Missing Air Malaysia Plane

[internets]

If it has been "taken" could it be in North Korea possibly?

 

That did cross my mind although getting it there without anyone noticing seems unlikely and not to mention North Korea and China are allies...although http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26446060

[redshift]

There have been electrical issues with the 777, control panel fires etc in the equipment centre (MEC) AFAIK most should have been rewired by now? Something like that could cause the loss of supply to many critical circuits including comms and transponders.

But as commented if ATC suddenly looses a tranponder ID on one of their targets you can be sure that will get their total attention. If the a/c had broken up at that time it would almost certainly be visible on radar.

The aircraft also has other beacons and location devices that are battery powered and quite autonomous so either they weren't triggered or whatever happened was totally devastating?

And yes, if the radar trace looses its ID and the plane changes course with no comms then you are guaranteed a visit by whichever air defence force controls that area. Usually they would call up on 121.5 and would no doubt have been heard by other a/c in the area.

[molemot]

This is what my old RAF chum David Learmount has to say in Flight International...

 

It’s bad enough for a widebody jet to go missing with 239 people on board, but then for the responsible country’s government and aviation agencies to handle the associated information with total incompetence is unforgivable. China, which may have lost more of its nationals on board than any other single country, certainly thinks so.

This Boeing 777, if the uncoordinated information released by Malaysia is to be believed – and maybe it isn’t – was last seen offshore from Malaysia within primary and secondary radar range. Air traffic control uses secondary radar, which interrogates transponders on board aircraft and gets an identified signal in response. If the signal disappears it could either be because the aircraft itself has had an accident, or because the crew has turned the transponder off.

The terrorists that hijacked the four American airliners on 9/11 (2001) turned off their transponders once they had taken charge of the aircraft, so they were lost to ATC, but the military could still see them on primary radar, and at that time there was no provision for direct communication between the military and the civil ATC to establish what was going on.

There is now.

The Malaysian military has primary radar to provide surveillance of surface and airborne activity off its coasts and borders. It clearly knew more about what happened to MH370 than any other Malaysian agency, but the authorities do not seem to have tapped into this expertise, and the military may have been slow to volunteer it.

There are so many information sources that do not appear to have been used effectively in this case. As a result the families of the missing passengers and crew are being kept in the dark, and the search areas now extended to both sides of the peninsula have become so wide that it is clear that tracking information on the aircraft has not been used effectively.

Nothing has been said about the 777′s ACARS system (airborne communications addressing and reporting system), a datalink that provides technical information about the health of aircraft systems to Malaysian Airlines’ base. In the 2009 Air France 447 loss case, just before the fatal sequence of events an ACARS transmission told AF’s base that an airspeed sensor disagreement had caused the autopilot to trip out. That information was made public.

If MH370 was lost to civil radar screens because the transponder had been switched off, it raises questions as to why that would be so. If the military, who are now quoted as reporting that the aircraft turned off its northerly track and headed west, descended and flew across the peninsula, saw that happen, why has the information taken so long to be released?

There has been no report about attempts to pick up signals from the aircraft’s emergency locator transmitter, although the increasingly international fleet of search vessels are clearly doing their best. If MH370 has come down in the Gulf of Thailand, South China Sea or the Malacca Straits, the water there is shallow – less than 200m compared with the 4,500m depth of the South Atlantic where AF447 was lost.

There is an all-pervasive sense of a chaotic lack of coordination between the Malaysian agencies which has hindered the establishment of an effective search strategy.

Meanwhile the failure to provide timely information when simple facts have been established shows a total lack of consideration for the families of those who are missing.

- See more at: http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/learmount/2014/03/malaysia-handling-mh370-incompetently/#sthash.CwX6embs.dpuf

Edited March 12, 2014 by molemot

[Mark Blanchard]

The phones are still ringing, so some of the phones weren't smartphones.  Why is it taking so long to track the cell towers?

[Sparky]

Kimbers, it's entirely possible, but in my opinion would need to be an inside job (complicit crew), as forced flight deck entry should give time for a radio call.

Transponder off, especially with course change, should ring alarm bells all over the place, and this is the bit I'm just not getting. They have to know more than they're letting on.

Mark - numerous technical explanations have been given to justify this. Apparently it's possible to get a ringtone for a mobile that's off the grid! Go figure.

[Bibs]

Perhaps they shot it down and are waiting for someone to come up with a decent explanation/excuse?

[Kimbers]

Yeah, it does seem like they know a lot more than they are letting on!

[slewthy]

Yes, perhaps.

 

How'bout this.

 

2 passengers with stolen passports managed to board the plane yet 5 who did not get to it had their baggage removed. Seems like an odd mix of lapse/normal security.

Maybe the authorities quickly realised they had missed these 2 illegal passengers shortly after departure and panicked. What would they do? Inform the A/C, tell it to turn around....scramble jets....make some more mistakes...

 

What next -keep it quiet whilst any crash scene is sanitised....spread some disinformation, send others off the scent for a while at least.

 

It does seem that the search area is being widened using evidence that you would expect to have been available right at the start. Maybe its only the release of information that is trickling in.

 

Question.

How closely do Rolls Royce monitor their engines? Is it minute to minute or hour to hour. If its the former,surely they could say when telemetry was lost - that would be independent of transponder/flight deck I would imagine. Anyone know? Is RR saying anything?

[esprit s2]

Joy of joys - am about to board a 777 to.................Singapore! I'll look out the window en route and see if I can find the plane.

[fmxa]

Or they're totally incompetent (seems more likely)

 

 

Yeah, it does seem like they know a lot more than they are letting on!

[Bibs]

Joy of joys - am about to board a 777 to.................Singapore! I'll look out the window en route and see if I can find the plane.

 

Good luck with the mission Bond... 

[esprit s2]

New you'd pipe up.

[Mark Blanchard]

See if you can find the plane: http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014?source=malaysia

[Bibs]

I'm in. I tried earlier and the server was kaput! 

[Vulcan Grey]

Here's a crazy theory....

 

Anyone remember the US spy drone that the Iranians captured by spoofing the GPS and leading it back to land in Iran, at a landing strip that they made to match the altitude of a US air base in Afghanistan?

 

Maybe the sudden veer west was caused by something along those lines... ?  After reading the report of Flight 447 (Brazil to France), it seems that the pilots are trained to ignore their instruments and just push buttons to tell the plane to fly to coordinates on the GPS!

 

I'm still stuck on how 2 Iranians with stolen passports were allowed on the plane with flights arranged by an Iranian business man, after the expiration of the previous tickets that he bought...  Maybe those flights didn't work because their plan wasn't ready...

 

Seems like an Iranian seeking asylum in Europe would be the perfect kind of mule for a terrorist to get to carry a small package in their suitcase for the price of a plane ticket!

 

Also read reports that the co-pilot on this flight liked to let people into the cabin, for up to a whole flight, and smoke..

[Bibs]

Drones are made to be controlled remotely, normal planes have no such facility so there's no way it could be controlled externally. 

[pete]

Bet the american security were tracking it

[Vulcan Grey]

Drones are made to be controlled remotely, normal planes have no such facility so there's no way it could be controlled externally. 

 

But they didn't control it, they supposedly fed it incorrect GPS coords, jammed the US controller's signal, and led the drone's autopilot to think it was landing at home base in Afghanistan.

[Bibs]

Still nothing to do with airliners.

[Sparky]

Chinese have satellite imagery that seems pretty credible.  Looks like it is 2 days old!  They would be unlikely to release this stuff unless they were absolutely certain it was valid.

[Bibs]

 

[Sparky]

And in roughly the right place too. If this is it, the Malaysians have a lot of explaining to do.

[Kimbers]

Just watched the news and they said Malaysian military have it turning west then flying over Malaysia and out into the sea before disappearing.......WTF?s

[Sparky]

Statement subsequently denied by the Malaysian military.  Seems their radar monitoring - civilian and military - is manned by the Keystone Cops.

[Mark Blanchard]

So the aircraft traveled 4 hours more after the transponders were turned off. And hyjacking is looking more likely. So it could be anywhere in the region.

This is looking like the biggest mystery of the 21st century.