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[KHarvey16]

This is blowing my mind right now. Just tried it watching a Qantas plane fly overhead and it overlaid perfectly. What kind of wizardry!?

It's super cool when it matches perfectly. It doesn't always but it's usually close enough!

Wall Street Journal ‏@WSJ 3m
Breaking: U.S. investigators suspect Malaysia flight 370 was airborne hours after vanishing http://on.wsj.com/O0q8sO

Interesting. That engine data could be very useful even aside from knowing how long the engines were spinning.

 

[toxicgonzo]

This is getting more and more bizarre! I can't stop F5ing this crap

 

[NYCmetsfan]

If the plane was flying for hours afterwards I'm not expecting them to find this thing any time soon.

Also if they can know the engines were working why not send location data. And why can pilots turn of the other beacons. What is the purpose of that?

 

[Darren870]

Weren't hijackings pretty common in the 70s?

Yea, but it was the 90's!

 

[MGR]

Wall Street Journal ‏@WSJ 3m
Breaking: U.S. investigators suspect Malaysia flight 370 was airborne hours after vanishing http://on.wsj.com/O0q8sO

Could somebody kindly post the text of the article?

*edit* Paid subscription site. Nevermind.

 

[Mononoke]

If it wasn't a hijacking, why would they fly 5 hours, instead of just turning around and going back to the airport? Or if communications were down, that also means their own radar/coordinates would be down too? (So they were flying blindly?)

 

[KHarvey16]

The Rolls Royce monitoring systems actually uses ACARS to relay engine data I believe, which means it must have been functioning if they actually have data.

 

[Pandemic]

Could somebody kindly post the text of the article?

Need to subscribe, but theguardian.com have quoted them with,

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

Source

 

[luoapp]

The Rolls Royce monitoring systems actually uses ACARS to relay engine data I believe, which means it must have been functioning if they actually have data.

yes, it's covered here, but the timing isn't right. http://www.newscientist.com/article...ngine-data-before-vanishing.html#.UyE4PlSC09I

This would suggest no concrete data is to hand. But New Scientist understands that the maker of the missing Boeing 777's Trent 800 engines, Rolls Royce, received two data reports from flight MH370 at its global engine health monitoring centre in Derby, UK, where it keeps real-time tabs on its engines in use. One was broadcast as MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the other during the 777's climb out towards Beijing.

 

[Darren870]

If it wasn't a hijacking, why would they fly 5 hours, instead of just turning around and going back to the airport? Or if communications were down, that also means their own radar/coordinates would be down too? (So they were flying blindly?)

Could have been like Helios Flight 522

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

However, I would have assumed someone would have seen the plane coming into their airspace.

 

[Chris R]

And going west, all flights to China, Japan, and Korea will travel north first.

Yep, almost all of them fly over my head here in Alaska.

 

[Munin]

It's super cool when it matches perfectly. It doesn't always but it's usually close enough!

Isn't the "hold up camera to plane" part just a gimmick because it presumably merely looks up the flight closest to your current GPS location?

 

[Pandemic]

Could somebody kindly post the text of the article?

*edit* Paid subscription site. Nevermind.

Here's a few further details,

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

The investigators believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn't produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

The investigation remains fluid, and it isn't clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or espionage. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven't ruled it out.

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose."

That last paragraph is very interesting..

 

[FyreWulff]

Well TIL that Rolls Royce is monitoring every plane in the sky's engines (that uses theirs, anyway) in real time on their own, separate from the pilots/airline.

 

[KHarvey16]

yes, it's covered here, but the timing isn't right. http://www.newscientist.com/article...ngine-data-before-vanishing.html#.UyE4PlSC09I

The article starts off saying at least two transmissions, and then suggests later that a flight that ended around 1:30 wouldn't be long enough to send a third. Of course though if it continued on for hours it would have the opportunity to send more (again assuming ACARS was functioning). 5 hours is a very specific claim to make.

 

[NateDrake]

Here's a few further details,


That last paragraph is very interesting..

If that is the case.....what happened to the passengers?

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

The rest of that video is so sad. The people drowned, ironically (and tragically) because of their life vests

After watching I would never inflate early, was he thrown strapped in his seat and it floated?

 

[Forsete]

I'm going with loss of cabin pressure. This is too weird now. :-/

 

[Jack Scofield]

This reminds me of the end of Contact.

 

[Antiochus]

Here's the full text. Such an important story deserves to be told in full

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn't produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

The investigation remains fluid, and it isn't clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or espionage. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven't ruled it out.

