India has joined search
 

According to Astro Awani

NEW DELHI: Ships of the Indian Navy that are on patrol in the Straits of Malacca are participating in the search and rescue (SAR) operations for the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) MH370 which went missing last Saturday.

The Indian Navy's satellite Rukmini or GSAT-7 has also been activated to pick up any clue that may lead investigators to the missing aircraft, Indian Media reported.

Matyj I'm beginning to think the same. This is starting to sound like a cover up of something embarrassing to Malaysia.
If the cover up was started in a panic there'll be a lot of buck passing going on, with nobody willing to man up and tell the truth. That's the Malaysian way.

By the way, was MAS conducting any kind of disciplinary action on the FO already?

I just don't see RMAF getting all the way through the chain of command from the radar grunt, to whoever has authorization to shoot down bogeys, to a fighter jet, in the amount of time it takes for a 777 to go from the point where transponders were shut down to the point where it exited Malaysian waters on the way into the big unknown (30-40 min), at 2 in the morning.

When Soviets shot down KAL 007, it took 2.5 hours to get the ducks lined up and to give an order to fire.

Neogen - Come on, you don't really believe that a large commercial, easily-recognisable make of aircraft (clearly marked with their own National Airline markings) was shot out of the sky by an RMAF fighter, without a second thought?? Get real, you've been reading too many novels. :rolleyes:

This is Malaysia we're talking, not North Korea. The Malaysians may have their faults, but shooting first and asking questions afterwards, isn't one of them.

Correct. But more due to a bumbling bureaucracy, face-saving, and individual little fiefdoms within Malaysian society, who have a need to have their authority pandered to, often at the expense of the embarrassing truth.

I don't think it was shot down. I think it sailed across the Malay Peninsula in silent running mode ( hijack or crew gone rogue) then has run out of fuel or been ditched somewhere in the Andaman Sea.

They've been searching in the wrong place. And maybe they knew it.buying time?

Military Primary vs SSR
 

First of all, I do not know the coverage of Malaysia's military radars.

Do we know if a primary pulse reached the location of the last SSR reply?

There could well be a considerable gap between the last SSR reply and the first primary returns.

While there may have been a series of primary returns, what evidence is there to tie those returns to MH370?

Or was it a smuggler or drone?

The Malaysian Air Force has not published the radar tracks. Most militaries would not as they do not want any opposition to know their capabilities -- or coverage gaps.

In the case of incapacitation, the a/c might run on autopilot until fuel exhaustion or CFIT -- or be brought down earlier by other failure modes.

If those primary returns turn out to be from MH370, we may end up with flotsam somewhere between Malacca and Madagascar. Finding the wreck in those circumstances will make the search for AF447 look easy.

Anyone have an idea how a Triple 7 would behave with a complete electrical failure?
I don't think it would simply roll over. If the throttles & flight controls were not touched, natural stability should leave it doing small phugoid oscillations and perhaps gradually turning. I believe the fuel system would likely continue to deliver fuel and the engines would continue to run until the feeding tank ran dry.

Just theorizing a bit, but if the cockpit were breached in some significant way, not only would you lose pressurization, you would likely lose some of the functions normally controlled from the cockpit. A crew would be at a serious disadvantage to do anything meaningful.

The radar returns from the point in space where the aircraft ceased its squawk should be closely scrutinized for evidence of loss of panels or structure. If there is such evidence, then these items would be an absolute priority for attempted recovery since they would probably indicate what happened.

If the aircraft has flown as far as it is capable of after the deviation event, then finding it in a large expanse of ocean is going to involve a lot of luck. That aircraft may look big standing next to it but it is entirely possible to lose it and not find it for years.

Good work Tom, must be hard work being a journalist these days when all you have to do is constantly refresh an anonymous internet forum for a story !

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: US issued warnings over Boeing 777s

Tarzanboy:
In looking at the image, this makes lots of sense, if indeed, their track was directly toward TRN in Malaysia.

The Swamp Missile...
 

