Glad to see IFALPA is making the effort to jump on the publicity bandwagon :yuk:

The only confirmed evidence we have is the last known position and last voice transmission. The first being close to an international FIR boundary, the second being friendly and unconcerned. Interesting comparison to MH370, although it may be coincidence. Also, where is the most remote point on the route with the greatest depth of sea? No claims of responsibility, either. Certainly a possibility that it was intentional but what probability...?

AFP and Sky reporting Egyptian authorities have confirmed they've found wreckage this time.

Sky news update
 

Skynews are now reporting that debris from the aircraft has been found some 180 nm from Alexandria. Apparantly confirmed by the military as aircraft debris including some passenger personal effects.

Regard the Imarsat option mentioned on this thread, there are not many short haul operators who would bother with Imarsat. Their routes are too short and too well covered with ACARS coverage and ground frequencies to bother with an Imarsat link. But perhaps it is time to rethink the monitoring of aircraft in flight, either by permanent transponder or an Imarsat type option. Aviation cannot continue with this great question mark hanging over it - it saps public confidence in the industry.

Looking at marinetraffic.com all vessels involved in S/R yesterday are now back to their original course, none left in the general area.
That would fit with initial wreckage identified, and remaining search conducted by the Egyptian Navy. 290kms North of Alexandria is very close to LKP

The EgyptianAir Force says it has found wreckage from the missingEgyptAir plane. - A military spokesman said in a statement that wreckage and personal belongings of passengers were found 290km off the Egyptian coast, north of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. The spokesman said the Navy was sweeping the area for the aircraft's black box. EgyptAir officials said 100 relatives of the missing passengers have gathered at a nearby hotel.

Hope they are right this time (and linked personal belongings to people actually on board). Clear change from the strange 'close to Karpathos' statements.

BBC reporting confirmed debris now.

'Debris found' from Egyptair plane - BBC News

https://www.facebook.com/Egy.Army.Sp...33477036783280

Official statement , confirmed finding debris and parts belonging to the aircraft and passengers belongings by the Egyptian navy 290km north of Alexandria

Sorry my friend but 99% of Joe Public have lost interest in this story already and are back to there normal lives. This is just another tragedy which will soon be completely forgotten once the media lose interest.

the Greeks disclosed some info about this flight, maybe not as detailed as some have wished. I noticed Egyptair receives regular ACARS messages from its fleet some with full positional data lat/long/alt/spd/trk. It will be nice if they disclosed such info. When was the last one received ?

Twelve - billion - kilometres.
 

Evanelplus

I'm shocked that in 2016, we can't pinpoint to a fairly decent degree of certainty where the aircraft could be after 24hrs of daylight since it went missing.

I don't blame you from being shocked, considering the following:

Twelve - billion - kilometres. How many nautical miles is that?

I would assume the technology exists but not the need to know?

Maybe it's not too shocking after all.

290 km directly north of Alexandria puts the debris location about 25 km within the Greek FIS, with the boundary running on about a 283° heading at that point. So if the wreck is exactly 290 km north of Alexandria, it is in Greek territory, if it is a bit further west, closer to the LKP, it is within the Cairo FIS. So if Greece wants to get involved in the investigation, they probably have a right to sit at the table.

Data exchange between aircraft would obviate the need for the detection of weak signals - at least on frequently used routes.

Pioneer is a bad example, we can't go around listening to aircraft with the deep space network, that'd be overkill. The two situations are not comparable.

"Facebook" - Mo ?
 

Mo122 - Can you enlighten as to the likely accuracy of the report above? Facebook is not exactly where I'd expect any "official" notification.

(Or am I behind the times ;) )

Exsimguy

I can assure you it's very accurate and official , as an Egyptian I can tell you this is the official page and gateway to the armed forces information to the public. 100% official armed forces spokesman.

@ExSimGuy on Facebook

A surprising number of authorities indeed use Facebook and Twitter. When you look at MH370 they reported first on Facebook and in some cases had their websites running days behind that. One of the pprune locals there confirmed this prio use of Facebook.

If they dont have a process in place like you expect for an official website, then these authorities run the risk of publishing premature and incorrect information. Something which has happened a number of times. The present case is no exception of preliminary reporting.

For people on pprune this is at least a bit annoying. For families in cases like these it is painful (see interviews with families).

@portmanteau

apparently you forget Greece till recently had 'procedural control' albeit supplemented by radar for a veeery looooong test period, and cluttered vhf. Well situation has improved.
now they clear you to destination, they tell you 'omit position reporting' and they usually contact you only for sector or FIR/UIR changeover, or to 'relay info' to another flight. Comms far better now days in Greece. HTH

@striker26

Last para in your own post #213 answers first para in you post.

Also, in the past Egypt's conclusions contradicted with other agencies like NTSB on MS990 and MAK on 7K9268. So it is natural for foreign media to be skeptical.

I have to say they appear to be more open minded this time around.

