Support NeoGAF

[Dishwalla]

I've been able to text and place calls in the middle of the Pacific ocean from topside when my submarine surfaced for a BBQ or swim qual. Radio waves propagate amazingly well over the ocean.

Really? I can't get shit on my ship once it moves about 20 miles off the coast of Virginia.

 

[Ovid]

Yup, CNN still playing the terrorism card.

Why do I continue to watch this channel?

 

[Coins]

Really? I can't get shit on my ship once it moves about 20 miles off the coast of Virginia.

I'm pretty sure we were more than 20 miles from Hawaii when we would do swim equals. Best coast and all.

 

[seanoff]

something like a stall along these lines would cause the plane go down really fast into a really small area:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c32_1367332518

and from FL350 it would still take 3 - 5 minutes to fall into the sea. more than enough time to make many many RTs

the engines report to base independently of the rest of the aircraft, they stopped transmitting.

the only plausible explanation at this point is catastrophic failure of the aircraft.

conspiracy theorists, yes you can turn off your transponder, however that's a big plane and it has a large radar signature. given the amount of military radar and civilian radar in that area they would have continued to track the aircraft, just without ID.

terrorists invading the cockpit, well the pilots would have squawked that code. lighting up military from australia to russia almost instantly.

 

[Enron]

The only explanation that makes sense to me at the moment is that the plane probably came down at full speed at a very steep angle if not nearly vertically. A terrorist attack would have blown debris over a wide field I would imagine.

Something as large as a 777 would shatter upon impact with the water and would still leave a debris field. They just havent found it yet.

 

[SpyGuy239]

This is just terrible and horrendous. I too can't believe with all the tech we have we haven't found it yet.

Hope the news gets "better" soon and everyone can get some closure.

 

[aeroslash]

Does everyone lock their cockpit doors now or is that a US only thing?

Yes. It's mandatory, at least in Europe. I've written it before in one of my posts in this thread

something like a stall along these lines would cause the plane go down really fast into a really small area:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c32_1367332518

No. Not at all. That was a cargo plane, the cargo was baddly stowed and it moved during TO, moving the CG of the plane outside the aft limit. That's impossible to happen in a plane like the 777. The most part of its weight is because of the fuel, that won't move, and the second most important factor is the people, that wouldn't move so bad, and even if they did, with the fuel on board, the plane would have its Cg between limits.

 

[mercenar1e]

could be something

#MH370 Vietnam search and rescue aircraft spotted new floating object. Authorities are not sure what it is. pic.twitter.com/m0peec6DVm

 

[iMax]

#MH370 Vietnam search and rescue authorities: new object spotted 80 km south-southwest of Tho Chu island

Source

 

[Insane Metal]

KUALA LUMPUR—Vietnamese officials said a search plane spotted suspected fragments of a missing Malaysian airliner Sunday night, in the first potential breakthrough in the search since the flight disappeared early Saturday morning.

The suspected fragments were found floating about 50 miles south-southwest of Tho Chu Island and were believed to be a piece of an inner door and part of an airplane tail, Vietnamese officials said.

Earlier Sunday, Vietnam’s search and rescue officials said that they were investigating a report about a suspected piece of yellow debris seen floating in the same area.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, suddenly disappeared just under an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours Saturday. The disappearance triggered a search and rescue operation across portions of the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea, involving the armed forces of several nations, including the United States, Malaysia, Vietnam and China.

The investigation into the fate of the plane has been complicated further by revelations that two passengers appeared to have boarded the plane with stolen passports, prompting airline executives and aviation officials to say that foul play can’t be ruled out.

Malaysia’s police chief, Inspector-General Khalid Abu Bakar, told reporters in Terengganu on the country’s South China Sea coast that while police investigators “don’t dismiss the possibility” of terrorism, they weren’t considering it the most likely cause for the disappearance of MH370.

Rescuers are looking at the possibility that the plane could have attempted to turn back to Kuala Lumpur, “which could mean that the aircraft could be elsewhere,” acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein, who also serves as Malaysia’s defense minister, said at a press briefing.

