Malaysian military now reveals it tracked MH370 to the Malacca strait, now being quoted on the Malaysian Insider.


Malaysian military now reveals it tracked MH370 to the Malacca strait - The Malaysian Insider

Chill
 

Reading your post on Kota Bahru and Kuala Terengganu as possible landing site. Adding the CCN theory of the plane turning across the north of Malaysia with KUL as their aim. What about Penang as the target? An active airport with cargo traffic at night would keep the airport open, big enough runway and should they not be able to make it have the sea around them.

My thought on the crossing to the west towards the north missing the Titwangsa range at the highest point and crossing at a less densely populated area (just in case).

It seems the 2 fake passports look like a red herring - probably just everyday drug smugglers/people smugglers/asylum seekers going about their daily business and now victims too.

I would not be surprised to learn that there are one or two of these types on most flights in that region.

Wiggy, Claybird, if there was a departure from FL, there would have been Alarms generated at the ATCOS station alerting them to the departure of a cleared level, fed from SSR data AND ADSB data

So; No crash site where expected. Aircraft seems to have carried on flying but with transponders etc off. Another thought-what was the aircraft carrying in it's hold? Would be interesting to know if there was anything of great value such as gold bullion. Theft?

Claybird, Wiggy.
Ok, so both seats have established comms. initiated descent and initiated a turn because they thought it was required. Then they run out of useful consciousness. Autopilot carries on.
Is that so implausible?

Maybe, but as on the trent 900 it was an oil fire due to a failed mismanufactured pipe that caused the disc burst on qantas. this could occur at any time in the flight in theory. i'm not saying its the same cause at all - just that it is a plausible explanation of sudden total loss of ac without comms - in theory - which the media is sort of implying is impossible.

It wouldn't explain the turn back etc. rumours.

Wiggy, doubtfire, claybird have valid points. At any rate, since its not SOP to turn a specified 90 degrees left or right, seems a moot point since it appears that it turned more like 120 degrees left based on LKP and Pulau Perak. Doesn't dismiss decompression/ghost flight as a possibility.

I have no problem with that as a theory, but in your post earlier you seemed (and maybe I misunderstood ) to be linking the reports of a left turn to the west with what sounds like a pretty much mandatory left turn in the Airbus procedure, hence my comment.

Una -

I don't doubt it ( if as you say, SSR and ADSB are working), but that wasn't the subject of our little discussion - see above.

ZOOKER

Alarms probably not the best choice of word, but label turns red or yellow depending on the situation. FL turns yellow to indicate selected level and cleared level are not the same if clear of traffic and info is from ADSB

Rodondo4

Ordinarily PEN would be a good option during the day when everyone is awake but I'd be less inclined at night. There's high terrain on the west side of the runway, Penang Bridge to mind out for on the east side, without knowing their control capabilities the Rwy22 approach over Georgetown is higher risk than the Rwy04 approach over water (and 04 has the ILS). If they drop it in the drink on approach I've no idea what their emergency water recovery capabilities are like though RFFS would be decent on land. If I HAD to land PEN is #1 (assuming TGG was no go), but if I felt there was 20-25mins up my sleeve I'd go to KUL - 2 runways (so won't close up the airport), well lit, far superior RFFS, better survivability for the pax (depending on the nature of the problem). Wasn't there so can only guess what they were going through, but these guys know the penninsula like the back of their hand.

Jaberwocky

I agree :ok:, it's not a DC7 or 707 and MAS Engineering isn't so sloppy. They knocked a winglet off plus some on a 738 in a towing accident once and a new one went back on. No sticky tape, reinforcement job there. The only time that happens is when the ramp/catering guys bang trolleys, etc into the fuse skin.

I presume that anywhere in the probable oceanic area where MH370 could have overflown, there would be several vessels form various navies carrying out patrols/exercises/operations. I also assume that most of these vessels would carry primary radar to detect incoming hostile aerial vehicles. Have there been any reports from any of these vessels that they had tracked MH370 at any stage?

Aircraft turned towards Malacca Straits
 

I too wondered about the search of the Malacca Straits for an aircraft believed headed elsewhere.

Then I came across this AIP from the Department of Civil Aviation Malaysia.

It details the available radars and the rules to be followed in communications failure; in short, if able, continue to destination as assigned, or if unable, maintain VMC and land at the most suitable aerodrome, which may be the aerodrome of departure. For KUL, that is an approach to land on runway 14L.

http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip%20pdf/ENR/...1.6/Enr1_6.pdf

Maybe now, if MH370 was there, it all begins to make sense.

Sky News' latest expert's hypothesis is that following a decompression, the pilots set the AP on a reciprocal course, and passed out after failing to put on their oxygen masks.

