Malaysia Airlines flight MH370-Updates and Discussion

Tigerandahalf

geneva geneva4444 wrote: »

Who told you this? Aircraft fly at FL450 all the time. The only reason there would be a lack of oxygen is in the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure caused by some form of mechanical or structural failure. Other than that there should have been no issues. Boeing triple 7's are in theory limited to a ceiling of FL430 but that is due to performance limitations rather than pressurisation difficulties.

Fair enough but isnt there a pressurisation valve that can slowly allow the plane to depressurise?

geneva geneva4444

geneva geneva4444 wrote: »

A lot of interesting theories this morning on here. I'm normally more of a facts guy but I'm gonna throw a couple of theories of my own out;

It was pointed out early on that one of the passengers on a stolen Austrian passport, was attempting to get to Germany to seek asylum and re-unite with his mother. When I heard that one of the corridors was leading towards Kaz/Turk region, I looked up Google Earth, drew a line from point of last contact to Germany and guess where that takes you. May just be a coincidence but further to it's potential is the recent case (last month) of a pilot hi-jacking his own plane en-route from Africa (can't recall where) to Italy and bringing it and passengers to Switzerland. That could have given the Iranian man on the stolen passport the idea. I'd love to know if he had used that stolen passport many times before, easy for authorities to check. If not, the timing so soon after the Swiss hi-jack is coincidental to say the least. I've heard that his plan may have been to go to China and China to Germany but he may not have wanted to risk the Chinese discovering the stolen passport, and him being deported back to Iran. My thinking is that he may have had no intention to go to China at all.

He had his ticket booked all the way though, no?

ABC101

I think it is very ironic... planes have normally been taken over by kidnappers / terrorists who where traveling as passengers.

Now we could be looking at the other end of the spectrum.... 200+ passengers being kidnapped / terrorized by a rogue pilot / pilots.

I wonder in the next evolution of aircraft will avionics be designed for a ground control station to remotely take control of an aircraft, divert it to the nearest airport and land it safely.

In other words the cockpit controls are unusable, and a rogue pilot or rogue passenger would have no control of the aircraft.

geneva geneva4444

Deleted User wrote: »

He had his ticket booked all the way though, no?

I think he did yes but the intention may have been to hi-jack the first flight regardless. Could he afford to risk the Chinese border control discovering his passport was stolen? Then he ends up back in Iran with no passport at all. Doesn't get to re-unite with his mother. Desperate people do desperate things. It is just a theory though. It's just quite coincidental that last point of contact to Germany is very close to the northerly corridor to Kaz/Turk area that they have narrowed down the search to.

The southern corridor makes little sense as it heads to the southern part of the Indian ocean with no main land anywhere. If they went that way, it would be a suicide mission.... but if it was a suicide mission, why not just ditch the plane when control was attained. Makes less sense to me.

2 stroke

Regarding the 45000/23000 readings, Am I correct that the 45000 is a radar reading, and that 23000 is from engine data. (Thats my recolection from last night, but I had a few drinks). Could be that a fault in altitude reporting caused the pilots to think that they were too low, leading to them climb to a dangerous altitude. Did the plane then fall to 23000 in one minute, or did the engines just report the altitude that they thought they were at.
After this incident, could the pilot have been trying to negotiate his way back by searching for waypoints familar to him but disorientedly thinking that he was approaching these waypoints from another direction, and nothing was familiar? Then decide to ditch in the sea, or perhaps pilot unconscious.

Bigcheeze

tayto lover wrote: »

A pilot on the Marian Finucane programme disclosed that aviation companies and engine manufacturers can check the performance of engines in the air. He said he has no doubt that people know where this flight is to about 100 metres.

So why are they not disclosing this?

They must have used a pilot who is not following the story.

The ACARS system which allows this was switched off by someone on the flight deck.

BorneTobyWilde

It turns out you can access the jets vital circuit breakers before you need to enter the cockpit . So maybe someone did access them and pull the breakers for the transponders but also more.. lets say the pilots instruments.
It would explain why jet climbed . A pilot with out knowing his altitude would want to keep nose up,and climbed to 45,000 ft unknowingly .
At some point he would realize and dive plane lower, would explain why it dropped.
He would then be up and down and flying erratic without knowing where he was or what his heading was. It would explain the paths this plane took, as they had no purpose.
So the actions would look deliberate, but only because the pilot was simply guessing to where he was heading.

geneva geneva4444

geneva geneva4444 wrote: »

I think he did yes but the intention may have been to hi-jack the first flight regardless. Could he afford to risk the Chinese border control discovering his passport was stolen? Then he ends up back in Iran with no passport at all. Doesn't get to re-unite with his mother. Desperate people do desperate things. It is just a theory though. It's just quite coincidental that last point of contact to Germany is very close to the northerly corridor to Kaz/Turk area that they have narrowed down the search to.

Why book the onward leg at all then? Makes no sense unfortunately.

geneva geneva4444

Deleted User wrote: »

Why book the onward leg at all then? Makes no sense unfortunately.

A back up plan if he doesn't get the chance to pull off the hi-jack. If he doesn't get the opportunity, then he ends up in China with no flight.

theKillerBite

geneva geneva4444 wrote: »

A back up plan if he doesn't get the chance to pull off the hi-jack. If he doesn't get the opportunity, then he ends up in China with no flight.

It wasn't anyone else except either the pilot or the FO. They disabled the ACARS system then a few minutes later the transponder. Then punched in coordinates and travelled between known waypoints.

galwayjohn89

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Why book the onward leg at all then? Makes no sense unfortunately.

So he doesn't have to get a Chinese visa.

geneva geneva4444

geneva geneva4444 wrote: »

A back up plan if he doesn't get the chance to pull off the hi-jack. If he doesn't get the opportunity, then he ends up in China with no flight.

"Sorry about having to thump you when you tried to hi-jack the plan. Enjoy Germany!"

homerjay2005

interesting thing here is that if this was a hijack, then they chose a plane that was taking off in the middle of the night and chose to fly it back into the night rather than remaining in their own time zone or flying east.

Every few 1000 miles would be the equivilent of a time zone -1 change, so essentially they were flying at a time where they were more likely not to be seen by other planes or detected, along with a bunch of passengers that were sleeping.

geneva geneva4444

theKillerBite wrote: »

It wasn't anyone else except either the pilot or the FO. They disabled the ACARS system then a few minutes later the transponder. Then punched in coordinates and travelled between known waypoints.

I agree that it's almost certain that either the pilot or first officer was the one who would have disabled the ACARS and transponder. It is possible is it not though, that one or both were forced to do so under duress?
I'm only pointing out alternative possibilities to what has now become the main theory (Pilot intervention). But if it was a pilot, where were they intending to go and why? The only person on the flight so far with a known intention to get to Europe (roughly the direction of the corridor heading northwest) was the Iranian man trying to use a stolen passport to get to Germany.
As an aside, I find it strange that there is a big time difference between the disabling of the ACARS and the transponder being switched off. Was it 14 minutes if I recall correctly. 01.07-01.21 local time. Plus, what reason would a pilot who hi-jacked his own aircraft have for flying as erratically as the data has indicated it did. It is only drawing attention to any military units monitoring primary radar.

ABC101

Interesting link which I got from another post on Boards.." Dish pics request - Elfordstown, RTÉ & Mt Gabriel "

http://www.aaiu.ie/sites/default/files/upload/general/3500-0.PDF

Basically an investigation into a near miss between a group of aircraft inbound to Europe, passing through Shannon ATC.

Gives a good insight into the system and how much voice traffic is required, apparently there was a software issue where a Anti Ghosting function did not allow the Swiss Air flight to be displayed in the radar screen for over 8 minutes.

A very clear and concise report too may I add.

Tigerandahalf

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-cabin-pressurization.htm

Above is a good link re a plane's cabin being pressurised.

It seems there is a valve(s) that allow air in and out of the cabin. However I read on another article that the pilot can control this at the flight deck. The crew could also have been forced into making these changes.

theKillerBite

geneva geneva4444 wrote: »

As an aside, I find it strange that there is a big time difference between the disabling of the ACARS and the transponder being switched off. Was it 14 minutes if I recall correctly. 01.07-01.21 local time. Plus, what reason would a pilot who hi-jacked his own aircraft have for flying as erratically as the data has indicated it did. It is only drawing attention to any military units monitoring primary radar.

It had to be the pilots. They signed off to Airtraffic control after the ACARS and and just before transponder was switched off - the plane already went rogue when the pilot said "All Right, Goodnight".

The data reporting system was shut down at 1.07 am and the transponder was turned off at 1.21 am just after the the pilot signed off to Malaysian air traffic controllers with ‘All right, good night,’ and before the Boeing 777 apparently changed course and turned west.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579955/US-officials-convinced-two-separate-communications-systems-Malaysian-jet-DELIBERATELY-shut-14-minutes-apart-emerges-aircraft-pinging-FIVE-hours-vanished-flying.html#ixzz2vvKbU6Yo

Kylo Ren

I've read through most of the thread but apologies if asked already lads.

Why can the transponder be manually turned off? I've seen people say it's because of the chance of an electrical fire?

SpaceTime

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

It turns out you can access the jets vital circuit breakers before you need to enter the cockpit . So maybe someone did access them and pull the breakers for the transponders but also more.. lets say the pilots instruments.
It would explain why jet climbed . A pilot with out knowing his altitude would want to keep nose up,and climbed to 45,000 ft unknowingly .
At some point he would realize and dive plane lower, would explain why it dropped.
He would then be up and down and flying erratic without knowing where he was or what his heading was. It would explain the paths this plane took, as they had no purpose.
So the actions would look deliberate, but only because the pilot was simply guessing to where he was heading.

I keep hearing people on TV talking about this as if only a few people knew where all these things are.

I have been quite surprised at how much information's publicly available on these aircraft. It wouldn't take an awful lot of research or investigation to find out how most of the systems work and also where they're located.

