In mud, yes.

In very shallow water over mud, yes OK.

With 50 m or more of water over mud. Nope. The plane ail fragment if it hits the water at high speed. Some of these pieces will be small with little momentum. Some won't be very aerodynamic (? hydrodynamic). Can you see a detached aileron flying through this much water and digging itself into the mud.

Even a high velocity (supersonic) bullet will travel a short distance, rapidly decelerate due to deformity and tumbling, and then slowly sick to the bottom. A bullet has much greater density, (and therefore greater momentum relative to surface area) than a plane. But if you fired a bullet into mud, sure it will go below the surface.

Inmarsat
 

Unless there's some Sekrit Skwirrel Blowing Snow going on preventing it, we'd all be a lot better off if Malaysia would turn this over formally to the NTSB. The incompetence is staggering.

That said, the previous ping plots won't be released until it's in someone's interest to do so. It's probably not Inmarsat's call.

But some people know where those pings were, and you can bet their surveillance satellites are burning some fuel to take a close look.

I'm away from my PC, so can't back run the data, but did anyone consider the oil rig worker might have seen an iridium flare? Duration about right, but I'm not able to check the angles.

He seems a pretty savvy guy, so I doubt he is that easily fooled.

You'd probably be close to at least one CC boundary at 1g. Not a 7777 pilot though...

Lost in Saigon

That's kind of the whole point of ACARS - to report issues. If a fire affected a single system somewhere, ACARS would have reported it.

See, for example, the 25 automatic messages sent from AF447's ACARS system during its 4 minutes of catastrophic issues

Regarding under inflated tires, they can certainly cause a fire. I had a tire burst at v1 in a biz jet, which was duly aborted. But if the same tire is retracted, it becomes a ticking time bomb

Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No one has come up with authoritative reference for the "preprogrammed turn" that seems to clearly indicate human deliberate action, so I have spent some hours researching. I refer to "news" comments such as CNN:

"Adding to the intrigue, ABC News reported that the dramatic left turn was preprogrammed into the plane's navigation computer. It's a task that would have required extensive piloting experience."

While Foxnews, and others including some posters here, join CNN in that reference, extensive searching suggests it all stems from ABC reporter David Kerley's comment on March 16, ABC ThisWeek, transcript quote:

"KERLEY: The prime minister confirming the report by ABC News the communications gear was deliberately shut down. Now we have learned from a source close to the investigation that whoever was controlling the plane preprogrammed that sharp left turn right off of the flight path, convincing investigators that someone was in control of the jetliner, either a rogue pilot or a hijackers."

No more detail or sourcing information for the above has shown up anywhere I could find. It would be nice if this could be established as fact as it rules both in and out many paths of logic. For now, I personally am tempted to treat it as non-credible, and reluctantly lower my own bias towards an obvious human deliberate cause (a change which started with the ACARS shutting "correction" today from the MH CEO.)

r/t
 

As an air traffic controller of 33 years experience (retired) I have already posted:
The use of Goodnight etc, although non ICAO standard phraseology, is the norm.
Can we have no more posts querying the use of it.
It has no relevance.

Xcitation-

Hasn't the 45k be refuted by the daily conferences as an anomaly, it didn't happen

I'd expect that the PC boards in the E-bays will have been "conformal coated". This is a flexible and waterproof coating that prevents damage from condensation (or spillage).

Isn't it obvious the 1,000 plus posters who normally participate are all gone? Wonder why?????

Now no ACARS shutoff?
 

Now CNN is saying that MAS are not saying that ACARS was deliberately shutdown, but that an expected signal 30 minutes after the last received signal was not received. That means a key piece of the puzzle for the last week has been taken away. (I did try to investigate ACARS protocols to find a logoff command but the manuals are $144 each and there are a lot of them, so I gave up. Anyone with more knowledge could usefully chip in.)
I also see that CNN is beginning to adopt a policy of criticizing everything the Malaysians do. Not helpful IMO. Once they get their hackles up the news flow will only get worse.

professionals
 

Perhaps we should all do the same until the loonies have exhausted their ideas ?
May take some time, there are a lot more of them than us !!

