Could be, if it's a lone wolf group it's probably not likely they'll be able to identify them and associate them with terrorism even if they get pictures off of surveillance cameras. So we probably won't be able to know for sure until after the wreckage is found.
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Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 missing
- Thread starter quagmire
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Could be, if it's a lone wolf group it's probably not likely they'll be able to identify them and associate them with terrorism even if they get pictures off of surveillance cameras. So we probably won't be able to know for sure until after the wreckage is found.
No. The black box doesn't transmit in real time. The data rate would be much too high. What AF447 was transmitting was something called ACARS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Addressing_and_Reporting_System
There are a few airline pilot forums, and they're useful places to go for information. I visit one at:
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/
In the main, the posters are pilots. Not everyone is, though.
See this thread:
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/80284-malaysian-777-missing.html
The New York Times had the quote below in an article yesterday.
If someone used something like a shoe bomb that caused the fuselage to rip apart (and the plane to disintegrate at 35,000 feet), there wouldn't necessarily be a flash visible outside of the plane, would there?
If someone used something like a shoe bomb that caused the fuselage to rip apart (and the plane to disintegrate at 35,000 feet), there wouldn't necessarily be a flash visible outside of the plane, would there?
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?hp&_r=0&referrer
I didn't say it was the black box that was sending the information. I meant that AF447 was sending the information ground facilities so we knew the basics of what happened due to that.
I don't think having an argument on this thread is appropriate. I'll confine myself to pointing out that it wasn't until the black box and the cockpit voice recorder were recovered that anybody really knew what happened. The ACARS messages about equipment problems didn't reveal the confusion and fatal errors made in the cockpit.
I was just looking at the CVR text (http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/rapport.final.en.php) and it's very sad. The last two statements recorded were:
Robert: 'Damn it! Were going to crash. It cant be true!'
Bonin: 'But whats happening?!'
That is why I said the basics of what happened. It didn't tell us why. All we knew the plane stalled and crashed into the ocean. That's all. It gave us what happened, but not why.
Didn't know this.
You sure?
So griping (correct word?) these kind of incidents.... So unlikely, yet so close to your worst nightmare... Who hasn't flown and hasn't thought about the remote possibility...
I flew on a MAL 772 only a few years back, from Adelaide to Kuala Lumpur.
I must be so unbelievably tough for the relatives and friends. Not knowing, but fearing...
Very strange situation with this missing flight. I personally don't think it was a terrorist act as there are more likely scenarios for having a fake/stolen passport than terroristic reasons. I think this plane went straight into the water and we'll find it soon, but with such little information all options must remain open.
Agreed.
With ruling out conspiracy theories, we pretty much only have the following:
An oil slick in the S. China Sea.
An abrupt turn from 020 to 330 before losing contact.
No indication of rapid descent that we know of.
So in ruling out terrorism (which should be the first thing to be ruled out, but isn't thanks to people jumping straight to a 9/11 or Maldives or similar situation), that leaves the following possible parallels.
SWR111. perhaps something mechanical that caused a problem, they tried to turn around, but was too late. However, no Pan or Mayday call went out, nor did they squawk 7700.
CAL611. Inflight breakup, as previously mentioned.
AFR447. Not likely, as weather was clear.
TWA800. Again, not likely.
What we are missing is that if this was as close to VVTS airspace as it was WMKK airspace, there should have been a drop of target and a handoff between WMKK and VVTS ATC. The LiveATC feed covers aircraft leaving WMKK and heading to the northwest, so we won't know if this happened until the tapes are pulled in Kuala Lumpur.
Before jumping to anything related to the B772, there weren't any ADs that came out recently requiring maintenance for this aircraft. 9M-MRO did have that maintenance done due to a collision on the ground, but that was roughly it. This bird was 12 years old.
So right now, nothing is known, so before jumping to anything, we wait to see what has happened.
BL.
It is being reported that the oil slicks spotted are not related to the missing plane.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/10/missing-malaysia-flight/6247113/
When a plane drops out of the sky like this one did is it rare not to find any debris anywhere? They know just about where it lost contact. Would there be a least a small sign of it by now. With all the ships out there I am surprised they have not found even a trace.
