Where is it? Under the water or in a hanger?

Based on what I saw and heard in the first days, especially comments made by ex-military consultants who had contacts with Boeing, the plane likely was flown north towards Pakistan or Afghanistan and landed. That opinion was quickly silenced and the southern arc theory substituted.

It wouldn't need to be hangared as the Malaysia Air livery was so simple it could easily have been painted over and it would look like any other plane in the region parked on a Tarmac. My guess is they are trying to convince the perpetrators they think the plane went south and crashed in the sea so they can plan a rescue with the element of surprise.

You think the passengers are still alive? I tend to doubt that.

In the drink in the southern Indian Ocean.

It's in a hangar in Polynesia, with Amelia's Electra and Jimmy Hoffa's golf cart.

Hmmm, maybe the NSA knows. After all, they are supposed to know everything else!
Peter.

Big plane, lot's of people, many contrasting news reports, massive search, no debris, equal big mystery.

Huge cost to Australia.

Great, big ocean and relatively small speck in a sea of garbage.

I hope they find it for the families sake.

If you would have asked me a year ago if an ultra modern airliner like a 777 could simply vanish I'd have said no way no how.....

Just goes to show you that technology is not impervious to mother nature or well planned evil doers. Which one is still not and may never be cleared up.

Malaysian Airlines is completely out of their minds however for not having paid the flight following/tracking subscription fees on their over seas class II Nav aircraft. My question to the senior management of Malaysian is simply WTF were you guys thinking?

quote:

Originally posted by surestrike:

Malaysian Airlines is completely out of their minds however for not having paid the flight following/tracking subscription fees on their over seas class II Nav aircraft. My question to the senior management of Malaysian is simply WTF were you guys thinking?

Considering that taxi operators and trucking companies do fit their vehicles with GPS trackers... Yep. They don't have that many excuses, I'd say.

quote:

Originally posted by surestrike:

Malaysian Airlines is completely out of their minds however for not having paid the flight following/tracking subscription fees on their over seas class II Nav aircraft. My question to the senior management of Malaysian is simply WTF were you guys thinking?

An investigative news story revealed that the gov't owned airline was perpetually in the red. I'm sure that politicos in Malaysia are no more able to run a business than they are here. Just look at AMTRAK and OBAMACARE.

I do wonder though, just because you are not paying the tracking fees, does that mean that no one is tracking you? I'm willing to bet Boeing knows where their planes are just to protect themselves in potential lawsuits.

quote:

I'm willing to bet Boeing knows where their planes are just to protect themselves in potential lawsuits.

Apparently in this case that isn't so.

I observed two different retired military general officers on national televised news networks reveal in the early days that their contacts at Boeing knew where the plane was. Why would they have said that? Why were no Boeing reps interviewed? They were soon pushed out and the now familiar story was introduced. Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even the Air France crash in mid-Atlantic left floating debris for months.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobster:
I observed two different retired military general officers on national televised news networks reveal in the early days that their contacts at Boeing knew where the plane was. Why would they have said that? Why were no Boeing reps interviewed? They were soon pushed out and the now familiar story was introduced. Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Even the Air France crash in mid-Atlantic left floating debris for months.

Bob,

If you have a "rock solid" conspiracy theory go ahead and spit it out.

I have an ATP pilots license in my wallet that says B-777 on it, right next to long list of other transport category turbo jet airplanes that I am qualified to fly. I've also flown the B-777 in that exact same area multiple times. While I can't tell where or what happened to MH 370. I can tell you that 99.9% of the talking heads I watched "reporting" on this incident were 100% full of steamy green fresh BULLSHIT.

With that in mind lets hear your expert opinion of the details and aftermath of this incident.

Sir, I am not impugning your professional ability. Please don't take offense. I admire and respect what you have achieved and your opinion.

However, as a non-aviation example, I drove a company provided vehicle for 4 years before I discovered it had an imbedded GPS device. It stands to reason that it is possible for pilots and owners not to know if their planes have tracking devices. I agree with you that most of the reporting appeared to be garbage, but those comments made early on still intrigue me.

