Malaysia Airlines 777 missing en route to beijing

[Irbis]

Why would anyone want to steal a passenger plane when stealing cargo planes is easier and less bloody?

Presumably, a hijacker would have a harder time getting onboard as the general public isn't usually allowed onto cargo planes.

If you have got the kind of resources to hijack a plane, kill 200+ people, have them and the plane disappear and then sell the plane or parts of it (who are all individualized so you have to falsify papertrails etc. iirc) then I bet you also have the kind of resources to bribe a few officials, get a fake ID and work clothes and then get a cargo plane.

There are far less cargo planes than passenger planes. They also tend to be used in richest regions of the world, meaning good airport security and high risk of plane being spotted. I'd think selling passenger plane to corrupt third world air line serving badly equipped countries would be much easier.

Kill 200 people? Please, if you have airstrip handy all you need is small group armed with automatic guns. Or, as Broomstick noted, simply being willing to kill passengers by depressurization, pilots have access to much longer lasting air supply. This is in the region that used to have heavy pirate activity, they didn't have problems disposing of victims before when they went after the ship.

[InsaneTD]

This came up on what's trending on Facebook.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 3396580350

Malaysia Airlines 3786 missing jet transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites over the course of five hours after it disappeared from radar, people briefed on the matter said, as searchers zeroed in on new target areas hundreds of miles west of the plane's original course.

The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent "pings," the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped. One of the people, an industry official, said it was possible that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.

WSJ has confirmed that the pilot had the ability to manually turn off the transponder on Flight MH370. Why is the transponder so significant? WSJ's Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.

The people, who included a military official, the industry official and others, declined to say what specific path the transmissions revealed. But the U.S. planned to move surveillance planes into an area of the Indian Ocean 1,000 miles or more west of the Malay peninsula where the plane took off, said Cmdr. William Marks, the spokesman for the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

He said the destroyer USS Kidd would move through the Strait of Malacca, on Malaysia's west coast, and stay at its northwest entrance. Malaysia, which is overseeing the search effort, directed Indian forces to a specific set of coordinates in the Andaman Sea, northwest of the Malay peninsula, an Indian official said Thursday. "There was no specified rationale behind looking in those areas, but a detailed list was provided late Wednesday evening," the Indian official said.
View Graphics

The automatic pings, or attempts to link up with satellites operated by Inmarsat PLC, occurred a number of times after Flight 370's last verified position, the people briefed on the situation said, indicating that at least through those five hours, the Boeing Co. 777 carrying 239 people remained intact and hadn't been destroyed in a crash, act of sabotage or explosion.

Malaysia Airlines said it hadn't received any such data. According to Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, the airline didn't purchase a package through Boeing to monitor its airplanes' data through the satellite system.

Malaysia Airlines said Friday that it has the required maintenance program in place for its Boeing 777, without elaborating.

If the plane remained airborne for the entire five hours, it could have flown more than 2,200 nautical miles from its last confirmed position over the Gulf of Thailand, the people said.

U.S. aviation investigators said they were analyzing the satellite transmissions to determine whether they can glean information about the plane's ultimate location or status. The transmissions were sent via onboard technology designed to send routine maintenance and system-monitoring data back to the ground via satellite links, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Among the possible scenarios investigators said they are now considering is whether the jet may have landed at any point during the five-hour period under scrutiny, or whether it ultimately crashed.

[Thanas]

There are far less cargo planes than passenger planes. They also tend to be used in richest regions of the world, meaning good airport security and high risk of plane being spotted.

And yet, they have been stolen from the third world with little effort in the past.

I'd think selling passenger plane to corrupt third world air line serving badly equipped countries would be much easier.

Kill 200 people? Please, if you have airstrip handy all you need is small group armed with automatic guns. Or, as Broomstick noted, simply being willing to kill passengers by depressurization, pilots have access to much longer lasting air supply. This is in the region that used to have heavy pirate activity, they didn't have problems disposing of victims before when they went after the ship.

