Searching this thread
 

I do not know what luck you have had with using the search function on this thread, but for me, it has been inoperative.

Fortunately there is an excellent alternative: Google is keeping this thread well indexed. You can structure Google searches as follows:

Supposing you want to search for references to NYT.
Then structure your search as:
<nyt site:http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost>
Just remove the <> part of the above for your search. (Had to do that to keep it from being truncated.)

For a different search term, you can use the above string and substitute your search term for NYT in the above example.

Maybe we can cut down on some of the repetitive question asking.:ok:

Nothing has been reported or found. Simply, ships directed to that area have been asked to be on the look for debris. One would suppose that ships have been navigating there at all times, so perhaps is just a bit of publicity for someone.

Newsreader on ITV tonight twice announced that the search area now covers 28 million square miles !!!

Thanks for the info any idea what MH 370 has/had?

Is the passenger bottled air regulated, does it have a defined endurance once activated, regardless of the number of passengers who are using it?

Is the figure of 2 hour endurance for flight crew in the ballpark?
I assume flight crew O2 is regulated, does it then follow that the 2 hour figure would double to 4 hours, if in use by only one crew member instead of two?

Thanks MoP, to be clear the gaseous main is for passengers and it lasts sixty minutes?

Mickjoebill

Tracking an aircraft - doppler
 

This approach is not relevant to the current event.

Until a few years ago, 121.5/243.0 MHz ELT signals were located using doppler from the COSPAS/SARSAT satellites. On one pass, the doppler (generated from the satellite's motion) would yield two areas (one on each side of the satellite track). A second pass would determine which of the areas was the actual one in which the beacon should be found.

Doppler Processing

Regarding expectations and comments about searching the captain's simulator and laptop and finding something incriminating, no one has mentioned this aspect (so i will try):

IF hiding a plane on the way to demise (for insurance reasons or to create a mystery or both) is the objective of some skilled misguided but capable individual, they are surely able to use established erase and cleanse protocols to purge such evidence as could be found by investigators. And would have?

I also wish to say that while I also don't like the idea of a fellow pilot being the main suspect, I find it irresponsible to harp on electro-mechanical failures as explanatory, when this FACT has been both reported and presented here several times:
The left turn was pre-programmed into the FMC and noted on an ACARS event log before ACARS stopped (for whatever reason).

If you wish to blame electro-mechanical causes (such as coffee spills) please address this FACT (rather than ignore it) in your post. TY.

Rate the ATC authorities...
 

Perhaps those who fly in the area regularly (I do not) could 'rate' the quality of the ATC authorities in the area?

Which are more likely to not notice a primary target entering their airspace?

Rubbish
 

"Thunder Ball"
Heard some of the Chinese pax were high profile Businessmen of some major companys & their worths in the 100s of millions.
One was also at odds with the U.S, Governmen in the past.

Would a Government go to such means to pay back someone?

Yea, I'm full of it.

Well, no. Assuming only Inmarsat picks up the ping - reasonable if the plane continues generally westward - you have no cross reference. Just an angle.

All that does if give you another set of arcs with a slightly different radius.

The key point is that the arcs we see from the last ping position go right over the last radar position, which means that the airliner very likely took a course roughly corresponding to one of those arcs.

Earlier signals could indicate whether the plane might have "cut the corner", which would be reasonable to assume if it flew a straight course.

All we can now from the arcs is that the plane is now on the surface of the planet up to a half hour's flying distance from the arcs.

That's a huge area, the size of a large country.

They have sophisticated radar systems so that they MAY operate them if required. In the same way that the military have Reserves as well as Regular soldiers in case they are required in the future.

They are provided against known threats based on intelligence and it is simply not affordable for many smaller countries to maintain high readiness at all times.

Fatigue
 

The report on Captain Shah by The Daily Mail may be a hatchet job, but it does suggest that he spent all day Friday awake and engrossed in this big trial. It claims he left the court at 9pm straight for the airport to fly overnight to Beijing. Surely he's likely to be tired, and this could lead to poor judgement, possible mistakes and short-temperedness, and not the masterminding of a multinational heist or terrorist plot?

For me, this event may only make sense in hindsight once more information is known. With the conflicting and sketchy information currently available, none of it makes sense in totality.

For those in the commercial aviation industry, how do you posit an entire planeload of people were kept under control for the length of time this A/C was apparently operational? This is what I cannot wrap my head around.

If one accepts the argument that the shut down of ACARS, then the transponder, followed by routine communication with ATC in a situation that demanded anything but routine communication is suggestive of deliberate disruption of the flight, then this mean that passengers and some flight crew were essentially hostage. If the dramatic changes in altitude are even close to accurate, people on that flight had to be aware very early on that something was wrong. Let's say that there were no dramatic changes in altitude because those reports were incorrect; wouldn't you expect one or more of the FA to notice something during that period of time when direction was reversed along with those waypoint crossings? As in, hey the water is supposed to be starboard, but now it's port?

What announcement could possibly be given to more than 200 people to ensure their complacency and/or cooperation for this number of hours? Well past the scheduled landing time of their flight, well past sunrise?

From what I can gather, if the A/C was operational at 08:11, this would not support some kind of situation where hypoxia was a factor, simply because oxygen supplies would not have been available for that length of time. My understanding is that O2 supplies for the flight crew should have been 2 hours and this does not reconcile with the almost 6 hours since the ACARS system stopped reporting. Can anyone confirm how much oxygen would have been required for the FD crew?

It would be helpful for authorized spokesmen to be more transparent with information, including releasing detailed info on the Inmarsat data transmissions.

Technical question on ACARS please?
 

