Re NZ 'burning' email
 

The only thing missing in the report was the actual time of observation (UT+7 for Vietnam, UT+8 for Malaysia)

Reading it, he obviously saw something burning and wrote burning (plane) to indicate he thought the burning could be a plane.

His bearing is basically due West. At the time of interest and given the duration it's unlikely to be a planet. It could be an aircraft at any distance depending on altitude.

The other alternative is a satellite. I've seen naked-eye satellites flare brightly and expand in size due to outgassing while in orbit. Alternatively I've also seen satellites re-entering that flared for about that period of time - tens of seconds. The only unusual thing is it was due west while satellites tend to orbit in an inclined plane, so no lateral movement is a problem for that explanation - though not impossible.

There's also the possibility that someone (e.g. a fishing boat) has found floating debris and kept it to themselves. Has happened in the region before, the Lauda air 004 where looters carried away personal belongings and aircraft parts: Lauda Air Flight 004 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An equally interesting comment a long ways back that got little discussion also seems relevant. A question about accessibility and security of the MEC (Mechanical Equipment Center) on the 777.

A little research turns up some very interesting info.

First lets look at the MEC location - below and immediately behind the flight deck seems a perfect spot to have catastrophic consequences.

http://www.skybrary.aero/images/B772_MEC_FIRE.jpg

A search seems to show incidents which exhibited characteristics that well fit some of the scenarios discussed here at PPRuNe. Scenarios that address the seemingly unlikely event of loss of comms, loss of telemetry (ACARS), loss of transponder etc.

The investigation found:

It does not in my opinion take an engineer or accident investigator to see that had this incident occurred at cruise that the results could very well have matched what has been speculated here.

A failure (or even a breach) in the MEC causes fire. As the crew is unable to shut down and deplane, the incident escalates with smoke filling cabin/cockpit, followed quickly by electrical failure as we saw happen in this incident ...

As the fire continues uncontained, with the aircraft deaf and dumb - electrical; and as a result comms, transponder, ACARS etc all down, the fire breaches the aircraft hull - as it was well on its way to doing in this incident - followed by a rapid depressurization.

It seems entirely possible and plausible that in such instance, as the damage would be advanced before the crew even were aware - and with the likely rapid loss of electric bus and all related, that no Mayday would get out between discovery and loss of power.

I think it also at least plausible that the pilots MAY have been able to initiate an emergency procedure, but may have rapidly lost consciousness.

More experienced pilots please comment, but I believe the response to a rapid decompression at cruise is to push the nose over hard into a banked descent. I can imagine pilots initiating the emergency descent maneuver at same time they dial in a heading and lower altitude, then being overcome - by depressurization and as the descent continues, then by smoke.

The aircraft, even in distress, could likely fly a fairly long ways. With in the fairly long delay before anyone realized or were worried about the aircraft being missing, it could have traveled well out of the area.

If the MEC is accessible from the cabin it seems terrorism is at least possible - and seems something to look at. But regardless, this incident seems to show everything necessary to casue the scenario we have been discussing, is present in a previous incident with the aircraft.


References:

Short Version:
Air Accidents Investigation: S2/2007 Boeing 777-222, N786UA


Air Investigation Bulletin - Overview:
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...7%20N786UA.pdf

Air Investigation - Complete:
http://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/647.pdf

The guy in the email must have good eyes, the rig is currently located in the Caribbean Sea 22.84518 / -79.38331

Or a military jet on full afterburner, maybe scrambled to intercept the jet that apparently turned off its transponder?

This was discussed at length earlier in the thread. On the 777 it is not a "push the nose hard over" screaming dive, it is ideally performed with the autopilot "in", and Boeing do not make it mandatory to change heading (left or right).

All of these "what if's" would have sent a message to the company:=

IRU on 9M-MRG
 

I mentioned the ADIRU in another post.. This airplane (MRG) had an issue a while ago where they had zero authority on the control surfaces while it was in AP. Not saying MRO had this problem, but it's a little weird they were at similar cruising altitudes.



On 1 August 2005 a serious incident involving Malaysia Airlines Flight 124, occurred when a Boeing 777-2H6ER (9M-MRG) flying from Perth to Kuala Lumpur also involved an ADIRU fault resulting in uncommanded manoeuvres by the aircraft acting on false indications.[14] In that incident the incorrect data impacted all planes of movement while the aircraft was climbing through 38,000 feet (11,600 m). The aircraft pitched up and climbed to around 41,000 feet (12,500 m), with the stall warning activated. The pilots recovered the aircraft with the autopilot disengaged and requested a return to Perth. During the return to Perth, both the left and right autopilots were briefly activated by the crew, but in both instances the aircraft pitched down and banked to the right. The aircraft was flown manually for the remainder of the flight and landed safely in Perth. There were no injuries and no damage to the aircraft. The ATSB found that the main probable cause of this incident was a latent software error which allowed the ADIRU to use data from a failed accelerometer.[15]
The US Federal Aviation Administration issued Emergency Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2005-18-51 requiring all 777 operators to install upgraded software to resolve the error.[16]

All the stories about possible turn-back, sightings over the Straits Of Malacca etc are just that... stories. They are qualified by "believed to have", "think that" etc etc.

