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Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With 777 en Route to Beijing

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  • Originally posted by 3WE View Post
    What does your industry do when something breaks after an engineering staff does in-depth study and determines that it won't break?

    Count up house fires, car fires, laptop battery fires and tell me how using lots of fuses is nonsense.
    i'm an attorney so when an attorney breaks he gets disbarrred or buried.

    ok, let's count up housefires caused by a non-modified, quality device that just all of the sudden burst into flames. seriously. when is the last time you heard of an electric range, which i suspect pulls an assload more juice than a transponder does, suddenly bursting into flames? a refrigerator? electric dryer?

    are there home electrical fires? sure. mostly caused by idiots who overload their own wiring with crap--say 4 gazillion xmas light plugged into one outlet.

    i didn't say that using lots of fuses was nonsense. i said that using risk of fire as an excuse to not make the transponder undefeatable by the crew INFLIGHT, was nonsense.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by brianw999 View Post
      ....(My bold underline)..... But in this case we're talking about a 12 year old Boeing 777 so that statement is really kind of .....er.....totally irrelevent !
      True... not terribly relevant to the thread title. But I'd say relevant to those who are advocating that *all* airplanes be equipped with transponders that cannot be turned off.
      Be alert! America needs more lerts.

      Eric Law

      Comment


      • Originally posted by TeeVee View Post
        ok, let's count up housefires caused by a non-modified, quality device that just all of the sudden burst into flames. seriously. when is the last time you heard of an electric range, which i suspect pulls an assload more juice than a transponder does, suddenly bursting into flames? a refrigerator? electric dryer?
        Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled dishwashers, disconnect the electric supply by shutting off the fuse or circuit breaker controlling it and inform all users of the dishwasher about the risk of fire. For all dishwashers, contact GE for a free in-home repair or to receive a GE rebate of $75 towards the purchase of a new GE front-control plastic tub dishwasher, or a rebate of $100 towards the purchase of a new GE front-control stainless tub dishwasher or GE Profile top control dishwasher. Consumers should not return the recalled dishwashers to the retailer where they purchased as retailers are not prepared to take the units back.




        About 350,000 GE dehumidifiers are being recalled due to a fire hazard, adding to the 2.2 million units recalled in September 2013.




        Should I go on?
        Be alert! America needs more lerts.

        Eric Law

        Comment


        • Originally posted by 3WE View Post
          What does your industry do when something breaks after an engineering staff does in-depth study and determines that it won't break?
          ....................
          One of my hats is aerospace reliability engineering. Any engineering staff member who determines something won't break needs to be fired.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by elaw View Post
            True... not terribly relevant to the thread title. But I'd say relevant to those who are advocating that *all* airplanes be equipped with transponders that cannot be turned off.
            With this comment, I'd like to bring the discussion around to MH370 again It seems that we have established that flying without a transponder is in itself neither dangerous nor rare. The whole argument about transponders erupted, when the discussion was on how the military radar traced the flight path of MH370 and did not react.
            So here are my questions again:
            a) Does military radar (and if anybody can provide this information: military radar in Malaysia) have the ability to read SSR (secondary surveillance radar) transponders? If they don't and they rely entirely on primary radar, then MH370 would just have been one blip of many. And since it was not the military's task to separate the traffic, why would they need to care about this particular blip?
            b) If the military does in fact read transponders, then MH370 was one unidentified blip among a number of SSR returns and a number of unidentified blips of aircraft flying without a transponder. Again: why would the military need to care about this aircraft that at the time even while unidentified did not give any reason for concern? They quite likely did not even know that ATC had lost contact with a passenger airliner.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Peter Kesternich View Post
              why would the military need to care about this aircraft that at the time even while unidentified did not give any reason for concern? They quite likely did not even know that ATC had lost contact with a passenger airliner.
              Because it flew without transponder signal in an airspace which mandatorily demands using one and doing so for more than a few minutes (ruling out an accidential misconfiguration of the device). Not a reason to send jet fighters immediately, but a reason to at least follow the blip and contact civilian air traffic control.

              If they have no such procedures it's a bit pointless to follow air traffic by radar at all, IMHO.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Traumflug View Post
                Because it flew without transponder signal in an airspace which mandatorily demands using one and doing so for more than a few minutes (ruling out an accidential misconfiguration of the device). Not a reason to send jet fighters immediately, but a reason to at least follow the blip and contact civilian air traffic control.

                If they have no such procedures it's a bit pointless to follow air traffic by radar at all, IMHO.
                Hmmmmm... my next question in that case would be: is a transponder really mandatory in this area?

                As for the possible scenario that I suspect - in case you are correct about what you said here - it works as follows:

                Military radar recognizes the unidentified blip. They watch it for a little while, expecting the transponder to come online or maybe suspecting an aircraft with transponder failure (which I assume happens a lot more often than whatever happened to MH370). After let's say 5 to 10 minutes, military radar get uneasy and calls Malaysian ATC with the question "We have an unidentified blip here, are you missing an aircaft?" ATC replies "No. Everybody is accounted for." Remember? MH370 turned off the transponder after the handover to Vietnamese ATC. So - at this point, there is some confusion and since MH370 has at that time already passed the Malay peninsula and is heading out into the Strait of Malacca, the military leaves it at that and minds their own business.

                Comment


                • At this point, I have a question for our resident (airline) pilots: what are the procedures for transponder failure? With tens of thousands of SSR transponders out there, I assume, some of them fail every now and then.

                  Comment


                  • I'd also be curious to know what SOP is re the transponder when flying over ocean areas that don't have any radar coverage.
                    Be alert! America needs more lerts.

                    Eric Law

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Peter Kesternich View Post
                      At this point, I have a question for our resident (airline) pilots: what are the procedures for transponder failure? With tens of thousands of SSR transponders out there, I assume, some of them fail every now and then.
                      We have 2 of them, usual procedure is to use #1 for one leg, then # 2 for the next.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by elaw View Post
                        I'd also be curious to know what SOP is re the transponder when flying over ocean areas that don't have any radar coverage.
                        The procedure varies Atlantic vs Pacific. 30 minutes after coast out in the Atlantic the transponder is changed to a code of 2000. When reaching the other side and radar contact is established the controller will assign you a new code. On the Pacific routes out of Asia the controller will tell you when to change to 2000. And again when you get to the other side you will be issued a new code. Also Eric remember that CPDLC and ADS do not need radar coverage, they work via SATCOM.

                        Comment


                        • Fires and circuit breakers

                          Originally posted by TeeVee View Post
                          yes there have been some isolated events where electrical devices started fires onboard (mostly related to unauthorized installations?) but how many involving systems like radar, radios, transponders? zero? one? two? fine! an acceptable risk.
                          Just the odd fire with a battery system in some Boeing or other

                          Or more seriously, the Egyptair cockpit fire. Or the Ethiopian ELT fire.

                          Comment


                          • first recall: 15 failures, 7 fires, no injuries in 1.3 MILLION appliances
                            second recall: 17 reports of fire, to minor injuries in 35,000 batteries
                            third recall: 16 "incidents" in 350,000 units
                            4th: 4 fires in 750 units

                            shall i go on?

                            you're comparing apples to boulders. mass produced (read: cheaply) appliances have a FAR greater risk than highly specialized aircraft parts and systems.

                            given the odds you've quoted i feel pretty damn safe in my house. how bout you?

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Spectator View Post
                              Just the odd fire with a battery system in some Boeing or other

                              Or more seriously, the Egyptair cockpit fire. Or the Ethiopian ELT fire.
                              as i said, one or two or maybe even more. but how many? in how many countless aircraft on how many triply countless flights over decades. pretty goddammed safe if you ask me.

                              Comment


                              • The preliminary report is out.
                                Sketchy, short and nothing new.
                                I'd say that you don't need to read it, but if you still want to, it is fully transcribed in The Aviation Herald: http://avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b/028&opt=0

                                --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                                --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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