News and theories about the missing Malaysian plane

another couple of weeks then the search will wind down after the politicans have milked it for what its worth and the global media move onto more pressing matters like what have brad and angelina been up to or what the kardashians are wearing.

 

There's often misquotation to adjust history, sometimes inadvertently (?) caused by a sloppy translation, this is an infamous one . . .

‘‘ All ships - follow me ’’​

Which was signalled by the Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman, when he tried to regroup after a good part of his squadron already was shot to pieces in the Battle of the Java Sea, was for the sake of history writing misquoted into . . .

‘‘ I attack, follow me ’’​

The Dutch Navy even made a recruitment poster with the wrong version of Doorman's order . . .

- - click pic to enlarge​

P.S.

Not so smart these instructions which were issued by Supreme Command ABDACOM, so by misquotation the Dutch made a hero out of Doorman after after this orders caused he and many of his troops were killed in action and almost all ships of his allied squadron were lost . . .

 

777 check captain says only human input could put MH370 on its fateful course
The disappearance of flight MH370 could have only involved human input according to a veteran Boeing 777 check captain.
Speaking exclusively with AirlineRatings.com the check captain said given the facts we know, that MH370 ended its flight in southern Indian Ocean, “human input was essential.”
“We are not dealing with an out of control plane.
“It is impossible for the Boeing 777 to fly this course by itself,” said the check captain.
"It required a pilot or someone with knowledge of the 777 flight systems."
MH370 made three course changes and at least two altitude changes according to the Malaysian military.
“To change course requires the pilot to either disengage the Flight Management Computer and dial in a new heading to the autopilot/flight director or fly manually”
The plane apparently increased its altitude from 35,000ft to 45,000ft according to returns to Malaysian military radar before descending as low as 5,000ft.
“This would have required input to reselect altitude in the autopilot/flight director or manually to fly the plane and typically reduce engine thrust.”
MH370 then made two more turns the first to the north-west and then due south.
According to the check captain the 777 would have had to climb back to 35,000ft as it would never have reached the southern Indian Ocean with the fuel load it had onboard.
“At say 12,000ft it burn 8 tons of fuel an hour but we can only fly at a top speed of 340kts (629km/hr).”
“But at 35,000ft we would burn 7 tons of fuel an hour and fly at 480kts (890km/hour),” said the check captain.
If MH370 had remained at say 12,000ft it would have only reached Carnarvon.
When MH370 ran out of fuel and if nobody was in control the Boeing 777 would not have glided down slowly according to the check captain.
“With no power and no-one flying it would have gone into a spiral and straight down possibly reaching supersonic speeds.”
“Parts would have started to break off - like aerilons and trim tabs.”
The 777 could have also gone into a flat spin.
There would have been standby battery power for critical functions.
However, within one minute of the engines quitting the plane’s auxiliary power unit located in the tail, with its own fuel supply, would have started automatically and brought full power back to the electrical and cabin systems.
This may account for the final partial ping from the plane picked up by Inmarast at 8.19am.
No response was received from the aircraft at 9.15am, when the ground earth station sent the next log on / log off message or ping.
This indicates that the plane was no longer logged on to the network and is consistent with the limit of its range with its fuel load.
The check captain noted that all the course changes could have all be re-programmed at the same time but the altitude changes could not.

..........from this website:

http://www.airlineratings.com/news/264/mh370-only-human-input

 

Interesting story. Must have been a shortage of successful commanders in the the Dutch navy to use as a poster boy. I do recall an old poem or song about a certain Van Tromp "an admiral brave and bold", which wasn't particularly flattering !

 

He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.
Demosthenes, 338 B.C.

 

There's been a whole string of conspiracy theories from various sources, many official. Early reports claimed that only a trained pilot could have changed MH370's route. More recently reports say MH370 flew a course around Indonesian airspace to avoid detection; an earlier theory had the plane following another aircraft closely to avoid detection. Currently there are reports of beacons "pings" from multiple positions hundreds of miles apart. There seems to be a great deal of confusion, it's no wonder there are conspiracy theories popping up all over the place.

Personally I distrust conspiracy theories, they seem to propagate by cell division at an alarming rate and rarely if ever lead to a conclusion of any sort. .

I have been wondering for several weeks if the whole thing could have been a simple accident. Route waypoints are entered into the plane's navigation computer. You can't just enter the endpoint because planes fly in corridors and also the computer has to figure out navigation on a globe, so several of these waypoints are required for a given route. I understand that waypoints are identified by a short mnemonic type code There must be thousands of these waypoints required to define every possible aircraft route and the possibly exists that an incorrect point was entered at some time. After deviating from its intended route, the aircraft seems to have followed a straight path across Malasia and then turned south to skirt Indonesia and looks perhaps to have followed a constant compass heading southerly. Maybe this is what a plane's nav computer would do if mis-programmed. Pilots says "goodnight" and takes a nap, wakes up over an ocean as expected, nobody steers by the stars these days . . .