Military radar readings indicate the plane may have reversed course, the country’s air force chief said. Gen. Rodzali Duad said the military is still studying the radar data, and added that it is corroborated by some civilian radar data.

The flight included passengers from more than a dozen nationalities, with just over half of them Chinese. A Malaysian aviation official said at the briefing that the aviation regulator is investigating video recordings of two passengers carrying stolen passports, from check-in to departure. Two people—an Austrian and an Italian—listed as being on the missing jet weren’t on the flight. Their passports had been stolen in Thailand.

A 30-year-old Austrian whose name was on the passenger list for the flight wasn’t on board. His passport was stolen in Thailand in 2012, an Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Another passenger on the list, Luigi Maraldi, an Italian citizen, wasn’t on the plane either, Italy’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday. Mr. Maraldi’s passport was stolen in Thailand a year and a half ago, his father said.

A European security official said it wasn’t uncommon for passengers to board flights using stolen passports. In addition, Beijing has emerged as a bustling transit hub in recent years, providing connecting flights to Europe and elsewhere from other parts of Asia, buoyed in part by a 72-hour visa-on-arrival program.

A massive, multinational search and rescue operation to locate flight MH370, meanwhile, continues in the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Until the plane is located, there is little prospect of figuring out what really caused it to vanish. And the longer the search takes, the less likely it is to find any survivors.

At a news conference in Beijing Sunday afternoon, a member of the airline’s crisis-management team, said the airline has told family members of passengers to “expect the worst.” Ignatius Ong said Malaysia Airlines would make travel arrangements for Chinese family members who wished to fly to Kuala Lumpur to await more news.

Meanwhile, many relatives in Beijing were overcome with grief as they awaited news. Sounds of weeping poured out of rooms of the Metropark Lido Hotel, about 20 minutes from Beijing Capital International Airport where the airline had set up a help center for friends and relatives of the passengers. Some of the family members crouched in the stairwells, their cries echoing into the hallways.

Zhang Zhiliang, from Tianjin, and his family huddled in a stairwell in the hotel, crying, “I don’t understand.” His cousin, 26 and also from Tianjin, was on the flight.

Late Saturday, Vietnam reported that one of its search aircraft had spotted two oil slicks some 140 kilometers, or 87 miles, from Vietnam’s coast. The slicks could be a sign that the missing plane had crashed, authorities in Hanoi said.

“I can confirm that there was an oil slick, no debris,” Mr. Hishamuddin said, adding that Vietnamese authorities are on site to verify whether there is any jet fuel on the sea surface.

On Sunday afternoon, a statement issued in the name of a previously unknown group claimed that the disappearance of the plane was a political act aimed at the Chinese and Malaysian governments and referred to last week’s attack in a Chinese train station by alleged Uighur separatists. It stopped short of a claim of responsibility. Malaysian officials said that they were unaware of any claim of responsibility but would investigate all possibilities.

A team of American aviation accident investigators, led by National Transportation Safety Board experts, is en route to Asia to provide assistance regarding the missing jetliner.

China’s navy said Sunday that it had sent two warships to help with the search. Beijing had already sent at least one coast guard vessel and two search and rescue ships toward the area, according to state media.

“Once the aircraft location is identified,” international accident rules will determine what country will formally lead the probe, the safety board said. The board’s announcement is the latest sign of the intense international interest in trying to quickly determine what caused the Boeing 777 to disappear from the sky in good weather.

The team, including technical advisers from Boeing Co. and the Federal Aviation Administration, left the U.S. Saturday and would “be positioned to offer U.S. assistance,” the board said. The NTSB is unlikely to head up what is bound to be a complex and extensive probe, but the board’s expertise is likely to play a big role in establishing the chain of events.

The NTSB’s decision, according to air-safety officials, indicates that at least at this point, U.S. aviation regulators and safety watchdogs are treating the plane’s disappearance and presumed crash as an accident rather than an act of terrorism.

