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Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With 777 en Route to Beijing

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  • Originally posted by sjwk View Post
    Except that wouldn't prevent them sending a radio signal giving position, and attempting to ditch.
    The MD-82 from West Caribbean, never sent any radio communication, the guys were struggling with the airplane.
    A Former Airdisaster.Com Forum (senior member)....

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    • After all these reports and corrections, I'm getting confused.
      I thought the ACARS was turned off close to when the transponder was switched off. However it appears the eng data was still being transmitted.

      Is the Rolls Royce eng data transmitter a stand alone sys or does it go thru the ACARS?

      Also I've heard the eng data transmitter was only sending pings to advise it was operational. Then I hear they were getting data from the engs.

      Can these pings or data bursts be triangulated with the satellites?

      Comment


      • Just Posted by NY Times:

        SEPANG, Malaysia — Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 experienced significant changes in altitude after it lost contact with ground control, and altered its course more than once as if still under the command of a pilot, American officials and others familiar with the investigation said Friday.

        Radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military show the missing airliner climbing to 45,000 feet, above the approved altitude limit for a Boeing 777-200, soon after it disappeared from civilian radar and made a sharp turn to the west. The radar track then shows the plane descending unevenly to an altitude of 23,000 feet, below normal cruising levels, as it approached the densely populated island of Penang. There, the plane turned from a southwest-bound course, climbed to a higher altitude and flew northwest over the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean.

        A military radar track appeared to show that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 climbed to 45,000 feet after disappearing from civilian radar and altered its course as if still under a pilot’s command.

        Comment


        • After having been offline for a couple of days I just read the last 10 pages of postings. Integrating those, plus the information publicly available during the last days, there are a couple of things coming to my mind, provoking conclusions and questions.

          1.
          At the well known location suddenly contact is lost with the crew and the plane. No location information of the plane is sent any more. (at least not officially, see below) At that location no debris is found in the sees below, making an acute inflight disintegration at cruising altitude or a crash into the waters there very unlikely.

          2.
          Later we get information of a possible radar localization of the aircraft by Malaysian military radar. Later this is denied again. (but then keeps on coming up again)

          3.
          At the moment described in 1. also the aircraft's engines stop transmitting 'maintenance data' towards Rolls Royce / Boeing (as far as I remember Malaysian Airlines has a full service contract with them, this data transmission is part of the regular procedure). This data transmission might have also been switch off on purpose by someone in the cockpit of the aircraft.

          BUT:
          Recently we received information that the engines were still transmitting data towards RR / Boeing via a different mode of data transmission, although this service was *not* subscribed by Malaysian Airlines. It took a couple of days before this information leaked to the public.

          => Could it be that RR / Boeing did not disclose this information / confirm this information openly because they were actually not entitled to collect this data??? Maybe RR / Boeing is also collecting ("stealing"?) this data from other airlines? In this case it could be that the potential thiefs of the aircraft (who knew that Malaysian Airlines did not subscribe to that service) were not aware that this system was actually available and transmitting data (as they did not switch it off).

          4.
          My earlier suspicion of someone not hijacking the plane for its passengers but to get hold of the aircraft was also asked by some others in the meantime. The discussion also established that its possible to depressurise the cabin on purpose resulting in disabled passengers. Gabriel already explained the difference of necessary runway length to land the aircraft is depending of whether one wants/needs to fly the aircraft again. Such a runway would have to be within the range of the aircraft.

          => where, within the fuel range, are runways available to land the aircraft?
          => could it be that the aircraft actually had more fuel on board than necessary to reach Peking? (I mean: not only the reserve fuel to be able to divert, as usual, but also deliberately been over tanked) What would be the maximum theoretical range of that aircraft if fully tanked? This might increase the radius of search area even more.
          => do these runways need to be permanent? or could one do with a temporary runway hidden in a jungle/desert?
          => as brought up by someone before, but again in the light of extra fuel on board: could it be that the aircraft landed somewhere, got refuelled and continued immediately?


          5.
          What would a potential thief of such a big aircraft would want to do with it?

          Comment


          • Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Post
            Enough with the cell phones, they will not work at altitude.
            This depends. A family member was flying BKK - DXB recently and sent me a text message while at over central India. Unsure on FL.

            Edit: just seen your previous post re: calls - makes sense.
            AirDisaster.com Forum Member 2004-2008

            Originally posted by orangehuggy
            the most dangerous part of a flight is not the take off or landing anymore, its when a flight crew member goes to the toilet

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            • Is that a direction India would be looking for threats? From Southeast Asia? I dunno. I just think the total disappearance of a plane barring nasty weather like AF447 makes me think it neither exploded nor plunged into the sea. But perhaps in a few weeks it will be "found" again. Stealing a Boeing 777 is a pretty good crime. In 9/11, they surprised the world by not using passengers as bargaining chips. Stealing a plane just to have one for whatever purpose would be another attempt to frustrate our attempt to fight previous wars.

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              • Originally posted by eTang View Post
                => could it be that the aircraft actually had more fuel on board than necessary to reach Peking? (I mean: not only the reserve fuel to be able to divert, as usual, but also deliberately been over tanked) What would be the maximum theoretical range of that aircraft if fully tanked? This might increase the radius of search area even more.
                I guess that someone in KL airport should have record about how many fuel they got, isn't it?

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                • Originally posted by pacoperez View Post
                  I guess that someone in KL airport should have record about how many fuel they got, isn't it?
                  Did someone check?
                  Did the public get the information?
                  Was the value faked?
                  ...

                  Comment


                  • Of course it may be that officials know more and are less bumbling than they appear, and they just don't want whoever has the plane to know how close they are getting... or by leaking certain things try to provoke a reaction.

                    The whole thing just seems weird though. Now we're hearing that while it was being controlled well enough to navigate along airways from navigation marker to navigation marker, it was ascending to above the maximum height before dropping 20 thousand feet, which surely no proper pilot in control would do?

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by BlueMax View Post
                      Radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military show the missing airliner climbing to 45,000 feet
                      RR via US Authorities say that it dropped 40,000 feet within a minute (not sure at what point)

                      AirDisaster.com Forum Member 2004-2008

                      Originally posted by orangehuggy
                      the most dangerous part of a flight is not the take off or landing anymore, its when a flight crew member goes to the toilet

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by BoeingBobby View Post
                        Enough with the cell phones, they will not work at altitude. And I doubt there are any towers out there even if they could.
                        Then what about United 93? And that was more than 10 years ago.

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                        • Via NYT

                          Investigators have also examined data transmitted from the plane’s Rolls-Royce engines that shows it descending 40,000 feet in the space of a minute, according to a senior American official briefed on the investigation. But investigators do not believe the readings are accurate because the aircraft would most likely have taken longer to fall such a distance.

                          “A lot of stock cannot be put in the altitude data” sent from the engines, one official said. “A lot of this doesn’t make sense.”
                          AirDisaster.com Forum Member 2004-2008

                          Originally posted by orangehuggy
                          the most dangerous part of a flight is not the take off or landing anymore, its when a flight crew member goes to the toilet

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by James Bond View Post
                            RR via US Authorities say that it dropped 40,000 feet within a minute (not sure at what point)

                            (Although the article I read says authorities are skeptical of that reading.) There were, however, changes in altitude recorded and altitudes given:

                            A military radar track appeared to show that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 climbed to 45,000 feet after disappearing from civilian radar and altered its course as if still under a pilot’s command.
                            Last edited by Fear_of_Flying; 2014-03-15, 00:27. Reason: Oh, I see you added a post clarifying.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by James Bond View Post
                              RR via US Authorities say that it dropped 40,000 feet within a minute
                              Is that even possible? At least with an intact airplane it isn't.

                              Comment


                              • WSJ reports that the plane had t be flown by an insider.

                                I just don't find much way to escape the conclusion based on available information that this was pilot suicide. Which pilot, and whether it was politically/religiously, or personally motivated, would then become the salient questions.

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