If that's the case, based on the expected flight distance and allowing for a bit of extra fuel, the aircraft could be down somewhere between Madagascar and Perth (Australia).

Is there any reason why pilots would fail to put on their oxygen masks? Could they fail?

Is there anywhere a decompression could occur that would take out the various communication systems?

@nitpicker

Many posts have been deleted over the past 12 hours, so not sure if anyone gave a definitive reply to whether the debris reported by a CX flight in the South China sea had been investigated.

From the New Straits Times in the last 30 minutes - The same article describes how the Vietnamese are expanding their on land searches etc...

Latest Twitter excitement via the Tomnod project.

Malaysia Airlines MH370 / TomNod crowd-search - CNN iReport

No idea about the scale.

The PA103 disintegration occurred at cruising level. Admittedly there were strong westerly winds at the time.
After SSR data was 'discontinued', the primary radar plots of the airframe break-up were extensively scattered. Some small items of the debris field reached the North Sea coast. I have seen the radar replay.
No such extensive 'debris-field' has yet been seen, 5 days down the line, in an area of fairly intense commercial aircraft operations/marine activity.
I did wonder whether an in-tact impact on the ocean surface had caused the a/c to disappear into an ocean trench, but there are non on the flight-planned route, unless of course the a/c continued north-eastbound, (outside radar cover), until it ran out of fuel.
Earlier, someone pointed out that the waters surrounding the last known position are shallow, but the bottom sediments are often thick, loosely-consolidated pyroclastic deposits. Could these sediments 'absorb' a B777, travelling at speed?
We do not actually know the extent of PSR/SSR coverage, civil/military, in this region, or the credibility of the various 'sighting (visual and radar) reports'.

Maybe this Island?

https://www.google.com/maps/@9.18714.../data=!3m1!1e3


Might even fit in the hanger there.

Turn back and continue to West of Malaysia?
 

Taking stock and getting back to basics, have I missed something re. the flight's stated turn back and flight into the Malacca Straits?

Are all the facts (quoted both herein these posts and going round-and-round the media), about this departure from original track and on-going flight from point of lost contact, stemming from the Berita Harian story? If so, has not the Chief of Malaysia's AF refuted these facts were ever disclosed to the BH reporter?

Or is it that the Reuters-gathered intel from the RMAF - to the effect that the plane HAD been tracked back by airforce radar - is fact?

Much media content seem to me to be swinging on the Berita Harian release, which is denied.

There again, I would assume the tracking back to the West must have been confirmed somewhere otherwise the resulting SAR effort in that area wouldn't be on-going.

I'm confused as to what's been confirmed and what's circulatory BS! :ugh:

Looks strangely like a ship, from the on-screen scale, about 175' long.

OPENDOOR:

175' is about right for a 777 also. Just saying

Pilot oxygen mask failure post. I picked up a B737 one day in the afternoon and flew it several legs and the next morning we got the same aircraft. Doing our first flight of day checks hit the 100% flow button and guess what? After two seconds the flow stopped. Maintenance had replaced the bottle the day before and didn't turn the valve on. All we had was trapped line pressure the previous day.

Interesting chart
 

Just saw it, definitely a ship with maybe a tender next to it.

No information on the cargo on this forum whatsoever.

Very odd.

Other websites mentioning that the plane was loaded with too many lithium batteries.

Simply turning a transponder off is not going to make a modern airliner disappear; there are too many systems sending information into the ether. On Airbus the loss of all electrics is regarded as impossible but some major power failures have happened. I'm not sure how the 777 is configured electrically, but a major electrical failure or fire in the E&E bay might cut all the aircraft communication systems and leave the crew poorly placed in the middle of the night.

I managed not to notice the scale marker! Fine spotter I'd be.

Yes, I make it about 54m from point to blunt end. Bit to the left, which 'might' be a tail is about 20m. Close to the size of a 777-200ER?

If you squint...

File:B777FAMILYv1.0.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That depends on the amount of time spent in an oxygen deprived state, and the physiology of the actual person. Reinhold Meissner could climb Everest without supplementary oxygen, I would probably die in 15-20 minutes if spending any time above 8000m.

Losing consciousness is the body's protective mechanism, shutting down the massively oxygen-dependent brain and keeping up a slow circulation to maintain basic life functions - for a while. Beyond a certain time the process becomes an irreversible coma soon followed by cardiac arrest.

Assuming a 2000/3000 fpm descent, from 35k ft the aircraft would descend to an altitude that is capable of sustaining life in under 5 minutes, and in under 10 minutes to a level where full consciousness can be regained in a matter of minutes. However if there is any extended time spent above 8000m (that is more than max 5-10 minutes), then the answer is probably never.

Because it is a ship, nothing strange about it. There is a smaller vessel docked to its port side.

