How long does it take to switch from Mode C to Mode A and to STBY?

Update - Vietnam SAR
 

Very briefly:

- Square orange object, buoy suspected, spotted by DHC6 at 1020 local time (UTC+7 i.e. 0320Z), position N074730 E1025712. Investigating.

- The suspected "window liner" object spotted yesterday evening (widely reported as a suspected "door" in international media) has not been found again by 1130 local time.

- Search area possibly to be extended to South China Sea by afternoon.

Search continues, no confirmed debris so far.

source Dan Tri via Google Translate

I'm starting to agree with Clear Prop. Either it was deliberately switched off, or there was a serious electrical malfunction / fire in the business end.

Seismic event
 

We are told that when SR111 hit the water "seismographic recorders in Halifax and in Moncton recorded a seismic event".

Does anyone have the expertise to confirm that, and to say whether the same could be expected of any large aircraft hitting the ocean (intact I presume)?

A fire in the cockpit (which cut communication) is not implausible and the second last hull-loss involved a cockpit fire of the 777 (albeit zero fatalities).

That might explain why it's difficult to find as well.

Search for debris - delay makes sense
 

Sailing through the search region several years ago showed a lot of fishing activity, but in addition to this there was significant floating debris, floating islands of rubbish and discarded junk. Whilst it may seem strange to some that a definite debris field hasn't been found, in the context of the area, it makes sense that they are being careful to verify any possible sightings. Plus, bearing in mind that much of the fishing in the area is small operators, with varied nationalities, operating to their own rules (rather than large companies), it really could be some time before feedback comes from these sources. Hoping that further news comes soon for the loved ones of those on board.

Don't know the answer there, but I do know there have been many more tsunami warning seismographic recorders installed since the 2004 tsunami, all over the SE Asian region ...

@clearprop
 

The more this goes on, my thinking about this incident is leaning much further towards this. I was only speaking with a colleague about this today - total silence from the incident aircraft with no obvious signs of debris with 40 odd aircraft searching and enough boats in the water to walk from West Malaysia to Vietnam is suspicious

Not to mention no radar being able to track it past the time the squawk was lost? Hmmm.. There is more to this than meets the eye I think.

Time will tell.

That's Okay. A lot of us find it intellectually stimulating, even if we have learned nothing more than the topography of the seafloor and that seismic studies in the area use towed-array detectors 8,000 meters behind the boat... :)

This mental exercise seems fairly pointless to me. If you want to hide from the radar, you only need to stay low when you're near ATCs. Presumptive hijackers could stay at 600' for 300nm and that would put them on the other side of Malay peninsula, at which point they could regain altitude and they'd have several million square miles of the Indian Ocean at their disposal. (But they probably wouldn't make it to any "really interesting" places like Afghanistan or Somalia, not without refueling.)

In case of AF447, even though the location of supposed incident was poorly known, pieces of wreckage were spotted from the air during the second day, before any ships even had a chance to get to the site, and first bodies were being pulled out of the ocean in 5 days.

In case of TWA 800, a large piece of the wing was found in the ocean the day after the incident.

Finding no trace of the aircraft at 60+ hours after it goes missing, in a densely populated region, is quite unusual and the media is justified in making it an issue.

Some of the assets sent to locate the debris are pretty advanced. The anti-submarine assets have the means to locate targets as small as a periscope.

'Another Witness'
 

Make of this what you want

Getting his 15 minutes of fame, or, something the authorities should be looking at?

After finding cracks in the Wings on the 787 production line and added to the 787 Battery issue, this couldn't have come at a worse time for Boeing. The last thing they need is for this to be blamed on the manufacturer. Could they survive an additional crisis?

Conspiracy Theorists.... Over to you

jugofpropwash:

Good idea. Could be that they have already been identified though. If that's the case, you are faced with the benefits of confirmation vs revealing your capabilities, and no doubt other strategic issues. Flyers to Fishermen, on the other hand, reveals nothing about the hand you hold.

SAR
 

This is still Google translated so careful...

1400 local: Singapore's C130 is said to have sighted "a suspected lifeboat-like object" at N081605 E1025111, 140 km SW of Tho Chu island.

"Physical comfort is detected lifeboat gray striped red and blue (the color logo of Malaysia). "

[The report appears to suggest the object is emergency chute size. But I have never heard chutes are be painted in airline livery colors....]

Surface vessels on their way to investigate.

KELANTAN: ''A businessman in Ketereh claimed that he saw a bright white light, believed to be of an aircraft's, descending at high speed towards the South China Sea via Bachok airspace about 1.45am on the day flight MH370 went missing''

Sorry this does not add up either; a bright white light is not a burning aircraft; always bright red/orange unless magnesium? Perhaps a meteor but astronomers could verify this.

If MH370 suffered an incident like Egyptair SU-GBP @ FL350, they had no chance. Might explain the quick descent and if the fire took out the power to the comms, no way they could send out a mayday even if they had time to.

EDIT - And they'll be heading towards land.

Ahhh, yes, the famous Glock radio-invisible plastic stealth gun. As a point of fact, a Glock contains a great deal of metal and is readily identifiable on x-rays as exaclty that; a handgun. And it has more than enough metal to activate a magnetometer.

8 degrees north
 

So we started at 3N and now we are up to 8N. How many NM is that? I imagine 300 at least.