Malaysia Airlines flight MH370-Updates and Discussion

Galway K9

Same news, I knwo the black box is not found, just unverified Debris but would the black box not have gave gps signal to its location despite a fire / catastrophic failure. Last communication is in the sky, on course. How could it just disappear from a fire / fault.

Happyman42

If a fire caused the initial problem, knocked out all the systems, incapacitated the crew and passengers, I can't see how the plane could get so far intact.
Could a fire like that just go out?

Iwannahurl

Inmarsat representative on Sky News a few minutes ago querying some aspects of the search strategy so far.

It seems they are saying the search should have been focused earlier on what their data indicated. It appears that the debris found west of Australia is now being taken very seriously indeed.

Good links here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=89544274&postcount=30

A Primal Nut

Galway K9 wrote: »

Same news, I knwo the black box is not found, just unverified Debris but would the black box not have gave gps signal to its location despite a fire / catastrophic failure. Last communication is in the sky, on course. How could it just disappear from a fire / fault.

GPS won't work underwater. There is an underwater beacon which lasts for 30 days. Searching Google gives the range as 25km. Which isn't a lot given the size of the Indian Ocean. But if they find a lot of debris the hope would be the black box beacon would be in range of it.

bohsfan

Galway K9 wrote: »

Same news, I knwo the black box is not found, just unverified Debris but would the black box not have gave gps signal to its location despite a fire / catastrophic failure. Last communication is in the sky, on course. How could it just disappear from a fire / fault.

You cannot get the box to transmit through water to the air, that's why it has an underwater locator beacon.

If a plane crashes into the water, this beacon sends out an ultrasonic pulse detectable by sonar and acoustical locating equipment.

The beacon sends out pulses at 37.5 kilohertz (kHz) and can transmit sound as deep as 14,000 feet (4,267 m). Once the beacon begins "pinging," it pings once per second for 30 days. In rare instances, the beacon may get snapped off during a high-impact collision.

In order to 'hear' the beacon a vessel needs to be in the water above it within a certain radius.

Iwannahurl

[T]he theory favoured for days now by professional pilots on chat sites and blogs [is] that the pilots had an event on board that took out the communications and led to a slow or rapid decompression which rendered the crew incapable of making an emergency landing. Pilots have only a few minutes to bring a plane down to below 4000 metres before the passengers and crew will become disoriented, then unconscious and eventually die.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/emergency-is-more-likely-scenario-for-flight-mh370-20140320-35620.html#ixzz2wW6S5u5B

If debris spotted in the Indian Ocean turns out to be from flight MH370 then its location adds strength to the theory that an emergency on-board may have knocked out the crew, leaving it to fly on auto-pilot until running out of fuel, an aviation expert said today.

Commercial pilot Robert Mark said the straight line from the the plane's last-known location to the new search area around 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, Australia, reduced the likelihood it was hijacked.

He told MailOnline: 'What I think is interesting is that if you look at where the plane was last seen on radar and where the debris has been found, it is almost a straight line.

'I would say it means that once the aircraft turned, it didn't change course.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584977/Australian-security-expert-says-MH370-reached-search-zone-without-deliberate-human-intervention.html#ixzz2wW7XSaN7

Happyman42

bohsfan wrote: »

In rare instances, the beacon may get snapped off during a high-impact collision.

After everything that these poor people have been through and the potential complexity of the search to find the wreckage that is an awful thing to contemplate. Hopefully they will get close to it before the 30 days is up.

Any reason it is only 30 days? Seems a short enough time, it must require large power resources?

A Primal Nut

The airline industry are extremely good at learning from accidents. Wonder what the big lessons this time will be. I was thinking either the ADS-B or transponder functionality could be backed up in the black box area where it couldn't be tampered with.

Happyman42

Iwannahurl wrote: »

http://www.smh.com.au/national/emergency-is-more-likely-scenario-for-flight-mh370-20140320-35620.html#ixzz2wW6S5u5B

With all the info doing the rounds since this started, I hadn't seen this.

The satellite antennas on Boeing 777s had been the subject of an airworthiness directive issued by the National Transport Safety Bureau in November 2013.

DellyBelly

I really hope they can verify that this is the plane for the family of the passengers sake. I'm guessing there would be no survivors as there are a lot of sharks in that water but you never know....

lb1

A Primal Nut wrote: »

The airline industry are extremely good at learning from accidents. Wonder what the big lessons this time will be. I was thinking either the ADS-B or transponder functionality could be backed up in the black box area where it couldn't be tampered with.

You can learn all the lessons in the world but at the end of the day modern jets are highly complex machines and like all machines things will go wrong. The real problem is when these things go wrong the craft is usually miles above the earth, unlike a car you cant just pull it over to the hard shoulder.

Maximus Alexander

Happyman42 wrote: »

With all the info doing the rounds since this started, I hadn't seen this.

MH370 did not have that antenna installed.

lb1

DellyBelly wrote: »

I really hope they can verify that this is the plane for the family of the passengers sake. I'm guessing there would be no survivors as there are a lot of sharks in that water but you never know....

Well if you could survive hitting the ocean at speeds of in excess of 1000 miles an hour I presume the sharks would break their teeth on your titanium exoskeleton.

wil

Tabnabs wrote: »

The only people "on the ground" for several hundred kilometres and you're complaining about their lack of SAR gear They aren't operating in isolation you know. At the end of the day, pretty much all technology will be limited to the ability of the Mk1 eyeball to interpret the information gathered. We should be grateful the company agreed to divert the ship when requested two days ago.

AHEM wtf.:eek:

What an odd, totally unwarranted and mistaken interpretation of a factual account as posted.
At no point in that post did I complain about lack of SAR gear.

This is a big slow car carrier, but is the only ship in the area for days, and not designed for SAR. It doesn't have any sophisticated ELECTRONIC SAR capabilities as mooted to be aboard other vessels.
It will likely need to be directed to specific coordinates by spotter planes/sat info from AMSA
It has advantage over smaller ships in terms of height, but given reports of poor weather conditions, visibility is not great.

In fact many posts are giving the impression that once there they should be able to find debris in hours, from planes flying at many more knots than a car carrier, to the extent that one reporter aboard one SAR mission signed off with almost a sigh of defeat after just one shift.
This is a huge area in the middle of nowhere, with almost nobody there apart from one ship. Simple facts.

Please do not aim personal misinterpretations to discredit simple factual statements. Thanks.

123balltv

lb1 wrote: »

Well if you could survive hitting the ocean at speeds of in excess of 1000 miles an hour I presume the sharks would break their teeth on your titanium exoskeleton.

Bahia Bakari survived the Yemenia Flight 626 plane crash off the Comoros Islands luckily she was rescued early enough.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/lone-survivor-plane-recalls-survival-sea-article-1.1569132

sopretty

DellyBelly wrote: »

I really hope they can verify that this is the plane for the family of the passengers sake. I'm guessing there would be no survivors as there are a lot of sharks in that water but you never know....

Did you really have to introduce the imagery of sharks into the conversation????? FFS. There were little toddlers on board. Talk about inappropriate!!!! :mad:

Insect Overlord

sopretty wrote: »

Did you really have to introduce the imagery of sharks into the conversation????? FFS. There were little toddlers on board. Talk about inappropriate!!!! :mad:

How is that any more inappropriate than the speculation about hijackers or terrorists? Age of the passengers is irrelevant. Unpalatable as it may be to you, it's a perfectly reasonable point to make about the likelihood of finding remains in that part of the world.

sopretty

An File wrote: »

How is that any more inappropriate than the speculation about hijackers or terrorists? Age of the passengers is irrelevant. Unpalatable as it may be to you, it's a perfectly reasonable point to make about the likelihood of finding remains in that part of the world.

In a coroner's court perhaps. Not on a web discussion as to what might have happened to a plane!!!!!! Particularly when lots of us here are hoping against hope that these people might turn up alive somewhere!!!!!

Insect Overlord

sopretty wrote: »

In a coroner's court perhaps. Not on a web discussion as to what might have happened to a plane!!!!!! Particularly when lots of us here are hoping against hope that these people might turn up alive somewhere!!!!!

Feel free to entertain the optimistic fantasy, by all means, but there's really no need to castigate those who are considering the more pessimistic possibilities.

And if you're right and the passengers are on land somewhere, they'll have no sharks to worry about anyway.

Maximus Alexander

sopretty wrote: »

In a coroner's court perhaps. Not on a web discussion as to what might have happened to a plane!!!!!! Particularly when lots of us here are hoping against hope that these people might turn up alive somewhere!!!!!

Is it any more or less palatable than the idea that they may have died on impact, drowned in the ocean, dehydrated in lifeboats, or suffocated at high altitude as some were speculating before?

The loss of 239 passengers on an aircraft is a terrible tragedy no matter what way you approach it.

There's no harm in hoping that they are alive somewhere, but the overwhelming likelihood is that they are not. Discussion will generally follow the path that the probabilities point to.

sopretty

An File wrote: »

Feel free to entertain the optimistic fantasy, by all means, but there's really no need to castigate those who are considering the more pessimistic possibilities.

And if you're right and the passengers are on land somewhere, they'll have no sharks to worry about anyway.

Coldly surmising as to cause of death of 239 passengers, is just that... cold and inconsiderate and inhumane.

Cessna_Pilot

sopretty wrote: »

Coldly surmising as to cause of death of 239 passengers, is just that... cold and inconsiderate and inhumane.

Well we have been doing that for 262 pages now. :rolleyes:

funtime93

sopretty wrote: »

Coldly surmising as to cause of death of 239 passengers, is just that... cold and inconsiderate and inhumane.

So what has everyone been doing for the past 13 days then?

sopretty

Cessna_Pilot wrote: »

Well we have been doing that for 262 pages now. :rolleyes:

Eh, no. I personally have not been. I've been trying to figure out what happened to the plane. I don't allow my brain to venture towards the specifics of death until my mind is rudely drawn to imagining sharks eating passengers!!!!!!!

sopretty

funtime93 wrote: »

So what has everyone been doing for the past 13 days then?

Looking at what could have caused a flight to go missing!

Flippyfloppy

sopretty wrote: »

Eh, no. I personally have not been. I've been trying to figure out what happened to the plane. I don't allow my brain to venture towards the specifics of death until my mind is rudely drawn to imagining sharks eating passengers!!!!!!!

I don't think the poster was being rude!

sopretty

Flippyfloppy wrote: »

I don't think the poster was being rude!

Fair enough. I don't appreciate such discussion however.

funtime93

sopretty wrote: »

Looking at what could have caused a flight to go missing!

Yeh but what caused the flight to go missing caused their deaths...

Merkin

sopretty wrote: »

Looking at what could have caused a flight to go missing!

So once that has been established, we're all to blithely ignore the fate of the passengers? We can be pretty much guaranteed that the ending they met wasn't pretty.

sopretty

funtime93 wrote: »

Yeh but what caused the flight to go missing caused their deaths...

So it's normal to hear of a death and openly discuss the potentially gorey details? WTF??? Have some respect for the audience you're speaking to.

Or is this our reality?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biArkwUaURA