She was carrying O2 Oxygen canisters...Terrible result.

Questions
 

1. What was the last radio transmission received from aircraft? If an aircraft goes more than 5 minutes (40 miles ) without a radio transmission someone will key the mike and ask where are you? Where they called on 121.5?
The tapes should be played.
2. What cargo was the plane carrying? Anything of interest? Precious cargo, dangerous goods? Etc?
3. Background of pilots and crew?
4. Cellphone signals can be traced. Last known position of any of the phones of the passengers?
More questions than answers. The Malaysian authorities need to answer .

Air interdiction
 

To the guys with the shoot down theory:

Hamster3null: Modern air force now SHOULD have their procedures squared away now. Sure, they can't protect everywhere in a big country but they will have their procedures oiled out to protect the really sensitive areas. Protocols are in place for all types of timelines.

Onetrack: Totally agree with you

I suspect the simple answer to the RMAF angle is they simply do not know. Perhaps they have a scheduled maintenance of the radar, perhaps they have an operator who forgot to turn on the 'recording' function, perhaps there is just a gap in their radar in that region. Again, not that Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are expecting some conflict of any sort requiring a high level of surveillance. However, it would be too embarrassing to admit to it.
Sometimes the most likely answer is the simplest answer. They simply do not know. Just check out what the Pakistan Chief of Air Force said when the Air Force failed to detect the helicopters going in to get OBL.

PlatinumFlyer, their route was planned just east of CAN THO VOR towards Hochiminh TSN VOR according flightaware.

Questions from a "lay man."
How long does the flight recorders continually record data before recycling? I've seen reports of the last 30 minutes of the flight?

If there was a depressurization event and the pilot lost conscious after setting the AP to the new course. The plane would continue until running out of fuel correct? Is there a "deadman" switch similar to a train? If the recorder only records the last 30 minutes and the plane continued for 2-3 hours after the "event" would the recorders even be useful?

Time to remember once again that in spite of media reports, the situation is not unprecedented.


Adam Air Flight 574 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tarzanboy!! Bravo.....

Ref post #2063

That is actually the first bit of realistic speculation that I have read in 2100+ posts.

@tarzanboy
 

In 104 pages, this is the first post that's made me think "hey, that might be something." If I remember correctly, the AA in Cali featured an FMS input of an identifier that was not the intended waypoint and it commanded a turn off the correct flightpath. While I doubt an erroneous FMS input was the cause of this crash (not much CFIT at FL350!), it's a good hint at a plausible answer to one of the many, many unanswered questions we all still have.

Could this happen again?! Unreliable Airspeed=nightmare for pilots!!

http://www.pprune.org/spectators-bal...-incident.html

Now they seem to be saying that there is no radar record of the flight to the West of the mainland?

MISSING MH370: RMAF chief denies military radar report - Columnist - New Straits Times

If this was a film script, it would be discarded as just too incredible!

It is possible the SAR response is orderly and logical and they're doing terrible job with the public information side of thing.

Sat tracking
 

Does anyone know why in this day and age why an airliner would not have an ISAT system?
With nearly every offshore helicopter operator monitoring all flights in real time with a instant database cache of position reports its ridiculous to think an airline has no idea where thier assets are!

Also for the crew an instant flip of the switch to "emergency" to indicate distress!

Hopefully a wake up call to airlines to look at systems such a skytrac!

That, and post from @Tarzanboy most plausible to date....

I once watched a BA 747 turn 50° after an incorrect waypoint input. It occurred in darkness and the flightcrew were completely oblivious until asked to confirm their position (heading east to the South Pacific off the New South Wales coast when they should have been tracking to Sydney over land). I can imagine a crew under pressure easily making a similar mistake with no visual references to alert them to a navigation error.

I certainly think there is some awful media relations work at foot there, but I've managed aviation SAR incidents (post Sep 11) where we could not disclose information from classified military assets that were being factored into our search plan. Some of these assets make the oft mentioned here "primary ATC radar" look like a joke.