This theory satisfies the "trained pilot did it" theory and the tidy straight-line segment course that reports claim the plane followed. I doubt it would be the first time a flight crew turned off comms and took a nap on a long trip. It wouldn't be the first time a pilot hit the wrong switch and turned off something he shouldn't.

It would be nice to think the computer would generate an error indication if waypoints do not make sense, but that needs intelligence. Ah yes, that's supposed to come from the crew, right? But flight crews are trained to trust the instruments and probably have the same childlike faith in their nav computer as I do in the one on my car. Once you stop using maps you stop clancing at the Sun or Moon for conformation that you are driving in the right direction. I had a similar experience to the one I am postulating when I input an destination and shortly afterwards found myself on my way back home. It took a few minutes to realise something was wrong.

 

With epirbs required on most commercial vessels the world over why the hell isn't there something similar on planes? At least the flotsam would have been located the first day.

 

An automatically ejected epirb is a nice idea but it's really old technology and there are cheaper and better methods available that would simpler to implement on new and existing planes.

I find it difficult to understand why the existing satellite phone system cannot be harnessed for continuous monitoring of every airliner from takeoff to landing. I get a monthly report on the health of my by-no-means-expensive auto with sat radio, nav, phone, automated emergency calls all for around US$30 a month and there are certainly cheaper services out there. There are far more cars than aircraft so it can hardly be a problem of system capacity. I don't think it's a cost problem either; continuous satellite phone use runs around a buck a minute - less than the wages of a crew member - and voice could be compressed into short bursts with data being texted.

It's the 21st century, lets move on folks, time to quit searching blindly for wreckage, groping around in the depths of the ocean for a "black box" then weeks of analysing beaten-up storage media. Modern planes already have a small part of it, but is seems to be limited to engine data.

GPS location, flight data could be added simply enough and reported on a frequent continuous basis. Cockpit voice can be used to trigger burst transmissions - cell phones already do that. For new designs and existing manufacturing why not a system to detect and report short-term catastrophic events to assist crash investigators?

Reportedly pilots are resisting cockpit voice by satellite on privacy grounds. I'm not sure someone responsible for hundreds of lives is entitled to privacy - I wasn't when I worked.- but the system could easily be set up so the cockpit audio recordings are held and accessible by court order.

Oh, one last thing, if and when this gets done let's give it backup power, make it impossible for pilots to disable it, and have it report any attempt to do so. We all know the kind of World we live in today . . .

 

You'll never get the FAA or other aviation organizations to sign off on automatic deployment devices, nor any device that can't be switched off by a pilot. One situation will come up, such as a fire in or around that device and the pilot will insist on being able to switch it off.

Telemetry data is provided now, of course it can was switched off. You can't prevent these type of acts of terrorism, so making devices to cover the rather rare event of something like MH370 situation isn't prudent. It's clear intentional acts took place, just by looking at the time line of devices being turned off, so we'll have to wait, but it seems pretty obvious someone was in control and turned off devices progressively.

 

A pilot told me if it isn't on a switch the flight crew can pull a circuit breaker if the situation calls for it, like to reduce the risk of a fire when a short-circuit occurs in a device.

He said in most planes this ''pull a circuit breaker'' option even goes for the black boxes (FDR & CVR) so they stop recording, but he wasn't sure about this in a 777.

 

List of unrecovered flight recorders​

 

Pilots like to be able to pull a breaker to silence nuisance alarms, but there has been a crash or two that might have been prevented if they hadn't.

 

The majority of failed recorder recoveries are from water crashes according to that list as might be expected.

Crashes into water are a small minority. Since the majority of crashes occur during approach, landing and takeoff, most crashes are in land, and of course not all flights are over water. I suspect that even for flights over large bodies of water, most crashes are on land.

 

‘‘Pings’’ from different locations . . .

About the ‘‘pings’’ from different locations, maybe ‘‘they’’ (who ever kidnaped the plane) have dismounted the Underwater Locator Beacons and threw them out of the cockpit window on different locations, yeah I know they would lose cabin pressure but this is survivable, it would be a major distraction if the beacons are all by themself somewhere on the ocean floor.

Flight Recorder



‘‘ Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder, each with a Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB) on the front. ’’


Underwater Locator Beacon



‘‘ A Dukane DK120 model ULB attached to a bracket on a Universal Avionics CVR (length: 4 inches (10 cm)) ’’​

 

Singapore Airlines Pilot cleaning 777 cockpit window​

Maybe if they have opened a front side window to throw the beacons out some of the cabin pressure would have stayed intact, depending on what the cabin pressure is vs the pressure on the front at their cruising speed and attitude. Major task to avoid getting it sucked into the engines though, maybe put them (or one of them) off at the throw.

P.S. - Boeing Training Video - Open Window

‘‘ Boeing 737 window opening on take off and actions to take.

- Includes window operations on the B 717, 737, 757, 767, and 777. ’’​