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Malaysia 777 Missing


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So the plane had ACARS capability, as you would expect, but no ACARS messaging was sent, says Malaysian. Yet it flew for another hour after last contact? Is it possible there was an electrical failure/fire that would have knocked out ACARS and other control functions, but plane managed to stay aloft for an hour? Obviously a wing didn't fall off. Even the Gimli Glider had just enough aux power for a controlled descent. It didn't disappear into a void.

What if one or both of the pilots were incapacitated, and no one could break into the flight deck. Is there a mechanical scenario, like a sudden cockpit fire, where the plane would have stopped transmitting ACARS? Ot would all transponder/messaging have to be shut down by a crew member? Could a crew member have disrupted all communications?

I am just firing off thoughts into a void here, trying to imagine even the framework for a scenario.

oh, and this, which means nothing in the context of the accident, but really makes me wonder about MH. It's not just that the co-pilot breached policy, but the pilot had to have allowed it, too.

Co-pilot invited women into cockpit of earlier flight, report claims

Malaysia Airlines says it is investigating an Australia television report that the co-pilot on its missing flight had invited two women to stay in the cockpit for the duration of a flight two years ago. Jonti Roos spoke about her flight on the program A Current Affair, which aired multiple still photographs from Roos that showed the women inside the cockpit and the pilots apparently working the plane’s controls.

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blues;

Or the Helios B737 crash? At this point anything is possible but if we take some of the outcomes of that kind of event, it may not be as plausible as other theories. A "Stewart-Helios" theory doesn't explain what appears to now be a confirmed turn-back manoeuvre. And if the turn-back manoeuvre didn't occur, then in that scenario the airplane would have continued, and crashed more or less straight ahead, some 7hrs later. That hasn't been confirmed/dismissed but I wonder if the authorities are thinking that it is now becoming reasonable to examine the "range of action" of the airplane, (roughly drawn in GE, below).

dagger;

Interesting story regarding the F/O's 'invitation'. The ubiquitous and loud CNN newsman Richard Quest has chimed in with a filmed cockpit visit in which he met the subject First Officer at MH a few weeks ago while "on assignment" in the Far East. As far as I am aware, it is not legal to have any non-operational personel in the cockpit at all, anywhere in the world but we (and perhaps others...?), know that enforcement standards differ around the world. It is not up to the airline to determine who is "operational personnel" meaning who is permitted entry to the cockpit. Further, it is standard operations that the cockpit door is guarded while it is opened for various operational reasons. However, if standard procedures not followed and if vigilance is relaxed, the possibility of an untoward entry heightens, does it not? And the procedures are, by absence of such interventions, successful. That said, flight crew organizations around the world have asked for an "air-lock" (double door) type system for exit-entry into the cockpit but for various reasons this has never been done. Whether and why it should / should-not be done is the subject of another thread!

As for your other thoughts on possibilities, sudden cockpit fire is high on my list but aircraft break-up is not. ACARS is not a steady-stream transmission so, like judging when cockpit transmissions "ceased", an ACARS "sudden silence" is a matter of examining when such is expected/required, in short, the pattern of transmissions and which has not been made publicly available. Electrical failure is not impossible but highly implausible, and, I believe, #1VHF radio transmission remains possible until the airplane goes completely dark. Some on other forums, (above which the dialog on this forum has substantially risen on this topic! ), have the airplane being hit by meteorites and missiles.

As Alice says, "curiouser and curioser"....

Range of Action - MH370 (~ 2800nm - range is reduced at lower altitudes:

i-X56Q5PT-M.jpg

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I thought of a missile for a while, and if that flight had been anywhere near the North Koreans, Russians or even nearing China, I'd be more pre-disposed to believe it, having been fascinated by the minutiae of how Korean 007 turned into a tragedy and the lies and suspicion that dominated that crisis for a couple of weeks. But the area in which this transpired makes a missile theory rather implausible.

