Then you're doing better than me or the pilot was ham-fisted. I was on a US Air A320 and the only way I could tell that the pilot started a racetrack holding pattern was looking out the window. And I'm a pilot.

Anyone know if there were any positioning Tech Crew on the flight?

If you have a fire, depressurizing is a normal procedure in many cargo aircraft since there is no fire protection system on the main deck. 777 freighter has this procedure. The problem off course with passengers is that you automatically activate the passenger oxygen system and re-establish oxygen generation on the main deck, which is exactly what you are trying to avoid.

As far as the different flightplans work: a different flightplan could very will have "survived" on route 2 when there has never really been a complete shutdown (it might be removed if you change the databases during preflight, I'm not sure, but that happens not very frequent...). But activating a flightplan on the other route 2 page pretty quickly can lead to "not on intercept heading" if I recall quickly. So I don't really consider it something that can happen "by accident".

The shuttle Challenger exploded at 50,000 feet. Not 65.000 feet.

Columbia was noted to be breaking up by observers in California so an awful lot of visibility before Columbia finally disintegrated.

ABC News reports that two data systems were switched off with an interval of 14 minutes.

First at 1:07 AM the data transmission system was not sending data anymore, then at 1.21 AM the transponder did not sent any data.

ABC suggest this was done deliberatley.

The 'ping data' to satellites is the only system which cannot be shutdown manually.

Malaysia Airline Search Intensifies in Two Widely Separated Areas - ABC News

No, the likelihood of saving anyone is remote, but getting to the crash site quickly will help in the recovery of as much of the aircraft as possible, which can help in explaining what happened.


As we currently can see, they don't even know what ocean the plane is in.

This doesn't make much sense.
A crew experiencing hypoxia would be donning masks and not playing with an FMS (assuming a competent crew). There would be a blaring horn and red master light blinking - this would occupy their attention, not FMS.

It initially exploded at 45000 feet and continued to 65000 feet.

To those concerned about censorship.
 

About twice a year, since I joined PPRuNe in April 1997, either Danny or Rob have explained why posts on threads such as this get deleted, if a post is frivolous, repetitive, asks questions already answered, makes statements that clearly show the poster hasn't bothered to read the previous pages, makes really stupid claims, like 'aliens' etc. makes a post that is quite irrelevant, then they will be deleted, as they contribute nothing to the discussion and take up unnecessary space. It isn't 'censorship', as some suggest, it is good house keeping and goes some way towards reducing the amount of fatuous 'glue' that the aviation professionals here have to wade through.

Star navigation
 

As an insomniac SLF and being mostly awake during night flights, I can tell looking at the sky at night if the plane is changing direction. I can even tell you which direction that would be, where are the planets if any are visible, trace the ecliptic and guess the approximate local time without looking at my watch. Ancient mariners had this skill practised a thousand times better than I. Do you mean to tell me that pilots would not know to navigate by the stars?

ABOUT PINGING . .
 

Does anyone here KNOW how often the ACARS- system on a 777 or on this 777 pings absent a response or ( contract ) to supply engine related data?

Note that BA claims no such contract- and RR also claims no ( engine? ) data after a few minutes before transponder shut down.

I suspect that some technical types consider DATA only to be ( engine parameters and the like ) and the non technical types do NOT consider a simple ping to be DATA … or vice versa depending on background.

And about 99 percent of the media pundits don't know the difference.

So when RR says NO engine data - they **probably mean ** no engine parameters- and do not count a ping per se as DATA

The press probably thinks or defines NO DATA as being NO pings

Yes its splitting hairs or whatever- but his old engineer would consider the ping as " hello- are you there " as an address or attempt to communicate and NOT DATA as its commonly used. I would consider altitude and speed and time as general DATA and Engine parameters as " engine " data .

Lacking one ( engine ) data IMO does NOT mean NO DATA if altitude and speed are part of the transmission.

Back to my question does anyone KNOW the ping repitition rate or ( try every xx minutes or seconds and if no answer to dump data, try again in xx minutes ) ???

that plot is at best 2.5 hours, but we know the aircraft was flying for at least 5 hours, with enough fuel for maybe 7 hours or so.

There is no contradiction between 2.5 hours and up to 5 hrs.

No, not that easy, they would be prompted for discontinuity and they would have to acknowledge it and 'fix' it. 2 keys wouldn't do it.

Look at the route. It's not part of a recognised route structure. It's following the fir boundary. Why do this? Because if you want to cause max confusion, and you are in the know, you do this to play one airspace against the other, by flying along the boundary instead of,across it until you are outside of radar coverage.

Problem is, with the endurance they had, jet could be anywhere in the Indian Ocean.

Nice post Evey H
 

It's very easy to forget there are real people and real families who's lives have been changed forever. For the families involved I hope they have the answers they are looking for and deserve very soon.

Nobody know for sure how long they were flying.
But per the CNN article and news video this graph ends where they either went North West or South East, watch the relevant CNN video, it is all there.

Thanks a million, mods, for doing all this and also not closing off this conversation to insiders only. It has been fantastic for non-tech, non-pilot folks to be able to tap in and learn - and stay a jump ahead of the tabloids. We'll go back on the SLF thread when the plane's found... :}

KNOW no - but if one would take the unnamed NYT article sources at face value, handshakes should be frequent enough to estimate (and discard) an apparent 40'000ft change 'in the space of a minute'. Might be extrapolation though (which must use grotesque FL when done from longer time steps).

40K feet drop in one min would make the T7 break apart. Shedding parts, etc.