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose."

As of Wednesday it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of miles from where an international search effort has been focused.

In those scenarios, neither mechanical problems, pilot mistakes nor some other type of catastrophic incident caused the 250-ton plane to mysteriously vanish from radar.

The latest revelations come as local media reported that Malaysian police visited the home of at least one of the two pilots.

Boeing officials and a Malaysia Airlines official declined to comment.

The engines' onboard monitoring system is provided by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC, and it periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and aircraft movements to facilities on the ground.

Rolls-Royce couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

As part of its maintenance agreements, Malaysia Airlines transmits its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis. The system compiles data from inside the 777's two Trent 800 engines and transmits snapshots of performance, as well as the altitude and speed of the jet.

Those snippets are compiled and transmitted in 30-minute increments, said one person familiar with the system. According to Rolls-Royce's website, the data is processed automatically "so that subtle changes in condition from one flight to another can be detected."

The engine data is being analyzed to help determine the flight path of the plane after the transponders stopped working. The jet was originally headed for China, and its last verified position was half way across the Gulf of Thailand.

A total flight time of five hours after departing Kuala Lumpur means the Boeing 777 could have continued for an additional distance of about 2,200 nautical miles, reaching points as far as the Indian Ocean, the border of Pakistan or even the Arabian Sea, based on the jet's cruising speed.
Earlier Wednesday, frustrations over the protracted search for the missing plane mounted as both China and Vietnam vented their anger over what they viewed as poor coordination of the effort.

Government conflicts and national arguments over crises are hardly unique to the Flight 370 situation, but some air-safety experts said they couldn't recall another recent instance of governments publicly feuding over search procedures during the early phase of an international investigation.

Authorities radically expanded the size of the search zone Wednesday, which already was proving a challenge to cover effectively, but the mission hadn't turned up much by the end of the fifth day.

Also on Wednesday, a Chinese government website posted images from Chinese satellites showing what it said were three large objects floating in an 8-square-mile area off the southern tip of Vietnam. The objects were discovered on Sunday , according to the website, which didn't say whether the objects had been recovered or examined.

Ten countries were helping to scour the seas around Malaysia, including China, the U.S. and Vietnam. Taiwanese vessels are expected to be on the scene by Friday, with India and Japan having also agreed to join the search soon.


In all, 56 surface ships were taking part in the search, according to statements issued by the contributing governments, with Malaysia providing 27 of them. In addition, 30 fixed-wing aircraft were also searching, with at least 10 shipboard helicopters available, mostly in the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam.

China's government was especially aggrieved. More than 150 of the 239 people on board are Chinese, and family members in Beijing have at times loudly expressed their frustration over the absence of leads.

More than a dozen Chinese diplomats met with Malaysian authorities in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday as tension grew over the search.

"At present there's a lot of different information out there. It's very chaotic and very hard to verify," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a regular press briefing. "We've said as long as there is a shred of hope, you can't give up."

The day before, Beijing pointedly pressed Malaysia to accelerate its investigation, which has been hampered by false leads on suspected debris and conflicting reports on radar tracking.

Vietnam on Wednesday suspended its search flights after conflicting reports from Malaysia that authorities had tracked the plane to the Strait of Malacca before it disappeared.

Gen. Rodzali Daud, Malaysia's air force chief, denied saying he had told local media that military radar facilities had tracked the plane there, saying they were still examining all possibilities. Vietnam later resumed normal search sweeps.

Malaysian authorities divided the search area into several sectors on either side of the country, as well as areas on land.

The challenge, said Lt. David Levy, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet, isn't so much coordination as the sheer size of the area involved. The search grids are up to 20 miles by 120 miles, and ships and aircraft employ an exhaustive methodical pattern "like mowing your lawn" in their search for the plane, he said.

U.S. defense officials sought to play down any suggestion that the Malaysian government was doing a poor job with the search.

"It is not unusual for searches to take a long time, especially when you are working with limited data," one official said.

Aviation experts say the absence of an electronic signal from the plane before it disappeared from radar screens makes it difficult to pin down possible locations. Some radar data suggested the Boeing 777 might have tried to turn back to Kuala Lumpur before contact was lost, a detail that prompted a search for the plane on both sides of the Malaysian peninsula.

A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft has been searching the northern Strait of Malacca, west of Malaysia, while destroyers USS Kidd and USS Pinckney have been deploying helicopters in the Gulf of Thailand to the east.

