Just FYI, I read Sunny in Chenobyl a while back which looks at this mythical pool of debris in the Pacific Ocean. Whilst it does exist, its not in the traditional sense. During an expedition to collect real pieces of debris from the area (i.e. carrier bags, plastic bottles, etc.) they encountered almost no debris. Tests did show a high-ish amount of suspended particles, but they wernt visible.

If it's seen to have crashed by military hardware (eg Jindalee) why would any nation say that and reveal their hand? It's not as if it would save a life.

Might help the relatives for the interim, but that's not a concern of governments.

ELTs
 

There is much talk of "the ELT" and "how it would go off in a crash".

Can anyone confirm whether all airliners now have crash activated ELTs? Or whether just newer ones do, and the older ones just have ELTs in the cabin / rafts for manual activation?

And if the latter, what about this vintage 777? I have (slight) reason to suspect that this 777 might not have a "fuselage mounted ELT" (i.e. the location / type / crash activated that got the LHR 787), whereas newer 777s do?

Range Question
 

Have been off for 12 hours. If already answered, apologies.

Lots of range discussions regarding 6 to 7 hours.

I assume that would be for FL350.

What would be the range possibilities at 3,000 feet or lower?

That reddit rumour about the SOS and forced landing is 2 days old and the translation 17 hours old.

Where's that info (if true) been?



Re fuel burns. As best as I could read Boeing documents, I worked out that it would use 50% more fuel at FL100.

Time / Distance
 

Working out the basic co-ordinates - there are some 600 miles between the last known position and the Malacca Straits. Even at cruise that is at least an hour of travel. Radio silence from the aircraft, comms, or even pax mobile's from the land crossing at least in a state of upset flight / wrong direction is weird.

A bit of a red herring in this case, methinks.

Flights from Malaysia approaching Heathrow with low fuel have been in the air for 8-9 hours, MH370 wasn't long out of KL.

At least in FAA land ELT's are required and have been as long as I can remember (http://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/2012...ions/Smith.pdf)

They are activated (theoretically) by a G switch and/or cockpit remote switch (I don't recall seeing one in an airliner but I haven't spent much time up the pointy end of those). They don't (just like all normal radio) transmit from underwater even if it was activated.

As for debris from mid-air explosion, I'd be looking for something a-la TWA800 TWA Flight 800 disaster - a look back - Photo 16 - Pictures - CBS News in the water if it came apart in mid-air. Apparently they have nothing of the sort in the area they've been looking at.

I think the point he is making is about cover ups, not fuel amounts.

Yancey Your link is as I say - it is required to have an ELT. That link does not specify "g activated" - just "fuselage mounted as far aft as possible" (to survive a crash). Older airliners have them "attached" in the aft cabin, and they are crew activated.

Yes - for FAA land (and some European) GA now seem to require 'g' ELTs, but I am not sure all airliners in service do?

Leading on, were the ac "interfered with" which seems to include Xpdr, ACARS, VHF etc. then I am sure ELTs were considered as well.

In the Air Inter 148 crash at St Odile the ELT did not work.

Survivors had to wait several hours before a TV-team was directed to their site by a survivor who had gone out to find the rescue team.

Can we now please let those ELT signals be? Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

#1673 the photos of the two "Iranians".
Why do they have the same legs, feet and hand baggage?
This has to be one of the poorest examples of Photoshopping ever.
How can we believe anything the Malaysians are saying?
This whole thing has gone well beyond "ludicrous"

A few days on and all we really know is that the data they have been using to reach their primary objective of defining a first position for the searches has been pretty flawed.

The news article I read said that it was two pictures of the same individual.

If you look carefully, the left photo has part of the right photo at the bottom. It's a mis-feed of a scanner or printer or fax. Pretty common.

So chances are that the military tracked the airplane across Peninsular Malaysia to the west coast. The military have stated that it descended 1000m, i.e. either 3000 or 3500 feet. Both these new flight leveles make sense from a pilot's point of view. Last known flight level was FL350. FL320 would be a correct level if they turned to a reciprocal or westerly track. If you wanted to be cautious and follow e.g. NAT contingency procedures, FL315 would also make sense. At this point it would appear that someone is atleast in partial control of the airplane.

I think for those of you unfamiliar with this part of the world, it is almost impossible to understand the ramifications of the "saving face" aspect of the information dissemination part of this ordeal...

Network and MartinM
Just reviewed your posts in light of my question. So I understand there should be data from ACARS regarding the status of the aircraft and you believe Malaysian are sitting on it?

