MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 18

jetblueguy22 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:43 am

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 44):
Why would Boeing and not the airline get it?

If they have a Boeing maintenance package Boeing would get it. In this case it seems they have a Rolls Royce package, so they get the data.

Quoting imagoagnitio (Reply 33):
Kabul is 4833 so that's out

I highly doubt they could get it past the US military radar.

Quoting imagoagnitio (Reply 33):
Pyongyang 4657 so that's out

Again they would have to go past South Korea. Passing through both US Air Force Radar along with South Korean military and civilian radar. Not to mention if the Chinese found out they were hiding it they could squash Kim Jong Il like a bug.

Quoting imagoagnitio (Reply 33):
Tehran, Iran is 6291 so that's out

Too many people would see it. Iran might be crazy at times. But they aren't stupid.
Pat

spacecadet · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:44 am

Quoting Starlionblue (Reply 48):
That apparently depends on what the operator subscribes to.

Is it possible that the engine manufacturer gets *all* the data, and only gives the *airline* what it subscribes to? Meaning RR would have everything, but in a normal flight just not give it to MAS because they didn't pay for it? I'm just wondering how this subscription thing actually works when it comes to ACARS data.

Finn350 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:44 am

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 44):
We don't know that it's accurate. But it is highly detailed, gives specifics on actual briefings going on, and quotes anonymous sources within the US government. And it's the WSJ, not some podunk local paper in Iowa. The WSJ has a large array of government sources, and the government often uses the WSJ to leak info they want out in public without officially announcing it. If this info is inaccurate, you can expect a denial from the government tomorrow, because this is a big deal in a big paper. My bet is that there will be no denial. At most, you'll get a "we have nothing we can report at this time"... followed by more leaks to the press.

I think the reporter has connections to Boeing, so that would be a logical place where he got the information. Boeing is probably involved as they have to put up scenarios in which the ACARS information about the engine performance are being sent. As I understand it, Rolls Royce as the engine manufacurer is the receiver of the ACARS information in this case, so they must have been the first who realized and passed the information to the intelligence officials.

flood · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:46 am

Quoting aftgaffe (Reply 5):
1) Hijacking (including by the crew)
2) Hypoxia plus other weirdness explaining the transponder and turn

Quoting BoeingVista (Reply 8):

Loss of control is still a possibility.

Technically, so is pilot suicide. If his intention was to make the aircraft hard to find, he may have done a rather good job.

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 29):
Has it been confirmed that the person was on MH370? Have authorities moved into that area to search for debris?

The report of the body in a life jacket came out earlier yesterday. As nothing has been reported since, it stands to reason it's unrelated.

asetiadi · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:47 am

I think we have to involve every country to search this plane. Get as much help as possible. We must rely a lot with US sine they have all high tech equipement for this search. Lets involve the aircraft carrier too. We have to find this plane because we must know whats going on. This could be one hell of mystery in history of plane crash.

Now another thing is Boeing and Airbus should make future aircraft with locator signal device that pin point the location of the plane regardless of the situation.

jetblueguy22 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:47 am

For all of those wondering about the RR engine care the BBC did a documentary on Rolls Royce. Here is a link. It is set to start at when they discuss the engine care program. It goes into a little detail about it. If you have free time watch the whole thing, I thought it was excellent. http://youtu.be/VfomloUg2Gw?t=42m44s
Pat

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:48 am

Quoting jetblueguy22 (Reply 50):
If they have a Boeing maintenance package Boeing would get it. In this case it seems they have a Rolls Royce package, so they get the data.

Thank you. I did not realize it was part of a maintenance package.

Quoting Starlionblue (Reply 48):
At night it would be very hard to identify the plane. The vast majority can't even identify the type during the daytime..

Good point...I keep forgetting it was night time.

giopan1975 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:49 am

The chain of events began some minutes after leveling off.
The chain of events began in the gap between two national ATCs.
Crews in this region usually keep seat belt sign on until leveling at cruise because there is usually a lot of unstable air and at lower altitudes.
Possible hijackers would wait until reaching cruise altitude and leveling of the plane and seat belt sign off to get on with their plans as they wouldn’t want to create noise coming from the crew earlier of the type “please sir sit down now”.

Do you need hijackers to be terrorists? Why not someone just want to steal a 250 mil USD asset?

