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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 ended in the Southern Indian Ocean

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H

HoosTrax

Member
From Straits Times:
Mr Fariq Abdul Hamid, the first officer of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370, was planning to marry a fellow pilot from another airline.

A report in the Sabah-based Daily Express said that Captain Nadira Ramli, 26, who is attached with AirAsia, is a daughter of a senior Malaysia Airlines pilot.

She is now with Mr Fariq's distraught mother at an undisclosed hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

The Daily Express and several news portals claimed that Ms Nadira had been given a month's leave to enable her to weather her sadness over her 27-year-old boyfriend's disappearance with 11 other crew members and 227 passengers on board the missing aircraft.
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C

CadetMahoney

Member
maquiladora said:
Posted?

In an exclusive story, the government-backed paper said investigators analysing MH370’s flight data revealed that the 200-tonne, fully laden twinjet descended 1,500m or even lower to evade commercial (secondary) radar coverage after it turned back from its flight path en route to Beijing
.....

Investigators pouring over MH370’s flight data had said the plane had flown low and used “terrain masking” as it flew over the Bay of Bengal and headed north towards land, the NST reported.

Officials, who formed the technical team, were looking into the possibility that whoever was piloting the jet at that time had taken advantage of the busy airways over the Bay of Bengal and stuck to a commercial route to avoid raising the suspicion of those manning primary (military) radars, the paper said.

“The person who had control over the aircraft has a solid knowledge of avionics and navigation and left a clean track. It passed low over Kelantan, that was true,” the NST quoted an anonymous official as saying.
....

The NST quoting sources said the probe would now focus on regions with disused airports equipped with long runways capable of handling a plane like the Boeing 777.
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http://news.malaysia.msn.com/tmi/mh370-flew-as-low-as-1500m-to-avoid-detection-says-paper#scpshrtu
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AtomicShroom said:
This flight didn't crash anywhere. The pilot had a very clear, meticulously planned agenda down to most minute details. To have executed all of this so flawlessly is a testament to his expert skills.

He's now a very rich man, and a terrorist organization is in possession of a 777 to use as they please.
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Jumping to conclusions much? The terrorist end game doesn't sound plausible with a 777 not crashing into anything.

Forsete said:
Doesn't the NSA or CIA have some high resolution spy satellite stuff in orbit?
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China does as well.
 
Slayer-33

Slayer-33

Liverpool-2
Mr.Awesome said:
Maybe I'm missing something but what's suspicious there? Unless her dad hates him or something
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That guy that wanted to marry the girl probably had nothing to do with this act. I wonder if he was under extreme duress when and if he made that last radio transmission.
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
I find it hard to dismiss the eyewitness accounts from the Maldives given that it lines up so well with the last known path of the plane. It causes me to have some doubt about the reliability of the satellite info.
 
R

raindoc

Member
KHarvey16 said:
A battery can cause or contribute to the problem just as easily as any other source of electricity.
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Despite it being located in a fireproof box that's designed to withstand a crash?
I believe you, but with a face that looks like I took a good bite out of a lemon. An on/off button for the "blackbox"... did not see that coming.
 
G

gutshot

Member
empty vessel said:
I find it hard to dismiss the eyewitness accounts from the Maldives given that it lines up so well with the last known path of the plane. It causes me to have some doubt about the reliability of the satellite info.
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Eyewitness reports are generally the most unreliable pieces of data in any investigation. Not saying it's not worth looking into, but I wouldn't throw out hard data just because it seems to conflict with eyewitness reports. It's many times more likely that the eyewitness reports are erroneous.
 
S

Sectorseven

Member
What do you think are the logistics of collecting and analyzing potentially dozens of spy satellite image sets?

Does each country do it independently and then share it with the recovery team? And I assume scanning it physically would be impractical, so do they have an existing program that can scan for whatever they want (a 777 in this case), or is that something that would have to be created specifically for this circumstance, and how long would that take to make?
 