@HT

There was tranfer from 'Makedonia control' sector to "Athens control" south sector (both being part of Athens ATS, just before KEA at 02:47 or so.
like i wrote earlier Egyptair gets regular ACARS from their fleet. Surely somebody would have said something -from their side- if anything abnormal or irregular was noticed from the data received which the aircraft transmitted manually or automatic. they claim 'operations normal' so to speak, till the time it disappeared from radar and that proves ONLY that the 'machine' was in good condition and nothing else.

Sky News are reporting that a body part has been found. :(

"Greek Defence minister says Egyptian authorities have found a body part, seats and suitcases in the Egyptair MS804 search".

Signal to noise ratio here is, as said elsewhere, dreadful. Could the amateurs and non pilots (please see the title of this forum) please keep their musings to themselves? Incoherent ramblings by spectators aren't helpful or useful.

Facts seem to be;

Whatever occurred could have occurred or started to occur anytime during the 40 something minutes after the last communication during which the a/c flew on normally and perhaps continued to occur all the way to the sea.

It is perfectly normal not to talk to an a/c for that length of time if remaining on its cleared route. Why on earth not? Pilots and ATC tend not to jabber pointlessly, unlike some here.

Comms were not established as the FIR boundary approached. Loss of comms in that area is, as previously stated not unusual due to extreme range. For those with no imagination at all had a mayday been made than all other aircraft within c. 200 miles would have heard it even if ATC didn't. Ergo none was made.

40 sec later the a/c began to descend rapidly and entered a series of turns. This is not inconsistent with the drill for rapid depressurisation/rapid descent though the 360' turn is not usually included in that. The 90' turn however most definitely is used in some companies's drills. The decisive turn off airway and immediate rapid descant is a well known and unique signature.

The fact that these events occurred almost immediately upon entering Egyptian airspace may or may not be a coincidence.

The turns are confidently reported as 90' left followed by 360' right. These numbers are precise parts of a whole turn and therefore do not look like the random gyrations of an out of control aeroplane. It seems most likely/almost certain that the aircraft was under a good measure of control at this point. Using these manoeuvres to speculate or infer damaged controls is simply not logical and beyond what the evidence supports. (not saying it's impossible, just there is no evidence to support it). It is, however, vanishingly unlikely for those turns to be random. It seems we can assume reasonable lateral control at least at this point.

"Spin". Oh dear. A spin is a manoeuvre where the a/c rotates almost about it's wingtip. It also only occurs at stall speed (except certain high g cases which an Airbus is most unlikely to ever reach). That loss of speed has not been reported. Bar an Extra at an airshow no aircraft - let alone an airliner does just one 360' spin, let alone a quarter one way and then a single turn the other. Airbi don't/can't spin in any but the most unusual circumstances, the flight control laws just won't allow it. If one did I'm pretty sure it would have to be in direct law (how did it get there?) and would almost cetainly be totally unrecoverable by any normal pilot and therefore result in multiple spins all the way down. Damage sufficient to cause a spin would have to be huge and catastrophic (loss of a large proportion of a flying surface or possibly t/r activation is about all I can think of) and most unlikely to result in a single turn - all but impossible. No radar will identify a spin at the 100+ mile ranges we're talking about - as the aircraft is effectively going vertically downwards the spin had no or virtually no "width" for radar to see. Compare with a 360' turn which requires two - four mies at any flying speed. Forget spin. A 360' turn was reported as observed and we have to go with that for now.

The separation interval between the left and right turns would be helpful. Were they contiguous or separated and distinct manoeuvres?

Timescale between leaving FL370 and loss of radar return at FL150(?) would be helpful.

We don't seem to know much more. No doubt we soon will.

@Wageslave Open forum open comments sorry...

Regarding the turn of 90, wasn't there some discussing with MH370 that if it had to change altitude, the pilot may do a turn of 90 degrees in order to get away from the flight line possibly used by other aircraft?

How can primary radar returns indicate an aircraft’s instantaneous heading?

It is said MS804 turned 90 degrees left and then 360 degrees right, giving the impression they were balanced turns. The primary plot may well have described such a path, but who knows where the nose was pointing?

Couldn’t it have been ‘tumbling’, inverted, slipping backwards/sideways, etc.? Very unlikely, I admit, but possible?

The greater the turn radius the greater the probability the turn was balanced/controlled, but do we know the approximate radius?

WS seems to have it buttoned up, but believing data and making assumptions from a possibly disintegrating aircraft is probably a step too far.

The use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for official announcements is now well established. The reason for using these sites is that they are equipped to handle millions of requests per second and can adjust their capacity to respond. Government networks are usually much more limited in their capacity to handle requests and cannot scale up beyond a certain limit. This means that a constant barrage of enquiries to official websites would result in most requests being met with a "Server not found" error message.

A 90 degree turn off the flight path is a standard manoeuver when initiating an emergency descent following a depressurisation or other incident. The idea is to maintain separation from other aircraft that might be flying at different altitudes on the same airway. So an indication that something may have occured that resulted in depressurisation, but no more than that. As the aircraft descended the range of any radio transmissions would also have reduced drastically, so it is unlikely that a distress call, if made, would have been received.

@Wageslave: I'd add that the public ADS-B records do not show the turns or descent. If this is a "conventional" failure, and you are correct in your interpretation of the pilot having control at these times, then it is odd or very unfortunate, that the ADS-B failed.