I am sure the conspiracy nuts are going wild over this.
Or it was a hijacking and they are really good at hiding a 777....
It will hopefully turn up soon.
Once the plane lost contact how far could it have flown before crashing. Is it possible they traveled another 100 miles off course.I am sure the conspiracy nuts are going wild over this.
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Or it was a hijacking and they are really good at hiding a 777....
It will hopefully turn up soon.
Could the whole plane have nose dived into the ocean without breaking up or is that not possible.
I am sure the conspiracy nuts are going wild over this.
Image
Or it was a hijacking and they are really good at hiding a 777....
It will hopefully turn up soon.
You know.. if this weren't such a serious matter, I would say that we could be dealing with a real life version of Oceanic 815 from Lost. Though, I don't believe they would have made it back to land without something being seen (read: smoke, wreckage).
But there you have it; to be honest, I'm hoping something like this did happen, that way there would be survivors.
BL.
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Yes, they could. They had 7.5 hours of fuel onboard. It is a 6 hour flight from WMKK-ZBAA.
IIRC, it went missing roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours into the flight, so that would leave you roughly.. call it a radius of distance the B772 could fly in 5 hours to search.
Possible, depending on how it was configured. Keep in mind AWE1549. It totally survived after hitting the Hudson. So that would all depend on how the aircraft is configured prior to impact.
BL.
It depends what happened.
As for nose diving without breaking up it depends if it exceeded Vne, but that doesn't mean it will break up either. Exceeding Vne means you're a test pilot and the chances of structural damage is high( there are also fudge factors in V speeds. Exceeding them doesn't mean catastrophic failure will occur).
Even if it nose dived into the ocean intact, it would have most certainly broke apart upon impact and there would be debris. There isn't a whole 777 resting on the ocean floor.
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AWE? You mean USAir 1549? The difference is 1549 was a controlled glide into the water. Nut was talking about a nose dive and there is no way the plane didn't break apart upon impact if it did nose dive.
<Conspiracy theory> If the plane transponder was turned off, could a plane go completely undetected from ground radar? Could this plane had landed somewhere safely and be undetected. Or is that just out of reasonable possibility that it could fly under the radar for that long.
It would still show up on radar if it was still in range. Just ATC wouldn't know who or what it is. It would just be a blip on the radar. A transponder basically identifies who they are, type of plane, and altitude.
Yep. US Airways ICAO designator is AWE.
And you're right; it was a controlled glide into the water. They had to configure the plane (read: flaps, slats) to control the glide and impact into the water. If MAS370 did that, the entire frame could survive intact. Otherwise, no, they wouldn't; they would be looking at something like ETH961:
The BBC's news bump just stated now that they are expanding the search to the other side of the Malaysian peninsula, so they are definitely looking in that radius of distance I mentioned, if not spreading out the search.
BL.
Thank you for your contributions quagmire. The community is most fortunate to have your insight from your professional training, skills, and experience.
I remember for the Air France accident that the aircraft sent pages of failure info and it all ended up on the front page of the NYT (I think that was the paper).
For this accident, if I was to guess on what little that I know, whatever happened was probably catastrophic. As far as floating debris I've heard mentioned in the news, there should be some, if a slick, it would more likely be a fuel slick instead of an oil slick (that would disperse), not enough oil to make much of a slick, and as far as things like floating cushions and stuff, the ocean is a huge place and depending on the sea state, stuff like that can be difficult to spot.
Decades ago I flew SAR for a missing plane in the ocean off of Guam. We knew where it was coming from, where it fell off radar, searched for 10 days and not a single bit of debris was spotted, although this airplane was not an airliner, but an EA-3 Skywarrior with 10 people on board. Another time we were looking for a 100' pleasure boat, and spotted it (engine trouble), but the sea was so rough, you could barely keep it in sight from 200' altitude. Now imagine trying to spot a cushion, some insulation, or a person with a vest in the water. Every difficult
So basically at this point, we're no closer to finding out how/why the plane went missing than when we first heard the plane went missing?