The officials stressed that could change as more details surface. For now, though, it is the NTSB investigators, rather than law-enforcement or antiterrorism officials, who are leading Washington’s public response.

–Vu Trong Khanh, Chuin-Wei Yap, Laurie Burkitt and Celine Fernandez contributed to this article.

Write to Jason Ng at jason.ng@wsj.com[/QUOTE][url]http://stream.wsj.com/story/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/SS-2-475558/SS-2-475986/[/url]

 

[SporeCrawler]

This is just terrible and horrendous. I too can't believe with all the tech we have we haven't found it yet.

Hope the news gets "better" soon and everyone can get some closure.

people greatly overestimate the tech we have and greatly underestimate the friggin ocean

 

[mercenar1e]

some of the images that are on twitter.. sad

 

[Loki]

Why don't all planes have GPS, preferably inside the "black box"? I always assumed they did. Maybe I'm missing some technical reason why it wouldn't matter, but it seems like a no-brainer.

 

[seanoff]

Why don't all planes have GPS, preferably inside the "black box"? I always assumed they did. Maybe I'm missing some technical reason why it wouldn't matter, but it seems like a no-brainer.

they do. not good in water apparently.

the FDR, CVR have pingers on them which operate under water.

 

[Sickboy007]

Why don't all planes have GPS, preferably inside the "black box"? I always assumed they did. Maybe I'm missing some technical reason why it wouldn't matter, but it seems like a no-brainer.

They do: http://www.flightradar24.com/38.36,-73.15/4

try the cockpit view, it's really cool.

 

[Pandaman]

Why don't all planes have GPS, preferably inside the "black box"? I always assumed they did. Maybe I'm missing some technical reason why it wouldn't matter, but it seems like a no-brainer.

the black box has gps, but you gotta remember that these things are the size of briefcases. power constraints are an issue and would limit the strength of a signal.

it may seem backwards, but they will probably need to find the plane before they hear from the black box.

 

[Dryk]

Why don't all planes have GPS, preferably inside the "black box"? I always assumed they did. Maybe I'm missing some technical reason why it wouldn't matter, but it seems like a no-brainer.

They have acoustic locator beacons that activate when they're submerged. Browsing some spec sheets tells me that a standard beacon will emit a 37.5kHz signal at 160dB for 90 days, but I don't know enough underwater acoustics off the top of my head to estimate what distance that would be detectable at.

EDIT: Apparently the range is usually about 3000 yards/2.7km, so if it's down there it shouldn't be too difficult to find... eventually. They're Li-Ion batteries so it's the best we can do I guess (also there's marine life considerations).

 

[Chittagong]

Yes. It's mandatory, at least in Europe. I've written it before in one of my posts in this thread



No. Not at all. That was a cargo plane, the cargo was baddly stowed and it moved during TO, moving the CG of the plane outside the aft limit. That's impossible to happen in a plane like the 777. The most part of its weight is because of the fuel, that won't move, and the second most important factor is the people, that wouldn't move so bad, and even if they did, with the fuel on board, the plane would have its Cg between limits.

Yeah I didn't mean cargo moving to cause a stall, but rather meant to simply illustrate how a stall can bring a plane down in a nearly vertical path very quickly. But like seanoff wrote even that would take a good while, certainly long enough to get logged to all kinds of systems.

While logic would say that the recordless immediate vanishment would suggest catastrophic disintegrtion in the air the complete lack of debris doesn't really support that theory. They have so many boats out there that by now they would have found something floating if the plane exploded up in the air.

Currently the scenario fitting the context to me would seem to be the pilot(s) intentionally plunging the plane at high speed.that would explain the lack of debris, SOS call and automated distress/failure signals. Recall how the AF plane sent out an incrasing amount of automated failure warnings as the plane perished. Suicide doesn't really explain the lack of altitude data showing it happening though.

