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

Re: Mobile phones and tracking

Maybe low to the ground, but up high it is rare to get reception due to the antenna patterns on phone masts - no sense in radiating power 7 miles straight up. Not saying it absolutely cannot happen, but the absence of such data for this flight is not indicative of anything.

Re: Mobile phones and tracking

Would you know what phones were even on the plane to filter out from the background chatter of a hundred thousand other devices?

Re: Mobile phones and tracking

If you know the name & address of the user, you can pull the records of where they attempted to register once you've obtained their IMSI from their home network. Assuming the networks in the country in question have any data retention policies for legal intercept/tracking activities.

Re: Mobile phones and tracking

Yeah, they might start doing that now.

Re: Maybe low to the ground

Except of course that's exactly how they took down one of the hijacked 9/11 flights - passengers got calls on their cell phones.

Moreover, if there was a sign of trouble I expect at least one passenger tried to phone home. Which means no awake passengers saw signs of trouble.

" It's been assumed since the sixties that traditional bombers would be detected, and intercepted. "

Yes: Over Europe.

Assuming that it's so in south east Asia is like assuming everyone there has a smartphone, just because most people in London do.

And remember that Malaysian radar DID track it. It then headed out over the ocean, where Malaysia wouldn't really care and nobody else would track it (aside from maybe India, who reportedly seem to have had their stuff turned off).

"Starting to wonder whether popping something on a plane and flying it to a target is as problematic as people make out"

Probably, given that this seems to have had the assistance of a pilot with 18,000 of experience who keenly took his work home with him. It's as easy to say that hacking a bank is easy because one of their sysadmins could do it.

I don't know about this peticular area but once you are a few hundred miles over the atlantic or pacific the only data ATC has will be from data sent by the aircraft. Over busy areas of land it's a diffrent story of corse.

Yeah, at least one good point you make there. I guess my first sentence is the killer. I was assuming that there are rooms full of people with tin hats, who push model planes around a map with sticks while drinking cocoa. You may call me 'meier', and should you land on my greenhouse, I'll send a kid out with the box of Woodbines. Tally ho.

Re: Mystery

There's certainly a famous historical precedent for that scenario, at least in terms of the evident mental impairment, intent and orders of the hijackers, if not the outcome: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961

Re: Mystery

What makes you think the highjack attempt has failed?

Re: Mystery

"The most likely explanation speculation would seem to be a failed hijack attempt. Hijackers make pilot turn off comms, try to get him to fly somewhere"

Yup, and the tech-savvy pilot would turn off the radio and transponder but leave on the subtle signals, such as engine data uploads. It would be very hard to get everything off without the flight crew being implicit, to my mind.

Re: This is a job for......

In Aliens vs. Cowboys?

Re: Afghanistan is under heavy US military aerial radar

Thank goodness you cleared that up.

Re: Afghanistan is under heavy US military aerial radar

I would down vote you for such a ridiculous post.. but unfortunately I can't put this past the US military...

Re: Afghanistan is under heavy US military aerial radar

You know thinking about it, if that Snowden chap was thought to have been on board it might not be such a far fetched hypothesis. Who knows what lengths the US would go to to get at him.

Re: Afghanistan is under heavy US military aerial radar

Who knows what lengths the US would go to to get at him.

You would be able to express them in nautical miles.

Re: Question

How can you stop someone from cutting the wires??

Re: Question

By not having them in an area you can easily get to while in the air. I'm not talking about smashing the equipment or anything like that I'm asking about why the ability to turn the thing off exists while it's in the air.

Re: Question

That's already been answered further up the page and numerous times in the media.

Short answer:

1) If they (there's two) break, you turn them off and on again.

2) They can cause interference and air controllers routinely ask for them to be switched to standby.

3) If it catches fire, the pilot would like to be able to turn it off.

The moment you have things in the plane that pilots can't turn off, the plane is LESS safe, not safer. We trust these people with our lives and have to hand them all the tools they need to protect them.

Re: Question

"How can you stop someone from cutting the wires??"

By putting it an unpressurised part of the airframe; but as others have posted there is always the potential requirement to be able to turn it off in the event of an electrical fire. Up to now no-one has designed tracking features into an aircraft on the assumption that the pilots may be "hostile"; same as before 911 you could get into the cockpit without having to break down an armoured door.

I expect a number of changes to airline procedures to come out of this, whatever the actual explanation turns out to be.

Re: Question

>I expect a number of changes to airline procedures to come out of this

Let's see, just thinking out loud.

Most obvious one first, pilot and co-pilot should have different religions. Pilots in seperate cabins. Plane controlled from ground with a pilot on standby outside the cabin for emergencies.

Re: Question

"pilot and co-pilot should have different religions."

Having flight crew with strongly held, differing religious viewpoints is not going to make the plane a safer place.