Starlionblue · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:50 am

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 51):

Quoting Starlionblue (Reply 48):
That apparently depends on what the operator subscribes to.

Is it possible that the engine manufacturer gets *all* the data, and only gives the *airline* what it subscribes to? Meaning RR would have everything, but in a normal flight just not give it to MAS because they didn't pay for it? I'm just wondering how this subscription thing actually works when it comes to ACARS data.

I get the feeling that RR analyzes the data and then reports useful parameters and trends to MH. I don't know if MH would need the raw data. Note that this is of course just conjecture on my part.

Come to think of it, I don't even know what deal MH has with RR. They might be leasing the engines, or paying with a "power-by-the-hour" deal. It is quite possible MH doesn't own the engines, nor do any maintenance on them, in which case they might get no data or very little.

[Edited 2014-03-12 23:51:31]

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:51 am

Quoting flood (Reply 53):
The report of the body in a life jacket came out earlier yesterday. As nothing has been reported since, it stands to reason it's unrelated.

Thank you.

About the WSJ story, is it implying the radar or transmitter was turned off during flight? I would think it would be difficult not to leak something about the plane being OK if it really is OK.

hamiltondaniel · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:53 am

Quoting jcxroberts (Reply 47):

Quoting CaliAtenza (Reply 6):
I did come across this twitter account: https://twitter.com/flyingwithfish

Either this guy is a Loon, or he knows something much more than we are all being told.

Or both.

He has made several tweets about the purpose of whatever happened to the flight being "asset acquisition" of 20 employees of Freescale Semiconductor who were on the plane, i.e., hijack the plane, fly it somewhere, use those 20 to do...something...and then...hmm...

He's either suggesting: some nefarious fellows think Freescale doesn't make microchips but in fact makes superweapons so valuable that one should hijack an entire aircraft to force them into slave labor in a cave in the Tribal Regions...

Or, that Al Qaeda wants to expand into making transistor radios.

This is really making me doubt his credibility about the "landing" portion of the ACARS messages to RR.

Starlionblue · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:56 am

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 60):
Quoting jcxroberts (Reply 47):

Quoting CaliAtenza (Reply 6):
I did come across this twitter account: https://twitter.com/flyingwithfish

Either this guy is a Loon, or he knows something much more than we are all being told.

Or both.

He has made several tweets about the purpose of whatever happened to the flight being "asset acquisition" of 20 employees of Freescale Semiconductor who were on the plane, i.e., hijack the plane, fly it somewhere, use those 20 to do...something...and then...hmm...

He's either suggesting: some nefarious fellows think Freescale doesn't make microchips but in fact makes superweapons so valuable that one should hijack an entire aircraft to force them into slave labor in a cave in the Tribal Regions...

Or, that Al Qaeda wants to expand into making transistor radios.

This is really making me doubt his credibility about the "landing" portion of the ACARS messages to RR.

I agree with all that. However I am inclined to think the Wall Street Journal has above par fact checking.

aftgaffe · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:56 am

Wait a minute, unless ACARS was turned off or failed after the 4+ hours it was on and working, RR / Boeing / US Gov't ought to know whether the plane landed based on the last ACARS upload right? The upload was either after engine power down or it wasn't? And if it wasn't, it was because of a crash / failure / human intervention after the 4 hour mark.

??

[Edited 2014-03-12 23:57:55]

flyzapper · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:57 am

I have a theory: What if Ethiopian 702 that was diverted to Geneva by the pilot a few weeks ago was a practice run? Some organization wanted to know how easy it would be for the pilot to divert the plane to a chosen location. The Ethiopian 702 scenario had an obvious asylum request, but it could have been a covert fact-finding mission the pilot carried out. This same organization then carried out the actual "kidnapping" of a plane with MH370. There are many lawless and remote areas of Indonesia and the Philippines, all within range of the plane.
Thoughts?

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:02:45]

hamiltondaniel · Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:59 am

Quoting Starlionblue (Reply 61):
I agree with all that. However I am inclined to think the Wall Street Journal has above par fact checking.

I agree. I doubt WSJ, who broke the story, would jeopardize their reputation on something like this by posting if they didn't have a very good source. So it seems likely that the aircraft did in fact remain in flight for 4-5 hours after loss of contact.

What seems unlikely is that this flyingwithfish guy somehow knows that the aircraft actually landed.

