Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crash

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In summary: No idea about air explosions. But I do remember explosion on Kursk was registered by some seismographic stations near you (well, in Scandinavia, could be Sweden or Finland).No idea about air explosions. But I do remember explosion on Kursk was registered by some seismographic stations near you (well, in Scandinavia, could be Sweden or Finland).It seems that there may have been a secondary explosion on the plane. The second explosion was equivalent to 2-3 tons of TNT, and was detected as far away as Alaska. It's possible that reports from Scandinavia were just the first that hit the news here.
  • #36
pprune dot org is a pilot's forum. While they too are puzzled and speculating, it's interesting to watch the exchange of ideas between folks knowledgeable in aviation.



What if MH370 wanted to perform an emergency landing for whatever reason. Close to IGARI point the crew entered a possible airport to land in their FMS which could be VVCT CAN THO with VOR "TRN", because this one has a 3000m runway which is close to the intended route ahead. But, there is another "TRN" VOR closer by, guess where: TRANG VOR close to the Andaman sea. The crew under severe stress executes the top TRN (closest by) in the FMS and the plane turns immediately to that point. Could this explain the hard left turn after IGARI point towards the Andaman sea?

[ aero chart at http://postimg.org/image/4d8stni21/ ]

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-103.html#post8368195

EDIT a
late entry :

That email that showed up late last night from the oil rig worker at 8 deg 22 minutes North,
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/03/malaysia-flight-370-seen-in-flames-by-new-zealand-oil-rig-worker-2916646.html
puts the "burning plane" due West of him
which is just about the same latitude as the left turn in the chart that pilot posted.

730_596392217112010_290119666_n.jpg
 
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  • #38
SteamKing said:
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that engine data sent to the mfg. (Rolls-Royce) indicate that MH-370 was flying for several hours after it disappeared from radar:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579434653903086282?mg=reno64-wsj

This report, if accurate, just increased the area of the search tremendously.

If it's accurate, we've got a "Red October" scenario.

My instincts say WSJ has a blooper here, rare as that may be.

The pilot is quite an aviation buff though, had a quite elaborate flight simulator in his living room.. Maybe he took the plane to his own 'Fantasy Island' someplace ?:biggrin:
 
  • #39
jim hardy said:
If it's accurate, we've got a "Red October" scenario.

My instincts say WSJ has a blooper here, rare as that may be.

The pilot is quite an aviation buff though, had a quite elaborate flight simulator in his living room.. Maybe he took the plane to his own 'Fantasy Island' someplace ?:biggrin:

After 6 days of searching it's ok to forward almost any plausible theory of what happened. We might have a 'ghost' plane where the pilots were incapacitated because of depressurization and loss of oxygen shortly after turning the plane around and setting the auto-pilot after a bomb or other catastrophic event that caused a communications blackout. The plane could have flown for thousands of miles at a high altitude and crashed anywhere in the vast Indian Ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash
 
  • #40
I wouldn't bother speculating. Experts in the field in interviews have said they don't have enough information to do anything other speculating. Some basic information from the wreckage is needed.
 
  • #41
Well, unless somebody saw a Sharktopus or an Imperial Destroyer along the flight path, it's more than passing strange that no sign of any debris from the plane has been confirmed.

The USN is moving one vessel into the Indian Ocean to search for the plane. Officials said they have an 'indication' that the plane may be found there:

http://gma.yahoo.com/us-officials-indication-malaysia-airline-crashed-indian-ocean-170011087--abc-news-topstories.html?vp=1
 
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  • #42
SteamKing said:
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that engine data sent to the mfg. (Rolls-Royce) indicate that MH-370 was flying for several hours after it disappeared from radar:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579434653903086282?mg=reno64-wsj

This report, if accurate, just increased the area of the search tremendously.

See the "corrections and amplifications" at the end of the link:

U.S. investigators suspect Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flew for hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, based on an analysis of signals sent through the plane's satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of on-board systems, according to people familiar with the matter. 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.

