MANman

Apparently the pilot can even pull the fuse on the cockpit voice recorder!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185

exilencfc

It quite likely wasn't unidentified. Planes are constantly sending out their identity but not AFAIK their flight plans. So it probably appeared to anyone who was watching as just another airliner nothing unusual. If it wasn't flying in a threatening direction or ignoring communications there wasn't any reason to be worried about it. AFAIK anyway, i'm by no means expert and some imput from somebody more knowledgeable would be valuable.

The problem with hypoxia is that it impairs decision making and reaction times. If the pilots were already hypoxic when warnings started sounding they may not have reacted correctly. That said, surely hypoxic conditions on the flight deck is a fault ACARS should report and apparently no faults were reported.

trailboss99

Yeah well that worked, didn't it?

The problem there is it relies on too many separate systems, A GPS, the transponder unit and a transmitter as well as a power supply and antenna unit. All these are then joined with a lot of wiring. That's a lot to go wrong. I'm proposing a small, light (less than 2kg) self contained system with inbuilt battery backup much like an EPIRB. Regardless of what goes wrong this will keep working as long as the airframe is in more or less in one piece.

At any rate the requirement for ADS-B should be satlink. The reliance on VHF in a modern heavy in this day and age is silly. Even shipping uses satphone over conventional radio now. A lot of them have the equivalent of live black box reporting as well.

As for the expense I simply do not consider it at all acceptable that in this day and age we don't know the whereabouts of a 250 million dollar piece of equipment with up to 500 souls on board at every given moment. Do you?

Now, back to our regular programing . . .


Some of the heaviest used in the world mate and I'm sure each and every one of them is looking. The straits of Malacca in particular are an oceanic highway.

bzcat

The performance of various Malay Govt agencies and departments have been very banana republic like. Seems as if the military is not talking to civil aviation authority and the police are perusing its own conspiracy theories even before the wreckage is found. Add to the whole passport fiasco and general cluelessness of some officials during press conference, it has not look good for Malaysia in front of world media.

And still, MH has not released cargo manifest almost 6 days after the disappearance. I asked about the cargo manifest as soon as the passenger list was released... It should be available to the media. What are they hiding?

Letitride3c

Latest VN leading news' headline (translated) on the web: "TTO - On 10-3, military officials said they believe that Malaysia has tracked the aircraft on radar to the Strait of Malacca, a great distance from the aircraft position last contact with the the civilian air traffic control off the east coast of the country."

Unbelieveable with latest news relevation from Malay military that MH370 disappear from commercial radar track and continue to flew after turning, changed attitude & continue somehow for 1+ hours and way off-course, then disappeared ??? The Air Force General said it before, there are some things we can tell or share with you and some that we cannot disclose ...

So MH370 possibly never entered Vietnam airspace or FIR as that government maintained and yet has been the focal point for much of SAR, relying on datapoints & information from Malay authorities and alleged sightings.

If it was Malacca Strait - very disturbing as it could have - with estimated fuel onboard - flown for several more hours. No known attempts made to contact or intercept the "silent" plane - raised more questions than answers, like radar sources from Indonesia and Thailand ?? English skills being the least of the problem here !

One might as well do SAR in the Bay of Bengal as it could've flown across toward India over that big wide body of water. Draw a 6+ hour radius, that plane could be anywhere in that vast region - yet, the main search grid is 100 nm and the Strait of Malacca. Hmmm, I think once the latest news is verified, we need a "slight" game-changing revision to the Wiki.

andrewwm

EPIRBs already report plane location after a set amount of g forces have been recorded. The only case they don't is if the plane ends up in the water, and then no amount of broadcasting will help you.

Planes have many backup electrical systems. Both engines are capable of independently powering coms, then you have battery backup, and failing that you have a RAM air turbine.

So the only way that your solution adds value is if the total electrical system is fried. Hijacking etc. it won't help because, due to fire concerns, all electronics have to allow for the pilot to disable them.

Moreover, your solution also requires a working battery, antenna, wiring, and ground-based infrastructure to receive the signals. It's just a redundant backup of the system already on board.

