Well maintained...
 

I have it directly from a good first hand source that has regularly touched this aircraft for line maintenance that this was a well looked after aircraft, and that as of the last time he saw this aircraft a few weeks ago there was certainly no suggestion that the historic wing incident was of any issue.
This is a good aeroplane.

And hasn't read back through the thread and seen the two or three other times it was clearly explained why the phones could still be ringing !!!

Isn't it time to consider having CCTV on airplanes......Am I being naive?

Yes, I think you might be.

I don't think you are; not in asking the question. It has been considered for years, but perhaps only within the cockpit. The Qantas A380, that had the engine blow up and returned to SIA, had tail mounted cameras for pax entertainment for takeoff & landing and any other time it might be selected. The technology exists and is used as customer options. Hell, buses and metros have CCTV for anti hooliganism. Considering air-rage and the effect it could have on safety why not in the cabin if only for that reason. Thinking further, about live feed, consider a loss on communication a la 9/11 a/c. Fighters are scrambled and fly along side. No communications. Shoot it down yes/no? CCTV might save everyone's life, or save a catastrophe. There was a thought that one of the 9/11 a/c was targeted on Capitol Hill or the White House. The pax saved the day on that one. But imagine a repeat without pax intervention and fighter command having to make the call. We are talking worldwide here; it could happen in any country and considering the attitude in some places that are more trigger happy than others, and where factions are slightly more actively revolutionary as well.
Further, consider all the investigative work, hours and machinery and money, that has gone into searching the sea bed for the 'boxes' because they had no idea what happened. Sometimes the cause still remains a mystery. Ask the AAIB & NTSB their opinion about CCTV.
So no, I don't think it is naive. There are already CVR's, and modern FBW a/c send a massive amount of data back by live link. The amount of data Qantas received about their engine blow up was impressive. It was like a Redbull F1 car telling all, all the time. Ask Vetel if he rather know if he had a slow puncture or not, before it goes pop. Any CCTV would be on a loop as per CVR's and have protection protocols.
It is worthy of debate and not an instant dismissal. Remember the B737 rudder hard-over. The rest of us were wondering if to was going to bite us today. No one really knew, for years, what the hell happened and why. I'm sure there have been many crashes where the conclusion would have been reached if the AAIB/NTSB had eyes inside or outside. If A380/340/330 have live feeds of data back to home base it would seem that all future a/c will have such a feature, so why not add video with the proviso of agreed privacy that it is only used after an event and with mutual agreement.

MISSING MH370: Terrorism cannot be ruled out : CIA

CIA Director John Brennan said there had been “some claims of responsibility” over the missing jet that had “not been confirmed or corroborated,” and that he could not exclude the possibility of a terror link.

Satellite/aerial imagery
 

The subject of imagery on Google Earth convinced me at long last to register for PPRune, as we're finally in a subject I have some knowledge to contribute.

Contrary to popular belief by many, the imagery on Google Earth, Bing, etc. are not realtime imagery. Further, much of the imagery, particularly over urban areas, is not satellite imagery but rather aerial imagery. Google itself does not acquire much ortho imagery itself; it's primarily provided by the large satellite and aerial imagery providers.

Much of the areas outside urban centers that is acquired by satellite imagery is captured at relatively high resolution (40 cm/pixel). However, extremely remote areas may have extremely low resolution, on the order of 30 meters per pixel. Because of this, it's not surprising at all for small, remote islands to appear blurry.

While Digital Globe or their subsidiaries may be retasking satellites to capture high resolution imagery of the suspected crash areas, don't expect that imagery to appear on Google Earth in the next couple of days. More likely DG will post it on their website first, and it will eventually be integrated into GE.

If this is indeed the case, why would you not scramble?

So is an $X00M aircraft hull and an $X00M liability loss.

And therein perhaps lies one reason we see only selective steady development on stuff that accurately points at cause even if we see super fast development in all other areas of aerospace engineering.

A surprisingly large part of the worldwide insurance market ultimately shoulders the cost of a loss like this - technology that excuses parts of the risk market from contribution might sometimes put an uncomfortable / difficult to manage burden on the remainder.

Sometimes it is fairer for some mystery to remain ...

Not a criticism - just a likely truth.

The insurance market underwrites aviation and aerospace in all its guises - can't do without it, and I think at some levels they do get a say.

Very common in SAR ops. The military radar contact wouldn't have a xpndr id, so while it is potentially a clue, until it is 100% certain the a/c in question, you still have to start the search at the last known point/point last seen, which was the last transponder transmission.

