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Malaysian airlines has lost a 777

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I wonder at what point would the SAR be called off or at least scaled back? Without any actual confirmed debris anywhere, we may not find the plane in the interim and it's already been over 2 weeks.
 
darkxshade said:
I wonder at what point would the SAR be called off or at least scaled back? Without any actual confirmed debris anywhere, we may not find the plane in the interim and it's already been over 2 weeks.
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I wouldn't expect them to "stop" until at least 35+ days, when they're sure the black box batteries would be dead. Even then, I expect that somebody will be looking for years, at a slower rate.
 
02ranger said:
The only problem with that idea is that the course change was entered into the flight computer before the "all right, good night" communication from the co-pilot, last I heard. How do you account for that if there was a fire?

I'm not trying to argue with you, because I honestly don't have a "favorite" scenario yet, I'm just curious how you reconcile the two.........
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I didn't know that, I had assumed the course change was to try to land at the nearest available airport that can handle a "heavy" class airliner. This eerily reminds me of the tragic crash that killed Payne Stewart, massive decompression then the plane flew on on autopilot until fuel exhaustion. I really hope they can get to the bottom of this eventually, I feel so bad for the relatives, not knowing what happened. I guess they should all know by now that the chance of finding any survivors is pretty much gone..
 
So Inmarsat said the pings got further away each hour. If they'd release the actual distances, it seems like it would be pretty easy to work out how plausible the South Indian Ocean search area is.
 
Again, there is no evidence of any programmed course change.

This has been reported numerous times. The stories reporting this were false.
 
joshsquall said:
So Inmarsat said the pings got further away each hour. If they'd release the actual distances, it seems like it would be pretty easy to work out how plausible the South Indian Ocean search area is.
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Well, one thing is for sure, if they flew for any length of time at FL120 or FL050, or did any "terrain following" to avoid radar, they couldn't have made it anywhere near the current search area...
 
LTC8K6 said:
There is no separate system to send engine data. Engine data is sent via ACARS. The WSJ report about hours of engine data is false.
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The number of people that believe this is pretty outrageous. People seem to believe that every single thing on an airplane is constantly communicating with everything on the ground.

People don't seem to understand that it is not possible for data to be constantly streamed home, besides that, it wouldn't even be beneficial in 99% of cases
 
LTC8K6 said:
Well, one thing is for sure, if they flew for any length of time at FL120 or FL050, or did any "terrain following" to avoid radar, they couldn't have made it anywhere near the current search area...
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If the flew north, they'd have had to fly over China to constantly be moving further from the satellite and still hit the northern arc. That means China is in on it, shot the plane down or incompetent. None of these seem likely, so I think now I have to believe that the plane flew south, which seems to indicate a crash.
 
At 12K feet, you fly a lot slower, and run out of fuel a lot quicker.

Then again, 12K feet is your target altitude for a depressurization.

But, if they got to 12K feet relatively quickly, they should be okay, and anyone beginning to suffer from hypoxia should recover.

So, if they got down to 12K, why did they go back up high again and keep flying?
 
LTC8K6 said:
At 12K feet, you fly a lot slower, and run out of fuel a lot quicker.

Then again, 12K feet is your target altitude for a depressurization.

But, if they got to 12K feet relatively quickly, they should be okay, and anyone beginning to suffer from hypoxia should recover.

So, if they got down to 12K, why did they go back up high again and keep flying?
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The 12k feet report seems dubious. Either you stay there or you don't. If you stayed there, there's probably not enough fuel to fly for as long as the pings indicate. If you go back up, why did you waste time/fuel on the descent? If decompression, they absolutely wouldn't have gone back up. If hijacking, I can't think of a good reason, especially with the report that it took over an hour to descend. I'm going with inaccurate radar altitude report.
 
BUTCH1 said:
I didn't know that, I had assumed the course change was to try to land at the nearest available airport that can handle a "heavy" class airliner. This eerily reminds me of the tragic crash that killed Payne Stewart, massive decompression then the plane flew on on autopilot until fuel exhaustion. I really hope they can get to the bottom of this eventually, I feel so bad for the relatives, not knowing what happened. I guess they should all know by now that the chance of finding any survivors is pretty much gone..
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Well, it turns out I was wrong anyway, so your theory is as good as any. LTC8K6 posted an article from CNN where they said no such information was available from the last ACARS transmission, so there's no evidence that a course change was entered into the flight computer at the time of the last communication, maybe none was entered at all. I'm not sure where that info came from originally, but it was all over the place that they had changed course. I think this is part of the problem with finding it is that the "know facts" seem to change daily, sometimes multiple times a day.
 