Lolyeah, keep having your fantasy. I am willing to bet you a hundred bucks right now that this is not what happened here.

Also, where would that handy airstip be without getting noticed by other radar?

[Broomstick]

There are far less cargo planes than passenger planes. They also tend to be used in richest regions of the world, meaning good airport security and high risk of plane being spotted.

And yet, they have been stolen from the third world with little effort in the past.

There have also been attempted cargo plane hijackings in the US. I am not aware of any that succeeded but it's not impossible and there may be instances out there I'm not aware of.

Kill 200 people? Please, if you have airstrip handy all you need is small group armed with automatic guns. Or, as Broomstick noted, simply being willing to kill passengers by depressurization, pilots have access to much longer lasting air supply. This is in the region that used to have heavy pirate activity, they didn't have problems disposing of victims before when they went after the ship.

Lolyeah, keep having your fantasy. I am willing to bet you a hundred bucks right now that this is not what happened here.

Also, where would that handy airstip be without getting noticed by other radar?

Large parts of Africa, Asia, South America and Australia have no radar coverage.

For that matter, there are considerable areas of land in the US west that have no or minimal radar coverage and few inhabitants on the ground where even a large airliner with the transponder off could move around and not automatically be noted. Some of the salt flats in the west have been used as landing areas as-is, without need for paving, because the ground is that hard and that flat. That's one reason the US military and civilian aviation industry uses those areas for flight testing, so much emergency landing area and so few houses to fall on. While a lot of it is covered by military and civilian radar a lot of it is not, particularly at the lower altitudes. There are great swathes of the aviation navigational charts that clearly indicate there no radar coverage and no air traffic control services below 18,000 feet in those areas. And then there's Alaska...

But, getting back to the part of Asia where the airliner disappeared: radar coverage is spotty in that area, as already acknowledged by several sources, and even more so over both the Indiana and Pacific Ocean.

Really, Europe is the only continent where you don't have gaps in radar coverage.

Minimum runway length for a 777 is about 6,000 feet, or slightly under 2,000 meters. There are a lot of runways that length in the world. The biggest concern is not finding a sufficiently long runway, it's whether or not the runway can support the weight of the airplane. Building a runway is essentially building a road, so it's conceivable an existing runway could be beefed up to handle a B777 or even built from scratch. Taking off again would require some serious weight reduction but with no passengers, stripping things like seats out of the interior, and minimum fuel it certainly could be done.

[AniThyng]

http://aattp.org/exclusive-a-former-nav ... light-370/

I like this guy already.

EXCLUSIVE: A Former Naval Officer Savagely Debunks The Conspiracies Surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Posted by: AATTP in Most Popular on AATTP, Op-Ed March 13, 2014

By AATTP Guest Contributor Jim Wright,

Those of you who are familiar with my military background know that I have experience in looking for downed aircraft, and other things, lost at sea. Which is likely why some of you keep asking me for an opinion on the missing jetliner. Here you go:

For those of you not familiar with this, five days ago Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 with 239 passengers and crew onboard disappeared somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. So far no wreckage, no debris, no trace of the aircraft or the people have been found.

Malaysia 777

Weird, man, weird. I mean, it’s totally GOT to be alien space pirates or Langoliers or Dirty Dick Vadar, right?

langoliers

I mean, right?

Yeah, look, Folks, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that based on my experience with this sort of thing, we can safely rule out alien abductions and inter-dimensional rifts in the space time continuum. And I have it on good authority that Cheney was home all night, nursing an acid stomach over Obama’s reluctance to invade Russia.

obama putin

Now, I suppose it’s just, just, vaguely possible that the missing aircraft is parked on a secret jungle runway in Sumatra or Cambodia (or Bangor, Maine), hidden under camouflage netting, with the passengers and crew secured in an underground prison and its mysterious cargo now in the hands of a heretofore unknown shadowy cabal of international criminals with a really cool and evil acronym for a name. But until the Queen gets a coded message demanding 36 Billion British Pounds in gold bullion to be hand delivered by Sean Connery himself, let’s just go ahead and label that Alternate Theory #1.

goldfinger

Most likely, and by “most likely” I mean the probability is approximately 99.999999999999%, the plane and its unfortunate passengers are scattered across a large portion of the seafloor under the Gulf of Thailand.

china-satellite

Yeah, okay, but why can’t they find the wreckage?

