How in the world can we lose an entire jumbo jet today?

I mean, seriously. We can buy a $150 spot tracker that pings a satellite every 10 minutes and runs for a week on one set of batteries and it can survive on a small catamaran, but an entire jumbo jet doesn't have enough equipment on it to keep it from completely disappearing? This is twice now. It took forever to locate that Air France flight that crashed a couple of years ago too. I'm baffled at how this can happen again in Malaysia.

I'm wondering if this is not the victim of some sort of an electronic attack. Knowing the redundancy in the systems it's hard to imagine how something not malicious could take out all of the electronic gear without blowing the plane apart.


That or the airplane flew through a time warp.

This brings up so many unsettling questions. These may have no relation to the cause of this tragedy, but are shocking nonetheless...

Why, especially after 9/11, can transponders be turned off?

How can passengers with stolen passports buy tickets and successfully board international flights often enough to barely raise an eyebrow?

There are more, but those two have been bugging me the most.

Prayers for the victims and families...

Mike

The answer to both is because the United States and the FFA can not control what occurs outside of our bounderies on flights not coming to the US.

Seriously, that's your answer??? This is not a US-specific problem, and needs a global solution.

Mike

ALIENS!
'nuf said.

Why do the aliens get blamed for everything?

Without them, we wouldn't even have the computers for you to post such conspiracy theory garbage in the first place, now would we???!!!!!

Mike

Ancient

I saw one blurb that claimed the plane was hit by a meteor.

It was:

Extraterrestrials
Elves
Kidnapped By Terrorists
The Plane Is Hiding Under an Invisibility Cloak
Uighur Militants Attacked the Plane
Life Insurance Scam
North Korea
Exploded Mid-Air and Disintegrated
New Bermuda Triangle
Supernatural
Lost was a prophecy

http://news.yahoo.com/report-chinese-may-show-plane-debris-images-214930324.html

This piece leaves the cause open, but it does share a view of the current status - which is probably old news.

Check out the related stories for your own records. I smell a hostage takeover that went real bad or assassination/terrorism.

I saw that at 11pm last night...it was daylight over there and still no news of whether or not that debris was related to the plane?

Now, that said, I just read that the satellite image is actually from last weekend and (presumably) just discovered. Current and wind may have moved that debris around making it hard to find. There has been so much misinformation on this thing, they're probably waiting until they have something definitive before announcing anything.

Apparently planes went to that location and couldn't find any debris. ...and then another weird piece of the puzzle:



Maybe there's a chance this plane is sitting somewhere in India on a quiet (and long) runway? That plane needs a runway that's nearly a mile long to land...not much chance of hiding it (and certainly not for this long with all of those people and cell phones). Seriously, a west direction for four hours at 550mph is at least Sri Lanka. Looking at Google Earth, that plane could have reached the western side of India with that time / range.\


Too bad those engine signals don't include a latitude / longitude...this is just silly.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

So...basically, forget everything you've heard...again. What an example of how not to manage the flow of information.

Truly sad for the families of passengers and crew regardless

what I find incredible is that the concept of the plane flying itself in survival mode (ala 2001 space odyssey) with the entire manifest dead (presumably from decompression at 35000 asl)

The engineer's description of what the plane WOULD do (in a hypothetical situation of rapid decompression/crew unresponsiveness) is almost freaky: slowly shutting down non-essential systems as the plane's "health" deteriorated, sending messages via sub-systems to local air/land/sea receivers, etc.

You'd think someone would have installed a few automatically deployed EPRIB from the tail, or chaffe, or SOMETHING..

Or...maybe the plane was captured in flight by a giant stealth plane... by Dr. Evil. To be ransomed for ONE MEEELLLON DOLLARS

I would not rule out that, not hard to hide something where no one is looking

There has been so much conflicting information coming out it's impossible to say what happened. Did it even actually turn back?

There could be a lot of political face saving going on here, when it comes to releasing data. Remember the Egypt Air crash, where the copilot locked the Captain out of the **** then dove the 767 into the ocean? For months the Egyptians tried to blame Boeing and the 767 for that.

If it did turn back, why, and how far did it really get before it either hit the water or went down in the jungle?

If not, and it went down near where the transponder stopped working, where's the debris field?

When I first heard about it, my guess was they had a short in the Electronics compartment, which is below the ****. That would explain why the transponder(s) and radios quit working, that would explain the turnback. You don't fly into China with no radios or transponder, unless you want to be shot down.

OK, so say they had such a problem, turned back, but then the problem escalated to a full blown fire in the E/E compartment. Now what? They would be getting smoke in the ****.

They cannot simply go down there and spray it with an extinguisher. But they would want to descend to a lower altitude (below 10,000') and turn off the pressurization, to keep the smoke from circulating.

Now say the fire is out of control and it eventually renders the airplane unflyable. The 777 uses a 'fly by wire' flight control system, electrons tell the hydrolic actuators what you want it to do, but with zero electrics, not so much.

The crew may have been overcome by the smoke when their oxygen ran out, and the airplane did a slow descent into the sea or jungle, if it got that far.

Remember, this happened at 2am. Pitch dark out over the water, no witnesses other than maybe a fishing boat, but at 2am, they were sleeping too, and seeing an airplane in the dark is pretty hard if the position lights aren't working.

If it blew up inflight, due to a bomb or a meteor strike, there would be floating seat cushions, luggage and bodies all over the place.

If the crew was able to set it down gently on the water, ala Sully on the Hudson, (highly doubtful at night) the airplane would eventually fill with water and sink. Again, this was 2am local, it might have floated for a few hours, but still gone under before anyone (like Fishermen) was able to spot it. There are huge 20 man life rafts at every door however, and those would have been deployed and spotted by now, I would hope.

Unless they didn't put it down so gently, and everyone was dead on impact, and it sank. Still, there should be some debris floating by now.

I'm going with Aliens.

We need to get back to Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw. The media today would rather BE the story than report it...

BTW, Todd, if you were trying to be sarcastic about the aliens, I missed that (and I'm sorry).

Mike

would any passenger be able to initiate a text/voice call if anything other than something sudden were to happen (instantly incapacitating all crew and passengers)?

And if a large explosion occurred (enough to completely demolish the plane beyond small pieces), you'd think NSA or some spy agency would see/detect it? I mean really, NORAD isn't totally asleep at the switch here.

And is that the best Chinese satellites can do in terms of resolution? I'm sure they've got stuff as sharp as western nations (heck, they built half the crap in our surveillance satellites). But maybe they have older satellites patrol this area of the globe and use their top stuff to look at other areas (like S.Korea or something)

My money is on something sudden happened, since I'm sure any passenger with a communication device would attempt some contact if a long, drawn out problem happened (like smoke in the cabin, etc)

Yeahbut...you think they are going to get a cell signal from inside the airframe, out over the water?

I seriously doubt it. I can't even get one half the time when I'm on the taxiway in Atlanta!

This ain't the USA we are talking about, it's the third world.

I'll bet it's in the jungle, in a lot of little pieces, far from where they are looking right now. Nobody saw it go in because it was 2am, and until some farmer stumbles across the wreckage, they'll be looking for a long, long time.

Or it might have gone into the water, with a very small or no debris field if it stayed mostly intact.

But if it was something sudden, there should be something to find in the area that the transponder ceased functioning.

A simple automated (and non-tamper-able) spot tracker mounted in the tail or a cabin top pod would resolve all of these questions with about 10 minutes of work. I still can't believe we don't have this ability.

Cell phones wouldn't work out over the open ocean so even if there was time to get a call or text out, they would have had to use the plane's data systems to get it out...clearly those either weren't working or stopped working rather quickly. But, that does bring up another point...if there were a runway large enough to put that thing down, there would probably be a cell phone tower in reach and someone would get some sort of signal out. It's unlikely that plane is hidden somewhere.

Jake, obviously the technology exists for the gps trackers, but like everything else, it costs money. Nobody wants to pay for it, and with 40,000 flights around the globe per day, nobody wants to monitor them all.

We have two transponders, and then there is the 'skin paint' of large metal objects flying through the air, from ground based radar, ie. old school stuff that they say shows the flight turned around and headed back towards Malaysia.

The case could be made that there should be a third transponder which only operates once airborne, from an independent power source (internal battery) which cannot be turned off by the crew or anyone else, that may indeed be the result of this investigation.

why isn't anyone investigating David Copperfield?

This is far from a David Copperfield operation.

Now this: hey, look! Both photos have the same legs?


Seriously, you are scanning these photos for worldwide distribution to try and identify these guys and you don't take the time to scan each one cleanly or (gasp) extract a digital screen grab? Facepalm.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...rlines-and-the-case-of-the-missing-legs/

How much would that cost compare to the search effort that has everything from satellites to submarines trying to find it? It could be as simple as a something that transmits a constant and simple stream of data by a radio signal. A bottom of the line 777 costs $261M so if it adds .5% to the cost? If you also start to consider the fact that there ~could be~ a (granted, slight) chance for survivors, finding them quickly could make a difference too.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/09/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-black-box

This right here:

Air traffic controllers today must orchestrate the most congested airspace using primarily voice commands. You can send and receive text messages from most aircraft, surf the web and even stream House of Cards. The system that powers the plane is limited to pre-dial-up internet connection speeds.

There is simply no datalink onboard an aircraft with the bandwidth to continuously stream the volumes of data collected and stored during every second of a flight by the flight data recorder and the **** voice recorder.

I can't prove it, but I'm about positive this is George Bush's fault.

The least exotic explanation is probably what happened. They went down in the jungle somewhere and we will never know where/why. If they went down in the ocean, that is a big piece of water and it can take a lot of time before debris is found.

I suppose they are now searching for the onboard flight data recorder and **** recorder.. 15 mile range for those beacons Timbo?

There are two Emergency Locator Transmitters on the 777's I fly, one in the **** and one in the tail. I'm not sure what the Malaysians use, or if they use any at all. The ELT's are supposed to self activate if they get wet, or if they are jarred loose from their mounts by an impact such as a crash landing.

BUT...if they went down in the water, the ELT signal is going to be very weak, depending on how deep it is. If they went down in the jungle, it should be able to be picked up by any aircraft flying over within about 50-100 miles.

ELT's are in most commercial airplanes in the USA, even in a small 2 seater like a Cessna 150. We often pick up ELT signals when flying around the in the USA, because student pilots will hit the test switch and then forget to turn it off, or someone will bump one and set it off unknowingly.

As far as radio coverage, down there in Malaysia, not so much as here in the US of A. I've flown down there from Tokyo to Singapore many times and we are out of both radar and voice communication a good bit of time between the islands. So even if there were a distress radio call made from the plane, it may have been out of range of any receiver when they made it.


There's a lot of water out there, and a lot of jungle too. It will turn up someday, no doubt. They found the Titanic didn't they? It took a while, but they found it.
BUT...the ELT's are powered by an internal battery and it will only last so long, maybe a week, if it was in tip top shape to begin with, maybe less if it was an old battery.

i wonder if anyone checked the hydrophone network. If they can hear whales fart, they might have heard something they could triangulate.