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The point I was trying (apparently not well) to make was that the possibility is there that "someone" witht he appropriate skills could potentially fly and ditch, in one piece, a B-777. At which point you would have ZERO debris to look for but an intact airliner.

I agree that this is a stretch due to the time of day and that the skills and conditions needed would need to be near perfect. But the possibility exists.

The other possibility is a total electrical failure resulting is the loss of transponder returns which in the absence of primary radar would lead to a loss of signal. It would also explain no ACARS and no Communications. The possibility of getting a plane thus crippled home at night over water is damn near zero. Problem is no one knows where it went after the SSR loss.

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Yes, in the context of the Cold War, East-West tensions and a spring-loaded Russian politburo far away in Moscow, a missile theory makes sense (but only further north). I agree...here, I doubt if the capability exists, at least to do it "invisibly".

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I'm fairly certain that whatever happened, we are now past the point of no-conspiracy return, meaning whatever the plausible explanations that investigators discover, the conspiracy theorists and other tin foil types will not believe it and come up with an alternative, blaming it on the CIA, Mossad, aliens, meteor and of course, Amelia Earhart who never died after her plane disappeared.

Also, a valid point with ACARS

https://twitter.com/BrianDunning/status/443492157890895872

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Here is a report on CNN. (They never get it wrong do they?)

http://www.cnn.com/

If that track after contact is lost is at all close to accurate it sure looks to me as if someone was in control. If they had a failure that was sufficient to take out all communications then it seems unlikely that there would still be a functioning autopilot that could continue to operate if the crew was incapacitated. I find it hard to imagine that the aircraft would continue to operate on a consistent track like that without an autopilot or someone at the controls.

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What do the standard ACARS company downlinks include? Is it just aircraft condition monitoring or is navigation data included too? Initially MAS said the aircraft lost comms at 02:40. Could be that they continued receiving ACARS messages up until then that were saying everything was normal and either didn't include nav data or nobody checked to coordinates given against the expected route (why would you if you thought everything was normal).

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Why is the military just now coming out with the prime radar track. Why would they let everyone search for so long in the wrong places. This is just wrong, there is something else in play here, something we are not being told. I'm not talking conspiracy theory or anything like that, just for some reason we don't know, all the known information is not forthcoming.

If the military is correct in their revealing of the radar track then someone was definitely in control of the aircraft and purposely shut off/sabotaged all the electronic aids.

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Both the CBC and BBC are reporting that the Malaysian Air Force are now denying that they tracked the aircraft to the West.

This is almost becoming as bad as PPrune's speculative theorists.

The NY Times has a fairly reasoned report on what information they seem to have so far.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-jet.html?hp&_r=0

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Perhaps folk should stop wondering "what they're not telling us" and consider a possibility that we're hearing every silly tidbit of speculation coming in, unfiltered by any expertise, from any Malaysian AF officer flattered by a journalist's attention. For Pete's sake, on this last rabbit trail, it wasn't even clear whether the alleged primary track was at 1000m or @ 1000m below cruise. The timelines are cris-crossing events and notifications thereof ....

This is simply not as well-equipped or professional a search/investigation as we're accustomed to, even in the earliest stages. Deep breaths, everybody (particularly those paying any heed to reporting sourced with people "who have been briefed ...").

;)

Cheers, IFG :b:

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Both the CBC and BBC are reporting that the Malaysian Air Force are now denying that they tracked the aircraft to the West.

This is almost becoming as bad as PPrune's speculative theorists.

The NY Times has a fairly reasoned report on what information they seem to have so far.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-jet.html?hp&_r=0

Was watching CNN this morning - they posted a page from PPrune. So yes, they're even tapping into sites like that (and presumably this one) for ideas of where to look and/or what to look for.

I feel like one of the pages out of the challenge of chimpanzees to type out the works of The Bard.

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When information is lacking, those who are responsible for giving it will offer anything - even if it's wrong or irrelevant - simply to avoid being accused of hiding something, or worse, of being incompetent. There's also an element of human nature in that they want to help, especially when so many families and colleagues are suffering what must be a terrible heartbreak right now. At the same time we have those who are responsible for providing information (the media), who will grasp at the tiniest scintilla just so they have "something" to offer, even if it's unsubstantiated or totally wrong.

Please don't get me started on the ridiculous speculation going on over at PPRuNe. When last I checked, there was over 80 pages of mostly useless drivel. Springsteen had it right. "57 channels and nothing on".

I'm as intrigued as the next guy, but there is nowhere near enough information to start speculating intelligently. The only thing I do know is that now would be a great time to be in the business of offering a system that will transmit real time critical flight data because I can see rule making on the horizon to make it mandatory. The circumstances of the disappearance of AF447 may have seemed like an anomaly. This event proves that they weren't.

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How would real time flight data have prevented this? Like the mode S transponder and ACARS that every airliner already has, it would be subject to being turned off. You may find the jet faster, but it doesn't prevent anything I don't think. I also saw a question on PPRUNE, why don't we have a live feed camera in the flight deck? Uhhh, no.

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There is at least one company that has a system in development that will send out data bursts when a certain parameter is reached, such as g-load, excessive pitch / bank, or a significant course change. My understanding is that it could not be simply switched off in the flight deck and that it would continue to function until all but the most severe of electrical failures required that it be deactivated to permit more critical flight systems to continue functioning.

I'm not suggesting such a system would have prevented this occurrence, but in the business of risk management, one thing you want to avoid (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld) is "known unknowns". What we know is that a very popular airframe type has apparently disappeared without a trace. We have no idea as to why. Real time flight data might have at least offered some clue as to why it's disappeared, so as to help others avoid a similar fate.

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In an epic "Boy, did I ever get that wrong", I recall wondering (maybe out loud), after the Ethiopian ELT fire, "Why do we even have ELTs in modern airliners? How could we lose an airliner, given GPS, ADS-B, SatComm?".....

The only thing left, which I'm sure someone on PPRUNE has suggested, is to have some extension of the CPDLC system that could take un-over-rideable control of an aircraft. Everything on (ultra)- modern aircraft, even if controlled with a physical lever, uses electronic signals and goes through a central computer for its primary actuation and could be controlled electronically. There's no way that any current ground based system could handle ALL aircraft or deal with abnormals requiring mechanical overrides, so I would suggest that our jobs as pilots are safe for a generation or two but, conceivably, individual flight could be controlled from half a world away. It sounds pie-in-the-sky at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone "at the top" hasn't had someone look into it.

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...it wasn't even clear whether the alleged primary track was at 1000m or @ 1000m below cruise. :b:

Absolutely. And how did they get altitude information from an aircraft without a transponder? At the very least they would need 2 coordinated radar returns and they don't even seem to have one.

If that aircraft headed out into the Indian Ocean, it will be a long time before anyone finds it. Areas within range of that flight (if it turned when they said it did) are more remote than most of the North Atlantic.

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Guest longtimer

In an epic "Boy, did I ever get that wrong", I recall wondering (maybe out loud), after the Ethiopian ELT fire, "Why do we even have ELTs in modern airliners? How could we lose an airliner, given GPS, ADS-B, SatComm?".....

The only thing left, which I'm sure someone on PPRUNE has suggested, is to have some extension of the CPDLC system that could take un-over-rideable control of an aircraft. Everything on (ultra)- modern aircraft, even if controlled with a physical lever, uses electronic signals and goes through a central computer for its primary actuation and could be controlled electronically. There's no way that any current ground based system could handle ALL aircraft or deal with abnormals requiring mechanical overrides, so I would suggest that our jobs as pilots are safe for a generation or two but, conceivably, individual flight could be controlled from half a world away. It sounds pie-in-the-sky at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone "at the top" hasn't had someone look into it.

This would be great until someone hacked into it and took control ....................

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Or hijacked the control room. Wouldn't that be convenient. No need to even put yourself in harm's way, just break into the control room! Forget even breaking in, you could place a manchurian candidate. Sorry, been watching Homeland.

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