Because the ocean is a damned big place, vaster than you can imagine unless you’ve sailed across it (and, because I know you people, yes, I HAVE indeed sailed this part of the world, it’s vast, and complicated and dangerous). And even when you know exactly, and I mean EXACTLY, where to look, it’s still extremely difficult to find scattered bits of airplane or, to be blunt, scattered bits of people in the water. As a navy sailor, I’ve spent days searching for lost aircraft and airmen, and even if you think you know where the bird went down, the winds and the currents can spread the debris across hundreds or even thousands of miles of ocean in fairly short order. No machine, no computer, can search this volume, you have to put human eyeballs on every inch of the search area. You have to inspect every item you come across – and the oceans of the world are FULL of flotsam, jetsam, debris, junk, trash, crap, bits, and pieces. Often neither the sea nor the weather cooperates, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to spot a item the size of a human being in the water, among the swells and the spray, even if you know exactly where to look – and the sea conditions in this part of the world are some of the worst, especially this time of year.

Yeah, but what about a fuel slick, we should be able to see that, right?

south china sea

Again, you just don’t understand how big the ocean is. A fuel slick from an airplane this size (assuming the fuel hit the sea in one mass and wasn’t vaporized into an aerosol by break-up of the aircraft at 30,000 feet) might cover, what? a square mile? Probably much less. A standard search area, a rectangle 50 miles wide by 200 miles say, along the airplane’s flight path might encompass TEN THOUSAND square miles – every inch of which has to be searched by the Mark 1 MOD 0 human eyeball. Starting to get the picture? We’re not talking thick heavy bunker oil. High grade light fuel, like the kind burned in commercial jet turbines, evaporates quickly. Slicks are broken up by wave action and wind. And in heavy seas the sheen of oil on water is nearly impossible to spot. There’s a very finite amount of time for finding a fuel slick on the surface of the ocean, assuming that one even exists, that time is past for Flight 370.

Yeah, but how come they don’t know exactly where it is? Don’t we track all airplanes via radar?

No. And certainly not over the oceans between countries. Commercial Air Traffic Control radar systems don’t work the way you think they do, at least not exactly, and not all of the time. Why? Money mostly. Practicality as well. International cooperation. The limits and wide mix of technology. And etc. Note also that this isn’t North America, things are a bit different in Asian airspace. The plane was (probably) over water, between national air control regions.

Yeah, but what about military radars?

radar

Most military radar isn’t concerned with commercial air traffic on standard routes flying at 30,000+ feet. The skies are full of jetliners. Most just appear as a contact on a tracking scope, watched briefly as they trundle along in a straight line across the sky, and are then ignored. Military people are concerned with threats. Threats typically move in a ballistic trajectory, or a flat fast powered arc, or much closer to the surface. Military radar records might be helpful in figuring out what happened, but unless Flight 370 was behaving like a threat while passing through somebody’s radar envelope, it’s unlikely that anybody would notice or bother to identify it. Also military people charged with defending their airspace don’t like showing people from other countries their radar systems, and for damned GOOD reasons, so it’s going to take some time to get those records. It’s going to be a while before a complete search those recordings can be done.

Yeah, but what about the ringing phones?

cell phone

You ever call a cell phone that was turned off? Sometimes it goes straight to voicemail, sometimes it rings. You ever call somebody, their phone rings and rings and rings and RINGS and then they FINALLY answer and you’re like, WTF Dude? And they’re like, What’s your problem, Bro, it only rang one time! You hear rings because the cellular network is looking for the phone and if the phone doesn’t respond immediately the network doesn’t know if the device is active, in an area of weak signal or limited connectivity or heavy congestion, roaming out of network, or turned off. Some networks send you a ringtone while they look for the phone you’re calling so you don’t hang up. Other times you just get dead air. There’s no standard, even in heavily regulated North America, and sure as hell not across the various countries of Asia. Again, this isn’t some big conspiracy, this is how the various evolving patchwork cell phone systems work. The information is widely available and you can test it yourself. Claiming that “ringing” cell phones mean the plane is or was still intact just means that you’re ignorant of how the technology works.

