Malaysia Jet missing-Officials conclude crash in Indian ocean/all lives presumed lost

[puckluck2]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

This is like where is Waldo but instead we are looking for a Boeing 777......

And the 239 that are presumably dead. Jeez, this is like your second attempt at a joke and they've both failed.

[JonDuke]

This was posted online about 45 minutes ago:

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: Search expands to Andaman Sea
http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking...n-sea-20140312

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - The international search for a missing Malaysian airliner has been expanded into the Andaman Sea, hundreds of kilometres to the northwest of the original search radius, an official said on Wednesday.

"Yes, above Sumatra is the Andaman Sea," Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said when asked to confirm whether ships and planes were searching for missing flight MH370 there.

Sumatra is a large Indonesian island south of the Andaman Sea.

The body of water is off Thailand's west coast.

EDIT: So Malaysia air force chief denies saying lost plane tracked to west but they are now checking further west and checking the Andamen Sea
Clusterfawk is a clusterfawk

[Acey]

Originally Posted by lazypucker

Can the transponder and other communication devices be manually turn off, as in the case of the plane being hijacked?

Yep, but again you'd still show up on primary radar (just a blip on the screen... no altitude, no identifer, no speed)

On the 9/11 tapes you can hear the controllers asking other aircraft what the hijacked planes were doing and how high they were because the hijackers nuked the transponders, but controllers could still see roughly where the plane was.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by JonDuke

This was posted online about 45 minutes ago:

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: Search expands to Andaman Sea
http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking...n-sea-20140312



EDIT: So Malaysia air force chief denies saying lost plane tracked to west but they are now checking further west and checking the Andamen Sea
Clusterfawk is a clusterfawk

ok so they have no friggin' clue where that thing is.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by nik-

ok so they have no friggin' clue where that thing is.

Or they do and don't want anyone to find it!

[nik-]

incompetence is always more likely than conspiracy.

Not that I truly think they're incompetent, but man ... when they don't even know the general direction the plane went in, sheesh.

[Peanut]

Just saw this on twitter too, apparently from someone working on an oil rig. No clue if it's legit.

https://mobile.twitter.com/neiljhk/s...88443679891457

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Peanut

Just saw this on twitter too, apparently from someone working on an oil rig. No clue if it's legit.

https://mobile.twitter.com/neiljhk/s...88443679891457

Vung Tau would fall in line with the plane's planned course.

[PIMking]

Well, I like the dudes email...

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by JonDuke

EDIT: So Malaysia air force chief denies saying lost plane tracked to west but they are now checking further west and checking the Andamen Sea
Clusterfawk is a clusterfawk

This quickly and sadly has become a the boy who cried wolf story. You don't know who to trust in the Malaysia government.

[Azure]

Good article explaining some of the questions some of us have.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/malaysia-air/

It is a misconception that airline pilots are in constant communication with air traffic control, or that planes are constantly watched on radar. Once a plane is more than 100 or 150 miles from shore, radar no longer works. It simply doesn’t have the range. (The specific distance from shore varies with the type of radar, the weather, and other factors.) At that point, civilian aircraft communicate largely by high-frequency radio. The flight crew checks in at fixed “reporting points” along the way, providing the plane’s position, air speed, and altitude. It isn’t uncommon to maintain radio silence between reporting points because cruising at 35,000 feet is typically uneventful. Some aircraft communication systems don’t require pilots call in; flight management computers transmit the info via satellite link.

Although modern flight management systems use GPS for navigation, that only tells the airplane where it is–it does not tell air traffic control where the plane is. It’s a bit like taking your iPhone into the heart of the Mojave desert: Your GPS will tell you where you are, but you can’t use Find My Phone because there’s no cell coverage. Although it would be possible to stream data from an aircraft in real time via satellite, implementing such a system across the industry would cost billions of dollars, Smith said.

Still, it is highly unlikely that Flight 370 went down silently, Joseph said. Many commercial aircraft have an emergency locator beacon that the flight crew can trigger in an instant. It also will activate under certain circumstances, such as impact with water–though it isn’t effective a great depths. And although civil aviation systems don’t have radar or other tracking technology at sea, military and security agencies almost certainly do. It’s possible a government ship, airplane or satellite captured some clues, as was the case when a Soviet fighter jet brought down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983.

“I would be very surprised if, on somebody’s radar data, this event was not recorded,” Joseph said.

[Azure]

Interesting that the article mentions the plane has an emergency beacon that should have gone off if the plane has crashed.

That wouldn't necessarily provide the location of the blackbox, but it would help authorities pinpoint the location of the crash I'd imagine. So it either hasn't gone off, is underwater, or it was destroyed in the presumed crash.

[jeffman]

So the Malaysians just wasted everybody's time searching the South China Sea

[Azure]

Well I'm not sure if they are incompetent, but I don't see how you can after 4 days come out and say that you just realized that the last known location was hundreds of miles away from where you said the original last location was.

[T@T]

[Leon]

Seems like it would be worth following up on a lead like that.

This is absolutely bizarre.

[Ryan Coke]

Originally Posted by Peanut

So does this theory not make sense due to the "slow decompression" aspect?
http://www.lowyat.net/2014/03/was-th...-200-aircraft/

Yes, your correct. Obviously there is quite a bit of technical knowledge in that piece, but there are also some huge holes in knowledge or understanding. It's like watching a movie where if you ignore some basic logical misses then it is believable.

The most glaring omissions are that, as I mentioned above, the warnings for cabin pressurization will occur regardless of how slow the leak is....slow or fast doesn't matter. Warnings are triggered between 10000' and 13000' feet, and even if it sat just below those thresholds, very few people would even notice it, I doubt anyone would lose consciousness, and nobody would die at those altitudes. The idea that the pilots would be hypoxically confused before the warnings started is ludicrous.

The idea that they did not get oxygen masks on a timely manner is possible, which is the basis for both the Payne Stewart Lear crash, or the Helios 737 crash.

I'm not dismissing pressurization and crew incapacitation as possible causes, just that some of the premises in that article are not correct.

[Regorium]

Isn't that where the pilot spotted the debris field that was weird enough to report?

[StrykerSteve]

Originally Posted by Peanut

Just saw this on twitter too, apparently from someone working on an oil rig. No clue if it's legit.

https://mobile.twitter.com/neiljhk/s...88443679891457

Combine that with this

http://securityinsider.blogspot.ca/2...lysis.html?m=1

and the fact that they both point to the exact same spot, I'd say there's enough to justify begin searching that area, immediately.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Azure

Good article explaining some of the questions some of us have.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/malaysia-air/

Colour me shocked. I would have imagined that even the most ancient aircraft in regular service would have some rudimentary satellite telemetry system to provide continuous reporting of the GPS position of the aircraft. This is not an expensive, or new, or complex feature. I know that aerospace certifcations ad a heap of expense, but I would wager that one seatback entertainment systems costs a significant amount more than this would.