Malaysia airlines plane may have crashed 239 people on board #4

[JerseyGirl]

Could the plane have landed someplace?
One theory U.S. officials are considering, according to that Wall Street Journal report, is that someone might have taken the plane to be used for some other purpose later. So it's theoretically possible that the plane could have landed at some remote air strip where it's being hidden. But there are some big holes in that theory. The 777 is a big plane. It requires, at minimum, nearly a mile to land. And, says Quest, there's the matter of getting it someplace without setting off alarm bells. "You can't just fly a Triple 7 and not have a radar trace," he said.

Couldn't a pilot just "fly under the radar"?
Again, theoretically. Being a tool to watch the sky, radar doesn't reach all the way to the ground. Military pilots are trained to take advantage of this when they need to sneak into a country undetected. But those aircraft also have terrain-evading radar and other features meant to help fighter and helicopter pilots hug the ground, noted aviation consultant Keith Wolzinger of the Spectrum Group. Understandably, Boeing doesn't offer that feature on its commercial airliners. "Airline pilots are not trained for radar avoidance," said Wolzinger, himself a former 777 pilot. "We like to be on radar." Also, unlike military craft, civilian airliners don't have gear to detect when they've been spotted on radar. So any effort to go undetected would be difficult and undoubtedly harrowing.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-questions/

bbm

 

[gitana1]

All of those planes!

(I never want to fly again. I hate it anyway, but I don't want to, ever!)

Why? All those planes in the sky without incident should be supremely reassuring. Incidents like this are so insanely rare, that they do not impact the safety of commercial flight in any discernible way.

bbm

OT: You and me both. I went years without flying after a very scary flight that almost went down in a tornado. I even got on a plane at Dulles to fly to Atlanta once, had a panic attack before we left the gate, and ran off the plane. And my luggage DID go on to Atlanta on the plane while I rented a car and drove. That has been about 20 yrs ago, and I've flown many times since then, including internationally. Sometimes with the help of Xanax... The Fearless Flyer's Handbook is what really helped (and being reassured by crew).

Mine was the New Zealand trip, both there and back. In 96'. That's when my phobia began. (But I had reason to fear flying before that for very many reasons that I won't go into because it's so off topic but that have ZERO to do with the safety of flying). The turbulence felt so extreme there and back, for most of the 13 and 15 hour flights and there were other reasons for me to feel bad in general about going on that trip.

So for many, many years, I couldn't fly unless it was a very short hour long trip and even that with Xanax AND alcohol, and still, I was frantic.
I took a fear of flying course that changed my life. I still have fear, but it is so manageable that what used to be dread and panic at the thought of a trip on a plane has been replaced with excitement, because I'm going somewhere!!!!

BTW, what I learned in my four day course tells me there is no way your plane "almost went down" in a storm. People feel that way, after going through weather patterns and sometimes, very rarely, there are "emergency landings" or aborted landings, but a plane not being diverted from extreme weather is an anomaly - no pilot of a commercial flight would EVER fly purposefully into a storm, tornado, cyclone, hurricane and they always seek ways around it - and a plane not being able to fly in extreme weather, if for some reason it actually was forced to fly through such conditions, is also such an anomaly that it's not worth worrying about.

One of the first questions asked of us during the Fear of Flying course was "How many of you have been through "severe" turbulence?" Most of us put our hands up. I for one, went "through" (really "near") a cyclone out of New Zealand (walking difficult and not allowed, food service suspended, lots of vomiting) and a tornado over Kansas, yes, Kansas, when I was 8). The pilot then explained that none of us have probably ever gone through "severe" turbulence and what we describe as such is likely considered, by pilots, to be "light chop".

He explained that what concerns the pilots during turbulence and nasty weather are two things: Some idiot is going to decide now is the time to go change their baby's diaper in the bathroom, and will be flung against the ceiling and later sue, and "Damn it. My coffee spilled." Please read this great article about turbulence: http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/turbulence/

Who experiences severe turbulence/weather? Hurricane hunters. Remember, planes actually fly into hurricanes on purpose, to collect data. And in the long history of hurricane hunters, only two planes have been lost:

"Just for fun," was the answer given by Col. Joe Duckworth. He and Lt. Ralph O'Hair, both flyboys for the Army Air Corps were among the first people to fly an airplane into a hurricane. In July 1943, Duckworth and O'Hair flew a small AT-6 prop plane into the eye of a hurricane with 132 mph winds off the coast of Galveston, Texas. While the pilot and navigator won highballs at the officer's club after safely returning that day, the prize for science was much more pronounced: The thermometers aboard the plane recorded a 25-degree Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius) difference in temperature between the eye of the hurricane and the air circling it.

Following that excursion, manned flights into some of nature's most severe storms became more frequent.

Today, most manned flights into hurricanes are undertaken by the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (popularly called the Hurricane Hunters) and the NOAA. NOAA mans 8-hour flights into storms, going from one side into the eye, back into the storm and out the other side several times per flight [source: National Science Foundation]. NOAA drops a Dropwindsonde device into the storm to gather real-time data about the characteristics of a storm from top to bottom. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron flies out of Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., and keeps track of Atlantic hurricanes with a flight crew operation of 20 people [source: 403rd]. http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/storms/fly-into-hurricane1.htm

http://www.tutorgigpedia.com/ed/Hurricane_Hunters#Swan_38

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Just heartbreaking. Piers Morgan's interview with Paul Weeks wife. I watched it live but here's a link:

http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/20...i-just-cant-wait-for-him-to-come-back-i-hope/

During the interview she states that they'd had a bad car accident back in Dec and had been talking about what they wanted done if something happened to one or both of them. He apparently couldn't wear his wedding ring on the job and didn't want to leave it in his room or at the job site so he left it at home with his wife, along with his watch.

My heart breaks for these loved ones who are left to wait in limbo.

OK, thats made me cry my eyes out. It's so easy to get stuck in the why's and where's, this really humanises it even more than before

 

[Chilly Willy]

snipped and bbm:
SEE - this just sets off my "hinky" meter - WHY is that the first response to every shred of evidence, every reported sighting, every possibility? The Malaysian authorities have no control over what RR does and does have related to data transmissions.

The NORMAL response if they wanted help to find this plane should be "Great news, lets coordinate what you've got and see how it fits with what we have and try to figure our another place to search......"

I've said it before - The families are showing great restraint in only throwing water bottles at these people. I don't know all that is going on but I know enough to figure that finding this airplane is NOT their first priority!! IMHO

Earlier in the thread someone likened the Malaysian responses to Bagdad Bob. I think that was pretty accurate.

Malaysian authorities have said they're concerned about how all this conflicting and/or untrue information is affecting the family members - then why don't they stop doing it?

 

[popsicle]

Wow! That is excellent news!

Well, I think. I know I clicked a lot of stuff, guess everyone else was clicking away too. No way to know what it is. :blushing::blushing:

Looks like no luck yet though. They are adding more. Keep clicking!:

Oh boy...me too. :floorlaugh:

 

[popsicle]

Jon Ostrower ‏@jonostrower 1m
Think of it this way: SATCOM is the faucet and ACARS is the water. #MH370

https://twitter.com/jonostrower

 

[gitana1]

jmo But I doubt our defenses are down.

Ever!

Exactly! That's one reason I think plane was either hijacked or crashed way out to sea far from land (believe former more). Everyone and their brother who have flown over past days are looking for any signs. Nothing has washed up anywhere. Very odd IMO.

Also being hijacked makes a lot of sense why Malaysia government has seemed so inept, the international implications are very real. Again, IMHO.

Pretty much none of those planes on the flight tracker, are looking for this plane, though. They are busy doing their job, which is to get to their destination.

Also, the ocean is a huge, huge place. I mean, it took five days to find Air France and that was WITH the transponder working.

No they dont. Yes they do. There is no truth to that. That is true. That is inaccurate. It's accurate. No it isn't. Yes it is. ARRRGGG!!!!:tantrum:

It's ridiculous! What the heck? It really should make us very grateful for the aviation industry and government we have in this country.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57...-in-satellite-image-search-for-missing-plane/

"Web collects 650K clues in satellite-image search for missing plane

Thanks to Tomnod users, every pixel from available satellite images has been scanned by human eyes at least 30 times".

