China No.1 leading official television CCTV has censored the No.84 record of the boarding list during boardcasting.

The image on twitter shows the name belongs to a muslim chinese who may came from Xinjiang where may have connection to the terrorist attack in Kunming several days ago. He's an artist, joined an artical conference at KL with 23 other artists from China.

A lot depends on the marine search capabilities in the area. Beijing has the resources, but whether the Vietnamese want them in their waters is another question.

An aerial search may turn up debris; then you have to get a boat to pick it up.

Once debris is located, there will be a starting place to search for the pinger, but that equipment has to be brought in to the area.

Local fishermen might turn up something, but do they have radios?

None of the reports coincide geographically with the initially reported lost contact two hours after take-off.

I wonder if the flight was due to make a position report at that time and hence it was the time when ATC reported it lost. i.e., sometime after the last radio transmission from the flight, but well after the time of impact.

Noted the following from Yahoo News Singapore
 

UPDATE [12:37]: Tuoi Tre, a leading daily in Vietnam, reports that the Vietnamese Navy has confirmed the plane crashed into the ocean. According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island.

UPDATE [11:32am]: VN Express, Vietnam's largest news site, reports that Vietnam Emergency Rescue Center just announced it has found signal of the missing plane at 9.50am 120 miles South West of Ca Mau cape, the Southern-most point of Vietnam.

The signal is believed to be the ELT (Emergency Locator Transmittor) , which can be activated manually by the flight crew or automatically upon impact.

Framer. There was a software fix.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/24550/a...503722_001.pdf

That's the report.

It is all a little bit stinky here, unless there was some massive electrical failure I can't see how there was no voice call/CPDLC/ADSC emergency sent - unless it was all rather abrupt..

Very few fishermen have radios. Vietnamese Coast Guard has state of the art, very capable fast oceangoing SAR vessels. Vung Tau, not far from where to a/c reportedly crashed, is the centre of the offshore industry in VN; lots of helicopters there, large anchor handling tugs/supply ships with equipment for salvage etc.

9M-MRO fitted with Rolls Royce engines.

And the point is??

Prior to contact being lost, which is reported as being just over 2 hours into the flight, along a route that typically takes 5½ hours to fly, the aircraft would therein be approaching it's halfway point along the route and that would (if it was following a great-circle track between KUL & PEK), logically, put it somewhere over the Gulf of Tonkin, it being an area of sea which is 300 miles (500 km) long, 150 miles (250 km) wide, and up to 230 feet (70 metres) deep.
That said, having just looked at the airway chart, they might well have been flying on airway M771, which would put them east/south-east of Hainan Island, over the South China Sea.

That might also fit with the report that the Chinese are reported to have launched two search vessels from harbours that are relatively close by to that same area.

http://www.dropbox.com/s/fz7y3r38775ijfs/MH370.PNG

Seems to be a lot of conflicting information, but there are now at least 4 sources (including the Vietnamese navy) putting it in the ocean between Malaysia and Vietnam, barely 40 minutes into its flight.

http://i.imgur.com/uoLG4bp.jpg

not looking good unfortunately...

SHUT UP ABOUT THE LACK OF RADIO CALLS
 

Radio calls to ATC are the LAST thing you consider doing when faced with a major problem of any sort concerning the aircraft. People on the ground cannot usually help quickly.

Professionals adhere to a 3 step sequence....Aviate....Navigate....Communicate.

After all, what is the point of wasting essential time talking to people who are not in a position to help you.

(Sorry, ATC, you are essential in crowded and tricky environments, but not to immediately help with tech/weather/terrorist/passenger issues, mostly tech.)

So in a case like this, the CVR and FDR may give all the info needed to solve the questions. Radio calls may not.

I don't mean to speak for others, but I would have thought from my reading that most of the radio call related comments were speculating that the abscence of comms are indicative of a situation where the tech crew definitely haven't had time to make a call - that is, they probably agree with you that the crew were at the beginning of AVIATE NAVIGATE COMMUNICATE.

That being said, I'm speculating on speculation and I dislike speculation at the best of times. Fingers crossed for good news from the search.

Roy, if you are leaving your assigned altitude either in or out of controlled flight would you not consider a mayday call? Granted there may be many compelling things to do first, like donning O2 masks etc.

However, the absence of data from the transponder, data link, ACARS, Vox etc all point to a sudden catastrophic event.

That is all fair and true, but over the ocean and going down 'aviate' and 'navigate' become somewhat redundant... Logic would suggest a 'come find us' of some sort would cross one of their minds. Unless, like I said, opportunity wasn't presented from FL350 down..

The departure time quoted in the media was most likely pushback time. Airborne time would be 15 to 30 mins later.

On today's flight plan it's about 1:00 flight time from WMKK to the VVTS FIR boundary at DUDIS and another 1:10 to the Sanya FIR at DONDA. So after 2:10 mins flying time they would be in Chinese airspace.

So it must have occurred just before they entered Sanya?

That's assuming they used M771 which they normally do.

@deptrai:


That's probably right. I was unaware of offshore oil exploration in Vietnam until I read about it in last month's Journal of Petroleum Technology. It's quite extensive, which means there are probably a lot of state-of-the-art deep water robots nearby, and hopefully up to date mapping of the sea floor. Maybe even seismic sensors.

John, I fly that route on a regular basis and communication with ATC is good.
VHF is available for most of the time. The 777 would also have been established on CPDLC data link using ADS-C connection with VVTS. ( unless it was u/s )
There is only a small time spent on HF and even then the HF quality with Singapore is excellent most of the time.

If this happened in Vietnam airspace as posted then they would have been on VHF with Hochiminh and identified on radar.