Sorry to intrude into such a knowledgeable (or wannabe knowledgeable) group. I've been lurking to learn, and test a few theories of my own (i.e. catastrophic electrical fire/failure, followed by loss of pressure in cabin). To that, I've paid attention to those that note the shut down of ACARS first. So to that, I have a question that I don't believe has been addressed to the pros here yet.

Much of the suspicion that is being cast on the cockpit crew at this moment stems from a Malaysian authority's (is that an oxymoron??) insistence that ACARS was deliberately shut down over 10 minutes before final communications and transponders failure/turned off. On one hand, I have to agree with one prior comment that until I saw a log off log, I'm not sure we can believe much from Malaysian authorities, or the press. Lousy track record and all that jazz... But for now, let's assume there was a formal log off.

I've heard pilots over the years mention that the ability to disable transponders is an important safety feature while in flight. But I don't hear much about the the same for ACARS, or the limited access you have to ACARS thru MCDUs on the pedestal. I have gone back to read older threads here about the value of ACARS, not to mention the insecure communications that are part and parcel of the system.

So two questions:

1: Is there a reason a pilot would voluntarily log off of ACARS?

2: Doesn't ACARS, if it loses VHF communications for a gap of time, request a voice log on at that time, forcing it to SATCOM? In which case, does it go thru it's own "log off" sequence? And isn't it possible that the crew would not notice if they were not depending upon it for weather (great weather that night), or confirming general log in events not needed until later?

The only reason I ask was that I tried some self education on ACARS and any anomalies - or why a crew may voluntary go thru a log off procedure in flight. And what I landed on was Canada's TSB report on the Swiss Air 111 crash back in 1998.

Transportation Safety Board of Canada - AVIATION REPORTS - 1998 - A98H0003

It probably taught me enough to know I'm even more a clueless novice. So I thought I would put it to the forum for further education.

Personally, can't see much reason for terrorism or suicide. The political views held by Capt Shah are about as far away from militant actions and fundamentalists as possible (pro Demoracy/anti-corruption). Nor would disgruntled attitudes towards Malaysian politics INRE the jailed opposition leader be much of a reason for killing what is a majority of innocent Chinese citizens.

Most importantly, I'd certainly hate to think that pilots' political views have to be considered for employment, or used to destroy reputations as a scapegoat. That's a dangerous precedent.


INRE suicide, according to media accounts, he and his wife had been separated for some time, but were sharing a home. So I can't see existing marital problems as suddenly being a reason for suicide.

All theories around deliberate acts, targeting the crew, start with ACARS... *if* it was deliberately shut down. Thus my questions. My thanks for your explanations, and I'll go back to lurking now.

GENTLEMAN !
 

You only occupy either seat (L/R) , because of your PA . Pax don't get on board a remote.

Someone mentioned DG as being conceivably within range dozens of pages ago. Then the subject of hangars there was mentioned. They're not big enough for the B-52's so they wouldn't be for a 777 either, judging by Google Earth. So that should be the end of that one....

And this has probably been done, but as for the 777 integral ELT, shouldn't SARSAT/коспас pick up any 406 MHz ELT's going off? There has mostly been discussion of search planes and Inmarsat. Sorry if it's a dumb question.

Oxygen Saturation
 

Astana is 3800 Miles or so. Kerguelen Island is 4000 'ish miles on a rough extrapolation of the Southern arc. Is is feasible? Vallee des Sables would be a lovely quiet place to put down?

Some 737 O2 discussion here on Pprune
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/29883...le-oxygen.html

This link indicates that at least one portable bottle is pressurized to 1800psi with a flow rate variable to deliver between 7 and 70 minutes.

Are all ten or so portable bottles the same specification?


It raises the issue of hypothermia on the flight deck and instruments freezing (?) if the plan was to keep cabin depressurized beyond the endurance of the emergency O2 supplies available to cabin crew.
Or does 777 have cockpit heating that overcomes the issue, if so can it work for an hour or more?

Mickjoebill

COMMON SENSE
 

Here are the last few pghs of a good peice by James Fallows in the current online issue of THE ATLANTIC:


"I agree about the streaming of black box data. It would be hideously expensive, and black boxes are (at least until now) invariably found.

But I hope this episode (regardless of how it ends) leads to more robust flight tracking. It really is not acceptable that airplanes can vanish over water any more; there are simply too many flights over water, and the incidence of catastrophic events on such flights seems to be once every few years, if this and AF447 are any guide. It does not appear that the combination of ELTs and underwater pingers is nearly reliable enough to dependably locate the site of crashes into large bodies of water.

The structure for such tracking is largely in place with all large modern transports fitted with ADS-B; the remaining tasks seem to be around the robustness of the tracking.
5) On Malaysia. Disasters often have entirely unforeseen political and social effects. Chernobyl, Katrina, the Fukushima nuclear breakdown -- these all became shorthand for points about institutions in those countries and their newly revealed vulnerabilities. A reader in Asia introduces a point that's been on my mind, especially considering my oft-pronounced and sincere enjoyment of Malaysia and its people in the years my family lived there. The reader says:

I've lived/worked there 2X. I like it. the people, country, and most of all, food.

But they have serious problems. In two decades, they're falling behind in the region. To me, its 'crony capitalism', which exists in Indonesia as well (lived/worked there for almost 2 yrs)
This is going to be a millstone around their necks for the immediate future. And it was all preventable-if they had just been honest WITH THEMSELVES.
There is a lot this last note implies that needs to be more fully explained for people unfamiliar with Malaysia's strengths, weaknesses, and similarities and differences with Indonesia. That will have to wait for the next time. Thanks to all who wrote in (and thanks to United for ever-so-slowly closing the WiFi gap with Delta, Alaska, and other airlines)."