There have been a lot of references to AF 447, many implying that oil slicks or debris was found quickly. Conversely, BEA reported at least 5 days between loss of aircraft and first sightings.

FLIGHT AF 447

http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flig...e.wreckage.pdf

"During the morning of 1st June, extensive air and naval resources were mobilized to find
any trace of the aeroplane and possible survivors. In spite of this, it was not until 5 days
later, and on the following days, that human remains and floating debris were found on the
surface of the sea, north of the last position transmitted automatically by the aeroplane."

"The discovery of the first floating debris at the surface of the sea, about 70 km north of the
last known position did not, however, make it possible to determine the point of impact,
due to a lack of precise knowledge of the currents that made the debris drift from the time
of the accident."

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp...p090601.en.pdf

"On Sunday 31 May 2009, . . . flight AF 447 . . . departure was planned for 22 h 00. . . . The French and Brazilian navies found debris belonging to the aeroplane from 6 June onwards. . . . The wreckage was localised on 2 April 2011 during the fourth phase of the sea searches. . . . The aeroplane wreckage was found about 6.5 NM on the radial 019 from the last known position, slightly to the left of the planned route."

"The first search phase aimed at detecting and locating the acoustic signals transmitted by the Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB) fitted on each flight recorder. As a priority, the aeroplane’s planned flight path as well as the greatest possible area inside the 40 NM circle was swept by two Towed Pinger Locators (TPL).

No signal from either of the beacons was detected by the sensors deployed in the area despite TPL passing by, on two occasions, not far from the debris field, on 22 and 23 June 2009. "

If the point of the last civilian radar return and the point of the last military radar return had been known at the same time, would a search effort not have begun at both points more or less simultaneously and not with a 4 day delay?

Passenger Manifest: Published
Cargo Manifest: Anybody seen one?

You have to ask yourself, "known to whom?"

Civilian authorities only had access to the civilian radar return, which terminated in Gulf of Thailand. Military radar return only existed on a tape somewhere in a military base and consisted of a single track among hundreds if not thousands of plane tracks seen by the military radar every day, without any association between the track and the plane ID.

It took time for a high-ranking officer to order the review of the tapes, and more time to perform the review, and even more time to authorize the release of this info to SAR. All in all, looks like it took about 2 days for this to happen.

Sir, not a four day delay. (EDIT: sorry, Hamsternull beat me to this).

If you recall a couple of days ago, US and AUS P-3's were tasked to search in the Malacca Straits, and various search areas WEST of Malaysia were up on the board behind the press briefers. That would indicate to me that both areas were being searched. I noticed a number of posters here wondering at why there were search boxes in red WEST of Malaysia. Well, now we know. :hmm:

I find it difficult to believe that there should be no active and real-time monitoring by the local military of their radar returns, and that perusal of tapes is required (allegedly taking days?). Why bother with military radar surveillance then?

A good theory. However, the ADS-B and SSR transponder antennae are not in the SATCOM mount and are duplicated on the top and bottom of the aircraft. So it is unlikely that a corrosion/crack in the SATCOM antenna and decompression would lead to a loss of SSR (which will be what the ATC were tracking) or to loss of ADS-B. It is possible that there could be a common mode electrical failure but that is doubtful.

The aircraft also underwent an extended maintenance ~ 2 weeks ago at which corrosion/cracking around the SATCOM mount should/would have been checked for.

No wonder we are having huge page drops by the mods....please read the thread before posting!

EDMJ, this event took place during the mid watch. Midnight to early AM shift. Consider the human factors involved. Consider also that process one goes through in the military to confirm what one suspects one has seen.

I don't think a radar operator expected a COMAIR to switch off its transponder while heading north/northeast, and begin to head west or southwest, with no IFF reply.

There is a lot we don't know, to include what comms challenges someone on the scope made, or if the person on the scope missed a trick and it was the next day before someone had a good hard look at the radar tracks and began to put one and two together.

In SAR, typical initial datum is LAST KNOWN LOCATION. So, lost IFF contact was most likely foremost in the minds of the national SAR coordinator, and it took some time and effort to establish that there was another possible datum to explore on the search mission.

That it took the authorities a few days to get that info out to the press "there are some things we can tell you and some things we cannot tell you" is a matter for you to take up with the authorities in Malaysia.

hamster3null

I gave full benefit of doubt to Malaysian statements up till now, but given the initial report of radar contact having been lost at 2:40 (later modified to 1:22, explaining that 2:40 was when the information was received from ATC) and the slip of tongue by the Air Force chief on the press conference of the 9th hinting at a possible return makes me suspect all this information was known very soon after the event, maybe not with the degree of certainty as it was announced today, but with a good degree of probability. There have been unexplained reports of the Straits of Malacca being searched since two days.

