If (and I do mean if) the other captain did actually make contact with the aircraft after it lost contact/disappeared off radar then it throws a whole different perspective on this.

Cant believe it was #5. I would think you would get at least 1 squawk in between FL350 and the water.

The report from the MH flight asked to contact the MH 370 indicates they were using 121.5. I have never been asked to contact another aircraft on HF. It would be very rare.

I think we will all be relieved when something happens, especially those poor family relatives of crew and passengers. Just why no seats or life jackets have surfaced, I like many others, have no idea, other than they are searching in the wrong area, but my knowledge of that area, is it a busy one, they fish all night and day, its just weird nobody saw anything. Its not like its in the middle of the Atlantic. But until they do, just so much is on hold. Boeing (is it our aircraft that caused it) Malaysian Airlines LAMES (what did we miss?) Security at KL (who did we let thru) refuellers (everything was normal) Flight Ops, (did we miss anything with these two pilots) and if so, what? And for the aviation industry en masse, a terrible tragedy has taken place, one we hate to acknowledge, and to have to be forced to believe once more, neither machine, nor man, is infallible.

Pilot: I established contact with plane - General - New Straits Times

This is the report URL. The report is hazy on detail and does not state that MH370 was clearly identified on the first call. The report is silent on the response to the Vietnamese Controller's request for a second contact. Far from definitive information.

121.7 being VHF and thus LOS was probably the best frequency to use if not SOPs.

I ve been in KLIA twice (last time 2 years ago).Immigration checks carried out thoroughly (even when they noticed the official invitation from MAS for assessment ) as well as the security checks on my flights back to Europe ( 2 points of security,first after the immigration and the second right on the boarding gate,where i forced to leave two bottles of water,as i didnt expect second security check). So i am bit surprised about concerns for the security in KLIA. As far as it goes for the passport issue ,one of them was not on the INTERPOL missing list but still no clue what went wrong with the other one,especially on a flight bound to China where visa restrictions are quite strict .

Given that the recorders should be emitting audible pings if they're intact and under water, I would have thought the searchers would have deployed an array of sonobuoys to listen. Perhaps they have, it's not something the media would think of reporting to the general public unless they ended up being responsible for finding the orange boxes.

Not too sure about that - there have been some pearlers over the years.

As far as cringeworthy or embarassing coverage about MH370 goes, however, most of the comments here seem almost benign.

It's appalling to see so many so called "esteemed" media outlets from a host of countries running a gaggle of images of bewildered and clearly devastated individuals who seem to be desperately trying to make sense of the situation and shield themseleves from the invasive shutterbugs at the same time. Stories are smattered with cliches, conspiracy theories and speculation presented as fact.

One does expect this with the usual suspects, but it seems the slightest hint of an information vacuum appears reason enough for the "respected" media sources to climb on to the bandwagon as well. Of course, all in the name of "public interest".

Given the lack of debris found, in an area of dense marine traffic, and the sudden loss of all telemetry, and 6 or 7 hours of fuel onboard, in the dead of night, if the aircraft was hijacked, where would be the limits it could travel to?

I'm thinking the "*stans" are not outside the realms of possibility.

New Straits Times is reporting that another Malaysian Airlines flight made contact wi
 

I sincerely doubt that another a/c established contact with MH370 at 01:30 as MH370 had plunged already more than an hour earlier.

Breaking news on Sky News now that, Malaysian Authorities have confirmed four passengers are being investigated following the ''receipt'' of information from Interpol. A news conference by Malaysia's Transport Minister will follow on Sky News very shortly.

@letsjet Not sure what the protocol is for a new thread or even if one is permitted on the same incident....Perhaps after 48 hours we start again? :eek:

It has been quite a while since the last incident, so I guessing everyones "in for a chat", but to be honest I have read the whole thread, & there is very little wild speculation, almost all of it is possible & given the lack of contrary evidence to date no one can conclude that anyones post doesn't have some possible truth to it. They are all theories anyway after all!

Theres plenty of stuff posted that I didn't think myself of as being a possibility, both technical & left field...but it all goes into the pot for me to decide what I think may have happened.

Also a splattering of "newbie" questions helps sort out some of the misinformation & perhaps corrects some assumptions made by more experienced persons.

