Planes fail to find 'credible' candidate for flight MH370 wreckage Australia has sent planes to the Southern Ocean, some 2,500km south-west of Perth, after analysis of what's been described as “commercial satellite imagery” revealed large objects suspected to be debris from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. The search area, depicted below in a map released by the Australian Maritime …
"Whoever was at the controls hoped they'd create a lasting mystery"
Possible, even as part of a suicide. Suicide might trigger a non payment clause in an insurance policy. Or just bring shame down upon the family. So fly somewhere you think they won't look and if they do find wreckage, fly long enough so the cockpit voice recorder overwrites the initial cockpit takeover.
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@Chris Miller.
"but is 'only' 60 feet in height"
No, the 77 tail is considerably shorter than this. The top is roughly 60ft off the ground when standing, but of course, the bottom part of this is air under the tail!! So, the actual tail itself is considerably smaller as an object. You can't count the air underneath!! So, if the debris is 24m in size, the tail is nowhere near big enough (even allowing for measuring error) to be it.
Pilots disable passengers and crew with knockout gas.
Pilots, knowing about and by now having purloined uber expensive cargo, bail out having set auto pilot to send plane to the most remote place possible.
Pilots quietly disappear and live life of luxury.
Now was that a conspiracy theory I heard or just a film / TV script I half remember. Maybe it was just a repeat of the D B Cooper episode.....
That is the biggest problem with this story. If it was suicide or hijacking, why did they end up in the middle of the ocean so far away. Such events usually co0incide with close proximity to cities or early/late in the planned route. Else with Hijacking to known landing areas. Neither happened in this instance, thus it's less likely than we would normally expect.
If it was suicide or hijacking, why did they end up in the middle of the ocean so far away.
We don't know that they did; this is simply a *possible* sighting of something that could *possibly* have been aircraft debris in a location that MH370 could *possibly* have gotten to. And the first aircraft on-site has failed to find anything anyway.
I'm actually rather surprised they're looking down to the South; the aircraft was clearly working its way North-East before radar contact was lost. But then there is clearly quite a bit going on that we don't know about - for example, the NTSB tracks are somewhat detailed considering the paucity of data that's been released...
Vic.
"for example, the NTSB tracks are somewhat detailed considering the paucity of data that's been released..."
Indeed so. We seem to have to extract the information from the various bodies rather than it being given. I get the distinct impression they know a lot more than they're saying. As I said earlier, the Malaysian minister etc. all look as shifty as you can get. They always seem to be saying as little as possible.
Then, you have the whole Malaysian peninsula crossing episode. The Malaysians were denying it, whilst the Americans were saying it happened (and were search to the west) only for it finally to be released that the Malaysians own radar provided the evidence!! At point, they were clearly lying or at best, hiding the knowledge. Why?
It all smells really bad.
"Bond is sent by M to a clinic to improve his health. While massaged by physiotherapist Patricia Fearing, he notices Count Lippe, a suspicious man with a criminal tattoo (from a Tong). He searches Lippe's room, but is seen leaving by Lippe's clinic neighbour who is bandaged after plastic surgery. Lippe tries to murder Bond with a spinal traction machine, but is foiled by Fearing, whom Bond then seduces. Bond finds a dead bandaged man, François Derval. Derval was a French NATO pilot deployed to fly aboard an Avro Vulcan loaded with two atomic bombs for a training mission. He had been murdered by Angelo, a SPECTRE henchman surgically altered to match his appearance.
Angelo takes Derval's place on the flight, sabotaging the plane and sinking it near the Bahamas. He is then killed by Emilio Largo (SPECTRE No. 2) for trying to extort more money than offered to him. Largo and his henchmen retrieve the stolen atomic bombs from the seabed. All double-0 agents are called to Whitehall and en route, Lippe chases Bond. Lippe is killed by SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe for failing to foresee Angelo's greed. SPECTRE demands £100 million in white flawless uncut diamonds from NATO in exchange for returning the bombs. If their demands are not met, SPECTRE will destroy a major city in the United States or the United Kingdom. At the meeting, Bond recognises Derval from a photograph. Since Derval's sister, Domino, is in Nassau, Bond asks M to send him there, where he discovers Domino is Largo's mistress."
Yep, I think this must be how it happened.
...why was the last ACARS transmission 12 minutes BEFORE the good night call to Malaysian ATC? If it were a fire or something equally catastrophic (which took out the required circuitry) the cockpit would have full of warning klaxons, lights, bells, whistles and all, way before twelve minutes. The fire theory doesn't work. The oxygen mask worn by pilots are air tight via inflated seals and take in the region of two seconds to put on, even if you wear glasses too. Also all Boeings (I think) have wheel well fire detection system and brake temperature monitoring (unlike flight Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 in 1991, a DC-8, all 261 souls lost), none that I know have fire suppression. The pilots would have know very quickly of fire and had the opportunity to lower the gear to "cool their heels" so to speak.
why was the last ACARS transmission 12 minutes BEFORE the good night call to Malaysian ATC?