One reason could be they are looking for traffic coming into their area, not transiting / exiting.

Secondly, if there is any correlation between the civil and SSR side, the primary return could have been verified as a known / identified / flight planned "target", and thus disregarded / categorised as low risk.

Finally, retrieval from tapes is required in the civil world for various reasons. In the military world I suspect less so, since the basic requirement is real time. Think through what the military system and radar is implemented for - a backup civil / SAR is not high on the priorities.

NoD

This was posted on a thread on A.net, but the source was not verified there. IMO, it does have the hallmarks of an official statement.

papershuffler:

Presuming that release is genuine, does that put into question the line of thinking that the aircraft changed course and head west, or was he making a targeted press release aimed directly at a particular flight route put forth by the media?

I think the remark "there are some things we can tell you and some things we can't tell you" is a fairly standard remark where multi-agency data is involved, especially if they only have a few shreds of information, some of which related to manifest items (police matters), some of which related to military radar data.

As with every incident, the only time the investigating collective have a "duty" to tell us anything is when they release a final Accident Investigation Report; and to a lesser degree if they release any initial/preliminary reports beforehand.

Anything else the SAR team mention in the meantime is put out as a matter of courtesy and we can't expect 100% accuracy. We certainly can't judge them for it.

So in summary any old tosh like "people obviously arent telling us everything" is just idiotspeak for the bewilderment of the masses.

Sure, many of us would love to step into the investigation office and see all the fragments and blind alleys they are dealing with, but seriously? If you had access to all their info at this stage, with no further clue where the aircraft ultimately arrived... wouldn't you hold off making comments until you felt you had something worthwhile to report?

One of the uniformed types said at a press conference quite early on that they had extended the search up the Malacca Straits to the Anduram sea. A US P3 surveillance plane has been there from the start tracking and mapping. Ben Sandilands of the OZ website Crikey reported the sighting at Silver Island late this morning. I did try to report the Anduram Sea search early on here but it all sort of got bounced by the mods, presumably as they tried to manage the tidal flow of postings.

Questions?
 

I seem to have fallen foul of the mods with a comment that asked what seems a highly pertinent question: why would the MAF suit by idly and watch an unidentified blip traverse the spine of Malaysia without taking action to identify it?

Not sure what I did wrong!

If they thought they might be dealing with a terrorist situation then keeping quiet at the time is understandable.

But why keep it up when they must have known the plane was down?

And I can't help feeling that the instinctive response of military to a suspicious object is to blow it up, just in case. If that happened, then there would be an even greater need for secrecy by those involved.

If this is the case, they should also know the transponder is (switched?) off and unable to make radio contact. At this point, I humbly submit, it becomes a high risk target.

Press poor
 

Sorry but I felt obliged to share this from The London Evening Standard which has a two page picture spread with an inaccurate report (and transcript) of the AF incident under the headline "Damn it, we're going to crash, this can't be happening." to draw attention.

"There are striking parallels between the two incidents. The Malaysia Airlines flight was at an altitude of 35,000 feet, while the Air France Airbus A330-203 was 3,000 higher at 38,000ft, both planes were state of the art and neither sent a distress signal."

This serves to remind, as I am sure all appreciate, that the media is increasingly desperate to fill space with anything vaguely related to keep the public interest alive, however spurious. The blondes in cockpit is arguably in the same league. It is of course possible, as it always was, that the crew invited someone into the cockpit, but there is no evidence to suggest they did on this flight or that this had any relevance. Hijack was and is a credible possibility. The blonde in cockpit story doesn't sensibly change that either way, unless someone shows a passenger manifest with a stunning blonde model with credible terrorist connections.

I would focus speculation on what might have caused what appears to be a sudden re-route, descent, and loss of multiple comms systems but I sincerely doubt now that we will get any closer at all to picking between hijack and a substantial event, deliberate or structural, until the aircraft is found regardless of how much vaguely related spice the media dredges up before then.

I think nothing, it seems the servers are giving up, my answer is nowhere too.

In summary I have suggested that if a target was once identified, it will remain as such (and hence 'uninteresting') even if the secondary return is lost.

CogSim
 

That's exactly my reading of it.

And what happens to high risk threats?

We all know the answer to that conundrum...