We had to be circumspect to avoid a public disclosure rabbit hole... it was also an incident that was subject to a lot of media coverage.

I almost accidentally mentioned one element during a media interview, it would have created a major issue in terms of cross jurisdiction cooperation for the future. It is possible either their own military or foreign military has provided them information on the condition that the source and type of information not be disclosed, hence the skewed search area (from day 2?) with no explanation. The SOP is to say "we've received information from a variety of credible sources that has led us to move our search in this direction".

The standard SAR methodology is to work from your highest probability of detection areas down. It appears they are doing that. This is usually based on imperfect information, e.g. they have a military track but it is partial and may not connect with the ATC track (and therefore identity of a/c). Or they have clues that are credible but wrong, which misdirect resources.

Ironically we were going to be meeting soon with one of the government SAR departments involved in this search, I assume due to this incident those meetings will move out a bit. Of course I'm going to try to get the scoop on what went on (when all this is over), but it will be the very last thing I ask them in the meetings; I'm sure there will be reticence to discuss.

No, it isn't designed to turn 90 degrees, it simply maintains 25 deg bank and Vmo all the way down to 14000 ft.

Oddly the passengers watching the inflight map, would see the plane heading out to sea. Human mistakes are made, when the information they see in front of them they have mentally checked it off as OK. Once checked off, it takes fresh eyes or very good training to reassess the data to reconfirm it is actually correct.

NineMSN reporting Vietnam has suspended air search and scaled back marine assets until better explanation from MY:

Vietnam suspends air search for missing plane

reported cracks
 

Just to put my bit over.

If the Feds issued an AD then they would have put a time line for it to have been done. For sure MAS would have stayed with in the stipulated time frame as would most responsible operations.

'Now they seem to be saying that there is no radar record of the flight to the West of the mainland?'

No they aren't. They are saying there is no CONFIRMED record. Quite a different thing. The lack of confirmed information is why they continue to search over such a huge area. That's what anyone sensible would do.

Yes you can depress manually. About half an hour in a 772 at FL350 until O2 depletion Give or take. That's by memory as they have removed the figures from our manuals now .

No you must make a manual rapid decent.

But they only last a few minutes, if the pilot stayed at altitude, they would have been next to useless in short time.

Life Raft found
 

MISSING MH370: Hopes as fishermen find life raft near PD - Latest - New Straits Times

Would this be typical of one used in a B777?

Re deanm #2157... (Air Helios B-737 crash)

"The emergency oxygen supply in the passenger cabin of this model of Boeing 737 is provided by chemical generators that provide enough oxygen, through breathing masks, to sustain consciousness for about 12 minutes, normally sufficient for an emergency descent to 10,000 feet (3,000 m), "

Was / is the 777 any different..??

BBC is reporting just now, that oil rig workers saw a burning aircraft off the coast of Veitnam. Search aircraft are being sent to the area.

Yes the Chemical Oxygen Generator lasts only at least 15 minutes....then they are empty. The Helios plane never attempted to descend & the pilot lost conciousness. The plane continued to fly on auto pilot at FL340 (34,000 feet) until fuel exhaustion.

Emergency oxygen system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MISSING MH370: Hopes as fishermen find life raft near PD - Latest - New Straits Times

There's a photo there as well - is this a standard kit on the T7? Port Dickson is on the Straits of Malacca. If this belongs to MH370, this could get rather interesting.

MISSING MH370: Hopes as fishermen find life raft near PD - Latest - New Straits Times

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the photo seems to show a maritime life-raft rather than one used in aviation.

The location given by the Oil Rig worker relates closely to the position the Cathay Pacific crew reported debris in the water........

It seems very disorganised by the Malaysian Government. Just reading below makes you shake your head at their incompetence over this incident:

Andrasz wrote: Looks that way to me too - it's been in the water a while as well as the top is faded and the ropes are filthy. It certainly matches a maritime one.

An aircraft evacuation slide looks rather different from my point of view. I'm sure though the media will report in breathlessly.