Well maintained...
 

I have it directly from a good first hand source that has regularly touched this aircraft for line maintenance that this was a well looked after aircraft, and that as of the last time he saw this aircraft a few weeks ago there was certainly no suggestion that the historic wing incident was of any issue.
This is a good aeroplane.

And hasn't read back through the thread and seen the two or three other times it was clearly explained why the phones could still be ringing !!!

Isn't it time to consider having CCTV on airplanes......Am I being naive?

Yes, I think you might be.

I don't think you are; not in asking the question. It has been considered for years, but perhaps only within the cockpit. The Qantas A380, that had the engine blow up and returned to SIA, had tail mounted cameras for pax entertainment for takeoff & landing and any other time it might be selected. The technology exists and is used as customer options. Hell, buses and metros have CCTV for anti hooliganism. Considering air-rage and the effect it could have on safety why not in the cabin if only for that reason. Thinking further, about live feed, consider a loss on communication a la 9/11 a/c. Fighters are scrambled and fly along side. No communications. Shoot it down yes/no? CCTV might save everyone's life, or save a catastrophe. There was a thought that one of the 9/11 a/c was targeted on Capitol Hill or the White House. The pax saved the day on that one. But imagine a repeat without pax intervention and fighter command having to make the call. We are talking worldwide here; it could happen in any country and considering the attitude in some places that are more trigger happy than others, and where factions are slightly more actively revolutionary as well.
Further, consider all the investigative work, hours and machinery and money, that has gone into searching the sea bed for the 'boxes' because they had no idea what happened. Sometimes the cause still remains a mystery. Ask the AAIB & NTSB their opinion about CCTV.
So no, I don't think it is naive. There are already CVR's, and modern FBW a/c send a massive amount of data back by live link. The amount of data Qantas received about their engine blow up was impressive. It was like a Redbull F1 car telling all, all the time. Ask Vetel if he rather know if he had a slow puncture or not, before it goes pop. Any CCTV would be on a loop as per CVR's and have protection protocols.
It is worthy of debate and not an instant dismissal. Remember the B737 rudder hard-over. The rest of us were wondering if to was going to bite us today. No one really knew, for years, what the hell happened and why. I'm sure there have been many crashes where the conclusion would have been reached if the AAIB/NTSB had eyes inside or outside. If A380/340/330 have live feeds of data back to home base it would seem that all future a/c will have such a feature, so why not add video with the proviso of agreed privacy that it is only used after an event and with mutual agreement.

MISSING MH370: Terrorism cannot be ruled out : CIA

CIA Director John Brennan said there had been “some claims of responsibility” over the missing jet that had “not been confirmed or corroborated,” and that he could not exclude the possibility of a terror link.

Satellite/aerial imagery
 

The subject of imagery on Google Earth convinced me at long last to register for PPRune, as we're finally in a subject I have some knowledge to contribute.

Contrary to popular belief by many, the imagery on Google Earth, Bing, etc. are not realtime imagery. Further, much of the imagery, particularly over urban areas, is not satellite imagery but rather aerial imagery. Google itself does not acquire much ortho imagery itself; it's primarily provided by the large satellite and aerial imagery providers.

Much of the areas outside urban centers that is acquired by satellite imagery is captured at relatively high resolution (40 cm/pixel). However, extremely remote areas may have extremely low resolution, on the order of 30 meters per pixel. Because of this, it's not surprising at all for small, remote islands to appear blurry.

While Digital Globe or their subsidiaries may be retasking satellites to capture high resolution imagery of the suspected crash areas, don't expect that imagery to appear on Google Earth in the next couple of days. More likely DG will post it on their website first, and it will eventually be integrated into GE.

If this is indeed the case, why would you not scramble?

So is an $X00M aircraft hull and an $X00M liability loss.

And therein perhaps lies one reason we see only selective steady development on stuff that accurately points at cause even if we see super fast development in all other areas of aerospace engineering.

A surprisingly large part of the worldwide insurance market ultimately shoulders the cost of a loss like this - technology that excuses parts of the risk market from contribution might sometimes put an uncomfortable / difficult to manage burden on the remainder.

Sometimes it is fairer for some mystery to remain ...

Not a criticism - just a likely truth.

The insurance market underwrites aviation and aerospace in all its guises - can't do without it, and I think at some levels they do get a say.

Very common in SAR ops. The military radar contact wouldn't have a xpndr id, so while it is potentially a clue, until it is 100% certain the a/c in question, you still have to start the search at the last known point/point last seen, which was the last transponder transmission.

There have been a lot of references to AF 447, many implying that oil slicks or debris was found quickly. Conversely, BEA reported at least 5 days between loss of aircraft and first sightings.

FLIGHT AF 447

http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flig...e.wreckage.pdf

"During the morning of 1st June, extensive air and naval resources were mobilized to find
any trace of the aeroplane and possible survivors. In spite of this, it was not until 5 days
later, and on the following days, that human remains and floating debris were found on the
surface of the sea, north of the last position transmitted automatically by the aeroplane."