Note: I read a couple of comments speculating that GPS and Cell Phone signals might penetrate water, at least a little bit, indicating the plane might be intact on the bottom of the sea. No. Hell no. Wrong wrong wrong. Take some science classes, wave physics for starters. GPS and cell phones operate above the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) portion of the Radio Frequency spectrum, those wavelengths do NOT, repeat do NOT, penetrate water. Period. Yes, Very Low (VLF) and Extremely Low (ELF) radio waves CAN penetrate water to a significant degree, but you’d need a cell phone the size of large refrigerator/freezer and an antenna MILES in length to use those freqs.

Yeah, but what about reports that the plane turned before losing contact?

That’s what experts are for. That’s what’s taking so long. Maybe the plane turned around, maybe it didn’t. Every single person on the planet in this information saturated age should damned well know by now that initial reports are going to be conflicting, contradictory, confused, and just plain wrong. This ISN’T some big conspiracy, it is unfortunately the nature of the situation, it’s perfectly normal and it happens all of the time and it always has and you know it. EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING who lives in the Information Age should understand in their bones that every Joe Shit The Ragman who comes along just might not know what the fuck he’s talking about, but that doesn’t stop him from getting on the TV or the Internet and speculating away. Conspiracy theories aren’t about the truth, they’re about the conspiracy theorist. Wait for the official word and for the sake of Dread Cthulhu, stop listening to TV pundits and World News Daily. News media HAS to fill up bandwidth, and they will with whatever drooling idiocy that comes along, that doesn’t mean any of it is true. Adjust your skepticism level accordingly.

Yeah, but a plane can’t just vanish, man, isn’t it WEIRD?

Don’t start in with the conspiracy theory nonsense again. It’s unusual nowadays, yes, especially for a large modern aircraft. But that doesn’t mean it has to be the plot of a Stephen King novel, or Ian Fleming for that matter. Planes have vanished before. It happens. It used to happen a lot. They fall into the sea or into the remote jungle and are lost. The world grows ever smaller, but it is still a vast, vast place, there’s plenty of dark holes beyond the reach of technology for things to drop into and get lost.

Yeah, so, but what about the horndog co-pilot and the passports and Obama’s role in all of this? Was it the CIA? NSA? Vladimir Putin? C’mon, what do you think happened, Man, what do you think HAPPENED?

I have no idea. Could be any number of things. Again, that’s what experts are for, let them do their jobs. Sooner or later, the plane or its wreckage will be found, eventually we’ll know the reason why. Mechanical failure, accident, weather, human error, terrorists, or even time-travelling kidnappers from a dystopian future. Sooner or later, you’ll know. Yes, it’s hell on the families who wait for news of the their loved ones, but hysteria, wild speculation by the media, and conspiracy theories from the internet sure as hell aren’t helping.

This isn’t CSI or an episode of 24, sometimes you don’t get answers in 60 minutes with time out for piss breaks and a snack. Deal with it.

bauer

Jim Wright is a retired US Navy officer with an extensive background in military intelligence. Nowadays he is a military consultant and writer. You can read more of his material on his blog Stonekettle Station and be sure to follow Jim on Facebook

[Irbis]

Lolyeah, keep having your fantasy. I am willing to bet you a hundred bucks right now that this is not what happened here.

Please, where I say this is what happened? Care to point it out?

All I said is the notion that it is easier to steal and sell cargo plane is complete and utter nonsense, at least with really unscrupulous thieves. Pilot can easily disable these onboard with little effort, had he or she wanted to.

Also, where would that handy airstip be without getting noticed by other radar?

