@Mixture
I know, I'm familiar with use of the system in an application with SIL requirements.
This technology makes it possible to mix tree types of traffic on the same network with special network switches:
- BE: Ethernet/IEE802.3
- RC: AFDX/ARINC 664
- TT: TTEthernet/SAE AS6802
Best Effort Traffic (BE) could be used for IFE, while TT (with byzantine fault-tolerance) could be used for flight-control systems. The BE traffic class does not have safety properties, and gets the remaining bandwidth of RC and TT.

If TTTech's claims is correct it should be possible to route 'hostile' BE traffic on a network with TT SIL3 traffic. (But it might still be good to separate this in separate networks)
http://www.tttech.com/fileadmin/cont..._Aerospace.pdf

An old version of this technology (that is incompatible with std. Ethernet.) is in use on the cabin pressurization system on A380.

Did MH370 really turn back?
 

Radar slant angle has been mentioned a couple of times (maybe more). I think the effect of slant angle may have a greater significance than many think. Quick recap: Radar slant angle refers to the fact that a primary radar measures the distance from the ground up to an airborne target, not the "map" distance. This means that a falling (or rapidly descending) target may appear to move toward the radar location.

To visualize this, I did a quick simulation of what happens if an aircraft goes ballistic (literally, i.e. a ballistic trajectory from stable flight after some instant event) from FL350, and how that will look on primary military surveillance radar from the Malaysian coast (not knowing exact radar locations, I had to do some guesswork)

http://i60.tinypic.com/s1hh81.png
The plot shows what happens to the aircraft crusing at FL350 heading 25 deg, ground speed 470 kts, and then some catastrophic event happening as it passes through the lower left corner. Assuming the drag does not increase (i.e. not significant breakup of the fuselage), the A/C initially continues at the same airspeed, but then picks up a downward component (ballistic trajectory).

On the radar, as the trajectory gets more and more vertical, this looks like the A/C is turning back (the dots are 6 seconds apart, consistent with a typical military search radar's rotation rate). The last 4 returns before the A/C goes below radar horizon appear to move in the opposite direction, consistent with a stable heading of ~220 (directly toward the radar site), albeit at a low speed.

All of this assumes, of course, that the radar has no accurate means of detecting altitude at this range. And what is a highly unusual manoeuver may well be seen as a sharp turn by radar operators.

Now for the speculation: This may have caused the Malaysians to start thinking the A/C turned around, which in turn may have led to some questions to the military about why an "incoming" target was not seen again on radar, face-saving cycle begins, etc...

Bottom line: I don't think the search between Malaysia and Vietnam should be given up just yet.

If you don't want your cell phone to be trackable, you have to remove the battery.
Source: federal agent who goes to my church.

@ mabuhay_2000:

I've worked with computers for... hmm... all my working life, in the aviation industry, one way or another, and some things are plausible, while other not. The idea that a T7 "computer system" could be hacked is, shall we say, less likely than the idea that this aircraft was hit by a meteor in my opinion. At one point I worked on a T7 flight simulator that used the entire aircraft AIMS system avionics boxes, and despite full access to the source code, those boxes were basically impossible to interface to, other than via their intended interfaces. As you might know, one function of flight simulators is to allow certain malfunctions to be introduced, to allow fault conditions to be trained, but this was extremely difficult in this case.

Yes. Have you?
Are you thinking of the external cover on the fuselage - that is not the valve.
The actual valve/actuator are internal and much smaller!

Military How it works
 

Retired F4
Perhaps it was a slow trip up the chain of command to someone authorized to initiate action and at that point the plane was over the Straits of Malacca heading west at flight level 295 at which point command may have decided it is Indonesia's problem not mine.

Not all of them.

Some 777s have pax O2 from multiple bottles in the sidewalls of the cargo hold.

Actual AF 447 report for dougydog
 

You wrote : " Where I asked the clearly stupid question: What were they even doing in the middle of a severe thunderstorm. I was just asking pertinent questions, IMO. "

but can you kindly (at least) read the final (actual) report :

http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/vol....let2012.en.pdf

as it was an usual weather in the F.I.T where, from dozen of years, planes go through (and I went through by 1972 / 1978 on planes such as DC-10.30). Now I am an old retired one ....

for your information too, the final technical report is the one on the url (I put the English version for you) and there is a trial going on in France which will be before court in some months for this case.

