Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is missing

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sn26567
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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by sn26567 »

KriVa wrote:Also, quite a few flight parameters (altitude, speed, heading,...) are already being sent automatically by modern civil jetliners, through ADS-B. I'm not sure whether there is a central storage of this data (it would be a LOT of data, of course), but instances like Flightradar24 do keep some kind of record. (The last parameter FR24 received was an ADS-B signal at 0 ft, if I remember correctly.)
Nevertheless, it remains astonishing that it is not possible to locate a lost aircraft with all the modern technology available. When you lose your iPhone or your Samsung Galaxy, it is possible to locate it immediately. The same for a stolen Mercedes or BMW. Why not a much bigger aircraft?

As for FR24, I think the last signal received was at 35,000 ft.
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KriVa
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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by KriVa »

Locating an intact aircraft isn't that hard either, through a variety of systems. You can use the standard Transponder, the Emergency Location Transmitter(either through HF, or SARSAT, built-in or portable). The problem arises when the plane breaks up. Sure you can find your phone with tracking apps and whatnot these days, you can also find your car back this way. However, if you smash the phone to the ground, or drive the car off a cliff, the tracking gizmos in it will be useless too.
All I'm saying, is that no system is failureproof in this sense. The last radar location is pretty well known, down to a very small margin. However, IF the aircraft disintegrates instantaneously, a live stream off of the black box won't help much either. The problem is not in tracking the aircraft, the problem lies in the aircraft breaking up, in my view.
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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by teddybAIR »

The yellow object that was believed to be a floatation device has been inspected and is not from the downed Malaysian airline. 48hrs+ into the search and no debris confirmed yet.

Passenger
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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Passenger »

"...Hong Kong's Air Traffic Control Center reported on Mar 10th 2014 around 17:30L (09:30Z) that an airliner enroute on airway L642 reported via HF radio that they saw a large field of debris at position N9.72 E107.42 about 80nm southeast of Ho Chi Minh City in the South China Sea, about 50nm off the south-eastern coast of Vietnam. Ships have been dispatched to the reported debris field..."

Source : The Aviation Herald
http://avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b&opt=0

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Homo Aeroportus »

sn26567 wrote: ....As for FR24, I think the last signal received was at 35,000 ft.
Things just don’t add up here.
FR24 say they have a good coverage of the area. Flight ALT goes from FL350 to zero in a blink and signal is lost.
An explosion could explain the sudden loss of comm, RDO/ACARS, but this would lead to a field of debris in "near" vicinity of the last known position and nothing was found after 3 days search.

Supposedly MH370 turned back soon after loss of contact (detected by military primary radar?). Then what?

Both WMKC, Kota Bharu (2400m RWY) and WMGK, Gong Kedak AFB (2600m RWY) are on the East coast, about 170NM from last known psn. That would have been the place to let down.
Today they announced they will extend the search area to the West of the peninsula and the Malacca Strait. So MH370 would have instead continued and crossed the peninsula?

With bases at Gong Kedak (Su-30), Kuanton (MiG29), Butterworth (F-18) + several other bases nearby on both coasts, the military did not track the flight or scrambled a pair of fighters?
So either the military had a bad show (well, even the Swiss close the shop at night) or the information given is incomplete/misleading.

Something that puzzles me is that during the last press point, they kept referring to a SAR mission. Nobody until now has ever said that the probability of finding survivors has vanished, which would be a normal way of putting things after 3 days.

Anybody any idea?

H.A.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by fretn »

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/missing-malays ... =ibtimesuk

This might be hogwash, but it certainly adds a new level of mystery to this disappearance. Apparently some phones were still ringing after it had dissappeared from the radar. Extremely interesting, a modern mystery in some ways.

Lysexpat
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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Lysexpat »

fretn wrote:This might be hogwash, but it certainly adds a new level of mystery to this disappearance. Apparently some phones were still ringing after it had dissappeared from the radar. Extremely interesting, a modern mystery in some ways.
Happens to my mobile all the time. After it has been used in international roaming, the caller gets a ringtone altough my phone is switched off. Same with text messages the sender gets a "delivered" message albeit the phone is off.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Treeper »

Passenger wrote:"...Hong Kong's Air Traffic Control Center reported on Mar 10th 2014 around 17:30L (09:30Z) that an airliner enroute on airway L642 reported via HF radio that they saw a large field of debris at position N9.72 E107.42 about 80nm southeast of Ho Chi Minh City in the South China Sea, about 50nm off the south-eastern coast of Vietnam. Ships have been dispatched to the reported debris field..."

Source : The Aviation Herald
http://avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b&opt=0
that field of debris could be it. but... 285nm from the point it disappeared from radar? that's roughly BRU-HAM or BRU-LYS. Is it possible to fly unnoticed for another hour or so, in that region?
or maybe a better question; could one turn all comms off mid-flight?

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by sn26567 »

The missing Malaysian passenger jet did not make automatic contact with a flight data-monitoring system after vanishing from radar screens.

The Boeing 777-200ER is equipped with a maintenance computer capable of talking to the ground automatically through short messages, known as ACARS. These help technicians prepare any necessary repairs and shorten turnaround times at the destination.

Automated ACARS error messages from an Airbus A330 that vanished in the Atlantic in 2009 focused attention initially on inconsistent speed readings as a possible cause of that crash.

In the case of the Malaysia Airlines jet, however, investigators have no such evidence to help them discover what happened to the passenger plane. There were no signals from ACARS from the time the aircraft disappeared.

In addition to standard ACARS messages, airlines can install a system sold by Boeing called Airplane Health Management which provides real-time troubleshooting and allows Boeing to monitor the flight as well as the airline, according to its brochure. This optional system was not installed on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

Source: Reuters
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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Flanker2 »

If the cell phone story is true, I think that it's more or less becoming clear that piracy is involved.
At this point we can continue to speculate but it's best to let the authorities do their work, for the sake of the hostages.
Last edited by Flanker2 on 10 Mar 2014, 23:42, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by cathay belgium »

My tought : no bermuda,no aliens, no pirates involved...
Search the ocean ... you will found it...
Better... found the WHY ?
Too many B772 flying around these days...
Radar don't need emitting signals.... it's just there... B772 is nothing stealth...
My guess it explosed, even with the false passports I don't think terrorism is involved..
So .. just Why ?

CXB
New types flown 2022.. A339

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Desert Rat »

If the ATC transponder, satcom, vhf and hf are switched off...the A/C is not able to transmit anything anymore...
EHM, airman or any other maintenance related data's are silent.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Flanker2 »

CX, many things don't add up in an accident scenario.
1. If the aircraft had a major structural failure, leading to the failure of the transponder system, it's probable that the debris would be found in close vicinity from the last point of emission.
2. If the aircraft didn't have a major structural failure, it wouldn't explain the sudden loss of the transponder system.

Here is the difference with the AF447 case: AF447 was flying in the Atlantic, in an area outside primary and secondary radar coverage where they work with position reporting, hence it took a few days to locate debris based on the last reported position, but they still found them quite fast.

For me it's clear that authorities are going after a moving target and therefore can't disclose any information until they terminate the operation.

I just hope that it's not organ trafficking and that they get them fast...
Last edited by Flanker2 on 10 Mar 2014, 23:58, edited 1 time in total.

crew1990
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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by crew1990 »

My guess is also an explosion or the dislocation of the aircraft, as it must have been something very sudden.

If indeed there were some hi jacker wich took the control of the plane, and wich then switched of all the transmitter, anyway the aircraft would have been landing somewhere in an airport, big enough to be abble to accept a 777. And I really doubt that a 777 could land on a commercial or military airport without nobody see it.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Flanker2 »

You would be surprised of how short a B777 can land.
1500 meters of strip is all it takes, which means that you could land them on any of the small desert islands on the pacific given the fuel they had. By flying low outside area coverage and using a network of ships with radar to tell them where ships were sailing, they could use the cover of the night to navigate to wherever they need be.

I don't know the purpose of the piracy, but when you snatch up so many people at once, human trafficking and organ trade is what jumps to my mind. It would be less risky and more profitable than a ransom demand.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rea ... ing-profit

In-flight full disintegration is impossible and for an aircraft the size of a B772 with all the fuel on board, it would be visible miles away from other aircraft at night at FL350. Mobile phones would not work btw.

A perfect disintegration would also be impossible as you would have to spread a huge load of explosives evenly over the entire aircraft to make the debris small enough to be undetectable as the aircraft is moving in the air at very high speed. Even if the wing tanks explode, the forward fuselage would still continue its way forward almost intact.

This one is close to the ground and caused by a triggered explosion (after anomally).



It's impossible to not find debris unless you have many tons of explosives, and even then the explosion would have been so huge and visible in the darkness of the night.


Also the airliners.net theory/myth that the aircraft could have plunged into the depths without losing structural integrity with pax asphixyating Apollo 13 style is impossible. Jet fuel being less dense than water and all the air in the cabin would have pulled the aircraft up to the surface, if it were uberhaput possible that the aircraft survived such a plunge.
In reality an aircraft would always disintegrate to some extent on impact with the water and cause a field of debris which would have been found by now, as they ha d a very precise last position.
Last edited by Flanker2 on 11 Mar 2014, 00:25, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by fretn »

The thing with a high altitude explosion is that would leave a huge field of (visible) debris in the immediate vicinity of the last known locaton. I've read somewhere that Malaysia's seats could double as a kind of floating device in a water ditching. This would have been spotted pretty easily (especially considering the huge amount of resources currently active to localize the plane), as an airplane contains lots of plastic and other fragments (luggage) that would surely float.

I think they're looking for the airplane in the wrong location, but how and what, and most importantly, where remains a huge question mark at this time.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by Flanker2 »

Fretn, you are correct.

Airliners.net are ruling out the mobile phone story, but it's wrong.
How can one explain that one of the cell phones rang during the first calls, then it did no longer?
Surely it can't be explained by the way a network behaves under roaming.

I'm going with the Tintin flight to Sydney scenario.
Why else would the Chinese deploy spy satellites...

My assessment is that by now, the pax would be transfered onto a ship of some sort, being moved to a new location. American spy satellites should be able to track back the movements to some extent using recorded images, the problem is that 230 mostly Chinese pax may not represent sufficient American interest to divulge information obtained through their spy satellite operation...

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by FlightMate »

That's one of the better possible scenarii

But I wonder who can have the logistic to pull off something like that?

I honestly believe the airplane crashed somewhere and it's a matter of days, if not hours, until we find the wreckage. But I hope the hijacking theory + ransom is the correct one.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by tsv »

Flanker2 wrote:You would be surprised of how short a B777 can land.
1500 meters of strip is all it takes, which means that you could land them on any of the small desert islands on the pacific given the fuel they had. By flying low outside area coverage and using a network of ships with radar to tell them where ships were sailing, they could use the cover of the night to navigate to wherever they need be.

I don't know the purpose of the piracy, but when you snatch up so many people at once, human trafficking and organ trade is what jumps to my mind. It would be less risky and more profitable than a ransom demand.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rea ... ing-profit

In-flight full disintegration is impossible and for an aircraft the size of a B772 with all the fuel on board, it would be visible miles away from other aircraft at night at FL350. Mobile phones would not work btw.

A perfect disintegration would also be impossible as you would have to spread a huge load of explosives evenly over the entire aircraft to make the debris small enough to be undetectable as the aircraft is moving in the air at very high speed. Even if the wing tanks explode, the forward fuselage would still continue its way forward almost intact.

This one is close to the ground and caused by a triggered explosion (after anomally).



It's impossible to not find debris unless you have many tons of explosives, and even then the explosion would have been so huge and visible in the darkness of the night.


Also the airliners.net theory/myth that the aircraft could have plunged into the depths without losing structural integrity with pax asphixyating Apollo 13 style is impossible. Jet fuel being less dense than water and all the air in the cabin would have pulled the aircraft up to the surface, if it were uberhaput possible that the aircraft survived such a plunge.
In reality an aircraft would always disintegrate to some extent on impact with the water and cause a field of debris which would have been found by now, as they ha d a very precise last position.
Man you should get a job as a Movie Script Writer! I've read some fanciful hypothesis about this incident but Pirating the Aircraft, avoiding all sea traffic on the way to a desert Island, landing the 777 undetected and then stripping the PAX of their Organs - well that's just a crack up :)

Are you sure they were transferred to a Ship though? I think it may be safer if they used a Submarine. Make it a big one and they can put the 777 in there in case they need it again..

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Re: Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with flight M

Post by teddybAIR »

Let's not underestimate the size of the search area and how difficult it is to spot small debris on the water. First of all, they start with the last known position. However, that only gives you a starting point from which to search. Depending on the accuracy, you already start with an initial search area that is thousands of square kilometers large. Even if you could pin down that initial location (remember, it's over the ocean and this airliner comes down from 35.000ft at give or take M.85) to a square with 50km sides, that gives you an initial circular area of 7.800km². Now factor in a current of 10km/h. Depending where it actually went down, the debris field can drift North West in the Gulf of Thailand, North East along the coast of Vietnam or even South.
Unless you have a pinpoint location on the crash site, it is impossible to know/predict which way the debris field is drifting. At a rate of - let's take a moderate 10km/h - after only 48hrs your search area has just widened by 500km in any of the likely directions!
Also consider the technology that is used in such search operations. Infra red camera's are rendered obsolete when the wreckage has been drifting in the water for multiple hours since anything that has been in the water that long and that isn't alive or burning, will have adopted the temperature of the ambient water. Therefore, the only technologies available are Dopler, which is slow and will also yield a lot of false returns, and the most reliable instrument: the human eye. That is why search is limited to daytime anyway. Unfortunately, our human eye is not that good in detecting small debris floating on an ocean surface.
I suggest we remain patient. Eventually they will find the wreckage. Conspiracy theories have surfaced after every accident that took a while to crack, but eventually investigation has always pointed to the real cullprit.

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