Dozens of abandoned WWII and Cold War era airstrips? And anyway, it would be in exact same spot for any stolen airplane, cargo or passenger one. Funny that objection didn't exist in your 'better steal cargo plane' scenario?

[AniThyng]

Another wild speculation I happened to see on the net - to paraphrase:

An american attack submarine has already found the black box pinger in the indian ocean, but rather than reveal the submarine, the ships and planes now diverting there to search will get to claim the credit

Well, I have to admit it's not much more absurd than any other theory...

[Broomstick]

You don't get a prize for finding the black box...

[Borgholio]

Well, I have to admit it's not much more absurd than any other theory...

If it were true, it actually makes sense. Sure an attack submarine would have the equipment to locate a small pinging object in the ocean, but they won't be able to mount a rescue or an investigation or anything of the sort. So they'd have to send out for other ships anyways. With that said, I doubt they'd be so paranoid as to totally hide the mere existence of a sub in the area. The Chinese must know we have subs there...

[Zaune]

Charlie Stross comes out with a hypothesis:

Having eliminated the stolen passport holders (illegal immigrants joining their families) and heard new admissions from the Malaysian military about the track of the airliner, I have a hypothesis about the disappearance of MH370 that doesn't require human malice—just a single terrible coincidence (of the kind that causes most major air disasters).

Last year Boeing issued an Airworthiness Directive for other models of B777, to look for cracking in the fuselage skin under the SATCOM transceiver antenna. Such cracking could lead, in extremis, to rapid decompression. "The FAA said it had also determined that this unsafe condition "is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design"."

Posit an incident similar to the loss of Helios flight 552:

Chain of events:

* On February 22nd, aircraft 9M-MRO underwent maintenance. During this, or during a previous maintenance cycle, an empty oxygen bottle was installed by mistake for a full one, or a valve was jammed, or some other undetected fault rendered the flight deck crew's emergency oxygen supply inoperable.

* At 17:22Z on March 7th, while in flight at 35,000 feet, the fuselage ruptured under or around the SATCOM antenna housing, damaging the SATCOM antenna connections and causing rapid decompression.

* At the same time, the previously undetected fault in the gas supply to the pilots' oxygen masks starved them of oxygen.

The pilots would not succumb to hypoxia immediately. They probably had enough conscious-but-confused time to don their (non-functional) oxygen masks, dial a course change into the autopilot, reduce altitude by 5000 feet, and broadcast a Mayday that nobody heard because it never got out of the airframe (because of the damaged SATCOM antenna).

Then they lost consciousness.

The plane drilled on into the big blue for six more hours with the pilots dead at the controls, like Paine Stewart's LearJet. The cabin crew were unable to get through the reinforced door before their portable oxygen bottles ran out: the aircraft finally ran out of fuel and came down somewhere over the middle of the Indian or Pacific Oceans.

We might not find the wreckage for years.

I'd like to stress that this is my current preferred hypothesis. It doesn't rely on conspiracy theories or human malice, and it explains the observed course and altitude changes. All it requires is the ghastly coincidence of two individually survivable maintenance errors affecting the same aircraft on the same flight. (Which is, of course, the pattern of most major aviation disasters.) There is, however, one take-away from this picture.

If this turns out to be what happened to flight MH370, expect the airline industry to start pushing back hard against the requirement for reinforced cockpit doors to be locked at all times while airliners are in flight.

Losing Helios 552 might be a freak accident, but if decompression and a locked door led to the loss of MA370 as well, then this would be a new threat that will now have killed 360 air travellers—many times more than have died as a result of hijackings since 9/11.

Is it appropriate to employ anti-hijacking measures to prevent violent hijackings a couple of times per decade, if they run the risk, as a side-effect, of crashing in-service airliners a couple of times per decade?

[Wicked Pilot]

I don't buy it. If they didn't get on the O2 within the span of their useful consciousness, the plane would have kept flying along and crashed from fuel starvation somewhere northeast of Beijing. Had they had time to make inputs to the autopilot, they would have first commanded a descent to 10,000, and from there if they passed out they would have regained useful consciousness as they descended. Google Kalitta 66 for some insight.

