Perhaps this has been discussed prior; if so my apologies. But I'm still hearing that the Malaysians are saying they'll enter the Captain's home "if necessary".

As a retired Captain I'm not casting aspersion, but with so little known here and so many lives involved, I would think that the appropriate authorities would have searched his home long ago - to include the computer(s) used to run his home simulator.

When you're totally responsible for hundreds of lives you give up a certain amount of privacy in a case such as this. It just goes with the job.

Despite cultural politeness, respect, and abhorrence for loss of face, the circumstances demand that everything possible needs to be examined ASAP.

it is quite sad that a popular senior pilot with a passion and love of his job is being character assassinated on here - not cricket guys sorry
he's one of you

i can see why the witch hunt though as sadly there have been a number of pilot induced crashes with modern jets and turbo props in recent years

i do not think the MAS crew are implicated with what we (don't) know so far

all we do know is that it is a ruddy nightmare

Lonewolf,

I posted it a few pages earlier but probably got lost in the backscatter:

Local Moonset in KL was 00:40am, coinciding with takeoff time. As the aircraft was initially eastbound, it is safe to say the entire flight was conducted in darkness, only stars could have provided some directional info to the initiated.

So was the Captain of the AF crashing a good ship in the ocean near Brasil.
So was the Captain crashing in Buffalo a perfectly good A/C.
So was the Captain crashing a perfectly good A/C in AMS (except a little fault with a RA)
So was the Asiana captain crashing a T7 in SFO....

etc etc

Of course the homes of both pilots should be searched for any clues. At the moment there isn't anything to go on. Why hasn't it been done already?

It is not to cast aspersions on the flight crew, but solely to eliminate them from blame.

Who knows, the home flight simulator of the Captain may show he practised flying a route to the Andaman Islands or some other manoeuvre?

How do you know it has not been? :confused:
The Malaysians are not obliged to tell the world every little thing they are doing.
Edit:
Sorry, I missed seeing this bit.

searching crew homes - good grief
 

as i said before there is NO single country handling an aircraft accident investigation nor is flight MH370 a criminal investigation

you all harp on about this should be done that should be down - his home should be searched -
but you cannot legally do that until such measures are in force....
imagine in the UK if those actions were taken by the CAA or an airline?
the AAIB would not even be on the case yet...

you are all getting hysterical

even in Malaysia a protocol will be followed in due course - wait and see

I've used Inmarsat in the marine environment.

The antenna needs to be kept "pointing" at the satellite during use.

to do this, the Inmarsat antenna contains a GPS receiver/antenna - if it knows where it is, and it knows where the satellite is, it can keep the antenna pointed at the satellite.

On a boat, the antenna is also stabilized, to account for the roll and yaw of the boat, but maybe this isn't needed on an aircraft.

Not at all. The three would be led by very differing government bodies (with potentially differing levels of competence, and perhaps hidden agendas)

SAR is usually under the command and responsibility of the organization owning the principal SAR assets used (in this case primarily Malaysian armed forces).

Air accident investigation is conducted by the responsible (and supposedly independent) transportation accident investigation body, and a part of this investigation is to assess the quality of SAR activities. It is launched immediately after an accident becomes known (and may in fact run parallel to SAR).

A criminal investigation is run by the judicial system, triggered by the 'discovery' of a criminal act.

Not quite semantics here...

Potentially the biggest dilemma if the aircraft is not found is whether this should be treated as an accident investigation or criminal investigation. Depending on the path chosen, some evidence may be easier to gather, but some more difficult. (Eg. in a criminal investigation any request for evidence from another country must pass through judicial and diplomatic channels, while in an air accident investigation various foreign investigation bodies may be invited to form a part of the investigation team).

Hi,

If France is take as reference country .. check the AF447 case
As soon the disparition was know .. a criminal investigation was launched

Strange? The Andaman Islands (and most land) in that area exist because of tectonics...earthquakes and volcanoes.

jcleant

we don't have a crash yet

and France always launches a criminal

In Malaysia, it´s a police investigation as well. Quoting Reuters´ article from today, mentionig the police may search the pilot´s home:

MH 370 Investigators Focus On Foul Play - Reports

Hmmm.....
 

1. Really, this should have been a closed forum thread from the outset. Pprune may wish to review this. There are a heap of press and idiots on here now that have only joined since this incident. Most (Obviously not all.) of these have zero to contribute. Too much clutter. It's agonising wading through the verbiage. :ugh:

2. What's now most telling, is not what we know, but what we do NOT.

3. There are also unknown 'knowns' to paraphrase a certain well-known US politician.... Much of the stupid speculation could be damped down if we were told a) If there was anything especially valuable in the hold, and b) What the ACTUAL fuel upload was. I don't see that the authorities have anything to lose by releasing that, - certainly the latter.

