It is unfortunate that some people here keep posting nonsense about the aircraft reaching FL450 when it has been repeatedly been explained that the T7 at that weight cannot reach FL450! Not to mention that primary radar at that range has a very large margin of error :ugh::ugh::ugh:

Some take exception to the scrutiny of the flight crew. Whilst they may turn out to be heroic victims of all this, there are still too many questions about the apparent highly skilled manipulation of systems immediately prior to disappearance. In addition the history of Islamic terrorism and the methods of Al Qaida to dress its operatives as harmless secular citizens has already been well documented, as per 9/11 for example. Therefore this scrutiny of the crew is legitimate and called for, despite the unfortunate possibility that they may be innocent. Time will tell and if necessary they will be exonerated and lionized.

NY Times reports that Malaysian authorities now report that pilot spoke to ATC after the ACARS was turned off, and gave no indication of trouble.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/wo...flight.html?hp

Also,

Within the land area with 60 minutes of fuel remaining on the northern (final ping) arc is this:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/...y/testarea.pdf

Not sure this area can be reached with 20 minutes of fuel remaining. (Using the NY Times graphic showing distances from the centerline of the arc.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/wo...ht-370.html?hp

I have a gut feeling (coupled with false flag information) this a/c has landed. It is known the Malaysian government are 'not as open' as to per maybe western countries as to security issues.

I suggest, nor am a pilot, but logic thinking (as we all understand how government secrecy works) the Malaysian government, behind the smoke screen are negotiating with a ransom request.

>If you want to believe the 40 degrees circle but do not want to believe the gap then that is fine.

By inspection of the map the 40 degree line goes pretty close to the last acars message - if you assume ditching and the plane floats for a couple of hours then you end up back at the starting point for the search.

I think we all want to see the accuracy of the 40 degree reading and the previous pings - if they are all around the 40 degree mark +/- accuracy then I'd say they are barking up the wrong tree.

Must be true. Keep quiet, let 25 countries expend hundreds of man hours, thousands of dollars, all to preserve your privacy.

Then, when all the passengers are released, hope there is no adverse publicity.

Re transponder turn off
 

Yes.
But.
Turning off the transponder in flight without notifying ATC is.... a no-no.

Technology exists that can solve this dilemma, see e g here.

I think that has something to with Najib Razak and the rising revolution with Anwar Ibrahim. There is something going on

That being the point. The adverse publicity is the way to force the PM to resign...the motive

The media keep reporting that the two pilots did not ask to fly together. That of course predicates that it was 'essential' that it was this flight that was chosen.

It might equally have been that the two pilots waited until chance put them on the same flight.

This is not to say that the pilots were the culprits but that not asking to fly together is a red herring.

On a freighter, they would.

Does anyone know if the Vietnamese or Malaysian ATS declared the first SAR phase on the aircraft, and when ? Once declared, would it not be SOP to alert active or inactive RMAF AD radar ? If not done, this would be one more little question for the Malaysians to answer.

Red arcs, as in .. which one ? There should be no reason why an earlier arc did not correspond to near one of the primary radar paints near Thailand, and using that as a fix, or an area of probability, and knowing the max and min ground speeds to later arcs, it would be possible to resolve the 'true' and 'false' arcs with a set of running fixes (or areas). So why at this stage would the Malaysian government have not removed one arc ?

How have they determind that VFR ACARS was disabled before the handover comms?

MH370 reached its cruising altitude FL350 at 17.03 UTC. At 17.07 UTC (01.07 local) the last RR (TOC) message was transmitted).
After that no RR ACARS messages was to be expected for a long time.

So how do they conclude 'disabled' and not just 'not transmitting'?

I would say the ACARS could have been disabled around the same time as the transponder - at 17.21 UTC.

There are PRIMARY radar targets every day in many countries. It involves not just airliners, but corporate and general aviation aircraft with inoperative, faulty, or improperly switched transponders. An aircraft that is not sqwaking a code becomes a PRIMARY target. It's impractical reality to launch interceptors at every Primary aerial target.

The Malay peninsula along the Thai-Malaysian border is only 100 nautical miles in width, about a 15 minutes' cruise. According to the primary targets volunteered by the military, MH370 actually had first penetrated Thai airspace in a straight line towards Langkawi in the northwestern corner of peninsular Malaysia. So, technically the initially unidentified primary radar target had penetrated and crossed the extreme north western tip of Malaysia in less than 10 minutes at high altitude and not in a threatening flight profile suggestive of imminent response.

In my flights en route HKG-SIN, for example, there have been many occasions when we were out of radar contact and unable to establish VHF/HF communications for up to 20 minutes for various reasons: lower assigned flight levels, frequency congestion, weak or degraded VHF/HF transmitters . . . And if our transponder had gone on vacation, I seriously doubt that we would have been intercepted. Air Traffic Control is aware of civil radar & radio blind spots and aircraft system limitations (typically up to 20 Watts transmitting powered radios) and will not alert military assets.

You're taking on China not Malaysia..