[StarSword]

Stross is actually onto something with the "single terrible coincidence" line, and it's something he's used in his novels (for example, the early part of The Fuller Memorandum when Bob accidentally kills a bystander while de-Cthulhuing an old aircraft). Most accidents aren't caused by any one big thing, but rather a confluence of little things.

[Thanas]

All I said is the notion that it is easier to steal and sell cargo plane is complete and utter nonsense, at least with really unscrupulous thieves. Pilot can easily disable these onboard with little effort, had he or she wanted to.

If it is not easier, then please point out the number of successful passenger plane thefts. Please, I am waiting.

Dozens of abandoned WWII and Cold War era airstrips? And anyway, it would be in exact same spot for any stolen airplane, cargo or passenger one. Funny that objection didn't exist in your 'better steal cargo plane' scenario?

Because stealing a cargo plane in the third world is exactly the same as stealing a passenger plane en route to China. Yessir.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Malaysian government finally figured the plane's missing.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26591056

[AniThyng]

I ask you, given the unprecedented circumstances, could anyone else dosignificantly better?

[Sea Skimmer]

Yes, bloody well yes. The Malaysians have it very very strongly appears been willfully negligent and intentionally suppressing evidence for god knots what reason, I assume just totally disfunctional government turf war compounded by very weak leadership of the search. They were told the first damn day that Vietnam had seen the plane turn back, and refused to acknowledge it for days afterward, then tried to claim they saw this first, then backtracked on that, and meanwhile, and didn't release data they had showing the plane had widely changed altitudes around the same period in its flight. This was just the start of the obscuration and false denials that basically kept going on all the way until the Prime Minister finally went on TV to stop looking incompetent.

Vietnam outright stopped looking for the plane a couple days ago they became so convinced of Malyasian disfunctional denials. They knew what they saw. That if anything is what is unprecedented.

[Broomstick]

It is now being reported that "someone" took the airplane up to around 45,000 feet/13,715 m for awhile. Which is actually sort of impressive as the certified "service ceiling" for a B777 is supposedly 43,100 feet/13,137 m. Well, there is a bit of a "fudge factor" in that the published limits for aircraft usually are short of the absolute limits but you don't really want commercial aircraft flying on the edge of their envelope. It's also sort of weird if you want to avoid attention because not a hell of a lot of traffic flies at that height.

It could, however, work quite effectively to kill off the passengers and possibly the crew outside the cockpit as well, likely incapacitating them in 15 seconds or less. It wouldn't take long for this to be fatal, just a matter of minutes. Even if some of the passengers got a drop-down oxygen mask on quickly enough to be useful between the abruptly lowered pressure and the small amount of oxygen they provide they wouldn't last more than a few minutes, either. If this was a hijacking I seriously doubt any of the passengers are still alive.

This just keeps getting weirder.

[Wicked Pilot]

It is now being reported that "someone" took the airplane up to around 45,000 feet/13,715 m for awhile. Which is actually sort of impressive as the certified "service ceiling" for a B777 is supposedly 43,100 feet/13,137 m. Well, there is a bit of a "fudge factor" in that the published limits for aircraft usually are short of the absolute limits but you don't really want commercial aircraft flying on the edge of their envelope. It's also sort of weird if you want to avoid attention because not a hell of a lot of traffic flies at that height.

I've heard primary radar may not be the best when it comes to calculating altitude. Obviously that's system dependent and I'm no expert on what's down there and what's it's limitations.

It could, however, work quite effectively to kill off the passengers and possibly the crew outside the cockpit as well, likely incapacitating them in 15 seconds or less. It wouldn't take long for this to be fatal, just a matter of minutes. Even if some of the passengers got a drop-down oxygen mask on quickly enough to be useful between the abruptly lowered pressure and the small amount of oxygen they provide they wouldn't last more than a few minutes, either. If this was a hijacking I seriously doubt any of the passengers are still alive.

