Malaysian airliner feared lost..
- Thread starter MANT!
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So they're smart enough to form an elaborate plan that requires a lot of expertise, advanced preparation and meticulous coordination, but at the same time they might just be dumb criminals.
"Miracle on the Hudson" notwithstanding, it would be very difficult without glass-calm water, 100% predictable winds, perfect visibility and so on. In the dark you can pretty much forget about it, instruments are not accurate enough to put it down safely without airfield lights and landing aids.
Even if you could get the plane and the boat together at the right place by GPS coordinates, which would be pretty hard for the pilot, the time window for off-loading whatever you're after would be very small without much allowance for bad sea conditions and such. And whatever you want had better be in the passenger compartment, because the cargo doors will be underwater.
It's not yet known what really happened. The investigation and search is still going involving multiple nations and agencies.
The most we know is that it seems navigational and computerized computer aids on the plane seemed to have been intentionally shut-off during flight. The plane seemed to be flying a route programed into the craft's flight computer (a device that is difficult to operate without great training, expertise and hands-on use.) The plane seemed to deviate greatly from its intended course and flight plan. And there's limited RADAR and satellite data on where the plane was last known to be. Combining the ring of the "ping" on this satellite and the estimated fuel the plane had available to it at the time of the ping there's a fairly "narrow" but LONG corridor the plane is likely in.
This corridor stretches from China/parts of the Middle East and India down into the Indian Ocean. The northern part of the corridor is over land and tightly controlled airspace by various nations who are unlikely to not notice an unidentified RADAR blip in their airspace. The southern part of the corridor stretches over some land and some remote islands but mostly open ocean. Considering how difficult even a regular plane can be to land, landing an airline of this size on anything but a very large and well equipped runway is unlikely, ruling out -to investigators- the plane being landed in some remote island or location leading them to believe the plane crashed into the ocean in the southern part of this arc.
There's still some sort of conflicting information and information that is hard to read but, by and large, it seems whatever happened here was "deliberate."
This could either mean persons on the plane commandeered it for some reason or another (ether to crash it or to land it and potentially use it in a future attack) or the plane was suffering from some-kind-of catastrophic systems failure that could not be communicated to the ground either by radio or computer systems and simply crashed.
There's probably good argument or weight to both scenarios, or any other scenario as well as there's some "Buts..." for all scenarios. (Like the point of hijacking the plane in such an elaborate manner to just crash it in the middle of nowhere and the likelihood of such a systems failure that wasn't communicated to the ground by the plane's computers or things like the flight computer being programed over a certain course that match designated in-air routes/skylanes.)
In essence, the last couple of days has revealed quite a bit of information but it's only created a lot of questions and head-scratching.
On the "Water landing" front. As said, this type of situation is usually reserved for certain circumstances. This times a plane is most likely to crash is during takeoff or landing so most emergency procedures plan for that.
Planes aren't exactly buoyant so even if a skilled pilot managed to bring one down on water, intact, (which is pretty impossible in of itself) the plane is still going to sink and sink pretty fast especially once the emergency doors are opened to release the emergency slides (which can be used as rafts for "water landings.") Though looking for buoyant debris, like emergency rafts, seat cushions, life preservers, has been one of the things they've been looking for to get clues on where the plane might be.
Though at this point it's likely any buoyant debris is probably pretty far from the "crash site."
Maybe to take the plane hostage and to dismiss the recent ruling that tossed out Ibrahim's acquittal.
Another opposing pov from Slate just sees this as a cynical powerplay and blamegame by the government of Indonesia.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...pported_anwar_ibrahim_was_he_a_terrorist.html
Another opposing pov from Slate just sees this as a cynical powerplay and blamegame by the government of Indonesia.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...pported_anwar_ibrahim_was_he_a_terrorist.html
Well, as captain of the plane and with vastly more flying experience than the co-pilot he'd be the one who'd have the knowledge to reprogram the flight-computer and probably even the knowledge to disable the ACARS system in the avionics bay. Still seems to me there'd still need to be "some" degree of co-operation on the co-pilot's part and from what I recall the two pilots had never flown together before or, at least, seldom flew together.