There is nothing that is impossible when it comes to software configured environment.

As long as accessibility is available, the cockpit technology configurations can be manipulated in such a way that the intended behavior is subjected to extortion.

If a pilot has malicious intend and he/she is able to hide that from external comprehension, there is nothing that will stop him/her from manipulating cockpit controls to achieve a different goal than anticipated with a normal cockpit configuration.

WP

Previous "pings"
 

Question for ana/snowfalcon;

Would the previous IOR pings be stored somewhere with associated arc positions available for those heading this search?

On a sidenote, it is very interesting to see at the press conference how they do their utmost to make sure not all the facts are presented. Evasive and incomplete answers combined with semi-smart constructions leading the journalists to believe that their questions have actually been answered... I can however, see why some information would be held back if there is the slightest chance that divulging this information would compromise the search and rescue efforts. Personally I would like to see the release of the cargo manifest and the fuel load/endurance. "No hazardous cargo onboard" says nothing about VAL or other sensitive cargo. And as those who are professionals amongst us would know, semantics can make the statement "There was no ADDITIONAL fuel onboard" true but it can also make the unspoken statement "There was EXTRA fuel onboard" true...

Please, don't think for one minute that I do not care about the passengers who boarded this flight. These and thousands like them are the people who pay my wages and put my family's food on the table. But I also quite like my fellow man (women actually)!

But this is where I might start being controversial. There are several interesting aspects to this incident. One of them is is security, both national and international. We can clearly see that very few people are watching anything and those who do see things are either ignored or their observations 'classified'. Therefore it remains that are still vast chunks of unmonitored airspace where you can do whatever you want. Personally, I don't think this a problem but it does show that certain countries spend a fortune in air defence yet when tested, have nothing to show for their investment. But what's really interesting is that they don't have the backbone to admit that nor are they prepared to state that anybody can pitch up by air and they'll not have any advance warning.

That a piece of airspace is not actively monitored should also be announced. Many believe that every single aspect of flight is actively managed by ATC. Europeans generally do not understand the concept of a Procedural Service yet not realising that such a service is the only one on offer in most parts of the world.

Then we have the control aspect. What do airlines do to ensure sanity in their aircrew? Every day, we get accosted by the Gestapo who run airport security, fight the 'system' just to depart, deal with surly cabin crew, bolshy passengers and still carry the baggage of our personal and home lives. Personally, I think I can deal with most things that are thrown at me (just as long as I don't have to fly with a certain F/O!) but there are times... Basically, we are expected to pitch up, do our stuff and bugger off. Just think back to the times when Danny started this site. This was the time when the taxi drivers and caterers knew more about your airline than you did. Hence the rumours! Now, everybody else knows more than you.

Returning to security - just a simple question: Who ensures that the correct people are on the flight deck? With few exceptions there is no real identity confirmation. In the UK, the clowns by the metal arches just want to abuse flight crew and make your life difficult. But the only thing they achieve is to ensure that we're not carrying an effing yoghurt! You couldn't make it up.

Sitting at the pointy end, you have to be able to turn things on and off. To be learn that the entire output of a IDG and two batteries is being directed though a faulty transponder or ACARS unit which can't be isolated because of a campaign by a 'concerned' Daily Mail reader is not acceptable. As yet nothing has changed, yet I feel the political pressure for meddling in aviation affairs.

So how do we prevent re-occurrence? A good start would be to make it so that flight crew have an even greater vested interest in performing well. By that, may I suggest that the consistent attack our T's and C's should stop forthwith. More enlightened and liberal management practices will also help. And then we have to make sure our political systems work. Failure to do so may result in unexpected outcomes.

As to what happened and why, I haven't clue. But my fingers are crossed for those on board and their relatives.

PM

:cool: To prevent an electrical malfunction (albeit rare) from becoming an electrical fire. Any piece of electronic equipment is a hazard to be the source of an electrical fire. Securing current removes some of the problem. That is why. (Yes, malfunctions that severe are very rare).
Because it is a piece of electrical gear. Sometimes, you turn it off and turn it back on, and it works.
That's been true for a long time. Granted, maybe the modern generations of electronic gear are so good one never needs to do that. I'd be skeptical, however, if that is claimed given the problems I have with my current smart phone. :cool:

@ Piltdown Man: well said, sir. At last, a post from the point of view of a professional pilot. :ok:

satellite pics of a/c in flight
 

@uncle_maxwell

That is an interesting proposition. If IR sat photos, taken at night, are available that cover each arc at the time of a given ping it is a reasonable computational exercise to use standard image processing techniques to find the a/c. in a photo. The search algorithm could match a rendered IR image of the a/c with "camera view" of the sat. Big data search techniques like map/reduce on a supercomputer could perform this search quickly. I've written such programs myself and know what I am talking about.

Same goes for daylight photos although the pattern matching would probably be done differently.

This would answer the N or S question and greatly narrow the SAR parameters. IMHO it's is well worth looking into if photos are available.

Totally false.