LTC8K6 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:00 am

So, if stolen, why steal a 777?

Valuable cargo?

Use as a weapon?

Hold for ransom?

jcxroberts · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:01 am

I don't see hijackers controlling a plane post 9/11. It didn't work for the last plane on 9/11 either. Unless they had sub machine guns. Looks more like hypoxia or the pilots in on a scheme.

Prost · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:02 am

Quoting flyzapper (Reply 63):
I have a theory: What if Ethiopian 702 that was diverted to Geneva by the pilot a few weeks ago was a practice run. Some organization wanted to know how easy it would be for the pilot to divert the plane to a chosen location. The Ethiopian 702 scenario had an obvious asylum request, but it could have been a covert fact-finding mission the pilot carried out. This same organization then carried out the actual "kidnapping" of a plane with MH370. There are many lawless and remote areas of Indonesia and the Philippines, all within range of the plane.
Thoughts?

No crazier than some of the other theories I've read.

CaliAtenza · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:02 am

Quoting jcxroberts (Reply 66):
I don't see hijackers controlling a plane post 9/11. It didn't work for the last plane on 9/11 either. Unless they had sub machine guns. Looks more like hypoxia or the pilots in on a scheme.

so lets say the pilots were in on a scheme; that could be anything at this point...

jetblueguy22 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:03 am

Quoting flyzapper (Reply 63):
The Ethiopian 702 scenario had an obvious asylum request, but it could have been a covert fact-finding mission the pilot carried out. This same organization then carried out the actual "kidnapping" of a plane with MH370. There are many lawless and remote areas of Indonesia and the Philippines, all within range of the plane.
Thoughts?

Although a fair thought, I would have to imagine they could break the pilot pretty quick. I doubt they just arrested him and let him go on his way. They probably questioned the heck out of him.

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 64):
I doubt WSJ, who broke the story, would jeopardize their reputation on something like this by posting if they didn't have a very good source. So it seems likely that the aircraft did in fact remain in flight for 4-5 hours after loss of contact.

Exactly. They have a reputation they would like to maintain. People don't forget the big fails.

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 64):
What seems unlikely is that this flyingwithfish guy somehow knows that the aircraft actually landed.

That's the part I'm iffy on. I have this feeling it did land. But if they know it landed somewhere why are they focusing so hard on the ocean? Is it a diversion and they have special ops guys ready to take the plane in some jungle? Or is this guy trying to get some more twitter followers?
Pat

hamiltondaniel · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:05 am

It occurs to me that most of the earlier mechanical failure theories relied on total electrical system failure to simultaneously knock out comms and transponders.

Don't these ACARS messages preclude a total electrical failure, though? They obviously need power.

What subsystem transmits the messages? Is it isolated from the rest of the communications systems (i.e. its own bus connection, entirely its own processing, its own antennas, everything?) If we know the ACARS works, what else do we know works?

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:05 am

Quoting jcxroberts (Reply 66):
Looks more like hypoxia or the pilots in on a scheme.

The former would indicate a crash, then, right?

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 64):
What seems unlikely is that this flyingwithfish guy somehow knows that the aircraft actually landed.

I agree.

AR385 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:05 am

Quoting giopan1975 (Reply 57):
Do you need hijackers to be terrorists? Why not someone just want to steal a 250 mil USD asset?

What are you going to do with it? Sell it in Sotheby´s or Christie´s? People who are in it for the money are not going to steal an airliner with 239 people on board.

hamiltondaniel · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:07 am

Quoting jetblueguy22 (Reply 69):
Is it a diversion and they have special ops guys ready to take the plane in some jungle?

The standoff theory just seems less and less likely. It's been a LONG time for something like that to be going on and nobody to have leaked something about it.

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:07 am

Quoting AR385 (Reply 72):
What are you going to do with it? Sell it in Sotheby´s or Christie´s? People who are in it for the money are not going to steal an airliner with 239 people on board.

Why not? They could sell parts and sell the people too.

I am not saying that is what I think happened, but simply going along with the thought process for that theory.

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:08:33]

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:08:54]

JimJupiter · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:09 am

Quoting flyzapper (Reply 63):
Thoughts?

I think it's Bravo Sierra, but totally in line with this thread.