Sounds to me like depressurisation, but you need to link depressurisation and transponder loss. This could be caused by structural failure taking out antennas, or electric supply loss on a common supply. Not sure about the 777 elec system but should have enough redundancy to ensure backups.

Following depressurisation, aircraft turned to return toward Malaysia and emergency descent. This is usually done on autopilot, so heading select and select alt of 10,000 or 14,000. Pilots would have donned oxy masks. However I wonder if there was a problem with the flight deck oxy supply. The company I worked for had a recent incident where the oxy supply to the flight deck was turned off. Not sure of the exact sequence but something like this. In doing the preflight oxy checks there was enough pressure in the oxy lines to enable oxy flow for the quick flick of the oxy test to ensure flow, at some stage during the flight the oxy pressure was found to be below minimum, it was then discovered that there was no oxy flow.

During emergency descent there would have been no flow if 100% oxy was selected, but if diluter demand air was selected they would have been breathing cabin air and would have passed out/died on descent. Aircraft would have descended to selected altitude. Level off and continued flying.
Looks like the track flown would have possibly taken them over Aceh, where terrain goes up to about 9000 feet in some areas, and then continued on in the Indian Ocean towards Diego Garcia until fuel exhaustion. Given endurance of say 7.5 Hours initially, aircraft would been flying about 5 hours at around 10,000 feet with speed brake out. Maybe at cruise speed around 300 kts.

Still many questions though. Pax oxy would have deployed, so pax should have been ok, but if only 15 mins oxy it would depend on the descent rate used in the descent. If pax alive over land then mobile phones would have probably been used. Cabin crew would have eventually entered the flight deck. If they found the crew deceased, maybe they tried to fly the aircraft and lost control.

Very Perplexing.

Thanks for that, although why my original post positing a hypoxia theory has vanished, I don't know.

Unlike the Helios tragedy where the aircraft kept flying in the 'death zone', flight MH370 started descending so at some point pasengers and crew would have begun to regain consciousness. Would the aircraft then have been too far from the mainland to make cell contact?

We need confirmation that the military radar tracked the aircraft in a perfectly straight line which would quite obviously indicate autopilot and could discount hijacking as hijackers would unlikely be flying in a straight line.

Ok, so IF (and a big if at the moment) it was a depressurization and for whatever reason the pilots were unable to keep/regain consciousness. When would ATC realise something was wrong and get some fast jets scrambled to check it out? Surely that would be a common sense approach.

It is.

Possibly an option if we accept the idea that the aircraft was indeed the object detected on radar crossing the Malay peninsula.

Perhaps it's worth asking a suitably qualified engineer for his/her opinion on the proximity (or not) of the crew oxygen bottle to significant electronic/electrical components :hmm::confused: . Could a problem with one cause a problem with the other?

Not speculatin', just askin'.....

What's the MSA over the part of the Malaysian peninsula that they might have flown to get to the Malacca Straits?
I've looked on Google Earth but can't seem to find the elevation.
I wonder what altitude they were at tracking west?
Edited:
I see the RMAF are saying contact lost at 2:40am at FL29 near Pulau Perak.
I wonder if this is a de-pressurisation event over the Igari waypoint, an attempted turn onto a reciprocal track, some failure of flight deck 02 and hypoxia setting in before turnback complete... and a ghost flight heading out to sea westbound.
Why was mode C lost though - perhaps a partially hypoxic pilot selecting the wrong setting?
Still doesn't explain how some sort of jet-upset would happen to put the aircraft in the sea though.
Very strange indeed.

Yes, raised in Post 1470.http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...st8364903.html
The theory has not yet been debunked.
As a result of a near vertical dive imagine the small craters we have seen on land (flight 93 9/11) occurring in the muddy 20-40 meter sediment in shallow 30 meter waters of Malacca Straights.

Also references crashes in water where there was very little evidence of a fuel slick.(flight 990)

http://www.dca.gov.my/Division/Airwo...es/AN%2091.pdf

A possibility of inflight decompression

No digital communication from the aircraft following decompression? Also, o2 masks would explain the 'mumbled' radio transmission?

Generally ~3000 feet, but there is a mountain range parallel to the coast east of George Town with ridges rising to 4000ft and the highest peak over 6000. Just to the north though there is a wide flat corridor inland where the entire peninsula may safely be crossed at 3000ft.

If I may...
 

Crew 02 bottles are on the left side of the forward EE Bay tunnel. Just forward of the EE bay/Cabin access hatch.

There are significant electrical and electronic systems adjacent to the bottles but I'm pretty sure the ATC transponder boxes are far enough away not to be compromised immediatley should a bottle fail are a fire begin in that area.

The minimum off route altitude is at its highest around Ipoh (WMKI). It is 9500ft there.