Or maybe a submarine caught a weird sound.

The jungle scenario makes sense, too. Remember the AirTran that splatted into the Everglades that took forever to find... I mean the WHOLE plane disappeared.

So someone thinks they might have seen it on radar? How would you identify MH370 from any other flight if all the electronics are out?

And they knew exactly where to look for that one too, they had great radar coverage, just outside of Miami.

The more I think about this, the more I think it was....

Snakes! Time to open some windows!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofRB63SM-vE

Tim,

Do you know of any device that signals just prior to a hard impact? I got this blurb from CNN that assumes the plane would have had to touch down in a controlled fashion in order to not fire off this beacon.

I think they messed up the translation. There is nothing that emits a signal if you are 'about to impact the ocean', other than the pilots screaming.

I believe they must be talking about the ELT's I mentioned above. The ELT's are independent units, not tied to any of the aircraft systems, and they are both portable, you are supposed to take them with you into the life rafts, if you ditch in the ocean.

The **** Voice Recorder (CVR) and Flight Data Recorder (FDR) are both tied to the airplane's electrical systems, and other systems. Those are the "Black Boxes" (actually painted bright orange, so they can be easier found) the media talks about.

But they are not the ELT's, which do emit an emergency signal once activated, on a VHF radio freq. which is 121.50.

If you own a VHF handheld, you might be able to hear the woo-woo-woo signal it puts out if you are near an airport when somebody tests one.

But not a marine VHF - those are on 156.0 MHz (channel 0, UK coast guard) to 162.025 MHz (channel 88B, AIS)

CNN is now saying it may have flown for an additional 4 hours...into the Indian Ocean.

This tells me either the crew was incapacitated, or it was hijacked, or one of the pilots took it for a joy ride.

I still think that they had some type of electrical short in the E/E bay and turned back to return to Malaysia. Then they descended due to smoke in the **** and/or cabin, then the crew was incapacitated and the airplane flew on autopilot at what ever altitude they had set (10,000' is what we usually use for a decompression/smoke event) until it ran out of gas (4 more hours?) and then the engines flamed out and it went into the Indian Ocean.

It that's where it is, they will have a very hard time finding it. Needle in a much bigger hay stack...and a week late to the party.

Timbo,

Don't they have oceanic radio that uses HF frequencies to communicate longer distances? I remember being in South Florida and I could hear airline flights reporting over Gander.

Yes, we still use HF as a #3 back up to;

#1 VHF and

#2 Sat com.

That's how we pass our position reports to the controllers when we are out of radar range, which is quite a bit of the time, over water or in the third world. We have to give them our time over a waypoint, the estimated time to the next waypoint, and the following waypoint, our altitude, fuel, winds, etc.

I prefer Sat com, but not every place on the planet has Sat Com installed in their Air Traffic Control centers. Most of the third world does not have it, that's where we typically use HF, because we are out of VHF range once out over the water more than about 150-200 miles from a VHF tower.

Here's the thing about HF though, it is TERRIBLE. The quality of the reception is very bad, most of the time. And it is affected by solar storms, even thunder storms will wash out the transmissions sometimes.

Then you have the language barriers, when you are trying to hear the Chinese or Russians or Africans, who are trying to speak English but do it very poorly.

We have been bitching about still using HF, a WW2 technology, in this century for many years, when Satellite Com is available and it is much clearer.

We also have a thing called CPDLC (Controller/Pilot Data Link Com) which also uses satellites, that we use over Canada, Iceland and parts of Western Europe and parts of Africa and Asia. With CPDLC, we don't even have to talk on the radio, we just type a message to the controller (we call it E Mail) and they can message us back, no radio calls needed.

BUT...as I said a long while back, it's a Money thing. A lot of the third world doesn't have Sat Com or CPDLC because they can't (or won't) pay for it. It's also a "Jobs" thing. As with Gander, Iceland and Ireland, we still use HF to back up the VHF and CPDLC.

Why? Because if they got rid of HF, they'd have to lay off a lot of HF operators.

I don't want to age myself but it was a while ago before SAT comms became as prolific.

Here's the typical route for the Atlanta to Johannesburg flight I do once in a while:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL200

As you can see, it is out over water, well away from any radar coverage, or VHF radio coverage, for 90% of the flight. Luckily (for me) most of the way we do have Satellite comm via CPDLC with various controllers along the way, starting with NYC, then Santa Maria, then Abidjan, Dakar, Windhoek, and finally Joburg.

We use HF as a back up, but we have zero radar coverage most of the way, only over land in the US and in Africa.

Here's the track for a typical ATL-Dubai flight, I just flew this a few days ago.


http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL8/history/20140313/0150Z/KATL/OMDB

As you can see, you have much better radar coverage because you are over land much more, only out of radar contact up over the north Atlantic for about four hours. We have CPDLC the entire way over water there however, and also use HF for back up. Over land, we use VHF most of the time, unless we are wayyy up into Canada going on a Polar route, to say Shanghi out of Detroit.


http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL583/history/20140313/1720Z/KDTW/ZSPD
We go straight north out of Detroit, over the north pole, and down the back side, so we have no radar and no VHF and even the HF won't work too good up north of 72 degrees north. Sat com works most of the time up there though, which is nice!

Here's the Tokyo to Singapore route I used to fly quite a bit, as you can see, they put an Airbus A330 on the route lately, so I'm not flying there any more, but it may come back to the 777 in the summer. You can see it's over water a lot more than over land, and we are out of radar coverage quite a bit, and using CPCLC most of the time for communications with ATC.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL621/history/20140313/0900Z/RJAA/WSSS

We really need to get the third world to buy into sat-com and get better coverage, and stop using HF. Also, Radar has limitations out over water, because it has to be physically mounted to something, ie. a land mass, or a ship, and it has limited range. I doubt any third world country is going to spend the money to put a ship on station just to monitor airline traffic.

Wow, Timbo. Even if you were lucky enough to successfully pull off a "Sully," those polar routes are so remote, you're not getting any real search and rescue until way too late. Can't be a comfortable feeling if you allow yourself to think about it.

As an aside, the best CNN can do right now as an "expert" is Bill Nye the Science Guy??? Wow.....

Mike

Yeah, they are woefully short on experts!

And Richard Quest??

Spare me!

He may be an expert -passenger- but he's got his head up his butt when it comes to anything technical!

Here's what he's an "Expert" at:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2...arge/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

When I was flying KC135's in the military we would go on very long deployment flights, "up north". They would give us a .38 handgun, one, for the whole crew! It was supposed to be for self defence if we went down in 'unfriendly territory' (cold war era) but we all knew it was so we could kill ourselves, if we survived a crash landing in the artic or in the ocean!


There were 5 crew and 6 bullets...just in case you missed.

Interesting...thanks for the info Timbo.

So, with all of the theories abound, I'm with you...some sort of catastrophic electrical failure followed by sort of incapacitation. If it was a hijacking, that was a failure - because usually they want to make some sort of statement with it.

But, a couple of questions: if they had an electrical malfunction severe enough to take down all communication options AND cause them to descend to clear smoke, would it have affected other fly-by-wire control systems or autopilot? How separate are those systems? You've also got other people on the plane - flight attendants, etc. It would have to be pretty bad to get everybody. What are the chances of an electrical failure that caused a couple of issues including a depressurization that might have gone somewhat unnoticed - maybe that electrical failure affected the instruments that indicated the problem? I know you should be able to recognize that but we had that private jet several years ago with a faulty door seal that knocked everyone out.

There are warning horns that go off if/when the cabin altitude gets above 10,000', just to warn you of a slow decompression, which was not the case in the Paine Stewart jet. They had a slow decompression from the door seal, but no warning system for high cabin altitude.

On the 777, there is one central location where all the electrons come together, that is in the E+E compartment, which is under the floor just aft of the ****. It's a very small space filled with all the computers, for all the systems and the radios, transponders, etc. Everything electrical passes through there on it's way to somewhere else. There is also a 'master computer' which is called the AIMS Cabinet.

Many times when we get on the jet, there are 4 mechanics in the **** trying to do a "Reset of the AIMS cabinet" because the airplane is giving them all kinds of stupid nonsense messages. It's a computer, sh!t in, sh!t out, so like any Microsoft product, they'll shut it down and reboot it, then run all their systems tests, again, and hope the status messages go away. This takes about 30 minutes.

Just last month a Captain friend of mine had to go 'down in the hole' to reset some circuit breakers for the SATCOM system which had quit working. They had to call ATL Maintainance on the HF radios and get instructions on where the CB's were, then go back into the first class cabin, pull up the rug, open the hatch, and climb down into the E+E bay to reset them. This while they were cruising at altitude over the south Atlantic, from Joburg to ATL.

So...it's not unheard of that something in the E/E compartment could go wrong. What other systems it takes out depends on what went wrong. If it was bad enough, it might knock out the transponders and radios, then start a smoke/fire event.

Remember the 787's battery overheating problems? Yeah. And that was a brand new airplane. These Malaysian 777's are 10-15 years old, who knows how good their mx on them is? Do they reset their Aims cabinets when they get a bad status message, or just say, "You can go without it, you'll be ok..." because they don't want to take a 30 minute delay. And what was the history on this particular air frame? They track mx issues specific to airframes. Did this one have a history of E/E issues? Nobody's saying yet.

If that's the case, you can understand why the airline officials would -not- be forthcoming with that info. It puts the blame squarely on them and their shoddy mx....IF that's the case. I'm just speculating here. I don't know what they consider a mx no-go issue. I know I don't leave ATL unless the airplane is 100%, due to my butt being out over the water for 14 hours, or over the north pole.

If the smoke/fire was bad enough to kill the pilots, the pax were dead too. All the air circulates throughout the entire airplane, which is why you would want to descend below 10,000' and shut off the pressurization, to stop the smoke circulation. The pilots have oxygen masks of course, but only about an hours worth of O2, if the bottle was full when they left. Sometimes they are only half full when you leave. Yes, we check it. I don't know if they do however.

If they got it turned around and descended to 10,000' and pointed it west, but then were overcome with smoke...it will fly on autopilot until it runs out of fuel, again, depending on how bad the fire was in the E/E compartment. Even if the autopilot stops working, the airplane is in trim to fly straight and level, it will amble along by itself, just like a sailboat will, going downwind if you've trimmed the rudder pressure to about zero then you fall overboard while taking a pee, it will go on without you, until some air bumps upset it enough to send it into a banking turn, then it will just slowly spiral into the sea.

It is very strange, and the 777 has not had any inflight fires in the E/E bay to my knowledge, but it may have been a hijacking with a couple morons who thought they could make it to Pakistan or...? BUT...if they were savvy enough to know to turn off the transponder, they also should have known how much fuel and what type of range they had to work with, and made it to where ever they were going.

I still think it was some type of mechanical issue and it went into the ocean or jungle.

OR...it was hijacked and ended up in the sea. Either way, that's a lot of water to search. Remember the Air France flight that went down off South America? The search party had a very good radar fix of exactly where they were, but it still took them two years to find it.

If one of the pilots had decided to go rogue, he would have had an airport in mind and been there by now, and we'd have heard about it. You can't hide a 777 for very long, even in the third world. If one of the pilots had wanted to kill himself, he would have just rolled it over and gone straight in, transponder ON, not off, what does he care about radar coverage, he probably would have made a radio call too, like "Adios MF'rs!" I doubt he'd fly along for 4 hours waiting to die.


Now, do we "Trust" the Malaysian radar data? Do we trust the "Pings" they say had it flying along west bound for four hours? Or should they go back and search the last known position again?

They would be better off with Jonny Quest

one news story hinted at some cracking around the base of the antenna arraw, which may have failed in this case, causing the communications blackout.

plausible (also would explain the course change if that's what happened) but wouldn't explain the disappearance unless something else happened to incapacitate the crew/pax.

i suspect that if crew loses the antennae, but were otherwise unharmed, they could still manage to find a runway to set down.

so, were possibly looking at:

something that incapacitated the crew as well as the airframe, but
wasn't instantaneously catastrophic (no debris field in flight path)
no "adios m-f'er" and no transponder, so not likely a human act
no crew or computer awareness of problems before last communication

was there any weather that night? maybe lightning strike? meteor hit?
ground /air to air missile?
front fell off?

The weather was clear.

A failure in "the antennae array" would require multiple other unrelated issues to occur at the same time. They should still have other methods of communicating (Tim can probably comment). I also would find it difficult to believe that all of the communications antennae are housed in one unit.

There are several different antennae on the belly of the airplane and a sat com sender/receiver on top, so a failure of just one would only affect that one radio/transponder. Everything is redundant, except the AIMS Cabinet, that's the weak link and it controls... everything!

We have 5 generators, 3 hydrolic systems, 6 fuel pumps, two in each tank, 2 pressurization systems, electronic engine controllers, three autopilots, two independent GPS/Nav systems, etc. but they all run through the E/E bay and AIMS cabinet, and it even has a 'dumb mode' to back up the normal mode...but if the whole thing catches on fire, or shorts out for some reason...not good!

and if the AIMS cabinet "breaks", what happens? Can you still fly?

I saw something about the antenna issue. Sounded like cracks in this area of the fuselage could lead to rapid decompression (probably a default effect in their risk assessment process). So, if that report was correct, it wouldn't necessarily be a simple as let's just grab the backup.

Of course, the media tends to blow all of these things out of proportion...

Mike

It's a pretty complex piece(s) of equipment, with many functions, but the flight control computers run through there, and some of the navigation stuff, and the autopilots, so if those go out, you are screwed...but it's never happened (to my knowledge) in flight, so unless there was a fire in that area, which caused overheating and damage to the AIMS, I doubt it would fail like that.

A rapid decompression would cause you to want to put on your oxygen mask immediately and begin an emergency descent to 10,000', and a turn towards the nearest airport, perhaps that's what they did, but that shouldn't cause both transponders and all radios, 3 VHF, 2 HF and 1 SATCOM to fail. They should have been able to put out a distress call if it was a rapid decompression, and they should have been able to breathe without an 02 mask once they got below 10,000' and they should have been able to navigate to a suitable alternate and communicate with ATC...Unless...they were overcome by smoke and fumes. They might have done the first part, then passed out and the plane just flew along at 10,000' until it ran out of gas.

I just wish the idiots on CNN would get out of that 777 Simulator and stop showing the Al Qaeda Wannabees how to turn off the transponder and operate the autopilot!

CNN YOU ARE MORONS!

Yup, serious Face Palm stuff!

Isn't there some sort of automatic countermeasures system that would take care of a fire?
In datacenters they use special gas to extinguish fires without damaging the computers too badly.

I still think it's odd that there where two Iranians on board with fake passports, although it could be completely unrelated (traveling under the regime's radar?).
What if they just stole it? Biggest heist ever?

At least one of the guys flying on a stolen passport was vetted out as legitimate...just traveling illegally and probably with an eye toward illegal immigration (and possibly part of a human trafficking business). I remember a report that his mom was waiting for him and she was interviewed by the gobermint. The media scrutiny appears to be off those two for the time being.

There are fire extinguisher bottles for both cargo areas, forward and rear cargo compartments, but the E/E bay is separated from the fwd cargo hold, by a bulkhead wall, there is no fire extinguishing system in the E/E compartment other than a smoke elimination venturi valve type thing, which uses differential pressure to push the smoke out the valve...

And 60% of the time, it works every time!

Hey, hey, hey...if everything worked 100% every time, us engineers would be out of work.

So am I the only one who thought "rapid decompression" was just code for ka-boom???

I forgot about the small handful of times that jetliners have sprouted moon roofs and managed to land with most of the people they had aboard when they left the airport...

Of course, until the Captain Sully video, I also thought that floating seat cushions were only on the plane to keep everyone busy as they fell to a horrific death. I know, you're supposed to wait until AFTER the "water landing" to put those on. But, has there ever been another successful water landing? Is it even possible on ocean waves?

Mike

EDIT: Jake, if more users knew how to write user requirements (OK, knew what they need in the first place), your success rate would skyrocket...

Now CNN is saying the NYT is reporting there were radar returns that had the plane climbing from 35,000 (a normal cruising alt.) up to 45,000'.

The service ceiling is only 43,100' on Delta's 777's, but if they were light you could easily climb to 45,000. Then it descended to 23,000', then it climbed again.

Of course no pilot would do this...UNLESS...you were fighting for control of the airplane and yanking back and forth on the control column.

Also, they are showing a ground track that zig zags a bit, after it crossed over Malaysia.

So...if what they are now reporting is accurate (and I give it 50/50 at best) it sounds like it was being hijacked, and flown by amateurs, who may have been looking for their destination. If so, somebody trained them on shutting off the transponder.

The question is, why?

What were they trying to do, crash it and kill people on the ground, or steal it, or just get to somewhere else? (Thailand, India?)

It would be very strange if they were able to overpower two pilots, and then fly the airplane on the path CNN is showing now. I guess we won't know what was really going on until we hear the **** voice recorder. I just hope they can find it in less than two years!

It takes a little while to climb 10,000 feet doesn't it? And then to drop from there over 20,000 feet? That's a really slow struggle.

Several years ago the golfer Payne Stewart's plane had a CO problem, and it flew until it ran out of fuel. There may have been an escort that witnessed it.

It happens.

Payne's plane slowly lost it's pressurization, the pilot(s) passed out, and it flew on auto pilot until it ran out of gas and crashed. There were F16's that intercepted it to see what was going on. The reported fog on the inside of the windows, which indicated loss of pressurization.

http://www.airsafe.com/stewart.htm

Jake, depending on how heavy/light the airplane was, it could climb at 1-2,000 feet per minute from 350 to 450. So maybe 5 minutes. But much less if you 'zoomed' it up there by pulling back harder, but you'll bleed off airspeed if you do that, and you won't stay up there long before you run out of airspeed and come right back down, which might be why they dove down to 230.

Hmmm...that would be an interesting clue if it is true. I'm still not sure I buy the hijacking theory from the altitude changes - 5 Minutes is a really long fight in a cabin (allowing time for some folks to certainly join in). That could still be a single event that left the plane in a sharpish nose up attitude when it stalled at that crazy altitude and pitched back down...but it probably wouldn't have traveled too far if that were the case. Too high for a bird strike, weather too good for hail. Cracked windshield(s) nobody noticed? ... I guess the Aliens still have this one for now.

And I still stand by my first topic...if the engines are globally capable of continuously broadcasting performance data to Rolls Royce every few minutes, why in the world can't the plane send some similar but specific location data? Granted, I have the benefit of hindsight, but this seems like a really big engineering duh-huh.

I agree Jake, it should be able to send position/speed/altitude/heading data to a satellite every 2 minutes or so...but then you'd have to install sat com capability to every airliner flying. And you'd have to put up more satellites, to monitor every square inch of the planet.

Right now less than 25% of the world airline fleet have Sat Com, and there are lots of 'dead spots' all over the globe. Then you'd have to have someone monitor all that data, from 40,000 flights per day, and you'd have to have some way to store all that data, and here's the biggest obstical:

WHO is going to PAY for that??

As with most things, it comes down to money. More safety costs Mo'money, and no Airline CEO or Politician wants to spend that money.

What's the trigger point in that awful scenario (Stewart)? I'd hate to be the guy making the call, or pulling the trigger; but would also hate to see it crash into a major populated area.

The Coast Guard has a hard enough time figuring out drift patterns when a boat goes missing, and they only deal with two dimensions of forces. Can't imagine how difficult this job must be right now in Malaysia.

Mike

By trigger point, do you mean who decides to shoot it down? And when?

I'm guessing if it was heading towards Washington, DC, they would have shot it down. Heading towards Montana, not so much.

I'm very confident that the solutions already exist, and it sadly is all about the money.

But, while we're already on the wish list portion of the discussion; who else is stunned that there isn't a remote control override available yet? After what happened on 9/11, and seeing what the military drones can do (remotely flown from under a mountain on the other side of the planet), I'd say this is long overdue as well.

Mike

Yes, do they brief/counsel you guys on that, or are you even allowed to discuss it?

I don't think DC is the only place with lives worthy of saving. And, I mean that as a caring human being, not a political troll.

Mike

Yeatbut....those jackasses in DC think THEY are the most important people on the planet, so they want to be "Protected".

But the people in Montana?

The clowns in DC couldn't care less.

Here's what Sully had to say about the Malaysia flight:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-26572575

There's nobody to hit in montana. Seven phone calls later almost everyone would be out of the way. lol

Sully is such a good talker. He sounds really intelligent and manages to say stuff while maintaining dignity. He doesn't say anything that's not factual, doesn't blame, and he doesn't bite on the latest "facts". That's a cool news set too.

Right now Pierce Morgan has some clown on who is telling everyone how to get down into the E/E compartment, where all the circuit breakers are!

Thanks CNN!

Al Queda must be LOVING all this great info for taking over and disabling a 777!

That would make hijacking/terrorism very easy, and make TSA searches even more worthless.

As I said earlier, the satellite coverage would have to be increased to have a comm link with every flight. Also, as the Iranians proved a couple years ago, they can hack a remote control system and take over a drone, and land it in Iran. It would only be a matter of time before some goofballs hacked a remote control system to take over a flight and land it elsewhere, hold it for ransom, sell it back to the owners.

Think Somali Pirates, but taking airplanes full of people, instead of big ships.

Ummm, yeah...no. I'm up for a $1,200 spot tracker (which is about 10X our cost) mounted in plane in a manner that is really tough to disable that broadcasts an id,lat,long,heading,and speed every 2 minutes. Seriously....that's not that much data.

OK, so you install a unit which is going to broadcast all that info, but what/who is going to receive this data out in the "Dead Zones" around the world?

Here's more speculation:
http://news.msn.com/world/missing-plane-piracy-theory-gains-more-credence

I have some doubts about the accuracy of altitudes reported by the Malaysian Military...

It may have just stayed at 35,000' and the radar returns were so weak, they thought it was at 45K, and 23K, and then back at 35K, but it wasn't.

The part that concerns me most is the zig-zag track, if that really happened, someone was alive and turning the airplane, as if they were looking for a place to land it. That could have been the pilots, going back to the "smoke in the ****" scenario.

Or it could have been hijackers, who were looking for their secret island hide-away complete with a paved airstrip!

We won't know until we hear the **** voice recorder.

I found it!
777-300 for sale - Vietnam

Timbo,

Regarding hijacks, I have the impression that some commercial pilots are now allowed to carry side arms. Does this apply to international flights?

Nice!

Everybody pitch in a few bucks, we can fill the belly with hulls and masts and use it to go to regattas all over the world!

That's a US Domestic only program, and it requires a week long training program to get certified, at your expense. The guys who do carry in the US are not allowed to take their guns out of the country. Remember this incident?


http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/26/pilot.gun/index.html

We do have Federal Air Marshals who fly on select International flights however. When they arrive into another country, they have to put their guns/ammo in lock boxes and turn them over to the local authorities while they layover, then pick them up on the way out. I don't think any other country, except maybe Isreal, has an 'Air Marshal' type program.

If this turns out to be a hijacking, I've got to wonder about motive, and destination. Especially since it was flying a zig-zag pattern after 3 hours of going straight west, after the initial turn.

I still think all the Malaysian radar data, both track and altitude, is highly suspect, but the week they wasted looking in the wrong ocean is not going to help find any debris field. It'll be widely scattered by now.

we occasionally hear of young police officers doing the same thing, running a speed trap gets boring at times so they have a play with the sidearm......
hey presto instant ventilation hole or dash replacement time

It's getting stupider by the minute, with all the CNN BREAKING NEWS and their self appointed Experts weighing in, and the Malaysian Government trying to save face, and and and....

I'm still going with Aliens, or snakes!

OR...they had a fire in the E/E bay and were over come by the smoke/fumes and it went into the ocean, and all the Malaysian Radar nonsense is exactly that....

OR...they were hijacked. Someone mentioned that two of the 9-11 hijackers came out of Malaysia, I don't spend enough time in Singapore to know what their political issues are, but it might be that some anti government group wanted to make a statement.

However, I would think if that were the case, we would have heard some group claiming responsibility by now.

The most far fetched theory is, someone took it over (or the Capt. with the home simulator was in on it) and landed it somewhere and is going to use it as a guided missile against...someone.

Malaysian Triangle

another possibility........

Can someone in the air-industry verify ??? Timbo


http://www.onlythebest.co/news/world/what-really-happened-to-mh370/

I've not heard about the cracks and the antennae issues, but then Delta doesn't tell the pilots much about any maintenance issues, they just fix it. The article does point out that that airline might have financial issues and not have fixed any cracks.

Here's the part that is nonsense, if all the other normal **** warning systems are working:

"As the cabin slowly loses pressure all inhabitants including the crew would be susceptible to the effects of hypoxia (loss of oxygen, symptoms include confusion, hallucination, disorientation and unconsciousness to begin with, followed by death). A slow loss in cabin pressure would gradually impair and confuse pilots, (due to loss of oxygen), causing pilots not to realize the need for oxygen masks until it was too late. As the crew slowly fall unconscious, this would then explain the "mumbling" heard from MH370 pilots by another aircraft."

Every commercial airliner has a "Cabin Altitude Warning" system to prevent this exact scenario. Remember all those Safety Demo's you've had to suffer through, where the Flight Attendants tell you, "Should the cabin change unexpectedly... (rise up to 11,000' or higher) oxygen masks will drop from ceiling panels over your seats. Pull the mask to the full extent of the tubing, to start the flow of oxygen. Place the mask over your nose and mouth and continue to breathe normally..." Watch the video, at 3:17.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eduNjwNvcH4

OK, the passenger O2 system is completely automatic. As soon as the cabin altitude gets above 11,000' (at a cruising altitude of 35,000' the cabin altitude would normally be at about 7-8,000' if the pressurization sys. is working normally) the O2 masks will drop, by themselves, if the system is working properly. The passengers will have 15 minutes of O2 available through those masks.

Meanwhile, in the ****, as soon as the cabin altitude reaches 10,000' (ten thousand, not eleven, so we have time to fix it or descend prior to the masks dropping) we get a very loud Master Caution/Warning horn, and big red lights in your face. You CANNOT miss this, you cannot sleep through it, as long as all systems are working normally, and they usually are.

Now, we actually practice this scenario in the simulators once a year. The Pilots have real oxygen masks available to them, not the cheese you get in the back. We have real masks with microphones in them, so we can talk to ATC, and smoke goggles, so we can see to fly, and our O2 will last an hour, at 100% O2, not the mix of ambient and O2 you get in the back. As soon as we get a cabin altitude warning, we descend to a lower altitude, so YOU can live. We could stay up at altitude for an hour, you in the back, would be quite dead however. So we practice what we call an "Emergency Descent".

Here's what our O2 masks look like (not a 777, but mask is pretty much the same) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRihhryndDc

With speed brakes extended, we can easily come down at about 6,000' per minute without hurting the airplane (over-speeding it) . You will feel it in your ears, no doubt! If we are at 35,000', it only takes us about 4 minutes to get down to where nobody needs the O2 masks, ie. 10,000', well less than the 15 minutes of O2 your cheesy little masks in the back will give you.

So, the pilots black out on a slow leak? Doubtful. BUT...if there were a fire, with toxic smoke and fumes, the pilots would have their hands full, and they might not have been able to see too well, thus the zig zag course, and they may have been overcome.

BUT...when ever there is a fire on board, we are trained to land IMMEDIATELY! They would have done a 180 and descended back into Malaysia, try to find any runway, what ever is closest. Get it on the ground ASAP and let the local Fire Dept. deal with it. To me, that is what their initial actions looked like. They turned and flew towards the nearest suitable airport. That says smoke/fire to me.

The scenario in the article above, where nobody knows the airplane is unpressurized, would only be plausible if BOTH the cabin alt. warning syst. were inop AND the Passenger Mask Drop system were inop...and if the Pilots were Idiots. As an experienced pilot, you know when your ears are popping, you know what thin air tastes like and you'll know when you start breathing hard. It feels like you are skiing at 11,000', you are out of breath, but you are just sitting there, so why are you out of breath? First thing I check is the PSI. It's highly unlikely, unless Malaysia Air does NO maintenance on their airplanes...and the pilots were morons.

How safe is the 777? There was a brief flurry of alarm when it emerged that the Federal Aviation Administration had issued an Airworthiness Directive after inspectors found corrosion in one model of the 777 that could have led to a structural failure and loss of cabin pressure. It turned out that the Malaysian 777 was of a model not affected.

A laughed as soon as I saw that and here's why...... about the 3:25 mark onwards, I'm sure you'll never think a safety demo is boring ever again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O53q8MlGAFk

Classic. I'm venturing a guess that since a bullet went through the fuselage, while flying at 8,000 feet, that the gun probably was not handled as per the policy directives.

Rolls Royce figured it out! Their system broadcasts engine data to the sky and they read and monitor it real time for their clients. Granted, their engines aren't on everything in the air...but their system seems to have decent coverage since they seem to be the one legitimate source of data that indicated this flight went on for some time. Too bad that data was focused on just engine info.

I mean, seriously...in today's day and age where you can by 100GB of cloud storage for $1.99/month it's just not THAT much info. Nobody needs to monitor it other than to make sure things are working - it just needs to be available should you want to analyze it.

Insurance companies offer wireless trackers that you can plug into your ODBC port in your car to (supposedly) give you a discount if you are a good driver (that might not be beneficial to some)...obviously that won't work over the ocean but it's just not that hard to collect and maintain data. A ping of data every 5 minutes from a jet relaying speed, heading, altitude, and location isn't that complex.

True, but as we are hearing today, Malaysian Airlines didn't even pay for the Satellite Communications, I've got to wonder how much of the required, and incidental mx they were doing. Did I mention it's about money?

Safety costs money. Training costs money, mx costs money, sat com costs money.

Didn't they do something like that in the Die Hard movie?

Because that could happen.

Then the bad guys already know what Bruce Willis has coming for them which will keep us plenty safe.

read an thought provoking idea this morning...if the plane did actually change altitudes, what are the possibilities they climbed to that absurd altitude to affect the cabin pressurization in some way to incapacitate the passengers? How does the timing of that work out with the supplemental oxygen duration for the passengers vs. pilots?

Can exceeding the service ceiling for the plane do, or allow a pilot to do, something to the cabin pressurization for 15 minutes?

so if some bad dudes were to "capture" the plane, kill the crew/passengers (maybe by this altitude thing Jake proposed), to use it later for some nefarious purpose, wouldn't people be able to track the plane when it's airborne again and over some area with radar?

If it changes its signals (however you could do that) and re-paints the plane...?

Or would it get picked off the minute some radar operator notices an "unmarked" (or no transponder) plane going through their airspace? And send some nicely painted fighter intercept jets to get close-up and personal with the plane?

Storage is not network bandwidth. That said the apparent occasional phone home data stream from the engines wouldn't take that much.

I don't think that the altitude would be required to eliminate the passengers. The oxygen masks for the passengers do not have a pressure supply. They wouldn't last too long at 39,000 or 45,000ft

Small pressurized planes have a way to decrease cabin pressure by control of bleed air and outflow valves. I would assume the 777 would not have a way to manually decrease cabin pressure.

still... if I were wanting a 777 for doing bad things to others, what use would it be now that everyone knows it's missing (callsign, ID, etc)?

When I crank it up again, I'm sure it would be "visible" in many different ways (all the different telemetry devices and transponders) so I probably couldn't go fly it all over without being detected.

Could they part it out and make money that way? Kind of risky chop-shop, but the Somalis seem to like to hijack ships so I guess it COULD happen..>?

Yes, in fact all commercial airliners have both an automatic mode and a manual back up for cabin pressure control. Most of the newer Boeings actually have 2 automatic controllers and manual back up (757-767-777-747's)

If a person knows hot to operate the system in manual, it's an easy thing to open both outflow valves and turn off the pressurization system, and let the cabin altitude climb up to cruising altitude. Now, you would NEVER do this, unless you had smoke/fire and you were below 10,000'.

Yes, in some Hollywood movie, staring Bruce Willis, I'm sure the pilots did just that, and the pilots put on their O2 masks, and all the people in the back, including the would be hijackers, passed out from lack of oxygen. But they would wake up when you descended to below 14,000' or so.

I guess you could take the plane up to 45,000' and depressurize it, stay up there until you think everyone in the back is dead, and then come back down, but you've only got 1hr. of O2 for yourself, less if you are at 45,000'.

It happens all the time...in Hollywood. (insert large eye roll emoticon)

Actually, I was referring to that one where they changed the ILS settings and had that plane crash into the ground.

but yeah, didn't the other movie with John Leguizamo as a delta force dude try to re-capture a hi-jacked plane in mid-air with the stealth fighter? and disarm a bomb with a soda straw?

So, supposedly the pilot was a political fanatic, and the object of his political passion has apparently just been jailed hours before the flight took off for "Homosexuality" which is being seen in Malaysia as a political persecution.



The pilot also supposedly made radio contact indicating all clear with the control tower AFTER the first antenna went dark, which rules out catastrophic failure. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html)

I saw that same story on one of my pilot web boards yesterday, it was later debunked as nonsense, the wife and kids thing, and if he's on his way to work, I doubt if he'd know that one of his 'leaders' was being jailed, just hours before the flight departs, because he's busy, getting ready to fly! Not watching CNN!

More grasping at straws....

You do realize the Malaysian Government, and Malaysian Airlines, has lots of reasons to blame this on the Pilots or Boeing, right?

If someone hijacked it, ie. Radicalized Muslims, it makes the Government, and the faith of peace, and their airline security, look bad.

So Blame the dead guys.

Works every time!

Timbo,

I'm just putting out there what I've read. I don't know much about the motivations behind the airlines or the government.

However, in this day and age of connected devices, all it takes is a tweet or a message from a friend to his cell phone and in a matter of seconds, news of his political heart-throb being jailed would have reached him. He wouldn't have to watch CNN to find out.

Yeah, and based on that tweet, he then decided to take the plane, to make a statement...

except he forgot to make a statement.

Go back to motive. Find a real motive. He had opportunity, obviously, but if he was going to do it to make a statement, why didn't he just make a radio call, ie. AMF! and roll it over and take it into the water?

Anyone really think it flew for 7 hours, and then went into the sea? Only if everyone was already dead from smoke/fumes and it was on autopilot.

Or...it was hijacked by morons who couldn't find Pakistan on a map!

but what would you do with it then? Let's assume they could find Pakistan (which apparently didn't happen, but whatever), could they hold the passengers hostage that long to extort money later for their return?

Can you sell the jet without raising suspicions?

I must admit, the accident hypothesis seems more plausible than the others at this point...

You can try to sell it. You could fill it with high explosives and fly it anywhere you want, until someone finds you and shoots you down.

The problem I see with a lot of these NYT reporters is, they are trying to apply First World logic and technology, to a Third World country's military radar system, and their logic. And I think the Malaysians are trying to point fingers in every other direction, other than make it a shoddy mx issue/accident.

If hijackers were smart enough to take over the ****, then turn off the transponders/radios, etc. and turn it, and fly a course, to somewhere, they should have had a destination in mind. Maybe they are sitting on a runway in the middle of nowhere. They would have to be VERY well trained in 777 FMS Operations to even find such a remote runway, in the dark.

And I'm sure there are lots of satellite photos being taken and poured over as we speak, of every square inch, of every runway, on every island, in that part of the world, looking for a slightly used 777 sitting up on blocks in the bushes out back...

If it was one of the pilots, he missed his opportunity to make a statement. He could have flown it right into downtown anywhere on that island, screaming Jihad all the way, on the radio.

If it was hijackers, why did they take it, and where did they go? They too could have flown it into any major city in Malaysia, Viet Nam or China, ala 9-11 that night.

So I'm going with mechanical issues.

But Air Malaysia doesn't want to hear that...

The mx issue is sounding more and more likely to me too. Clearly the US has issues with putting things back together correctly as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/travel/delta-plane-wing-panel/

Timbo,

Would you consider 3rd world airlines as more or less profitable than the US based ones?

Well, that depends on what time frame you want to use. After 9-11, every major US Airline went bankrupt.

But in 2013, the Big 3 US Carriers (Delta, United and American) made HUGE money.

Delta alone netted about $2.7 Billion in 2013. That's a record for this industry...and still they can't tighten down an access panel.

I read that Malaysian is in financial trouble right now, so...? We know they don't pay for Sat com, but Delta only pays for it on our international fleet, not our domestic airplanes.

I'm sure you're feeling mighty fine about Delta mx right now Timbo: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/delta-plane-loses-wing-panel-during-flight-n54306

Technically Southwest never declared bankruptcy following 9-11, but it takes them 12 hours to change a tire on a Boeing 737 parked 15 minutes from the factory...no one is perfect.

Brucat, if the numbers I read back in the Air France crash period were accurate, ~80% of water landings by airliners had at least a few survivors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing. I have a family member that has survived a water ditching. As PIC of a single-engine, 1970's tech piston powered aircraft that often flies over water, I think about this a lot. All the gear won't save you if you can't get out of the airplane through door or window!

It truly is sad that we don't know where this bird is, after 11 days and several countries satellites involved. Would an EPIRB not be picked up via satellite in that part of the world? They have coverage in the Southern Ocean and Indian Ocean. Further, China doesn't build the cameras in our spy satellites or many of the components, MAYBE a few of the integrated circuit chips. They may have caught up but the tech involved in making the camera mirrors and lenses is some pretty high-end stuff...I'm sure they bought the Russians designs but I've only started to see the Chinese offering the manufacturing technology that could remotely build these in the past decade or so.

Finally I agree with most of Timbos hypothesis, especially the electrical fire-military aircraft have the FCC's in different parts of the plane for this very reason. If that's not it, +1 to the Aliens.

Southwest is not considered a Major US Carrier, that's why I didn't include them. Alaska and Hawaiian didn't declare bankruptcy either. They don't fly internationally and their biggest airplane is a 737. But that's also why they didn't go bankrupt.

After 9-11 and the global recession, a lot of International customers stopped flying. That crushed all the big International carriers who were operating wide body airplanes around the globe, half empty. That's why they all filed for bankruptcy and that's why the big 6 merged to become the big 3.

If the airplane went down in the Indian Ocean, while everyone was looking in the wrong ocean, for a week, well, any debris field is going to be widely scattered by now, so they'd have to do sonar drags all over the entire Indian Ocean to find it. If it went in fast and hard, it may have broken up and there may be some floating debris washing up on downwind shores some day soon, then we'll know for sure.

But it took searchers two years to locate the Air France jet, and they knew where to look, heck they had a piece of the tail floating on the surface. Unless this jet shows up again as a flying bomb, I doubt they will ever find it, but they'll blame the pilots. It's the easiest way to solve their security and mx problems.

So how much is a 777 worth in a chop shop?

Anyone remember the hijacked 767 that went into the water?

There were some survivors, because it crashed close to shore.

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqKdVo_IcGs

(btw, that's me in the speedo, right at the beginning) ;^)

I can't stand all the idiots on TV freaking out that it's such an outrage that such a "huge aircraft" disappeared without a trace. As big as a 777 is compared to a guy standing next to it, it might as well be microscopic once in that ocean.

I hate to speculate on this, but I would think that if it were terror-related, there would be someone taking public, plausible credit by now. I think that leaves it to rogue pilots, or probably more likely, mechanical failure. I'm sure I'll be proven wrong, but that would be fine if it means they find the plane.

Mike

EDIT: I do remember that video. As flat as that water looked, and as controlled as the descent appeared, it still broke into lots of pieces. That's why I originally asked the question: outside of the Hudson or a small lake with no waves, is it possible to come out as cleanly as Sully?

If you like plane crashes, here's 10 minutes worth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlNoza8oAZw

Watch the B52 at 4:30. They were practicing for an airshow.

The two most dangerous words in Aviation:

Watch This!

Here's another viewpoint, this one from a real Airline Capt., not Richard Quest:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/16/opinion/palmer-malaysia-flight-370/index.html

Another pilot's perspective (matches Timbo's scenario).....

https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13cv1gohsmbv5jmy221vrfyiz3vdhbop04

"chris goodfellow
4 days agoPublic
Post activities

MH370 A different point of view. Pulau Langkawi 13,000 runway.

A lot of speculation about MH370. Terrorism, hijack, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN - almost disturbing. I tend to look for a more simple explanation of this event.

Loaded 777 departs midnight from Kuala to Beijing. Hot night. Heavy aircraft. About an hour out across the gulf towards Vietnam the plane goes dark meaning the transponder goes off and secondary radar tracking goes off.

Two days later we hear of reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar meaning the plane is being tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the straits of Malacca.

When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and I searched for airports in proximity to the track towards southwest.

The left turn is the key here. This was a very experienced senior Captain with 18,000 hours. Maybe some of the younger pilots interviewed on CNN didn't pick up on this left turn. We old pilots were always drilled to always know the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us and airports ahead of us. Always in our head. Always. Because if something happens you don't want to be thinking what are you going to do - you already know what you are going to do. Instinctively when I saw that left turn with a direct heading I knew he was heading for an airport. Actually he was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi a 13,000 foot strip with an approach over water at night with no obstacles. He did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000 foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier towards Langkawi and also a shorter distance.

Take a look on Google Earth at this airport. This pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make that immediate turn back to the closest safe airport.
For me the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense if a fire. There was most likely a fire or electrical fire. In the case of fire the first response if to pull all the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one.


If they pulled the busses the plane indeed would go silent. It was probably a serious event and they simply were occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, Navigate and lastly communicate. There are two types of fires. Electrical might not be as fast and furious and there might or might not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility given the timeline that perhaps there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires and it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes this happens with underinflated tires. Remember heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. A tire fire once going would produce horrific incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks but this is a no no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter but this will only last for a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one of my own in a flight bag and I still carry one in my briefcase today when I fly).

What I think happened is that they were overcome by smoke and the plane just continued on the heading probably on George (autopilot) until either fuel exhaustion or fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. I said four days ago you will find it along that route - looking elsewhere was pointless.

This pilot, as I say, was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. No doubt in my mind. That's the reason for the turn and direct route. A hijack would not have made that deliberate left turn with a direct heading for Langkawi. It would probably have weaved around a bit until the hijackers decided on where they were taking it.

Surprisingly none of the reporters , officials, other pilots interviewed have looked at this from the pilot's viewpoint. If something went wrong where would he go? Thanks to Google earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times. I guess we will eventually find out when you help me spread this theory on the net and some reporters finally take a look on Google earth and put 2 and 2 together. Also a look at the age and number of cycles on those nose tires might give us a good clue too.

Fire in an aircraft demands one thing - you get the machine on the ground as soon as possible. There are two well remembered experiences in my memory. The AirCanada DC9 which landed I believe in Columbus Ohio in the eighties. That pilot delayed descent and bypassed several airports. He didn't instinctively know the closest airports. He got it on the ground eventually but lost 30 odd souls. In the 1998 crash of Swissair DC-10 off Nova Scotia was another example of heroic pilots. They were 15 minutes out of Halifax but the fire simply overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. Just ran out of time. That fire incidentally started when the aircraft was about an hour out of Kennedy. Guess what the transponders and communications were shut off as they pulled the busses.


Get on Google Earth and type in Pulau Langkawi and then look at it in relation to the radar track heading. 2+2=4 That for me is the simple explanation why it turned and headed in that direction.

Smart pilot. Just didn't have the time."

The pilot posted the above before the Rolls Royce info was made public.. here is what he said after that info became public (see the url in post above for full conversation:

"chris goodfellow22 hours ago
Diego and all who have commented - thank you.

I wrote this post before the information regarding the engines continuing to run for approximately six hours and the fact it seems acars was shut down before the transponder.

The continued speculation of hijack and/or murder suicide and the latest this morning that there was a flight engineer on board that is being investigated does not do much to sway me in favour of foul play until I am presented with evidence of foul play.

My post received a lot of comments on Reddit as well if some of you wish to read those. www.reddit.com MH370.

Now let me deal with Diego's request for my present view in light of new evidence.

We know there was a last voice transmission that from a pilot's point of view (POV) was entirely normal. The good night is customary on a hand -off to a new ATC control. The good night also indicates STRONGLY to me all was OK on the flight deck. Remember there are many ways a pilot can communicate distress - the hijack code or even a transponder code different by one digit from assigned would alert ATC that something was wrong. Every good pilot knows keying an SOS over the mike is always an option even three short clicks would raise an alert.

So I conclude at that point of voice transmission all was perceived as well on the flight deck by the pilots.

But things could have been in the process of going wrong unknown to the pilots -
Evidently the ACARS went inoperative some time before. Disabling the ACARS is not easy as pointed out. This leads me to believe more in an electric or electric fire issue than a manual shutdown. I suggest the pilots were probably not aware it was not transmitting.

The next event is the turn to the SW in what appears direct Langkawi.
As I said in the first post the pilot probably had this in his head already.
Someone said why didn't he go to KBR on north coast of Malaysia which was closer. That's a 6,000 foot runway and to put that plane down on a 6,000 foot strip at night uncertain of your aircraft's entire systems is not an option. I would expect the pilot would consider ditching before a 6,000 runway if still above maximum landing weight which he likely was.
The safest runway in the region to make the approach was certainly Langkawi - no obstacles over water with a long flat approach. In my humble opinion this 18,000 hour pilot knew this instinctively.

Reports of altitude fluctuations. Well given that this was not transponder generated data but primary radar at maybe 200 miles the azimuth readings can be affected by a lot of atmospherics and I would not have high confidence in this being totally reliable. But let's accept for a minute he might have ascended to 45,000 in a last ditch effort to quell a fire by seeking the lowest level of oxygen. It is an acceptable scenario in my opinion. At 45,000 it would be tough to keep this aircraft stable as the flight envelope is very narrow and loss of control in a stall is entirely possible. The aircraft is at the top of its operational ceiling. The reported rapid rates of descent could have been generated by a stall and recovery at 25,000. The pilot may even have been diving the aircraft to extinguish flames. All entirely possible.

But going to 45,000 in a hijack scenario doesn't make any good sense to me.

The question of the time the plane flew on.

On departing Kuala he would have had fuel for Beijing and alternate probably Shanghai and 45 minutes. Say 8 hours. Maybe more. He burned 20-25% in first hour with takeoff, climb to cruise. So when the turn was made towards Langkawi he would have had six hours or more. This correlates nicely with the immarsat data pings being received until fuel exhaustion.

The apparent now known continued flight until TTFE time to fuel exhaustion only actually confirms to me the crew were incapacitated and the flight continued on deep into the south Indian ocean.

There really is no point in speculating further until more evidence surfaces but in the meantime it serves no purpose to malign the pilots who well may have been in an heroic struggle to save this aircraft from a fire or other serious mechanical issue and were overcome.

I hope the investigation team looks at the maintenance records of the front gear tires - cycles, last pressure check and maintenance inspection. Captain or F/O as part of pre-flight looks at tires. Is there any video at the airport to support pre-flight walkaround? Any damage on pushback? A day after I wrote the original post a plane in the U.S. blew a tire in takeoff and the t/o was fortunately aborted with a burning tire.

Hopefully - and I believe now it is a slim hope - the wreckage will be found and the FDR and VDR will be recovered and provide us with insight. Until facts prove otherwise, I would give the Captain the benefit of respect and professional courtesy."

That makes sense.

Here's some 'old school' stuff for you cubicle pilot wannabee's to look at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R0CViDUBFs

This is the **** of an (American Airlines) MD80, which is simply a stretched DC9, and still sporting 1950's technology from a DC3! This is at the opposite end of the technology spectrum from a 777, but it's fun to look at.

I flew both the DC9 and MD88 at Delta for just long enough to know I hated it. It makes you work wayyy too hard just to fly it, and you can never trust it to do what you want it to. It's got a mind of it's own.


We have a saying in the airline biz:

Boeing build airplanes, McDonnell Douglas builds Character!

Compare that **** to this one, a 777LR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_llyS20J0Ac

And yes, I know Boeing bought Micky-D's, but that still don't make it right!

The Maddog.

Yeah, and now you know why we call it that! I spent my first three days in the MD88 simulator screaming obscenities at it!

I think my uncle had to fly them too. He said it was the only plane that scared him more than the harriers he flew in the Corps.

Timbo: does the fact that the left turn was programmed and executed by a computer make any difference to your assessment?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?hp&_r=1

My experience is limited to sitting in the copilot seat of a twin engine Baron for some hopping around the east coast (occasionally a P-Baron)...programming an unplanned turn in that case is pretty quick and simple and takes less time than executing the turn manually. Our pilot would usually set the course change into the autopilot for any type of course change (to avoid weather, traffic, or to adhere to ground instruction). I would expect them to program that turn especially if they had their hands full with other things.

The simplest answer is usually the correct one. This is a good example of how the media can affect the story - particularly in a vacuum of facts.

+1 for aliens


This was me flying into Tampa at 1am lastnight in a sick storm



I shoulda taken an aisle seat

Thailand turned over some newish radar data (not before now because "nobody asked for it") that corroborates the data that the flight turned back toward Malaysia. According to this report, it seems that the flight turned back toward Kuala Lumpur (where it originated) and then later turned west toward Butterworth. A quick look at Google and Earth and I see that Penang International Airport is just to the other side of Butterworth, Malaysia and has a runway about 2 miles long that could probably facilitate that plane. I think it's starting to really look like something major went wrong equipment onboard and those guys were trying to get it back on the ground. Something happened on the way that saw it pointed further west out over the Indian Ocean and unmanned.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/mh370-...ne-lost/article5799254.ece?homepage=true

I don't buy it first of all, but secondly, the 777 Flight Management System (FMS) has the ability to load two routes, a Route 1 wich is our normal route, and a Route 2, which we load with our divert points and divert airports.

If they were having a mx issue, and they'd decided to divert, all they would have to do is push two buttons on the FMS to move from Route 1 to Route 2: "Activate" and "Execute" and the airplane would now fly the route 2, to their divert airport.

I'm in ATL at the moment, on my way to Dubai tonight. I'll keep my eyes open for the Malaysian 777, who might be trying to shadow us....

Riiiihhhgggt!

I don't trust a single thing we're being fed. Not from the government(s), and certainly not from the media, who come up with a more and more outlandish theory every 4-6 hours. Not because I'm a paranoid conspiracy theory nut, but because there are just too many changes of the story from the officials, and too much editorial ad-libbing from the "reporters" (anyone who thinks this plane can be hidden, fueled, and flown around the world to shadow in for a sneak attack in the USA needs to step away from their bunker and get some sunlight)...

It's sad that we're back in this situation after 9/11, where they report stories first and check facts later (if at all). One would have thought that they would have learned that lesson after the Bush/Gore election night fiasco...

Mike

It's all about the money. First to report gets the viewers and they can sell ads. Viewership, in general, is pretty insensitive to whether or not something is "factual".

I know all of that, and the internet fuels a lot of it; but especially when people's lives are in the mix, it's just disgusting.

Anyone see the footage of the helicopter that crashed in Seattle yesterday? Did your news outlet also show the raw footage of the thing fully engulfed before the fire department arrived? Now, imagine that your dad was one of the two guys in there, either just killed from the crash, of being burned alive as he died, unable to get out. I'm all for freedom of the press, but handling these stories this way does not make us look good as a species.

EDIT: Yes, I know that these are two different issues (the plane issue is one of needlessly freaking out the public and potentially giving terrorists new ideas), the helicopter is total lack of common decency), but the common theme is sensationalism that serves only the media.

Mike

No, CNN was covering the missing plane 24x7.

Didn't hear about the border skirmish between Israel and Jordan, or the "flash mob" at the Ukraine Naval Station, or Phil Jackson being named to the NY Knicks; and certainly didn't hear about Benghazi or the IRS misgivings

Probably never was a plane. Probably just another diversionary tactic.


I wonder if that scenario has popped up?

OK. Now we're getting down to my original question:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...c-af7c-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html

A radius of 40 miles!!! My math might be off here, but isn't that still like 5000 square miles? Pi*R^2 ?


Kinda like looking for..... frick. I don't know. Something really hard to find. It's been a long day. lol

Considering the current search area is the size of Texas (268,820 sq. mi.) - I'm sure they'd like to narrow it down to 5K sq. mi.

Still - that's like the size of the state of Connecticut.

I'm in Dubai, watching the BBC news, they are reporting some debris in the southern Indian Ocean, 2300km SW of Perth, spotted by satellites. Aussies are sending aircraft to search the area. May be just trash, or might be relevant stuff.

They say the piece of debris is 24m (70ft?) in length so it must be something substantial.
Navy planes and ships are on their way.

Diversion from what? (Queue the Twilight Zone music.)

I'm curious about this obsession. Why?

Was that directed at anyone in particular?

No, it seems to be an international frenzy.

It's a mystery with a lot of facets that create intrigue.

It seems to be a form of conspiracy theory which invariably leads to irrational beliefs. Just wondering what it is about the human psyche that causes this departure from the rational.

Pete didn't you pay the bills by working in the field of the human psyche? You know the answer to your question now where exaclty are you trying to take us today?

Yes Jake I know, but I haven't been down a good rabbit hole in a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory
http://www.infowars.com/33-conspira...o-be-true-what-every-person-should-know/

Its called the internet.

Before all the crazy people would be isolated to have their crazy ideas to themselves.

As Joe Rogan said... "Now you can find other crazy people who believe the same crazy **** you do and you can ride that crap all the way to the apocalypse."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/sc/web/show/130102/the-true-story-of-the-mary-celeste

Mysteries abound, I'm just not understanding why so many otherwise rational people become engrossed in them.

My opinion is that it all stems from human curiosity - an evolutionary trait that has led to our extended survival as a species, our technology, and our society. Compared to other species, we retain more of our child-like curiosity (and playfulness) as we mature. Tied to this curiosity, we also have a psychological need for closure...i.e. "an answer" to the question in front of us. Unknowns leave an emotional void in all of us. People have different levels of a need for closure of that void and some are willing to accept lesser degrees of verified "truths" in order to obtain that emotional satisfaction in that closure. This then becomes a belief that may be completely irrational but has satisfied the emotional need.

I'm thinkin' fear of the unknown. Most people need an orderly, structured world. Then some of us are anarchists..

Jake, all this talk of "closure" just reminds me of an episode of Friends with one of the 1,000 times Ross and Rachel couldn't get their act together as a couple.

Random thought of the day...

Mike

What could be more structured than "planes crash now and then, sometimes they crash in places where they are really hard to relocate".. I think it is the mystery that lets people fantasize and theorize attracting attention to this.

In the news, this missing plane totally overshadows that the cold war version 2 have started.

It hasn't overshadowed it, we just don't like talking about it.

I am not talking about here, but in the news. Lots of coverage of the missing (probably crached) airplane, very little on the russian landgrab.

There aren't many answers to be had there...full of emotional voids.

I had to go back and research that whole Ukrainian situation yesterday because I got lost in the latest reports without some of the details...like that time I registered for Fortran II before I had Foretran I. After three weeks of class, I start wondering if I missed something. (In my defense, however, it wasn't so cleverly named with the "II"). I bought the 1 book and got caught up in two weeks - finished at the top of the class. The wide details weren't exactly my thing.

that has a nice ring to it:

Cold War 2.0

The first one is over? Who won?

I believe they claimed it was over when USSR turned into Russia

Did they turn in their nukes?

no, they just sold them off to the Iranians and pretty much any other bidder.

I believe there are a few still there under rusty padlocks

If the Iranians had a nuke, they would have used it already. On us or Israel, but they definitely would have used it.

Mike

I hope my scenario is the more accurate.

http://www.ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report

Ukraina handed their soviet nukes over to Russia under an agreement where Russia, Great Britain and France guarnteed their territorial integrity and security.. Whoops.

Nobody wins a war btw. It is just a matter of how much each side loses. Hence the term "Amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics".

I'd agree with that. Whomever loses the least...wins?

When you piss away the economy and sons, daughters, dads and mums as expendables.. Even losing the least is bad enough in my book.

Sorry for the thread hijack. Hopefully the airplane with all passengers turn up at an old disused WW2 airfield outside HF radio coverage where they are busy playing "Cast Away".

That'd be one hell of a story.

We'll tie it all back in now, see, war is just like sailboat racing.

Sailboat races aren't won, they are lost.

Good moves don't win them, bad moves lose them!

And I think we were being 'shadowed' last night on the way home from Dubai!!

Preparation and luck play key roles as well.

If everyone prepared perfectly, had no luck factors (wind shifts, traffic, breakdowns, aliens, etc.) and sailed perfectly, every race would end in a tie.

Think about that the next time you are tempted to file for redress after being called OCS...

Mike

Anyone watching CNN today?

more BREAKING NEWS!

Turns out they descended down to 12,000' when they turned back....

Gee...who woulda thunk it?

Every trained pilot.

I stand by my original scenario; rapid depressurization and/or smoke/fire, the pilots turned back and descended, but then were overcome by the smoke/fumes, the airplane continued to fly on autopilot until it ran out of gas and it went into the sea. I doubt they will find it any time soon.

God bless the Aussies for trying, but I doubt there's any floating debris left by now, and even if they do find some, by now it's so far away from the point of impact, they may never find the airframe or the black (orange) boxes.

LOST 2


I'll just go n cut my throat now.......

yes, but at least a debris find would support your hypothesis that the pilots did everything they could to save the flight and were't terrorists or whack-jobs.

PS I still think someone's submarine "heard" the plane hit the water... but they won't divulge it either because "no one asked" (like Taiwan) or they don't want to divulge how good their stuff is

Bringing us back to sailing for a brief moment... CNN, since at least Thursday, has been running footage from the last VOR to show what the conditions can be like down there. Apparently, no one else is insane enough to be on that water, let alone shooting video...

What I haven't heard mentioned, is this an area north of the iceberg and growler range? Presumably, being the end of their summer, this wouldn't be an issue; but it would be something else to discuss, other than the complete BS about shadowing.

Speaking of which, did anyone catch the panel of three guys discussing the shadow theory? They were discussing the theory that the jet diverted to shadow a different plane out of Singapore, to head out to an unknown destination in mid-Asia.

One was an ex-fighter pilot (British-sounding accent), one was a 777 (or similar) pilot, the third was some sort of analyst. The fighter pilot was visibly outraged, and stated as much, that anyone was wasting their time on this idea. The 777 pilot pointed out how nearly completely impossible this would be to pull off. The analyst pointed to some reference that Israel used two large jets to pull off a military event, flying over Egypt and another country undetected, so he was sticking by his guns that the shadow theory is real. I thought the fighter pilot was going to punch him out...

Mike

That's why they are "Analyst" and not pilots! They work in rooms without windows, and they live in fantasy land, whereas the pilots have had to go out into the dark of night, and deal with the reality of trying to pull off something like that; unrehearsed, un briefed, and timed exactly, to an unknown other airplane, (the Singapore flight) and 'hope' it's going in the right direction.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia is now saying Flight 370 ended in the Indian Ocean.

I don't know what debris they have found to confirm that...maybe he's just trying to send the families home?

No debris - Inmarsat did further analysis of their data and eliminated the northern corridor, concluding that the flight ended in the Indian Ocean.

Looks like they think they spotted some pallets in the ocean, 370 was carrying some pallets.


They didn't bother to mention how many other things carry pallets around on the oceans.

maybe they can also find all those containers that the Svendborg lost last month...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/21/world/container-ship-loses-containers/

That would certainly help avoid "incidents" with some of our blue-water racer/cruisers...

That they are empty means they're probably floating about 3 feet under the surface of the sea. good times...

I'm always amazed that the Volvo Round the World boats don't all run into something down there, seems it's full of garbage, and some of that garbage is very large, empty, metal containers!

From the above article: "The Through Transport Club, which insures 15 of the top 20 container lines, has put the loss at fewer than 2,000 containers a year. But other industry sources say the number may be as high as 10,000. That would still represent far less than 1% of the containers traversing the world's oceans. Maersk, one of the world's largest lines, says that its highest annual loss in the last decade was 59 containers."

Hit one of those when you're surfing down a wave at 25kts, and it's going to leave a mark!

I'm pretty sure several of the VOR boats have been damaged in recent years from hitting submerged objects down there, and at least one of them was an unknown object. At the speeds they travel, and especially at night or in a storm with no visibility; they have almost no chance to avoid the stuff. There is most definitely a factor of luck in that race.

Mike

On the boat and your pants...

SO Timbo

Why would the plane be so far off course from where it was supposed to be? Even if it was trying to turn around it missed it by a good 30-60 degrees by my naked eye.

My guess is, they had an electrical short/smoke/fire, which disabled both their radios and transponder. It seems they did initiate the initial action items as we are trained; turn towards your divert field, descend below 14,000.

It seems after they accomplished those two things, they were subsequently overcome by the smoke/fumes and the airplane continued on autopilot, holding heading and altitude, as it should, until it ran out of gas.

In the UPS 747 fire and crash in Dubai, their pilots got their oxygen masks on, and their smoke goggles on, but the smoke was so think they could not even see their instruments, from less than 6" away! They made a low pass over the Dubai airport, but were going 250kts when they did. So they tried to go around and do another approach, which ended with them crashing into the desert just outside Dubai.

If you can't see your instruments because the smoke is so thick, and you can't ventilate the smoke, you can't fly the airplane. You are only going to live until your 02 runs out anyway, which I'm sure was far less than the 7 hours MH370 flew on autopilot before it ran out of gas.

Here's another issue that might arise if/when they ever find the **** Voice Recorder (CVR). In the old days, the CVR was a cassette tape which ran in a 30 minute continuous loop. When the 777 came along, Boeing went to a digital recorder, but from what I've been told by my simulator instructors, it only has a two hour loop. IF...they were fighting a smoke/fire situation, lost the fight, and then the airplane flew on for more than two hours, the CVR is going to be blank, as in no voices at all. We may never hear what they were talking about when the problems started.

The Flight Data Recorder will have a lot of data such as airspeed, altitude, heading, systems which were inop, (Hydraulics, fuel on board, etc.) I don't know if it will tell them definitively if there was smoke, or where the smoke was coming from, unless the FDR also records which electrical busses were lost due to the short, etc. If there were some other reason for the smoke, like somebody was intentionally starting a fire, or a small bomb/hijack scenario, it won't tell us that.

what caused that much smoke? The front tire fire that someone mentioned earlier?

Sucks you can't open a window, and get a nice fresh (250 knot) breeze to clear the ****... and fan the fire...

Hey, can anyone open up the emergency exit doors when the plane is still flying?

Let's say the smoke in the cabin was that bad... could a steward open the back door? Not that anyone has a parachute or anything, but perhaps out of desperation?

In the UPS 747 crash, it was Lithium Batteries. The Malaysian 777 was also carrying Lithium Batteries in the cargo hold. I don't know how many, but it only takes a few to start a fire. HOWEVER... the 777 has a pretty good smoke/fire suppression system for the cargo hold, and that should not affect their radios.

The UPS 747 was talking on the radio right up until they hit the dirt. That's why I think the Malaysian problem started with their radios, or something in the E/E bay, which has no fire suppression.

Once you have depressurized the airplane (at any altitude) you can indeed open the **** windows, but not the cabin doors, as they swing forward, against the wind, like your car doors, but you'd never be able to force it open with a 200+ knot windflow.

But in case of a fire wouldn't there have been any time to communicate with an airport?
Like a mayday? Is there even a protocol/training for situations like these?
I still cannot believe there isn't an independent EPIRB-ish system onboard in case of an emergency like this one.

Depending on where they were, they might have been beyond VHF radio coverage. We switch over to HF and Sat Com once we leave VHF (land based) coverage areas, when we go over the oceans and northern Canada/North Pole area to make our position reports. BUT...from what I've been hearing, Malaysian Airlines didn't pay for Sat Com, so their guys may have been using HF, and that is a huge pain in the buttocks, especially when you are on fire, and breathing in your 02 mask. The HF radios are complete crap, in terms of reception. Lots of static.

The LAST thing we do is make a radio call to report a problem, when it's a MAJOR problem, like a fire/depressurization, we are too busy to talk to ATC for the first 3-5 minutes. If we are already out of VHF range, most guys wouldn't even try to make an HF report. HF radios suck, and the coverage is terrible. You are not in radar contact by then, and the guy on the other end of the HF is probably fast asleep at 2am.

If their problem was an electrical one, it could have started with the electrical buss that powers the radios, rendering them inop anyway.

Here's more on the UPS 747 fire/crash in Dubai:

http://www.emirates247.com/news/emi...to-lithium-batteries-2013-07-25-1.515438

From the report: “A cargo on the main cargo deck had ignited at some point after departure. Less than three minutes after the first warning to the crew, the fire resulted in severe damage to flight control systems and caused the upper deck and **** to fill with continuous smoke.

“The crew then advised Bahrain East Area Control [BAE-C] that the **** was ‘full of smoke’ and that they ‘could not see the radios’, at around the same time the crew experienced pitch control anomalies during the turn back and descent to ten thousand feet.

“The smoke did not abate during the emergency impairing the ability of the crew to safely operate the aircraft for the duration of the flight back to DXB.