Bob,

Boeing thought that they had a solid position lock on MH 370 from it's automated engine parameter reporting system. Unfortunately for multiple reasons they did not. That early information that they did was incorrect.

The airplanes I fly overseas have an automated continuous reporting system that sends constant position reports to flight dispatch via sat link during class II nav situations. (non ground based navigation, like over the ocean and out of range of shore based nav facilities or over land without useable nav facilities within range.). We also have the engine and maintenance reporting system. In fact I've had our maintenance folks contact me via sat link and inform me of a potential engine problem before we were even aware of it over the middle of the ocean.

All of these services however must be turned on and they are not free. Malaysian decided they were not going to pay for it so it wasn't turned on. We also have a system nicknamed the "tattler" or FOQA which immediately reports any unusual flight parameters to head quarters. so long gone are the days when you could buzz your girl friends house on a deadhead flight or do a barrel roll on an empty leg. I have a buddy who drives a truck for Fed Ex. They know exactly where he is at all times how fast he is driving how long he was stopped ETC. Big brother is watching.

Unfortunately down in Southeast Asia there are areas with very poor radar coverage and scant radio navigation. So if your sat nav, tracking, reporting and comm are off you can become invisible real quick. Which is exactly what happened either via a hot destructive fire in the E&E bay or bad guys doing it on purpose. That has yet to be determined. I have some theories but I also having some formal aircraft accident investigation training. I'll say that theories are guesses, guesses are smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors do not solve accidents. Once and IF they ever find the wreckage or the hull intact which I severely doubt THEN and only then will we have any solid information of which to formulate and post incident scenario.

quote:

Originally posted by surestrike:
If you would have asked me a year ago if an ultra modern airliner like a 777 could simply vanish I'd have said no way no how.....

Just goes to show you that technology is not impervious to mother nature or well planned evil doers. Which one is still not and may never be cleared up.

Malaysian Airlines is completely out of their minds however for not having paid the flight following/tracking subscription fees on their over seas class II Nav aircraft. My question to the senior management of Malaysian is simply WTF were you guys thinking?

So Mother Nature or evil doers are responsible for the vanishing. That would mean bottom of the ocean gets two votes and hanger in Pakistan gets one.

Here's hoping Fugro find it and there is some closure.

It is a big ocean with lots of garbage and a huge head start for any wreckage to float away or sink.

Maybe some wreckage will wash ashore in Western Aus or Tasmania, where so much rubbish seems to wash up on the west coast.

quote:

Originally posted by xgrunt:
So Mother Nature or evil doers are responsible for the vanishing. That would mean bottom of the ocean gets two votes and hanger in Pakistan gets one.

Or the bottom of the ocean gets three votes. If evil doers (doer) were responsible there is no guarantee that the aircraft ever made landfall.

But the nature of my comments above are that I don't know what happened and you should draw absolutely no conclusions in regards to anything that may have happened to MH 370 from my statements above.

The only conclusion that you should be able to draw is that the airplane is still missing. That the press frenzy in its entirety contained less factual information than your average daytime soap opera, and that NOTHING of any usefulness came out of the press releases that we've had so far.

The one and only time that we will have factual information about this incident is when and if the wreckage is ever found.

It is still interesting why there has been no wreckage found, at all. That, by itself, to me at least, makes a crash into the ocean a bit doubtful, but I am not an expert! I also think that it is hard to land and hide a Boeing 777. I am still puzzled why there seems to be no satellite information about the plane, unlike the event over the Ukraine. Classified perhaps?
More questions than answers.
Peter.

It took investigators almost two years to find Air France Flight 447 and they had a really good idea where it crashed. So it is not at all unusual that Malaysia 370 has not been found to date. And I wouldn't be surprised if it is never found. The ocean is a really, really big place to hunt for an aircraft.

Seems to me there is a difference between knowing where it must be, and actually finding the wreckage. In this case we have nothing, so, if the plane crashed into the sea, why has there been absolutely no wreckage found? In other words there seems to be NO evidence that the plane went down in the ocean. That is why we are still having this discussion! In the case of Air France there was no doubt what happened to it, we just had to "put the pieces together".
Peter.

