Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is missing

[quixoticguide]

Most importantly, where is it now?
-The aircraft probably carried sufficient fuel for 7,5 hours. Count route + contingency + reserves.
This puts it at 6000km.
Given how consciously they went about saving fuel by flying higher despite the risk of being spotted, it must have been on the limits of the range with fuel. For me this means Iran, Saudia Arabia or Somalia.

The sceduled flight time was 6 hours and they flew already 1 hour.
So they haven't enought fuel for the country's that you mentioned.

[Flanker2]

6 hours trip fuel, contingency 5-10%, alternate and holding + reserves + 30 minutes final reserve.
Prevailing winds are East to West, which saves about an hour on the trip, and don't think that they will bother to land with any reserves left.

Difficult but doable, given precise navigation and good planning. They could also have had a plan B.

Over the Indian Ocean they could turn their transponder back on and fly higher altitudes to save fuel because there is no SSR.

It depends on the routing obviously and the winds on that day.

Impossible? Definitely not.

[sn26567]

Malaysian authorities have expanded their search into the Andaman Sea and beyond, requesting India's help with the search. The jet had enough fuel to reach deep into the Indian Ocean.

Indeed. Following the revelation that a plane which might be MH370 has been spotted by Malaysian military radars: it diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe.

The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India's Andaman Islands.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... DG20140314

[Acid-drop]

Apparently the malaysian gov known this route from saturday ...
Yet they strongly denied everything.
I continue to beleive they hide something themselves.

[sn26567]

Such an itinerary, knowing the waypoints, could only have been performed by pilots or people with an equivalent knowledge.

[Acid-drop]

yes most likely ... or someone who did a few hours of pilot course and read a few pdf ...
In 2001 it wasn't an expert, was it ?

[Nevihta]

Apparently Lithium batteries were in the cargo... (CNN)

[Acid-drop]

Everybody has one in his pocket...

[Flanker2]

Li-ion batteries can ignite and take an aircraft down, but they can't switch off the transponder and VHF/HF coms, and even SATCOM and keep it flying for hours.

5 hours into the flight, the engine's health monitoring system stopped sending pings through satcom, at cruise speed and altitude. So it's likely that it was switched off by the hijackers/pilots or that something bad happened to the aircraft at that point.

It's not a suicide mission by one of the pilots, because if it was the location wouldn't matter.

This being said, why did they switch off the satcom only after 5 hours...? Did they acquire new knowledge or is that the time that it took them to figure out how to switch it off. Depending on how the systems are interconnected, it could be that they had to open up the roof panels in the cabin to gain access to the wiring and cut it off close to the antenna, which would explain the delay.

[earthman]

This all begs the question what was on the cargo manifest, or what wasn't but was being transported anyway.

[Nevihta]

Everybody has one in his pocket...

1. Not everyone has 1 in pocket.
2. If the battery starts to ignite in your pocket, you'll probably notice it before it's too late.

Please be factual or constructive.

I'm not saying it's the cause or whatever, it's an information that might be useful, or not.

[Passenger]

Apparently the malaysian gov known this route from saturday ...
Yet they strongly denied everything.
I continue to beleive they hide something themselves.

The above graphic is a good lead indeed, specially with this update on The Aviation Herald: "...During the press conference in the afternoon of Mar 14th 2014 Malaysia's Transport Minister provided more details about the primary radar observation stating, the target was first picked up at waypoint IGARI at FL350 (editorial note The Aviation Herald: waypoint IGARI nearly conincides with the last secondary radar position of MH-370) at 01:21L moving towards waypoint VAMPI, then waypoint GIVAL and finally turning northwest towards waypoint IGREX. The target was lost at FL295 after GIVAL at 02:15L..."

Apparently the malaysian gov known this route from saturday ... Yet they strongly denied everything. I continue to believe they hide something themselves.

I don't think Malaysian authorities were trying to hide something. Think it was incompetence (which is as bad). I think it was impossible for them to accept the possibility that the aircraft could be crashed into sea on purpose, and even harder for them to assume that the causer wanted to make sure that aircraft nor black boxes would ever be found. Remember the LAM Mozambique E-190 crash (29th November 2013) where the black boxes gave the proof that the captain crashed the aircraft.

Therefore my first guess here for this accident: it's now just a matter of hours before the aircraft will be located by a ship's sonar.

[sn26567]

It appears now that the plane has been flying up to FL450, higher than the upper limit for a 777, which is FL431. According to The New York Times, an Asia-based pilot of a Boeing 777-200 said an ascent above the plane’s service limit, along with a depressurized cabin, could have rendered the passengers and crew unconscious, and could be a deliberate maneuver by a pilot or hijacker.

An American official said that the data available at this moment “leads them to believe that it either ran out of fuel or crashed right before it ran out of fuel.”. It is not conceivable that it could have crossed Indian airspace unnoticed.

[bollox]

I seem to remember a Lion Air 737 that crashed in to Mt ymittos (Greece). Examination has shown that pilot,crew and passengers were incapacitated/dead due to oxygen starvation. The plane flew till out of juice. In this case military could see non moving people in plane.
There was also a bizjet with a similar failure and kept on climbing until stalled/engine flamed out (above FL400)

[Sabena320]

I seem to remember a Lion Air 737 that crashed in to Mt ymittos (Greece).

That was indeed the Helios crash in 2005 due to serious pilot error.

[Flanker2]

I don't think that the aircraft ran out of fuel.
A health monitoring system, even for engines, wouldn't be programmed to stop when the engines stop, as that would be one of the parameters of the health monitoring.
Also, there was plenty of fuel for 2 or more hours of flight, as the flight time was by itself longer than the 5 hours the system was pinging through the satcom.

FL450 makes sense, to incapacitate the pax and crew quickly.
That points to the fact that there was time pressure, ie pax or crew attempting to regain control of the cockpit.

However, it doesn't make sense for a hijacker to follow waypoints.
You would want to fly as direct a routing as possible to get there as soon as possible.
That looks like something a FD would fly, based on FMC inputs.

So I suspect that the pirate didn't know how to navigate by his own, and put in the data in the FMC to make the autopilot fly to the intended destination according to a plan he had.
The pirate was however confident about basic handling skills and aircraft performance.

Alternatively this could have been a ploy to confuse.

It makes sense, because by the time the aircraft would land, the day would break.

The aircraft landed somewhere, satcom was disabled.
That's the most plausible explanation I have for now.

[Flanker2]

It now looks as though the aircraft might have deliberately been flown along FIR lines...
So I think these are highly skilled pro's... no way they would run out of fuel in the middle of the Ocean.





http://airinfodotorg.files.wordpress.co ... =640&h=506

Remind yourself that the first leg is only 40 minutes of flight and at lower speeds during climb.
So this is less than half of the duration of the pinges and only 1/3rd of the possible range. They could have gone anywhere from there.

I'm surprised that authorities and people are still shocked by this kind of events after 9/11... and make remarks such as "your Hollywood imagination". This was very obviously a piracy from the early days.
What will it take for people to realise that the human can be evil?

The U.S. are saying that it is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean. I hope that this is their official position and not all they are doing to find the victims. After all there is no U.S. interest involved... Nowadays people need to take care of themselves, authorities have become optional services who only move their arses if it suits them.
No ransom demand equals human trafficking and potential re-use of the B772 for purposes of terrorism.

[convair]

Seems a very plausible theory. Anyway, let's hope you're right and that the pax and crew are safe "somewhere"!

But why not hijack a KUL-Bombay flight then?

[Flanker2]

"Increasingly, it seems to be heading into the criminal arena," said Richard Healing, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. The latest revelations about the investigation, he added, "indicate the emphasis is on determining if a hijacker or crew member diverted the plane."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... 1720140314

I wonder what the authorities are waiting to expand on this line. The more they wait, the less likely it is that they will find the jet or its occupants. I wonder what they are waiting to upgrade this into a terrorism investigation, send a few aircraft carriers and start a major search action going through island after island.
250 people, mostly Chinese, aren't worth it, so let's let these pirates have their way?
Next thing we know this becomes the new hype...

If they want to look for a wreckage, they can do that later. The people would be dead already, so even if they find it, it wouldn't be such a big achievement.

I guess that there must be a reason why KUL-PEK was chosen over KUL-BOM.
One of the reasons could be the fact that they would win a few days as the search would start at the wrong place... if that was the aim, they succeeded.

[RTM]

I don't think that the aircraft ran out of fuel.
A health monitoring system, even for engines, wouldn't be programmed to stop when the engines stop, as that would be one of the parameters of the health monitoring.

The thing is... when both engines stop, you are going into electrical emergency power mode. Just RAT and batteries. So all non essential systems are isolated, incuding EHM and ACARS. Meaning, YES, it WILL stop!

Having said that, I do agree that the aircraft should have a larger range than the estimeted 5 hrs...