Not sure about that one. Unpressurized at 450, even on 100% O2, you're going to have diminished capacity. You really need a space suit at that altitude. You can do just fine neutralizing the pax at 250. Pilots have a tank of O2, pax usually have an O2 generator that only provides for a few minutes. Or better yet, most of the pax are going to be asleep and/or unaware of your deviation until you land anyway unless you alert them. But really, it could be some crazy guy at the controls, who knows.

My guess, damnit I don't want to make guesses but anyway, I'm going to place my bets with a attempted repeat of the Ethiopian 767. Kinda fits the profile, seems less outlandish than outright theft.

[Broomstick]

It is now being reported that "someone" took the airplane up to around 45,000 feet/13,715 m for awhile. Which is actually sort of impressive as the certified "service ceiling" for a B777 is supposedly 43,100 feet/13,137 m. Well, there is a bit of a "fudge factor" in that the published limits for aircraft usually are short of the absolute limits but you don't really want commercial aircraft flying on the edge of their envelope. It's also sort of weird if you want to avoid attention because not a hell of a lot of traffic flies at that height.

I've heard primary radar may not be the best when it comes to calculating altitude. Obviously that's system dependent and I'm no expert on what's down there and what's it's limitations.

I'm not sure if primary radar was where they got the information or not. Apparently some of this is coming from military data, and we know that nations don't like to discuss their capabilities too freely. We know it's not secondary radar because the transponder was off. I suppose that leaves primary radar... or maybe something else I'm not aware of, either data from the actual plane or some military capability I don't know about.

Nor do they say how long the airplane was at that altitude. Or what the margin of error on that figure might be.

Even if they were "just" at 35,000 feet it would still incapacitate everyone very rapidly.

It could, however, work quite effectively to kill off the passengers and possibly the crew outside the cockpit as well, likely incapacitating them in 15 seconds or less. It wouldn't take long for this to be fatal, just a matter of minutes. Even if some of the passengers got a drop-down oxygen mask on quickly enough to be useful between the abruptly lowered pressure and the small amount of oxygen they provide they wouldn't last more than a few minutes, either. If this was a hijacking I seriously doubt any of the passengers are still alive.

Not sure about that one. Unpressurized at 450, even on 100% O2, you're going to have diminished capacity. You really need a space suit at that altitude.

Program the autopilot? I really don't know what the capability would be in that regard. They may not have intended to go that high, but diminished capacity could cause that to happen. The Payne Stewart Learjet got up around that high simply because it had been set to climb and by the time it got to cruise altitude there was no one left to level it off. I wonder if that happened here? Either an accidental or intentional depressurization while it was set to climb?

I haven't heard when it climbed to that height - presumably several hours into the flight when enough fuel had burned off to lighten the aircraft sufficiently to achieve that altitude.

My guess, damnit I don't want to make guesses but anyway, I'm going to place my bets with a attempted repeat of the Ethiopian 767. Kinda fits the profile, seems less outlandish than outright theft.

You mean this one?

Really, until we get the aircraft, or better yet, the black boxes, it's hard to say what the hell happened.

[Wicked Pilot]

I'm not sure if primary radar was where they got the information or not. Apparently some of this is coming from military data, and we know that nations don't like to discuss their capabilities too freely. We know it's not secondary radar because the transponder was off. I suppose that leaves primary radar... or maybe something else I'm not aware of, either data from the actual plane or some military capability I don't know about.

I remember from the 737/Legacy collision, when the Legacy's transponder went off the Brazillian primary radar showed it rapidly climbing and descending when in fact it was level the whole time. I bring it up because 450 seems pretty damn high, especially since the plane would still be pretty heavy at the time.

You mean this one?

No, the more recent incident where the first officer took the plane to Geneva for asylum.

[Broomstick]

Hmm... hadn't thought that the transponder was transmitting bad data... except the transponder was supposed to have been turned off before the max altitude... I think.

Really, we're not getting particularly good info on this.

Every time today I've heard the 45k altitude brought up the person pretty much said "that's damn high" (more or less) and yet they still continue to say it. Usually they don't say when in the flight this occurred or how the information was obtained.