As I said earlier, the leaks are starting, the stories are beginning to change. And as EK Pilot has stated correctly, I bet face saving has an awful lot to do with what is going on behind the scenes.

Finally got to the end of this thread...
 

...and wish I didn't have to read half of it (but good on the Mods for clearing some of it up).

Not highly relevant I feel but those who wondered about seat-belt sign off policy it's 10,000' on the way up unless wx/turb dictates otherwise. On odd occasion below 10 they maybe off on short sectors as a courtesy to the crew if it's deemed safe/practical to do so.

There's often good reporting from Australia and then there's over hyped trash and the "A Current Affair" expose was a sad example of the latter. Yes the lads were not in compliance with company policy (indeed Civil Regulations) but the portrayal was appalling - utter trollop as a ratings grab, but given the owners of Nine Network no surprises there (and how much did they "pay" the lass for her story I wonder?). Undoubtably it's all true as evidenced by the photos and in another era it was okay but now showed poor choice of action by the crew (especially to be photographed). The FO can't defend himself now and the Captain will surely answer to the Company once they find out - might even get dismissed due to the public nature of this report in the current situation (perhaps he should sue Nine). Bad choice of broadcasting. Suffice to say jump-seat policy in MAS is quite strict (as MAS has pointed out to the program) and smoking in the cockpit is strictly forbidden, but does still happen as I'm sure it does in other companies - the Captain calls the shots.

And who said it was a B767... It's one of MAS' B737-400 still in operation in 2011. Look closer before you post.

Now I'm as perplexed as everybody else as to how, where and why, I'm open to any rational idea at this stage. Admittedly favouring hijack with the passport issue earlier perhaps it's just back to something more mundane like a badly crippled aircraft in some way with a major electrical problem (still wouldn't rule out a bomb which crippled avionics but not their ability to fly). For a long time now people have been saying why on earth are they on the west side of the pennisula (when the first news of search efforts in the Straits of Malacca hit)... I have no reason to disbelieve if these guys thought they could get the aircraft back safely they would try their damned hardest to do so. Yes if there was a raging fire onboard they might have tried WMKN (TGG) but from FL350 there's a heck of a lot of height to lose in a short distance. Same for WMKC (KBR) and anyone who's been there it's not much of an airport in a populated area. WMKP is more logical for a rapid descent to land in a straight line - if their controls were compromised who wants to man-handle a 777 more than necessary except a turn to finals and we've have no idea if they could get the gear out for example so even PEN might only be a second choice. Bear in mind all these airports are closed for the night (PEN maybe not, but very low key) at this time so crashing on the field is a last resort action especially since there appears to be a lack of communication they've no way of announcing their imminent arrival. I wouldn't be surprised if the crew felt KUL was their best, safest option and on top of that (and for the life of me can't fathom why nobody posting here didn't say it earlier) there is a Lost Comms approach procedure for KUL which this crew would have known. If they were down to basic night VFR flying then how best to get to KUL and comply with the procedure... find the west coast, turn south and fly until you pass KL. They could line up for a straight in similar to a KIKAL2 for RWY14L or give ATC a chance to guess what they are doing (if they hadn't already) and head down towards the lights of Malacca to come back for RWY32R approximating a LAPIR2 arrival. Makes logical sense if they were comms crippled so why people think it's stupid for the authorities to be searching the West Coast is a bit rich. If the guys were trying to get back to KUL then it's sad they might have been within reach of KUL and dropped it in the drink for whatever reason.

Having said that, why they're searching so far north is a bit odd but perhaps they have their reasons due radar information at their disposal and who are we to say. Just my thoughts on the situation.

The ELT unit itself contains the G switch to set it off. Nobody said they're perfect (and do have a pretty good failure to activate rate). Point is if it's underwater, who cares? The only thing that would bring attention to the black boxes are the pingers, which are water activated. AFAIK the ELT is mounted outside the pressure bulkhead (usually) and someone would have to go pull the ELT battery out (there's one in the ELT container so it keeps transmitting when it doesn't have ships power after activation), as well as disable ships power. Now you're involving maintenance activities or a large gang of people to go around pulling power and batteries from devices. I know of no evidence pointing to the likelihood of such an organized event taking place here.

And as other non-US airlines have ELTs installed, it's probably safe to say it comes from the factory pre-installed, so one would have been here. Probably something the FAA wouldn't allow them to make a customer option during type certification but I know little of that beyond some paper-pushing on some 337s I had to do.