 

[goomba]

Don't know if been posted yet, I leave here the link of NG doc about air france flight that disapeared in the Atlantic, might have some similarities with this situation or not

Air Crash Investigation - Air France Flight 447 Crash

wow just goes to show even with all the technology in modern planes ,human error can still lead to disaster. Pulling back while stall alert keeps blaring , fucks sake

 

[aeroslash]

Yeah I didn't mean cargo moving to cause a stall, but rather meant to simply illustrate how a stall can bring a plane down in a nearly vertical path very quickly. But like seanoff wrote even that would take a good while, certainly long enough to get logged to all kinds of systems.

While logic would say that the recordless immediate vanishment would suggest catastrophic disintegrtion in the air the complete lack of debris doesn't really support that theory. They have so many boats out there that by now they would have found something floating if the plane exploded up in the air.

Currently the scenario fitting the context to me would seem to be the pilot(s) intentionally plunging the plane at high speed.that would explain the lack of debris, SOS call and automated distress/failure signals. Recall how the AF plane sent out an incrasing amount of automated failure warnings as the plane perished. Suicide doesn't really explain the lack of altitude data showing it happening though.

Maybe it's because i'm one, but i really trust the professionalism of the pilots.

 

[Korey]

Interesting that nobody got a text or tweet out in time

 

[Pandaman]

Interesting that nobody got a text or tweet out in time

the ocean doesn't have a lot of cell towers.

 

[mercenar1e]

it seem that they really found parts of the plane.. the media is waiting for Malaysia Airline to confirm

 

[Vesmir]

There have been incidents in the past where structural failure has led to generator cables being severed. This can explain the lack of communication. Furthermore if the stabilizer's lines are also cut due to this failure, it can cause the plane to uncontrollably turn. This kind of accident has occurred before, and despite the 777 being a more "sophisticated" plane, an oversight like this isn't unprecedented.

 

[Chittagong]

Maybe it's because i'm one, but i really trust the professionalism of the pilots.

Even skilled, trained professional pilots can have psychological issues. In fact, I was just thinking about it the other day that how bizarre it is that pilots taking their planes out with them doesn't happen more often - there are so many pilots that the suicide percentage in general population would lead one to expect more disasters than we see.

 

[Phoenix]

Even skilled, trained professional pilots can have psychological issues. In fact, I was just thinking sbout it the other day that how bizarre it is that pilots taking their planes out with them doesn't happen more often - there are so many pilots that the suicide percentage in general population would lead one to expect more disasters than we see.

For medical, endurance, and security reasons you normally have more than one pilot.

 

[aeroslash]

Even skilled, trained professional pilots can have psychological issues. In fact, I was just thinking about it the other day that how bizarre it is that pilots taking their planes out with them doesn't happen more often - there are so many pilots that the suicide percentage in general population would lead one to expect more disasters than we see.

For medical, endurance, and security reasons you normally have more than one pilot.

Not to say that's why we pass medical and psichological exams each year

 

[Chittagong]

For medical, endurance, and security reasons you normally have more than one pilot.

That might explain it. EgyptAir flight 990 is the only example I can think of right now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990

 

[cafemomo]

This statement might be a bit hyperbolic and somewhat bias, but the 772 is a fantastic aircraft. Very well maintained even by some of it's shoddy operators.

The only way to bring the aircraft down is either through sheer stupidity in the case of the OZ crash in SFO or through an act of terrorism

 

[davepoobond]

I feel like the Bermuda Triangle moved to the south of china

 

[footfunghi]

According to Bild.de the stolen passports were registered as stolen with Interpol but the Airport/Security did not check the database.

this is ridiculous...

 

[davepoobond]

According to Bild.de the stolen passports were registered as stolen with Interpol but the Airport/Security did not check the database.

this is ridiculous...

"Oh that's why you check the database"

 

[footfunghi]

Also from Bild.de:

Relatives were able to establish a connection to a mobile phone on the missing plane. It rang once before the connection was aborted.

Lets hope they are able to locate the plane with data of the connection.