“On the descent to ten thousand feet, the captain’s supplemental oxygen supply abruptly ceased to function without any audible or visual warning to the crew five minutes and thirty seconds after the first audible warning. This resulted in the Captain leaving his position. The Captain left his seat and did not return to his position for the duration of the flight due to incapacitation from toxic gases.

“The First Officer[F.O], now the Pilot Flying [PF] could not view outside of the ****, the primary flight displays, or the audio control panel to retune to the UAE frequencies.

“Due to the consistent and contiguous smoke in the **** all communication between the destination [DXB] and the crew was routed through relay aircraft in VHF range of the emergency aircraft and BAE-C.


This event happened over land, not far from where they departed and they were talking to Bahrain ATC on VHF radios.

The Malaysian 777 was way out over water, out of VHF radio and radar range. I think that's why there was no reported radio chatter, but as I said earlier, the problem causing the smoke could also have rendered their radios inop.

Does the 777 have SELCAL?

Timbo, I heard the same about the voice recorders, last two hours only.

They need to give you guys those fancy HUD masks, so you can land the plane with a **** full of smoke, assuming you're within your O2 limit from an airport. I'm sure the military can trickle those down by now.

Mike

Yes, both on HF and Sat Com. but mostly we use CPDLC and send/receive messages from ATC when we are out of VHF range, but not every country supports that system.

Mo'Money...

There's a lot of stuff they could buy, but like I said at the beginning, nobody wants to spend the money. (airlines nor governments) It's a calculated loss type situation. Pilots, airplanes and passengers are expendable, and the bean counters say, "Well...all that safety stuff is very expensive to buy, then we have to maintain it, and inspect it, and replace it. So what are the chances we will ever actually need it??"

It's a risk they are willing to take...when they are at home in bed.

And I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that CPDLC is not very available in that part of the world

I've flown the route from Tokyo to Singapore many times, they do have it in some areas along the way, Hong Kong area has it, I don't think they have it in Malaysia, but without looking at the charts I can't recall exactly who does and who doesn't right now. I'll take a look after dinner.

Here's the regular route, Delta is now running a 767 on it, which is why it's been about 6 months since I last flew it.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL621/history/20140324/0900Z/RJAA/WSSS

Here's a slightly different route, which is the one I recall flying (A590), and this flight was a 777. Seems Delta is alternating 767's and 777's on the route, depends on which day of the week you fly it. http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL621/history/20140322/0900Z/RJAA/WSSS

This route is out over the water more than the previous route. That could be because of weather along the route. There are typically a lot of thunderstorms down that way, more so the closer you get to the equator.

Not sure a VOR boat has had an issue in that particular part of the ocean. That is getting down there. The only vessels continuously operating in that region are of the military kind we aren't supposed to know about. Otherwise it's round the world racing boats, which is why CNN is playing that footage, it's probably the only HD footage from that area! So, not too many lost container unless the were carried there by ocean currents!

Puma hit a tree trunk, but in the Malacca straights: www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/otherspor...ugh-precarious-Malacca-Strait-route.html

Camper avoided a whale on the way into Lisbon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ1WaiCAGXk

I do recall BP5 having an issue pretty far south, but a lot closer to land than where this flight went down. Some of the other round the world tris and cats have hit UFO's at speed deep in the southern ocean. As I recall they had a radar detection system for growlers installed on Orange II in the bows of each hull to mitigate this problem, because you're right Mike you can't see at those speeds, pitch black night, while getting drenched with ice cold water...

Anyway, I suspect they might have found debris from the accident in the satellite and surveillance footage that we haven't seen (and never will). Airplane parts are light and some tend to float. I also trust the Inmarsat guys. They are a sharp bunch of dudes and my hates off to them for crunching the numbers to get some actionable data out to the search team.

This is just getting stupider by the minute this morning. Malaysia spent the past 24 hours basically reversing everything they've said up to now, stating that the pilots acted in a manner consistent with trying to save the plane after an event (Timbo's theory), and that the plane must be in the ocean with no survivors. They offered $5,000 (yes, five thousand) dollars for each victim. Meanwhile, China is calling BS and demanding proof of the crash...

Pray for the families, I don't expect them to ever get the truth about what has become of their loved ones.

Mike

With everything I've read, it sounds like this is the truth. I read some detail this morning about the technique that the satellite companies used to track the plane. Basically, they came up with a way (never done before) to measure the Doppler effect of the signals they received from the plane to get a reasonably accurate position on it when it was communicating. They looked at nanosecond variations in the signal timing. The signals were 'heard' from more than one satellite and they were able to triangulate it's path and position with a relatively high level of accuracy in a method that has never been used before with these kind of signals. That mathematical analysis actually went under peer review and was scientifically verified before it was announced. They had been working on this for more than a week and they were able to unquestionably eliminate the northern corridor as a possible path. Taking that data and the fuel range of the plane seems to very firmly point to it crash landing in the Indian ocean.

If it were your relatives, would that be enough proof, or would you want physical evidence?

For me, if it weren't for all of these half-schemed theories over the past few weeks, this data would probably help in lieu of evidence. However, at this point, I'd be wanting wreckage. Of course, I'd have a very difficult time believing anyone at this point, and it would be very difficult to trust that any "evidence" wasn't fabricated.

Mike

Did I mention it's about money? Here come the sharks:


Families Deserve Fair Payout From $1.5 Billion Policy: Lawyer





By Sigi de Vos and Henry Austin


LONDON -- The families of those aboard missing Flight 370 deserve a fair payout from the $1.5 billion insurance policy held by Malaysia Airlines for their "appalling treatment," a London lawyer representing some of them said Tuesday.

“We’ll be giving advice to the families on what is best for their individual circumstances,” said James Healy-Pratt, a partner at Stewart's Law LLP. He is representing families from a number of countries.


The airline must pay the families of those on board around $176,000 each, under a multilateral treaty known as the Montreal Convention, and said it had already given relatives $5,000 per passenger in compensation.

But relatives can also sue for further damages — and it is these further pay-outs that experts warn could vary widely.

mmm, If I got on an airplane would it be a reasonable expectation to disappear off the face of the earth?

I'm pretty sure they are on the face of the earth...somewhere. Still, a lot more people die just walking across the street, or driving to work, than in airline accidents.

The lawyers always LINE UP to get their third...

What is appalling is when the process turns into whose life is more valued than another, and the size of the payout is expected to match. 9/11 showed that ugly side of our society.

Edit: I'm no communist or socialist, and have no problem with people working harder/smarter and earning more than others, buying extra insurance, etc., but when a tragedy happens and wipes out a bunch of folks, if there's a pot of money to pay claims, they're all equally dead.

Mike

The artful dodger, good move.

Here's Jon Stewart's take on the CNN coverage, in case you missed it:

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/6lqtfn/the-curious-case-of-flight-370

Thanks Timbo, I did miss that. Wow, I thought shadowing was ridiculous, I wasn't aware that they were discussing BLACK HOLES!!!

Mike

As more information comes out, to me it seems more like a mx issue. Apparently there were two Airworthiness Directives recently issued for the 777 fleet. One had to do with internal wires in the **** crew 02 masks, which could (and did) start a fire, in the oxygen hose!

The other AD was about cracking in the fuselage skin around the SAT COM antennae mounting area, which, if not repaired, could cause a rapid decompression.

Either one of these two issues, especially the 02 hose fire in the ****, could have caused them to divert and descend, then go unconscious.

I am thinking someone starts renting out personal SPOT trackers for flyers.

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/...iation/Egyptairflight667_zps99936539.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh212/727Kiwi/General%20Aviation/Flight6672011_zps48f604d2.jpg

This is what the 777 with the 02 mask fire looked like afterwards, and this happened while it was sitting at the gate. Now imagine this happened in flight.

Good lord, that must have been like a blow torch up there until the O2 ran out. Can you imagine if that happened in flight?

Wow - there have got to be flammability standards on those materials, right? Realize that about anything will burn if you get it hot enough and have a direct flow of pure O2, but...

Anyone remember Swiss Air 111, in 1998? I was flying as a MD 11 First Officer at the time so it's burned into my memory. Every time we went to our annual recurrent training afterwards, we had to practice our emergency descents, fire checklists, ditching checklists, etc. These poor guys wasted 15 minutes running a smoke elimination checklist, when in about 5 minutes they could have had it on the ground in Halifax. It was as a result of this crash that our checklists and procedures all changed to; "GET IT ON THE GROUND, NOW!"

The problem with the Malaysian flight was, they didn't have a nearby airport, if it was a **** fire, but it seems they did turn back and descend, before being overcome. Then it just flew on autopilot until the fuel ran out...? Maybe.

Here's a quick refresher on Swiss Air 111:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111

Read the whole thing if you have time, but if you don't, here's from the "Findings" near the bottom:

TSB findings

The investigation identified eleven causes and contributing factors of the crash in its final report. The first and most important was:

Aircraft certification standards for material flammability were inadequate in that they allowed the use of materials that could be ignited and sustain or propagate fire. Consequently, flammable material propagated a fire that started above the ceiling on the right side of the **** near the **** rear wall. The fire spread and intensified rapidly to the extent that it degraded aircraft systems and the **** environment, and ultimately led to the loss of control of the aircraft.[1]

Investigators identified evidence of arcing in wiring of the in-flight entertainment system network, but this did not trip the circuit breakers. The investigation was unable to confirm if this arc was the "lead event" that ignited the flammable covering on MPET insulation blankets that quickly spread across other flammable materials.[1] The crew did not recognize that a fire had started and were not warned by instruments. Once they became aware of the fire, the uncertainty of the problem made it difficult to address. The rapid spread of the fire led to the failure of key display systems, and the crew were soon rendered unable to control the aircraft. Because he had no light by which to see his controls after the displays failed, the pilot was forced to steer the plane blindly; intentionally or not, the plane swerved off course and headed back out into the Atlantic. Recovered fragments of the plane show that the heat inside the **** became so great that the ceiling started to melt. The recovered standby attitude indicator and airspeed indicators showed that the aircraft struck the water at 300 knots (560 km/h, 348 mph) in a 20 degrees nose down and 110 degree bank attitude, or almost inverted.[43] Death was instantaneous for all passengers and crew due to the impact forces and deceleration.[18]

The TSB concluded that even if the crew had been aware of the nature of the problem immediately after detection of the initial odour, and had a commenced an approach as rapidly as possible, the developing fire related conditions in the **** would have made a safe landing at Halifax impossible.[44][45]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVq4_HhBK8Y&list=RDGeI5ke0BENw

I like the gearshift he uses

Well...how else would you get it from first gear into second, third and overdrive?

There's another button for Warp Speed.

I could tell you where it is but then I'd have to kill you...

I know the secret handshake, you can tell me....

Here's something interesting that washed up on an island along the flight path:

http://www.maldivesfinest.com/mh370-evidence

I would have to imagine that stuff is all serial numbered and they would be able to figure out where it came from rather quickly.

I thought I've heard of those coming out of space craft and satellites on a regular basis too and that it wasn't that unusual to find them washed up on beaches. However, that thing would be pushed by the wind as easily as just about any debris out of that thing...so who knows?