Malaysia Airlines 'loses contact with plane' (and search effort updates)

[watkinsx2]

Really - citation?  I thought they were both radio and sonar transmitters - 2k is not very deep for the open ocean - the Marianas trench is 11km deep.

 

NTSB quoted here as saying:

 

 

 

?I don?t think the range is quite five to 10 miles, but there are a lot of different factors involved. It also can be compromised if it?s buried in silt or sand.?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/malaysia-airlines-flight-recorder-beacons-send-signal-for-30-days-before-batteries-die/2014/03/11/1d1cb3d8-a8a2-11e3-b61e-8051b8b52d06_story.html

[jasondefaoite]

I don't believe the Chinese were bullshitting.  From the report I've read, they put forward a lead, and told Malaysia to NOT release it as it was NOT confirmed or known if it was a debris field.  The fantastic suits in Malaysia decided to release it anyway.

 

It was published on a Chinese website. That's how it was released.

[Mugwump00]

Ah.  Kaijus dunnit?!

[Praetor]

Black boxes would be activated, they only have a range of around 2km.

If anything, this issue is showing that there are a lot of deficiencies in airline tracking.

There are meant to be redundancies in place, yet when the transponder is switched off, all tracking is gone.

We have GPS tracking in cars, but not in planes apparently.

We can save some of the most pointless #### in the cloud.  But not plane data.

I see some really, really major changes to tracking of aircraft to come from this. 

 

As far as I'm aware, they have them.  But they are operated via the transponder, which was turned off.

 

i thought that airplanes had two redundant transponders. Also the fact that one of them was switched off after a while the flight took place is very suspicious.

[pallipdrsn0]

Nashy, on 14 Mar 2014 - 01:26, said:Nashy, on 14 Mar 2014 - 01:26, said:

It wouldn't be a stretch for the pilots to feel tired at 1am (They do get tired, the airlines just like to make you think they don't).  They fell asleep, one of them slumped on the yoke, disengaging the auto pilot, turning the airctaft, and possibly making him fall off the yoke, for the plane to keep going, and slowly decend into the ocean.

 

Actually very likely, "The MPs heard that 43% of pilots said they had fallen asleep in the cockpit, based on a survey of 500 members of the British Airline Pilots' Association (BAPA)."

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18252654

[Skiver Veteran]

Actually very likely, "The MPs heard that 43% of pilots said they had fallen asleep in the cockpit, based on a survey of 500 members of the British Airline Pilots' Association (BAPA)."

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18252654

I'm not sure if its required etc but I thought it was pretty much ok to take a nap for Pilots? I seem to remember watching one of those "air craft investigation" programmes in which the captain was woken a few times during a sleep because of "false readings".

[Nashy]

I'm not sure if its required etc but I thought it was pretty much ok to take a nap for Pilots? I seem to remember watching one of those "air craft investigation" programmes in which the captain was woken a few times during a sleep because of "false readings".

 

Absolutely not.  They should never be asleep while in control of an aircraft and responsible for people's lives.

They are meant to report fatigue, but it generally is frowned upon by airlines.  For long haul flights, there is a second crew on board so the main crew can sleep during a period of the cruise, and come back after being rested to land. 

[Skiver Veteran]

Absolutely not.  They should never be asleep while in control of an aircraft and responsible for people's lives.

They are meant to report fatigue, but it generally is frowned upon by airlines.  For long haul flights, there is a second crew on board so the main crew can sleep during a period of the cruise, and come back after being rested to land. 

We are talking about long haul flights, here in the UK, lorry drivers aren't allowed to drive for a certain amount of hours without taking a rest/sleep. Now picture a pilot on a 14 hour flight, are you telling me that it's honestly safer to force a sleep deprived pilot to stay awake rather than let the co-pilot (and aren't there 3 flight officers?) keep an eye on things whilst he has a sleep?

 

Keeping in mind that the vast majority of all flights are done on auto pilot anyway?

 

Here is a study done in 2010 on the "quality" of pilots sleep and how this person was recommending airlines did more to help pilots sleep.

 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2010.506246#.UyMUHPl_t8E 

[Dinggus]

I don't think it would be a big deal if one pilot slept while the other stayed awake. A lot of pilots are prior military, haven't they learned anything about the buddy system or at least some discipline to stay awake?

[Nashy]

We are talking about long haul flights, here in the UK, lorry drivers aren't allowed to drive for a certain amount of hours without taking a rest/sleep. Now picture a pilot on a 14 hour flight, are you telling me that it's honestly safer to force a sleep deprived pilot to stay awake rather than let the co-pilot (and aren't there 3 flight officers?) keep an eye on things whilst he has a sleep?

Keeping in mind that the vast majority of all flights are done on auto pilot anyway?

Here is a study done in 2010 on the "quality" of pilots sleep and how this person was recommending airlines did more to help pilots sleep.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2010.506246#.UyMUHPl_t8E

I wasn't trying to get into a debate about it, I was just answering your question. That's not my opinion.

The pilots are to stay awake. If they feel they can't, they tell their airline and they are grounded.

As said, long haul have two crews. The two who take off go for rest while the relief crew look after things, and then they change again for the remainder of the flight.

The suggestion that there are experts who believe pilots should be able to sleep while in control of an aircraft is very alarming and puzzling for me.

[Nashy]

I missed a q, Sorry.

Modern planes have a captain and a first officer. You nay have a second officer on board. Im not sure if the relief crews are referred to as SO while not on the flight deck or not Sorry.

Note. Spelling and grammar maybe wild. I'm mobile on a newish phone, and am still getting the hang of this keyboard.

[Skiver Veteran]

I wasn't trying to get into a debate about it, I was just answering your question. That's not my opinion.

The pilots are to stay awake. If they feel they can't, they tell their airline and they are grounded.

As said, long haul have two crews. The two who take off go for rest while the relief crew look after things, and then they change again for the remainder of the flight.

The suggestion that there are experts who believe pilots should be able to sleep while in control of an aircraft is very alarming and puzzling for me.

I think we are getting our wires crossed slightly, im not trying to suggest that pilots sleep in their seats etc, its shift work so as one pilot goes for a break another takes over etc which is where my question of a "second office" came in because again, I thought they had to have two people at the controls at all times.

Personally I find the opposite alarming, I know how I am after long days so to have a pilot at the controls for 14 hours + and then being given the job of landing me safely, I'd much rather they had a sleep in between.

 

I missed a q, Sorry.

Modern planes have a captain and a first officer. You nay have a second officer on board. Im not sure if the relief crews are referred to as SO while not on the flight deck or not Sorry.

Note. Spelling and grammar maybe wild. I'm mobile on a newish phone, and am still getting the hang of this keyboard.

np :)

[Hum]

Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.

 

The radar data doesn't show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.

 

[pallipdrsn0]

Anyone know of an image of where the satellite communication (satcom) antenna adapter is on an Boeing 777?

 

http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/us-student-s-clue-for-missing-flight-goes-viral-1.1303883?utm_content=1.1303883&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=Feeds&utm_campaign=US_student%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%99s_clue_for_missing_flight_goes_viral&localLinksEnabled=false&utm_term=News_RSS_feed

 

But the theory doesn't really answer why the plane supposedly was off-course (or going to); and when the plane is in trouble during a late-night flight isn't there an alarm that goes off to wake up the passengers? And surely the plane must have had enough fuel to get it to it's destination? And surely oxygen masks are also employed for the pilots? ......and don't call me Shirley ;)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5t5_O8hdA

 

If his theory holds true then I sure am glad to not be a stockholder of Boeing

[macoman]

Missing Malaysia plane MH370 'may have fallen victim to pirates'

 

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have been ?an act of piracy? and the possibility that its hundreds of passengers are being held at an unknown location has not been ruled out, US investigators have said.

Seven days after the Boeing 777 vanished en route to Beijing with 239 people on board, officials are examining the possibility the flight was deliberately steered off course and landed by an unknown hijacker.

There have been claims that the plane flew on for more than five hours after it disappeared in the early hours of Saturday. In theory, MH370 could have flown more than 2,200 nautical miles, meaning it may have reached as far as the Indian border with Pakistan.

As an international fleet of more than 50 ships pushed further into the Indian Ocean to search for signs of a crash, US and Malaysian investigators believe ?human intervention? could have played a role in the disappearance.

 

US authorities believe the aircraft continued to send faint transmissions, or ?pings?, for several hours after the flight was last in contact with the ground.

The pings, sent automatically by the 777?s internal systems, raise the possibility that the flight was still airborne but that whoever was in control had deliberately severed contact with the ground.

Data from military satellites also suggest that the MH370 was flying over the west coast of Malaysia, hundreds of miles off its intended course north-east to China, Reuters reported, citing two sources close to the investigation. The military radar, more powerful than its civilian counterparts, suggests that the plane may have been following a series of established ?way points? ? geographic turning points used by pilots to navigate their course.

The flight reportedly disappeared off military radar as it flew north-west of Malaysia towards the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian territory made up of 572 small islands in the Indian Ocean.

Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian transport and defence minister, refused to comment on the military radar reports but said his country was ?following all leads?. He said that police had not yet searched the home of Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the experienced Malaysia airlines captain of MH370.

The respected aviator built a personal flight simulator at his house on the edge of Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.

The hijacking theory is just one of many competing possibilities as investigators remain baffled how the airliner could have disappeared without trace.

While the naval search for the MH370 began in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, evidence that the flight remained airborne for hours after it was last seen has led to a massive expansion of the search grid.

A fleet of 57 ships from 13 different countries is now actively hunting through the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, where the average depth is 13,000 feet ? nearly 10 times deeper than the Gulf of Thailand.

The Indian navy is taking the lead on the land and water search around the Andaman Islands. The population of 380,000 is spread across only 37 of the islands, making it possible that the aircraft crashed on land without being noticed. Many of the islanders have little contact with the outside world and some of its tribes are considered among the most isolated people on the planet.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10699611/Missing-Malaysia-plane-MH370-may-have-fallen-victim-to-pirates.html
 

[DocM]

Not novel, there were many "skyjackings" in the 1970's before security was tightened and the various national Sky Marshal-like services were established.

[Hum]

Anyone know of an image of where the satellite communication (satcom) antenna adapter is on an Boeing 777?

 

[bonalste]

I wasn't trying to get into a debate about it, I was just answering your question. That's not my opinion.

The pilots are to stay awake. If they feel they can't, they tell their airline and they are grounded.

As said, long haul have two crews. The two who take off go for rest while the relief crew look after things, and then they change again for the remainder of the flight.

The suggestion that there are experts who believe pilots should be able to sleep while in control of an aircraft is very alarming and puzzling for me.

Sorry, you're both mistaken. It isn't just relief crews that enable pilots to sleep, and you do not require two people to be awake in the flight deck at the same time. There are rules set out that stipulate sleeping requirements that are based on decades of research stipulating the arrangements that are to be made for a pilot to sleep. I am talking a two-man crew - captain and first officer - with no relief pilots. Just the two of them in the flight deck, with one of them sleeping in their seat. Rules are as such:

Either the cabin crew need to be notified that one of the pilots is sleeping or an alarm needs to be set. The cabin crew must check on the pilots every 20 minutes if they are notified. Actually they should do this anyway, regardless of whether they have been notified of anybody sleeping. Sleeping, in aviation, is termed as "controlled rest"

Such controlled rest will last for no more than 40 minutes, will not begin until the aircraft is in the Cruise stage of flight and will end not less than 30 minutes prior to top of descent (the end of the cruise stage of flight). In some airlines, crew taking controlled rest will be required to then complete a fatigue form, which will be collected to provide data on general levels of fatigue throughout the airline and the industry, as well as for use in human factors investigation at any prior date. Too many of these forms being filled in will result in a meeting with management to discuss any issues, and if unresolved a doctor may get involved. However, do not be mistaken that what you have said is fact. You are, I am afraid, totally wrong. I am an airline pilot. A first officer flying 2-crew Airbus A320's. I haven't taken controlled rest. Although there have been times when maybe It would have been appropriate. Many, MANY captains that I have flown with do. Some do so consistently. Controlled rest is an ESSENTIAL aspect of airline safety. If such a requirement that somebody felt tired and needed a nap were to make somebody become grounded, nobody would ever admit to feeling tired and so people would be falling asleep in an 'uncontrolled' manner, I.e. Both pilots at the same time with no controls in place to minimise disruption to the sleeper's ability to operate afterwards and no checks in place to ensure that they indeed wake up again. Controlled rest, I will say again, is essential to safety. What you suggest would be inherently dangerous.

Sorry, I've been lurking on these forums for a little bit but felt compelled to register to make this point. Pilots get a lot of flak (such as the myth that someone said earlier about 90% of accidents being caused by pilot error - a mixture of fabrication, exaggeration and lack of understanding of event chains and aircraft and crew dynamics) and much of it is unwarranted. Tell me, would you rather your loved ones were flying on an aircraft where two competent crew were well rested because of realistic sleeping regulations, or where both pilots were exhausted because neither was prepared to risk being grounded by admitting it?

[Krome]

BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have detected a "seafloor event" near the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam, an area suspected to be linked with the missing Malaysian jetliner MH370, a university announced on Friday.

 

The event occurred at about 2:55 a.m. local time on Saturday, about one and a half hours after the plane's last definitive sighting on civilian radar, according to a research group on seismology and physics of the earth's interior under the University of Science and Technology of China.

 

The area, 116 km northeast from where the last contact with the Boeing plane was recorded, used to be a non-seismic region, the group said.

 

"The seafloor event could have been caused by the plane possibly plunging into the sea," the research group said.

 

The location of the event was identified based on records of two seismographs located in Malaysia.

 

If the data is proved to be linked to the missing flight, "the strength of the earthquake wave indicates the plunge was catastrophic," according to the research group.

 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-03/14/c_133186204.htm

Sorry Hum, but that story of that news sounds so BS.  How da hell a seismographs can register a disturbance by the plane and not from the oil rig?  The Chinese just lost all its credibility on this event.

[Praetor]

Sorry Hum, but that story of that news sounds so BS.  How da hell a seismographs can register a disturbance by the plane and not from the oil rig?  The Chinese just lost all its credibility on this event.

 

honestly, i think the only real and true explanation of what happened is on the black boxes. Other than that, it's all conjecture, speculation and misinformation.

 

snipped.

 

bonalste: as an airline pilot, what is your opinion of what happened in this case? just curious.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Sorry, I've been lurking on these forums for a little bit but felt compelled to register to make this point.

 

Welcome aboard. :)

[The Evil Overlord]

Welcome aboard. :)

Dude, of all the threads to make aircraft puns......?

[Mugwump00]

Could someone explain how a transponder, being switched off, overrides civilian radar's ability to detect a large aircraft?   It seems it's disappearance from radar doesn't automatically mean it plummeted or disintegrated, and now many believe it just went on, quietly.  Is civilian radar oblivious to non-transponder equipment objects? How can that be safe?

[Dot Matrix]

Could someone explain how a transponder, being switched off, overrides civilian radar's ability to detect a large aircraft?   It seems it's disappearance from radar doesn't automatically mean it plummeted or disintegrated, and now many believe it just went on, quietly.  Is civilian radar oblivious to non-transponder equipment objects? How can that be safe?

There's primary and secondary radars. McKay might be able to explain it better... Look back through the thread and you'll find them.

[bonalste]

bonalste: as an airline pilot, what is your opinion of what happened in this case? just curious.

I'm of the same opinion as you. Without facts, we may as well pull theories out of a hat. With uncertainty over the aircraft's direction and duration of travel, there is a vast area to cover to find a relatively small amount of wreckage. It is a needle in a proverbial haystack. I don't know much about the 777 systems, but there may be an electrical fault that could have disabled the transponder, ACARS and VHF/HF comms. Many things, such as avionics fires, can cause unusual effects with regards to electronics. Some fault in the wiring could have short circuited some systems. I don't know. The time lag between the loss of ACARS and the loss of transponder is unusual, true, but could be explained by a wiring fault, causing the loss of the initial system, followed by a fire a short time later. This is all total speculation. I have no idea about the 777 systems and how they interact, but coming from an almost entirely electronic aircraft, I know how messy those systems can be.

One thing I will say regards terrorism from either passengers or pilots. A pilot will know how to disable ACARS, but an untrained passenger will not. ACARS disappeared before the transponder. Now the transponder can be turned off with ease and anybody who has played flight sim or had a trial lesson in a Cessna will know how to do this. Most people with an interest in aviation will also know how important the transponder is to tracking, but not too many people have heard of an ACARS. So, I ask: if a passenger terrorist took over the aircraft, how did they know that they needed to disable ACARS, and how to do so, but they forgot about the transponder of nearly fifteen minutes? if a pilot terrorist took the aircraft, why did they wait so long to disable the transponder when that is far more useful for providing tracking information? Perhaps there is a different reason the ACARS was the first system targeted to switch off, but I find it odd. So while I'm once again stating that I have literally no idea whatsoever what caused this incident and won't profess to do so until the investigative teams provide their findings, I will say that the degradation in communication from the various systems on board the aircraft are not necessarily indicative of terrorism. I'm not saying it isn't terrorism, just that it's not usually useful to jump to conclusions until the facts are in.

Welcome aboard. :)

Oh dear! That was actually a good, subtle pun which I didn't notice immediately. Thanks!

Could someone explain how a transponder, being switched off, overrides civilian radar's ability to detect a large aircraft? It seems it's disappearance from radar doesn't automatically mean it plummeted or disintegrated, and now many believe it just went on, quietly. Is civilian radar oblivious to non-transponder equipment objects? How can that be safe?

Imagine you are in a dark room and you throw a glass of water in a wide arc around you to see if anybody, or anything, is around you (in this scenario, you are in need of fetching a mop and bucket afterwards). Now, some of that water might splash back onto you, and this will tell you that there's something there, but it won't tell you a huge amount except for the general size of the object based on how much water gets splashed back. But imagine that you splashed another person who had orders that, were he splashed, he would splash you back in the same direction with a type of liquid specific to them. This would tell you that there is a person there and also who it is, based on the liquid. Presumably everyone has a towel handy.

Transponders work in to similar way. When a primary radar hits an aircraft, or any object, that radio wave will reflect off of the skin of the aircraft and back to the transmitter on the ground. In the scenario above, the splashback. This gives the radar operator information about bearing and distance, but to receive a more detailed response which includes a unique identifier the transponder operates a secondary surveillance radar - a transmitted signal that sends this information to the ground station upon interrogation by a primary radar. In other words, when the radar on the ground pings the aircraft, the aircraft pings it back with its name and altitude. With the transponder off, the return signal is fully dependant on the strength of the return (which will be less than that of a signal sent from the SSR) and loses quite a bit of information if it does get received.