So far the U.S., like other nations taking part in the search, has had no success. Many aviation experts are concluding that searchers might not have been looking in the right places. Even if the plane broke up in midair, it would have left telltale traces of debris in the ocean. The cracks now emerging between some of the participants in the search could make it even more difficult.

You can help search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, thanks to a website called Tomnod.com. It allows anyone to comb the area where rescue workers are searching using satellite images. The WSJ's Deborah Kan speaks to DigitalGlobe's Luke Barrington.

Diplomatic feuds over air disasters have generally erupted over the conclusions of the investigations, long after the initial search is over.

The results of the 1999 crash of an Egyptair Boeing 767 en route to Egypt from New York, which killed 217 people, spawned a dispute between Washington and Cairo that strained ties for years. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the plane's co-pilot purposely put the twin-engine jet into a steep dive and then resisted efforts by the captain to recover control before the airliner slammed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket. Egyptian authorities insisted the evidence indicated mechanical failure.

Years earlier, Washington and Paris butted heads over the investigation of an American Eagle commuter turboprop that crashed in 1994 near Roselawn, Ind. The French objected to the NTSB's conclusions that French regulators failed to take actions that could have prevented the accident.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Could have been like Helios Flight 522

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

However, I would have assumed someone would have seen the plane coming into their airspace.

That's crazy:| Never heard of this before. Sad story.

 

[luoapp]

The article starts off saying at least two transmissions, and then suggests later that a flight that ended around 1:30 wouldn't be long enough to send a third. Of course though if it continued on for hours it would have the opportunity to send more (again assuming ACARS was functioning). 5 hours is a very specific claim to make.

It says two were received.

 

[Dryk]

This is blowing my mind right now. Just tried it watching a Qantas plane fly overhead and it overlaid perfectly. What kind of wizardry!?

I noticed that all of the planes flying around Australia today are ADS-B equipped, that's why.

 

[KHarvey16]

Isn't the "hold up camera to plane" part just a gimmick because it presumably merely looks up the flight closest to your current GPS location?

I think it's whatever's in a certain radius that shows up.

Well TIL that Rolls Royce is monitoring every plane in the sky's engines (that uses theirs, anyway) in real time on their own, separate from the pilots/airline.

It sifts through the ACARS data for engine parameters for analysis at their DAC. It's a service they sell to operators.

 

[KHarvey16]

It says two were received.

The first sentence says at least two. Further in it says two but never suggests there couldn't have been more, that's simply all the source was confirming at the time.

 

[luoapp]

It sifts through the ACARS data for engine parameters for analysis at their DAC. It's a service they sell to operators.

It doesn't make sense if Malaysia is willing to disclose military information now (however unreliable) but withhold ACARS information from the beginning.

 

[Daria]

Pro tip for future WSJ links: copy the article title and search in Google. Usually will give a link that doesn't have a paywall.

 

[KHarvey16]

It doesn't make sense if Malaysia is willing to disclose military information now (however unreliable) but withhold ACARS information from the beginning.

It isn't Malaysia's data, it belongs to the airline. This is part of the process I mentioned earlier that gets frustrating for people outside the loop. This proprietary engine data requires sign offs and consent and all kinds of other things to go anywhere, and it's usually policy that it doesn't get interpreted informally since a lot is at stake.

 

[CharlieDigital]

Weren't hijackings pretty common in the 70s?

When people get pissy over the TSA, I always like to reference the Golden Era of Hijacking

Imagine air travel in the 1960s when flying the skies meant luxury. You could light up a cigarette on board and enjoy a five-star meal.

Going to the airport wasn't a hassle. There were no security screenings, and boarding a plane was just as easy as getting on a bus.

"You'd be dropped off at the curb and walk through the whole terminal onto the tarmac, to the top of the boarding stairs and sometimes onto the plane without a ticket, without showing anyone your ID," Brendan Koerner, author of The Skies Belong To Us, tells NPR's Arun Rath. "Without having your body or your luggage searched at all."

Koerner says the ease of air travel came with big consequences: People seeking money or fame would carry a gun or a bomb on board a plane and take it hostage.

By the end of the '60s, you were having 30-40 hijackings a year. There's a couple of great ones. Raffaele Minichiello, an Italian-American Marine, who had a pay dispute with the Marines, decided to solve his problem by hijacking a plane from Los Angeles to his native Italy where he was greeted as a folk hero and ended up signing a contract to star in a spaghetti Western after serving just 18 months in prison there.