This incident is really showing how bad the media has gotten...

Their entire drive is for ratings. Accuracy has become unimportant. Getting you to look is paramount.
 
LTC8K6 said:
This incident is really showing how bad the media has gotten...

Their entire drive is for ratings. Accuracy has become unimportant. Getting you to look is paramount.
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They are terrible now. I bet I could call and claim to be inside the investigation and we have evidence that the plane was sucked into a black hole that spontaneously formed in front of them, was spit out on the other side of the galaxy, and that they're currently flying through space on their way home a la ST:Voyager, and the media would report it as fact. They'd probably be even more eager to report it if I told them I "wasn't allowed to comment to the media".
 
darkxshade said:
I wonder at what point would the SAR be called off or at least scaled back? Without any actual confirmed debris anywhere, we may not find the plane in the interim and it's already been over 2 weeks.
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Took two years to find the black box from the Air France crash in the Atlantic... This could be a while. Unless you believe the jet landed in Pakistan or Eastern Iran.
 
santz said:
i thought they found the debris quickly but the actual wreckage of the air France flight took 2 years to find
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They found the debris and fuselage parts + a few bodies in around 5 days, it took 2 years to recover the "black boxes" which proved difficult to find even though they were still pinging because the ocean depth there is 12,000ft, only a handful of submersibles of any kind are rated to go that deep and the "pings" are only detectable for 2-3 miles max. Then you've got to figure that ocean currents carried them quite a bit before the got to the bottom. Luckily they were both intact and a complete theory was able to be completed quickly as to the cause of the crash, (pilot error).
 
AF447 debris was sighted in 2 days, bodies and debris were recovered in 5 days.

But they had a good last known position for AF447, reported by ACARS, and so they knew exactly where to look for debris.
 
CZroe said:
I see 53' containers all the time. They make them up to 56' but 53’ is the DOT maximum length for a trailer on the road and my experience is almost always with them and truck trailers.
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They tried to go with 53' shipping containers, but the effort fizzled out.

20' and 40' are standard, and there is a fairly common 45' long "high cube" container.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container#Specifications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container#53_foot_container

P.S. Each year an estimated 10,000 shipping containers fall into the sea
 
I'm beginning to believe there was some kind of fire that eventually killed everyone.

Let's say there's smoke in the cabin and the pilot don there masks and are ok but at some point the co-pilot is sent down to the electronics bays to check things or turn things off that might be the problem. Does the co-pilot have a long enough air line to go down into the bay while still wearing the mask or does he have to hold his breath? If he has to hold his breath the pilot may have expecting him to come back in a minute or two and when he didn't come back the pilot went down to help. But, neither one made it back to the cockpit and their masks and died of smoke inhalation.

If this happened the plane would fly on until it ran out of fuel. This may have been a zombie plane after all...


Brian
 
Brian Stirling said:
I'm beginning to believe there was some kind of fire that eventually killed everyone.

Let's say there's smoke in the cabin and the pilot don there masks and are ok but at some point the co-pilot is sent down to the electronics bays to check things or turn things off that might be the problem. Does the co-pilot have a long enough air line to go down into the bay while still wearing the mask or does he have to hold his breath? If he has to hold his breath the pilot may have expecting him to come back in a minute or two and when he didn't come back the pilot went down to help. But, neither one made it back to the cockpit and their masks and died of smoke inhalation.

If this happened the plane would fly on until it ran out of fuel. This may have been a zombie plane after all...


Brian
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They would get down to 12K feet as quick as possible, and get to the nearest suitable runway. Nobody is going to go into the E/E bay.

If they feel the need to walk around, there are several portable oxygen bottles for that purpose.
 
LTC8K6 said:
This incident is really showing how bad the media has gotten...

Their entire drive is for ratings. Accuracy has become unimportant. Getting you to look is paramount.
Click to expand...

Seriously. Every day I look they have some new breaking piece of information, and then casually mention that everything they reported yesterday was wrong. What the fuck.
 
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