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

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Question - don't black boxes give off GPS signals? That is how they found the Air France wreckage in the Atlantic, isn't it?
 
Mike Rotch
Question - don't black boxes give off GPS signals? That is how they found the Air France wreckage in the Atlantic, isn't it?
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I don't think they do. Because if indeed they give off GPS signals, the black box of the Air France could've been found on the spot instead of 2 years later? Hmm..
 
I thought the issue with the AF situation was that the black box was in such deep water, the signal wasn't reaching the surface, whereas the area this plane would seem to have gone down is significantly shallower.
 
The location of the Air France crash site was known, but the wreckage was under two kilometers of water - which made getting to the actual crash site difficult.

Authorities are entertaining the idea that this could be a hijacking - which would make this a very sophisticated crime. The hijackers would have to disable the transmitters at a time when the plane was due to cross into Vietnamese airspace, then turn the plane back before it crossed over to keep it within Malaysian airspace. Then it would have to land somewhere out of the way, but big enough to handle a 777, with some way of concealing it. Assuming the hijackers wanted to lay low, they would not be able to fly out of the country in another plane - which would have to take 250 passengers and crew - so they would either have to stay in the country, or escape by sea. Which they would have to do whilst evading the search crews scouring the area.
 
Mike Rotch
Question - don't black boxes give off GPS signals? That is how they found the Air France wreckage in the Atlantic, isn't it?
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They give off a 406Mhz style beacon that can be picked up.
Don't think they have GPS transmitters, since they require a way to transmit the signal to someone.

GPRS or CDMA doesn't work in all areas.
Satellite phones style system needs a clean signal to reach the satellites to work.

Where as a pinging radio signal can be tracked quite easy and is less of a power hog on the internal batteries.
 
I just read about the beacon thing, and it says the signal can last up to 30 days? If indeed the plane crashed into the water, it might just be a tad easier to locate because the depth of water on the said scene is just under 100m deep..
 
TenEightyOne
it's not relevant to the actual comms. It's like saying "they had a Thunderbirds ringtone on their phone" or "this is the plane with the tinted visors", it's just a function that alerts to inbound comms on monitored channels (normally all).
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It is relevant to comms (though not on this flight), when SELCAL is used it is often in total radioless zones like the middle of the Atlantic, SELCAL initialised before these zones are entered and used in replacement to give position, speed and Alt updates to ATC so they can regulate the airways. Aswell as other company messages etc. Once again though to this situation it doesn't apply, 100% radio (VHF HF UHF etc) silence isn't a issue.

TenEightyOne
They'd be taking some HF inbound (even if silently) to back up GPS, the area they were flying through is MWARA covered due to propensity for VHF breaks.

EDIT: SQR(1.5(AltFeet)) gives about 220 nautical miles as VHF line of sight (not adjusted for curvature), at that point with some storm clouds the chance of a clear line would have been diminished.
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I was responding to Keef who was talking about trans Atlantic/Pacific type out of range flights, I can see how you thought I meant SELCAL as primary comms but that's why I quoted him. Using HF for backup is normal.
 
prisonermonkeys
The location of the Air France crash site was known, but the wreckage was under two kilometers of water - which made getting to the actual crash site difficult.

Authorities are entertaining the idea that this could be a hijacking - which would make this a very sophisticated crime. The hijackers would have to disable the transmitters at a time when the plane was due to cross into Vietnamese airspace, then turn the plane back before it crossed over to keep it within Malaysian airspace. Then it would have to land somewhere out of the way, but big enough to handle a 777, with some way of concealing it. Assuming the hijackers wanted to lay low, they would not be able to fly out of the country in another plane - which would have to take 250 passengers and crew - so they would either have to stay in the country, or escape by sea. Which they would have to do whilst evading the search crews scouring the area.
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This would be an even scarier scenario because how would they know enough to disable all that stuff, and stay under radar, or find a spot to land it without being noticed?
 
prisonermonkeys
The location of the Air France crash site was known, but the wreckage was under two kilometers of water - which made getting to the actual crash site difficult.

Authorities are entertaining the idea that this could be a hijacking - which would make this a very sophisticated crime.
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Only if it was a hijacking with a landing. Radar is line of sight and those coasts bristle with up-ward looking defence systems, I don't see how they could getting over land even if they were able to operate all the aircraft control systems. If they had help on the ground, that's different - but you might need the help of the state or military.

@Jay fair enough, I was just pointing out the SELCAL is always there and always on, it's just part of the stack. You 'use' it when it spots an inbound.

@Grayfox some manufacturers make beacons that will emit a radio signal and every now and then a blast with last-known GPS in, they're not standard to Boeing but they are an option. An expensive one, probably, and therefore not too common.

The problem with the Air France flight was initially the line of sight to the transmitter, you had to be in an incredibly small patch of ocean to "see into" where it was resting. An incredible effort to find it.

It shouldn't require such a great effort to find this plane if she's lying on the sea bed, but it could still take days, probably not weeks.

EDIT: Why are they searching the Malacca Straight? They must think it turned back quite some way, it should have exited to the top right of the map.

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very odd story

If it disintegrated in mid air, there should be widespread debris. A lot of parts from an airplane can and will float.
- If that was the case, mechanical failure is the least of the possibilities since its one of the most reliable machines in the modern era.
- Couldn't have been pilot error because the plane would have been flying itself, plus the pilot was very experienced

What else could cause an airplane of that magnitude to just go missing?
 
Have they thought about looking at the passengers/crew members cell phone records to see if there was any activity in the last 3 days? It may lead to something, whether it be location or plans
 
I'm becoming more and more confused by this.