Finn350 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:09 am

Quoting jetblueguy22 (Reply 69):
That's the part I'm iffy on. I have this feeling it did land. But if they know it landed somewhere why are they focusing so hard on the ocean? Is it a diversion and they have special ops guys ready to take the plane in some jungle? Or is this guy trying to get some more twitter followers?

It is quite remarkable that a pilot suicide is the least controversial theory now.

Hijacking the plane and landing it somewhere would be quite a feat from the terrorists. And it would almost certainly require that one of the pilots would be part of the plot. And how could they hide a landing of a 777 in any part of the world?

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:09 am

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 73):
It's been a LONG time for something like that to be going on and nobody to have leaked something about it.

That is one of my main thoughts and why I do not think it landed safely.

Prost · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:10 am

Quoting AR385 (Reply 72):

What are you going to do with it? Sell it in Sotheby´s or Christie´s? People who are in it for the money are not going to steal an airliner with 239 people on board.

It'd have to be ebay. Buy it now price.

hamiltondaniel · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:10 am

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 74):
Why not? They could sell parts and sell the people too.

Who are they going to sell parts to? There's no burgeoning black market trade for modern airliner parts. A chop shop for a 777 would have few customers.

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:10 am

Quoting Finn350 (Reply 75):
And how could they hide a landing of a 777 in any part of the world?

That is my other issue with the safe landing theory. Even though it would have been might at the time of landing, it would stick out during the day time.

Also, if it did land safely, why would the passengers not try to reach out to their families?

CaliAtenza · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:11 am

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Natio...tion-to-verify-possible-sightings/

what does that mean? This thing keeps getting murkier and murkier by the minute. Hell the future Hollywood movie is writing itself!!

flood · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:11 am

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 74):
Why not? They could sell parts and sell the people too.

I am not saying that is what I think happened

This whole mystery will unravel when two Trent 800s show up on Ebay next week.

777Jet · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:12 am

Is it the captain who determines the final fuel load and can request more fuel based on weather / head winds etc? If so, it would be interesting to know how much extra fuel, if any, was requested and by whom? If the captain requested a few hours more fuel than normal then that might lead somewhere...

Also, and I apologize if I missed this in the thousands of other posts, but is the exact fuel load known yet? Surely that would be so easy to find out as it would have been documented - the exact fuel load. By knowing the exact fuel load, one could work out how far it could have traveled from its last known location at various altitudes - I know a lot of maps have been published but most of them were just assuming the plane had 5 hours of fuel left. If it flew low to avoid radar it might have been spotted and it would have not been able to fly as far as if it flew at a high altitude. How high could a 777 with less than 1/2 a tank of fuel fly, 40,000ft +? KUL-PEK is a relatively short mission for a 777. If somebody was going to take one and fly it a long distance you would think that they would take one on a longer route that would have more fuel? Once we get that final fuel figure we can at least work out how far it could have flown without stopping to refuel.

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:13 am

Quoting flood (Reply 82):
This whole mystery will unravel when two Trent 800s show up on Ebay next week.

They were RRs, but I know what you mean. Just imagine that for a moment...because imagining a little more at this point can't hurt.

Starlionblue · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:13 am

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 70):
It occurs to me that most of the earlier mechanical failure theories relied on total electrical system failure to simultaneously knock out comms and transponders.

Don't these ACARS messages preclude a total electrical failure, though? They obviously need power.

What subsystem transmits the messages? Is it isolated from the rest of the communications systems (i.e. its own bus connection, entirely its own processing, its own antennas, everything?) If we know the ACARS works, what else do we know works?

Just spitballing here but it is possible. Transponder and radios have switches in the cockpit. Not sure where the circuit breakers are. However ACARS and circuit breaker are, as per previous poster, in an electronics bay. Accessible in flight, yes, but not just by reaching out from a seat in the cockpit.

Absurd scenario 1: Hijack. Bad guys turn off transponder and don't make radio calls. They don't touch ACARS because they don't know about it.

Absurd scenario 2: Massive electrical issue in the center console knocks out comms and radios that are all there. ACARS stays on. This would also have had to knock out the FMCs I suppose since you can text message through ACARS and datalink from those.

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:18:00]

KIAS · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:14 am

Quoting washingtonflyer (Reply 21):
That map is way too conservative. It shows the range as not even making it to its intended destination - PEK.

The range is not based on fuel but on estimated flight time.