Dave
 

Similar ATC experience, half of it in this region.
While I agree with you on the "goodnight" bit, its the "alright,..." that sounds a bit odd to me togther with the lack of callsign if that is the case.
I've spoken with hundreds of MH flights over the years and can't recall anyone acknowledging a frequency transfer with just "alright, ......"

Granted he is answering his own countrymen ATC, so maybe a little more familiarity crept in there.

As I said before, I have no intimate knowledge of Malaysia's ACARS reporting capability. I doubt you do either. From what I have seen so far, I bet the Malaysians don't even know....

In any case..... If the fire did NOT effect another system, ACARS would NOT have reported it.

Is that not true?

Well, I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest this forum's questioning is a reason why, but just minutes ago NT Times confirmed the computer pre-programming angle:

at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/wo...ight.html?_r=0

it says:
"WASHINGTON — The first turn to the west that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was carried out through a computer system that was most likely programmed by someone in the plane’s cockpit who was knowledgeable about airplane systems, according to senior American officials.

Instead of manually operating the plane’s controls, whoever altered Flight 370’s path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials. The Flight Management System, as the computer is known, directs the plane from point to point specified in the flight plan submitted before each flight. It is not clear whether the plane’s path was reprogrammed before or after it took off."

Hmmmn....

(UPD: WSJ reporter David Ostrower also just corroborated this new NY Times report in an on-air interview)

RE: "Isn't it obvious the 1,000 plus posters who normally participate are all gone? Wonder why?????"

IMHO, "not invented here" and turf are all well and good in their place, but here we have one of the world's all-time mysteries and tragedies in play.

If the investigators, the media, the common folk looking for both comfort and answers, and even the affected families, find some sense amongst the weeds here, well, kudos to those that did not leave but are still here to refine ideas and theories and facts, as might be appropriate.

Priorities, please.

@oldoberon

US government snr official rate it "not wholly reliable".

See for yourself on CNN

Malaysia Flight 370: 10 of the most compelling questions - CNN.com

Really? On what do you base that idea? As far as I recall the NTSB is involved as is the AAIB which has an excellent reputation. None of us knows exactly what is happening and none of us is entitled to, only those involved directly in the attempt to discover what has happened are. Any information passed to the general public is done as a courtesy not as a right. Information passed to the relatives may differ in quantity but they are involved directly in what has happened and take priority over the rest of us. Some time back somebody (an official I think) said that it would be cruel to raise the hopes of the relatives by informing them of every alleged sighting of the aircraft or possible wreckage and I'm sure we would all agree - especially in view of some of the posts on here. I have my own feelings and ideas about what has happened but that is just what they are - feelings and ideas NOT facts so you won't see them posted here.

I’ve read all 5500+ of the posts to this thread, and I’m struck by the lack of known facts. Focusing on position, the last known position we know for certain is where MH370 was when its XPDR went dead. Many theories have been set forth on what MH370 did next. Please allow me to offer one that I haven’t seen presented yet.

Consider that a primary radar return signal has no inherent identification data in it. Thus, one knows the “where” of the target causing the return, but one don’t know the “what” or the “who” with certainty. This leads to the possibility of spoofing. Admittedly it wouldn’t be easy, but it might offer an explanation why only the MAF’s primary radar seemed to detect MH370 - they were following a false trail. The spoofing signals might also explain the wild altitude excursions the MAF reported for MH370.

Similarly, the Inmarsat pings could be spoofed. If the SATCOM on MH370 was turned off, someone could be located anywhere along one of the famous red arcs, responding to the Inmarsat ping on an hourly basis using the electronic identity of MH370’s SATCOM. Again not easy to do, but if someone did they could create yet another false trail.

Why go to the trouble of spoofing radar and satellite signals? Possibly because it would let the real MH370 go east, where no one was (or is) looking, buying time for the perpetrators to do...something.