@GlobalWarrior
 

I have read the story about the SR-71 mission several times.

I am guessing MS370 was about M.85 at FL350 for cruise.

Disregarding all the conspiracy theories for the moment, there is an indication that the plane's direction turned abruptly to the left. (if the data is correct)

The captain was a 777 simulator fan. Maybe demonstrating something on the real plane?

Question for all...???

Is there anyway the plane could have exceeded designed speeds in a short period of time so as to disintegrate?

Just been informed reuters has a source saying preliminary investigations indicate a in flight disintegration. ..


Don't shoot the messenger

Having an Eticket issued to a final country does not necessarily mean anything more than sometimes (often) it is cheaper to book a ticket to point D via point B&C than to terminate the journey in B or C.
Canny travel agents and passengers do this all the time.
It is called cross border selling. The pax has no use for the final coupon(s) and they just nosho for it. Nothing the airline can do about it, and pax has got himself cheaper fare.

If you have the correct ID you can disembark even at transit points, and enter that country with practically no questions asked, expecially within the EU. Arriving pax with an EU passport are not cross checked with the flight manifest or whether their ticket actually permits them to stopover or only transit point B or C from an airfare point of view.

Immig is not interested in cross border selling of tickets. They are only interested in whether an arriving pax has the correct documents to enter their country.

The US in this regard is much tougher- hence queues to enter the US take several hours to get through.
An EU passport holder arriving within the EU, has their passport scanned and off they go...if that.

Correct ex-BA.

Creative routing my the travel agents.

How close is the 772 to coffin corner at FL350 ?
An autopilot can disconnect for any number of trivial reasons and a hamfisted attempt to regain manual control at altitude could possibly lead to loss of control and/or confusion as per AF447.

Sky News just reporting that they have VERIFIED a photo showing what appears to be part of an aircraft door as an actual photo from the search. They also say they have another photo showing a tail fin (but refused to show it pending verification).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BiSevV6CYAAXXLl.jpg

The rationale used by the Reuters source:

Reuters goes on to say that the source spoke before reports indicating wreckage/debris had been spotted.

I think some carriers scan in the image of each passenger's passport for each flight to help any unfortunate in-air misplacing of docs. I recall one of the telly Airport-like programmes mentioning this in the past.

Can any ACARS expert state whether previous flights of MH370 would have had confirmed ACARS tx/rx of regular information, I.e positions at a given location? Is it so that ACARS connects to a series of downlink stations and whichever answers first establishes the connection gets the message (removing the out of range issue?).

As it seems many hobbyists routinely grab ACARS transmissions, should it be odd that this flight's wasn't. I presume ACARS should have redundant eqpt inboard (I understand there can be several comms paths). Google brought up this link (about 9/11 and some controversial claims, but if one focuses only on the technical side) shouldn't it imply that MH would have received many 'no connection' responses to any ACARS messages it might have originated? After t/o would they proactively originate many msgs on a typical flight? http://911woodybox.********.fi/2012/...s-uplinks.html

Coagie, do you have a reference for the claim that the French submarine was not listening for the right signal from the AF447 black boxes?

I find it very hard to believe. People generally are not that stupid. Sonar operators (if that is how they were listening) would have in depth technical knowledge of their equipment.

The Reuters report is rather caveated and has lots of wriggle room.

(Reuters) - Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner with 239 people on board are narrowing the focus of their inquiries on the possibility that it disintegrated in mid-flight, a senior source said on Sunday.

@OldBoeingDriver Unlikely in my opinion overspeed alone would cause disintegration. United 175 hit the WTC at 513 knots at 700 feet and remained intact until impact, which is past the barber pole. Vmo for that airplane is 360 knots IIRC. Overspeed plus some kind of abrupt maneuver, possibly.

Particularly since the French are among the leaders in sonar technology, selling them to the US and the UK among others.

Thales Underwater Systems - Sonar Systems - Naval Technology

I
 

PROBABLY UNRELATED MISINFORMATION: Is the mention of an AD related to 777 cracks (AvHerald comments) of interest here?The only useful link is to [Federal Register Volume 78, Number 187 (Thursday, September 26, 2013)] which I'm not sure how to conjure up.

Yup, seems likely to be routine airplane-safety business. Here's part of the text of the publication of the intended AD:

Just a word of caution from a S&R Tech (CASARA) on the reported 'oil-slicks' apparently seen by the Vietnamese. These waters are near some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Many vessels still routinely (and illegally) 'flush' their tanks while at sea. Yes, the sheen could be from aircraft Jet A1 - but would dissipate pretty quickly, in hours not days.

There is a distinct possibly it came from a passing vessel though...

Quoting Scoobys:
I flew as an f/a doing long haul for years, if I was given a quid every time someone tried to bin or burn their passports in the lavs on arrival into egll I'd be a millionaire, then they would tell immigration they where from a different country,have been persecuted and have just so happened to have lost their passports and please Mr Blair can I have asylum.
unquote

I was once airline staff at a major airport. The same thing happened there! Traveling on a fake passport is not necessarily related to terrorism! In an earlier post someone suggested that the supposed itinerary of the users could mask their country of origin, making a repatriation difficult. Sounds plausible too!

That was one amazing feat of investigative journalism, given that the photo was posted on an official Vietnamese website several hours ago (and linked several times on this forum too). However there is nothing yet to suggest that whatever we see on the photo comes from the aircraft.

barrel owl, sorry might not have been clear.

I don't mean that the Freescale employees weren't on the flight, simply that they were unlikely to be top key employees. This wasn't a "decapitation" of the company management as the article seemed to be implying. It may have been low level managers from one of their Malaysian fabs.

Probably .82-.83...

I haven't heard that the turn was abrupt.

WTF is a simulator fan??? Was he a training Capt?

Im 1000% sure PIC would not have been "demonstrating" anything. Sims are for demonstrations........ Not the A/C on a revenue flight. Sometimes training (not that I'm insinuating this was a training flight at all) is about showing new pilots the page numbering system in the flight manual!!!

FBW aircraft have envelope protection so exceeding limits is difficult.

GW

"I find it very hard to believe. People generally are not that stupid. Sonar operators (if that is how they were listening) would have in depth technical knowledge of their equipment."


YRP, They may have knowledge of their equipment, but not knowledge of what frequency to listen for from an aircrafts acoustic beacon. That's not something they do everyday.
And yes, people are generally that stupid. They just front like they know what's going on. It's a natural defense mechanism.
As far as a reference, look it up yourself. You'll remember it longer. Believe me, if you do your own research, you'll find how competent/incompetent people, governments, businesses, etc really are!