ACARS is generally scheduled. I don't know if the system would autonomously create more reports in the event if something going wrong - but the pilot has a button to push to create a new report on demand.
The fire theory doesn't work.
Not for me, it doesn't.
Also all Boeings (I think) have wheel well fire detection system and brake temperature monitoring
Not all 777s have nosewheel well fire monitorig - I've been reading the FCOM for some Qatar Airways aircraft, and they only have mainwheel well fire monitoring. I've no idea if MH370 had anything in the nosewheel well, but as I've said numerous times, even if there were a serious fire there that managed to incapacitate both pilots somehow, something would already have had to happen for the change of flightpath; this wasn't a simple divert (the FD would have taken the aircraft straight to the alternate).
Vic.
I don't buy the fire theory either. If the autopilot was reprogrammed to go back to the beacon of an airport, it would have just kept circling over the beacon waiting for more instructions, not head off on some random course.
Also, if there *was* a or some other event that caused the pilots to don their oxygen masks the first thing you do is descend rapidly to a point where you can breathe unassisted because the pilots know those masks don't last long and hypoxia will guarantee the death of everyone on board.
ACARS, the transponder and voice radio are all different systems. I find it difficult to explain why they were all knocked out
I also laugh at the front page of a British bird cage lining manufacturer which stated that the planes systems were hacked remotely. Uh. Sorry, but a 777s flight controls are not computer assisted (unlike Airbus) which means that explanation is about as likely as truth from a politician.
Uh. Sorry, but a 777s flight controls are not computer assisted
Some most certainly are. I cannot tell you if all of them are. From the FCOM:
In the normal mode during manual flight, the ACEs receive pilot control inputs and send these signals to the three PFCs. The PFCs verify these signals and information from other airplane systems in order to compute control surface commands.
"ACE" is Actuator Control Electronics
"PFC" is Primary Flight Computer
that explanation is about as likely as truth from a politician.
Yup.
Vic.
@vic
You're right, sorry, there are computer assists on the 777, but from memory there is a big button on the control column that overrides those computers. The Boeing mentality is that "computers can be mistaken, people should always be able to override them". So unless the hackers rewrote the proprietary control systems to disable that feature, there is no way to control the plane from the ground like that.
there are computer assists on the 777, but from memory there is a big button on the control column that overrides those computers.
Yes. There's a switch in the overhead panel to disconnect the PFCs.
there is no way to control the plane from the ground like that.
Of course there isn't. But people love to make up "theories"...
Vic.
The ACARS on MH370 only transmitted data every 30 minutes. Somebody misunderstood that initially and started the whole "suspiciously disabled before the last radio transmission" theory. Malaysian authorities later realized the mistake and retracted the whole thing, but the damage was done. It lingers in people's minds that there was something suspicious about how the onboard systems were turned off that confirms it was an intentional disappearance.
One thing I wonder about the search using sat imagery: There's that company that set up the thing where everyone can look through their photos and tag potential objects, which suggests that there isn't an automated way to do it. But this seems like the kind of problem that would be ideal for image processing to go after.
And the article here says that there was 'analysis', which suggests the computery kind. Anyone know if there are systems set up to use standard image processing stuff to help? Eg, you have a photo of area M before and area N after; anything that changes is of interest. There are caveats like cloudcover, lighting changes, maybe others due to the way the stitching is done or things I don't know about... but it seems like there ought to be potential there.
Pretty sure there are. IIRC, in Yurop alone, subsidies are allocated depending on what is being grown, which is checked by you-guessed-what. All the tech for all the wrong things. On the other hand, we can analyze and map the whole surface of nearby planets within weeks. This isn't being done manually.
Anyway, I had a course on this back when Bush made Kuwait safe for the Emir again, back when computers were slow and 16 MByte counted for something.
> I don't know about... but it seems like there ought to be potential there
I've had a go at the Tomnod web search and it's edifying to see the problem first hand. In addition to the waves themselves, there is a surprising number of breakers and loads of foam from breaking waves visible in the images. Unfortunately these features are at the same scale as the wreckage / life rafts.
These ephemeral features mean the best approach would be to compare fairly short time difference images and look for features that haven't changed. Obviously, collecting almost identical data on the off-chance it will be useful in a search would not be a very cost effective use of satellite imaging gear. Therefore, I'd imagine that rules out purely visual sea searches by satellite.
As far as i know, the 'analysis' carried out in this case was simply matching a visual image to a radar signal.
