Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With 777 en Route to Beijing

[AVION1]

Boys and girls, again. Remember we are dealing with third world countries. Maybe the aircraft flew all the way to China....and crashed in the Himalayans

[dr_cfii]

Boys and girls, again. Remember we are dealing with third world countries. Maybe the aircraft flew all the way to China....and crashed in the Himalayans

Who are you? George W Junior?
I have been following some of your posts and wonder:
1) if you ever left your red neck village?
2) If you ever watched anything other than the FOX news
3) Why are others (including myself) replying to your nonsense?

[Graham2001]

What are the odds MAS370 is intact and on a remote Indonesian air strip? I'd say high

So, your going for a "Tintin: Flight 714" scenario, if so, that one's got everything, hidden runways, planes hijacked by their crew, contactees, ancient aliens, flying saucers,sepratist groups and an exploding volcano!

[opa-opa]

AVION1 makes a good point

I think AVION1 makes a good point, what the Malaysia govt has displayed so far is either gross incompetence or is doing some huge cover up.

Just right now during the press conference with victim's families, they are again all contradicting each other and denying there was any report of the plane being tracked by radar over the Malacca Strait. Reporters keep pressing them for clarification but they just say there are some "sensitive" information they are still not able to reveal.

3rd world country? It's more like a banana republic.

[Evan]

Ok, so the question we have to ask, assuming we are getting the facts now (which is a dubious assumption) is this:

What possible scenarios allow for abrupt course and altitude deviations and extended flight without coms?

a) There's a botched hijacking - I'm doubting this for a number of obvious reasons.

b) There's a malicious pilot - doesn't seem to fit the profile

c) There's a cascading technical problem that also faults all the com equipment but does not prevent extended flight - I can't imagine what that would be.

d) There's the "Helios Sequence" - This one seems plausible at least. A stealth problem in the pressurization creates hypoxia in the cabin. One of the flight crew—in a very compromized mental state—manages to set a return (ish) heading on the MCP and a target altitude for a rapid descent. Maybe he sets it at 3000ft instead of 10,000ft. Maybe he was going for Langkawi. Anyway, he mumbles a distress call and loses consciousness. The aircraft turns and descends, then maintains flight level until fuel exhaustion.

Problems with this theory are defenses that remove the stealth aspect:

a) There are three checklists to detect the condition that doomed Helios 522. True, Helios skipped all of them, but this was a very experienced crew.

b) There is EICAS. Serious pressurization warnings include aural warnings. Excessive pressure differential has a siren. There is also pack leak detection logic if the problem was in that department.

It's too bad we don't have a triple-7 driver with us to shed some light. MCM is off the radar and BB is a FrankenBoeing pilot but maybe he knows a thing or two about the 777 systems...

Aside from these scenarios, what else am I not thinking of that could meet the above circumstances?

[Gabriel]

Aside from these scenarios, what else am I not thinking of that could meet the above circumstances?

That they would have regained consciousnesses some minutes after descending to a very breathable altitude.

You are assuming that they set a heading and a low altitude. Helios kept going cruising altitude all the time until they quickly spiraled to the ground when the lost one engine due to fuel exhaustion.

[AVION1]

I think AVION1 makes a good point, what the Malaysia govt has displayed so far is either gross incompetence or is doing some huge cover up.

Just right now during the press conference with victim's families, they are again all contradicting each other and denying there was any report of the plane being tracked by radar over the Malacca Strait. Reporters keep pressing them for clarification but they just say there are some "sensitive" information they are still not able to reveal.

3rd world country? It's more like a banana republic.

Fourth world country. We have customers in there, and 80% of our shipping get lost or stolen at malaysian customs. Fedex and DHL are losing big money in there.

[AVION1]

Who are you? George W Junior?
I have been following some of your posts and wonder:
1) if you ever left your red neck village?
2) If you ever watched anything other than the FOX news
3) Why are others (including myself) replying to your nonsense?

I m a proud NRA member and I love to eat Beef Jerky too!

[MCM]

G'day Evan,

Not off the Radar Evan, just not a huge fan of complete speculation with really nothing to go on.

Hijacking - unlikely, but possible.