[Sea Skimmer]

Service ceilings are normally calculated based off rate of climb, when the rate of climb limit is reached at design weight and design atmospheric conditions this becomes the calculated service ceiling. An additional 'maximum' ceiling may be calculated off a lower rate of climb limit, 100fpm in the case of USAF specifications.

However that has no bearing on the fact that a plane may well be able to slowly climb much higher, and be perfectly stable doing so, and zoom climb vastly higher without any real problems except a creeping stall risk. Above 50,000ft cold sink problems may occur for certain designs, but that takes a considerable amount of time to be relevant. Airliners should have very high maximum aerodynamic ceilings with such high aspect wings and lift to drag ratios. Ultra high bypass turbofans are not ideal powerplants for high altitudes, but that doesn't really matter at 45,000ft. Many airliners get past 40,000ft cruising light near the end of a flight normally, and this plane was not full of fuel. It wouldn't surprise me of a 777 can actually sustain 50,000ft if it wanted too. I'd be surprised if it couldn't. Going much higher, less likely.

The 45,000ft report was from a military radar on the coastline. Search radars come in 2D and 3D flavors. A 2D set has no real heightfinding capability thus the 2D, two dimensional, range and azimuth only, while a 3D set can determine it accurately. Certain intermediate types also exist, actually make up many supposedly 3D radar types, with stacked beams or Vee beams that don't have a completely accurate height finding capability, but the nature of the beams angle allows a certain broad strokes measure of height finding. Dedicated heightfinders also exist which are very accurate, but are generally only used in conjunction with certain obsolete Soviet SAM systems, mainly SA-4 and SA-5, in the modern day. Most militaries use 2D and 3D sets together depending on role, 2D sets tend to be considerable better for searching large volumes of airspace, and cheaper for the coverage provided.

Air traffic control primary radars can be 2D or 3D, usually these days the ones at the airport are 3D to help guide in planes even if the transponder fails and have fairly short range, 60 miels or so, while larger ones located to cover bulk airspace are often 2D only for maximum volume search capability at low cost. The latter radars in many countries are shared with the military, or purely military that happen to feed data to ATC. In the case of the US the area search system is actually owned by the FAA in principle, and feeds the military on the side. Some nations have no wide area coverage via actual painting radar, and rely entirely on beacon tracking.

[AniThyng]

Yes, bloody well yes. The Malaysians have it very very strongly appears been willfully negligent and intentionally suppressing evidence for god knots what reason, I assume just totally disfunctional government turf war compounded by very weak leadership of the search. They were told the first damn day that Vietnam had seen the plane turn back, and refused to acknowledge it for days afterward, then tried to claim they saw this first, then backtracked on that, and meanwhile, and didn't release data they had showing the plane had widely changed altitudes around the same period in its flight. This was just the start of the obscuration and false denials that basically kept going on all the way until the Prime Minister finally went on TV to stop looking incompetent.

Vietnam outright stopped looking for the plane a couple days ago they became so convinced of Malyasian disfunctional denials. They knew what they saw. That if anything is what is unprecedented.

Speaking of politics, conspiracy theories now swirl on the captain being a staunch member of anwar Ibrahim's opposition PKR political party. The day before the flight anwar was found guilty of sodomy and thus (again) disqualified from active politics.

Even so, I fail to see how that would motivate him to do anything of this sort, even if indirectly this is hardening political stances and hurting the ruling government and polarizing peoples opinions.

I've seen the captains YouTube channel. Not that I am an expert or anything, but he subscribes to opposition news channels, and Richard Dawkins. I expect people to start claiming he was a poor Muslim, sadly. ( an ironic echo to claims that this is related to AQ...)

[Broomstick]

Another possible wreckage sighting, a Greek oil tanker in the neighborhood is going to the spot to check it out.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yeah, so, but what about the horndog co-pilot and the passports and Obama’s role in all of this?

I heard about the passport thing, but what's this about the horn dog co-pilot and Obama? I haven't been following that closely.