Wow!!!!

snipped and bbm:
SEE - this just sets off my "hinky" meter - WHY is that the first response to every shred of evidence, every reported sighting, every possibility? The Malaysian authorities have no control over what RR does and does have related to data transmissions.

The NORMAL response if they wanted help to find this plane should be "Great news, lets coordinate what you've got and see how it fits with what we have and try to figure our another place to search......"

I've said it before - The families are showing great restraint in only throwing water bottles at these people. I don't know all that is going on but I know enough to figure that finding this airplane is NOT their first priority!! IMHO

You're right. Earlier I expressed surprise at the rage on the part of the family members. Rage (instead of fear or grief). Now I get it. They are dealing with corrupt liars.

 

[Aviator]

Correction: Satellite, Not Engine, Data Drove Investigators’ Suspicions on Malaysia Jet Flying Time
U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for up to four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

The investigators believe the plane flew for a total of up to five hours, according to these people, based on analysis of signals sent by the Boeing 777's satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of some onboard systems to the ground.

Corrections & Amplifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said investigators based their suspicions on signals from monitoring systems embedded in the plane’s Rolls-Royce PLC engines and described that process.


The Wall Street Journal reporter who still stands by the core of his story, is one of the top, if not the top, aviation reporter at the Journal. Martha Raddatz, the defense reporter at ABC News, is very well connected with national security sources. IMO, the U.S. government is selectively leaking information.

Based on the Wall St. Journal reporter's accounts, the pinging lasted for four hours, at 30 minute intervals. So there was power and a functioning communication link during that interval. Depending on whether the U.S. can triangulate the location of each ping, that would give an approximate a location at the time of the last ping. That leaves up to a 30 minute flying distance from the point of the last ping.

According to the Journal reporter's radio interview, he mentioned several times that U.S. officials haven't ruled out the plane landing, or crash-landing on land.

 

[popsicle]

That's what I thought also - about 7 1/2 or 8 hrs.

My guess is that the one more communication received after 1:30am - that one last engine ping or whatever - was 4 hrs later. It seems now that instead of continuously tracking it for 4 hrs, it may have sent out the one communication to Rolls Royce that the US picked up. Since there must've not been another one (it hasn't been mentioned?), I'm assuming that that's the reason the US thinks it may have crashed, or may have landed.

(I'm going to make the assumption that it doesn't ping when turned off, hence - it could've crashed OR it could've landed).

This is my understanding, probably the only thing I think I understand. The plane sent out a signal at/just after take-off and then again just before it dropped from radar.

The RR pings are every 30 minutes and it was the plane saying I am here ready to sent the info, however, Malaysia Airlines didn't subscribed to the service so it wasn't able to connect nor send any information. Also, the pings that were detected were very faint per the article linked up thread. Since they know how many pings they detected they are guessing how many hrs it flew until it stopped/dropped/landed. jmo

 

[Soulmagent]

Could the plane have landed someplace?
One theory U.S. officials are considering, according to that Wall Street Journal report, is that someone might have taken the plane to be used for some other purpose later. So it's theoretically possible that the plane could have landed at some remote air strip where it's being hidden. But there are some big holes in that theory. The 777 is a big plane. It requires, at minimum, nearly a mile to land. And, says Quest, there's the matter of getting it someplace without setting off alarm bells. "You can't just fly a Triple 7 and not have a radar trace," he said.

Couldn't a pilot just "fly under the radar"?
Again, theoretically. Being a tool to watch the sky, radar doesn't reach all the way to the ground. Military pilots are trained to take advantage of this when they need to sneak into a country undetected. But those aircraft also have terrain-evading radar and other features meant to help fighter and helicopter pilots hug the ground, noted aviation consultant Keith Wolzinger of the Spectrum Group. Understandably, Boeing doesn't offer that feature on its commercial airliners. "Airline pilots are not trained for radar avoidance," said Wolzinger, himself a former 777 pilot. "We like to be on radar." Also, unlike military craft, civilian airliners don't have gear to detect when they've been spotted on radar. So any effort to go undetected would be difficult and undoubtedly harrowing.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-questions/

bbm

This is the issue I was having in the first day of the plane missing.

It is the most unlikey outcome that a plane be completely missing for any lenth of time.

Could a goverment land a plane in their country and keep it quite?

Ours could. So I would think that another country could as well.