Pressurization wise - highly unlikely for the reasons Gabriel mentions. But not impossible. Its more likely in that scenario that they did not descend, but just turned instead.

Malicious pilot - possible. In the past insurance claims have been denied for pilot suicide, which could be avoided if the aircraft was never found by flying it somewhere unexpected.

Technical problem - possible. Complete loss of electrics would do this - aircraft is flyable (don't need electrics for the engines/flight controls), navigation ability low at night. It would be a reasonable course of action to turn back towards where you know there is land and are probably familiar with the area, hoping the weather/cloud base allowed the finding of an airport. If they had successfully found somewhere we'd know about it.

As for the other posters wondering how much runway you'd need - if you never intended to fly the aircraft out again, the answer is bugger all. 1000m runway would be ugly, but most likely successful.

[Evan]

G'day Evan,

Not off the Radar Evan, just not a huge fan of complete speculation with really nothing to go on.

I know, I know, very little to build speculation with here anyway. I was hoping you might shed some light on hypothetical scenarios that could at least meet the criteria. I can't imagine what could cause a loss of all electrics given all the levels of redundancy in the electrics architecture. The 777 has a fully automatic load shedding system that will shed SATCOM and right HF at somepoint but there would always be left side HF until the very last amp. And the suddenness seems to rule out a progressive failure situation like Swissair 111.

There just has to be something missing or false here in the reporting.

[Evan]

That they would have regained consciousnesses some minutes after descending to a very breathable altitude.

I'm unclear on that. Depending on the elapsed time and level of oxygen deprivation, is it possible that it could cause extended incapacitation, permanent brain damage or prove fatal despite a descent initiated at the point of loss of conciousness. Maybe the rate of descent was too shallow. Anyway, there's still EICAS to prevent this. Very little else to go on here.

[aricat]

I know, I know, very little to build speculation with here anyway. I was hoping you might shed some light on hypothetical scenarios that could at least meet the criteria. I can't imagine what could cause a loss of all electrics given all the levels of redundancy in the electrics architecture. The 777 has a fully automatic load shedding system that will shed SATCOM and right HF at somepoint but there would always be left side HF until the very last amp. And the suddenness seems to rule out a progressive failure situation like Swissair 111.

There just has to be something missing or false here in the reporting.

The scenario of a major failure, be it a fire or explosion, possibly followed by explosive decompression, fits much of the information. That situation would reasonably lead to the pilot descending and turning back, followed by a struggle to save the aircraft, which ultimately failed either in a controlled ditching or slamming into a mountain. But the hole in the theory, as you point out Evan, is that the nature of the damage would have to be such that all manner of transmissions from the plane were cut off virtually simultaneously.

The much more elegant explanation is that the pilot turned off the transponder, lowered himself off the radar, and crashed the plane in a remote area. I wonder if he could have even timed it out so that the crash occurred prior to the next routine ACARS message being sent. (Boeing received the take-off and climb messages, but not the cruise relay.) In other words, he wanted to crash the plane in complete stealth mode, for whatever reason, and was apparently successful.

I'm wondering why you consider this theory as so much less plausible?

[Evan]

Well, the seeming inplausibility of this set of cirmcumstances could also be explained by being complete rubbish, as it seems now that reports of a heading to the Straits of Malacca are being denied now...

What a circus.

[Gabriel]

Not related to MH, but...

http://avherald.com/h?article=4713ebe3&opt=0

An Air India Boeing 777-300, registration VT-ALS performing flight AI-127 from Delhi (India) to Chicago O'Hare,IL (USA) with 313 passengers and 16 crew, was climbing out of Delhi when the crew stopped the climb at FL280 reporting a problem with the transponders. The aircraft descended to FL150, entered a hold to dump [a big lot of] fuel and landed safely back in Delhi about 140 minutes after departure.

Take-off, climb to cruise altitude (almost), transponder failure, turn back and descent.

Now we only need to fail the ACARS, the comm radios, hide an airplane or its wreckage, and we are there.

[eTang]

As for the other posters wondering how much runway you'd need - if you never intended to fly the aircraft out again, the answer is bugger all. 1000m runway would be ugly, but most likely successful.

Good point, thx MCN!