I agree with the earlier post that if they are searching The Straits of Malacca, they must have something else which they don't want to release. That would be 1.5 flying hours back from the Southern tip of Vietnam.

The other thing not being addressed (Excuse me if I missed a discussion, this is a long thread) is the missing 5 passengers. Malaysian went out of its way to confirm that the checked bags of these passengers were offloaded. But FIVE no-shows is an awful lot? Who were these people and what was the routing of their tickets? Did they turn up to claim their checked bags or did they "Disappear". If so, what was in those bags?

It seems whatever happened in MH370 at the time of the incident happened in such a way that precluded electronic information transmissions from any of the following devices:

ELT-failed/turned off
ACARS-failed/turned off/MEL unserviceable
AIRCRAFT TRANSPONDER-failed/turned off
PRIMARY & SECONDARY RADAR-failed due no primary paint or secondary transponder reception
RADIO-no comms by either crewman

For all items to fail seemingly instantaneously seems to indicate either the purposeful opening of their controlling circuits or their loss during a massive single electronic failure. The second is indicated due to the loss of secondary and primary radar contact. In the case of 9/11 the aircraft were taken over and flown by the terrorists to their conclusion within hours. There is no indication of this with immediate radar loss. Wouldn’t this indicate that cause is a catastrophic failure?

Right. Now, the question becomes: what primary radar ATC stations are there along the route of MH370, and what were their actual effective ranges? And, when newspapers say that the plane disappeared from the radars, do they mean that the primary return was lost, or that the transponder had stopped transmitting and the primary return wasn't there to begin with?

OK, good to know - 120 miles is not a lot but would probably take the aircraft out of the search area.

KILA
 

I'm not defending security at KLIA because if they were not screening against the complete security database, that is a problem.

On the other hand, on the surface at least security at KUL appears very good. I recently flew to LHR and back with MH on a A380 and, out of KUL, we were asked to produce Passports and Boarding Cards for checking before Boarding. My wife was taken aside for about 10 minutes for further Passport inspection because she did not look British (Whatever that means these days!!), despite the fact that her Passport picture matched her physical presence and that we were travelling together in First Class. I thought that suggested quite a high security alertness.


If this IS terrorism, wouldn't such a "Flagship" flight with 500 passengers have made a more "Attractive" target. I keep wondering WHY Malaysian (An Islamic country) and why a flight to PEK?

There are several airports capable of taking a B777 on the east coast of Malaysia that would have been in gliding range from position IGARI.

If this guy is right - interesting wording. Descending at high speed - not plummeting out of control, not crashing. A white light - not flames or a fireball.

Wacko Scenario
 

There have been such a wide range of theories, many of them reflecting a lack of aviation knowledge that I've decided there is room for one more.

Perhaps some triple 7 experts can rule out this scenario.

The big puzzle here is: what could possibly happen at cruise speed at 35000 feet that would not result in a very large and dispersed collection of pieces of airplane that would easily have been noticed in a couple of days of daylight? And if there was a high energy breakup at sea level there would be a more concentrated collection of debris.

What if:

A massive electrical disturbance that took out all of the communications and much of the control electronics right down the line. Leaving the pilots with a basic panel and difficult to handle controls.

Assume the electronics are fried - without considering how this disturbance crossed over between the several buses. So, eventually they would engage the RAT and maybe get some useful hydraulics (if needed), but the RAT electrical power would not be very useful because of damage already done.

Faced with that an experience aviator might be able to control the aircraft and ride it down with or without engine power... possibly idling. Not sure what the engine control electronics does if it loses command signals.

So, with the basic panel they keep the airplane flying - possibly gliding - watch the altimeter, and hope the standard setting for FL350 is not crazy wrong at sea level. Or maybe they even had data on more local altimeter settings. As they get to 500 feet - they taper off to V1 or thereabouts and slowly descend until they hit the sea. And then float there for a short time. As sea water flows in through a few cracks in the fuselage.

And then sadly.... the aircraft sinks.

What's missing - floatation rafts getting deployed - maybe not practical.
406 MHz beacon... why is it not being heard?
Could this scenario require manual deployment?

Many years ago when I was active in small aircraft flying and airline and military avionics design the activation rate of ELTs was very poor in many crashes - the TCO got revised and the g switch specs and orientation made a great improvement. But automatic activation on nasty landings would make a lot of people unhappy.

So - could a 777 water landing leave the g detect switches untriggered?

Crazy? Impossible? Or just implausible.

So far the limited fact set seems to not produce many possible solutions.

In this scenario there might be an almost total absence of debris.

Enough...

A previous poster has provided an extract from the Malaysian AIP showing radar coverage up to 200 nm. This radar is located at Kota Bharu (WMKC), and the normal configuration of Malaysian DCA radars is a co mounted PSR (60 nm range) antenna with a MSSR antenna , range 200 nm. This is the nearest radar to the last displayed position (N6.97 E103.63) on FR24.


As this location is 93 nm from the Kota Bharu radar, it is outside PSR coverage, so no primary radar returns would have been seen. However the position is well within SSR coverage with a lowest coverage height of about 5000 ft at this range. At 200 nm the lowest coverage height is about FL270.


