....oil rig works saw something else....
 

...what the oil rig workers saw, was the tail of a bigger meteor, which were common on that weekend. I had a lot of meteorscatter reflexions in my ham radio on that day.... . My thought about the oil plattform theory :cool:...

Beg to disagree with bigglesbrother on his following comments:

1 Aircraft now appears to have kept flying until fuel exhaustion – about 6-7 hrs.

This can be halved if a/c below 10,000. Chances of detection greater at higher altitude + assumption of hypoxia invalidated.

2 On autopilot – or it would probably have crashed earlier.

Less likelihood of technical malfunction for a/p to remain operative.

3 All major comms and auto electronic readouts disabled: BUT it seems that auto R-R engines monitor satellite report pinging cannot be deselected manually.

This assumption would contradict no3 above.

4 One of the crew is the culprit? Aircraft depressurised and all except hijacker pass out & die due to lack of oxygen. Eventually he goes too through cold or running out of his own oxygen supply.

Assumes a highly competent took control, not just in flying aircraft, but also well versed in close combat. We have no information to suggest that either member of the crew fulfill this criteria.

5 Hijacked, but did hijackers have enough technical knowledge to disable all major systems yet keep flying?
Most unlikely

6 Aircraft in the sea somewhere.

Highly likely.

7 USA knows far more than it has disclosed

On what basis could this become a reasonable assumption. There are no good reasons for the USA to withhold even if it is defence sensitive. Particularly after such a long lapse of time. Can you imagine the world reaction to such an eventuality. It would be considered callousness at the extreme. I cannot even for a moment accept that the US would be so unwise.

MAS only has 1st class on the 380.

Should the story change again, and again, and an 'ACARS Off' event at some point in time, is used as a means of casting suspicion on the crew because they may have had some reason of their own to turn it 'off', then consider that the ACARS unlawful interference page has been made public knowledge at:

www.cockpitseeker.com/wp-content/uploads/A320/pdf/data/datalink.pdf

sk200.wikispaces.com/file/view/Manual++Operaci%C3%B3n+Normal+de+Vuelo+LAN.pdf

users.telenet.be/evics/content_11_1.pdf

.. and therefore a well researched interloper may have invited the crew to turn off ACARS as well. The crew should therefore be less suspect to the extent that an interloper could have trawled sufficiently deep to pull up these pages (or even got something out of the base Tech Library).

Nothing lasts forever, so we'll just have to think of a new method.
Meanwhile, have a think about who/what would gain from the blame being shifted towards the crew.

CNN now cant figure out WHEN the acars was deactivated. So maybe all those " here is what we KNOW" lists are , eh, invalid. Maybe we don't actually KNOW very much at all.

Well, it's becoming quite a marathon to keep up with the Thread. But in those quiet moments, when the techno-babble all fades, there are two posts which keep coming to mind. And, when all said and done, things are often far simpler than we ever suspected...

Back in the 50s and 60s when the battery life of a PLB was short we used to carry a flurocine dye marker. In the tropics we also carried a similar small quantity of shark repellent.

It was rumoured that the dye marker attracted sharks and the repellent didn't work. A packet, probably about 250 grams would create a bright patch around 10 feet diameter.

Obviously, 50 years on, improved dyes will be available but in other than a calm sea dispersion is likely to be rapid.

The supposed oil-rig workers observation still makes no sense. If you read his email, he says So - even if he was able to see this aircraft from more than 350 miles away, it would not appear "at high altitude." All he would have been able to see, if anything, is a bright light on the HORIZON.

He would not have seen a plane at high altitude, could not have seen that it was "on fire" or "all in one piece."

it is either a hoax or he simply saw something else.

Can we please stop with the nonsense that someone 350 miles away saw a plane "up in the sky on fire?"

I believe that approximation is only valid near sea level.

I went back to basics and did the trig. I may have made a mistake, so would be happy to be corrected if someone wants to check the calculation.

Had there been a truly robust system for flight tracking in place that reported 3D position every minute or so from takeoff to touchdown:

1) those with malign motives would have to rule out the possibility of "disappearing" a large commercial aircraft and a few hundred people simply by turning a few cockpit switches or flipping a CB;

2) whether or not this was not the result of a malign act, the CVR and FDR would have been found by now.

Had such a system been in place for AF447, the cause of that crash would have been known with a high degree of certainty at least a year earlier than it was.

ELTs are simply not sufficiently reliable in a crash into water, as AF447 again demonstrated. And it's very hard to find a crash site when it's somewhere in a large body of water without knowing within a a pretty small radius where it was likely to occur. See Varig 707 1979 disappearance, not to mention the Northwest DC-4 that vanished over Lake Michigan and, almost 65 years later, still has not been found.