Things get more interesting, especially if this "lead" pans out at least on a motive or a degree of "motive" front. Still leaves some question on to where the plane is. If this guy had some agenda he was trying to advocate for in some manner still seems to me that causing a disaster in a "production" is more noteworthy than having the plane seemingly vanish.
(And that's without going into an "over-thinking it" front in the sense of "knowing that a simple crash by a guy with agenda would be shrugged off as a display of that agenda, being more dramatic better makes the point.")
ETA:
I didn't correct this above but am correcting it here "verbally."
I guess the part of ACARS system that continually talks with satellites wasn't shut down, this part needing to be done in the avionics bay. Just another part of the system that could have simply been done in the computer on the instrument panel. This must have been something that changed over the last day or so since I thought I had seen it reported the entire ACARS system was shut-down (again, requiring going into the avionics bay. Which, really, isn't something an airplane pilot would have much experience in.) Doing this, if I understand correctly, would have limited the information the plane tells satellites and other monitoring systems which has part of what has made the search so complicated.
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If you want to commit suicide in a really spectacular way, that brings worldwide attention to you, then you might create a mystery like this that'll take the world months or years to solve.
Or alternatively, maybe you never want the world to find you, to know for sure that you committed suicide because of shame / insurance money / whatever. So you go to the deep waters of the Indian Ocean where it'll take authorities forever to find the wreckage.
Btw, this Wired article is worth a read:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/malaysian-airlines-flight-370-possibly-hijacked/
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes finds out how to change a flight path in a cockpit simulator(also shows how to turn of the transponder):
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26611302
Plus here is an photo of the Avionics bay access hatch of 777-200(door still closed):
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26611302
Plus here is an photo of the Avionics bay access hatch of 777-200(door still closed):
All indications right now seems to be that the avionics bay was not entered in order to disable part of the ACARS system since the part you disable there remained active. (The "handshakes" with satellites) the ACARS component that was disabled could have been done at the computer terminal in the cockpit's instrument cluster/dash.
Yeah, I really don't see a good reason for why it should be possible for a commercial plane to shut off its transponder. Exactly when would such a plane ever need to go silent?
As said above there are times when the transponder simply isn't needed. Turning it off reduces the "density" and "clutter" of radio signals around the aiport. Less nonsense for ground controllers to deal with. Also if it's malfunctioning turning it off may solve problems and make things easier for those on the ground and air.
The ACARS system is different, what was turned off was no big deal in the grand scheme of things. The aspect left on, and can only be deactivated by going in the avionics bay, just offers data unuseful to precisely find the plane and not in real time. Though I think some of that is offered as an optiinal feature on the plane that the airline didn't take.
Keep in mind everything we know is based in what we're being told. There may be systems and ways to find this plane not revealed to the public right now so as tonot tip any one off.
But any system is fallable and can be shut-off in some manner. Whether by switch, pulling a fuse, cutting a wire or simply smashing the device. There may be better ways to have real-time tracking on a system not easily disabled given satellite and radio technology and it probably should be in use. But then it becomes a cost/benefit thing. Jumbo jets cost 10s or 100s of millions of dollars. They're complicated and everything on that plane has to be considered on a weight perspective. So it becomes a question is it worth making big, expensive, changes to maybe make an incident like this that happens once in a great while harder to do?
Millions of people and flights have happened over the last week and a half and we've had this one incident in that time. How long since the last time a plane disappeared? So is it worth, or possible in such a vast industry, making changes because a few hundred people in literally billions were lost?
Many could argue in such a grand scale it's not worth it.
^^ Keep in mind that the transponder operates by "talking back" when it is activated by air traffic control radar. If the aircraft flies in a radar-controlled airspace with its transponder off, it's going to be painted by radar, and the control center will know it's there, they just wouldn't have the altitude and other information provided by the transponder on their screens. Which in itself would be a red flag. Outside of radar coverage, the transponder doesn't do anything.