Crew O2 bottles end fittings face aft not fwd.

India asked to join Search-where is their radar data?
 

One unfortunate side impact of missing 777 is that it has revealed just how pathetic military radar coverage is in the region. Nations are naturally reticent regarding what their radars can see or not, but in this case it has become apparent that Vietnam, Malaysia have at best spotty military radar coverage and poor Indonesia is not even bothering to claim any capabilities. Indians who are never shy of emphasizing just how sensitive Andaman sea is to their national security have not come forward with any radar data which they should have, had their radars been "looking" east as they claim to be.

@TURIN

On the pics of the cargo bay pointed to by bloxin there is also visible damage on the "nozzle end" of the exploded oxygen bottle. Of course this damage may be more a result of decompression than of the explosion itself.

On the other hand if the thread of the bottle fails, the outlet connector and the valve would give a pretty good projectile. Here is a picture of that potential projectile.

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/3...ml#post4297606

Kingair1978
 

That's somewhat of the direction I was going.

I doubt they crew forgot, or were unable to don their masks.

They probably got them on, but had no O2.

In the meantime, they selected a lower altitude and a point to navigate to, then passed out.

There seem to be some variables as to how crew and PAX O2 setups are arranged.

Lost in Saigon, that would depend on how long the descent took... Maybe they kept the same speed due to structural failure, they would then descend at let's say 2500 fpm? It would take them a good 10 minutes...

I ASSUME that Boeing and Rolls-Royce have representatives with whichever organisation is in charge of the incident investigation ?

Does the FAA also have have representatives there ?

And, again, does anyone know the nominal duration of the Sonar locator beacons ?

Thanks

Lost in Saigon
 

That's not necessarily true. If the descent was very slow, and high altitudes maintained a long time, they would not wake up.

Also, the latest is that they remained at 29,500

Without O2 there, they would not wake up.

If the crew rolled off a few thousand feet in the altitude select and got the plane startd down, that's when they MAY have passed out.

As one of the possibilities in this case has to be pilot action, I seem to recall that the captain had a simulator at his house. Would it be possible that the software on this could show what flight profiles the pilot had been practicing?

GPS
 

Humble Pax here, sorry if this post has no place here, I do respect leaving it to the experts on here generally. However, I am absolutely flabbergasted that my phone and tablet can be tracked by GPS if they go astray, but according to an article on the BBC planes cannot, and black boxes cannot. Sorry if I have misunderstood and mods of course please delete if this is an unhelpful/useless post.

BBC article

Good grief.

I and others have said quite some time back that this plane caught fire in such a way, rapidly and severely that it overwhelmed the crew eventually.

We now have a rig worker claiming to have seen an aircraft near its track on fire at the time of disappearance and yet people on here still keep going on about depressurisation, hijacking, terrorism and mobile f***ing phones!

I believe you will find this aircraft went into the sea within 10nm of track relatively intact but probably near vertically and at high speed.
There will be very little left.

See Valujet 592 for an almost exact replay.

And before the pedants say yes but Valujet talked to Atc, yes they did but not every major fire sequence starts the same way and yes it is entirely possible for all communications to be interrupted by fire before the reporting systems were aware of it.

Quite some posts back somebody suggested that they knew this flight was loaded with a large cargo quantity of Lithium batteries? Is that correct?

Apologies if this has been answered already.
When the flight lost contact at 1.30am, it was tracked on primary radar for a further 70 mins. #


With all this military/airforce, have the Malaysians been asked if they scrambled military aircraft to intercept the unidentified flight which actually flew over the peninsula ? If not, why not ?

As Bruce Schneier put it (he's one of the world's top security gurus): "Any competent security expert can build a system so secure that he or she cannot think of any way of hacking it." But someone else will.

Even if the system isn't connected to anything else, it can be hacked by manufacture/maintenance/user subversion. The most dangerous security error is to imagine your system can't be hacked.