Once again, big ocean, little aircraft. Just like Air France there was no wreckage found for two years of hard searching in a relatively defined area. There is no real defined area for 370 so you are basically searching the entire Indian ocean - good luck with that.

There has been intense searching in areas of the southern Indian Ocean. Recomputation of the likely area it crashed meant the searching was for nought.

Not really hard to see why no wreckage found. Big ocean, lots of garbage, no knowledge of how the aircraft impacted etc., assuming the computations are correct....

quote:

Originally posted by surestrike:

quote:

Originally posted by xgrunt:
So Mother Nature or evil doers are responsible for the vanishing. That would mean bottom of the ocean gets two votes and hanger in Pakistan gets one.

Or the bottom of the ocean gets three votes. If evil doers (doer) were responsible there is no guarantee that the aircraft ever made landfall.

But the nature of my comments above are that I don't know what happened and you should draw absolutely no conclusions in regards to anything that may have happened to MH 370 from my statements above.

The only conclusion that you should be able to draw is that the airplane is still missing. That the press frenzy in its entirety contained less factual information than your average daytime soap opera, and that NOTHING of any usefulness came out of the press releases that we've had so far.

The one and only time that we will have factual information about this incident is when and if the wreckage is ever found.

I appreciate your thoughtful input. However, Mother Nature/mechanical or evil doer puts in the ocean or evil doer only puts it on land. Two votes for the bottom of the sea and one vote for a hanger someplace. Unless the alien mothership used its tractor beam. Truly a big mystery.

"Just like Air France there was no wreckage found for two years of hard searching in a relatively defined area".

Sorry Opus1, but I do not understand your statement about taking two years to find wreckage. Floating wreckage and 2 bodies were found within a few days of the incident. It took two years to find the black box.
Peter.

Ummmm, the point Peter is that Flight 447 was known to have crashed in a general area and wreckage on the ocean floor took two years to locate. The fact that floating wreckage was found was because the flight path and time of flight departure was accurately calculated.

NOW take a flight that had no real known flight path and a lot of guessing and it is little wonder why flight 370 has not been found.

Still hard to believe we can keep track of nuts and bolts lost in space but we just LOSE an airliner without any trace in this modern age.

Grizz

Ok, somebody help me wrap my head around this issue of the arcs. Apparently there is a satellite in geosync orbit at the equator that interrogates a transponder of sorts on aircraft to monitor engine performance and other parameters. If an aircraft is flying along an arc at a fixed distance from the satellite, perpendicular to the equator, how can one determine from the data transmission timing that the plane is flying north or south? I understand doppler effect but it seems to me the doppler effect would be identical. The only way I can see that direction can be determined is if the plane is not traveling a perpendicular arc. In this case, if the plane was on an arc skewed NE/SW then wave compression on the SW arc leg would indicate that the plane was headed generally south. Are the diagrams just off?

quote:

Originally posted by Bobster:
Ok, somebody help me wrap my head around this issue of the arcs. Apparently there is a satellite in geosync orbit at the equator that interrogates a transponder of sorts on aircraft to monitor engine performance and other parameters. If an aircraft is flying along an arc at a fixed distance from the satellite, perpendicular to the equator, how can one determine from the data transmission timing that the plane is flying north or south? I understand doppler effect but it seems to me the doppler effect would be identical. The only way I can see that direction can be determined is if the plane is not traveling a perpendicular arc. In this case, if the plane was on an arc skewed NE/SW then wave compression on the SW arc leg would indicate that the plane was headed generally south. Are the diagrams just off?

Only because radar returns from multiple locations on the northern track did not show any unknown aircraft passing through. Not to mention the known track that was observed southbound.

Yes, I'm the same Captain Dave that you saw on CNN 57 times after the disappearance, and about thirty times on other networks. The firm I'm with is on retainer with different networks just for this type of thing.