There is the old description "too cute by half."
Elaborate doesn't always mean successful or even smart. I suppose it all depends on execution.
If I told you in the 1920s that about a man named Schicklgruber (as per Hans Habe anyway) would kill about half the population of an oppressed minority using boxcars, bug poison and shower fixtures--you would say that was mad...and you'd be right. Same if I told you that folks using box cutters could down two skyscrapers.
As per the Wired article: In the midst of manic episodes or afflicted by paranoia, they often can be quite good at planning minor details of their crimes, yet quite deluded about how the endgames will play out.
Lisa Nowak comes to mind.
In terms of decompression, the pilots did say something alone the lines of "good night," so that might be of importance. That will rank right up there with "STENDEC" in terms of getting people talking.
The flight engineer is being looked at
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/17/pilots-become-focus-malaysia-airlines-investigation/
But I thought 777s didn't have flight engineers. There is this move to just have two seats up front, but I do remember a journalist who sat just behind the two pilots for a CNN travel story...
Sadly, this is all nothing new:
January 11, 1987; A Continental Airlines DC-9 was hijacked in flight by Norwood Emanuel, a Muslim hijacker that wanted to crash into the White House on Jan. 11, 1987.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings
The (now discredited?) Chinese sat photo looked a few too many pixels across to be an artifact. It might be good to have this man on the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dino_Brugioni
As here--the third incident in which there were survivors of a passenger jet that had been intentionally ditched into a body of water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961
Now a low velocity ditching means you have larger pieces of the aircraft that can sink in toto, unlike a high speed crash that will leave a wider field of smaller debris, one would imagine.
Flight 961 might be the model to go by.
More http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_370
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?150042-Flight-370
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/80284-malaysian-777-missing.html
This is one reason I really want Space Based Radar http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sbr.htm
The Space Based Radar (SBR) mission was to provide worldwide, on-demand, near continuous, surveillance, and reconnaissance for battlespace characterization... The refresh rate is such that analysts are not looking at history, they are looking at current events.
Without that, there are areas where we are blind.
The development and production of space-based radar is more challenging than other types of radar systems, because of the strict weight, size, and power limitations imposed by the satellite and launch vehicles (Falcon Heavy and SLS have taken care of that)
Now Astrium's Geostationary Observation Space Surveillance System (GO-3S) spacecraft is slated to provide 3-meter resolution over a 100-sq km swath 36,000 km up:
Delivering 3.5 kw of electricity to its payload, GO-3S would provide near-real time imagery comparable to video, a capability that could best unmanned air systems when it comes to delivering high temporal resolution data for environmental monitoring...Unfortunately, says Astrium's Gil Denis, GO-3S weighs 8,840 kg (4,900 kg dry mass) and stands 10.3 meters high in its launch configuration with a 4.1-meter diameter telescope.
Now imagine something like ATLAST pointed earthward.
That is real wall to wall coverage that would have solved this mystery in double quick time.
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Right, turning it off simply means controllers on the ground won't have data on the plane but will still know "something" is there. Just not what.
China has started a ground search at its territory for the missing aircraft and has also deployed 21 satellites to help with the operation. Seems also that the Australians are narrowing the search area at their end:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26609569
I still find it unlikely that the plane flew to Chinese territory without being detected at all. And if it landed..well, someone would have seen it for sure. But I guess before they find the plane the changes are 50-50 between the two corridors mentioned.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26609569
I still find it unlikely that the plane flew to Chinese territory without being detected at all. And if it landed..well, someone would have seen it for sure. But I guess before they find the plane the changes are 50-50 between the two corridors mentioned.
China is a big country likely with large, unpopulated or sparsely populated areas not likely to see a jetliner landing in the middle of the night/at dawn.
Yeah, but is it plausible a jet like that could just land in the desert or something?
It's "plausible" it wouldn't be a good landing and it'd likely damage the tires and landing gear of the plane and then other than the emergency slides there'd be no way to get OFF the plane but it "can happen" but under ideal conditions like a calm day and good lighting.