In any case, "data sent from systems embedded in the engines" doesn't necessarily mean the data was sent to the engine manufacturer, who doesn't have any particular interest in real-time access to it, and the correction doesn't imply that either. The aircraft operators DO have real time interest in it, since it might be sending data about items to be checked by maintenance engineers at the destination airport. So it seems rather far-fetched to me that such data transmissions would have existed but nobody knew about them.
 
  • #43
nsaspook said:
We might have a 'ghost' plane where the pilots were incapacitated because of depressurization and loss of oxygen shortly after turning the plane around and setting the auto-pilot after a bomb or other catastrophic event that caused a communications blackout. The plane could have flown for thousands of miles at a high altitude and crashed anywhere in the vast Indian Ocean.

Reminds me of an incident years ago when a military fast jet pilot thought he had a major problem, and ejected into the sea off the west coast of England. (The pilot was rescued safely). Actually there were no problems with the plane, except for a fault in the warning system.

Having "forgotten" to put the plane into a dive before ejecting, it soon became clear it was likely to crash through lack of fuel somewhere over North Africa. Luckily, that was prevented by the Spanish Air Force, who succeeded in shooting it down into the Bay of Biscay - but only after three separate sorties had used it for target practice, and missed.
 
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  • #44
The WSJ story seems to be unraveling. Malaysian airlines does not subscribe to the real time data collection service where the data was alleged to have been sent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26572172
The Boeing 777-200 was not transmitting data to the satellite, but was instead sending out a signal to establish contact, said the official, who was not named.

If true, it could suggest the aircraft was still flying.

Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive a stream of data during flight on how the aircraft is functioning. Malaysia Airlines did not subscribe to that service, but the plane was still automatically sending pings to the satellite, the official said.
 
  • #45
I've heard rumors on PPRUNE for a few days about the possibility of a long flight out of radar contact into the IO. I've traveled by air and ship in that area, once you get a few hundred miles west of the the Strait channel headed southwest of Indonesia there is nothing to track you on the ground until Diego Garcia. Most of the primary radars and sensors are looking for incoming tracks so is unlikely someone would alert on the plane headed out to sea even if they saw it but it would be recorded in the database to be looked at later.
 
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  • #46
AlephZero said:
In any case, "data sent from systems embedded in the engines" doesn't necessarily mean the data was sent to the engine manufacturer, who doesn't have any particular interest in real-time access to it, and the correction doesn't imply that either. The aircraft operators DO have real time interest in it, since it might be sending data about items to be checked by maintenance engineers at the destination airport. So it seems rather far-fetched to me that such data transmissions would have existed but nobody knew about them.

I'm not saying this is true but it's possible that RF transmissions/pings (VHF/UHF/SHF) from engine/plane monitoring systems were detected by ELINT birds designed to track ships in that area. We and Russia have several systems that can detect, locate and target ships at sea using RF emissions.

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/surveill/noss_andronov.htm
 
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  • #47
AlephZero said:
The WSJ story seems to be unraveling. Malaysian airlines does not subscribe to the real time data collection service where the data was alleged to have been sent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26572172

If they don't subscribe to the service, that actually strengthens the WSJ's story. The Malaysians argued that the plane was suddenly "gone" after it stopped its transponder signal. But that may be because they were not getting the ACARS signal. Perhaps the civilian politicians giving the public updates simply didn't know it even existed (I didn't before this incident).

The US Navy is reported to be shifting the search much further west, which further strengthens WSJ's story -

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Some reporting about the ACARS signal (bolding mine):

Sources familiar with the investigation reiterated that neither Boeing nor Rolls-Royce had received any engine maintenance data from the jet after the point at which its pilots last made contact. Only one engine maintenance update was received during the normal phase of flight, they said, speaking on condition on anonymity.

That said, the latest evidence of an electronic whisper from the plane, extending an electronic handshake to satellites but containing no data, suggests the aircraft was at least capable of communicating, though nothing else is known about its situation or whereabouts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/mh370-engine-data_n_4958050.html
 
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  • #48
... suggests the aircraft was at least capable of communicating...
I'm not familiar with the complete system, but AFAIK the engine-related parts of it are effectively powered independent of the plane's electrical system (the electrical parts of the engine control system are powered independently of the rest of the aircraft for the obvious safety reasons).