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 30):
It's not really possible that kind of information is showing up on some aviation consultant's Twitter, is it? Surely something that astounding would be leaked not to him but to a reputable newspaper.

I believe he is speculating, like most folks.

Quoting stackhouse007 (Reply 40):
Wouldn't an ACARS report contain a touchdown rate, speed, etc...?

Not necessarily. ACARS is a means of transmitting data, in this case EHM data sent from a module in the Trent engines.

Quoting jetblueguy22 (Reply 50):
If they have a Boeing maintenance package Boeing would get it. In this case it seems they have a Rolls Royce package, so they get the data.

All of the modern RR engines have the ability to send EHM data.

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 51):
Is it possible that the engine manufacturer gets *all* the data, and only gives the *airline* what it subscribes to? Meaning RR would have everything, but in a normal flight just not give it to MAS because they didn't pay for it?

No. In fact the airline pays $5-6 for each message sent. Malaysia has 60 aircraft in its fleet, those costs add up. They will only send what they want to send.

Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 2):
Presumably, they received a summary? And thus know when the flight ended?

For the reasons as above, I would think MAS would use gatelink for the summaries, which uses a WLAN connection on the ground, rather than transmit via ACARS.

Quoting Starlionblue (Reply 58):
I get the feeling that RR analyzes the data and then reports useful parameters and trends to MH. I don't know if MH would need the raw data. Note that this is of course just conjecture on my part.

The raw data is the intellectual property of the airline, not the OEM.

Quoting hamiltondaniel (Reply 60):
He has made several tweets about the purpose of whatever happened to the flight being "asset acquisition" of 20 employees of Freescale Semiconductor who were on the plane

Seems odd to me that a caper involving 20 engineers didn't result in proper disabling of the a/c broadcasts.

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:16:06]

laxboeingman · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:15 am

Quoting CaliAtenza (Reply 81):
what does that mean? This thing keeps getting murkier and murkier by the minute. Hell the future Hollywood movie is writing itself!!

It does not necessarily mean that he is going to a possible landing site. What it does mean is that he is going to an area where people think they saw the plane. That could mean it was when it was in the air or on the ground. What makes it interesting is that they are keeping the location undisclosed.

Finn350 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:16 am

Quoting CaliAtenza (Reply 81):
what does that mean? This thing keeps getting murkier and murkier by the minute. Hell the future Hollywood movie is writing itself!!

If the story has any accuracy to it, it sounds like a hostage negotiation. It is beyond unbelievable.

Edit: And to be clear, I don't believe this kind of scenario to be possible.

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:23:21]

hamiltondaniel · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:16 am

Quoting KIAS (Reply 86):
I believe he is speculating, like most folks.

He is claiming that he has insider information that the RR ACARS reports include an after-flight summary, implying the plane landed successfully. That goes a bit beyond "speculating."

hiflyer · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:16 am

so lessee....RR says their motors turned for 4hrs after last contact per the WSJ. Hmmm
Aircraft was at 29.5 why 29.5? well it's below most commercial traffic and if you are not going for max range fairly fuel efficient and lowers your exposure to primary radar returns at long range just a bit.
Aircraft reportedly made course changes not on flight plan so pretty much leaves out incapacitated cockpit someone.
One other note...lot been said about minimal to near response to 'unknown targets' on radar not causing alarms...I would allow that perhaps because there is frequently unknown primary targets in the region....at night...
Still no word what, if anything, was onboard as cargo. Also no big public chatter of anyone of importance on the pax list.
As others have stated...too much not being said...

nm2582 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:16 am

Quoting KIAS (Reply 86):
Seems odd to me that a caper involving 20 engineers didn't result in proper disabling of the a/c broadcasts.

An oversight?

History is littered with nefarious activities foiled by a missed detail. Perhaps engine reporting is quite outside a pilots' sphere of awareness, so it was never thought of.

AY-MD11 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:16 am

If the plane was hijacked or the pilot/pilots was the hijacker then the engine data that show it flying for 4-5 hours,maybe they try to fool the investigators.
What if they landed somewhere and left the engines running for hours in ground. Does the engine data show the power/rpm too?

Starlionblue · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:16 am

Quoting flood (Reply 82):
Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 74):
Why not? They could sell parts and sell the people too.

I am not saying that is what I think happened

This whole mystery will unravel when two Trent 800s show up on Ebay next week.

