The Malaysian Airforce - TUDM - has a fighter base at Gong Kelak. It's near the coast just south of Kota Bharu. It hosts No 11 Sqdn which operates Su-30 Flankers - you would have thought there would be air defence radar there which would have "seen" a 777 passing close by (along with other traffic)

Is this radar recorded?

Woman raises questions about cockpit behaviour

Meanwhile, I'm interested to see the findings of the most recent eyewitnesses (fishermen).

Question for 777 pilots/engineers only please...
 

Can you access the ACARS c/b on the flight deck? The earlier Boeings that I have flown all sported c/b panels but that (idiotic) youtube 777 MEC video has me wondering.

Interesting to note that the fishermen's accounts mention the aircraft lights, suggesting the 777 had electrics available. (Or it was some other fast moving low level aircraft...fighter?)

I found that story utter disrespectful to Fariq and his family.

That's what Australia does, finds the worst in people.

The key point in the story was the girls felt as though they were completely safe and did their job as they should have. Also, I did not see one picture with them in the air but one with the captain.

I feel as though this story showing how much of a caring person he is, is a much better sentiment:

MISSING MH370: First officer Fariq cared and loved my many - Latest - New Straits Times

P.S. They were flying in a 767 it appears from the pictures. Different aircraft type, different and more training since 2011. I'm sure he was an excellent pilot. Must look at the positives.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BibskYkCMAA4pbB.jpg

One man using stolen passport on ill-fated Malaysian jetliner confirmed as a 19yo Iranian

https://twitter.com/abcnews/status/4...636610/photo/1

Electrical fire
 

At the risk of going over old ground…….my apologies in advance, but here is my two bits worth….

The three confusing issues or facts (unless the authorities are not revealing the full information, as suspected or insinuated elsewhere) are:-

1) No comms from the crew – no mayday, no request for deviation from altitude or track (it is just possible that they may have still had selected Lumpur VHF control frequency – before getting to IGARI to change over to HCM, and actually did make some initial radio calls but the aircraft position was at the extreme range of Lumpur control).

2) No ACARS messages of any serviceability issues with the aircraft. Or more likely, there were some ACARS messages delivered to MAS maintenance control, but MAS have not been able to make sense of them – and are thus not willing to release them to the public. In other words, the messages, (and it is highly likely that there were more than one), does not fit any logical scenario – a la AF447, the actual scenario of the crew stalling the aircraft and then keeping it stalled, (by sustained crew input on the flight controls, all the way to the surface), would have been rejected out of hand even with all of the STATUS messages that AF had received.

3) No debris found – this has been covered ad-nauseum already.


Simon001 in Post #1648, and others, allude to a bomb – a scenario that fits with the above, unless MAS are sitting on some ACARS messages – particularly if their transmission occurred over a period of time – ie the problem was not instantaneous. Even if MAS are not releasing the ACARS message(s) to the public, I cannot believe that they would keep all of the countries, and relevant SAR authorities therein, in the dark about it. Particularly so the Chinese, with the majority of the pax.

Conversely, if MAS are NOT sitting on any ACARS messages then it beggars belief that they would not publically state as much, leading to the rather blameless conclusion (from the MAS point of view) of a bomb event.

Given all of the above, I do not think it was a bomb event.

So, if not a bomb what is the next most likely scenario (speculation here – running the analytic risk of AF447, without all of the FDR and Voice recorder data)?

Assuming that ACARS messages actually were transmitted by the aircraft, they are not straightforward or logical – in the sense that it cannot immediately be concluded or logically considered – to explain:-

· What was the actual single event that must have triggered the flow of messages?, together with
· What was the likely crew response to such an event?.

Given that there have been no suggestions to date of “pilot error” (the usual and handy suspect) from any source, then I suspect it must be quite difficult to make sense of the ACARS messages transmitted by the aircraft.

I would expect that an electrical fire of sorts in the E&E compartment or on the flight deck would/could make various systems unserviceable (including the left/all VHF radios), leading to the transmission of various ACARS messages. The crew would be faced with an acute emergency, and whilst dealing with it, are forced to revert to manual flight (the turn back alluded to by the Malaysian authorities). Either the radios have been rendered inop or the crew workload is so high in the smoke environment that no radio calls are made by the crew.

With an electrical fire raging under floor or on the flight deck, eventually a vital piece of equipment is burnt through or the crew are overcome. By this stage the aircraft could be heading in any direction, but clearly the Malaysian authorities have concluded that it had headed back over the Malay peninsula and, somehow, ended up in the Malacca straits.