''If this is the case, they should also know the transponder is (switched?) off and unable to make radio contact. At this point, I humbly submit, it becomes a high risk target.''

But the Tech crew would know that too..

mabuhay if it was operating at FL3++ and clearly looked like a widebody jet, they would have NO instantaneous interest in it.

Military outfits are almost entirely monday-friday 9-5 operations, it would take a stuka attack from something very fast moving, heading directly for a military base or major population centre to sound any alarm bells in the mind of the poor guy on duty at O-silly-hundred-hours observing for credible threats.

CNN have totally bought into the new theory that the plane was tracked on radar into the Straits of Malacca and that it was last radar-fixed at some as yet undisclosed location roughly 100-200 miles northwest of KL.

This certainly points to one of two scenarios being more likely than others:

1. The pilot, having lost much of his guidance, was attempting to make a visual return to KL. One must then ask if moonset and local weather (something we left behind when it was assumed that the search would be much further north) played any role. METARS for relevant stations might be useful now.

2. Hostile elements, either terrorists or misguided pilot(s) were in control of the aircraft and the postulated track would suggest a terror attack planned at KL which after all has some of world's tallest buildings. One might then ask why anyone would plan such a thing especially at night (it would be approximately 0330h to 0400h local time if any terrorists managed to execute such a plan.

As either of these seem somewhat difficult to believe, we might then consider a third option, terrorist hi-jack with known landing point in Sumatra, explaining the low-altitude flight path in an attempt to evade primary radar. This even keeps alive the possibility that this plan has been successfully executed but in which case, why no announcement or demands?

Most likely outcome, but not by much, is that crippled aircraft made desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to return to KL and that evidence of this will eventually be found.

I'm aware of the 2:40 curiosity, but I'm inclined to think that it's purely a coincidence.

Consider that the original statement about the plane being lost at 2:40 was made by the airline (that is, civilians). After that, the search continued in the Gulf for a while; my timeline may be off but I think that the first mention of Malacca Straits happened at least 36 hours after the plane went missing. The plane took off at 16:41 UTC on 3/7. The earliest statement about "turning back" I could find was made by Malaysia's air force chief at 06:00 UTC on 3/9.

Militaries aren't usually big on sharing info with civilians, and it takes an established protocol or an explicit authorization from high command to release stuff like that. It's pretty unlikely that someone would pass the information about last known military contact to the airline within a few hours after disappearance, in the middle of the night. And even if that did happen, it's downright incredible that Malaysia would then waste time and effort on searching the Gulf.

Andrasz
 

Logically, I would have thought an identified target that sudden stopped squawking would be cause for concern, even if only because it would be highly unusual for a commercial airliner to do that and should set a few alarm bells ringing, especially in a post 9/11 world.

So your saying that, if a plane took off from the UK in the night then halfway out over the sea stopped communicating and transponder stopped working on SSR, then turned back toward the UK and over flew the UK for 1 hour still with no communications, that there would not be military response ?

i am afraid i cannot see that at all, and i find it really hard to believe that is the case here

If the radar operator had already marked the contact as COMAIR, while it was squawking valid Mode 3, it might have (depending upon autotrack functions used or not used) retained that track classification with nary a peep out of the radar operator who, not being ATC, may not instinctively know where a given COMAIR is headed to on a given evening.

Do you put your sharpest people on watch at zero dark thirty? :confused:

Clarifications
 

The not so good:

Fernanset - that was an unmeasured response, perhaps you should too. Execs comment didn't suggest any aircraft, just this particular one and many of the senior LAMEs at MAS could tell the life story of their aircraft. The 777 has been a pretty well maintained fleet and I'd see no reason to doubt their judgement even in spite of the element of human error.

Physicus - it's RMAF Butterworth and has been for sometime, you're living in the 80's.

Slats11 - Meals, a bit too early still, people might have got a drink and peanuts if they were lucky. Skyshow, yes so they would have been able to watch position unless... IFE, yes would have been on after 10'000 so if not sleeping many would be watching. Phones, seriously from my experience there is no reception above 8000', momentary at best. Someone way back mentioned something about EPC (?) maybe that works but how many actually do it. As a digression one MAS 777 was a test aircraft for inflight GSM services (relayed through SATCOM). System was active in cruise, you could switch your phone on and make calls and sms only; the aircraft was it's own cell (charges were high of course). Success had a lot to do with your telco, mine didn't work, but for others it did.

