Malaysia Airlines 777 missing en route to beijing

[Thanas]

Terrorists activity makes no sense here considering that Malaysia is pretty much a conservative Islamic country already and more importantly, one who Iran has no beef with. Likewise, bombs are unlikely for the same reasons Sea Skimmer has already mentioned - in flight breakup would have created a large debris field.

[Col. Crackpot]

The attack killed mostly Chinese nationals. They could have been the target? A nutter flying the plane straight into the ocean intact is a plausible explanation for the lack of a debris field.

[Thanas]

The attack killed mostly Chinese nationals. They could have been the target? A nutter flying the plane straight into the ocean intact is a plausible explanation for the lack of a debris field.

And how did they get access to the locked cockpit? I think any conspiracy theory be best left alone unless there is evidence for it.

[Sea Skimmer]

In any case, no one's found anything... Sea skimmer, how effective would the ASW equipment of the P-3 or the helicopters be? Is a MAD useful at all?

MAD is borderline useless for anything, it only works within a few hundred yards of the aircraft at best. It would find lots of junk and iron ore on the bottom of the seafloor and that about it. The P-8 doesn't even bother to mount it, its only real use is localizing a stationary diesel submarine that was already detected and went dead silent. Patrol planes have to drop sonar bouys to listen to anything, given the cost of expending them it would be better to spend the money on dispatching more planes or ships. Helicopter dipping sonar is something of waste too until all possible visual/IR searching zones were double and triple checked.

Finding those things is really just a job for the persistence of surface ships, and while the water is a bit shallow, submarines. Its not like you need a warship either, anyone with a good hydrophone can search. Hell some fish finding sonars would work, though in that part of the world most fishing boats are very small and dont have sonar or radios. That's one thing that's being run down now, sending people around to ask fishermen if they saw anything. Some go out for multiple days at a time with no radio and might have seen something but as of yet not reported it.

[Thanas]

They also might consider employing the services of some specialists in underwater salvage which after all have the greatest experience in locating wreckage of this kind (the French also have a Government vessel dedicated to it). I doubt Malaysia has the money to do so though.

[Sea Skimmer]

They also normally take considerable periods of time to do anything, because the take a while to show up and then in this case the water is very shallow in the most probable search area. That means scan sonar has a very limited swatch as far as active searching. That's normally what those companies do. Endless mower patterns with side scan sonar. Reliable, but very tedious.

The water is also full of shoals and reefs, which further limit the use of any form of sonar, even just basic hydrophones to pickup the locator beacons, assuming they survived the crash. The beacons are less robust then the hardened memory core buried inside the box. Without some kind of firm cue it is needle in a haystack territory. Indonesia lost a 737 in the Makassar Strait in 2007 and it took a week to find even with multiple cues from radar and several intermittent contacts with the beacons.

Seriously its day three. The search zone is now part of the Andaman Sea, the entire Gulf of Thailand and the western half of the south China sea as far as the Chinese coastline. Tens of thousands of square miles. Malaysia isn't some dirt poor country but hiring a salvage outfit would mean very little right now. The US navy has all ocean salvage companies beat at undersea searches anyway, having invented most of the shit they use and done more then a bit of insane recovery in the past, and it is helping.

[AniThyng]

Terrorists activity makes no sense here considering that Malaysia is pretty much a conservative Islamic country already and more importantly, one who Iran has no beef with. Likewise, bombs are unlikely for the same reasons Sea Skimmer has already mentioned - in flight breakup would have created a large debris field.

There has been some tension lately since Malaysia is a Sunni county and has been declaring domastic Shia Islam as deviant ( basically for local political gain by trying to paint a major Islamic party opposition figure as Shia, the main idea is Iranian shias are fine but not Malay Shia, if any ), and this has reportedlyled to some unofficial trade retaliation by Iran. Nothing official though.

[Borgholio]

According to Interpol, it's not likely a terrorist act. Unless new info pops up, that pretty much settles it. Now we just need to find out what failed on the plane.

[Sky Captain]

If plane was not actively tracked by radar when it went missing one explanation would be attempted hijacking that resullted in course change and later crash in some random place in ocean where no one has searched for debris yet.

[InsaneTD]

The local news just said that one of the stolen passports was used by an Iranian man who was trying to emigrate to Germany.

[Thanas]

If plane was not actively tracked by radar when it went missing one explanation would be attempted hijacking that resullted in course change and later crash in some random place in ocean where no one has searched for debris yet.

And how did they get into the cockpit? Since 9/11 cockpit doors are reinforced and locked at all times during the flight.

[Broomstick]

Human factors. Either one or more of the pilots in collusion with hijackers, or the hijackers threaten to blow up the plane/kill everyone aboard/whatever and the pilot(s) yields to demands.