Unlikely scenario perhaps –, but so was the AF447 and the Asiana SFO accident.

The fact that "Mom was expecting him" doesn't preclude a terrorist attack.

ACARS revealed indeed what was going on, on the way down to the ocean. But keep in mind that ACARS data was initially leaked by an AF engineer to the internet and not through official channels. And if you go back in time, AF officials said initially that the ACARS messages proves nothing with regards what happened on AF447. Only month later, everybody was talking about ACARS.

Now with regards to ACARS on B777. Here some insights specific to a B777. B737 for instance is less sophisticated.

ACARS managment Unit (MU) is connected to a 115V BUS and to the 28V Battery BUS (B737/B777)
ACARS MU send over VHF (B737/B777) and over satelite (B777)
ACARS MU collects all vital data of the aicraft (B737/B777)
ACARS MU has downlink (B737/B777) and uplink (B777) connection
ACARS MU connect to each system independantly going over separate BUS (B737/B777)
ACARS MU has two independant, redunant fiberchannels for connecting to mentioned systems below and individual power source (B777). This is the "SAFEBus"

ACARS collect data from: (B737)
Flight Data Unit
FMS

ACARS collects information from: (B777)
Flight Management
Display
Central Maintenance
Airplane Condition Monitoring
Communication Management (including flight deck communication)
Data Conversion Gateway (ARINC 429/629 Conversion

Additional ACARS allows Airline HQ to upload/download data from the EFB (Electronic Fligtht Bag)

With regards to MH370 and ACARS, there are two options
a. Malaysian Airlines offcials are telling us not all they know
b. All ACARS related systems were destroyed immediately, otherwise it would have been sending data as it send over multiple channels.

Cheers
Martin

As detailed above, you do not need to deactivate "ACARS" as a system. All you need to do is prevent it transmitting...

On some types, just switch VHF3 from "data" to use it as a radio - ACARS cannot now communicate. I imagine if you turn off the Satellite link you'll get rid of that route as well...

NoD

Do Malaysian enrypt the ACARS messages, like some others? The header however is transmitted unencrypted always. Afaik the frequency is asia is 131,550 and can be recorded by anyone who has the equipment. Maybe someone has done this already?

the last press release from the airline included this statement regarding ACARS:

" All Malaysia Airlines aircraft are equipped with continuous data monitoring system called the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) which transmits data automatically. Nevertheless, there were no distress calls and no information was relayed."

Question for anyone who knows.

If there was an electrical issue, such as short or fire, would ACARS not start sending out some faults? Being that most electrical issues are not short time scale events. By that I'm going on about heat to fire time scales.

Fire?
 

Network

If the second scenario you have described is a possibility - why is there no radar tracking of the plane. I realise that the transponder was not transmitting so there was no identification as a civilian aircraft but surely an object like this is exactly what military radar is programmed to track. ie an object which is not transmitting an identification signal. Then surely they would know where to search, not the splattergun approach that is currently occurring.

Good article. But it begs the question why the authorities would be holding back on the information.

One possibility is the plane was hijacked and they thought it was going to be used as a missile, so they shot it down. That might cause some reticence to talk about it. The lack of flotsam and debris would then be because they are not telling us where it ended up.

Has any one considered?
 

Of course they haven't considered a water landing, people are too busy being told what to think. The Lion Air plane was pounded by surf, multiple tide cycles, and pushed hundreds of metres along a reef over 4 or 5 days and still held on to its contents........

Nigel on Draft...that's why I asked for a 777 guy to answer. I know first hand about 737/747/330/340 etc.

On at least two of those you cannot access the c/b in flight, NOR CAN YOU SELECT VOX ON COM 3

On the 737 and 747 switching 3 to vox does not lock it there necessarily...some radio options default back to data after a few minutes.

See now why I wanted a definitive 777 answer?

It's a bit depressing, seeing the way this has become a huge guessing game since there's very little hard information available.

What part of "Just wait until the wreckage is located, so that the information from the FDR and CVR can be read and evaluated," is so hard to understand?

As sleazy and low rent sensationalist trash as `A Current Affair' may be - that's a story, and an important one.
There's no way those girls should have been on the flight deck under any circumstances.

Shot down would mean a visible missile especially at night, but what if the crew/passengers crashed it knowing what was happening. If the authorities have deduced this possibility they still haven't deduced where it happened. Why else would they be looking in the north Malacca Strait?

According to Reuters:
Although Malaysian are less specific: