show up but some faults in the receive path won't trigger an error, the transponder just won't know it is being interrogated, and won't reply.

Jet I agree it stinks to high heaven, but that doesn't mean it was a willful act by someone on the flight deck...

At the rate this SAR is going, I doubt the debris field, if any, would remain clustered together. I fear that we'll just have to wait patiently for the debris to wash up on some coast, hopefully populated, and then back track the currents and find the crash site.

The denial by the RMAF chief that he ever stated the aircraft was picked up on radar near Palau Perak is Malaysian face-saving - in case their conclusion was wrong. Radar picks up all kinds of things, not necessarily related to aircraft. The radar results have to be analysed and a conclusion drawn. That conclusion may be right or wrong, when the radar return is from an object that shouldn't be there.

Let's say MH370 definitely was the unknown item picked up by military radar crossing the Malaysian peninsula and tracked to near Palau Perak.

Lets also examine the report by the eight people sitting on the beach at Bandar Marang on the NE coast of the Malay peninsula at 1:30AM, who heard a "loud and frightening noise" that "seemed to come from Kapas Island."

We all know that sounds reverberate and bounce off large solid objects. What if the eight people on the beach heard an explosive decompression of MH370? (they would have been within hearing distance of waypoint IGARI, and sound carries a long way at night, and through the sky).

Let's say an oxygen bottle in the cabin exploded and caused major decompression, and took out a heap of electrical wiring and comms, including the transponder.
The crew immediately commenced a left turn to return to KL and initiated a rapid descent.
However, hypoxia took over prior to reaching a low level and the crew became unconscious. The aircraft continued to fly in a gentle arc, back over the Malay peninsula, at a steadily reducing height, or at a low height preset by the crew on the AP.

In that case, there's a strong possibility the aircraft crashed into the Gunung Leuser National Park - one of the largest, largely unpopulated, mountainous wilderness areas in Northern Sumatra.
An aircraft crashing into a high-elevation area of this park at 3:00AM local time would be heard by very few people - and it would disappear into the jungle just as GOL 1907 did.

It's starting to become obvious that MH370 did not crash into the sea in the current search areas. Vietnam has scaled back its search, obviously confident the aircraft wreckage is not in its search area. The seas in the search areas have been combed by vast numbers of ships, aircraft and even satellites over 4 days, and nothing has been found.
If there was wreckage in the current sea search areas, at least one or two fishing boat crews would have come forward by now. The silence is deafening. The aircraft obviously flew well outside the current search areas.


http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-co...plane-1.507926

What if?
 

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?
http://s4.postimg.org/4d8stni21/image.jpg
"KUALA LUMPUR: The international search for a missing Malaysian airliner has been expanded into the Andaman Sea, hundreds of kilometres (miles) to the northwest of the original search radius, an official said Wednesday."

AIMS
 

The lack of communication etc etc from MH370 is strange. Having worked as ground maintenance on 777's for 15 yrs or so, I can only think that something catastrophic happened to power supply, and L and R AIMS has shut down, without AIMS, pretty much all communication is lost including transponder, and most displays apart from standby instruments will fail..just a thought..guess time will tell..just pray for the passengers and crew.

10 countries in the SAR operations - Malaysia, Vietnam, U.S., China, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Phillipines, Taiwan, and Indonesia.

The array of shipping and aircraft in the search is mind-boggling and must be approaching the largest joint SAR force ever assembled in recent years.

BBC News - Malaysia Airlines: How is the search being carried out?

Read yesterday on The New Straits Times that Qatar is offering to join in as well. Not sure in what capacity, surface or airborne.

If indeed the transponder failed, there were comms problem and it was returning or preparing for an approach for return. How is it possible that sophisticated air force like RMAF failed to detect the plane for over 1 hour and flag it as possible incursion? :uhoh:

Neogen - I think that's what the Malaysians are trying to hide. An embarrassment of major proportions.
A radar operator sighted an unknown radar return, pointed it out to a "chief" - and it was dismissed as a flock of birds. :suspect:
Either that - or the "chief" was sound asleep at home, and it was common knowledge he didn't like to be awakened, only to find a flock of birds being reported as an "intrusion". :uhoh:

Dual TRN FMS waypoints...
 

I just want to say that Tarzanboy's theory is quite an interesting one upon further reflection. What are the odds that there is a perfectly suitable emergency diversion straight ahead with identifier "TRN", plus another location with identifier "TRN" back near the Andaman sea where the aircraft seems to have flown to instead for no apparent reason?

I must admit, it seems like an easy mistake to select the wrong TRN on the display when they would both be roughly the same distance from the place of last contact.

Onetrack - or they sighted the radar return, informed the chief, RMAF scrambled the jet and overzealous RMAF .....:mad:

One fact for sure: Malaysian officials have given ambiguous, inaccurate and at times directly contradictory information since the aircraft's disappearance.

@DWS posted:

Here is the info on this topic:

Special Conditions: Boeing Model 777-200, -300, and -300ER Series Airplanes; Aircraft Electronic System Security Protection From Unauthorized Internal Access