 

[pj]

Tragic to see the victim's family online, trying to make sense of the missing plane.

Daughter of a mother that works as an air stewardess on the flight,
https://twitter.com/JasmineJohari

Devastating shit..

That image is weird to me. Why would someone share something so personal?

 

[bengraven]

If this was terrorism, as some believe, wouldn't someone be taking credit by now?

 

[mercenar1e]

absolutely disgusting.. what information is he basing this on?

Rupert Murdoch
777crash confirms jihadists turning to make trouble for China. Chance for US to make common cause, befriend China while Russia bullies.

https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/statuses/442680012630945792

 

[Dryk]

absolutely disgusting.. what information is he basing this on?

He knows better than you, haven't you heard?

 

[linsivvi]

absolutely disgusting.. what information is he basing this on?

Rupert Murdoch
777crash confirms jihadists turning to make trouble for China. Chance for US to make common cause, befriend China while Russia bullies.

https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/statuses/442680012630945792

The emperor of bullshit mountain doesn't need no information.

 

[Wilsongt]

absolutely disgusting.. what information is he basing this on?

Rupert Murdoch
777crash confirms jihadists turning to make trouble for China. Chance for US to make common cause, befriend China while Russia bullies.

https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/statuses/442680012630945792

Fuck Murdoch and his entire empirez

 

[Mononoke]

If this was terrorism, as some believe, wouldn't someone be taking credit by now?

Not if it's a single person. We always equate acts of terror with groups or cells.

 

[CREMSteve]

it seem that they really found parts of the plane.. the media is waiting for Malaysia Airline to confirm

Anything further on this development?

 

[mercenar1e]

Anything further on this development?

its currently 10:59 PM in Vietnam. i don't think the boats made it out to that area just yet but we should be getting new developments later today.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/09/malaysia-airlines-missing-plane-investigation-widens-live

Too dark to confirm possible plane wreckage, officials say
Officials are waiting until daylight in Vietnam to send more aircraft to the site where a navy plane has found fragments thought to belong to the missing Malaysian Airlines aircraft.

Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority said it was too dark to be certain the object in waters off southern Vietnam was part of the missing plane, Reuters reports. It is 10.06pm local time in Hanoi.

It’s important to add that the possible sighting – news of which emerged in the last half an hour – has not yet been confirmed by Kuala Lumpur or Malaysian Airlines.

 

[breakfuss]

What, so they're going to wait another 10 hours for sunrise? They don't have spotlights?

 

[Finaika]

Why aren't they using torchlights?

 

[Slayer-33]

What, so they're going to wait another 10 hours for sunrise? They don't have spotlights?

Probably best to have all resources searching at optimal times.

 

[davepoobond]

What, so they're going to wait another 10 hours for sunrise? They don't have spotlights?

That's how it works man

 

[Imm0rt4l]

That image is weird to me. Why would someone share something so personal?

My thoughts as well

 

[mercenar1e]

What, so they're going to wait another 10 hours for sunrise? They don't have spotlights?

Spotlights won't help, they don't know how large/scattered the debris is.. My best guess is that going in now could possibly destroy evidence

 

[delta25]

I'm getting some major Close Encounters of the Third Kind vibes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXiCKn1HCR4

but in all seriousness, my prayers go out to all the families involved.

 

[Daria]

Also from Bild.de:

Relatives were able to establish a connection to a mobile phone on the missing plane. It rang once before the connection was aborted.

Lets hope they are able to locate the plane with data of the connection.

I don't believe it. The 777 was not equipped with wifi and they were no phones in the plane. And they were in the middle of water at 35,000 feet, they wouldn't be able to get any sort of signal.

If this was terrorism, as some believe, wouldn't someone be taking credit by now?

Not necessarily. It could've been a single acting person or small group that is not related to any extremists.

----

Someone earlier posted about the communications that another pilot had with MH370, those reports are false. The pilot did NOT have communications with the plane before communication lost. That report was confirmed last night.