Huh?

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=22894802

ABC News is reporting that there are two communications systems that were shut down. A data reporting system was shut down at 1:07 AM. The transponder at 1:21 AM. US officials are "convinced" this was done manually. If so, this was not an accident.

Those families are emotional yo yo's with all the wrong info being reported. I'm sure they're all holding on to hope that they're still alive.
It's gotta be excruciating.

Oxygen joke. But judging from the reaction it got, it may as well be an Argon joke.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zmlKjO4juCo?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Guys guys guys, the answer to who caused this is easy.

http://mqcdnzone.moviequoter.netdna-...planecrash.jpg

Fourteen minutes apart does seem unlikely for an electrical problem. Maybe a fire could do that, but the theory of an intentional shutdown becomes much more plausible.

I'm still having trouble with them supposedly passing over land undetected, but I guess maybe those areas of land aren't very populated, so maybe it's possible. If they landed somewhere for nefarious reasons, there aren't a lot of places to land a 777 secretly. Is someone building a 7000 foot grass airstrip in the jungle?

Of course.

I laughed.

Yeah, "should have", but obviously a bunch of stuff that should have happened didn't, or this plane wouldn't be at the bottom of the ocean. :spock:

Something unprecedented happened here.

I'm going to take the odds on "pilot suicide". What have you guys got?

I was initially going with Payne Stewart, but I'm fading on that theory given the news about stuff being turned off at different times.

I'm going to go with terrorist test run to take hostages, and in this case they just killed themselves and everybody else to eliminate any clues about what they did.

Well Obama isn't but if we bring back W. ???
And that doesn't deserve being moved to the D.C.! LMAO

We don't know that.

If true, and that's a big IF, then no doubt it was not an accident.

But that doesn't lock in terrorist since no one has claimed responsibility for this. I mean isn't that the point, to be responsible?

The culprit was Laotian.

I didn't think terrorist were very responsible :LOL:

In all seriousness. Just ignore me tonight. I had back and knee surgery last weekend and I'm still flying high on pain killers. :thumb:

Wouldn't shooting a plane down count as terrorism?

This.

Accidental downing was my thinking.

Pilot suicide sounds viable as well.

Pilot was a pretty stable dude with 28k+ flying hours. However, I think the co-pilot may have secured the cabin door, killed or incapacitated him (pilot) and put the plane in the drink. Not a nose-dive while screaming "Allah-Akbar", but at 0100 in the morning many if not most passengers would be asleep so he gradually veers off course and augers that bitch in with no one bum-rushing the door. Somewhat similar to CPT Craig Button in 1997...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_D._Button

Crazy stuff happens in the air

My Future Brother in Law is a Pilot and now an ATC for the FAA - this was the craziest story he told me he heard of in flight

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705

<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/XnNI1gi7u_U?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/XnNI1gi7u_U?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

MH370 may have topped this story

Probably wouldn't even need to do that, if the other pilot was gone or whatever, I'm sure he could put the plane in a irrevocable dive pretty quickly

.

That's quite the story. It's amazing that those guys were still fighting with fractured skulls and flying half-paralyzed and stuff.

Yes but think about this..

This dude's artery is severed - BLOOD is spilling out.. and the plane is flying upside down!

The entire cabin must have been painted red

epic reenactment :clap:

From what little we know, it appears the plane flew for a few hours after last contact. Plus the transponder was manually cut off some 14-15 minutes after the final transmission I believe.

Leads most to conclude it wasn't put into an immediate, terminal dive.

Amazing that know one knows. Everyone grasping for straws trying to be the first correct. This is amazing. Even my friends in the pilot community have no idea.

So apparently this plane was on a route toward the Andaman Islands:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/...html?hpt=hp_t1

[Excerpt from article - I added the bold.]

Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia.

Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.

The radar data doesn't show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.

The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. That makes some investigators think the plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing.

Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected.

But Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice.

Indian authorities own the only four airstrips in the region, he said.

"There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar islands and land," he said.

I found this interesting from the same article:

[Excerpt from article]

• Another lead: Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event was recorded in a nonseismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said.

"Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused by MH370 crashing into the sea," said a statement posted on the university's website.

So it's like the show lost?

If it was captured by aliens, do you think they were able to do 239 anal probes in one week?

1 second.

Time warp.

Nonseismic region is what makes this very interesting.

I was thinking about this on my walk to work today.

So let's say you want to hijack an aircraft in the modern world. You probably can't force your way into the cockpit any more, so you need another plan. You're either:

1. claiming a bomb or something and forcing the pilots to fly somewhere, which isn't going to work very well. You can't tell them to power down transponders and stuff and be able to confirm it. If westerners are on the flight they're probably going to bum rush you in this era, but Chinese people won't do it.

2. getting in via subterfuge. That would mean that you're either recruiting a pilot or copilot or (more likely in my opinion) recruiting a flight attendant who'll get the door open for a group of passengers to take over.

If you're trying to steal a plane, you don't necessarily want passengers. My first thought was, 'why not steal a plane off the taxiway or something', but maybe that's harder. I guess you'd probably also end up with fighters following you.

So now you've got the plane. You have to land it somewhere, which means you need an airstrip. You're either taking over some small airstrip or you're building your own. I wouldn't think the Andamans are the best place for that, but there are a couple of islands out that way that are nothing but unfriendly natives who repel civilization. Perhaps someone should go check on them and see if they've all been murdered so the terrorists can build an airstrip.

You've got places in the Philippines where you might be able to build an airstrip undetected, and places in Borneo where you could, but they'd be easy to spot (eventually) by satellite unless you're doing some fast and sophisticated camouflage.

So you land the plane. Now what? Presumably you're going to either fill it with gasoline or put a nuke on it and try to fly it into something. I'm not sure how easy or hard it is to wander into European or American airspace and not get intercepted relatively quickly. I would've thought it would be hard, but then again I didn't know that a plane could disappear in the first place.

The bigger problem is the type of plane. This is apparently a 777-200ER, which has a maximum range of 7,725 nautical miles, or about 8,900 statute miles. http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commerc...00product.page. For reference, the distance from the Philippines to Los Angeles is about 7,300 miles and the distance from Pakistan to New York is about 6,800 miles.

So in other words, that plane can get you pretty much anywhere, though I'll acknowledge that Nebraska may be safe. I'm presuming that's a loaded range and not an empty range, but they're probably loading it up with something.

This thing also has to refuel and take off from that remote airfield, which is probably not easy to do. Do we have the satellite coverage and naval radars to monitor that big an area?

So assuming that you successfully land this thing, refuel it, and take off, do you put a nuke on this thing and try to fly it into a city? It seems like a real long shot to do that, and is a pretty James Bond supervillain thing to do. The thing is, we might need to put some anti-aircraft guns around major airports, but I would suspect that it would be detected and intercepted before it reached a major city.

And of course, for all we know it could be some Uighers hoping to kill some Chinese, but I'd be surprised if they could pull off a hijacking.

Wow. I had no idea that planes had a system like this. I wonder if it's ever been used.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/us/mal...html?hpt=hp_t1

Excerpt from interesting overall article:


In a less sinister but equally lethal explanation, some experts theorize the plane mysteriously crashed somewhere because of mechanical malfunction.

Perhaps it was an electrical failure.

It's possible, though pilots have trouble embracing the thought.

"I've been running that in my brain now ever since this thing happened," said Jim Tilmon, an aviation expert and retired American Airlines pilot.

"One possibility would be a total electrical failure which is very, very hard to imagine because it has so many generators coming from different places," Tilmon said.

"If all the engine generators fail, they still have what's called the rack. That's the generator that literally falls out of the bottom of the airplane, has a propeller on it, and ram-air turns that and gives them generating power enough to go ahead and fly the airplane safely.


"Electrical failure -- it'd have to be total ... absolutely incredible like we've not heard of before," Tilmon said.

This is becoming VERY strange. So much misinformation to sift through.

Wow. I had no idea. Them engineers who make planes are some smart folks.

As I think about it, that type of system couldn't possibly provide enough power to actually fly the plane. I think it's impossible from a physics viewpoint. Maybe it's enough to slow their descent and give them a longer glide path, or it's enough to power electrical systems if they still have engines.

funny story about those

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

Maybe it provides enough power for electronics / radios and hydraulic pumps so they can control the plane?

The only issue with that is it would be MUCH simpler to charter, buy, or steal a small jet to deliver a nuke to a metro area than a 777. There is no upside to it. Even faced with an airliner full of hostages, I don't think any government would allow a hijacked aircraft anywhere near a metro area. Unless they think they could successfully disguise this aircraft as another an infiltrate airspace....

Good point. My assumption was that they would be trying to disguise themselves as a regular aircraft, but you're right. I bet you could just buy a plane big enough for a nuke if you had one.

So what's going on? You can fill a big plane with a lot of fuel (both in the tanks and I guess in the passenger area), but that's not going to give you much range.

Immediately start looking into rural Colorado and find Galt's Gulch.

Rain Man is just bringing it.
I'll admit, I'm more than a little surprised that Pakistan is closer to New York than the Philippines are to LA.

And the drop down engine...I had no idea.

Yeah, that Pakistan thing made me furrow my brow. I would've bet significant money that it was a longer distance, and almost didn't even bother looking it up.

I seriously doubt that the RAT on a 777 generates enough power to "fly the plane safely."

he could of started the APU to power all the systems..

It sounds like we're pretty close to ruling out an accident or equipment failure. Two separate communications systems were shut off 14 seconds apart, and the engines continued to run for four hours. We also pretty much know that the plate turned west, and appeared to follow a different known air navigation route in that new direction for the brief time they had it on military radar.

I don't think this was a suicide or sabotage attempt because if you just wanted to crash the plane and you had control of the cockpit you could just send it right down into the drink. This clearly looks like air piracy to me.

It may not have been successful and we may still find wreckage later, but it clearly looks to me like the intention was to steal the jet.

Maybe I read that wrong, but I would think that they would only deploy the RAT if all other generation sources had failed. The APU just acts like a starter for the engines, right? It doesn't continue to power the engines after they are started?

The only non-human cause I can think of is a massive, unprecedented electrical failure knocking out all communication and navigation systems (yet somehow not knocking out the systems needed to fly), the pilots are forced to take over manually, and they got lost in the dark searching in vain for land until they finally ran out of fuel.

If THAT happened, then the search area is so massive that we may not find the plane for decades.

I'm still not beleiving the 4hr thing until there is some assurance the data timestream isn't just a time zone or clock setting issue.

Even an electrical failure likely wouldn't produce systems going down 14 minutes apart. Perhaps a fire could?

I don't know if they'd radio in about a fire, though. They might be preoccupied, which would explain no contact, but you'd think there'd be some kind of signal if they were battling a problem for 14 minutes that was NOT a complete electrical failure.

When you start looking at single points of failure, there are going to be very, very few of those in the mechanics. The pilots are probably the weakest link in the whole system, both on intent and vulnerability.

While coming in to land yesterday, I chuckled when I heard the pilots turn off the autopilot a few seconds before landing. The old guy sitting next to me asked why I laughed, so I told him. He couldn't believe that the computer was flying the plane the whole time previously. He just looked amazed.

Yeah, any accident/equipment failure scenario also needs to keep in mind that asian pilots are apparently not well-trained to actually fly a plane (as we learned in a recent SFO incident, where they had to land a plane manually in clear perfect conditions and screwed it up badly). Over in a lot of asian airlines, they are mostly glorified button-pushers who don't practice emergency procedures often and almost never try to manually land a plane.

You can "hear" them turn off the auto-pilot? Or they announced it?

Not that it has any relation to this situation, but the language thing has got to be a disadvantage to non-English speakers. Aren't they required to use English on international flights? In an emergency landing or even a routine landing, it has to slow down communications and reactions.

And how did we manage to pull that off anyway? It's nice to be an English speaker.

Yes, you can hear it if you're on an Airbus and are sitting in the front.

Does it yell or something? What's the sound?

I must confess that the sounds of flaps and landing gear always make me jump. I don't like hearing sudden sounds on airplanes.

It's a triple tone, almost a trill, if you will.

LMAO

I was on flight a few weeks ago that you wouldn't have liked. When were climbing out, heading to Seattle. I started to fall asleep and about five minutes later, there was a loud bang and the sound of rushing wind. I woke up and everyone was looking around at each other. We stopped climbing and slowed down really quickly. Looking out the window, I expected to see a blown up engine or something. It wasn't that, but our ground speed was REALLY slow. A flight attendant rushed up and got on the phone with the flight crew. I looked at her and raised my eyebrows, and she just ignored me.

About ten minutes later, the wind noise went away and we started climbing again.

About five minutes after that, the pilot came on to explain what happened, which was nice of him. He said that they had a really high brake temperature warning, and instead of declaring an emergency and going back to DIA, they chose to drop the gear to cool it off. Unfortunately, they did so at a much higher speed than normal. So, of course, I'm wondering what was going to happen when we got to Seattle.

I've told this here before, Im sure. But the freakiest thing I experienced on a flight was looking out the window and seeing one of the rivets on the leading edge of the wing sitting up like a middle finger. It was literally displaced 3 inches out of it's slot. When we landed it just slipped back into place.

I read someone else making a pretty good point about this flight. The last communication from the pilot was to say good-night to the Malaysian air traffic controllers because they were leaving their airspace and control was going to be switched to the air traffic controllers in Vietnam. It was soon after that when things started happening.

If you were going to steal the plane, whether you are the pilot or a hijacker, thats a really good time to do it. Malaysia is not paying any attention to you because they handed you off, and Vietnam isn't paying any attention to you because you haven't contacted them yet.

There are a lot of scenarios out there about electrical failure or whatever to explain the communications systems shutting off, but isn't that a weird coincidence to happen then of all times? Why didn't things go wrong while the Malaysian or Vietnam air traffic controllers were in control? Why would it happen in between when no one is paying attention to you?

Just curious how you hear them turn off an on the autopilot?

Most of the time you don't year anything in the back.. The pilots will hear an audible tone in their headsets when they disengage the autopilot...


You might feel the plane adjust to the trim difference from autopilot to hand flying...

But not sure passengers hear anything...

For the same reason every light is red when you're in a hurry.

See 302

That's not really how it happens... If you are getting handed off from one controller to another, they know you are being handed off and are standing by waiting for you.

Malaysia would have to let Vietnam know that they were being handed off...

Did you check your pants?

LMAO

I meant the triple tone thing. But, no, it startled me but I didn't lose control of my bodily functions.

There's a large sea in between, though. What you described is common in the continental US, but in a situation like that, you have to go a short time with no air traffic control, and THAT is when things happen, not before or after?

Normally the when the AP is engaged or disengaged passengers never hear it.

99.9% of Airliners have rules and regs about autopilot... Most require AP to be on and engaged 100% of the time above 3000 feet.

Trust me you don't want to be in a jet doing 450 kts at 35000 ft with a person hand flying it. Passengers would not be happy.

Is it just a matter of not having a smooth enough ride, or what? This is fascinating (especially for someone afraid of human flight).

Can the pilot turn off the flow of oxygen to the passenger cabin?

I'm going with murder suicide. One of the pilots kills the others in the cockpit, turns off the oxygen to kill everyone in the back, then flies somewhere far off his flight plan and sets it down in the water as gently as possible to minimize debris. Just to get the last laugh.

You have that out over the Gulf of Mexico, spots in the Caribbean and some parts of Mexico.

At that point you do position reporting, but the receiving controller will still expect you at a certain Zulu time. IF not with in the tolerances of that Zulu time then they should of started calling, searching, etc...

But with position reporting you are in contact with other aircraft out in those areas...

Its hard to control a jet at that speed and altitude smoothly.. Yes passenger comfort, but we only have 1000 ft separation of other traffic.

Auto pilot is a better pilot at cruising than humans... Besides if I am flying, I cant read the paper, eat and play games on my phone...

I don't think so.. I could be wrong, but on our jet, we cant... Its a built in safety feature to supply the passengers...

Not sure on the 777

...And i immediately think of the punchline, "Don't forget the coffee!!!"

I'm absolutely fine with the computer flying the plane.

I found out about the triple tone thing years ago. I was late for my flight, so my carry on got shoved in an overhead at the back, so I was waiting in the galley for the crowd to clear. The pilot came out and we started chatting, so I asked him what the noise was and I always hear it on approach. He seemed surprised and said, "You can hear that?" and then said it was when they turn off the autopilot.