Malaysian airlines has lost a 777

[Slew Foot]

pilots commited suicide... with the locked door and on autopilot it flew for hours until it crashed.

Wouldnt a flight attendant realize something was up when the plane was really off course and try get to the pilots or radio for help?

 

[norseamd]

they have parachutes right?

 

[Artorias]

pilots commited suicide... with the locked door and on autopilot it flew for hours until it crashed.

That sent chill down my spine.

Wtf is going.

 

[LTC8K6]

The RR Engine Health Management EHM system works via ACARS. It sends three engine performance snapshots, takeoff/climb/cruise, and a summary when the flight ends. It will also send data if a sensor indicates a problem.

The only explanation I can come up with for the reports of the flight continuing for four more hours is that RR found a summary report from 9M-MRO, indicating that the plane landed and the time it landed.

 

[LTC8K6]

Perhaps a ditching could also trigger the summary report?

http://www.rolls-royce.com/about/technology/systems_tech/monitoring_systems.jsp

 

[MaxFusion16]

http://stream.wsj.com/story/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/SS-2-475558/SS-2-479770/

officially not an accident, this was planned

 

[brainhulk]

Im reading the wreckage found by Chinese has been ruled out as missing 777

Damn

 

[MaxFusion16]

wsj quote

edit: wsj just issued a correction, saying that the rolls royce rep actually said this IS officially an accident now.

seriously, don't know wtf is going on anymore.

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777′s engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn’t produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner’s transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

The investigation remains fluid, and it isn’t clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or sabotage. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven’t ruled it out.

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted “with the intention of using it later for another purpose.”

As of Wednesday it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of miles from where an international search effort has been focused.

In those scenarios, neither mechanical problems, pilot mistakes nor some other type of catastrophic incident caused the 250-ton plane to mysteriously vanish from radar.

The latest revelations come as local media reported that Malaysian police visited the home of at least one of the two pilots.

A Malaysia Airlines official declined to comment. A Boeing executive who declined to be would not comment except to say, “We’ve got to stand back from the front line of the information.”

The engines’ onboard monitoring system is provided by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC, and it periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and aircraft movements to facilities on the ground.

“We continue to monitor the situation and to offer Malaysia Airlines our support,” a Rolls-Royce representative said Wednesday, declining further comment.

“The disappearance is officially not an accident and all information about this is strictly handled by investigators,” said a Rolls-Royce executive who declined to be named, citing rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency.

As part of its maintenance agreements, Malaysia Airlines transmits its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis. The system compiles data from inside the 777′s two Trent 800 engines and transmits snapshots of performance, as well as the altitude and speed of the jet.

Those snippets are compiled and transmitted in 30-minute increments, said one person familiar with the system. According to Rolls-Royce’s website, the data is processed automatically “so that subtle changes in condition from one flight to another can be detected.”

The engine data is being analyzed to help determine the flight path of the plane after the transponders stopped working. The jet was originally headed for China, and its last verified position was half way across the Gulf of Thailand.

A total flight time of five hours after departing Kuala Lumpur means the Boeing 777 could have continued for an additional distance of about 2,200 nautical miles, reaching points as far as the Indian Ocean, the border of Pakistan or even the Arabian Sea, based on the jet’s cruising speed.

Earlier Wednesday, frustrations over the protracted search for the missing plane mounted as both China and Vietnam vented their anger over what they viewed as poor coordination of the effort.

Government conflicts and national arguments over crises are hardly unique to the Flight 370 situation, but some air-safety experts said they couldn’t recall another recent instance of governments’ publicly feuding over search procedures during the early phase of an international investigation.

Authorities on Wednesday radically expanded the size of the search zone, which already was proving a challenge to cover effectively, but the mission hadn’t turned up much by the end of the fifth day.

Also on Wednesday, a Chinese government website posted images from Chinese satellites showing what it said were three large objects floating in an 8-square-mile area off the southern tip of Vietnam. The objects were discovered on Sunday , according to the website, which didn’t say whether the objects had been recovered or examined.