There are a lot of limitations to satellite surveillance that you wouldn't necessarily be aware of. The satellites follow a polar orbit that only brings them over a given point on the earth's surface every few days typically. There aren't ground stations everywhere to receive a real-time downlink, recorders are limited and unreliable, and orbital relay systems not available in most cases. There's a hard bandwidth limit that means you can have detail or broad coverage, but not both. There's a limited power budget which means the satellite may not be able to transmit all the time. That's especially true for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites, and the Australian images are clearly SAR (probably Radarsat). Considerable post-processing is required for SAR, so you aren't going to get images right away - hence the delay of days on the Australian images.
"The satellites follow a polar orbit that only brings them over a given point on the earth's surface every few days typically. There aren't ground stations everywhere to receive a real-time downlink, recorders are limited and unreliable, and orbital relay systems not available in most cases... you can have detail or broad coverage, but not both. There's a limited power budget which means the satellite may not be able to transmit all the time... Considerable post-processing is required for SAR..."
Don't come to me with problems! I only want positive people on my team! I don't want you back in this office until you've got solutions! Here, take this - I read it in college, and it sounds to me like you need to learn how to be a TEAM PLAYER!" *hands over book called "How To Say Anything And Mean Nothing: Secrets Of Management Revealed"*
Oops, sorry. Was channeling an executive there for a minute. ;)
In all seriousness, OK, yeah, that explains a lot of it. And this obviously isn't an issue terribly often, obviously, so... basically we need more damn bandwidth already so we can spend it on this kind of stuff! And a lot more satellites. And... well, yeah, things. We need things.
Saw an item on RT or Al Jazeera about a week or so ago, suggesting that the plane had suffered a decompression for some reason, and that the pilot(s) had been attempting to wind the autopilot around to the reciprocal heading in order to return to KL, but had passed out before completing the task.
Possibly only one pilot was in the cockpit at the time?.
Could a pilot regain entry to the anti-hijack cockpit these days if the crew inside were unconscious? This would of course presume that for some reason the cockpit crew had not donned their masks, OR that the oxygen gear was faulty - (perhaps JUST the cockpit oxygen?)
It sounded a more plausible explanation than any other I've heard, though I've not heard of it being advanced since that programme was aired.
Saw an item on RT or Al Jazeera about a week or so ago, suggesting that the plane had suffered a decompression for some reason, and that the pilot(s) had been attempting to wind the autopilot around to the reciprocal heading in order to return to KL, but had passed out before completing the task.
That theory is wrong.
777s don't have a "follow this heading" control, they have a database of waypoints and airfields in the Flight Director. The pilot selects where he wants to go, and the plane goes there. They also have neat toys in the FD such as a "divert" mode, where the unit scans its database for the nearest airfield that can handle the aircraft in its current state. So to do the divert, you select the "Alternate" page, hit "Divert", then hit "Accept". The plane takes you to your emergency airfield.
What actually happened is that the aircraft flew through several waypoints, none of which were divert airfields.
Could a pilot regain entry to the anti-hijack cockpit these days if the crew inside were unconscious?
That depends on what state the flight crew had left the door in.
The standard mode has the door locked, but can be opened from the outside by keying in the right code (3 to 8 digits). Each attempt is annunciated inside the cockpit.
The pilot also has a control on the centre console which allows him to open the door, or to reject further attempts to get in for a period of time.
Additionally, the door has deadbolts, which prevent it opening under any circumstances.
Vic.
Hmmmm.....
Well.......
Maybe the airline got the budget 777 from 'WeBuyAnyPlane.com perhaps?
Bet it's rattled their customers a bit though. I remember passing through Anchorage airport just after that KAL plane got shot down years ago. The place was buzzing with passengers, except for a distinct empty space around the hopefully smiling girl on the KAL desk!
It WAS Anchorage that used to have that huge stuffed bear in the concourse wasn't it?
Interesting info Vic.
That's 'El Reg' though eh? No matter what the topic - Bitcoins, Boeings or whatever - somebody always seems to pop up who has a handle on it!
"That's 'El Reg' though eh? No matter what the topic - Bitcoins, Boeings or whatever - somebody always seems to pop up who has a handle on it!"
Exactly right ! It also makes a nice change from pathetic bickering you see on some other forums.
If you don't know anything when you start reading, you certainly do when you have finished.
Have an upvote all contributors.
people are trying so hard to eliminate the tried-and-true fact that there ARE actually crazy/evil people out there in the world, that do real bad things for no logical reason that the rest of the world can understand.
All these special theories of fires that somehow overwhelm absolutely everyone in seconds after the pilot has made a deliberate course correction, while simultaneously shutting down almost all telemetry from the aircraft, and activating absolutely no indicator or sensor prior to this 3-5 second window stretch things a lot harder than repeated proven historical precedent of deadly acts by insane individuals.
It's a huge world out there, and for those who disparage religion, it's important to remember that also means the world is not somehow required to make sense. Bad sh*t happens, at random. To believe there is always a "reason" other than this, is to actually be participating in the same "crutch" that the religious depend on.
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