So it might not imply any more than that a box of electronics was floating in the sea for a while. As your report says, since they weren't actually using the system, there is no data content, just a "ping". But why anybody would configure a system that wasn't being used to transmit any data, to waste bandwidth by repeatedly pinging satellites, is another question.

But the HuffPost report has so many vaguely self-contradictory statements, it's hard to take any of it too seriously. Statements like "the engines could have run for 4 hours" are easy to make based on the on-board fuel load. That then changes to "the engines did run for 4 hours"...

Maybe the USN wants to be seen to be involved, while keeping well clear of any hotheads in the Chinese navy who might try taking pot shots at them?
 
  • #50
A clarification


http://news.yahoo.com/rolls-royce-concurs-malaysia-missing-jets-engine-data-100810333--sector.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Rolls-Royce said on Friday it concurred with denials from the Malaysian government that reports a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet may have flown on for hours after it vanished from radar screens were not true.

The Wall Street Journal said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials believed the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing 777's engines as part of a standard monitoring program. (http://r.reuters.com/ruw57v )

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Thursday that the reports were not true.

"Rolls-Royce concurs with the statement made on Thursday, 13 March by Malaysia's Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein regarding engine health monitoring data received from the aircraft," a spokeswoman for the company said.

"Rolls-Royce continues to provide its full support to the authorities and Malaysia Airlines."

So if the engines weren't sending engine data,,,
could be their handshake includes location,
or the pings were triangulated by those spooky satellites.

The latter would explain the delay - presumably they had to go back through days old data.
Also explains sketchy information - nobody wants to reveal details of their capability.
 
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  • #51
And the plot http://gma.yahoo.com/malaysia-airliner-kept-pinging-indication-crashed-indian-ocean-194746310--abc-news-topstories.html?vp=1.

I read an article several days ago in which the author interviewed investigators who look into these sorts of events and the possibility of pilot suicide struck me as very odd. I mean, if you hate your life and such, why would you kill so many people along with yourself? Just do it in peace and alone (CO poisoning via car exhaust for example).

If it is true that two independent communication systems were shut off at different times, I would strongly entertain some type of hijacking or something. What would be the point of turning off communications systems if the pilot(s) simply wanted to off themselves? I would imagine just doing a nose dive into the ocean would be sufficient, but I'm not expert in these things.
 
  • #52
Yanick said:
And the plot http://gma.yahoo.com/malaysia-airliner-kept-pinging-indication-crashed-indian-ocean-194746310--abc-news-topstories.html?vp=1.

I read an article several days ago in which the author interviewed investigators who look into these sorts of events and the possibility of pilot suicide struck me as very odd. I mean, if you hate your life and such, why would you kill so many people along with yourself? Just do it in peace and alone (CO poisoning via car exhaust for example).
Ever heard of school and workplace massacres? It is a very common pattern that the perpetrator kills himself afterwards.

To go out in a blaze of glory might lessen the barrier to perform the act of suicide.
 
  • #53
  • #54
Yes, I understand that these things happen. I just find it a bit strange, is all.

I'm not sure you can parallel a pilot suicide event with something like a school/workplace massacre. The former involves literally just killing complete strangers, maybe a couple of flight attendants who the pilot would be familiar with. Things like school or workplace shootings occur in environments where there is some type of familiarity with the people, the location etc. I don't mean to over generalize and over simplify here, by the way, but it is fairly common that the perpetrator of a massacre of some sort has either been, or perceived to have been, slighted, offended etc. Obviously there are many exceptions and each case is pretty much individual, but from what I know of the latest school shootings and such in the US, there is usually some type of connection between the perpetrator and the location/people, even if there is no hard evidence about the motive.