Ten countries were helping to scour the seas around Malaysia, including China, the U.S. and Vietnam. Taiwanese vessels are expected to be on the scene by Friday, with India and Japan having also agreed to join the search soon.

In all, 56 surface ships were taking part in the search, according to statements issued by the contributing governments, with Malaysia providing 27 of them. In addition, 30 fixed-wing aircraft were also searching, with at least 10 shipboard helicopters available, mostly in the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam.

China’s government was especially aggrieved. More than 150 of the 239 people on board are Chinese, and family members in Beijing have at times loudly expressed their frustration over the absence of leads.

More than a dozen Chinese diplomats met with Malaysian authorities in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday as tension grew over the search.

“At present there’s a lot of different information out there. It’s very chaotic and very hard to verify,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a regular press briefing. “We’ve said as long as there is a shred of hope, you can’t give up.”

The day before, Beijing pointedly pressed Malaysia to accelerate its investigation, which has been hampered by false leads on suspected debris and conflicting reports on radar tracking.

Vietnam on Wednesday suspended its search flights after conflicting reports from Malaysia that authorities had tracked the plane to the Strait of Malacca before it disappeared.

Gen. Rodzali Daud, Malaysia’s air force chief, denied saying he had told local media that military radar facilities had tracked the plane there, saying they were still examining all possibilities. Vietnam later resumed normal search sweeps.

Malaysian authorities divided the search area into several sectors on either side of the country, as well as areas on land.

The challenge, said Lt. David Levy, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, isn’t so much coordination as the sheer size of the area involved. The search grids are up to 20 miles by 120 miles, and ships and aircraft employ an exhaustive methodical pattern “like mowing your lawn” in their search for the plane, he said.

U.S. defense officials sought to play down any suggestion that the Malaysian government was doing a poor job with the search.

“It is not unusual for searches to take a long time, especially when you are working with limited data,” one official said.

Aviation experts say the absence of an electronic signal from the plane before it disappeared from radar screens makes it difficult to pin down possible locations. Some radar data suggested the Boeing 777 might have tried to turn back to Kuala Lumpur before contact was lost, a detail that prompted a search for the plane on both sides of the Malaysian peninsula.

A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft has been searching the northern Strait of Malacca, west of Malaysia, while destroyers USS Kidd and USS Pinckney have been deploying helicopters in the Gulf of Thailand to the east.

So far the U.S., like other nations taking part in the search, has had no success. Many aviation experts are concluding that searchers may not have been looking in the right places. Even if the plane broke up in midair, it would have left telltale traces of debris in the ocean. The cracks now emerging between some of the participants in the search could make it even more difficult.

Diplomatic feuds over air disasters have generally erupted over the conclusions of the investigations, long after the initial search is over.

The results of the 1999 crash of an Egyptair Boeing 767 en route to Egypt from New York, which killed 217 people, spawned a dispute between Washington and Cairo that strained ties for years. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the plane’s co-pilot purposely put the twin-engine jet into a steep dive and then resisted efforts by the captain to recover control before the airliner slammed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket. Egyptian authorities insisted the evidence indicated mechanical failure.

Earlier, Washington and Paris butted heads over the investigation into the 1994 crash of a French-built American Eagle commuter turboprop near Roselawn, Ind. The French objected to the NTSB’s conclusions that French regulators failed to take actions that could have prevented the accident.

Earlier this week, Malaysian investigators said they were expanding their investigation to encompass the possibility of hijack or sabotage, and possible personal or psychological problems of the crew and passengers. But Malaysian officials haven’t discussed transmissions regarding engine operations or offered any explanation for the primary and backup transponders’ not working.

 

[Ns1]

O_O

Crazy

 

[LTC8K6]

Another possibility is that the RR system sent a report when the engines ran out of fuel in flight. That should generate data reports as the engines fail.

That would mean a crash wherever it ran out of fuel.

 

[tynopik]

Another possibility is that the RR system sent a report when the engines ran out of fuel in flight. That should generate data reports as the engines fail.

That would mean a crash wherever it ran out of fuel.

