Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With 777 en Route to Beijing

[retox]

One thing I am learning here is how distressfully polluted the Gulf of Thailand and the South China sea have become, so oil slicks and floating 'debris fields' might be a fairly common thing out there. (Remind me not to buy any more Thai shrimp). It won't surprise me if this is another lark.

It's been 6 hours since this debris was reported just 50nm from a major port city. I would expect them to be at the site by now.

Question: why HF? Would MH-370 have been out of VHF range at some point?

I know this is way off subject but you commented about not eating Thai shrimp. Google "Vietnamese shrimp pig feces". Your stomach will turn. I've seen it first hand in China and I can't eat shrimp anymore.

[retox]

I'd love to drop your iPhone at 400kts and 35000ft over the ocean and see how long you take to find it. Especially if it was turned off a while before dropping it.

I am not sure what you have in mind. The plane was under radar surveillance when it disappeared and the wreckage is not near that point. There is no radar track, there was no radio call, there was no ACARS message... What do you expect? To have a satellite following each plane with an IR camera in case it goes "dark"?

If you are going by the fuel range, you now have a circle of several thousand miles of radius with center at the last known position and involving ocean, jungles, mountains, deserts... Not easy to find a plane in these circumstances.

The suggestion many had here after AF447 was a distress beacon that detaches/ejects from the tail, or wing. The common objection was that this type of accident does not happen enough to warrant the extreme cost. AF447 was eventually found and it's not as if cutting some time off of the search would have saved anyone. People just don't like to wait for news I suppose and it ends up fueling all the silly rumors.

[Gabriel]

Honestly? I think they are all guessing as much as we do

That's even worse than them hidding information.

- and just covering all their bases, in case the plane really turned back and went down in the Strait of Malacca (which I doubt it did, but better be on the safe side...)

What's the rationale of searching around the point of LOC, in a zone that from the departure point is opposite to the direction of flight and that it would mean that if they turned back they overflew the point of departure, but not in between?

[brianw999]

......and as always, the final investigation report will be the final word on the matter.

[AVION1]

It's starting to look more like a hijacking!

I don't think so. By now we should already know if the aircraft landed in another country. And the hijackers are looking for political asylum or money.

[Peter Kesternich]

That's even worse than them hidding information. (...)

Why? It only shows that the people in charge are also just human. I think that's a lot more comforting than a high-level conspiracy.

[Evan]

I think we can assume by now that the expected areas along the flight path have been ruled out. Depth soundings of 80m or less and a P3 on station would have revealed something by now. This points away from a bombing and to a scenario in which the flight continued for some distance off the planned flight path without affording a distress call. What are these scenarios? An overwhelming situation such as AF447; a hijacking gone wrong; a suicidal pilot (we've had two of these already); both pilots incapacitated (hypoxia?); a problem that included the loss of radio transmission... what else?

[flight191]

I think we can assume by now that the expected areas along the flight path have been ruled out. Depth soundings of 80m or less and a P3 on station would have revealed something by now. This points away from a bombing and to a scenario in which the flight continued for some distance off the planned flight path without affording a distress call. What are these scenarios? An overwhelming situation such as AF447; a hijacking gone wrong; a suicidal pilot (we've had two of these already); both pilots incapacitated (hypoxia?); a problem that included the loss of radio transmission... what else?

Interesting conjecture, you mean perhaps a scenario like Helios 522?

[Evan]

Interesting conjecture, you mean perhaps a scenario like Helios 522?

Not exactly. The Helios 737 had a stealth factor in the a/c controls that I don't think exists on the 777, and Helios maintained autoflight at cruise whilst this one dropped off radar. In a scenario such as Helios 522, they would have continued on flight path beyond Beijing before fuel exhaustion caused a descent.

A Vietnamese Maritime Search and Rescue Services ship has been dispatched to investigate the latest debris field. It will be daybreak there in a few hours so we can hope to get confirmation on whether this is MH-370 by this evening.

[retox]

I think we can assume by now that the expected areas along the flight path have been ruled out. Depth soundings of 80m or less and a P3 on station would have revealed something by now. This points away from a bombing and to a scenario in which the flight continued for some distance off the planned flight path without affording a distress call. What are these scenarios? An overwhelming situation such as AF447; a hijacking gone wrong; a suicidal pilot (we've had two of these already); both pilots incapacitated (hypoxia?); a problem that included the loss of radio transmission... what else?

Negated by the radar track which, at this point, is the only clue they even have that has not been proven to be rumor or speculation.

[AVION1]

I think we can assume by now that the expected areas along the flight path have been ruled out. Depth soundings of 80m or less and a P3 on station would have revealed something by now. This points away from a bombing and to a scenario in which the flight continued for some distance off the planned flight path without affording a distress call. What are these scenarios? An overwhelming situation such as AF447; a hijacking gone wrong; a suicidal pilot (we've had two of these already); both pilots incapacitated (hypoxia?); a problem that included the loss of radio transmission... what else?

You forgot to add a "KAL-007" scenario. Aircraft was destroyed by a vietnamese MIG-21, by mistake.

[Peter Kesternich]

You forgot to add a "KAL-007" scenario. Aircraft was destroyed by a vietnamese MIG-21, by mistake.

The Vietnamese Air Force flies Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers these days. There is no cold war going on between Malaysia and Vietnam, and Vietnam wouldn't be suspecting any hostile aircraft from this area. There was a flight plan filed, the flight was on course, and Vietnam either was expecting the aircaft to enter its air space or was already in ATC contact with it. So - nope, no KAL007 scenario.

[Quench]

This is absolutely left field speculation.


And a and b have a lot of drawbacks.
a- Why no primary radar track?

I was wondering was their definitely a primary radar monitoring the aircraft ?
If it was SSR only then the track would disappear if the transponder lost power.

[AVION1]

The Vietnamese Air Force flies Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers these days. There is no cold war going on between Malaysia and Vietnam, and Vietnam wouldn't be suspecting any hostile aircraft from this area. There was a flight plan filed, the flight was on course, and Vietnam either was expecting the aircaft to enter its air space or was already in ATC contact with it. So - nope, no KAL007 scenario.

KAL-007 had a flight plan filed too. The aircraft was south korean, a friendly country.

[Gabriel]

Why? It only shows that the people in charge are also just human. I think that's a lot more comforting than a high-level conspiracy.

I wasn't thinking "conspiracy". Just not to say "Hi Jack!" to the public too soon.
My idea was that they had more information after analyzing, comparing and synchronizing several sources of primary and secondary radar (it's not so easy, in an screen filled with unidentified blips, to know what of those blips is the one you are looking for).

Then, knowing that the plane was heading "there" and not disclosing it (yet) was better that not having primary radar info at all.

One thing that puzzles me is that they released no precise info of what the primary radar data shows. There are ways (3D radar, triangulation if you have the blips in 2 or more radars at a time) to roughly estimate the altitude of the plane, so it should be possible to make a rough 3D path of the plane up to the REAL last point of contact (not the one where the transponder was lost but all the way until the primary radars lost it).

There are mentions of "radar suggest a steep descent". What is "steep"? 5000 fpm (that could be compatible with a controlled thing) or 15000 FPM (an uncontrolled dive at best), and what was the angle of that path? Etc...