The number of graphics I have seen with the flight travelling direct from A to B is astounding. Just shows how much the news stations don't know about flight lanes & great circles. Luckily they are not in control of SAR (Search & Rescue).

Yes the thread is long, real details are slow to come to light, every little bit of new information will have several pages spent on it to determine its worth, especially if you only get a bit every 6 hours or more...

There are numerous air defence radars in the area. Some of them would have tracked the primary return of the aircraft.

Switching off the transponder and flying elsewhere, undetected, is not really credible.

If the aircraft was flown somewhere else by hijackers, it would not have disappeared from the radar (even if the hijackers turned the transponder off).

Did anyone notice on the flight radar 24 track from the same flight number last night, the tracking signal seems disappear around about 40minutes into flight, then comes back on 21 minutes late at the tip of Vietnam. Same thing on the 1st March as well.

The tracking always seems to stop on these occasions as the aircraft turns from 25 degrees to 38 degrees. On other days the signal is apparent the whole way across to Vietnam. (weather/atmospheric conditions perhaps cause the loss of sign on some days??)

Anyway, that gives a rough distance of ~220km and a fairly short flying time between A and B for the search teams assuming it kept the same heading.

If last signal ATC contact was potentially around 1.30am (10mins after it goes off the flight radar screen) Then plane would have been perhaps only ~110km off of the Vietnam coast at that point.

Doesn't seem like that big an area to search if using grids with multiple S&R aircraft and it is near impossible for something to drop out of the sky without noticeable debris being scatter around if there was an explosion.

The search and rescue seems very badly organised from what i've seen and compared to the s&r of other aircraft lost at sea in recent years (Helicopters, North Sea).

Stolen passport holders' journey
 

Italian:
Mar 8, CZ748, 00：35-6：30 KUL-PEK

Mar 8, CZ767, 11:55-15:15 PEK-AMS

Mar 8, CZ7737, 20：55-22：20 AMS-CPH

Ticket No. 784-*******099

Austrian：
Mar 8, CZ748, 00：35-6：30 KUL-PEK

Mar 8, CZ767, 11:55-15:15 PEK-AMS

Mar 8, CZ7689, 21:05-22:25 AMS-FRA

Ticket No. 784-*******100

Clarify; emergency frequency used in last known communication
 

RE Post 563

Quote:

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I wonder about the credibility of the Captain who was quoted as saying he had a conversation:

"He said those on the same frequency at the time would have heard the exchange.

This, he said, would include vessels on the waters below."

The Maritime Mobile Service uses frequencies in the range 150-160 MHz using Frequency Modulation, and well as some HF SSB. The aeronautical service uses frequencies between 108 and 132 MHz, using Amplitude Modulation, as well as some HF SSB.

The HF SSB frequencies are not in common between the services, unless we are talking about 2182 or 5680 kHz, the distress frequencies.

Two aircraft half an hour apart at 35,000 feet should be able to talk very clearly on VHF, where the boats below would not be listening (unless military). However I wonder why he would be using HF if VHF was adequate?

---

According to the article at New Strait Times link ;

....the captain, who asked to not be named, said his plane, which was bound for Narita, Japan, was far into Vietnamese airspace when he was asked to relay, using his plane's emergency frequency, to MH370 for the latter to establish its position, as the authorities could not contact the aircraft.

news conference:

Search area extended due to possiblity air turn back.

Oil slick found by vietnamese but no debris yet reported.

Passenger manifest/ passport discrepency issues being investigated by international agency's .

No contact made by any another pilot after radar contact lost.

If one flies low enough, is it possible to be "below radar" and therefore not tracked, or is that one of those things that only works in the movies?

Military Radar - better than Civilian
 

Military Primary Radar has the ability to measure altitude and also compute bearing and speed. They have to do this to vector interceptor aircraft or missiles.

This was shown in TWA 800 where radar returns after transponder failure were used to determine the trajectory and velocity of the major components. This was done by the NTSB using military system software.

Primary radar records can and are used to deduce all those parameters, with the possible exception of altitude, in accident investigations.

See the report for Egypt Air 990.

Very Ex BA might be on the money, 4 PAX now suspect, and FBI called in. Still no sign of aircraft.

