News and theories about the missing Malaysian plane

This thread is an split off in order not to distract the one where the topic came up, so if want to respond on the missing Malaysian plane please do it here, thanks . .

 

Odds are it will remain a mystery, finding the flight recorder from it would rank as one of, if not the most difficult, assignments ever attempted.

 

I think it will be unlikely they'll find the flight recorder, let alone the main debris field of the wreckage. For example Air France 447 took two years to find and they knew exactly where to look and in much shallower water.

Unless extreme attempts are made, I do believe once some wreckage is found, they'll just settle with the families and funds for recovery efforts will slowly, but inexorably dry up. It's a much different situation than with other flights, just way too much missing. Air France 447 had a direct flight path and transponder (plus other data) to follow to the point of impact. This narrowed the search to a few hundred miles, but it still took two years to recover the black boxes. MH 370 could be anywhere in a 1/2 a billion square mile patch of the roaring 40's, in 2 mile deep water. That's way too much area to cover.

With winter coming on down there, don't expect much until next summer.

 

About eight months ago we went to recover a private plane that crashed about three miles offshore in 35 feet of water. We had the location it had gotten below the radar and the bearing from the airport tower. It still took us a full day to find it. The area and lack of information makes the search of the Malasyan plane several orders of magnitude more difficult. Also, if it hit the water hard, it got shredded. Check the attached photo.

 

Oh dear Lord, please let this thread die.......

 

I'm not sure what you're concerned about, but events like this happen, Westfield. Fortunately, for most aircraft "incidents", recovery is fairly easy, because of the vast percentage of crashes happen on landing or approach, understandably, so wreckage is obviously easy to find, typical near the end of a runway or in line with it.

Loses at sea are much less common, but with modern aircraft, tracking, data and communications transmissions usually can put a fairly fine point on the mishap location, again making finding the wreckage repetitively simple. The latest satellite images suggest a lot of possibly MH370 floating debris. This isn't a good sign. If you recall flight 800's recovery effort, off the coast of NY, lots of debris might suggest she wasn't intact when she hit. If she was intact at impact, even if they managed to keep her nose up in a ditch attempt, there'd be bigger chunks, much of which wouldn't remain on the surface long. Don't get me wrong, any ditch or impact at or near stall speeds, will shred as Gonzo put it, the jet, but if a ditch was attempted, large portions, particularly of the tail section, would have broken off whole or nearly so. Not so if she augered in, like Value Jet 592, they'll be lucky to find much if anything at all, except for some seat back cushions.

 

This story will be a long time dying Westfield, what has entered my mind is why these planes aren't equipped with some kind of EPIRB that automatically jettisons when, say, the altitude drops below 100 metres and the landing gear is not down.

 

Not the story Mr. E, but the conspiracy theories....please Lord let them die!

 

What surprised me was that hours passed after the last contact before rescue craft were dispatched.
I had previously erroneously assumed that planes' version of AIS would be monitored very closely and if one stopped communicating a response would happen after 15 to 30 minutes.

 

The plane was on the cusp of moving from one jurisdiction to another when the transponder was turned off, which may have contributed to the lack of response. Maybe the Vietnamese should have blown the whistle. Don't know. What surprises me is that after a week or more of debris sightings, not a shred has been recovered. I had to laugh at one wiseacre who explained that was because the wreckage was floating several metres down in the water column, and while visible from overhead satellites, would be hard to see at close range.

 

The search has moved to another area thousands of kilometres away. Searchers are happy because it is much closer to base. Reminds me of the man looking for the lost car keys under the streetlight, too hard to find in the dark elsewhere.

 

A well chosen moment to turn trackers off, from the perspective of those who wanted to disappear . . .

 

What I didn't like seeing in the news were stories that it was a deliberate action of the pilot and/or co-pilot.

According to earlier advice by I presumed experts, is that the plane did a sharp turn which indicated that the pilot wanted to go to the nearest airport.

If there was a problem with the electrics on the craft and a fire occurred it would have wiped out the electrics and as they were not all wiped out at the same time, it indicates the possibility of a fire spreading.

It was also suggested that the pilot's first priority is to land the plane, so turning to fly to the nearest airport would be done before radioing any distress signal. So we could assume that turned the plane to land at the nearest airport and locked it into auto pilot before radioing any distress signal.

Unfortunately with a fire comes smoke, once the cabin was full of smoke you have a plane full of dead people.

The auto pilot is still on, the plane would fly over its intended destination and then keep going until the fuel runs out, at the mercy of the elements, the reason why it flew erratically.

The same problem occurred in Australia several years ago when the cabin pressure dropped and everyone on the plane fell unconscious. The authorities new it had happened but couldn't do anything and as it was auto pilot overshot the Brisbane airport and kept going until the fuel ran out and ditched into the sea.

I feel for the relatives who went from a crash to hijacking and a chance they are alive, and now this.

I hope they find the answer soon.

Poida

 

Not likely, oxygen masks will drop as soon as a fire occurs . . .

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Sorry, I'm wrong in above post . . .

Emergency oxygen system: ‘‘ If there is a fire on board the aircraft, masks are not deployed, as the production of oxygen may further fuel the fire. ’’

Which makes me wondering if they still won't be used if the other option is dying of smoke . . .