Of course, there is then the problem of keeping the passengers in line these days - no guarantee they'll sit quietly any more. I suppose, though, the plane could be depressurized and knock them all out or something.

Disclaimer: WILD speculation there.

[General Zod]

Human factors. Either one or more of the pilots in collusion with hijackers, or the hijackers threaten to blow up the plane/kill everyone aboard/whatever and the pilot(s) yields to demands.

Of course, there is then the problem of keeping the passengers in line these days - no guarantee they'll sit quietly any more. I suppose, though, the plane could be depressurized and knock them all out or something.

Disclaimer: WILD speculation there.

What if a bird got sucked into an engine? I think people are a little quick to leap to the terrorism angle.

[Broomstick]

A bird getting sucked into an engine does not result in failure of transponder and radio. If that happened the airplane should have had no problem transmitting "Hey, we just sucked up a bird".

[Zaune]

Besides, even if there was a bird capable of reaching an airliner's crusing altitude (and I'm pretty sure there isn't), losing one engine won't make a modern airliner fall out of the sky unless the crew do something really dumb like shut down the wrong engine by mistake and fail to realise until they're about to impersonate a lawn dart.

Admittedly, that has happened at least once that I'm aware of, but that was in a brand-new aircraft owned by an airline who cut some corners on the familiarisation process.

[Thanas]

Human factors. Either one or more of the pilots in collusion with hijackers, or the hijackers threaten to blow up the plane/kill everyone aboard/whatever and the pilot(s) yields to demands.

Of course, there is then the problem of keeping the passengers in line these days - no guarantee they'll sit quietly any more. I suppose, though, the plane could be depressurized and knock them all out or something.

Disclaimer: WILD speculation there.

Speculation without any kind of evidence is not good.

Remember the Air France machine that went off the radar, without transmission suddenly a few years ago? Everybody was going nuts and in the end it was nothing like the initial speculation.

[StarSword]

And then there was the 747 that blew up over the Atlantic about ten or so years ago and people swore they had images of a missile being launched, and then it turns out whoever took the picture had a dirty lens and the explosion was an electrical fault that set fire to a fuel tank.

Don't ascribe malice in plane crashes unless you've got evidence.

[Broomstick]

Besides, even if there was a bird capable of reaching an airliner's crusing altitude (and I'm pretty sure there isn't)

The bar-headed goose migrates over the peak of Mt. Everest, cruising between 28,000 and 30,000 feet. So yes, birds can reach those altitudes.

Granted, they usually don't fly that high unless necessary. I put bird-strike-at-cuirse in about the same category as hit-by-a-meteor in regards to this flight.

Right now all we have is a big question mark, so folks have nothing but speculation.

[LadyTevar]

The question now is DID it actually change course, and if so, why? Would this course change have dropped it below radar?

[Sea Skimmer]

It Did! Malaysia is now saying the plane was off course for a solid hour before being lost over the Strait of Malacca. As in it was seen by radar on the west coast of Malay, and then lost apparently when it flew out of range. It was still at high altitude, but about 3,000ft lower then it should have been.

They wouldn't stay up that long on a stable directional path if they had no power or the cockpit was damaged. Hyjacking is now well, more then slightly likely. It need not involve anyone but the pilot or copilot. All they have to do is lock the cockpit door, then surprise and stab the other person in the neck with a pen. Then they can turn off the locator beacon gear, and do whatever they want until out of fuel. This threat was seriously considered in the past in the US, and a reason why it actually took a while before it was decided to be standard for cockpits to have reinforced doors as they do now, instead of just ones that locked firmly.

Record for a birdstrike is 37,000ft BTW, I was going to put that first.. but kind of an irrelevant fact now. The wing loading on large aspect ratio bird wings is so low that only tolerance to oxygen deprivation holds them back.

[Sea Skimmer]

Source for course change, all over the web in the last hour but here's one with relevant bit quoted.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/m ... -1.1717414

Source says Malaysia Airlines flight veered off course for an hour before vanishing as two Iranians using stolen passports ID'd

Investigators searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight believe it veered off course for more than an hour with its tracking systems apparently disabled before vanishing, according to senior military source.
In the new scenario, Flight MH370 drastically changed its route at a lower altitude, flying over Malaysia’s west coast, over the busy shipping channel of the Strait of Malacca.
Previously, Malaysian authorities have said the Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for the Chinese capital Beijing.
At the time it was roughly midway between Malaysia's east coast town of Kota Bharu and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 feet.

[Thanas]

How does this tracking system get damaged/disabled without hijacking?

[Broomstick]

The question now is DID it actually change course, and if so, why? Would this course change have dropped it below radar?

OK, brief course on aviation radar because I see this as being a point of confusion.

