Apropo of nothing.... hypoxia / anoxia is a good way to go... having done several decompression runs in the RAF chambers I can say fron experience that it is not unpleasant... you don't gasp for breath as in the movies, you are breathing air, it just doesn't have enough oxygen in it to maintain conciousness... you just gently drift away.... (until the doctor in attendance puts your oxygen mask back on for you that is)... should I ever consider ending it all that is the way I would want to go for sure.... not that I am I hasten to add

I trust you mean thin as in not much to tell us. you can forget any suggestion that things will be left out deliberately. accident investigators dont work that way, read any report on any accident certainly by icao/aaib/ntsb and you will see how thorough they are.

Portmanteau, Your assumption is only correct if the controller is using both primary and secondary radars. However, on this occasion I suspect that the en-route control centres might have been operating utilising secondary radar only, a common mode of operation within regulated airspace, where authorised.

igs942
Even if the exact position was known where the engines ran out of fuel, the aircraft could still have glided for over 100 miles in any direction. So pi times the radius squared gives a search area of 3.14 times 10000 = 31,400 square miles as a minimum.

Because of the depth of water, a towed sonar array would be needed to pick up debris on the sea floor and the maximum speed would be in the region of 5 knots. Perhaps you could survey as much as 250 square miles a day with side scan sonar. It would still need 125 days just to totally cover this relatively small area. It could be many years before any wreckage is discovered on the sea bed.

I think the point is with the last radio call, yes he didn't read back the freq, yes this happens a lot, but there's normally a reason for not reading it back, perhaps you were day dreaming, filling in a log book, A nav check, systems check, shoving food down your face, chatting. The list is endless. But, what was the reason that the PNF didn't read back the frequency? What was is that lead him not too, an innocent reason? The start of something that distracted his attention? As this was the last human interaction from the flight it deserves an analysis?

Once upon a time, Gulf Air lost a Skyvan in the Gulf, not very far from Das Island, following a double engine failure.

The pilot did a successful ditching, and was picked up, along with his only passenger, from the top of the aircraft by a helicopter which was in the area and heard his Mayday. The aircraft sank shortly afterwards. The helicopter pilot had obtained a very good fix on its location; plus/minus 100m, say?

We wanted to recover the aircraft to find out exactly what had happened, especially the fuel cross-feed settings. The seabed was flat, sandy and quite shallow; about 30m is my recollection, but I can't remember.

We hired an oil industry service vessel equipped by Decca and capable of finding almost anything made of metal on the seabed, down to a large wrench.

We paid for 10 days searching by that expensive piece of kit, and they found nothing. After that time the magnesium in the engines would be trickling on to the sand, so we gave up.

With that experience, I have to say that finding any part of MH370, let alone the FDR and CVR is unimaginably difficult by comparison with our search, with the position uncertainly, great depth and seabed topography. Any success will be the result of very, very intelligent guesswork, a lot of experience of the ocean, and a huge dose of luck.

Read back
 

Not /forgetting too read back a freq is certainly not uncommon especially if you, in anticipation, already have the freq set up in standby on the radio.
ATC clears you from his freq, gives new one - you glance at the radio to confirm it is as you entered it.
Say goodbye to ATC, forget to read back the freq.
Switch freqs on the radio.

Not reading back the freq is not going to cause any reaction on the part of ATC.

Certainly no: "My Gawd he didn't read back the freq! We had better scramble the fighters!"

If by analysis you mean endless posts of speculation, let's not do that.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkIAPZMCEAAogfL.png:large

Would you normally wait 4 minutes before checking in on the new frequency?

Change from Delivery to Ground: 32 sec delay
Change from Ground to Tower: 11 sec delay
Change form Tower to Approach: 1:27 minutes delay (from take off clearance)
Change from Approach to Radar: 3:59 minutes delay

Yes, you could have important things to do (aviate, navigate) but 4 minutes ...?

I guess what I'm saying is; Was there some problem developing at that time already?

The transcript does not include transmissions to/from other aircraft. The frequency could have been busy at the time.

...like procrastinating on reaching a go/no go point before committing to an preplanned but irreversible course of actions? Is that what you're saying?

Knowing human nature in all honesty probably not a good idea. Why? because you will have 'experts' and laypeople alike coming out of the woodwork trying to decipher every single word, every single annunciation, grammar, making 'guesses' as to what the 'garbled' part really means etc not to mention have 100000000 different people arguing who's voice was really speaking etc.

What I like the Malaysian authroities to do however is to release the transcript like they did HOWEVER to also add on that it is literally VERBATIM word for word transcribing so there are no controvercies at all as far as what the actual words spoken are concern.

Ditching under control
 

While I have great difficulty understanding just what is to be gained by mysteriously disappearing without a trace, there's a possibility that VNAV could be set up to start a descent at a waypoint where you would be down to minimum fuel, but you would still have to be conscious to put down flaps to achieve a ditching at minimum speed.

Without flaps, the speed would be much higher and we could expect some breakup and release of buoyant items in the fuselage.

The longer we go without turning up any debris, the more it looks like a controlled ditching - - with the very faint possibility the Inmarsat folks missed something in their calculations.

Given the more Northerly position estimate of the ditching, it's reasonable to expect some debris, if there was any, to make its way to WA. The drift models will suggest a time when it may be useful to check WA beaches at low tide.

My understanding of the INMARSAT information is that it is both timing and doppler shift. The timng gives the range ring, the doppler shift an indication of the relative velocities of the aircraft and satellite during that ping. The velocity of the satellite is known so the velocity of the aircraft across the range ring can be calculated. Thus for any likely speed two tracks for the aircraft can be calculated for each ping. Then the probabilities come in plus the airborne time vs endurance at varoius speeds and levels. I would think by logical steps the possible aircraft htrack, speed, and level can be estimated reasonably accurately.

Not uncommon at all in areas with civil ATC where it's very unlikely that unknown aircraft would appear. That doesn't stop the mil having primary radar coverage too if there is some threat perceived but civil ATC often does not have easy access to the primary picture. The benefits are a 'cleaner' picture and cost savings by not having to install and operate a primary radar.

HMS Tireless joins search: BBC News - MH370: UK submarine joins search for missing plane

I don't see anything unusual about losing comm after the frequency change hand off, this happens on regular basis. Usually a quick switch back to the previous frequency will clear up the error. However this is the most likely place where a mistake is to be made by the controller assigning the new freq or the pilots receiving the new frequency. I see too much focus on this being an intentional nordo situation.

Could it be that the 01:01:14 Tx was initiated by the crew to remind ATC that they were still on frequency?
Without access to the full frequency transcript, it may have been that MAS370 was the only a/c on the Lumpur Control frequency, or had not heard any other RTF for 10 minutes and therefore thought it timely to remind ATC they were still there.
This happened often at the area-control units where I worked, especially after the traffic 'turndown' associated with the global recession.
On several occasions, I warned flight-crews that if the RTF sounds unusually quiet, it was because yourselves and I are the only people here.

Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's transport minister, said it was unfair for all of the blame to focus on the Malaysian response to the crisis.

"Just putting MAS on the witness stand (is not enough). We also need to bear in mind what is the role and responsibility of Rolls-Royce, of Boeing, of all these expert agencies. Where is their voice ?" He told Chinese TV.

Make of that what you will !

Only official spokespersons should be heard. If it isn't the Malaysians they should say so and identify who it is.

From my narrow viewpoint there are too many voices speaking from within Malaysia without support from the other parties.