It had enough fuel to go a couple more hours

 

[MrDingleDangle]

This is just a crazy story. I am not even sure what to think now, if it flew for an additional 4 hours it would probably be more likely found if it was purposely done. if it was out of the pilots control and landed in the ocean 4 hours from its last known location it will be crazy if it is found.

 

[santz]

wsj quote

edit: wsj just issued a correction, saying that the rolls royce rep actually said this IS officially an accident now.

seriously, don't know wtf is going on anymore.

wow, i read through all of that, very interesting article with all the facts and assumptions of the different search parties and countries involved laid out neatly. Hopefully they find it soon.

 

[tynopik]

fun twitter feed: https://twitter.com/flyingwithfish

his running hypothesis is that the Chinese orchestrated this as part of a mass defection/kidnapping of the 20 freescale engineers for their secret project work while hiding the fact that they had in fact 'acquired' said talent

 

[norseamd]

fun twitter feed: https://twitter.com/flyingwithfish his running hypothesis is that the Chinese orchestrated this as part of a mass defection/kidnapping of the 20 freescale engineers for their secret project work while hiding the fact that they had in fact 'acquired' said talent

would not be worth the talent for the attention

they have their own engineers

with a population of 1.3 billion do you think they have trouble finding enough professional engineers

not even sure if this would be worth it for major nuclear engineering

 

[tynopik]

would not be worth the talent for the attention

they have their own engineers

but not engineers with top secret US clearance . . .

obviously it wouldn't be for the raw 'talent' but for what they know about critical 'stuff'

 

[norseamd]

but not engineers with top secret US clearance . . . obviously it wouldn't be for the raw 'talent' but for what they know about critical 'stuff'

that was what the last sentance was talking about

would be a stretch

this would be some real cold war shit if that was true

 

[RampantAndroid]

fun twitter feed: https://twitter.com/flyingwithfish

his running hypothesis is that the Chinese orchestrated this as part of a mass defection/kidnapping of the 20 freescale engineers for their secret project work while hiding the fact that they had in fact 'acquired' said talent

But how would that play out? How would they get all surrounding ATCs to completely miss the plane? And then land it somewhere?

 

[tynopik]

But how would that play out? How would they get all surrounding ATCs to completely miss the plane? And then land it somewhere?

ATC has a very limited range without an active transponder

And we already know it flew 4-5 more hours while being completely missed.

And a state actor has the resources to make something like this happen. The plane lands at night, they have the demolition equipment ready, plane gets ground into itty-bitty bits and buried before sunrise, all passengers they don't care about are shot and buried, voila, disappearing plane.

We can't find it now because there's nothing to find.

 

[RampantAndroid]

And we already know it flew 4-5 more hours while being completely missed.

Wait, how do we know this?

Also, of those 20 people some were already Chinese nationals...

 

[jaedaliu]

Wait, how do we know this?

Also, of those 20 people some were already Chinese nationals...

Too much news reporting on speculation and unconfirmed & unofficial information leaks.

I'm pretty sure all the news so far can be summarized by "We're not sure of anything. All leads so far have not panned out to any actual evidence."

 

[brainhulk]

Too much news reporting on speculation and unconfirmed & unofficial information leaks.

I'm pretty sure all the news so far can be summarized by "We're not sure of anything. All leads so far have not panned out to any actual evidence."

 

[Triumph]

LOL, that is the perfect image for this investigation.

 

[darkxshade]

What a clusterfuck this has been. So much misinformation being released to the public.

 

[Mark R]

Wait, how do we know this?

There was a rumor circulating that the manufacturer of the engines (Rolls Royce) had satellite based telemetry on the engines to assist with maintenance planning.

This has been debunked by RR, as in general the telemetry is only downloaded over a short-range wifi-type radio link at the airport terminal, and only critical alerts get sent by ground radio/satellite (depending on installed modules - apparently this aircrafts was only equipped with ground radio telemetry and did not have the SATCOM option).

Boeing also offer a general aircraft systems telemetry module which will send general equipment telemetry routinely via satellite. However, the Malyasia flight 370 was not equipped with this optional upgrade.