And covering an item that we do not know..... I don't think we know of any ACARS transmissions....

Deep perhaps, but also wide and flat and not open ocean. Should be easy to locate.

from that same BBC conversation, see BBC hyperlink above ... crash location, but if it is where this debris has been found then it sits on a boundary where the ocean floor is more like the Alps, very rugged and contoured. "That area borders a large, deep plain about 3km down." Dr Simon Boxall said an A320 could easily "slip through the cracks" of the ocean floor in the area."This is a very soft sediment area and wreckage could sink very quickly,so they need to find it fast," he said. The ocean floor ridges could also act to block signals from the black box pinger, and sonar from vessels searching for the wreckage, ...

It depends how close the site is to Crete. The initial seabed close to Alexandria is reasonably level, and then it gets fractured and fissured closer to Crete.

http://s32.postimg.org/lce7956th/image.png

Does anyone know if any revisions to CV/FDR design are in the pipeline, after MH370 and AF447, such as auto-jettisoning, floating units?

I find it rather depressing that here we are, several years on, with the risk, again, of potentially being unable to locate the data recorders.

Same here and i find it an utter disgrace..


Here we are in the year 2016..if an a/c ditches in the sea:

We rely on... A 37.5 kHz (160.5 dB re 1 μPa) pinger which can be detectable 1–2 kilometres (0.62–1.24 mi) from the surface in normal conditions and 4–5 kilometres (2.5–3.1 mi) in good conditions.

Yes from the surface... 3miles.

How far down might this a/c be located? How long have we been looking for MH370 towing a sonar device from the back of a boat @ 5mph on a very narrow sweep. Because the batteries on the pathetic ULB(Underwater locator beacon) died yonks ago??

We should be ashamed, dont blame the coffers, blame the people who make the regs in the first place for the public airspace, this should be stipulated no a/c can fly without a new and considerably improved FDR/CVR detection/recovery system in place which is not from the dark ages. /RANT

(Please excuse the rant, it is somewhat related to the issue here, RIP to all those souls lost, and thoughts to families loved ones involved.)

More information from ESA about the potential oil slick is here.

Ejectable/jettisonable Recorders
 

The technology is available and has been in use by the military for some time, as the background material in this Reuters article on AirAsia QZ8501 makes clear:

AirAsia crash makes case for ejectable black boxes | Reuters

In theory, it was discussed at the ICAO High Level Safety Conference in February last year

HLSC

but I can't quickly find anything in the publicly available documentation. Enhanced tracking was discussed, as these reports make clear - see page 60 of the pdf

http://www.icao.int/Meetings/HLSC201...s/10046_en.pdf

and

Air Transport News

and

ASN News » ICAO member states recommend new flight tracking performance standard

It generally doesn't.

You have injected the word "balanced" which may or may not have been the case. (If the FBW system was operating normally, it probably was. ). Please review this image from this post based on official information provided by the Greek Defense Minister:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ci1D4KGXEAAQ1Av.jpg
This is a summary of their interpretation of such radar information as they had, so note that it is "possible movements" not "this is God's own truth!"
Considering the summary of information apparently gleaned from radar, and that the staff providing information to their defense minister are not idiots, the general point being made is that the track over the ground (which is what the radar gives you when you track each return) led them to this estimate.
Reviewing Wageslave's post directly above yours, the answer ought to be obvious.
Track information is a collection of data points over time that tell you the aircraft's path over the ground. When an aircraft is flying (rather than falling in a stall or spin) track and "where the nose is pointed" generally coincide. (with a few degrees of crab as needed for cross wind ...)

If you re-read Wageslave's post, and look at the estimate from radar information, a falling tumbling stalled/spun aircraft would have a mostly vertical path, not one that would show what they provided.
From my own experience: years ago, when I was flight instructor, I reviewed radar tapes of an aircraft that had crashed while in a spin. The track information for the maneuvers before spin entry showed the usual time/distance lapse and ground track. The lateral distance covered once spin entry (and the ensuing failure to recover) was significantly less, both on the practice spin initiated and recovered from, and on the subsequent one initiated and not recovered from.
The figure above did not try to provide a scale, but none is needed. If it was flying (rather than stalled and falling) then radar track gives a good enough estimate for where the nose was pointed for the analysts to arrive at an estimate of heading.
Again, see the points Wageslave made in the post above yours.

(note I'm no aviation pro, just an enthusiast)

Last info I came upon around a year ago is essentially nothing. There seem to be thoughts thrown around about adding GPS coordinates to the ACARS messages plus preventing the pilot from turning off ACARS. But no concrete action yet.

You can imagine the objections, and indeed they are sensible: what if there's an electric fire? Does the benefit from pretty rare events justify the risk? And so on.

Where on the seabed will the debris field be?
 

If you look at the seabed map a few posts ago on this page (14), and measure 300 km from Alexandria, you find an arc that is on the smooth area south of the northeast-southwest ridges and well south of the rough terrain that is closer to Crete. I hope that will speed the recovery of clues to the wreck.