dtc

It got torn off on the runway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXDalv7kNQ

venk

That is what I meant. If MH 370 just flew into the ocean gliding with no power, the tail cone would have broken off as soon as it hit the water just as the Asiana flight tail came off when it hit the end of the runway. Flying into water without a gentle flare as Captain Sully did in the Hudson would be like hitting land.

QF WP

They would head north (turn right at Vampi) if going to Middle East on N571.

Alternatively, they'd head south (as MH370 perhaps has done) on N571 and who knows what the person in charge of the plane has done. There is insufficient knowledge to know whether they keyed in other waypoint(s) [possibly Cocos-Keeling Island and then Polum??]; or if they flew the plane manually on a southerly heading...your guess is as good as mine at the moment. There are no waypoints due south of Polum...

http://skyvector.com/?ll=-22.2565631...089:F.YM.POLUM

ACARS

It has been done before in a large 767 of Ethiopian Airlines. This was the result. Luckily it came own in day light and shallow water just off the coast line.

Better footage here.

Kiwi Flyer

Incorrect. The reason for the arcs is the last known data on the aircraft position comes from pings recorded by Inmarsat satellite. From the data a distance from satellite is calculated, but not a direction or lat/long position. A constant distance from the satellite describes an arc on a 2-d map.

jbsay

If the Australian report is correct, and MH370 actually ended up in the south Indian Ocean, it almost certainly went down at or about the time the aircraft ran out of fuel. (Otherwise, the plane would have crashed much closer to where it lost communications, etc.) A B777, like all modern commercial airliners, can glide without engine power for quite some time: depending on its configuration, a B777's glide ratio can exceed 20:1. This means MH370 could have glided 90 or so miles without fuel from its last reported altitude of FL235 at a fairly gentle rate of descent of ~900ft/min. Even if the captain and first officer were incapacitated when the aircraft went down, gliding is its natural state; the aircraft is designed for stable flight by default. The vast majority of airliner crashes involve a far more violent rate of descent or in-flight breakup -- see, e.g. AF447 -- but the available data suggest MH370 went out with a whimper, not a bang. As such, the likelihood of debris floating is much higher than is usually the case with this kind of event.

jackal

Interesting; I knew that training aircraft (Cessnas, Diamonds, etc.) are designed for stable flight by default, but I thought that airliners weren't. Is the 777 unique among jet airliners or did my ground school professor misinform me?

FWIW, just did a quick Google search and came up with this:

seattletravelguy

The plane didn't glide; there's no way.

trailboss99

That's actually not too bad. You can work with those depths, had it been those numbers plus 5000, then it gets tricky.

At any rate we should have a ship in the area shortly if it's on schedule.

Oh and ref the 56 knot speed shown for the vessel in line to be first on scene, Adler was due to have some work done in WA this month, she can pull 50 or maybe a little more and was due to head west after work was completed. It's conceivable that if she was within a couple of hundred NM at the time they may have let her have her head. If it is (and I'm not saying it is, it could well have been a mistake) her she'll be back in Fremantle soon enough, you don't wanna know her consumption rate at WOT . . .

trailboss99

Not sure I get this statement, no it won't glide on it's own but it's more than capable of gliding with a hand at the controls.

userasc

It has been reported this possible debris was recorded by radars. Can anyone explain this?
There surely should be some signal to cause the radar reaction?

ExpatExp

I'll let the aeronautical experts address the perspective from above sea level, but from sea level, any number of things can generate a return: waves, rain, thunderstorms, birds, large marine mammals poking their heads, fins and tails out of the water, fishing gear, floating trees, floating containers, large patches of floating seaweed or other natural or artificial waste (rubber duckies), etc. -- granted not all (and perhaps none) of these things may be relevant to that particular area of sea, but these are all things which can generate a return on ship-based radar and which are covered and discussed in most radar operation courses.

Similarly, all of these things are well known to radar operators and can be filtered out by the correct software and tuning settings. Therefore, I'd imagine that they must have seen something quite substantial in order to have mentioned it at all. Whether or not the object(s) had anything to do with an aircraft is a different matter entirely, but it sounds like we will know quite soon.

bioblot

A 777 on autopilot that runs out of fuel will glide.

userasc

Thank you! It has just been reported on SKY that US P8 went to the area and found nothing.. P8 is apparently able to perform some way of underwater search..

I hope they have satellite images for the next days and can follow from the images what happened to this object..

userasc

They are still investigating the north path too.. among other news - the transport minister said 'Malaysia is sending 2 aircraft to Kazakhstan' and they also spoke to Nepal.