S

syllogism

Member
empty vessel said:
I find it hard to dismiss the eyewitness accounts from the Maldives given that it lines up so well with the last known path of the plane. It causes me to have some doubt about the reliability of the satellite info.
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That's not the last 'known' path though as that path and the turn to NW are both based on the same military radar data, so you wouldn't be dismissing just the satellite data.

Also, I'm not sure if the angle of that path is correct, it looks off
 
L

liquidtmd

Banned
Hypothetical: If the plane flew on auto-pilot in a straight ish line from it's U-Turn position to the Maldives sightings, how long would the flight time roughly be?
 
M

MMBosstones86

Member
Sectorseven said:
What do you think are the logistics of collecting and analyzing potentially dozens of spy satellite image sets?

Does each country do it independently and then share it with the recovery team? And I assume scanning it physically would be impractical, so do they have an existing program that can scan for whatever they want (a 777 in this case), or is that something that would have to be created specifically for this circumstance, and how long would that take to make?
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I believe it'd be done independently and no one will say anything unless they are quite confident they have something. I highly doubt most countries want to divulge their satellite coverage unless they absolutely have to.

RPGCrazied said:
Wouldn't this plane have run out of fuel by now? It either has to be landed or crashed. Right?
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um. It hasn't been in the air for over a week, so yes...
 
S

syllogism

Member
liquidtmd said:
Hypothetical: If the plane flew on auto-pilot in a straight ish line from it's U-Turn position to the Maldives sightings, how long would the flight time roughly be?
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In a bit under 4 hours from the position it had at 1.21am, assuming a typical cruising speed of 560mph.
 
O

Ovid

Member
BigEvilTurtle said:
I've been following for days but I'm now behind. What's this about Maldives?
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Apparently folks saw a low flying plane. Someone did plot path to the Maldives which lines up but it's waaaaay too far from the last satellite "ping".

EDIT: Not way far but you know what I mean.
 
B

BobTheFork

Member
We have CNN or Cspan up on a tv in the lobby where I work. About 20 minute ago I walked past and they had a ticket up saying NTY is reporting the flight path of the plane was changed from outside by a computer. It seems....insane to be reporting that. Has that been talked about more?
 
R

raindoc

Member
new fuel for speculations from german newspaper "Die Welt" - according to "aviation expert"' and owner of airlineratings.com, Geoffrey Thomas, MH370 carried something "extremely valuable". He claims to have gotten this info from people involved in the official investigation.

Article in german
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
gutshot said:
Eyewitness reports are generally the most unreliable pieces of data in any investigation. Not saying it's not worth looking into, but I wouldn't throw out hard data just because it seems to conflict with eyewitness reports. It's many times more likely that the eyewitness reports are erroneous.
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I understand the unreliability of eyewitness accounts better than anybody (I am familiar with the academic literature on it), but these are not the kind of reports that are or should be easily dismissed. It may well be some other plane, but it's unlikely that the plane the witnesses saw simply didn't exist at all. Eyewitness accounts aren't that unreliable.

syllogism said:
That's not the last 'known' path though as that path and the turn to NW are both based on the same military radar data, so you wouldn't be dismissing just the satellite data.

Also, I'm not sure if the angle of that path is correct, it looks off
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My understanding is that the last two turns have never been confirmed as flight 370 but have been described as possibilities. If that's not true, and those data points are confirmed to be flight 370, then I'd be inclined to think that the witnesses did not see flight 370.

syllogism said:
In a bit under 4 hours from the position it had at 1.21am, assuming a typical cruising speed of 560mph.
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If it was flying at a low altitude, would it be flying slower?
 
K

KHarvey16

Member
raindoc said:
Despite it being located in a fireproof box that's designed to withstand a crash?
I believe you, but with a face that looks like I took a good bite out of a lemon. An on/off button for the "blackbox"... did not see that coming.
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The issue isn't necessarily limited to the device itself igniting but you can end up with a problem in the wiring or other systems interfacing with the recorder. Now, wiring is obviously also designed not to catch fire when it melts but hot bits of plastic can be dangerous regardless, and could lead to a cascade of failures depending on the specific scenario.

In the end it doesn't make much sense to design a recording device against nefarious intervention at the cost of safety under normal conditions. It has no ability to prevent a pilot from crashing a plane intentionally and can only provide information after the plane has crashed. It is vital to have this data when a mechanical failure or pilot error is suspected but in the case of deliberate action you would know it was turned off and also see no evidence of mechanical failure.
 
R

raindoc

Member
KHarvey16 said:
The issue isn't necessarily limited to the device itself igniting but you can end up with a problem in the wiring or other systems interfacing with the recorder. Now, wiring is obviously also designed not to catch fire when it melts but hot bits of plastic can be dangerous regardless, and could lead to a cascade of failures depending on the specific scenario.

In the end it doesn't make much sense to design a recording device against nefarious intervention at the cost of safety under normal conditions. It has no ability to prevent a pilot from crashing a plane intentionally and can only provide information after the plane has crashed. It is vital to have this data when a mechanical failure or pilot error is suspected but in the case of deliberate action you would know it was turned off and also see no evidence of mechanical failure.
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cheers.
 
S

Sectorseven

Member
KHarvey16 said:
The issue isn't necessarily limited to the device itself igniting but you can end up with a problem in the wiring or other systems interfacing with the recorder. Now, wiring is obviously also designed not to catch fire when it melts but hot bits of plastic can be dangerous regardless, and could lead to a cascade of failures depending on the specific scenario.

In the end it doesn't make much sense to design a recording device against nefarious intervention at the cost of safety under normal conditions. It has no ability to prevent a pilot from crashing a plane intentionally and can only provide information after the plane has crashed. It is vital to have this data when a mechanical failure or pilot error is suspected but in the case of deliberate action you would know it was turned off and also see no evidence of mechanical failure.
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Is there any reason all the black box's data can't be sent wirelessly via satellite?
 
S

syllogism

Member
It's worth noting that the time difference between Malaysia and Maldives is 3 hours. If we assume that the fine reporters of Haveeru took that into account, these locals would have seen the plane at 3am local time.

It doesn't seem Haveeru is very credible, however, considering the article includes statements such as this
Satellite data suggests that the last "ping" was recieved from the flight somwhere close to the Maldives and the US naval base on Diego Garcia.
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Which is completely wrong, and it is suspicious that these eyewitness observations surfaced more than a week later, coinciding with some conspiracy theories regarding Diego Garcia
 
aeroslash

aeroslash

Member
AtomicShroom said:
It becomes possible if the plane was set on autopilot. It's not impossible that the pilot programmed the autopilot to climb to 45,000 ft to kill everyone aboard (including himself), then to go back down and follow a straight path to the middle of the Indian Ocean... where the plane flew itself until it ran out of fuel and crashed.
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The autopilot would never go above the aircraft ceiling and it wouldn't be able to descend 20000' in a minute...
 
A

AtomicShroom

Member
liquidtmd said:
If thats true, that would make it around 5:21am and the sightings say 6:30am. So thats out in that format...unless more than one U-Turn was at play
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If the plane was flying low as reported (both by officials and eyewitnesses), then it would also have been flying slower. 6:30am sighting wouldn't be surprising in that case.
 
K

KHarvey16

Member
Sectorseven said:
Is there any reason all the black box's data can't be sent wirelessly via satellite?
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raindoc said:
cost due to data volume. limited data transmission is planned for the future (picked that much up as the story developed).
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Sectorseven said:
I don't know, I bet you could pay for a lot of wireless black box data with the money this search and rescue is costing.
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Yup, it's down to cost mostly. ACARS can send the important data and normally does periodically during the course of the flight, and even this is incredibly expensive. I think I saw an estimate that a streaming connection with real time ACARS data today would cost an average airline north of 100 million dollars a year. It's a lot of data over specialized satellites.
 
THE:MILKMAN

THE:MILKMAN

Member
I wouldn't have thought a car-like GPS tracker system would cost much to implement.

Place it within the black box or hide it elsewhere in the plane and upgrade it to survive a crash and deep water and just switch it on as and when a plane crashes or goes "missing".

Too simple?
 
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