The comments by Surestrike are about as good a guess as anyone has come up with. The only exception is I think the fire, if there was one, I think it was in the center pedestal, knocking out the control heads, but not the actual radios (generic term) or ACARS. "IF" that happened and the pilots failed to mask up immediately, they could have been over come by the smoke, leaving the airplane pilotless. It would have flown on till it ran out of fuel, in heading hold mode the south west drift would be consistent with the known winds at that time.

We won't know until the aircraft is recovered. Currently multiple parties are funding a remapping of the ocean floor in that part of the world. That effort is scheduled to last SEVEN to TEN years!

A Northwest B747 had a P6 power distribution panel fire do exactly the same thing, the fire burned itsself out and the crew landed on standby power and instruments in Winnepeg in about 1986 if I remember the date correctly. Not unprecedented to say the least.

Regarding the Generals who claimed it landed somewhere...yea not so much.

http://www.skybrary.aero/index...,_2007_%28AW_FIRE%29

Dave,

I was on the 777 fleet as an instructor and check airmen when this incident occurred. There was another less severe E&E fire that occurred airborne as well. As you probably know all of the comm and nav boxes are in the E&E bay which is accessible through the cabin via a hatch just forward of the first class section. So while a center pedestal fire would definitely have bad effects. A hot E&E bay fire will also wipe out everything electronic very quickly and the 777 has some history with fire in that area. Which is why I mentioned the E&E bay as suspect area.

Your thoughts on the pedestal fire and the smoke inhalation aspect make sense.

As mentioned until the wreckage is found, it's all guess work. I hope they find her.

quote:

Originally posted by surestrike:
http://www.skybrary.aero/index...,_2007_%28AW_FIRE%29

Dave,

I was on the 777 fleet as an instructor and check airmen when this incident occurred. There was another less severe E&E fire that occurred airborne as well. As you probably know all of the comm and nav boxes are in the E&E bay which is accessible through the cabin via a hatch just forward of the first class section. So while a center pedestal fire would definitely have bad effects. A hot E&E bay fire will also wipe out everything electronic very quickly and the 777 has some history with fire in that area. Which is why I mentioned the E&E bay as suspect area.

Your thoughts on the pedestal fire and the smoke inhalation aspect make sense.

As mentioned until the wreckage is found, it's all guess work. I hope they find her.

If fire incapacitated/killed the pilots and the plane flew until it ran out of gas and fell out of the sky. What type of debris field would you expect say as opposed to a suicidal pilot ditching the plane under power.

What would the fire have done in the passenger compartment and what would be SOP for other crew members?

IF the sea state was just right, and IF The airplane came down in a gentle manner it might not have broken up. IF that was the case and the airplane was generally intact it could have sunk leaving little or no debris field. If the airplane was in trim and the sea state was calm I guess there is a very slight chance that she made a self gliding non break up ditching and sank in one piece.

If she was violently crashed into the water she would have broke up leaving a debris field.

She may have been purposely ditched under control too. We just don't know. Just because they didn't find a debris field does not prove one or the other.

quote:

Originally posted by surestrike:
IF the sea state was just right, and IF The airplane came down in a gentle manner it might not have broken up. IF that was the case and the airplane was generally intact it could have sunk leaving little or no debris field. If the airplane was in trim and the sea state was calm I guess there is a very slight chance that she made a self gliding non break up ditching and sank in one piece.

If she was violently crashed into the water she would have broke up leaving a debris field.

She may have been purposely ditched under control too. We just don't know. Just because they didn't find a debris field does not prove one or the other.

Are the passengers/attendants alive at the point the plane touches water? If deceased, how would this have been accomplished? Thank you for your factual measured responses.

quote:

If deceased, how would this have been accomplished?

As mentioned the airplane would have had to be in perfect trim and gliding at just the right angle. Slim (very slim)chance but possible.

quote:

Are the passengers/attendants alive at the point the plane touches water?

That is the $64,000,000.00 question isn't it?

A ditching like that has been done before - Sully's landing on the Hudson.

http://www.smh.com.au/national...20141214-126zgw.html

Still searching....