Wiggy
 

I agree with your comments about the transponder. Not sure a radar sweeps are fast enough to catch code changes anyway.

I'm not familiar where all the components are located in that electronics bay either.

There is always the possibility that the transponder just happened to fail...I know not probable.

The "unidentified target" was tracked by the radar at RMAF Butterworth. It crossed Malay Peninsula over Thai territory, well north of the border.

MH370 went silent roughly 215 NM from Butterworth. If it turned towards Phuket, its route would have passed over the middle of Gulf of Thailand, likely never getting closer than 150 NM to the radar. If whoever was piloting it knew about the military installation, they could have stayed at 200 NM all the way. It would stay at the edge of radar range and they'd only have an intermittent track that did not extend far enough back to connect to last known position of MH370.

As far as I can tell, Thailand does not have any active air force bases on the peninsula. At best the "target" could have been tracked by a couple of civilian ATCs there. Neither does Vietnam have any bases close enough to catch the moment MH370 turned off course.

The aircraft has now been missing for six days. Assuming a mid air break up or break up on impact with water, there must have been some floating debris. It would be reasonable to expect that had this ocurred over the Malacca Narrows, bye now some floatsam would have reached the shores of these straights.
On the basis of a 5kt surface current, the floating debris would have travelled 720nm. It would be reasonable to expect that the SAR
co-ordination team would have taken this into consideration and concentrate their efforts taking into account the direction of surface water movements. However even if the point of break up is currently based on best guess, it is only a matter of time before some debris is washed up on someone`s shores. It is then that the real hard work of finding the location of the main wreckage will commence.

Didn't work so well for Helios 522...

ildarin
 

the helios crew did not recognize the BLARING HORN as cabin altitude warning, they thought it was the landing gear horn. same sound, different interval.

so they didn't put them on.

I think you badly misread your source. 8.5 _minutes_ survival time does not even pass the smell test. At -20C in room-temperature clothing and without complicating factors (e.g. wind chill or rain), survival time is going to be on the order of 12 hours.

However, if you combine -20C temperature with hypoxia, things are going to turn badly much faster.

Correction by WSJ re data link
 

Correction: Satellite, Not Engine, Data Drove Investigators’ Suspicions on Malaysia Jet Flying Time
U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for up to four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

The investigators believe the plane flew for a total of up to five hours, according to these people, based on analysis of signals sent by the Boeing 777's satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of some onboard systems to the ground.

Corrections & Amplifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said investigators based their suspicions on signals from monitoring systems embedded in the plane’s Rolls-Royce PLC engines and described that process.

They also ignored an engineers question;

"Can you confirm that the pressurization panel is set to AUTO?":ugh:

PPRuNe gets a favorable review in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/wo...pgtype=article
________________________

The Wall Street Journal reporter who still stands by the core of his story, is one of the top, if not the top, aviation reporter at the Journal. Martha Raddatz, the defense reporter at ABC News, is very well connected with national security sources. IMO, the U.S. government is selectively leaking information.

Based on the Wall St. Journal reporter's accounts, the pinging lasted for four hours, at 30 minute intervals. So there was power and a functioning communication link during that interval. Depending on whether the U.S. can triangulate the location of each ping, that would give an approximate a location at the time of the last ping. That leaves up to a 30 minute flying distance from the point of the last ping.

According to the Journal reporter's radio interview, he mentioned several times that U.S. officials haven't ruled out the plane landing, or crash-landing on land.

Yes, misread M for H in the abstract. The NIH number is 8.6 hours at -20C with two layers of loose clothing. Recovery time after several hours of -20C is fairly lengthly.

Really? Shouldn't that be the Gulf of Thailand, a much bigger body of water?

Missing Engineers
 

This is what Reuters had to say about the techies. Not sure that anyone said anything specific about the technology they were working on.

Loss of employees on Malaysia flight a blow, U.S. chipmaker says | Reuters

What's "Boeing 777's satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of some onboard systems to the ground"? Do they mean SATCOM? So, MH370 did have SATCOM hardware?

