World Health Organisation website

Every year, more than 800,000 people die from suicide; this roughly corresponds to one death every 40 seconds.
Suicide is among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 years in some countries, and the second leading cause of death in the 10-24 years age group; these figures do not include suicide attempts which can be many times more frequent than suicide (10, 20, or more times according to some studies).
Suicide worldwide was estimated to represent 1.3% of the total global burden of disease in 2004.
Mental disorders (particularly depression and alcohol use disorders) are a major risk factor for suicide in Europe and North America;

(Please take note here!)
however, in Asian countries impulsiveness plays an important role. Suicide is complex with psychological, social, biological, cultural and environmental factors involved.

To totally deny the possibility of one of the pilots doing this, denies that they are human beings. If close family members or friends or workmates could see the total depression or anxiety of a suicidal person many of course would be stopped from doing it. But these people keep it secret to themselves and are successful at completing what they feel they must do for themselves.

Scruffy, why would the co-pilot just not open the cockpit door using the emergency access???

Graham321, why does being a pilot for a major airline prevent a person from having suicidal tendencies? Having been a commercial pilot in airlines for quite a number of years now I have had the unfortunate job of telling you that I have known / known of quite a few pilots and cabin crew who have taken their own lives. Thankfully none of them have done so at work but we all know of quite a few cases of apparent pilot/crew suicide or attempted suicide (egypt air / silk air / fed ex). The problem we have in our profession is people like you who put these unrealistic expectations on crew which drive the problem underground. Please read: Qantas allowed suicidal pilot to continue flying - Story - Business - 3 News

Now I don't know if this is a case of pilot suicide, but to rule it out just because pilots don't do that is stupid. :ugh:

There is a lot of misconception out there around suicide, people who are about to kill themselves are not always depressed, in fact a recent study that I recently read said that often people appear to be happier than normal because they have made the decision to end it all and that is a load off their mind. People don't always do it in an obvious manner, the world is full of people who just disappear, making your aircraft disappear is actually quite a 'face saving' way of doing it as if the aircraft is never found or totally destroyed then suicide is very very hard to prove, this means you may not be labelled as someone who killed themselves and insurance etc. will still pay out.

Take this aircraft, if it is ever found and their are not faults found with it, we will find that the CVR is of little use as it may have only recorded the last 2 hours of silent flight deck, the FDR will be of little use as it will just show that someone flew the aircraft to its final destination (if that happened here). So what we are left with are 239 possible suspects.

Both Iridium and INMARSAT have been or are in the process of upgrading and in any case already have the bandwidth for ADS-C. The specification for ADS-C EPP "report containing the sequence of 1 to 128 waypoints or pseudo waypoints with associated constraints or estimates (altitude, time, speed, etc.), gross mass and estimate at Top of Descent, speed schedule, etc." are already agreed. Aircraft in oceanic airspace equipped with FANS 1/A already transmit ADS-C position reports over SATCOM every 10 minutes so could increase the frequency. Even if ICAO and the various national regulators take no action, the insurance companies involved may 'mandate' use of ADS-C if it reduces their losses.

MrDK:

If that turns out to be the case, 2+ hours of silence would at least clarify that whatever happened on this a/c all took place near to the point of deviation from the FPL RTE.

The investigators will still have forensic science to answer a lot of other questions with enough accuracy to at least rule out or confirm whether the little green men were on board the aircraft the whole time. :rolleyes:

Regarding the Search and Rescue, and having spent many hours doing Visual Searches for missing ships and the like, it is usual to find pallets and stuff like that on the high seas, things get carried by sea currents, and get scattered all over the ocean. Unusual stuff I have seen in the North Atlantic 100+ miles from the Azores include whole tree logs, containers, plastic crates, plastic boots, ropes, fishing nets (lots and lots), etc, etc
As I was watching the images of a ship in the Search Area yesterday on TV, the Search conditions were not good, quite heavy seas. As a P-3 Pilot said already, most of the times you catch an object by difference of contrast, because you are searching for a white greyish object, in a gray sea with withe/gray foam, under gray skies... You don't "see" it, your eye usually captures the different contrast and you then focus. Also, you get very tired very fast, after scanning for one hour you are mentally fatigued and your efficacy drops, we usually have the crew swap places in the cabin to "change gears".
Also, "good weather" may not be good for SAR, if you have sunlight reflection off the water, it gets difficult to spot objects "down sun", so according to sea state a cloud cover may actually help, although in their case I don't think they'll have a calm sea anytime...

I may be wrong, but I think suicide may be somewhat acceptable in some Asian countries, at least, compared to some western countries.

Suicide mission of the pilot? I treat this as unlikely, because such an impulse reaction would not result in such perfect preparation as switching the XPDR at the perfect location, skip FPL at such moment, disable all communication systems, care for nobody touches the ELT button, disable the automatic ELT, etc etc etc. If he wanted to commit suicide, just lock the door and push nose down forward will give the wished result - why care about all the bells and whistles ringing in such action?

Non of us are qualified to determine whether Captain Zaharie was suicidal or not, but from what we know about his devotion to aviation, I find it very difficult to believe that he would harm either his beloved plane or passengers if he wanted to end it all.

If he wanted to die doing what he loved, he would have hired a 172 on a day off and flown himself into the sea. In fact you know what? I don't even think he would have done that. He was so proud of his job and presumably his impeccable record that he probably would have found it difficult to 'blot' that record, even at the end.

And the co-pilot was on the point of proposing to his girlfriend, another Malaysian pilot.

I really do think pilot suicide comes way down the list of explanations of this mystery.

Bandwidth
 

Some interesting posts over the past few days on having aircraft sendind more regular location updates and the impact of that on available satellite capacity.

In the maritime world the AIS (ships Automatic Identification System) transmits according to the rate of change of course. A ship stationary or travelling slowly will transmit its position much less often than one travelling faster. A ship changing course will transmit more often than one travelling in a straight line. For anyone not familiar with AIS 'marinetraffic' is worth googling.

I'm sure something similar could be implemented for aircraft to include the gaining or losing height as additional criteria for increased frequency of reporting

I've lived in Indonesia for 22 years now. I would say that suicide is just as tragic here as in the West. It is not talked about much, almost a taboo subject. Suggesting that someone has committed suicide would likely not be well received at all by parents of the deceased, for example.

Clear_Prop
No it would not clarify much.
It would give timing and subsequent probabilities.
1. Incapacitated crew do not talk
2. A lone crew member will likely not talk
3. A lone hijacker will likely not talk
The only thing you may obtain are sounds that someone in the cockpit was alive along with warning signals from the plane.

About the "arcs"
 

One small point - the satellite can't see the full earth disc! Why, because it is too close.

Use 35786km as Earth to Satellite distance, and 6371km as Earth radius. The right-angle triangle with 35786+6371 as side'c', 6371 as side 'a', will when solved for side 'b' provide a max distance of 41672.8km. Solving for satellite beam center to max angle (half beam) will provide 8.69°.

Using the above will show quickly that the 90° elevation at the Equator is correct, but the satellite doesn't see the poles.

Enough said, and I'm sure you'll go back and make the necessary changes.

As a help, check post #3929

Also post #5965 will show the earth - satellite elevation angles for some possible positions.

The so-called 'ping' times are of course the time taken for the receipt of the return of the aircraft's ICAO unique ID when polled by the satellite on an hourly basis - divided by 2 and converted to distance allowing for any latency/aircraft SATCOM through time. That timing creates the distance and ultimately the arc position on the earth's surface. The initial 'ping' was most likely at 1611UTC when the STATCOM system was powered up during the pre-flight checks.

While we are discussing rumours/rumors here, it is interesting to see that India has refused China's offer of ships to help in the search, and to wonder if such thoughts may not have crossed Australian minds too regarding Chinese planes in Western Australia.

http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/in...#axzz2wm7yhZXa

I would have to agree with your assessment, ChickenHouse. Someone - my guess, a team of someones, with many tech. manuals available to them - spent months if not years preparing for this.

If evidence magically comes to light conclusively implicating either of the pilots as a spur of the moment suicide, I'm firmly donning my alfoil hat and joining the conspiracy theorists - i.e., I will not believe it. If one of the pilots was involved, (and I don't believe this to be so for one moment), it was as part of a highly specialised team with a clear agenda, and NOT a spur of the moment suicide.

Anyone know if crew O2 quantity is a parameter on the T7 sfdr?

Looks like even VH-VHD has had a go today. HMAS Sucess is already there and the Xue Long is about half way now. Can you see much out of a 319 window?

According to the World Health Organization, the rate of suicide in Malaysia is close to the lowest on the planet; a tenth or so of rates in European countries.

The rate of suicide-by-loaded-aircraft amongst pilots is vanishingly low as well; statistically it's zero plus noise. Pilot suicide is a highly unlikely explanation for this incident. Unfortunately, so are all the other possible explanations.

It is not a parameter on any DFDR.

jolihokistiks:
No, definitely not something that would be crossing Australian minds at all.

Paranoia
 

India and China are two great nations in the same geographic sphere. Tensions are somewhat inevitable, however this is a moment to be human together; to show sadness and compassion and do all that we can to bring this tragic matter to a close.

This is a moment to build trust between nations, not a time for 1950's paranoia.