On the logic side; you would have had to of gone back across land yet again (almost certainly picked up on someones radar and/or spotted.) Why bother going across the Peninsula once (leaving your only known trail) just to do it once more? You were over there to begin with and could have just ensured you avoided all radar by staying there

On the technical side; doesn't match the Pings. Earlier pings they have would have indicated that eastward path, plus hitting the 40 degree at 8:11 after a short double back would be impossible. Going East also means they would be very close to/end up pinging a second Satellites range. That would have been unbelievably helpful in this SAR effort! (but sadly didn't happen)

It has been suggested the timing is highly accurate and so should have a fairly precise number. 40.00 (? how many significant figures) seemed a bit unlikely.

As you suggest, it is likely just rounding to a number.

Thanks D.S
If it were possible (Terrain 'hugging', etc) , regardless how unlikely, to double back, then given all eyes appear to be on the Indian Ocean, it's mission accomplished in terms of diverting the SAR effort and execute Pt II of whatever overall plan is?

Spot On....
 

TheShadows post Parallels with prior inflight fires strikes me as the most sensible thing I have read on this tragedy in the past few days.

It would seem to me that in a fire, those thin ARINC 629 cables carrying ACARS data would be first to go. Failure of those might make it appear as if a human was turning knobs as systems can not connect to their LRUs.

Boeing Share Price
 

That's a hell of a good observation.

Wonder what happened to Air Malaysia Share price?

And if the wreck were found?

Right now , not finding the wreck appears to be
a financial plus for them and finding it
a hell of a liability.

No wonder they are sending everyone off on a wild goose chase..

Uploading flight plans to a T7 FMS
 

Is it possible to upload a flight plan previously drafted on a PC to the T7's FMS from a flash drive or a smartphone/tablet USB connection? Is proprietary software required to draft a flight plan or is it available to the general public?

What many of you dont seem to realise is that ACARS outages are pretty common, even in the middle of Europe. ACARS comes in and out sometimes and pilots would think nothing of it, a station might be congested or doing some maintenance or whatever. Likewise transponders fail on occasion, not very often but again if a transponder failed during my flight I would think nothing of it, that is why we carry two of them. I would not know it has failed until ATC told me though and at that point i would just switch to the other transponder.

Flying is not like the high security prison some of you imagine it to be where a change in the FMC triggers loud sirens at a ground facility. There might be 101 reasons why I do or change things in my FMS. There are literary 100 of thousands of flights every day, 99.99999999% of them landing safely. The role of ATC is to make sure that in this very congested airspace airplanes do not collide with each other. They do not have a role to police what I input or not in my FMC.

Most serious emergencies would be dealt with by turning the aircraft towards a suitable landing airport, if heading out across the sea turning initially back towards the coast would seems sensible if confronted with fire or fumes. Although pilots have their own supply of oxygen there have been occasions in the past where the crew oxygen has been filled with nitrogen by mistake. If that was the case the crew would have been incapacitated quite quickly. Passenger oxygen has a limited supply of about 15 minutes, at altitude they would have been incapacitated too. Cabin crew do have portable bottles but can the fly the airplane? They can try and maybe they did but the portable supply doesn't last vey long at the flow needed if the airplane has depressurized, one way or another they would have ended up incapacitated too if they did not manage to descent the airplane to bellow 10,000 feet. Finally incapacitated people can do all sorts of funny things while trying to do something else, that is the nature of incapacitation.

Amazing how the same ideas keep cycling ...

Info on 2009 777 onboard fire - check out the links for pictures of damage.

On the contrary, many of us do realize that. The question must be put, however, is what are the odds of both of them failing on the same flight within minutes of each other? How often has that happened in your knowledge and experience?

What are the odds of flipping a coin and getting heads five times in a row?

Having flipped a coin four times in a row and got heads every time what are the odds of getting heads again if I flip it one more time?

I don't think probability works in the way you imply. ACARS fails quite regularly, once ACARS has failed what is the probability that the transponder fails? The same as it always has been for transponder failures. Unless there is a common mode failure in which case it is much higher.

The statistical approach whilst attractive is fundamentally flawed. Just because an event happens frequently and even more frequently than other events does not mean that it will prove to be the cause of the next incident (if you want a spectacular illustration of this take a look at the Fukushima nuclear power station). The fire explanation is just as far fetched as any of the other explanations - perhaps even more so as it requires an even greater number of unlikely events to happen (which does not preclude it from being the explanation). However, even though the rarity of the hijack or pilot deviance explanation is significant this particular line of investigation still fits the known facts better.

@ Contact Approach

This is exactly what I am trying to say. Electrical fire makes perfect sense for ACARS going off and pilots unaware of ACARS not transmitting, rather than a manual turn-off that everyone is implying.

@Elephant - The St Petersburg paradox and Bermoulli?


@Ramjet555. Yes, I agree with you. It certainly suits Boeing if the aircraft was never found.


If this incident followed the Occam's razor principle we'd have found the aircraft. Looks like we are following Hickam's dictum instead.

There would be an EICAS FDE (message) if an ATC Transponder had failed.





Posted from Pprune.org App for Android

In my A/C it would not show in the 777 I would imagine that it would depend on the failure mode. Either way it would be a low priority message and therefore buried underneath any other higher priority messages resulting from electrical / smoke / fire / pressurisation .

For all the fire/catastrophic failure merchants; How was the aircraft still pinging INMARSAT afterwards? :ugh:

Say the odds are 1 in 1,000 that the transponder fails and 1 in 1,000 that ACARS fails. Then the odds that both fail at the same time are 1 in a million. Easy math.

Considering it was an electircal problem or a slow electrical fire, aircraft flew on autopilot for several hours until it ran out of fuel, or until fire burnt controls electricals first, and the plane crashed.

Hypoxia is nasty and extremely insidious.

I have experienced it in a chamber. After spending 2 mins off Oxygen trying to fill in a worksheet, I only managed to make a start on my name at the top.
The first two letters of my name.

Apart from a big grin, I wasnt aware of any problem.

And this paralysis occured after a rapid decompression from 8000 to only F250.

:eek: