Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane

[Mavric]

If I had to guess, and it is just an uneducated guess, I think the plane decompressed and everyone died almost instantly. I basis this off the possibility that it may have flown 7 plus hours and that the plane had about 8 hours worth of fuel on departure. This does not account for the varying altitudes that may have occurred(maybe autopilot?), transponders being turn off (no clue, maybe faulty wiring?), or the plane's change in flight plan(no clue). Don't air traffic controllers continuously monitor planes? Aren't all aircraft a blimp on someone's radar screen? It's a little alarming that this plane could get off its recorded flight plan and no one would know.

 

In my mind, terrorism is not the first probability because no radical group has stepped forward to take responsibility. It's a little like the old adage of "if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears It, did it make a sound?" What good would hijacking a plane do if the rest of the world doesn't know who did it?

I don't think decompression because of the altitude and course changes. If anything, it would have continued toward China. Plus, someone turned the transponders. Someone wanted the plane to go somewhere else.

 

Lack of claim of responsibility is my biggest hangup with terrorism as well but wouldn't rule out a pilot or passenger - unaffiliated with a larger group - from going off the deep end.

[zoogs]

This whole thing is so weird. I didn't pay much attention at first, but now I'm starting to get transfixed.

[krc1995]

Would a cell phone have service from those areas and altitudes? If the plane was hijacked for hours it seems to me that a few of the passengers would have found a way to make a call if their phones would work. Maybe they didn't know it had been hijacked? I don't know- weird stuff.

[Mavric]

Would a cell phone have service from those areas and altitudes? If the plane was hijacked for hours it seems to me that a few of the passengers would have found a way to make a call if their phones would work. Maybe they didn't know it had been hijacked? I don't know- weird stuff.

There have been reports of people calling cell phones of passengers and having them ring but no one answer. The speculation being that the cell phones are still active but have been confiscated. Others have denied this is happening.

[ZRod]

I could still see decompression as a possibility. If they were getting hypoxia they could been confused and started switching dials and such to turn the transponder off and change the heading without knowing exactly what they were doing. But like CNN it's just speculation.

 

I'm curious about GPS. Don't these planes use it as a navigation option? And if so is there no way to check communication with the satellites and triangulate another last known contact area?

[Mavric]

I could still see decompression as a possibility. If they were getting hypoxia they could been confused and started switching dials and such to turn the transponder off and change the heading without knowing exactly what they were doing. But like CNN it's just speculation.

 

I'm curious about GPS. Don't these planes use it as a navigation option? And if so is there no way to check communication with the satellites and triangulate another last known contact area?

I don't know for sure but I would be pretty surprised if you can turn off all the communications by flipping the wrong switches on the dashboard. I would think those would be located elsewhere. And with that many people on board - even just the number of crew members - surely they all wouldn't have dropped exactly at once such that no one could have at least radioed that something weird was going on.

 

The planes are flown by GPS. That is what is speculated was being used to fly west as they were still flying along normal air traffic corridors. But GPS is a one-way communication. The satellites send out signals and whatever device is receiving the signals figures out where it is by comparing the signals. Nothing is sent back to the satellites.

[Mavric]

Someone deliberately diverted Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and shut down communications with the ground, and the jetliner continued flying for six hours, Malaysia's prime minister said Saturday. The announcement shifted the focus of the investigation to the crew and passengers on the plane, which has now been missing for more than a week.

 

Prime Minister Najib Razak's statement also meant the flight path of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to Beijing could have strayed as far as the southern Indian Ocean or northwest to Kazakhstan, complicating the work of search crews who already have been scouring vast stretches of ocean seeking the plane's 12-person crew and 227 passengers.

 

Police on Saturday told CBS News that the homes of all of the jetliner's flight crew were searched after being under surveillance for the last few days. Authorities have said they will be investigating the pilots as part of their probe, but have released no information about how they are progressing.

 

"Clearly the search for (Flight) MH370 has entered a new phase," Najib said at a televised news conference.

 

Experts have previously said that whoever disabled the plane's communication systems and then flew the jet must have had a high degree of technical knowledge and flying experience. One possibility they have raised was that one of the pilots wanted to commit suicide.

CBS

[ZRod]

I could still see decompression as a possibility. If they were getting hypoxia they could been confused and started switching dials and such to turn the transponder off and change the heading without knowing exactly what they were doing. But like CNN it's just speculation.

 

I'm curious about GPS. Don't these planes use it as a navigation option? And if so is there no way to check communication with the satellites and triangulate another last known contact area?

I don't know for sure but I would be pretty surprised if you can turn off all the communications by flipping the wrong switches on the dashboard. I would think those would be located elsewhere. And with that many people on board - even just the number of crew members - surely they all wouldn't have dropped exactly at once such that no one could have at least radioed that something weird was going on.

I always thought it was kind of like being drunk, so you never really know what might happen.

[Mavric]

I could still see decompression as a possibility. If they were getting hypoxia they could been confused and started switching dials and such to turn the transponder off and change the heading without knowing exactly what they were doing. But like CNN it's just speculation.

 

I'm curious about GPS. Don't these planes use it as a navigation option? And if so is there no way to check communication with the satellites and triangulate another last known contact area?

I don't know for sure but I would be pretty surprised if you can turn off all the communications by flipping the wrong switches on the dashboard. I would think those would be located elsewhere. And with that many people on board - even just the number of crew members - surely they all wouldn't have dropped exactly at once such that no one could have at least radioed that something weird was going on.

I always thought it was kind of like being drunk, so you never really know what might happen.

I agree. It's not impossible. But I just think that they'd have to be far enough out of their normal positions that it would be very unlikely.

 

And basically everything now says the plane not only few for several hours but continued changing course and elevation. From what I remember from the Payne Stewart plane decompression, they went unconscious over the course of a few minutes or for sure less than an hour. The plane just flew straight until it ran out of fuel. That doesn't seem like what happened here.

[ZRod]

I could still see decompression as a possibility. If they were getting hypoxia they could been confused and started switching dials and such to turn the transponder off and change the heading without knowing exactly what they were doing. But like CNN it's just speculation.

 

I'm curious about GPS. Don't these planes use it as a navigation option? And if so is there no way to check communication with the satellites and triangulate another last known contact area?

I don't know for sure but I would be pretty surprised if you can turn off all the communications by flipping the wrong switches on the dashboard. I would think those would be located elsewhere. And with that many people on board - even just the number of crew members - surely they all wouldn't have dropped exactly at once such that no one could have at least radioed that something weird was going on.

I always thought it was kind of like being drunk, so you never really know what might happen.

I agree. It's not impossible. But I just think that they'd have to be far enough out of their normal positions that it would be very unlikely.

CNN showed in a simulator where the switch is at in the center console. It's not really out of the way but you have to turn it all the way for it to be off.

[Hooked on Huskers]

 

Interesting. My guess, police was searching numerous files called http://www.fs-recorder.net/, a Microsoft FS add-on (free download). Just like post-game film room or CVR CD disk.

 

I could still see decompression as a possibility. If they were getting hypoxia they could been confused and started switching dials and such to turn the transponder off and change the heading without knowing exactly what they were doing. But like CNN it's just speculation.

 

I'm curious about GPS. Don't these planes use it as a navigation option? And if so is there no way to check communication with the satellites and triangulate another last known contact area?

Very easy to switch off GPS (transponder and radios too) in dashboard switches, both real one and MS simulator.

 

Stay tuned

[tschu]

What are the odds that this plane ever gets found? It's likely to be *somewhere* in the Indian Ocean, which has a depth of 5 miles in places, and the search area is literally millions of square miles unless some radical new information surfaces. It has to be like a 100-1 longshot.

[ZRod]

What are the odds that this plane ever gets found? It's likely to be *somewhere* in the Indian Ocean, which has a depth of 5 miles in places, and the search area is literally millions of square miles unless some radical new information surfaces. It has to be like a 100-1 longshot.

Somebody get James Cameron and Robert Ballard on the phone!

[Mavric]

MAS Airlines flight MH370 dropped to an altitude of 5,000 feet, or possibly lower, to defeat commercial (secondary) radar coverage after it turned back from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on March 8.

 

Investigators are poring over the Boeing 777-200ER's flight profile to determine if it had flown low and used "terrain masking" during most of the eight hours it was missing from the radar coverage of possibly at least three countries.

 

Top officials, who make up the technical team that had been holed up from morning till late at night here, are looking at the possibility that the jetliner, carrying 239 people, had taken advantage of the busy airways over the Bay of Bengal. By sticking to commercial routes, the flight may not have raised the suspicion of those manning primary (military) radars of the nations it overflew. To them, MH370 would appear to be just another commercial aircraft on its way to its destination.

 

"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," said officials.

 

"It's possible that the aircraft had hugged the terrain in some areas, that are mountainous to avoid radar detection."

 

This technique is called terrain masking and is used by military pilots to fly to their targets stealthily, using the topography to mask their approach from prying microwaves. This type of flying is considered very dangerous, especially in low-light conditions and spatial disorientation, and airsickness could easily set in. The stresses and loads it puts on the airframe, especially an airliner of the 777's size, are tremendous.

Full Article

[StPaulHusker]

Ironically, I am reading a book about a stolen 727.

 

The plane/pilots did the same thing as what was just written above. The book was written 10 years ago.

 

I tend to wonder that if it didn't crash, it was stolen for human trafficking and the plane used for parts on the black market.