I'm guessing as we all are but something catastrophic must have happened for the crew not to have said something to someone.

Agreed. Especially with HCM control. Spent many nights trying to get them to answer any radio call with little success, especially that time of night, and their CPDLC can be spotty. They very easily could have flown for a while with no radio contact with HCM.

Nitpicker, I will pick the Nit with you here. There are some nights flying along at 0300 along M771 when HCM is darned near impossible to get hold of on either 120.7 or 133.05, and CPDLC can be down. Maybe better during the daylight hours.

Hogged--- I've been flying in and around VVTS airspace for 25 years now and can honestly say the number of times I had trouble getting through would be able to be counted on one hand.

In the last 5 years I've connected to CPDLC on every flight ok and spoken to VVTS CTL without problem day or night.

I don't know what you are on about?

Now of you'd like to talk about Yangon......there IS a problem there..

I haven't trolled through all the other posts, so apologies if this point has been covered before.

Having flown that route many times myself, (and in a 777, not that that has anything to do with it), I'd be very surprised to find there were not quite a large number of eye (or at least ear) witnesses to the aircraft hitting the sea. The number of fishing boats in those waters beggars belief. Overflying that area at night, there are so many fishing boats, each with a light, you could be forgiven for thinking you were overflying a huge city.

If I'm correct, it will probably be a day or two before any such eye/ear witnesses return to port.

Nitpicked, last week no CPDLC, and couldn't talk to them on 133.05. They couldn't hear us, though we could spottily hear them. Not the only flight having the problem that night. Week before again no CPDLC, though the radios were fine. I find that during the last year there are nights when there are radio problems, all I am saying.

Ok fair enough.

Andu---Good point about the fishing boats, there are thousands of the coast of Vietnam. Maybe one did see something??

This is the ADSB information from FlightRadar24

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By2...it?usp=sharing

In all fairness, losing comms is one thing, but losing comms AND losing the track off the satellite is another

news conference:

the search is concentrating on the last area of radar contact, over the sea,at 1.30 am, 120 nm east of kota bharu(malaysia).that area would be south/west of vietnam.in the gulf of thailand.

If you check out the tropospheric propagation forecast page, unstable VHF/UHF comms around Viet Nam shouldn't be a surprise.

Just thought of something, does the b777 on this leg carry fuel in the centre tank? Could we be possibly looking at a TWA explosion again? Just no time to make any calls etc...

The 777's MH use do have centre tanks fitted. Most if not all the 7 hours fuel would have been in the wing tanks.

Nitpicker330, so more than likely a little fuel left in the centre, hence could have the correct air/fuel mixture, SOP at my work is to remove all fuel from the centre and some of the aircraft I work on now employ nitrogen generation systems.

Anyhow just speculations

Hm-m-m.
 

You mean that captains trained to fly by computer may not catch obvious trouble (thinking San Francisco)?

krispy kreme. regarding fuel tank. while Idon't fly the 777, I do recall that the TWA explosion was around 13,000' and the ullage was a factor due to temps, being at35000 it would be nice and cool.


HOWEVER any explosion could damage the cable between the cockpit and the transmitter and or antenna. Thus any attempt at communication might not work.

for those mentioning fuel exhaustion or starvation, it should be noted at 777 at FL350 should easily be able to glide in excess of 100 miles (zero wind).

On tV someone reminded me of the BAE146 operated by the then PSA in which an angry employee got aboard with a gun and shot the pilots and the plane crashed into the ground in california sort of near paso robles. no radio call there.

Even if ATC had not picked up an emergency call there are enough North and South bound aircraft as well as West bound aircraft at that time of night and surely one of these would have picked up the call. Do MAS allow bulk carriage of Lithium batteries on their a/c?

#PrayForMH370: Relatives told to come to KLIA with valid passports

Lithium batteries: I just bought some very high powered ones. They came interstate by post in a cheap box without any warnings or special handling labels. I suspect that they are in our aeroplanes a lot more than we think.

I imagine a cargo fire would at least give a few minutes of alarm, especially in a modern aircraft with cargo fire detection.

This site (New Straits Times) seems to have the most real-time coverage, nearly minute-by-minute updates:

New Straits Times

Latest:

- Massive search ongoing in the South China Sea
- Contact lost at 2.40 am Malay time, 2 hours into the flight

Emergency Locator Transmitter
 

Hello and at outset , I need to say I am not an aviation professional. I would be grateful, if someone can succinctly explain to those of us non professionals, how the ELT would work, with reference to the B 777.

i.e.

Where is it located?
What triggers it ?
In the case of ocean crash, as the AC or its debris sinks, does the ELT detach and float ? If so, how does it detach ? E.g. is it a solenoid like mechanism etc.
What is the ELT signal ? Is it low frequency or high frequency ?
What position information does it give ? Or is there no position signal, and one needs to use triangulation to find it?

Any other info would be great. Thank you in advance.

MH370
 

We entered HCM FIR last night westbound at FL340, passing Moxon (the boundary with WSJC) at about 1720Z, transitted HCM and Phnom Penh and exited, passing overhead PNH at about 1810Z.

We experienced no problem with VHF Comms with HCM Centre, and VVTS CPDLC/ADS also worked fine. We encountered no adverse wx - in fact it was a beautiful clear NE monsoon night, though there was some limited scattered lightning visible way off to the SW.

121.5 was congested, with both HCM Centre and another MH flight trying to contact MH370. HCM Centre were also making repeated attempts to contact the aircraft on the normal Centre frequency.

To state that the aircraft "disappeared" from "publicly available radar" is virtually (npi) meaningless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar