Missing Malaysian Airlines B777

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Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 1,578

I think it was a tweet a few hours ago. Nothing official.

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

I find it saddening that many here are willing to assassinate the Captain's character simply because he lived and breathed aviation. It truly is sickening how readily you are all willing to suggest that a pilot having a simulator at home must be suspicious and ill intended!

The pilot was well known to the flight sim community. He has many hundreds if not thousands of forum posts on simming forums. He proudly posted pictures of his home simulator build and apparently also invited anyone to come along if and when in the area!
He never once tried to keep his simulator a secret. This was a guy who had been flying for 33 years and lived and breathed his job. I loved flying, he loved his job and never took it for granted. The simulator was an extension of this. He made his job his hobby.

Do these sound like the actions of someone planning an evil deed?
Why announce to the whole world you have a simulator that exactly duplicates an aircraft, if you plan to use it for nefarious plotting?
Besides, what would a home sim, running Microsoft Flight Sim X, teach a man that has 33 years of professional flying with unrivalled access to professional Level D simulators, hand books, etc under his belt?

This man is/was simply devoted to his career. He is/was the embodiment of someone "Living the dream".

I think what has happened here, is that a desperate media have picked up on an innocent hobby and twisted it into a suspicious act!

Excellent post.

Every enthusiasts here know what it is regarding the use of a Flying simulator.

However, what we have to agree is that by exposing his profession on the forums, he might have draw himself as a target for criminals or terrorist.

Regarding the on-board fire hypothesis, I completely forgot the fact that both of theses guys are smokers. Imagine simply that the co-pilot (right -hand seat) ignited a fire that way unintentionally.

Back to the fact:


Najib was briefed on the new data by investigators from two U.S. agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board. It showed with a “great degree of certainty” that its system known as Acars, which sends data and text messages to and from the ground, was turned off just before the plane passed Malaysia’s east coast, he said.

[...]

A short time later, when the jet reached the area where air traffic control passes from Malaysia to Vietnam, its transponder was also disabled, he said. Without a transponder, radar can’t identify a plane and has difficulty locating it precisely.

Source:

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Member for

17 years 1 month

Posts: 354

Seems to me as a member of the public observing this , that the only undisputable fact is that this aircraft has disappeared and that almost everything else is conjecture , assumption or speculation .

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Sunday [...] [ACARS] "was disabled before," the pilot made its last famous call: "all right, good night"

Source:

Reuter.com

It become incredibly harder to believe at a simple accident.

Member for

16 years 3 months

Posts: 403

Seems to me as a member of the public observing this , that the only undisputable fact is that this aircraft has disappeared and that almost everything else is conjecture , assumption or speculation .

What else would you expect?

Member for

15 years 5 months

Posts: 117

Watching the news reports about this, I want to ask a couple of things. If this was indeed a hijack and assuming that there are more people involved as ground support team, is it possible that the ranges that media outlets show are wrong? Or to say it another way, is it possible that with some support from people on the airfield (like forged documents or reports), the plane took off with more fuel than planed, up to it's maximum capacity? If so, and if the numbers wikipedia gives about the plane are accurate, they could have flown almost everywhere in that hemisphere.

Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions but my knowledge in commercial aviation is rather limited and this is only my own little conspiracy theory, while drinking coffee and watching TV.

Member for

20 years 5 months

Posts: 10,625

To be honest Erlindur, until we find it and solve the case, anything is possible.
We have carte blanche here.

I think we can discount a land crash. Someone would have seen or heard something about a 777 hitting the ground by now.
A small plane can disappear into the trees. A 777 would make a considerable more noticeable "mark" where it hits.

It's still quite possible the plane is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, which can been 7000 meters of more deep. If it's they, we are unlikely to ever find it.

Member for

15 years 5 months

Posts: 117

Yes you are are right of course. I just prefer the hijack scenario because I hope that the plane landed and all those people are still alive. I only raised the more fuel theory because I'm thinking Africa as a destination. The path there is relatively radar free and the east coast is filled with messed up places where you can land an aircraft and hide it. Is it possible for that plane to reach there without refueling?

Member for

11 years 2 months

Posts: 384

I have been following this and listening to the speculation as to this mystery disappearance. It is alleged the transponder was deliberately turned off. The Aircraft flew on for another 7 hrs. How do they know this? Rolls Royce who monitor in flight engine performance, it is assumed they have no knowledge of this. Also usually commercial aircraft carry just enough fuel to cover the flight. They don't fill it right up if a short haul trip. To much wasted energy getting the aircraft in the air and unnecessary extra weight on landing. The mystery deepens.

Member for

11 years 8 months

Posts: 569

Bombgone; Kuala Lumpur to Beijing is hardly "short haul". The total scheduled flight time is 6 hours, therefore a 7 hour trip with the f.o.b is entirely possible (legal minimum is 'enough to get to your scheduled destination, plus enough to divert to your alternate airport after getting to your destination, plus an additional 45 minutes flying time on top of all that). So realistically the legal minimum the flight could have had was 7:15-7:45 hours flying time, and in reality probably had much more (Malaysian Airlines isn't exactly Ryanair ;) )

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14 years 2 months

Posts: 694

Breaking news, suitcases and other debris was found by Greek oil tanker Elka Athina in the Malakka Strait.

Actually they were spotted, not found and not by the tanker, but rather by local fishermen who just assumed they were from the lost aircraft. The tanker was just the nearest vessel in the area and was ordered to assist the search effort. No luck so far.

Member for

11 years 8 months

Posts: 569

An interesting theory doing the rounds is MH370 shadowed another flight (SIA 68) another 777 at 30,000 feet bound for Barcelona. By "piggy-backing" off SIA68 it would have been able to avoid detection from primary radar by only showing up as a single dot (SIA68).

SIA68 was in the exact location, flying in the same direction, as MAS370 was when the military finally lost radar contact with the unidentified aircraft at 02:15.

An interesting little theory if nothing else, I've noticed SQ68's flight path wasn't along any of the tracks the satellite's final received ping came from though.

http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68

Member for

11 years 11 months

Posts: 498

An interesting theory doing the rounds is MH370 shadowed another flight (SIA 68) another 777 at 30,000 feet bound for Barcelona. By "piggy-backing" off SIA68 it would have been able to avoid detection from primary radar by only showing up as a single dot (SIA68).

Highly unlikely. It would need a miracle to achieve something like that, no matter how skilled the pilot. For starters, it was a night flight. Second, there's no on board air to air radar. Trying to locate, track and then manoeuvre a large aircraft next to another to reduce the RCS to appear as one under those conditions would be fraught with risks and most likely end in an air collision.

If the data from Inmarsat is to be believed, the most likely track of the aircraft is towards to the South, heading into the Indian ocean. There is no way it could have over flown the airspace of a dozen nations, heading into central Asia, without being detected and challenged to identify itself. No matter if it had its transponder turned on or off. If it was off, it would have appeared as an unidentified object and challenged to identify itself by both civilian and military air traffic control. If it had its transponder turned on, it still would have been challenged as it would appear to be an unscheduled flight in their airspace, and would be challenged to explain why it was there. And it's very unlikely that it could have evaded radar detection by flying lower. It takes low level deep strike strike aircraft like the Tornado, Jaguar and F-111 to fly nap of the Earth flight profiles to evade detection, just a few hundred feet above ground, but even that doesn't rule out low level radar detection. So an airliner sized aircraft could not evade all the radar coverage while flying over a dozen countries.

The most likely route it could have taken to evade detection is into the Malacca Strait and then around the tip of Sumatra, before turning south into the Indian ocean. That would have only briefly exposed it to a small strip of land between the Thai/Malaysian border, which would explain why the Malaysian air force didn't get enough time to confirm whether the track they saw was indeed MH370, and after which they lost track.

Member for

12 years 9 months

Posts: 4

Hello, excuse my ignorance but why is it even possible to switch a transponder off?

Member for

18 years 11 months

Posts: 8,847

It is an electrical item which may malfunction, possibly causing a fire, therefore the need to isolate it in an emergency (or a hijack).

Member for

12 years 9 months

Posts: 4

Ok, cheers for that.

Member for

15 years 9 months

Posts: 1,684

"Not too close" as Sandy BMused55 has already said in Post #175

I haven't read the whole thread, so I might be repeating something.

I wonder how close a hijacked airliner could get to Diego Garcia.

Definitely "not too close" as Sandy BMused55 has already said in post #175

If any place would have seen this coming on their radar (irrespective of the Transponder being switched off) would have been DG.

There would have been the equivalent of the UK's QRA interception long before it got even close. Likely two fighters as wingmen and one aloft and one possibly underneath taking the risk of collison (any serviceman takes that risk to defend their nation) would have steered it away or requested authority from the USDOD/Pentagon to shoot it down/shoot out it's engines.

Tough if you cannot handle the "shoot it down/shoot out it's engines" but that is how strategic DG is to all of us in the Democratic world.

Stop worrying about DG they can look after themselves.

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

B52 were trained to fly nap-of the earth flight (500 - 1000ft).

Even KC135 did train for that (Fr FAS).

If you are flying slowly (to enhance fuel consumption) it might be feasible. Don't forget that we have a top of the notch flyer supposedly behind the Joke (if he had to do that for whatever reason).

Regarding the fuel on-board, the CEO of the company clearly stated the first day that the plane took-off with a FULL fuel load. For me that's a range of nearly 15k km or on high low profile somewhat around 5/7k km.

Regarding the destination, I wonder why no-one has so far advanced Somalia. We are discussing Piracy here. They (at least the pirate that have settled themselves there) do not own the exclusivity of that activity, but still...

But I wonder what kind of charges would have faced the pilots if they had brought back a plane to Malaysia damaged by in-cockpit fire started by themselves. Let's be clear here: would have teh fear factor be so high that they attempted to land in an other country (administered by the UK/US/Fr for example)?

Member for

11 years 11 months

Posts: 498

B52 were trained to fly nap-of the earth flight (500 - 1000ft).
Even KC135 did train for that (Fr FAS).

If you are flying slowly (to enhance fuel consumption) it might be feasible. Don't forget that we have a top of the notch flyer supposedly behind the Joke (if he had to do that for whatever reason).

That's true, although military aircraft like the B-52 have specific equipment that enables them to fly so low like FLIR, NGV and terrain following radar, which are absent on airliners. Besides, the aircraft was flying at night, it would take one heck of a pilot to attempt nap of the earth flight without those aids.


Regarding the destination, I wonder why no-one has so far advanced Somalia. We are discussing Piracy here. They (at least the pirate that have settled themselves there) do not own the exclusivity of that activity, but still...

I was wondering about that myself, would the aircraft have enough fuel to get to Somalia? Besides, if it was a case of Somali piracy, wouldn't they have demanded a ransom by now? After all, it seems money is all they ever seem to be interested in.