one can regularly spot the Paracels from altitude, on a clear day, along this route (seen them myself @ FL35 and from average sea level). If I was an MH Skipper rehearsing scenario on Sim. then I may have considered this contingency. Must admit though, there was quite a few Vietnamiese fishing vessels at that location last time I was there at sea level.

Your original supposition is flawed. There are several reasons for the last couple off ADS-B alt readouts to be zero, but it's generally from some form of packet loss. This includes switching the txdr off..

In my mind it's becoming glaringly obvious that only part of the available information is being made public.

ACARS - well, MA don't really say, do they?
RR maintenance center - dead silent on the issue, although they must know the timeline.
Boeing - possibly same as RR, depending on contract with MA

I'm not normally given to conspiracy theories, but I increasingly feel something bad happened that involved one of the powers that jostle for control of these waters in one way or another. And this takes a while to sort out behind the scenes....

IMHO all the talk about fake passports is a red herring - two asylum seekers who hoped for a better life and found an untimely death. The group who missed the flight - forget about it, happens every day.

I doubt we'll ever know the full story.

After reading with interest all the thread, must say that I am not an advocate of the terror act theories, it sounds too far fetched and the stolen passports looks more a coincidence than anything else.

On the other hand, it just occured to me that not long time ago Egypt Air had an emergency, on the ground fortunately, with an oxygen fire in the flight deck, eventually the airframe was written-off and by the photos I have seen, on the final report IIRC, the damage was quite extensive.

What are the odds of such an event happening again with MH370? I don't have the Egypt Air's report handy, but I guess some recomendation for parts change/inspection was made concerning the oxy system.

Just a thought

ACARS MU switches automatically between the VHF and SATCOM. Indeed the pilot can change VHF3 from DATA (default settings) to VOICE. But ACARS MU would then switch to SATCOM which there is no reference to a switch in cockpit to turn that off. At least I haven't found one ;)

B777 ACARS can communicate on text basis with ATC. Pilots can transmitt/confirm/receive messages trough ACARS ATC. This in case that there is a voice failure.

ACARS of the B777 is highly sophisticated. It is much more than a dummy text transmission tool.

Valujet 592 hit the everglades near vertically at high speed after a cargo fire, virtually nothing was found on the surface, the largest piece of wreckage was the size of a football.

I still think this is a serious fire possibly from the cargo deck that happened to knock out comms first. I assume comms and ACARS etc still have to run down wiring to aerials on the hull. Why couldnt that wiring have been interrupted by fire before ACARS was aware of it.
For there to be very little debris in shallow waters then this aircraft cannot have broken up in flight otherwise debris would be floating everywhere. I suspect the airframe went into the sea intact, whether controlled ditching with rapid sinking or a high velocity impact. Who knows.

Marine Radar - Malacca Straits Piracy
 

The Malacca Strait is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, at the beginning of this century it had a huge problem with piracy which resulted in LLoyds adding a 1% risk surcharge to shipping travelling through it.


Huge measures were taken by Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to rectify the problem. Radar coverage was greatly increased and patrols were stepped up in the area.


Piracy has reduced markedly since those measures were introduced, but is still a problem, I believe an oil tanker was hijacked just last year.


Could the increased search activity in the Malacca Strait be the result of unidentified radar returns which have come to light after reviewing marine radar footage at a later date ???


I'm not overly familiar with the maritime radar systems which are employed in that region, but I would assume they would have the capability of detecting low flying aircraft. I know in the UK the marine radar coverage of the English Channel is used for just that purpose.


Having conducted business in Asia in the past I am well aware of the importance of " Saving Face " You only have to look at Fukushima to understand just what sort of lengths people will go to too save face.


Is it feasible that the Malaysian Airforce are embarrassed that MH370 managed to overfly the country without being detected, could that be the reason for not disclosing that primary radar returns were detected by the Navy in the Malaccan Strait ???


I would find it very hard to believe that such a localised search would be taking place in the Strait without some sort of evidence that the plane may have been in the area, but I'm baffled as to why they wouldn't disclose such information.

Or of course self powered uploads of FDR/CVR/CvideoR with a GPS position and Timestamp direct to 'the cloud' could be added at relatively little cost compared to the cost of almost a shutdown of transoceanic flight. As I posted earlier - this has gone beyond concerns about unethical management wanting to watch you pick your nose in the cockpit. Had there been a record to the cloud system on this aircraft there would be closure for the several hundred relatives, the reason for the aircraft going down could well be known as it would have been found already.

? ATC barely know about ACARS, it's an airline tool. There is nowhere in any ATC centre/tower I've worked at that displays ACARS text.
CPDLC is a whole different ball of wax.

Martin M... check FCOM 5.40.98

You can deselect ACARS satellite transmissions on the ACARS Manager page of the COMM>MANAGER menu of the MFD. A simple mouse click, but there should be no reason to do so unless they misread the bulletin about loss of VHF Datalink on BP V15... which is digressing as no relevance and only confusing this thread.

Also, an in-flight DATALINK reset should not reset OMS and EICAS maint downlinks.

Hypoxia would not switch off the ADS and SSR transponders. In all the cases of hypoxia and crew incapacitation I have read, the aircraft carried on with no problem squawking as normal. Just no-one answered the RT.

Mr Good Cat,


Sadly there are many 'black hole' areas where you will get the 'Datalink unavailable' EICAS on both SATCOM datalink and VHF datalink.


Temporary ACARS datalink losses are very common, across Siberia/Mongolia you can lose it for 10-15 minutes.


This is a very confusing loss, much like the AF loss. Once the aircraft has been located then I'm sure there will be a lot to learn.


As to smoking/visitors in the flight deck that is very much up to the airline and the operating authority. In my airline it is forbidden to have visitors in flight and to smoke. On many other airlines those restrictions do not exist. Do you know, specifically the SOP's for Malaysian Airlines? I don't.

On the 777, to have the pressurisation in manual and not realise it, is extremely hard. Much harder than on the 737. ( I have flown both all variations of both types). I don't believe the thing depressurised and the crew were unaware of it.

Rachcollins
I have that feeling too. It's a quite plausible scenario.

Though it doesn't explain lack of comms / elt / ACARS etc. But then again no likely theory fits the current available evidence.

china eastern airlines flight 5093
 

Looking at the planefinder.net at 17:20 local time MH370 leaves the screen,the only other aircraft close by is china eastern airlines flight 5093.

Too much concidence?
 

MH370 detected above Malacca Straits at 2.40am

2:40 am - exactly the same time the original reports said it was declared missing. Too coincidental!

More likely this is a journalist who's conflating different stories. 9:1 says this story dies an inglorious death.

Also I'm sure some pilots can comment on the flight time from the last reported position and time to Pulau Perak. It looks like a very slow flight to me.

The engine manufacturers live engine monitoring service was not activated on MH370 press reports state.

The MAS series of dangerously low fuel emergencies into Heathrow lead to bare faced denials and cover ups by MAS. UK authorities couldn't rely on assurances given and in the end had to insist that MAS provided weekly reports on fuel levels of aircraft arriving into the UK as a condition of being allowed to fly there.


With the present incident on home soil you'll find commercial aviation and military interests are far too buddy buddy to expect leaks to filter into the public domain.

Now we are getting somewhere..