Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370

[Rhumsaa]

 

 

 

That is the card the US are playing to substantiate their increasing involvement. But, if they're going to pay for the investigation, then crack on. Unless, of course, they bill the Malaysians and then invade somewhere in their 'war on terrorism'.

 

Have to say though, the human intervention explanation is the most logical.

Isn't 'Intervention' of two forms though? A deliberate act knowing what you are doing on a serviceable aircraft, or desperately trying to fly an unserviceable aircraft not knowing what you are doing?

Indeed.

 

Quite

[Lonan3]

 

 

 

 

That is the card the US are playing to substantiate their increasing involvement. But, if they're going to pay for the investigation, then crack on. Unless, of course, they bill the Malaysians and then invade somewhere in their 'war on terrorism'.

 

Have to say though, the human intervention explanation is the most logical.

Isn't 'Intervention' of two forms though? A deliberate act knowing what you are doing on a serviceable aircraft, or desperately trying to fly an unserviceable aircraft not knowing what you are doing?

Indeed.

 

Quite

Absolutely

[wrighty]

 

Albert's theory holds no water. A sudden cabin depressurisation would have set off an automatic mayday call - which apparently didn't happen.

Where did you read about 'automatic maydays'? I thought they had to push a button for that, after getting their oxygen equipment on?

I though I heard them talk about it on radio 4, but maybe not. According to this document the oxygen masks would deploy automatically and the crew would signal mayday as standard procedure. Unless the plane completely exploded, in which case it should have been found by now, in your scenario a mayday call should have been made one way or another.

[Bobbie Bobster]

@wrighty Aviate, Navigate, Communicate seesm to be the ingrained order of things (kinda like Airway, Breathing, Compression). If the workload in an emergency for steps 1 and 2 are very high, the crew might not get on to 3 before communication was degraded, either through damage or deliberate action.

 

ETA: Ooh, another aviation/medical crossover: linky.

[Bobbie Bobster]

Seems as if ACARS was switched off (implying a graceful termination of contact, rather than sudden loss, e.g CB's being pulled) before the final VHF communication with ATC. So it further implies deliberate action by actor or actors unknown, rather than a catastrophic event.

[Slim]

Doesn't autopilot automatically follow way points?

This changed course though.

 

Bob: yes and it was the cockpit controlled side of the ACARS not the embedded part that the pilots couldn't (or don't know how to) disable.

 

It's a mystery still, and there simply isn't enough info to draw any conclusion but the news of the disablement of the transponder and ACARS at the precise moment it switched airspaces looks almost certain that it was timed deliberately rather than a random failure.

 

As for Tameelfs conspiracy nonsense, it should come as no surprise that it is complete bollocks. The patent holders aren't on the manifest and the information about patent ownership is incorrect, the heirs to the deceased estate would own the patent rights. Freescale isn't owned by the Rothchilds either, it's a public company and has other large shareholders:

 

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fsl/institutional-holdings

[The Border Terrier]

It has happened before, but the two cases I can think of, one ended with the flight attendant spending the rest of the flight holding onto the pilots legs who had been sucked out, and dropping to breathable altitude.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

 

TBT.

[Albert Tatlock]

 

Doesn't autopilot automatically follow way points?

This changed course though.

But didn't it change course following way points, hence a satellite picking it up in a corridor?

 

If the autopilot is set to go from A to C, and B is en-route as a way point as part of getting to C, then the aircraft would still follow the way points to get to C automatically via B, turning only in corridors at way points where required?

 

So, in my scenario of crew and passengers disabled having first tried to get things working before being overcome, from then on it would seem the plane was turning when really it was just the autopilot following built in instructions, aiming for a corridor that had possibly been programmed in error through desperation?

[Slim]

But didn't it change course following way points, hence a satellite picking it up in a corridor?

According to reports, it changed course 90 degrees west, completely off it's original flight plan.

 

I gather the satellite 'corridor' isn't to do with the waypoints, but to do with the range. Because the main ACARS system was shut down there was no location data, but Inmarsat have been able to plot possible locations based distance using signal strength, so we've got two radial lines of possible locations while the data was being transmitted:

 

If the autopilot is set to go from A to C, and B is en-route as a way point as part of getting to C, then the aircraft would still follow the way points to get to C automatically via B, turning only in corridors at way points where required?

Would make sense if it was following it's existing scheduled route, but it wasn't.

>>

So, in my scenario of crew and passengers disabled having first tried to get things working before being overcome, from then on it would seem the plane was turning when really it was just the autopilot following built in instructions, aiming for a corridor that had possibly been programmed in error through desperation?

I gather the route was changed only once the plane left malasian airspace, so it was effectively in the 'hand over' zone. It seems quite a large coincidence that the transponder was switched off and the plane changed course to a route that made it hard to track if this really was a catastrophic failure.

 

I personally wouldn't rule out failure elsewhere in this story, the fact that it's dissapeared means that it could have been hijacked then suffered a failure, or there was a struggle or something else that caused decompression; we just don't know. The first part does look like human intervention though, based on what we've been told.

[Bobbie Bobster]

a satellite picking it up in a corridor?

The "corridor" thing is a bit of a misnomer. Inmarsat IOR picked up the last ACARS ping at 0811 and analysis of the signal indicates that it was at a 40-deg distance from IOR, therefore somewhere along the two "corridors" shown. It's not a flight path, just the last known position from ACARS is somewhere along the arc (again, courtesy pprune). Assuming straight-line flight puts them somewhere towards the end of the arcs after 7.5h.

 

 

[Slim]

The inmarset plots are odd, as the military radar contact shows it flying west from it's last known civilian radar position yet those arcs shows it either north or south of this position.

[Donald Trumps]

No way would it have got through Chinese radar systems, or into Russian areas of 'interest'

[AcousticallyChallenged]

The inmarset plots are odd, as the military radar contact shows it flying west from it's last known civilian radar position yet those arcs shows it either north or south of this position.

Remember radar is old hat tech now. It's not changed much since the 60s AFAIK.

 

The big question is whether the plane made contact with the ground voluntarily or not, and either way, where did this occur?

 

Obviously, if the pilots were disabled, landing would be more difficult unless the hijackers could fly 777s, and there's the fact that these planes tend to rely on instrument landing (ILS) where the airport will give the glideslope, or at least, the red and white lights at the side. Both of which an old disused airfield is probably going to lack.

[doc.fixit]

I am truly impressed with the knowledge and information here. I really am, thanks for the insights.

[quilp]

It was surprising to find that after the Yanks left South-East Asia, they left behind many airstrips that are rarely, if ever, used these days. Many of them are long enough to accommodate modern passenger airliners. This is also the case on a few small Islands in the South-Pacific. There is a list on google Earth.

 

Big mystery.