The SSR data from this radar is sent to the KL ATC center at Subang, which provides enroute ATS for the KL FIR.


As for other radars, the last position is about 190 nm from the Hat Yai radar site in Southern Thailand, and 290 nm from the Ho Chi Minh radar, so no other radar coverage was available.


However there is an ADS-B site on Con Son island, about 130 nm south of HCMC. This is at a elevated site of 1500 ft, so has very good coverage, and is 200 nm from the last FR24 position. The lowest coverage height is about FL220 at this range. The Con Son ADS-B data is also sent to Singapore ATC to enhance surveillance of the ATS routes in the adjacent Singapore FIR


So its likely that the various ATS providers had good position data - but entirely dependant on the aircrafts transponder/s. Without that no data at all. There could of course be military radars providing PSR coverage of this area - but that has not been disclosed as yet.

Sorry if mentioned and correct me if I am wrong but....

The plane was airborne 6 minutes after it's scheduled departure, yet there were 5 people who checked in but didn't board.

I find it hard to believe that after waiting and waiting for 5 people, you would then be able to find all of their luggage and remove it without delaying the plane.

"I find it hard to believe that after waiting and waiting for 5 people, you would then be able to find all of their luggage and remove it without delaying the plane".


It's quite possible they could have been ready to close the doors 10--15 minutes ahead of scheduled departure time. All checked bags can be traced to a loaded container so the time taken would depend to some extent on the loading sequence of the containers, but it can be quite quick. And taxi doesn't take long at that time, after all the heavy longhauls have already departed.


Of far more interest is the matter I raised on the last page. FIVE is a lot of no-shows for a single flight, even if their bags were offloaded, which MH went out of its way to confirm. Who were these people and did they later claim their checked bags? What was their flight routing and where were the tickets purchased. etc.

I don't find this suspicious at all. KUL is MH's hub, and as such people most likely connected to this flight from all over South East Asia/Europe/Australia/India etc.

It is possible that the these passengers were proactively denied boarding by MH in advance due to missing minimum connection time (eg if a connecting flight from BOM was delayed - pax would be offloaded).

I haven't read anything to say that this isn't the case. Likewise with many MH flights departing from KUL around the same time, I doubt 5 pax failing to board is statistically significant. They may have been simply fallen asleep etc.

Regardless, due to security reasons of course bags must be offloaded if passengers are not travelling, and it sounds like they were.

So, if the transponder was inop or disabled, then civilian radar would have been unable to track the aircraft? And we don't know if there was any military coverage?

I'm more and more convinced that they're looking in the wrong place.

One Chinese national had their name redacted from the pax manifest. The cargo manifest is made up in "good faith" and therein lies a potential problem.

Well, Red October, why not read the article and find out?

Never been up at 01:45 in the morning to get a drink or take a pee? What's the point of your question? You think he made it up?

:confused:

The article linked on the previous page might suggest they are looking in the wrong place.

I have an annotated map of the search area but can't post the image, but if this was a true sighting they need to search right off the coast of Bachok, Malaysia (near Kota Baru). Though it is hard to believe the Malaysian search parties would close their eyes for the first 50 miles of feet wet on the way to search their designated area...

KELANTAN: A businessman in Ketereh claimed that he saw a bright white light, believed to be of an aircraft, descending at high speed towards the South China Sea about 1.45am on the day flight MH370 went missing.
Alif Fathi Abdul Hadi, 29, told the New Straits Times what he saw after lodging a report with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) in Tok Bali earlier today.
Alif said he was in the compound of his home when he saw the bright white light, which he described as similar to the ones used by airplanes during night flights.
"I was walking towards my back door when I caught a glimpse of the white light.
"It was moving towards the sea, towards Bachok area, which was unusual.


From New Straits Times Latest - New Straits Times

I did initially promise myself I wasn't going to get involved in this discussion, but I must admit I too am becoming quite perplexed by the lack of any wreckage in the expected area. There was one small fact that I observed at the start and quickly disregarded as meaningless, but as this situation is dragging out, I am beginning to suspect it may be more of a clue.

It is to do with the Transponder, or more to the point what we know has been received from it by the FR24 data. Or more to the point what hasnt been received. The very last report in the FR24 data chain lacks any altitude data. For it to have been processed, a recognisable message must have been received by the servers, otherwise the message before would be the last data we would see. What strikes me as noteworthy about this is that the most obvious sequence of events I can think of where this data output would be recorded, would occur when the transponder was deliberately cycled from Mode C (S) through Mode A (no alt) on the way to STBY (Off).

I might go one step further and suggest I am struggling to imagine any other set of events where this pattern of signal output would be observed.

Your thoughts?

A Question for Malaysian LAMES, or someone in the know. When did this aircraft last have a D or Phase Check?

Clear prop, if I have understood you correctly you are suggesting that the lack of data seems to indicate the transponder may have been deliberately switched off?

As I understand, FR24 saves one report per minute, even if reports come in more often than that.

Assuming that your premise is correct (this is the first time I hear about this), what are the odds that the last report saved by FR24 just happens to be the one when the transponder was passing through mode A?

I noticed that. What's the reason? Who edited it? MAS? Or...