A big excerpt here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/love-and-terror-in-the-golden-age-of-hijacking/

 

[Daria]

Via Breaking News

No plane debris found at spot shown by China's satellite images, Malaysian aviation chief says - @AP

 

[TEH-CJ]

Via Breaking News

wow..

 

[luoapp]

It isn't Malaysia's data, it belongs to the airline. This is part of the process I mentioned earlier that gets frustrating for people outside the loop. This proprietary engine data requires sign offs and consent and all kinds of other things to go anywhere, and it's usually policy that it doesn't get interpreted informally since a lot is at stake.

Received engine data means ACARS was working, though. Definitely not "lost contact". I have to lean to New Scientist on this one.

 

[Pandemic]

Since it's flown for 4 hours and then lost the data of the engine, is it possible for it to have not crashed, and just flown to a secretive location?

 

[KingFire]

When people get pissy over the TSA, I always like to reference the Golden Era of Hijacking



A big excerpt here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/love-and-terror-in-the-golden-age-of-hijacking/

They used to have freaking pianos on those:

 

[Twilight Gap]

Since it's flown for 4 hours and then lost the data of the engine, is it possible for it to have not crashed, and just flown to a secretive location?

But how do you hide an airplane and 239 people for a week?

 

[Totakeke]

But how do you hide an airplane and 239 people for a week?

Doesn't sound feasible, then again that is basically what's happening right now.

 

[Sectorseven]

Well now other nearby airports can refine their list of potential bogies they picked up, right?

 

[KHarvey16]

Received engine data means ACARS was working, though. Definitely not "lost contact". I have to lean to New Scientist on this one.

I agree, but new scientist hasn't contradicted any claim regarding additional data transmissions. Again they explicitly state there were at least two, which is wording that doesn't make sense if you're asserting there were only two.

 

[Pandemic]

But how do you hide an airplane and 239 people for a week?

A hangar of some sort? Maybe that's why the phones keep ringing? And didn't it have 20 employees apart of a technology company?

Just wild thinking, but anything that doesn't sound feasible, can happen. Who knew this plane could still be flying for 4 hours, undetected?

 

[Pandemic]

Missing flight could have flown as far as Australia

On Twitter, Ian Petchenik has illustrated just how far the plane could have gone in that time — potentially all the way to Australia. We should note, this map doesn’t take into account earlier reports that the plane veered to the west after it went missing. But it serves to show that the plane could have covered lots of ground if U.S. investigators’ suspicions are correct.

Source

 

[Ollie Pooch]

I guess at this point, anything could have happened. The bit about investigators potentially treating the plane as something to be 'used for another purpose' and the news about the longer flight time, you have to wonder if it has been hijacked and stolen. Completely bizarre.

 

[Twilight Gap]

Source

I was in the process of typing that somebody should make a map showing the distance the plane could have traveled, assuming it was in the air for over 4 hours.

That's a lot more space to cover. Maybe they're in a different body of water, or perhaps they're chillin' on an island somewhere.

 

[Aad]

There are a lot of uninhabitated islands in that range...

 

[MIMIC]

What the heck? So did someone (or the pilot) hijack the plane and then land it somewhere?

I posted earlier in this thread that the transponder just randomly turning off (without a distress signal) felt like foul play rather than an air disaster.

 

[luoapp]

I agree, but new scientist hasn't contradicted any claim regarding additional data transmissions. Again they explicitly state there were at least two, which is wording that doesn't make sense if you're asserting there were only two.

Yes, but two reports matches with Malaysia's claimed time of losing contact. Also New Scientist has some information on those two reports, which I assume can only be obtained by someone close to RR. What's the chance there are more but he only has access to two but not the rest?

 

[apana]

Holy shit, the plane could be in the Himalayas for all we know.

 

[jaxword]

Holy shit, the plane could be in the Himalayas for all we know.

Somehow I doubt the Chinese government would ever allow an untracked plane to fly by.

 

[WonkyPanda]

The alternative is that the plane was taken over and the passengers took it down in a revolt.

 

[Falk]

So.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_714

Which means if it doesn't involve aliens now, it will by the end of this story arc.

 

[KHarvey16]

Yes, but two reports matches with Malaysia's claimed time of losing contact. Also New Scientist has some information on those two reports, which I assume can only be obtained by someone close to RR. What's the chance there are more but he only have access to two but not the rest?

It's unlikely the source is someone with access to the data but someone who was informed of its existence. It could be the integrity of the data wasn't confirmed so nothing beyond the data that was collected while the aircraft maintained contact with ATC was mentioned or discussed at that point.