There are insiders posting things online that shouldn't really be online at all in terms of very technical details about specific aircraft and security procedures.

While I'm not a believer in security by obscurity, I do think that there's too much very specific information getting into the public domain and that airline staff should be more responsible than to publish information purely for 'geek value'. There are security concerns around some of this stuff.

Secondly, there's absolutely nothing to stop a fully trained 777 pilot being a terrorist. One can train commercially as a pilot and there are very advanced flight simulators and software packages available that would probably give someone enough knowledge to at least attempt to fly the aircraft if they'd some flight training.

So, really, I don't think one could rule out hijacking or in-flight sabotage of systems.

If this is the case, there's going to have to be a major review of what's accessible from the cabin that's for sure!

Although, there's also a balance between locking down everything to prevent something like this and the safety requirements of crew being able to quickly access systems.

We could move to a situation where access hatches and doors are locked, and that makes it difficult for pilots or other crew to access them when they really do need to. This could result in an accident and could be even more dangerous than terrorism so, it's hard to know where to draw the line or what the balance should be.

I would be loathed to think of a situation where a lock was so secure it stuck shut and pilots couldn't access essential controls to shut down or otherwise operate systems in an emergency.

I think aircraft should have a security tag transponder though that links to satellite. Preferably, something that's battery-backed up and cannot be easily disabled from in side the aircraft.

mickmackey1

theKillerBite wrote: »

It had to be the pilots. They signed off to Airtraffic control after the ACARS and and just before transponder was switched off - the plane already went rogue when the pilot said "All Right, Goodnight".

Why didn't the control tower ask why ACARS was switched off so, they had 14 minutes before he said 'Goodnight' :rolleyes:

SpaceTime

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Why didn't the control tower ask why ACARS was switched off so, they had 14 minutes before he said 'Goodnight' :rolleyes:

Maybe the pilot wasn't aware it was switched off, if the systems were accessed from the cabin somewhere and sabotaged i.e. cutting a circuit breaker or wiring?

All they would need is someone who was very familiar with the maintenance of this type of aircraft. So, a passenger with maintenance experience, or someone infiltrating the crew or a maintenance team. Who knows?!

It's all speculation. But, there are still more questions than answers.

Calina

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Why didn't the control tower ask why ACARS was switched off so, they had 14 minutes before he said 'Goodnight' :rolleyes:

I don't believe the tower could possibly know that ACARS was off.

SpaceTime

Calina wrote: »

I don't believe the tower could possibly know that ACARS was off.

It would seem to me that the systems are all designed with the following in mind:

1) They're not security systems, they're navigational aids / maintenance aids.
2) They don't work very well if the aircraft are flying on non-approved flight paths i.e. there's no / limited radar coverage when you're out 'on your own' other than military systems which might or mightn't pick something up as suspicious.

geneva geneva4444

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Why didn't the control tower ask why ACARS was switched off so, they had 14 minutes before he said 'Goodnight' :rolleyes:

As a controller, we don't have access to whether the aircraft's ACARS has been disabled. We can however tell if it is on through the CPDLC (controller pilot data link - ie: text messaging) but only half of the aircraft that operate over Irish airspace actually use it so it is not a surprise if it an aircraft is not logged on via CPDLC. Ryanair don't have CPDLC functionality at all for example. Then there is FANS (similar to ACARS) which is another kettle of fish altogether and to be honest very complicated. In sum, the enroute controller can only tell if the transponder has been switched off.

mickmackey1

Calina wrote: »

I don't believe the tower could possibly know that ACARS was off.

You're probably right, it doesn't seem like much has changed since 9/11.

Edit: just saw your reply there geneva, fair enough.

tayto lover

Timeline for anyone not familiar with the story -

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0315/602476-timeline-the-hunt-for-flight-mh370/

KERSPLAT!

Keno wrote: »

I've read through most of the thread but apologies if asked already lads.

Why can the transponder be manually turned off? I've seen people say it's because of the chance of an electrical fire?

If there's a problem with equipment, the pilot must be able to isolate it. That's my understanding but if far from an expert!

MadYaker

Just read the updates on the irish times website there. Not sure if it could be considered good news or bad news.

Am I right in saying they know how long it flew for but not what direction? Because if that is the case theres a high likelihood that it will never been found.

Setun

A map of all the possible 777-capable airstrips in the estimated range of the flight. Should narrow it down a bit...



Via Guardian/WNYC

CelticRambler

Bigcheeze wrote: »

tayto lover wrote:

A pilot on the Marian Finucane programme disclosed that aviation companies and engine manufacturers can check the performance of engines in the air. He said he has no doubt that people know where this flight is to about 100 metres.

So why are they not disclosing this?

They must have used a pilot who is not following the story.

It's tayto lover who wasn't following the story properly.

The "people" that that pilot was referring to are those in the intelligence community for whom (he went on to imply) the disappearance of a few hundred people is a small price to pay for keeping secret the extent of their spying capabilities. Nothing to do with ACARS or engine data.