There are two basic sorts of radar: primary and secondary. Primary radar is the original radar and the data is pretty raw, you get echos off everything - birds, clouds, trees, temperature inversions, whatever. Lots of blips and nothing labeled. It gives you the most information but is often not useful due to the quantity and quality of data, including false returns.

Secondary radar works with the transponders to generated labeled blips for air traffic control. It is usually set to edit out echo returns that are too slow, too small, or meet other criteria so as to present mostly aircraft and not much other stuff. This makes traffic control a lot easier because you aren't mistaking flocks of birds for airplanes and you can tell which blip is which aircraft at a glance.

The vast majority of the time civilian air traffic control is using only secondary radar.

From what I gather, when they talk about this airplane "dropping off radar" they mostly mean it dropped off secondary radar. It dropped off ATC screens. That can happen due to power failure, transponder failure, or someone turning the transponder off.

The military radar which continued to pick up the airplane was almost certainly primary radar, which picks up everything. But, remember - primary radar isn't labeled. A radar operator might be able to deduce that blip there is an airliner but they won't know which airliner unless they contact the airplane via radio, and the military isn't likely to do that because that's ATC's concern. By dropping a few thousand feet they're essentially "changing lanes" in the sky (there are designated routes and altitudes, but I don't want to clutter the explanation with the details) which makes it even harder to relate that blip to the missing airplane.

I am assuming that what's happening is that they're going back over military radar records after cross-matching with civilian radar records to determine which of the primary radar blips was the airliner that dropped off secondary radar. This takes time (obviously). That's why it took a couple days to figure out the track of Flight 370.

Here's another thing - certain altitudes are designated for eastbound airplanes, others for westbound airplanes. The way this airplane changed altitude, the amount the altitude changed, it's not just that they "changed lanes", they changed lanes appropriately so that they were at a proper altitude for the direction they were going. Someone looking at the raw primary radar return wouldn't see anything amiss. That implies control, and knowledge.

It sure does look like someone wanted to hide the airplane.

[Broomstick]

How does this tracking system get damaged/disabled without hijacking?

There is an off switch.

After 9/11 there was some talk of hardwiring them to be on all the time but the idea was nixed. A malfunctioning transponder can give a confusing signal (I once had one declaring my unpressurized airplane was cruising at 50,000 feet which is flat out impossible) so ATC wants the option to turn that off when it's less confusing that way (after which they maintain radio contact as needed and there's a lot of position reporting). Electrical faults, power losses, and other problems might necessitate shutting down systems either to prevent shorts/fires or conserve power.

As for damage - well, shit happens. Lightning strikes, shorts in wiring, old age, spilled coffee - same reason anything else on board might get damaged.

Of course, there being an off switch, it's possible to turn one off accidentally. After which the pilots get chewed out by ATC and turn it back on. Doesn't happen very often.

Now, that's the transponder. Some airplanes have a system that transmits data via satellite to a ground station. This being a 777 it's quite likely it had one of those. I'm not familiar with that particular device, but it could very well have an off switch, too. Or someone knowledgeable would know which circuit breakers to flip to turn off power to it.

[Sea Skimmer]

The satellite system is ADS-B, but it also broadcasts as a transponder as well. I don't know if ADS-B capable planes bother to mount the older transponder system, it seems a bit pointless to me that they would do. Even for redundancy they could just have a second ADS-B system.

The antenna could break, the transmitter for ADS-B could break, and a list of other faults. The pilots would have a warning for this that it was broken and they are now no longer identifying themselves. Flying towards and with a route planned over communist Vietnam and communist China both of whom have active integrated air defense systems this would best quickly get the pilots attention I think. At least given that they had someone with 18,000 hours flying in east asia in the cockpit. No transponder = you could get shot down. You would certainly get intercepted. Those are not super friendly countries when it comes to national defense. Oh and Taiwan is nearby too with all its air defenses. And tensions are high in that part of the world.

Little or nothing about ADS-B should be common with the crew radio except possibly one antenna, but large aircraft have more then one radio and antenna anyway. Turning the system off is a flip of a switch meanwhile.

ADS-B tracked by ground radio stations streamed to flightradar24.com showed the plane on course into the middle of the Gulf of Thailand, then it was gone. Vietnam may have seen it turning, this seems to still be unclear, and it was never stated if they had an actual radar paint, or purely a response to transponder interrogation or not.

Then most of an hour later the plane shows up hundreds of miles away on an almost reciprocal course with no ADS-B active. It doesn't say much for Malaysian radar that nobody sounded an alarm at the time over this at the time, but they don't really have an air defense system.

A whole slew of things had to be damage for any of this to make sense as a non hijacking event. A meteor into the cockpit might do that. A bomb near the cockpit might also, while still leaving the autopilot capable of holding a (wrong) course.