 

[popsicle]

Retweeted by Jon Ostrower
Scott Mayerowitz ‏@GlobeTrotScott 3m
Missing jet creates legion of armchair sleuths http://ow.ly/uz08e

https://twitter.com/jonostrower


Retweeted by Stephen Trimble
Jon Ostrower ‏@jonostrower 31m
The Malaysian 777's satellite comm. system kept pinging for hours "saying I'm here, I'm ready to send data." http://on.wsj.com/1lYx08l #MH370

https://twitter.com/FG_STrim

 

[popsicle]

Stephen Trimble ‏@FG_STrim 2m
If @WSJ is true, Malaysia could have been more helpful this morning when denying engine data transmissions and maybe mentioning satcom link.

https://twitter.com/FG_STrim

 

[Waddles]

If we assumed that this was purely an accident, no terrorism or pilot suicide or anything, and they were somehow forced to keep flying till they ran out of fuel and crashed, is it technically possible for something catastrophic to happen electrically whereby no communications are possible and no way of landing the plane yet still produce the ping 4 or 5 hours later? sorry for my complete ignorance on the subject!

ETA, thanks Aviator, I have my answer
So there was power and a functioning communication link during that interval.

 

[Waddles]

Correction: Satellite, Not Engine, Data Drove Investigators’ Suspicions on Malaysia Jet Flying Time
U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for up to four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

The investigators believe the plane flew for a total of up to five hours, according to these people, based on analysis of signals sent by the Boeing 777's satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of some onboard systems to the ground.

Corrections & Amplifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said investigators based their suspicions on signals from monitoring systems embedded in the plane’s Rolls-Royce PLC engines and described that process.


The Wall Street Journal reporter who still stands by the core of his story, is one of the top, if not the top, aviation reporter at the Journal. Martha Raddatz, the defense reporter at ABC News, is very well connected with national security sources. IMO, the U.S. government is selectively leaking information.

Based on the Wall St. Journal reporter's accounts, the pinging lasted for four hours, at 30 minute intervals. So there was power and a functioning communication link during that interval. Depending on whether the U.S. can triangulate the location of each ping, that would give an approximate a location at the time of the last ping. That leaves up to a 30 minute flying distance from the point of the last ping.

According to the Journal reporter's radio interview, he mentioned several times that U.S. officials haven't ruled out the plane landing, or crash-landing on land.

aaah, makes much more sense

 

[FlyerFan28]

Did all the cell phones on board cease pinging?

 

[Waddles]

Did all the cell phones on board cease pinging?

did they ever ping? I haven't found any info on the cellphones pinging or anything, my obsession from the start. Did i miss something?

 

[Soulmagent]

Did all the cell phones on board cease pinging?

If they were ringing they were pinging. However I havent heard anything about them releasing information about the phones and the pings.

Dont phones without service go straight to VM. Without a ring.

 

[lilblue]

If we assumed that this was purely an accident, no terrorism or pilot suicide or anything, and they were somehow forced to keep flying till they ran out of fuel and crashed, is it technically possible for something catastrophic to happen electrically whereby no communications are possible and no way of landing the plane yet still produce the ping 4 or 5 hours later? sorry for my complete ignorance on the subject!

ETA, thanks Aviator, I have my answer
So there was power and a functioning communication link during that interval.

I don't know anything about planes, but I think that would be very improbable. Perhaps if there was a fire that cut out some of the electrical systems and not others? Maybe they lost some cabin pressure at the time of the failure and the pilots only had time to try and turn around? But then why no attempted communication? If the pilots were eventually disabled from lack of oxygen then autopilot would have to be functional for the plane to keep flying. It really makes no sense that all communications and the transponder were disabled, while the satcom and autopilot were working for 4+ hours. This really seems intentional to me at this point.

 

[popsicle]

Jon Ostrower ‏@jonostrower 5m
What do the pings tell investigators right now? The 777 was intact & had electrical power after disappearing. http://on.wsj.com/1lYx08l #MH370

https://twitter.com/jonostrower

 

[PrairieWind]

Did all the cell phones on board cease pinging?

There would have been no network to hear the cell phones pinging. If an airliner doesnt have cell/or wifi capabilities, which this one did not, the cell phones would have been useless.