Also of interest:

"Throughout the roughly four hours after the jet dropped from civilian radar screens, these people said, the link operated in a kind of standby mode and sought to establish contact with a satellite or satellites. These transmissions did not include data, they said, but the periodic contacts indicate to investigators that the plane was still intact and believed to be flying."

Just to nitpick, that's for -30C.

Media if you belive
 

Boeing did state that an airworthiness directive about possible fuselage cracks issued by US authorities in November regarding 777s, which had been linked in some theories to flight MH370, did not apply as the missing plane did not have the specific antenna installed.


However, the Malaysian authorities said reports that more data had been transmitted automatically by the plane after it went missing were inaccurate, adding that the final information received from its engines indicated everything was operating normally.
A report in the Wall Street Journal had claimed that US investigators believed the plane had flown for five hours, based on data allegedly transmitted to Rolls-Royce, the British engine manufacturers.
But Malaysia Airlines chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari Yahyain, told reporters: "We have contacted both the possible sources of data – Rolls-Royce and Boeing – and both have said they did not receive data beyond 1.07am. The last transmission at 1.07am stated that everything was operating normally."
A Reuters report said sources close to the investigation claimed communications satellites picked up faint electronic pulses from the plane after it went missing, but the signals gave no indication where the jet was heading nor its technical condition. They said one engine maintenance update was received during the flight.
Neither Boeing nor Rolls-Royce would comment, citing international conventions on air accident investigations.

I can only quote from subjective experience way back when we were put in small groups into 'the chamber' to experience and watch each other get hypoxic. The chamber was 'climbed' to (I think) about 30,000ft equivalent.

We were given a simple maths test to work out - write down 500 now start subtracting 17 - then one in each pair had their oxygen switched off.

I became woozy and not with it relatively rapidly say 45 seconds or less but subjectively within 20 - 30 seconds was back up to speed when given 100% oxygen. My 'partner' seemed to be totally unaffected when his supply was shut off neatly writing sum after sum.... it was only when we looked after about 45 seconds we noted that although the writing was neat it was gibberish... he also recovered quite rapidly 20 - 30 seconds or so.

So what we learned was onset can be fast and obvious - or fast and not obvious, imagine the FO happily punching nonsense into the FMC. Recovery - on 100% oxygen was rapid. However, we had not spent a long time at height and were young and relatively fit. I expect as with all things biological YMMV.

It could be, it seems to me, that the WSJ reporter still does not have it right.

As noted above and before, it seems that this T7 did not have SATCOM so how could it be transmitting pings to satellites?

What if what was actually pinging was the ACARS/RR monitoring radios but these transmissions were picked up by NSA satellites?

That seems more likely and could explain the confusion of the reporter and his source(s).

I am neither familiar to a great extent with the FBW architecture of the Bus , nor the 777. However, from what I understand it operates ( without Autopilot engaged ) in a form vaguely similar to CWS on my "steam driven" 737, I.E. the aircraft will more or less maintain the same angle of pitch/bank, and within certain limits , return to same if disturbed.

This being the case, given that they had already attained cruise altitude, unless whatever catastrophe that occurred interrupted electrical power such that power to the FBW was disabled, any discussion involving the autopilot is without value, as the aircraft would have continued in controlled flight anyhow until fuel exhaustion.


As a footnote, I think more is known than is being released (particularly radar data) & find it difficult to believe that Satellite data etc would not be available.

Having said that, it took from 5 days to 2 years between finding surface wreckage & anything useful in the Air France accident, so don't hold your breath.

Please read it again, you will note that it says it would be reasonable.. had it ocurred ... it is a proposition that had it, then given this narrow channel of water it would be reasonable to expect that there would be some flotsam. So as no flotsam why are they still busy dreging this narrow water way.

Glossary for noobs.
 

Dear pro pilots and engineers,
This thread has over 4 million views... safe to say it's gone viral amongst non-professionals, regular folks just listening in on a fascination conversation.
So, first, thanks.

I realized I was missing half the conversation, not knowing what the many abbreviations and acronyms that are commonly referred to in these posts (SAR, NIH, PAX, UTC, ACARS etc.) So I thought I would provide a link to a wiki page which could help us amateurs follow along and possibly prevent us from asking dumb questions.

List of aviation abbreviations - Wikipedia

Again, many thanks.