"The discovery of the first floating debris at the surface of the sea, about 70 km north of the
last known position did not, however, make it possible to determine the point of impact,
due to a lack of precise knowledge of the currents that made the debris drift from the time
of the accident."

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp...p090601.en.pdf

"On Sunday 31 May 2009, . . . flight AF 447 . . . departure was planned for 22 h 00. . . . The French and Brazilian navies found debris belonging to the aeroplane from 6 June onwards. . . . The wreckage was localised on 2 April 2011 during the fourth phase of the sea searches. . . . The aeroplane wreckage was found about 6.5 NM on the radial 019 from the last known position, slightly to the left of the planned route."

"The first search phase aimed at detecting and locating the acoustic signals transmitted by the Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB) fitted on each flight recorder. As a priority, the aeroplane’s planned flight path as well as the greatest possible area inside the 40 NM circle was swept by two Towed Pinger Locators (TPL).

No signal from either of the beacons was detected by the sensors deployed in the area despite TPL passing by, on two occasions, not far from the debris field, on 22 and 23 June 2009. "

If the point of the last civilian radar return and the point of the last military radar return had been known at the same time, would a search effort not have begun at both points more or less simultaneously and not with a 4 day delay?

Passenger Manifest: Published
Cargo Manifest: Anybody seen one?

You have to ask yourself, "known to whom?"

Civilian authorities only had access to the civilian radar return, which terminated in Gulf of Thailand. Military radar return only existed on a tape somewhere in a military base and consisted of a single track among hundreds if not thousands of plane tracks seen by the military radar every day, without any association between the track and the plane ID.

It took time for a high-ranking officer to order the review of the tapes, and more time to perform the review, and even more time to authorize the release of this info to SAR. All in all, looks like it took about 2 days for this to happen.

Sir, not a four day delay. (EDIT: sorry, Hamsternull beat me to this).

If you recall a couple of days ago, US and AUS P-3's were tasked to search in the Malacca Straits, and various search areas WEST of Malaysia were up on the board behind the press briefers. That would indicate to me that both areas were being searched. I noticed a number of posters here wondering at why there were search boxes in red WEST of Malaysia. Well, now we know. :hmm:

I find it difficult to believe that there should be no active and real-time monitoring by the local military of their radar returns, and that perusal of tapes is required (allegedly taking days?). Why bother with military radar surveillance then?

A good theory. However, the ADS-B and SSR transponder antennae are not in the SATCOM mount and are duplicated on the top and bottom of the aircraft. So it is unlikely that a corrosion/crack in the SATCOM antenna and decompression would lead to a loss of SSR (which will be what the ATC were tracking) or to loss of ADS-B. It is possible that there could be a common mode electrical failure but that is doubtful.

The aircraft also underwent an extended maintenance ~ 2 weeks ago at which corrosion/cracking around the SATCOM mount should/would have been checked for.

No wonder we are having huge page drops by the mods....please read the thread before posting!

EDMJ, this event took place during the mid watch. Midnight to early AM shift. Consider the human factors involved. Consider also that process one goes through in the military to confirm what one suspects one has seen.

I don't think a radar operator expected a COMAIR to switch off its transponder while heading north/northeast, and begin to head west or southwest, with no IFF reply.

There is a lot we don't know, to include what comms challenges someone on the scope made, or if the person on the scope missed a trick and it was the next day before someone had a good hard look at the radar tracks and began to put one and two together.

In SAR, typical initial datum is LAST KNOWN LOCATION. So, lost IFF contact was most likely foremost in the minds of the national SAR coordinator, and it took some time and effort to establish that there was another possible datum to explore on the search mission.

That it took the authorities a few days to get that info out to the press "there are some things we can tell you and some things we cannot tell you" is a matter for you to take up with the authorities in Malaysia.

hamster3null

I gave full benefit of doubt to Malaysian statements up till now, but given the initial report of radar contact having been lost at 2:40 (later modified to 1:22, explaining that 2:40 was when the information was received from ATC) and the slip of tongue by the Air Force chief on the press conference of the 9th hinting at a possible return makes me suspect all this information was known very soon after the event, maybe not with the degree of certainty as it was announced today, but with a good degree of probability. There have been unexplained reports of the Straits of Malacca being searched since two days.

One reason could be they are looking for traffic coming into their area, not transiting / exiting.

Secondly, if there is any correlation between the civil and SSR side, the primary return could have been verified as a known / identified / flight planned "target", and thus disregarded / categorised as low risk.

Finally, retrieval from tapes is required in the civil world for various reasons. In the military world I suspect less so, since the basic requirement is real time. Think through what the military system and radar is implemented for - a backup civil / SAR is not high on the priorities.

NoD

This was posted on a thread on A.net, but the source was not verified there. IMO, it does have the hallmarks of an official statement.