So it is not that I don't believe that these things happen, I just can't imagine how screwed up a person's mind must become to literally just sentence complete strangers to death. People who could not possibly have had any affect on one's life. It is no different to random acts of terrorism, except that terrorist do it for some ideological reasons. "Extended suicide" just sounds like a wishy-washy euphemism. It should just be called cold blooded murder.
 
  • #55
"I just can't imagine how screwed up a person's mind must become to literally just sentence complete strangers to death. People who could not possibly have had any affect on one's life"
---
Well, I can easily imagine that. Because I don't buy into a progressivist dogma that humans are "essentially" good, so that bad actions "must" be explained that the perpetrator felt slighted in some way by the victims.

The idea that humans are "essentially" good is so ingrained in society that you need not consciously adopt any such dogma, yet still be influenced by the false logic of it.

Once you fully and consciously discard that dogma, you suddenly see how pervasive, in big and small ways, that dogma really is.
 
  • #56
jim hardy said:
A clarification

http://news.yahoo.com/rolls-royce-concurs-malaysia-missing-jets-engine-data-100810333--sector.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Rolls-Royce said on Friday it concurred with denials from the Malaysian government that reports a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet may have flown on for hours after it vanished from radar screens were not true.

The first sentence of the Reuters report has been further clarified to remove the words "were not true." from the end of the opening sentence of the article. Trying to parse the original sentence could make your head explode.
 
  • #57
The source of plane position data from the 'ping' is interesting if true. If it were from a normal, open and official source you would think that it would have used from the beginning to direct the search. This leads me to believe it's being derived from a secondary source as we are moving the search into areas that the operators of the plane and local officials say they have no information on. It's possible to have a direct intercept but if the pings were to a Inmarsat/Iridium system like Aero L that's on the network but not actively sending data it's possible a 'system internal or external of the Sat operator' with access to raw link data ("transport layer") could also be the source of position information.
http://www.canadasatellite.ca/Inmarsat-Aero-L-H-H-I-s/2142.htm

From WSJ:
Malaysia Airlines said it hadn't received any such data. According to Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, the airline didn't purchase a package through Boeing to monitor its airplanes' data through the satellite system."

The US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the situation by name, said the Boeing 777-200 wasn’t transmitting data to the satellite, but was instead sending out a signal to establish contact.Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive a stream of data during flight on how the aircraft is functioning and relay the information to the plane’s home base. The idea is to provide information before the plane lands on whether maintenance work or repairs are needed.

Malaysia Airlines didn’t subscribe to that service, but the plane still had the capability to connect with the satellite and was automatically sending pings, the official said.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/satellite-bleep-deepens-unprecedented-malaysia-airlines-mystery/story-e6frg6so-1226854490107
 
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  • #58
Now the rumors are it was tracked passing waypoints used by airliners headed toward mideast and Europe.

http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big...ts-missing-malaysia-airlines-mh370-flown-deli

n a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 35,000 feet about 90 miles (144 km) off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called "Igari".

The time was 1.21am.

The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called "Vampi", northeast of Indonesia's Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.

From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called "Gival", south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called "Igrex", on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.

The time was then 2.15am. That's the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction.

A fellow on pprune ( A self described blog for RUMORS) posted the day of disappearance a suggestion it went that direction, a couple days later posted an aero chart with a course drawn on it to Yemen with no coment.
I wonder who he is and what he knows.

It's worthy of Tom Clancy.
 
  • #59
jim hardy said:
Now the rumors are it was tracked passing waypoints used by airliners headed toward mideast and Europe.

http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big...ts-missing-malaysia-airlines-mh370-flown-deli



A fellow on pprune ( A self described blog for RUMORS) posted the day of disappearance a suggestion it went that direction, a couple days later posted an aero chart with a course drawn on it to Yemen with no coment.
I wonder who he is and what he knows.

It's worthy of Tom Clancy.

Or Ian Fleming.
 
  • #60
I can't believe that the plane landed anywhere. Once the passengers realized that they weren't where they should be, they would have turned on their cell phones. Sooner or later one of those phones would connect with a passing cell tower and there would be a record of it. Maybe some NSA spook could look that up. :smile:
 
  • #61
Borg said:
I can't believe that the plane landed anywhere. Once the passengers realized that they weren't where they should be, they would have turned on their cell phones. Sooner or later one of those phones would connect with a passing cell tower and there would be a record of it. Maybe some NSA spook could look that up. :smile:
If they had their phones and if they were alive.
 
  • #62
Evo said:
If they had their phones and if they were alive.
A phone left on in their luggage (in the cargo bay) would also ping towers as it passed.
 
  • #63
jim hardy said:
Now the rumors are it was tracked passing waypoints used by airliners headed toward mideast and Europe.

http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big...ts-missing-malaysia-airlines-mh370-flown-deli



A fellow on pprune ( A self described blog for RUMORS) posted the day of disappearance a suggestion it went that direction, a couple days later posted an aero chart with a course drawn on it to Yemen with no coment.
I wonder who he is and what he knows.

It's worthy of Tom Clancy.
I looked on pprune and ran into one interesting bit on info on the potential engine pings. It was mentioned that the pings identify the engine and not the aircraft. If the engines were swapped, they could be on a different aircraft.
 
  • #64
Borg said:
I looked on pprune and ran into one interesting bit on info on the potential engine pings. It was mentioned that the pings identify the engine and not the aircraft. If the engines were swapped, they could be on a different aircraft.
Why should the pinging then have stopped, as it has done?
 
  • #65
Borg said:
I looked on pprune and ran into one interesting bit on info on the potential engine pings. It was mentioned that the pings identify the engine and not the aircraft. If the engines were swapped, they could be on a different aircraft.

But swapping engines is more complicated than swapping slippers or gloves, so I find it hard to believe nobody would notice engines were on a different plane.
 
  • #66
Borg said:
A phone left on in their luggage (in the cargo bay) would also ping towers as it passed.
People should switch off their mobiles before loading them to cargo bay. Setting aside all matters concerning that's required, doing otherwise would be a wasting of batteries.
 
  • #67
arildno said:
Why should the pinging then have stopped, as it has done?
Good point. It was a quick post as I was walking out the door. It was one of the last posts on that forum and nobody had thought about that yet. Of course this assumes that people are continueing to look. If the engines were on a different aircraft, it could have landed for the night (five hours later) and would stop pinging when the engines shut down. If the ping search was only done for that day, the engines could be pinging today. I would hope that someone is still looking for pings from the engines but, I'm always nervous about making assumptions. :smile:
Borek said:
But swapping engines is more complicated than swapping slippers or gloves, so I find it hard to believe nobody would notice engines were on a different plane.
According to the members on that site, engine swaps do occur often enough for this to be thought about. But, as arildno pointed out, they should have started pinging again eventually.
 
  • #68
Czcibor said:
People should switch off their mobiles before loading them to cargo bay. Setting aside all matters concerning that's required, doing otherwise would be a wasting of batteries.
Just noting another scenario where phones could ping a cell tower. I wouldn't even put a phone in my luggage but I would bet that there's a phone or two in every cargo hold. Someone who's careless enough to put a phone in their luggage doesn't seem to me to be someone who is going to be careful about turning it off.
 
  • #69
Borg said:
Just noting another scenario where phones could ping a cell tower. I wouldn't even put a phone in my luggage but I would bet that there's a phone or two in every cargo hold. Someone who's careless enough to put a phone in their luggage doesn't seem to me to be someone who is going to be careful about turning it off.

Totally agree. But we don't know what the cell companies know. Perhaps they did get pings, reported them, but didn't go to the media about it.

Seriously, what percent of the population would forget to turn off a device, or just disregard the rule -- maybe 1%? Maybe 5%? Well, there were over 200 people on that plane.

And I wouldn't limit that to only people who put their phone in luggage.
 
  • #70
A Malaysian government official involved in the probe told the Associated Press on Saturday that investigators are now certain that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course. The official said that hijacking was "conclusive" and no longer just a theory.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/14/malaysia-airlines-search/6409061/
 

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