Flightaware does no thave sufficient coverage over the sea.
FR24 has
Here is the full set of factuals at this time

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post8359089

Because he (the Italian pax) called his family to say he wasn't on the plane, never had tickets, and he had had his passport stolen several months ago.

Refer to my post on page 9. He called his parents in Italy from Thailand and told them he was safe and never boarded or booked the flight.

He reported his passport stolen in August 2013 in Thailand.

This recording ends at N4.7 while the aircraft disappeared at N6.9

Flightaware has no sufficent coverage in the area

With possibly 4 ailerons and maybe 8 roll spoilers a side, I hardly think that the loss of an aileron is a complete loss of a primary flight controls?

FR24 coverage for yellow airplanes is from their own receiver fleet and/or private receivers coupled to their network.

Coverage of MAS370 at the last positon was from "F-WMKC1" station, which suggests it is located at/near Kota Bharu. This stations covers the bay until close to Vietnam. Another station in the area is "F-VVTS1", but it seems not to reach the particular area. Kota Bharu is about 10 min flying time from the last position, roughly 80 NM. No problem for any well located ADS-B receiver of any make.

If my memory serves me correct there was a modification or similar about 5 years on the B777 Trent thrust reverser. There are 3 separate locking systems, 2 of them are hydraulic and 1 electric. The left and right hand thrust reversers use separate hydraulic systems. Could MH370 be a repeat of the Lauda B767 accident over Thailand ?

A bit of idle speculation.

There are, to me, 4 possible scenarios. 1) Sudden and catastrophic failure. 2) Act of terrorism. 3) Incorrect response to upset by flight crew. 4) Suicide.

1) Is unlikely to be caused by failure of the aircraft, albeit memories of the Lauda Air 767 inflight T/R deployment remain. Outside influences could be the one in a billion metor strike, or an accidental shoot-down by armed forces.

I don't buy the idea of onboard fire; in all such previous cases the crew have had time to radio their plight.

Curiouser and curiouser
 

An Italian living in Thailand reports his passport stolen in August last year.
The same name (and the same passport number??) shows up on the passenger manifest. The same Italian has since contacted his parents to assure them that it is not him. That definitely demands closer scrutiny.
One of the British newspapers (not one known for its accuracy in aviation matters) is showing the aircraft as having crossed Vietnam and come down on the south China coast and quotes Flightaware as the source for its information. Could an aircraft have flown on for so long without any kind of communication or without showing up on Vietnamese radar even if there was no SSR data being transmitted?
The Chinese government has racked up security at all its airports. Why? Do they know something others don't?
Malaysian Airlines are being particularly tight lipped although, to be fair, with no aircraft, no wreckage, no communications, no witnesses (do they get regular engineering reports from the aircraft in flight?) what can they say.
This thing gets curiouser and curiouser.

Certainly one of the first avenues of enquiry for Investigators.

Course change
 

Without knowing the FP, just speculating, but the course change may have been due to MH370 reaching IGARI. No idea if the heading information on Flightaware is accurate, but the location Malaysian published is just before IGARI slightly west from R208 (assuming it was on this path).

After what happened in a Beijing Railway Station last week, I'm sure there is a lot of interest in option 2.

With regards to the stolen passport, I wonder how many passengers board flights with stolen passports every day around the world. Whilst it obviously would need investigation it isn't necessarily the answer.

I think it's clear that whatever did happen was very sudden, for the aircraft to either drop to zero with no intermediate path or altitude, or something catastrophic to happen that rendered the ADS-B transponder inoperable immediately.

Way too early to speculate but the majority of the passengers were Chinese about 160 of the 230 passengers. The Chinese have been experiencing relentless terrorist attacks from the Uyghur people from Xinjiang in the far Western China. The most recent attack was a bloody machete wielding mob who hacked up 30 plus people in Kunming, China a whole separate region in Southern, China. There have also occured almost monthly police confrontations and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang. An attempted terrorist hijacking was also carried out last year in Xinjiang on an E-175
but the crew did a valiant job in getting the aircraft on the ground expeditiously and the passengers and crew fought off the attackers. Many of these terrorist attacks go unpublished and are unknown mostly outside of China.

