MH370: Malaysian Airlines Flight to Beijing carrying 239 people is lost over sea.

[TenEightyOne]

Just saw the "turning back?" story. That might tie with what I read last night about FlightTracker showing a change of direction.

What amazes me though is that if it was still flying there was no signal output of any kind, that just doesn't happen on that type (or similar).

I suppose that if we presume that the flying crew were too busy too send a signal (or that their radios were inoperative), maybe the period from the start of the emergency to the end all fitted in between the aircraft telemetry's scheduled transmission?

I can't believe that it's made its way to any airspace without being seen. It would be hard enough feat in military cargo plane, let alone a well-laden 777.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

I see a lot of media outlets are focusing on the mystery passengers angle, stopping just short of labelling it a terrorist act - but you know they are thinking it.

The only way terrorism would make sense is if it was carried out by the East Turkestan independence movement in China's westernmost Xinjiang province, as most of the passengers were Chinese. But they rarely do much outside the city of Urumqi and its surrounds, and they are probably lying low at the moment after that attack on commuters at a train station last week. And bringing down a jet would require a huge step up in their logistical capabilities.

 

[TenEightyOne]

It's more in the league of Chechen rebels but the geography makes no sense, even if the timing might conceivably at a real stretch.

If there was an explosion on the plane it's conceivable that it wasn't supposed to happen there, maybe someone was moving some kind of device? Maybe illegal arms or explosive equipment are involved?

Maybe there was a hijack attempt but they were unable to gain access to the cockpit, the crew turned back for (2 hours into a 6 hour flight it would make sense to head for home). The hijackers detonated a device. The flaw there is the lack of any communication, just speculating.

I still can't think of a way for it to glide without the crew having some opportunity to find any power to send a signal unless they were incapacitated or battling some extreme onboard circumstance like fire or fumes.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

That seems like a bit of a stretch.

 

[Crash]

Maybe there was a hijack attempt but they were unable to gain access to the cockpit, the crew turned back for (2 hours into a 6 hour flight it would make sense to head for home). The hijackers detonated a device. The flaw there is the lack of any communication, just speculating.

If there's any sort of emergency that requires landing, the pilot crew will divert and attempt to fly the plane to the nearest feasible airport/airstrip. In this case, somewhere in Vietnam will likely be closer than turning back.

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It is extremely strange for a plane to completely disappear off radar and not communicate any sort of emergency; unfortunately, this may have been some sort of in-flight catastrophic failure.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

If there's any sort of emergency that requires landing, the pilot crew will divert and attempt to fly the plane to the nearest feasible airport/airstrip. In this case, somewhere in Vietnam will likely be closer than turning back.

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It is extremely strange for a plane to completely disappear off radar and not communicate any sort of emergency; unfortunately, this may have been some sort of in-flight catastrophic failure.

Yeah we know, but reports are the ones saying that the flight data that is so far available shows what looks to be an attempted turn around. Also from what Ten has said he has experience with flying and aircraft...

 

[Grayfox]

If I remember correctly, AF447 crashed in the ocean in such a manner that there was no real debris left from it.

I think the depth of the ocean is about 2km around the crash site.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

If I remember correctly, AF447 crashed in the ocean in such a manner that there was no real debris left from it.

I think the depth of the ocean is about 2km around the crash site.

There was plenty of real debris it was just underwater, you can find plenty of images of the wing and parts of fuselage online.

 

[Grayfox]

There was plenty of real debris it was just underwater, you can find plenty of images of the wing and parts of fuselage online.

Under water but not floating, when you try to find a plane crash you look for debris.

They said they had found a signal but they cant find it even with the signal.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Under water but not floating, when you try to find a plane crash you look for debris.

They said they had found a signal but they cant find it even with the signal.

Yes, but when a plane crashes over a large body of water you look for a debris field above and under the ocean. That is what they are currently doing with the Malaysian flight but they have no signals from what we've all seen and reported on this thread since yesterday.

Debris isn't automatically going to float, and they don't just automatically look for debris on a surface as your post suggest, it's still considered a debris field even if it's under the surface.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

I think the depth of the ocean is about 2km around the crash site.

Around AF447, maybe. In the Gulf of Thailand, it's between forty-five and eighty metres deep.

 

[Grayfox]

Debris isn't automatically going to float, and they don't just automatically look for debris on a surface as your post suggest, it's still considered a debris field even if it's under the surface.

A fair bit does float up

The foam inbetween the skin, luggage, bodies, clothes have been found on some ocean crash spots

Around AF447, maybe. In the Gulf of Thailand, it's between forty-five and eighty metres deep.

Was referring to the depth around Thailand is 2km, didn't think it was that shallow.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Was referring to the depth around Thailand is 2km, didn't think it was that shallow.

Depths of two kilometres only occur off the continental shelf. The nearest continental shelf is off the west coast of Indonesia, and off the east coast of the Philippines.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

A fair bit does float up

The foam inbetween the skin, luggage, bodies, clothes have been found on some ocean crash spots




Was referring to the depth around Thailand is 2km, didn't think it was that shallow.

Once again that is not always the case as I said, with the AF there were many submerged bodies along the underwater mountain range where most of the plane if not all came to rest at after impact. Yes I know of crashes over water where wreckage is found, but there is much of it that is usually submerged, this was also the case with TWA 800 even though broke apart over water.

 

[Mike Rotch]

I'm going with Crash's verdict of catastrophic of in-flight failure, but without the terrorist angle.

If a terror group is going to plan out and execute a plane bombing they will not be shy to own up to it in the aftermath.

I was going to suggest noxious fumes in the cockpit (no radio comms) but that doesn't explain the cut off of all signals. That leaves some sort of 'chain of event' explosion from fuel systems or some miraculous failure of electronics/ fire to render the pilots and outbound signal absent.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I'm going with Crash's verdict of catastrophic of in-flight failure, but without the terrorist angle.

If a terror group is going to plan out and execute a plane bombing they will not be shy to own up to it in the aftermath.

I was going to suggest noxious fumes in the cockpit (no radio comms) but that doesn't explain the cut off of all signals. That leaves some sort of 'chain of event' explosion from fuel systems or some miraculous failure of electronics/ fire to render the pilots and outbound signal absent.

Or another alternative, that plane was crashed deliberately which explains the radio silence and the strange off path course it took. Not that I think it happened this way since I've already posted what I think, but the scenario I just suggested shouldn't be ruled out at this point.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

If a terror group is going to plan out and execute a plane bombing they will not be shy to own up to it in the aftermath.

Unless they wanted the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the disappearance and search.

 

[Dotini]

Unless they wanted the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the disappearance and search.

Nation states have in the past accidentally or deliberately brought down airliners.

KAL007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

The US shot down an Iranian passenger airliner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

A Polish flight into Russia ended under mysterious circumstances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash

Speculation persists that TWA 800 was an inside job: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/08/the-missiles-that-brought-down-twa-flight-800.html

 

[Robin]

In 2012, for reference. Lost about one metre of wing.

If there was no mayday then it was unlikely to be a highjacking because anyone trying to break into the locked cockpit would be instantly noticed. Do planes have a hidden emergency button if they are under duress?

@Dotini

Although its unlikely you can't really rule out accidental downing as you said because it has happened before.

 

[Grayfox]

The US shot down an Iranian passenger airliner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

That was caused by plain cowboy style stupidity.

The gun ship was not where it should have been.
They were also with in Iranian waters.
The US has not apologized for it

I was going to suggest noxious fumes in the cockpit (no radio comms) but that doesn't explain the cut off of all signals. That leaves some sort of 'chain of event' explosion from fuel systems or some miraculous failure of electronics/ fire to render the pilots and outbound signal absent.

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

That crashed due to fire getting out of control and it ended up killing the planes entire electrical system.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Nation states have in the past accidentally or deliberately brought down airliners.

What does that have to do with anything?

 

[Grayfox]

What does that have to do with anything?

That the plane may have been shot down is my guess.

 

[Dotini]

What does that have to do with anything?

In lieu of any explanation by investigating authorities, we are in a period of doubt and uncertainty as to what happened in the Malaysian tragedy. However low the probability, accidental or deliberate downing of the flight unfortunately cannot be ruled out. It is not my opinion that this is the reason. Perhaps it was adverse weather - a mega-lightning strike?

 

[prisonermonkeys]

However low the probability, accidental or deliberate downing of the flight unfortunately cannot be ruled out.

How do you explain that, then? There is no evidence that the plane was shot down, because no navy or air force could get into a position to do it without crossing into somebody else's airspace or territorial waters. The whole area is disputed, so everyone has eyes on it.

Perhaps it was adverse weather - a mega-lightning strike?

Planes are designed to withstand most weather phenomenon, and there no reports of extreme weather in the area at the time.

 

[Dotini]

How do you explain that, then? There is no evidence that the plane was shot down, because no navy or air force could get into a position to do it without crossing into somebody else's airspace or territorial waters. The whole area is disputed, so everyone has eyes on it.

You ask for a speculation on top of a speculation. I would not have offered it but I will indulge an off-the-wall unsupported speculation, since you asked for it.

Speculation:

- The aircraft went down in an area in or adjacent to the South China Sea which is not disputed by China. It would either clearly be in the airspace of Maylasia or of Vietnam.
- There was no commercial radar coverage of the particular area. The aircraft was tracking itself by GPS.
- Most of the passengers are listed as Chinese. There is no love lost between either the Malays and the Chinese nor the Vietnamese and Chinese.
- Let us suppose there were important Chinese figures aboard the plane against whom either Vietnamese or Malay officials held an animus.

But I still think it could be mega lightning, which is 1000 times stronger than normal lightning and is not a cloud-to-surface discharge, but a surface-to-space discharge.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Once again that is not always the case as I said, with the AF there were many submerged bodies along the underwater mountain range where most of the plane if not all came to rest at after impact. Yes I know of crashes over water where wreckage is found, but there is much of it that is usually submerged, this was also the case with TWA 800 even though broke apart over water.

The difficulty in finding it was that wreckage disperses very quickly (you have to be quite 'lucky' to find an intact debris field). Looking for the AF flight was difficult because the emergency locators sank very quickly, you need line-of-sight to detect them which made the 'cone' of visibility unbelievably small against the search area.

In this case it should be easier to find once a searcher is in range.

@prisonermonkeys , it was a hell of a stretch It's such an unusual incident in what were reported to be 'near perfect' flying conditions that I was just thinking through a hijack... the plane hasn't made it to a heavy strip, the hijackers are unlikely to have found "Rivers of Babylon" plausible and therefore I was thinking to the point where their intervention destroyed the aircraft.

That's as likely as entire mechanical disruption, but yeah. I suspect that once the facts are known we'll learn a lesson about something we hadn't considered before.

@Dotini - I don't buy 'political interference', although some cynics are saying that the Chinese are unusually keen to help, personally I think that the altruism being shown by the 'rival' rescue teams is genuine and I can't imagine that bringing down an airliner is a very clever way of wiping out a few opponents. Especially by Chinese standards.

Weather was reported as 'perfect flying conditions' when I checked, no reported concerns with clear sky, no turbulence and steady wind. You can't rule out freak weather anywhere of course and you know I never say never...

 

[Furinkazen]

I'm no plane expert, but if for say there was some kind of catastrophic sudden power loss, then surely don't they have an emergency back up power system in place?

 

[Dotini]

I'm no plane expert, but if for say there was some kind of catastrophic sudden power loss, then surely don't they have an emergency back up power system in place?

In the unlikely event that both jet engines stop, the 777 can deploy a rat-motor which provides enough juice to run the radio and not much else.

Contaminated fuel could cause both engines to stop running.

If memory serves, the 777 has a combination of cable flight controls and fly-by-wire. They would retain some measure of control even if the power went off.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I'm no plane expert, but if for say there was some kind of catastrophic sudden power loss, then surely don't they have an emergency back up power system in place?

Indeed they do, covered earlier on I think.

Just read that two of the 'suspect passport holders' bought their tickets at the same time. Again there's no stated link to terrorism but clearly there are several reasons why investigators need to know who was carrying the passports.

Just as its not impossible for all four passport holders to have bought their tickets from the same major provider (unknown to each other) nor is it impossible that two people who travel on fake passports from one country to another know each other, they presumably have nefarious reasons but those aren't necessarily related to air terrorism.

@Dotini yes, and a number of battery backups for various telemetry systems. If you look at the record of AF's chatter you'll see that the plane was talking to the ground much more often than the pilots, and all from various isolated components.

One 777 has crashed with a fuel icing issue, that's the only mechanically caused 777 loss as far as I'm aware. Media are now pointing to the airline's "financial situation", but then most airlines have one of those.

 

[Grayfox]

In the unlikely event that both jet engines stop, the 777 can deploy a rat-motor which provides enough juice to run the radio and not much else.

Contaminated fuel could cause both engines to stop running.

If memory serves, the 777 has a combination of cable flight controls and fly-by-wire. They would retain some measure of control even if the power went off.

The Ram Air Turbine powers critical avionics as well as hydraulics and radio.

Media are now pointing to the airline's "financial situation", but then most airlines have one of those.

QANTAS has one and it has never crashed