The cost, complexity of coordinated SAR and unnecessary trauma to waiting families can only make a stronger business case for the implementation of triggered transmission of flight data as envisioned in the BEA report on AF447.

Character assassinations
 

I don't think there is anyone carrying out a character assassination of the Captain. The investigation must be stringent and the investigators must think the unthinkable - there is nobody so important that they are above investigation.

As for press releases/conferences, circumspection is needed. I know the 777 MEC and ELMS well and I think that (for whatever reason) the authorities aren't revealing everything they know but that is not unusual in the 21st century with a hysterical 24/7 media on their case. And I'm not about to start directing those who might want to bring down another 777 where to look - although plenty of others have. := There may well be an ongoing hostage negotiation for all we know. If the press suddenly find the location of that, I think we can all guess the likely outcome.

The gps-based antenna pointer was an accessory but not a part of the core phone system itself, which works by itself if the antenna is correctly pointed manually. 8-10 years ago I used Inmarsat extensively in remote parts of North Africa, all I needed was a rough compass bearing to the satellite, elevation was a memory recall item of 35 degrees. Phone worked fine if antenna was pointed within 15-20 degrees of true satellite bearing, elevation had a greater tolerance.

Even 15 years ago it was possible to buy car-top antennas that did not need any pointing, worked as long as satellite was in line of sight anywhere above 15 degrees of the horizon. I'm sure modern Inmarsat antennas can connect without the need for satellite tracking.

What if it was my freighter A/C?
Would we see/hear the same?
Or would the freighters be "exempted"????

(we have families too.....)

You are correct that for a stationary use, Inmarsat antennas can be manually pointed. On a moving Vehicle, it is usually necessary to have an antenna that can track the satellite to maintain an Inmarsat connection.

Are you sure that the car antenna you mentioned was not for an Iridium? Irdium phones, even when used for data, do not need to be pointed.

My bet is that the Inmarsat antenna on this plane has its own GPS, and that GPS is the source of the locations in the "pings".

The Inmarsat claim of receiving "pings" is shrouded in privacy and is contradicted by all the evidence.

Dam near all aviation experts say the search is not in the right area.

The Evidence is:

1. The transponder went off because it was either out of range or disintegrated. At the same time, tracking went off. That again is a sign of disintegration.

2. The only reliable witness Michael McKay of NZ observation from an oil rig, is he saw it explode, gave the bearing 270 except he got the distance wrong, it was much further away than he guessed. At 36,000 ft, that explosion was visible for hundreds of miles and HE was the only one report it, to Vietnam who did search where he said he saw it but it was NOT there, it was the same bearing but a greater distance.

3. Vietnam flights spotted what looked like debris at that point near the Flight Plan Track.

4. Chinese satelite spotted what looked like wreckage where the debris would have drifted to.

5. The "Imarsat" report conflicts with all the above evidence and does not add up. Imarsat for Privacy reasons are

refusing to provide more information. Malaysian airlines are refusing to give information which again, does not help the search.

The search should be along the flight plan track exactly where the transponder went off to the Vietnam coast, centered on the last observation by Michael McKay.

It's that SOLE One and Only observation that anyone can rely on. It's corroborated by multiple sources.



How can the world be so dumb and stupid to go off on wild theories that it went to the Indian Ocean, landed on an island , and now, it went to the middle east, it went to Europe..

There are very serious problems with the "primary radar" interpretation. The world there is full of aircraft and it's predictable that one operator may not know of all the flights that took place or if flights were not notified to other countries. That happens.

The fact is, secondary radar went off from Malaysia and did not come on in Vietnam. That corroborates the

flight tracking information of stopping in the sky on track, between Malaysia and Vietnam.

The Chinese appear to have other resources to confirm the impact.

An underwater search needs to start at that estimated observation, on track, at the bearing observed by
Michael McKay as there is NO other reliable and credible evidence
except for the position where the Transponder stopped which is a pretty good starting point.


I'm amazed at how the worlds press fail to look at the facts.

What is even more amazing is the apparent incompetence to date.

Now, wait for it, the US Navy is sending expensive resources into the Indian Ocean "looking for the 777".

It begs the question, exactly "where" do they intend to look in the Indian Ocean when all the
evidence says the 777 lies on the direct Flight Plan Track after it's transponder "stopped"
to the location observed by Kiwi Oil Rig "worker", Michael J. Mckay.