Gulf of Thailand isn't so deep, at worst around 80m and not even that if the flight sunk enroute from the Malaysian coast to Vietnamese coast. If they crossed over the east coast of Vietnam then there's some deep water in places - ENC shows 100-200m soundings (confirmed by some of the platforms in the area operating in 180m water), until you cross the continental shelf and it drops off to 1000+ meters, even 2000+ meters a little south of Danang. It will really depend where they can pinpoint the impact site, but if it's off the shelf deep-sea recovery will be extremely difficult.

Anyone recall at what depth the AF447 wreakage was located in? Like Airbus, I'm sure Boeing will want know why this airframe went down if humanly possible - like the Adam Air B737 before.

Actually besides Bunga Kekwa A there's around 12 other platforms in the area and north of VungTau up the east coast is heaps more. Hopefully somebody sees something floating in the water.

Avherald has an unconfirmed post about a Vietnamese AN26 search aircraft spotting an oil slick at N 7.55 E103.15. The post says it's from vietnamese news.

This would be 45 NM in direction 327 degrees from the last known position of MH370 reported by FR24, indicating some kind of flying ability after the loss of contact.

Let's wait and see if this is true or false.

AFR447 depth
 

@Cross Check

3,800 to 4,000 metres (2,100 to 2,200 fathoms; 12,500 to 13,100 ft).

Well I will throw this out there. Thursday we were flying from HKG to Hano late morningi. While in HK airspace a ANA cargo flight reported a TCAS contact 3 miles, at 8 o clock, 1,000 feet below. HK atc called in the blind to the "unidentified" a/c, whih was squawking 1400 to initially identify itself, and when that did not work, to press ident, to which she got a "reply". She was able to verify their level. This went on till we transfered to Sanya, but the ANA guys were able to see the a/c and it was clearly "shadowing" them. I know the Chinese and Americans have being shadow boxing in the region of late, but this is the first time I have heard of a civilian a/c being caught up... At the time it was unnerving. Now,.... Just saying...

"This would be 45 NM in direction 327 degrees from the last known position of MH370 reported by FR24, indicating some kind of flying ability"

Not so - at Lockerbie debris was scattered for mile forward of the point the plane came apart - - 7 miles and high and several hundred knots means the parabola of bits can be pretty significant.

In fact, in the absence of any other info you can calculate where breakup occurred by logging the different remnants and their size back along the debris trail

If that is indeed the splash point, it is less than a mile from IGARI on R208, just before the dogleg to M765 going northbound into the VVTS FIR. Technically, just inside the the WSJC (Singapore) FIR.

Same name and also same age, 37?
Looks quite implausible.

The guy is actually listed in the released Malaysia Airlines flight manifest at #101, with age 37, his actual age. However, according to La Repubblica, not only his family in Cesena (Italy) has talked to him, but also the Italian authorities from the Foreign Minister contacted him and confirmed is alive and did never boarded MAS370.

Incidente Malaysian Airlines, "Papà sto bene, sono in Thailandia". La telefonata di Luigi Maraldi ai genitori - Repubblica.it

777 search location
 

Im struggling with something here...
contact lost 2hours into flight... wouldn't that put the AC between Vietnam and China? Not south of Vietnam (less than 1 hour flying time from KL)
I am confused

This aircraft is 9M-MRO... if there was any factors contributing to an inflight breakup event then it would have more likely been 9M-MRJ, the tail strike aircraft in ZRH, required the emmpenage to be replaced.

But MAH370 was traveling roughly NE, so 327 degrees is about a 90 degree left turn. Also given normal flight speeds debris won't fall 45nm from any break up.

Assuming this to be true for a moment, the alarming thing would be the major foul up in the authorities to flag out the passport.

Oil Slick Sighting Is First Sign Malaysia Airlines Plane May Have Crashed.
 

@Kubalson

My two cents.
An oil slick itself is not yet a conclusive evidence of the crash site. I remember very well in 2009, during the early stage of the search for AF447, a long oil slick was also spotted by a Brazilian Air Force rescue aircraft. Eventually it turned out the slick was probably the result of ship leakage.
The actual debris area was found many miles away from there.

So it may be an evidence of the crash or may be not.

