MH370 airliner MYSTERY: The El Reg Pub/Dinner-party Guide

Re: Nothing here...

"Nothing here......about flying close to the Singapore Airlines plane to hide from radar..."

It certainly made an interesting read and was food for thought.

However, such tactics would never foil a decent radar array or operator. Military radar in particular is designed to be able to tell you just how many planes are coming at you, no matter how closely they fly. Radar is easily capable of picking one airliner out from another. You wouldn't confuse the return simply by flying a mile behind an airliner in another airliner.

BUT:

If a civilian ATC sees two airliner returns on the same heading, alt and speed - one with a transponder, one without - in their controlled airspace, I imagine they would give the pilot (of the identified aircraft) a shout to ask if there is anything in the vicinity, and put a shout out to try to identify the other return. I also imagine that if it's in uncontrolled, near-empty airspace and the pilot says he's ok, can't see anyone else and there is nobody else around that he can see, then the ATC might let it slide... especially at 1am.

Tl;dr: Tailing another aircraft to avoid radar utterly fails in a technical sense, but might work *at the time* because of human failings. However, a later review of the radar would show the 'false' return.

Re: There's a lot more that can be said...

It is possible for the pilots to depressurise the fuselage AND disable the deployment of oxygen masks from the cockpit.

It is?

To the south, the Cocos Islands have a suitable airstrip, and only 600 inhabitants. This is sufficiently low for a small group of armed men to take it over.

But this didn't happen.

I hope everyone here has read Tintin: Flight 714 to Sydney to fuel ideas.

Re: There's a lot more that can be said...

a) put it in a row of many similar other airliners

c) land it carefully on a deep part of the sea so that it does not break up, and let it sink intact.

d) Put it in a (big) hangar

Are there any abandoned USSR airstrips in Khazakstan or thereabouts, with bomber hangars still roofed? (Or nuke-proof hardened aircraft shelters, probably good against weathering for longer than the Pyramids) Have all such airfields been checked on the ground by now? (How cooperative are the Stans? )

Still not my favorite theory. Flying Southwest (on auto-pilot? not?) until the fuel ran out is the most mundane way to disappear. It's a long way from land, always very rough ocean, and off almost all shipping lanes. How / why? We may never know.

e) Cut it up and put the bits in (a) scrap-metal compactor(s). I can't conceive of a reason, but if you had the manpower and plant normally used for demolishing buildings and crushing cars, I imagine it could be unrecognisable within a few hours and gone after a few more hours. One for the conspiracy theorists, I think.

Re: Why are emergency locator beacons so failure prone in water crashes ?

"Why are emergency locator beacons so failure prone in water crashes ?

ELT beacons are supposed to work in the event of crashes even if the crash is on water.

So why did they fail in both the AF 422 and the MH 370 case."

I'm guessing it's because they were on a plane that crashed. It's probably not an engineering solution that is 100% reliable, given the conditions.

How big *is* the Bermuda Triangle????????? Is it growing? If so, why? Is AGW responsible, and if not, why not? Inquiring minds want to know!

Re: But what motive?

"I find it surprising their isn't more discussion or speculation on what motive might drive events as they panned out (at least in the 'criminal' scenario's discussed) "

I would suspect that there's a whole lot more known than has been released about cargoes, crew and passengers. And that's why there's not more speculation about motives - because there's nothing in the public domain to offer any grist to this mill. But behind the scenes the investigators must be focusing on exactly the purpose of any plan, as one of the many lines of enquiry.

Re: Hijacking foiled scenario?

2. Plane is hijacked by tech savvy terrorist intent on a 9/11 type attack on Beijing.

6. Plane flies out to sea where it can do no more harm.

And tech-savvy terrorist forgets how to read a compass....

Re: Hijacking foiled scenario?

"4. Terrorist turns off all comms that they know about.

5. Co-pilot alters course without alerting terrorist."

Possible, but if the terrorist knows enough about the systems to turn them off, then logically he'd be sufficiently savvy to monitor what the co-pilot is doing. Moreover, he can't rely on a coerced pilot to carry out a terror attack, so he would need to know how to fly the plane himself, and the co-pilot is surplus baggage the moment he has finished talking to Malaysian ATC. In this scenario the only reason for not incapacitating the co-pilot is so there's no change of voice to alert the ATC who have communicated with the flight outbound from KL, but then you'd expect the terrorist to take over the flying and communication with Vietnamese and subsequent ATC. So long as he communicates according to known protocols then there's nothing to alert them until the airline goes off course.

Re: Hijacking foiled scenario?

" Plane is hijacked by tech savvy terrorist intent on a 9/11 type attack on Beijing."

Target makes no sense, though. The flight was going there, so why hi-jack when the plane has just reached altitude and risk getting rumbled long before you get there?

A coerced first officer would likely make a much more formal and less relaxed call. There's no way a tech-savvy hi-jacker would allow such an informal 'call.

Re: There is at least one other possibility...

Pretty sure anywhere that could land a 777 beyond a flat bit of desert would have at least a phone line. Let alone a "hotel" would have one and TV's for the passengers to phone home after seeing the media storm.

The absence of this happening means at the very least the passengers and non pilot crew are unfortunately likely to be dead. Good luck trying to keep 200 people of different nationalities from trying mobiles or running away (assuming it landed).

> I'll go for a fire in the electronics bay that caused the blackout

That's quite unlikely; the 777 has two main AC busses, powered from any of 3 main generators, with a ram-air turbine as a fourth option. Power can be routed from anywhere to anywhere.

In the event of an uncontrollable fire - to the extent that the offending components cannot be shut down and extinguished - it's very unlikely that the aircraft would have power for flight control or satcom. We can be pretty sure about the former (since the aircraft did turn, and the cable backups are only intended to maintain straight-and-level flight while the electrics are restarted, according to the FCOM), and we know the latter.

So an amount of the electrical system was alive. The 777 has many radios - typically 3 VHF, 2 HF and 2 SATCOM. In the event that there was a big fire, I think it unlikely that someone was able to turn the aircraft around, but couldn't get off a mayday call, a mayday squawk, or trigger the ELT beacon.

Vic.

1) We have primary radar traces that all the people who have access to the raw data believe is the missing flight.

2) We don't know that the 'pings' represented an aircraft in the air. but we DO know that they represent an engine that is not powered down and is receiving an electrical signal. So it's not likely to be coming from a wreck or a parked plane.

3) Correct, but if it stopped transmitting without being switched off, then the 'pings' would not be transmitted. But they were.

4) Eh? There reason has been given: The pings were picked up by a geo-sync bird over the Indian Ocean. The last one was a known distance from that bird, making the final destination of the plane within an hour of that arc.

MH370 arc

4. This might help (MH370 arc) They seem to assume the plane must be at least as far its slowest speed would carry it in a straight line from the last known fix, therefore eliminating the middle of the arc. I don't know what justifies that decision - surely manoeuvres could mean it was closer than the distance in a straight line at its slowest speed - ie anywhere on the whole arc + flying time left.