It doesn't seem to have crashed; a water crash should have broken the plane apart and left tons of floating debris, and a land crash would have caused a fireball and huge plume of smoke.

If they managed a safe water landing, what could knock out all communications and distress signals but leave enough control for the pilots to glide into the water?

If there was a hijacking, how did they manage to sneak a plane out of the region without showing up on anyone's radar?
 
PsuPepperoni
I'm becoming more and more confused by this.

It doesn't seem to have crashed; a water crash should have broken the plane apart and left tons of floating debris, and a land crash would have caused a fireball and huge plume of smoke.

If they managed a safe water landing, what could knock out all communications and distress signals but leave enough control for the pilots to glide into the water?

If there was a hijacking, how did they manage to sneak a plane out of the region without showing up on anyone's radar?
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Only one explanation for it.

Bermuda Triangle. 💡
 
The Thai travel agent who booked the tickets for the passengers with stolen passports says she did so on behalf of an Iranian man named "Mr. Ali", and the tickets paid for in cash by a third party. Apparently this is quite a common method of booking tickets in the city where they were booked.
 
It's plausible but unlikely that the plane was ditched like Sully in the Hudson, but nobody got out and it straight up sank. Plus, an emergency would've been declared, etc.

EDIT: I'm getting kind of tired of hypothesizing about this accident. To just up and lose a plane something preposterous has to happen. With all this modern technology, losing something which is designed to never be lost if virtually impossible.
 
Wow, this is very strange. I do have a gut feeling that the plane was landed somewhere. How'd they do it? I have no idea, but I'm beginning to side with that theory. Whoever's behind this must be very smart...
 
The problem with that theory is that in order to land the plane, you would need a runway capable of handling a Boeing 777. Commercial airports would be out of the question, because the plane would be immediately identified. So you would need a private airstrip, and there probably aren't many that can take a plane that size.
 
I don't think an aircraft this big could land on a grass airstrip / clearing could it?

Still no word from Boeing as to whether all location and communication instrumentation can be disabled on a 777.

This story has got me reading all sorts of information about mid air refueling, under radar flying... :scared: So many conspiracy theories are coming out at the moment.
 
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I think the plane is crashed and that more coverage is needed to find it, although as I said I'm unsure of why the search areas are where they are. The Chinese are clearly pushing the Malaysians to "search harder", do they feel that the aircraft should have been found now or are they just demonstrating that they're doing something for the families, despite there actually being little they can do.

@Robin You can do that, you can shut down/isolate anything you want. It takes quite a bit of knowledge, can almost never happen accidentally (unless through destruction) and would be unthinkable to any professional pilot.

It's do-able though.

prisonermonkeys
The problem with that theory is that in order to land the plane, you would need a runway capable of handling a Boeing 777. Commercial airports would be out of the question, because the plane would be immediately identified. So you would need a private airstrip, and there probably aren't many that can take a plane that size.
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Another way out theory (and why not, the truth is going to be literally as unlikely);

The plane turned to start a descent spiral, during that time someone familiar with Boeing systems (or someone coeercing the crew) isolated communications and took the aircraft over. The plane descended steeply before heading NW, skirting the edge of the Gulf of Thailand and into Cambodia where a clearing has made somewhere in Boutum Sakor.

Remember, a 777 can land at most airports on low fuel, even with a good load of passengers. It just can't take off again. I don't think it would be meant to, it doesn't even have to structurally survive the landing, it can wreck the brakes, undercarriage, airframe. You'd want to avoid a fire, of course, that would give your position away.

Land the plane, cover it or paint it (sounds silly but very doable and obvious), move the passengers out.

To go to this amount of effort to take hostages is unlikely; for the above (completely spurious) scenario to be true it would need to revolve around a potential hostage travelling on the aircraft. You read it here first, this post is effectively the film rights. :D
 
I don't know if it's been said before in this thread, but in the local newspaper today there was a fairly large article about an Italian and an Austrian, both of whom were initially thought to be on the flight, but it later turned out both had had their passports stolen earlier on.

Unfortunately, when thinking of the situation, it reeks of a terrorist attack.
 
TenEightyOne
To go to this amount of effort to take hostages is unlikely; for the above (completely spurious) scenario to be true it would need to revolve around a potential hostage travelling on the aircraft. You read it here first, this post is effectively the film rights. :D
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Or Chinese intelligence wanting someone to disappear without overtly killing them.


Anyway. Langoliers. I've solved it, we can all go home.
 
TenEightyOne
@Robin You can do that, you can shut down/isolate anything you want. It takes quite a bit of knowledge, can almost never happen accidentally (unless through destruction) and would be unthinkable to any professional pilot.
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I would have thought in a post 911 world it would surely be impossible to switch off anything which can compromise the ability to locate and communicate with a commerical airliner. Why on earth would crew ever need or want to switch this stuff off, even if its difficult to achieve?
 
Robin.
I would have thought in a post 911 world it would surely be impossible to switch off anything which can compromise the ability to locate and communicate with a commerical airliner. Why on earth would crew ever need or want to switch this stuff off?
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Because sometimes they park the plane and go for a crafty-fag-and-a-cuppa, it's effectively a bus-in-the-sky.

There are lots of emergency checklists that include reboots of various systems/subsytems so the ability does need to be there. Airlines really concentrate on avoiding coercion eg stopping hijackers from getting to the cockpit. What they don't tell you is that it's quite easy to do if you take some screaming hostages.

@Famine , d'oh! The plane would have landed in Beijing by now! :D What was that fruitcake Sci-Fi series with aliens-living-on-earth that beamed some plane down before firing it through the president's car window? Now that's more like it, had deserts, moody long shots with wandering, confused passengers. Excellent stuff.
 

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