I'm sure we all have opinions about Immigration Officials. BUT, a Western Chinese dissident doesn't look much like an Italian, even to a totally clueless Official? Also, a Passport once reported as lost is immediately cancelled and cannot be use again??


That said, a 772 doesn't just disappear in good weather without any communication.


The problem here is going to be that the ACARS data is unlikely to help much if it just stops??

Bleve

that is correct but we don't know where the plane actually broke up and what direction it was pointing when it did

you can envisage as sudden yaw that would put it at any point in the compass immediately before breakup

I have real problems with the idea that a the plane had any flyable ability and could not communicate at all

I don't know for sure about Malaysian ,but our aircraft are always squawking on ACARS telling tales almost to the point when the Captain goes for a pee.So conceivable if equipped with ACARS, the aircraft would still be squawking technical problems even if the crew were not able to .

The posting in AVHerald's chat with the AN26 observation seems to have disappeared, but here is a Vietnamese site which tells essentially the same and looks credible enough. It is apparently from the official Vietnamese search HQ, and there is even a picture of the search area division between Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore.

Apart from the oil slick, the AN26 also reported an unspecified smoke sighting some 10 miles south of the oil slick and approx 28 NM / 312 degrees from the FR24 LKP.

Airborne search was terminated because of local sunset, but ships are continuing during darkness.

I'm still puzzled because an oil slick 45NM from LKP indicates to me that the plane would have been at least somewhat flyable, but the smoke debris 10 NM away indicates some parts have separated in the air.

Of course this may all still be false spottings and conclusions. Tomorrow will tell more.

Anyone knows the sea currents in the area? A 2 kts current during 12 hrs would account for a 24 NM drift, but to drift 45 NM the current needs to be almost 4 kts which is not that common.

A quick one about the Italian passport....

I) Major screw-up not to nullify that passport number to render it useless.

II) That WTC bomber from 1993 (don't remember his name) was some kind of Middle Eastern guy who posed as Italian to get on his trial run flights.

III) Wasn't he operating from Indonesia? Malaysia? Something like that. Thankfully the police force in whatever country it was, was quick to react and managed to track him down. Now he is safe in prison in the US. Thankyou, police force!

So there may have been a passenger on board travelling under a false name.

While this may well be an authority screw up to allow this to happen and, as has been mentioned, fail to flag down this passport as stolen and invalid, I would hesitate to see a bigger problem with this.

Independent of what name any passenger chooses to travel under, there still is a security control to be passed before boarding. Both for people and for their luggage. So if someone travels incognito or not, for him to take along something untoward would need minding of this little detail as well.

Now if one finds a way to bypass security checks and bring something nasty, he surely would not need to draw suspicion by additionally travelling with a stolen passport?

Yes, AF ACARS transmitted data all the way down through the multiple failure chain. However, and I don't wish to speculate, ACARS would NOT help much in the event of some type of catastrophic failure which resulted in an immediate stop in transmission?

For an Italian going to China he would need a visa before he could board the aircraft.. To get a Chinese visa you have to present a recent photograph of yourself with the application form. I'm sure a Chinese visa official would know the difference between an Italian and a Chinese.

That NYT article citied a telling quote.

The FR24 people should know their data well enough, why everyone else didn't is a mystery. At least that confirms a splash site in the entrance to the Gulf of Thailand - best news on a bad situation.

Interesting that you mention this. I just watched the series "Air Crash Investigation" on the episode regarding the mid air collision between a F-4 and a DC-9 in 1971. The vertical stabiliser of the F4 sliced the DC cockpit clean off. No comms from either pilots, fell off radar contact. Only survivor was the RIO on the F4.

Our old friend who knows everything about aviation David learmount is comparing AF 449 with MH370 and suggesting that at 1-2am people are at their lowest mentally and physically.

Malaysia Airlines Plane 'Crashes In Vietnam'

Simon Calder suggest the comments on social media sites are wrong. Surely he can't be thinking of pprune :ugh:

CNN reporter Richard Quest had interview on today's TV program that he flew with the F/O that was listed on MH370 several weeks ago for some sort of CNN program. Had a short video clip of him in the jumpseat while in-flight.