They already have this - ADS-C is the same system but with satellite uplink. The problem with satellite uplink is that it has much higher latency than ADS-B, so is only used when no ADS-B listening stations are available.

It's not the expense. It's that your solution only solves the problem of this one specific crash (maybe) while adding a lot of maintenance, weight, and additional points of electric failure.

WindowSeat123

So basically, every SAR vessel in the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea searching for this missing plane has been on a wild goose chase? This will certainly not go down well with the Vietnamese and Chinese authorities.

I am not going to speculate whether the Malaysian authorities are hiding anything, but one thing becomes increasing clear (and I hate to say this by the way), so far the way the Malays have handled this made me forced to agree with the posters who question the professionalism and competence of the Malaysian authorities.

JDiver

For information that may already have been discussed or posted, please read the wiki prior to posting new theories, old news, discredited reports.

As this is intended to be a strictly moderated thread, those posts criticising SAR efforts, redesigning aircraft, containing wild speculation, tasteless material that could be offensive to family reading this thread, material that can be read upthread or in the wiki and the like will be / have been summarily deleted, in accordance with FlyerTalk TOS.

- JDiver, on behalf of the Senior Moderator team.

andrewwm

<redacted>

I think much more blame needs to be placed at the feet of gossips and rumor-mongers in the press that just reprint whatever rumor percolates up from local media (looking at Reuters).

Every time some piece of "news" comes out from a non-authoritative source, it gets posted here 30 times, such as the sighting by a CX plane and now this apparently fabricated quote about the plane being tracked by military radar.

A day later, the "news" (really, rumor or unverified find) gets debunked by the actual authorities, who are then accused of hiding things.

andrewwm

According to local Malaysian sources, the whole Reuters article about the aircraft being tracked at 29,000 feet by RMAF Butterworth out into the Andaman Sea was a fabrication.

On the first day, an official from the RMAF said that it is possible the plane turned back (speculation). But there have been no other confirmed news about it being tracked/not tracked by military radar since then.

WindowSeat123

If the Vietnamese don't have adequate radar coverage over that section of the gulf and have to rely on the pilot's position reports, then they may not know. Remember, it was literally at the southern edge of Vietnamese airspace so radar coverage maybe somewhat patchy there.

jackal

What's the effective data rate for recordings to the FDR? Is it on the order of kilobits per second or megabits per second? If the former, satellite data capacity has come a LONG way since 2002, and with more and more aircraft becoming equipped with on-board wifi, it shouldn't be too hard to upload a few dozen (or even a few hundred) kbps of data at very little incremental cost.

Absolutely great idea, IMHO. I skim through the wiki periodically when I haven't been on the thread, but it's hard to see what's changed.

Good point--uploading just the coordinates, even on a very frequent basis, is literally just a few KB of data at most. Again, with more and more aircraft being equipped with in-flight wifi, it would be trivial to do this at almost no cost.

As someone else mentioned, plans are already in the works to do this with ADS-C, though. Can't come soon enough, IMHO.

That works, but it's not the easiest to read. I like SingaporeDon's idea--highlight the stuff that's been posted in the last, say, 12 (or maybe 24?) hours in yellow. Timestamp when it was highlighed so others can go through and un-highlight it after it's passed the requisite amount of time.

The fact it's taken three days for them to release that information either speaks to hiding something or incompetence, IMHO.

yannix

+1. Everyone just wants instant answers or anything for that matter. Everyone just needs to chill out. We won't know anything conclusive for a while.

I've seen firsthand during natural disasters where reporters are desperate for a news piece and would be seen interviewing some low ranking police officer. It then would be published as a local "official" being quoted with saying <insert information/clue here>. That story would then be picked up by major news outlet which would lead people to believe that it's fact.

MANman

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...ssions-396857/

In response to a question posed by Flightglobal about the aircraft’s ACARS data, one of the officials cited the “sensitivity of the investigations.”

JDiver

Note the radar coverage map in the wiki, originally posted upthread by a member; if VKB radar is out or not performing properly, MH370 would be out of Malaysian radar coverage for much of its transit in the Gulf of Thailand.