We are still where we were last Saturday morning - no evidence of what has happened to the flight

Who said the company didn't get them?

Maybe no one was reading them, or the initial info was ignored.

Would explain some behaviours of multi-medalled generals.

It would crash. There is nothing in the 777 systems that would prevent it flying into the ocean. If and it's an if, the fisherman are correct, and the aircraft was flying straight and level at a low altitude, then someone was flying it, or making autopilot inputs.

Latest briefing postponed again according to BBC World just now.

@ Tarzanboy #2045 (was post #2063)
 

At last something that makes sense and 'feels' right for an explanation.

It answers some of the 'whys'

..... and it wouldn't be the first "crash/aircraft loss" due to an incorrect way point input

MEC fire
 

Yes this could be a cause of fire and lead to an accident.

However I am sure that the crew if being faced with smoke and fumes in the front end would go through the QReF and don mask and initiate a long shallow to a lower altitude as rightly stated by a dial in of the autopilot. (at the same time initiate other drills to do something to locate and react if at all possible to the smoke/fire) By this stage there would be four eyes and two pairs of hands on this going through check list. A busy time.

All crews of all types will have practiced this in the SIM many times.

Regarding the search in the other direction.

Lets face facts, one of the radar sites reported a radar hit at about the time it could be reasonable to assume this flight could reach if in fact it made a turn. Reported it was not transmitting mode S.
If the authoritys there did not fully investigate and search these areas then I am sure every one would be up in arms that they have not made all efforts.

This is a very sad situation for the industry regardless untill we know the full outcome and untill the DFDR and CVR are located and the data accessed wwe never will do. However its good that so many front seaters are responding on here with very usefull information.

@HamishMcBush

Exactly! That's the point I was making in mine #1951.

IMO, after a lot of research here on this thread and elsewhere, there has been no definitive official statement by the SAR investigators that a turn back over the peninsular happened!

Oil rig letter
 

Some facts:

The Songa Mercur is currently drilling in Block 05-1c in Vietnamese waters.

The reported location in the letter is within that Block - I don't have access to the exact coordinates of the well.

The distance to the last reported location is 306 nm on a true bearing of 276.5 degrees:

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...ps509f48dd.jpg


Note that the bearing line runs just south of the Con Son Islands and across the tip of the Ca Mau peninsula.

For an aircraft at FL350 to be visible from the rig, it would need to be closer than 230 nm. At FL200, 175 nm.

It does say Last Recorded Position - Recorded on: 2013-02-18 08:15:00 (UTC)

It may have moved since then.

@readw - Wrong. Do your research properly before you post crap. The Songa Mercur oil rig is currently in the South China Sea, at the location mentioned in the oil rig workers email - and the company that owns it has reported a 100% successful operational period during February (click on "February fleet update" at bottom centre of page).

Songa Offshore

Is there any possibility the plane came down over land and never made it back across Malaysia? Dense jungle has absorbed planes before, leaving little or no trace, especially if - and I appreciate it's a big if - the plane broke up in mid air. Just a thought, albeit a very amateur one (no flames, please).

Mobile Phone Tracking
 

Nobody seems to have responded in any detail to the various points about pax phones.

It is common knowledge that many cell phones are left on during flights. Given the demographics, most MH370 passengers would be using smartphones. This raises one interesting avenue of enquiry, and one non-issue.

"QQ" IP Number Logs

If MH370 crossed Peninsular Malaysia at relatively low altitude, some of those phones could have established contact with cell phone towers along the flight path, if only for short periods. Such contacts are logged by the telephone operators even if no call is made. MH knows the numbers of most phones on board because they were used for passenger registration.

More interesting is the fact that smartphone apps contact certain websites automatically when a cell connection is established. Families of some Chinese passengers are reported to have observed that QQ (similar to Gmail chat) showed the missing passengers as logged in. (Login could be entirely automatic under control of a smartphone app.) If true, this means that QQ (as well as the Malaysian cell phone carrier, and the respective governments) have a log of the IP addresses associated with passenger smartphones during the fleeting connection with the Peninsular cell phone towers.

As regards jamming, it is, of course, possible to jam phones, but considerable power would be required to jam every single phone throughout the length of the fuselage, in the cockpit, crew quarters, etc.

Non-Issue - Phones "Ringing Out" Without Going to Voicemail

Another claim in relation to phones is probably true but irrelevant - families of passengers claim that when they attempted to call the passengers' phones, they encountered a continuous ring tone (ring out) rather than being diverted to voicemail or an error message after one or two rings.

Based on my own experience, Chinese cell phone carriers sometimes handle unavailable phones in very idiosyncratic ways, particularly when a Chinese phone is used outside China. There seems to be official concern that voicemail could be used for surreptitious political communications.