I know the circumstances are grim but I couldn't help but

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 84):
Quoting flood (Reply 82):
This whole mystery will unravel when two Trent 800s show up on Ebay next week.

They were RRs, but I know what you mean. Just imagine that for a moment...because imagining a little more at this point can't hurt.

"Trent" is the model name of this RR engine type. RR engines are typically named for rivers in Britain.

Quoting 777Jet (Reply 83):
Is it the captain who determines the final fuel load and can request more fuel based on weather / head winds etc? If so, it would be interesting to know how much extra fuel, if any, was requested and by whom? If the captain requested a few hours more fuel than normal then that might lead somewhere...

Yes, the captain has the final say and can add "Captain's Discretion" or "Extra" fuel beyond the usual taxi, trip, alternate, contingency and final reserve. If a Captain does this too often for no good reason, he'll soon be having a coffee with the chief pilot, but of course in your scenario the Captain will be long gone by then.

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:17:34]

flyzapper · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:19 am

Quoting JimJupiter (Reply 78):

Quoting flyzapper (Reply 63):
Thoughts?

I think it's Bravo Sierra, but totally in line with this thread.

I also think my theory is one of the craziest things I have heard, but terrorists are known to do practice runs before the actual attack. The 9/11 hijackers did this. The engine status data the WSJ is reporting appears to suggest a controlled flight for quite some time. The biggest question with the engine status data is the state of the engines at the final transmission. If they were reported to shut down normally, then all bets are off.....

Airbus747 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:19 am

Dear Aviation Enthusiasts, I have followed this website for years, enjoyed photography and read multiple discussions on this forum - though never contributed myself.

What drove me to register and pay for membership was this specific long discussion - and a few questions that I think have never been addressed in the various segments of this story (apologies if they did) :

1) What is the likelihood of a sudden meteorological condition affecting flight systems and instruments (including the transponder) on this aircraft?
e.g. lightning strike or volcanic ash (there was an eruption a few weeks ago in Indonesia I reckon).
Could they have caused similar or worse conditions to British Airways Flight 9 or KLM Flight 867, maybe in a sequence e.g. starting by disabling the transponder, then other things (maybe even disabling flight crew)?

2) Is there any chance for a massively powerful crash to virtually vaporize (and thus make fully disappear) any remaining part of the aircraft?

And a less serious question, though for some reason I just couldn't help noticing...

3) This forum seems to be a largely international community and I recall that during many previous incidents (or other major forum topics) there were at least a few contributions to the discussion by locals, people located close to the incident, people with contacts to the airline, etc.
Well, I haven't come across any comments from Malaysia so far... I simply would be interested to hear more about what the local aviation enthusiasts/experts/pilots/etc think - provided that we actually have any members from there!
So, if you are out there, what do you think is going on?

JimJupiter · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:19 am

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 84):
imagining a little more at this point can't hurt

With all due respect.

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 29):
As a journalist

You might want to spend more time carefully reading these threads.

[Edited 2014-03-13 00:20:14]

aftgaffe · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:19 am

Does anyone know what the applicable cutoff in flight time is for adding a third crew member. It seems like MH 370 might be pretty close to the threshold, not that that means anything in and of itself.

jetblueguy22 · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:19 am

Quoting Finn350 (Reply 75):
It is quite remarkable that a pilot suicide is the least controversial theory now.

And sad at the same time.

Quoting Finn350 (Reply 75):
Hijacking the plane and landing it somewhere would be quite a feat from the terrorists. And it would almost certainly require that one of the pilots would be part of the plot. And how could they hide a landing of a 777 in any part of the world?

Who knows. But this is getting more and more bizarre. It's almost as if you can't rule anything out.

Quoting laxboeingman (Reply 80):
Also, if it did land safely, why would the passengers not try to reach out to their families?

If they managed to put it down in a remote area, and somehow out of nowhere got a runway long enough, they may not have cell coverage.
Pat

777Jet · Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:20 am

Quoting AY-MD11 (Reply 91):
If the plane was hijacked or the pilot/pilots was the hijacker then the engine data that show it flying for 4-5 hours,maybe they try to fool the investigators.
What if they landed somewhere and left the engines running for hours in ground. Does the engine data show the power/rpm too?

Or it flew well beyond its destination (to make the data misleading) and then turned around, came back, and landed...

Who is online

Popular Searches On Airliners.net