I understand the concern over not being able to shut down an electrical device in case of suspected fire. But there have to be solutions for that. A GPS receiver reporting current 3D position to a satellite every few minutes via SATCOM (perhaps more often in case of altitude or heading changes) does not require a lot of power, nor would one need Li-Ion batteries to power it.

A truly robust system of flight tracking would achieve about 95% of what live streaming of CVR/FDR data would do at far less expense or pilot resistance, and pilots do have a legitimate interest in not having their every remark monitored by the ground.

Japan Airlines 350 Japan Airlines Flight 350 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Royal Air Maroc flight 630 Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Silk Air flight 185 SilkAir Flight 185 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

EgyptAir 990 EgyptAir Flight 990 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique - LAM 470 LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lemain, if you read back through the thread you will find an instance where the pilot did exactly that which is why suicide is a discussion item.

Then the question of minimum runway length for take-off obviously depends AUW of which fuel load is the major variable. To assume it needs a full fuel load to reach a distant target assumes that the target is indeed distant. It might also be conceivable that any plan could be for a short field, light load take-off followed by a brief stop at a compliant larger airfield for refuelling.

Personally I think that is a nonsense and I suspect the aircraft crashed or ditched.

ELTs

This jumped out at me, is that confirmed by the airline or another reliable source? Just doesn't sound right to me, to have something like that easily accessible to pax. The number of times I've caught them fiddling with a halon or o2 bottle... On the flip side, it seems counter-productive to have them inside the slideraft pack/door bustle (if that is what was meant) because of maintenance/checking issues. (Assume poster was referring to portable ADT406 or similar)

That model (I'm assuming in most) airlines requires a check by the CC prior to departure. I don't see the beancounters allowing one on every door (would be 8 on a 772) when one or two would do the job... The idea being of course that after successfully exiting the aircraft into the rafts the CC would join them up and operate the existing 406s as a group

Anyway, carry on....

This handy calculator will allow everyone to experiment with the likely visual horizon for two points of any altitude:

Horizon calculator - radar and visual

If you use 35K for the aircraft and say 150ft for the rig worker then the horizon is at 244 miles...

Unfortunately, even allowing for some distance covered, at 370 miles away there's just NO WAY this rig worker saw the aircraft... it was something else. My bet is on a meteorite. Just another case of putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5.

I'm struggling with idea - seen in previous posts - that you can use TCAS with your transponder off.

The rotary selector on the 777 transponder control has these settings..

Stby
Xpdr
TA only
RA/TA

As you rotate the selector from Stby the first setting is "Transponder on" followed by the TCAS selections - thus there is no way to see other aircraft on your ND without showing you own ...

So the Pings allow the radius of a circle centred on the Inmarsat Satellite to be calculated to approximately 100 miles. The Aircrafts location being somewhere along the circumference deduced as a function of its presumed initial location and its potential range? Puts the SAR task into perspective.

DT, no, the results are additive - we used 1.14 for nautical miles so:

1.14*sqrt Ha + 1.14*sqrt Ho would for 37k and 250 feet give 219 + 18 = 237 nm.

Now there is a phenomenon of analogous propagation where the light waves are bent by atmospheric ducting. However at night I believe such ducting is unlikely. One would conclude that an observer at 370 miles (nm or statute) would be unsighted. Now if that distance was kilometres :)

Luke SkyToddler / HCM ATC
 

Posts http://www.pprune.org/8371899-post2745.html & http://www.pprune.org/8380914-post4609.html

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Last Satcom 'ping' error radius
 

The arc's showing north and south potential locations for the final SATCOM 'ping' are only very approximate guides. Added to this, in the most extreme scenario the final 'ping' could have been sent up to 59 mins before the aircraft had actually landed or its engines were shutdown or had flamed out. (I.E. final event could potentially occur only 1 minute before the next ping was due to be transmitted)
This being the case we need to add that extra 59mins potential range, so at 480kts add another 480nm!
Also if still at altitude and the engines flamed out on this 59th minute then at FL390 you could add an additional glide distance of a further 150nm. (still air) Therefore, in this extreme scenario there is (very roughly) a potential further 630nm of omni directional error. Effectively you can redraw these arc points, giving them a 630nm error radius (or put another way 1260nm wide!) Perhaps someone could apply these distance and post the revised arc's.

The supposed "burning plane" would still not appear at "high altitude."

Why does everyone miss that part of his email? Even if he could see that far - the object would appear on the horizon! It would not appear to be a "high altitude!!!!"

:ugh: