Malaysia Airlines flight MH370-Updates and Discussion

Calina

Deleted User wrote: »

Actually my worst fear would be a design flaw or something that would start happening on other 777s.

Agreed unless we track down the plane. At least then it could be looked at. Absent the plane however, yes, that would probably have been my biggest issue.

molly09 wrote: »

Just wondering has anyone heard any update about the 5 people who checked-in for this flight but never boarded the plane? I have not read any recently about these people. 5 people seems like a lot, to go so close but never boarding the plane.

I believe they weren't checked in, but were booked passengers who did not show up to check in. This is not unusual by the way.

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

They are saying last contact with the plane was at 08.11 Malaysian time. That is over 7 and a half hours after the plane took off. We were told plane could fly for 5 more hours.

As far as I know, we have never officially been told that the plane could fly for 5 more hours after it vanished. As far as I am aware, the fuel load of the plane has not been released so at most there has been some extrapolation based on what would be normal expected fuel load for a flight from Malaysia to Beijing under normal conditions along with some added contingency. The range of the plane has generally been something I have considered to be speculation. 7.5 hours is at the top end of the speculation from what I have seen and distance is negotiable depending on speed, headwinds/tailwinds and altitude - note, I am not a pilot so the impact on same is something I can't comment on.

finix

I don't know much about Flight Radar 24 but this has surfaced. I would welcome comments from people who are familiar with how this website works

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMxm1Nv1QEY#t=79

theKillerBite

I have plotted the waypoints taken by the plane. If you want to have to decide yourself which waypoint it took next:

http://skyvector.com/?ll=12.731799666045882,90.25195312869975&chart=304&zoom=9&plan=G.2.7791829819825455,101.7846679587874:F.WS.IGARI:F.WM.GIVAL:F.WM.MAPSO:F.WM.MINAT:F.VO.IGREX

ozzy jr

The previous largest plane to ever vanish without a trace,

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/the-727-that-vanished-2371187/?page=1

Happyman42

ozzy jr wrote: »

The previous largest plane to ever vanish without a trace,

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/the-727-that-vanished-2371187/?page=1

That is one crazy story...cheers for posting, never heard it before.

Mint Sauce

Just watched the Malaysian PM Press Conference. So now that we know, or its been confirmed that the plane continued to transmit data for more than 5 hrs after take off, and that it was sent on one of two courses. Is there somewhere that the plane could have landed undetected within that range, or could this still be a recovery mission.

Its also quite worrying that the WSJ article was dismissed by the Malaysians at first, and now they are confirm ing that data was transmitted.

Its still a very worrying and scary situation by the sounds of things.

fits

Mint Sauce wrote: »

.

Its also quite worrying that the WSJ article was dismissed by the Malaysians at first, and now they are confirm ing that data was transmitted..

did they dismiss it or refuse to confirm it, because there is a difference.

I dont believe releasing unconfirmed information is helpful and wouldn't blame them at all for making sure of things before they go public. The analysis of this data from many sources sounds very complicated.

irishmover

fits wrote: »

did they dismiss it or refuse to confirm it, because there is a difference.

I dont believe releasing unconfirmed information is helpful and wouldn't blame them at all for making sure of things before they go public. The analysis of this data from many sources sounds very complicated.

He said in the interview that they won't release information they aren't 100% on. So I'm sure that they didn't want to say the WSJ claims were correct because at that time they were, as you said unconfirmed.

They're doing it the right way. Atleast the Malaysian press conference we don't need to take as speculation unlike all the news outlets.

It's a bit like transfer deadline day. Sky sports 'sources' reporting Chelsea signed some player. You don't take it as fact until Chelsea themselves say so!

Rosco79

What is standard operating procedure for military when its radar system picks up an unknown flight? It is only now known that Malay military radar picked up MH370 but what would or should the military have done at the time that an unknown flight was picked up? Try contact? Scramble Jets? Ignore?

Panda_Turtle

booth70 wrote: »

its like looking for a needle in a haystack!

Or like looking for a needle in 5 million haystacks?

jasonb

It's taken a long time, but it's good to finally have some confirmed details being released. Clearly not everything is answered yet, but it feels like the first time in a week that they're getting closer to finding the aircraft...

J.

Animord

jasonb wrote: »

It's taken a long time, but it's good to finally have some confirmed details being released. Clearly not everything is answered yet, but it feels like the first time in a week that they're getting closer to finding the aircraft...

J.

It also gives a glimmer of hope that those people may still be alive.

fr336

theKillerBite wrote: »

Boeing & Rolls Royce are off the hook for any liability now. This just looks bad on Malaysian Airlines & the Malaysian Military/Government. I mean if a airplane enters your airspace with no transponder turned on & no comms and you do absolutly nothing...The Americans would have sent up half of their airforce to intercept, even Greece sent up F16's to intercept that Helios flight.

Like on 9/11? Hmm. Eventually I suppose....

Peter Flynt

Animord wrote: »

It also gives a glimmer of hope that those people may still be alive.

Sadly that's probably unlikely.

A Plane on land is not going to go without notice for this long I'd say.

theKillerBite

fr336 wrote: »

Like on 9/11? Hmm. Eventually I suppose....

Norad scrambled fighters on all of the planes within minutes of hearing of the hijackings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_the_September_11_attacks

fr336

Peter Flynt wrote: »

A Plane on land is not going to go without notice for this long I'd say.

Unless there are a lot of remote, even unpopulated, areas on this planet...

fr336

theKillerBite wrote: »

Norad scrambled fighters on all of the planes within minutes of hearing of the hijackings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_the_September_11_attacks

You say hijackings..that isn't the same as something acting out of normal. Every source I've seen on this has talked about how long it took to get them up there, making them too late for even the 4th plane. It was a joke (or deliberate on the part of the White House? One for the conspiracy guys).

fr336

Peter Flynt wrote: »

A Plane on land is not going to go without notice for this long I'd say.

Being briefed by Malaysia officials they believe most likely location for MH370 is on land somewhere near Chinese/Kyrgyz border.

— Jonah Fisher (@JonahFisher) March 15, 2014

SpaceTime

It's just getting stranger and stranger.

The Malaysia authorities seem to have been working in the dark to a large extent only. I would guess that nobody thought it could be a hijacking so they just went through a very conventional search expecting to find it.

It seems that the satellite pings only got checked after nothing was found.

At this stage, everything (including the weird mobile phone anomalies) should be re-checked forensically.

A lot of things were being (publicly at least) dismissed as impossible.

At this stage, I think we need to have very open minds.

If an organisation or individuals attempted to grab an extended reach long haul jet, we have big security changes coming.

I sincerely hope it's nothing as sinister as a hijacking.

ABC101

I wonder is there any other military radar other than Malaysia which has picked up the plane?

If India control the Nicobar islands.. they probably would have a military set there. If MH370 flew south west out past Rondo... did the Indonesians pick up anything on their military sets?

I now believe there was nothing technically wrong with the plane, but it was taken over by either rogue pilots, rogue pilot or a passenger with considerable flying experience of a 777.

It's now becoming a more urgent race against time to find the crash site... as floating debris will be drifting further away from the impact site.

Does anybody know if it is possible to switch off the Black box recorder from the flight deck or from the Avionics room?

Five Lamps

fr336 wrote: »

Being briefed by Malaysia officials they believe most likely location for MH370 is on land somewhere near Chinese/Kyrgyz border.

— Jonah Fisher (@JonahFisher) March 15, 2014

So they'd have us believe that this airliner is sitting on a suitable runway somewhere in SE asia? If so, best kept secret ever. Perhaps the hijackers are arguing over the ransom and that's why they haven't been in touch.

The planning for this type of operation would have been both complex and extensive. Far more would have been involved that 9/11. Even a passenger switching on a phone might end the plane (even remote areas have mobile coverage)

Perhaps a hijacking was the motive but it seems likely that this plane has crashed in the sea somewhere.

Silverbling

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

It seems interesting that the flight went to 45,000 feet. At this altitude the plane could be in danger of falling out of the sky. It has been said that the plane fell 40,000 feet in a minute. Could explain why. You would think the pilot would be aware of this. Had they been forced to fly at this height? At this height would they avoid radar?

Can you explain why the plane would have fallen out of the sky for those of us who do not know?

Would military pilots be familiar with flying at those heights?

Thanks

SpaceTime

Considering that someone stole a 727 in Angola a few years ago (OK not as dramatic as a hijacking) but that they managed to avoid detection would lead me to think that someone might try it.

OK the 727 is lower tech and not very valiable but, at the same time its a big aircraft to just vanish.

I'm increasingly unimpressed with the state of the art when it comes to aviation tracking technology. Radar clearly isn't much use when you're outside normal flight corridors and where the plane is not behaving predictably.

I don't think these systems where ever intended to track a rogue airliner.

A Primal Nut

fr336 wrote: »

Being briefed by Malaysia officials they believe most likely location for MH370 is on land somewhere near Chinese/Kyrgyz border.

— Jonah Fisher (@JonahFisher) March 15, 2014

Close to Uigher territory in Xinjiang.

Happyman42

Five Lamps wrote: »

Even a passenger switching on a phone might end the plane (even remote areas have mobile coverage)

.

Would it not be as simple as having one of these?



http://www.signalbuster.com/Scripts/default.asp

SpaceTime

Happyman42 wrote: »

Would it not be as simple as having one of these?

It would still be worth just for the sake of ruling it out getting the list of mobile numbers and IMEI numbers and getting the respective networks to check their logs to see if there's any record of them roaming on unexpected networks.

Yeah, I would imagine a jamming device would block reception, particularly in an enclosed metal tube like an aircraft which is already going to make it a little tricky. If the plane's in flight, even over land, the mobile networks would struggle to keep track of the phones at that speed as you'd be jumping too quickly from cell to cell. That being said, they might still manage it as they're a lot more sophisticated than 1G and 2G were.

You wouldn't necessarily get active service (unlikely as it can take up to 5 minutes for a mobile phone to log into a roaming network as it has to request permission from its home network and there's a load of stuff goes on to setup roaming) However, it might still have attempted to connect and the local network it flew past may still have a trace on an IMEI number attempting a connection.

Looking at the likely places they could have flown through, mobile reception would have been quite poor anyway as they're not very populated places. If they flew over an island or something though, there's a possibility that phones could have momentarily logged into a network.

It's definitely something worth checking but I wouldn't hold my hopes up that it would return any useful information.

fits

SpaceTime wrote: »

Would it not be as simple as having one of these?

It would still be worth just for the sake of ruling it out getting the list of mobile numbers and IMEI numbers and getting the respective networks to check their logs to see if there's any record of them roaming on unexpected networks.

This has been done.

Silverbling

Was the plane fuelled to capacity or enough for the flight?

If something was this well planned could they have put extra fuel on board to extend the range?

Happyman42

SpaceTime wrote: »

It would still be worth just for the sake of ruling it out getting the list of mobile numbers and IMEI numbers and getting the respective networks to check their logs to see if there's any record of them roaming on unexpected networks.

Yeah, I would imagine a jamming device would block reception, particularly in an enclosed metal tube like an aircraft which is already going to make it a little tricky. If the plane's in flight, even over land, the mobile networks would struggle to keep track of the phones at that speed as you'd be jumping too quickly from cell to cell. That being said, they might still manage it as they're a lot more sophisticated than 1G and 2G were.

Looking at the likely places they could have flown through, mobile reception would have been quite poor anyway as they're not very populated places. If they flew over an island or something though, there's a possibility that phones could have momentarily logged into a network.

It's definitely something worth checking but I wouldn't hold my hopes up that it would return any useful information.

If it was a hijack and it's a big 'if', then I am sure they would have dealt with the mobile phone issue. To not deal with it, would suggest a level of stupidity that would rule out the capability to plan a very very clever and complex operation would it not?

SpaceTime

fits wrote: »

This has been done.

In that case, then nothing useful must have been found, or at least nothing useful that they're discussing anyway.

I think a lot of people are vastly overestimating the transmission capabilities of mobile phone handsets too though. They are only capable of producing at an absolute maximum about 1 Watt of transmitted energy and mostly operate at fractions of this level and they're broadcasting on the upper end of UHF (higher up than TV) and some new systems very low end of microwave frequencies., not HF or VHF like aircraft radio. Mobiles operate typically on 800-2100MHz mostly at 900MHz as the de facto GSM 2G standard.

We're normally using them in nearly line of sight coverage within 1km or maybe up to 5km max of a transmitter site.

You can pick up networks at sea sometimes but that's in ideal conditions when you're standing on the deck of a ship and the transmitter's on the coast somewhere. You're on the ground, and you're not standing in the middle of a fuselage which will act more like a faraday cage, blocking signal reception. Even picking up signals on a train can be tricky sometimes for similar reasons.

The satellite pings are far more likely to reveal some helpful information.