The good:

V1...ooops - your ELT stuff is more or less correct. The tubular model is a Rescue406 and it floats like a buoy - in fact saltwater makes the battery cell work (if you use it on land you have to stick it in water or better yet urine), but there is nothing automatic with it other than in liquid it works and out it doesn't. The boxy unit quite often is an ADT406, it can be automatic (G switch) if armed but otherwise it's off and it can float if it's floatation collar is attached. But if they go to the bottom of the ocean they're not much use.

I was under the impression that all transport category aircraft had to carry an ELT and haven't flown a bird yet that doesn't have one "built-in" in addition to the portables stowed in the cabin (the built in one of course being armed at all times except in the hanger), at least on Boeing aircraft. For those wondering, the missing aircraft contains 1 fixed, 1 portable and 2 slide raft ELTs. The fixed one as per V1s description, the portable on it's own battery and the raft only when deployed in water (spose you could cut it out and drop it in water if you're the boy scout type). Only one unit is G-switched, the rest require human operation.

The Shadow - as someone said to me, plausible. However I would add that in my experience with unusual events affecting the airframe that post repair, said problem area is subjected to more routine inspections than normally required and that is Boeings recommendation. Eg hard-landing gear repairs every so many cycles, tail strike repairs every so many hours, etc. I rather doubt it would be fix it once and forget about it, monitoring would be required much like warped fan blades. I'm not an aerodynamicist, just a pilot, so won't tackle you on the theory, but as crew we get some stuffed up situations in the sim like runaway controls and while that can't mimic surface loss and the rolling moments could be significant, the outer 1/4 of the wing isn't contributing the majority of the lift so managable springs to mind in the best of situations. Regards to major repairs, much much earlier a MAS 777 tail striked in ZRH and it was "pretty" bad, whole tail redone, that aircraft is still flying.

Fly26 - the area you're referring to, it's pretty rugged for the most part and semi-mountainous depending where exactly. Nuri's and light aircraft have disappeared in there for ages and that makes sense due to their size but if a 777 went in with 30,000+kg of fuel onboard I think the haze problems here would be a whole lot worse.

Airliner flies along. Suddenly transponder is switched off/fails at time x, likely causes .. Interference//tech issue//sudden destruction of aircraft, allied with comms possibilities as follows..

A/Radio transmission from flight ends abruptly. Likely cause..explosion/or/explosive decompression. Sudden destruction.
B/No radio calls from crew. Likely cause..Crew wouldn't have Known the transponder had failed and continued.
C/ATC tried to contact the crew in range and there was no response. Likely causes...destruction at x/or/interference at x/or/radios made u/s by same tech issue as transponder eg. Fire//electrical problem.

Mu!tiple eyewitnesses report an unusual large aircraft flying fast and low. Coupled with there being no evidence of sudden destruction, either in the form of debris, infrared flash monitoring, seismic registration or eyewiynesses in a very densely populated area points to either interference or tech issue, fire or electrical. As the eyewitnesses have mentioned that the aircraft was carrying lights, it couldn't have been a total Electrical failure. (If this large aircraft flying in an unusual direction at an unusual altitude on the very night this 777 goes missing is indeed the 777) . if it wasn't a total electrical failure then it would have been almost certainly possible to get either the transponder or com1 or acars or HF going.

Which points to two things. If it was a fire, it was now under control or it would have Been out of control by this time, but wasn't, or the bits would have been found by now. The witnesses specifically mention white light, not fire. If the fire had been contained I daresay the pilots would have landed it asap.

So it wasn't a fire.

Which leaves us with the last cause... Interference. If the aircraft was seized the scenario would fit the facts..seizer/s turned off the transponder, prevented the Crew from transmitting, and forced them to fly somewhere else, or flew themselves, deviating from the flight plan. Where they were seen by eyewitnesses. Or painted by primary radar.

We know two things by deduction..the aircraft was unlawfully taken control of and By now the aircraft is either crashed or landed safely somewhere in the hands of the criminal/s.

[QUOTE=Lonewolf_50;8366717In defense of the Malaysian authorities: it may have taken some analysis by the best radar operators and analysts -- who'd not be on the night shift, but on the day shift -- of radar the tapes/data from the night shift to arrive at the conclusion that the radar contact being tracked was indeed the airliner they had been looking for. Such analysis takes time.[/QUOTE]

I am reminded of a similar disappearance nearly 30 years ago. A light aircraft disappeared overland in UK. Our local military suitably qualified SATCO was called upon to examine the radar tapes to determine the probably location of the crash site.

This examination was at least full day after the accident and he was successful. LW is therefore probably quite right.

The way things are done in post-9/11 UK are not necessarily the same way they are done in Malaysia.