At where the MAS conference took place, one of the relatives said his brother was one of the passengers on board, and his phone, which has a singapore number, has successfully been dialed.

However till now, the recent two dial has not got any responses. Malaysia authority has recorded this number for further investigation.

NTSB - Press Release

If you have enough readings from PSR, you can deduce heading, what i'm saying is SSR gives live, factual readings of heading, received from the transponder, PSR is all guestimation

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the two fake passports, on an aircraft travelling to Beijing, is anything really noteworthy.

Stuffed up rapid descent due decompression and forgetting to put on the masks?

A single primary radar (skin paint) gives you bearing and distance, nothing else. If you observe multiple returns you can deduce heading and speed.

If you want altitude you need a second radar stations returns time synchronized to the 1st station., and observing multiple sweeps.

I'm not counting a tactical radar that has a very narrow beam width and a very narrow scan angle, and has almost no use for civil aviation.

BTW: who is the genius that decided mode A would be Code, and mode C would be Altitude? :ooh:

Military surveillance radar systems do it all in real time and are more than accurate enough to vector interceptors to (predicted) location and altitude.

Vietnam especially runs round-the-clock military surveillance due to a number of ongoing territorial disputes.

LAS

DME based on PSR is getting VERY oldschool. I'm sure it is still used in accident investigation for confirmation, but with CPDLC and ADS, it's very much a backup

Stormy Knight, I guess it boils down to this business needs answers, and fairly quickly at that. I imagine most on this blog are either pilots or engineers, all who are using experience as to their opinion what might or might not have happened. For those who suggest it is a poor blog, might take into consideration until something concrete shows up, speculate is all we/us can do. But the very nature of the business puts some urgency into it, and people react to that. Some, suggesting that pilots and engineers iqnore the whole dreadful thing, until something gives them a lead, is nonsense, this affects the whole industry and regardless of whom you work for, most are thinking about Malaysian Airlines right now. No airline, unless totally hopeless, deserves this. And this is considered to be a good airline.

Not really surprised that nothing has yet turned up. Descent from altitude after a catastrophic event, either in large or small pieces, would be subject to trajectories influenced by, amongst others, the forward motion of the aircraft, the force of whatever caused the catastrophy and wind, which could scatter debris over a wide area well away from the point of the event. In effect we are back to basics once the aircraft fails to be a complete unit and the fact is the area to be covered can be thousands of square kilometres.

Okay okay I do not work in military and never have or ever will, if you have enough PSR heads in enough different locations then accuracy increases obviously, but in comparison to ADS or SSR? MAH 777's are full CPDLC apparently so that's the most up to date on board telemetry we are going to get before the FDRs are recovered

Can anyone comment on the total lack of ACARS data. The key to being pointed early in the right direction on AF447 was ACARS. With all the resources of PPRUNE members, someone on a positon to know must be in a postion to know if there were ANY ACARS sent.

The South China Morning Post is running pictures of two debris fields spotted from a flight at 36,000ft this morning, they were taken from a MAS flight en-route from PEK to KUL.

At the news conference they said no ''erroneous'' information was received via ACARS.

A photo taken by a passenger flying the same route has surfaced on twitter: https://twitter.com/JournoDannyAsia/...630848/photo/1. Apparently, it shows an area outside of the search location.

VN Express, Vietnam's largest news site, reports that Vietnam Emergency Rescue Center just announced it has found signal of the missing plane at 9.50am 120 miles South West of Ca Mau cape, the Southern-most point of Vietnam.

The signal is believed to be the ELT (Emergency Locator Transmittor) , which can be activated manually by the flight crew or automatically upon impact.

No ACARS/ADS means the fuselage broke up immediately, the cockpit was severed from the transmitters

A new thought!

I have 2 questions
1. What was the previous rotation of this aircraft?
Possibility of package hidden on board and not discovered by cleaners.
2. How long was the aircraft on the ground in semi darkness at KLI?
Possibility of of unauthorised entry.

Platinum: Sky News is reporting no abnormality. I presume that means good data til there was none.

Una: Understood. And I thought your earlier post explained it well, but there was a backlash of but in the XXX investigation...

When you think about it, when all else fails the old school stuff still has its place, even if it is in the aftermath of a disaster. It is interesting that they are reporting an increase of the search area in case the aircraft turned back??