"Pilots in seperate cabins."

Who gets to over-ride the other one if one is suicidal. Surely having them in the same space is actually safer.

"Plane controlled from ground with a pilot on standby outside the cabin for emergencies."

Which means you have a plane that can be controlled by either the ground station or someone who can spoof the system, who is not on board. Given how people feel about drones, hackers and the NSA right now, I don't think that would go down well.

Re: Question

>Having flight crew with strongly held, differing religious viewpoints is not going to make the plane a safer place.

It will reduce the chance of cooperation due to religious beliefs so it will make the plane safer

>Who gets to over-ride the other one if one is suicidal. Surely having them in the same space is actually safer.

It will prevent one pilot overpowering the other. With improved monitoring ground control should be able to see see which pilot is being a naughty boy and hand control over to the other.

>Which means you have a plane that can be controlled by either the ground station or someone who can spoof the system, who is not on board. Given how people feel about drones, hackers and the NSA right now, I don't think that would go down well.

No it doesn't. These planes can be sent off already pre-programmed for the journey so it's not as if there will be constant control (as I said I was thinking aloud so didn't explain properly) just a burst to open the cabin door in an emergency, no other function allowed. As for how people feel about drones and what have you, I think there is more danger from service personnel who clean the planes, load the baggage, etc, than an attack on technology.

Re: Question

"It will reduce the chance of cooperation due to religious beliefs so it will make the plane safer"

And it will reduce the chance of cooperation due to religious beliefs, so it won't.

Seriously, have you ever put two over-tired people with wildly differing, strongly held religious views in close confines and made them work together? It's grounds for arguments, passion and flared tempers. None of that should be going on in a cockpit of an airliner.

Frankly, I'd prefer my pilots to be selected because they were the best at their jobs, not recruited on the grounds of religion. And when/if there is an issue on the flight deck, I want the pilots to fall back to relying on their skill and nothing else. I do not want fervent prayer to replace skill and dedication.

I don't agree with any of your points. They are poorly thought-out knee-jerk reactionary solutions to a problem that we are not even sure exists.

The best person to fly a plane is the pilot in the cockpit, working in close harmony with their first officer. Putting two different flavours of religious maniac in two separate boxes, refereed by someone on the ground, in a plane with a remote control over-ride which could be subverted is frankly not a good solution. I wouldn't get on that plane.

@Psyx Re: not going to make the plane a safer place.

You know the sad part is, I can picture a bunch of pols in a room arguing his points instead of yours, and then enacting them into law.

Re: Obviously

A Boeing 777 costs more than 3.5 tons of gold at today's prices, so the plane itself would still be worth more than the cargo.

Re: Obviously

One of these things is not like the other.

Selling a stolen 777 or even operating such a procurement.

Selling stolen gold.

Re: Obviously

"now, don't you dare threaten to dump our treasuries again"

3.5 tonnes of Gold?

Yeah, that's gonna be comporable to the multi-trillion unredeemable debt crater that must NEVER EVER be though of as unredeemable.

But not that Saudis hold more of these.

Re: Smartphones

poor in South East Asia?

there's plenty of poor people, but there's lots of well off middle class and lots of very wealthy in the cities - who all have the latest gizmos

Fire > ditched > pings are from seabed

Re: Smartphones

"pings are from seabed"

Emanating from a radio transmitter powered by what for several hours after ditching, operating despite its container not being designed to take several (hundred potentially) Bar of pressure, with the radio signal propagating to a satellite up through the water?

The US Navy spent quite a lot of money to develop radio systems to communicate to submarines, so I don't think it's as simple as that.

I could be wrong, but I don't think it was underwater and still pinging away.

Re: Smartphones

I don't understand how that is relevant, I'm afraid.

That's not what the ACARS transmitter is. It's a radio transmitter, externally powered, not resistant to high pressure AFAIK.

Additionally, the acoustic transmitter fixed to black boxes is just that: It's an acoustic transmitter that makes a noise, not a radio transmitter: It would have to be pretty bloody loud to be heard in spaaaaaaaaaaace!

Re: Smartphones

"My post is relevant to "pings are from seabed"."

"pings are from the seabed" was referring to the poster's theory that the radio handshake pings from ACAS and received by satellite were broadcast from submerged wreckage, not pinging noises from an acoustic transmitter.

Re: What now?

An iPad in each plane, connected to the existing satellite transmitter--now completely locked and secured--could do the job. Data sent in the clear for everyone to see.

What are the relative risks of a mysterious plane disappearance being foiled, versus a short-circuited ShinyGadget battery causing a fire and subsequent crash?

Or the advantages of everyone knowing where a plane is, versus the disadvantages of "terrorists" etc. knowing where every plane is?

What's the likelihood of unnecessary panic when some system glitch erroneously shows a flight as having disappeared, or going off course, when it's actually fine?