Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With 777 en Route to Beijing

[Evan]

Ok, start looking...

http://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/bathymetry/

[Gabriel]

NY Times just posted this interesting update

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/wo...t.html?hp&_r=0

It's very interesting indeed. Very complete and serious. Perhaps the best one I've seen so far on this incident.

And there is a very good map showing the "corridors":



One intersting thing, where I thing that the article is misleading, is to note is that, AFIK, these "corridors" are NOT possible paths the plane might have taken, but just possible locations of the airplane when it sent the last ping to Inmarsat.

That was reportedly the 4th or 5th ping after the plane lost contact with the primary radar.

It would be very interesting to see the same "corridors" of all the previous pings. After it lost contact, to see if they were flying a constant heading (equallly spaced archs) or erratically (archs randomly distributed), and also before the contact was lost, to see how accurately the archs match known positions. This could shed a lot more of light on possible flight paths.

Not to mention if (big IF here) the pings were also detected by some other satellite (maybe a secret military one?) from where similar archs could be derived. Two archs cross each other at two points, so a couple of possible paths would clearly emerge from combining the data.

[orangehuggy]

Quoting former British Airways safety chief John Lindsay speaking on Sky News: "I would suggest that almost certainly that it would be a not just a possibility but perhaps a probability that the aircraft is on the ground transmitting those signals..."
I think its highly irresponsible to give such false hope to the grieving relatives

[Gabriel]

Quoting former British Airways safety chief John Lindsay speaking on Sky News: "I would suggest that almost certainly that it would be a not just a possibility but perhaps a probability that the aircraft is on the ground transmitting those signals..."
I think its highly irresponsible to give such false hope to the grieving relatives

My God...

How on Earth can one combine "would", "suggest", "almost", "certainly", "possibility", "perhaps" and "probability" all together in one short sentence?

I would suggest that it's not only a possibility but perhaps a probability that almost certainly your daughter is not completely virgin, maybe.

[Evan]

It would be very interesting to see the same "corridors" of all the previous pings. After it lost contact, to see if they were flying a constant heading (equallly spaced archs) or erratically (archs randomly distributed), and also before the contact was lost, to see how accurately the archs match known positions. This could shed a lot more of light on possible flight paths.

Not to mention if (big IF here) the pings were also detected by some other satellite (maybe a secret military one?) from where similar archs could be derived. Two archs cross each other at two points, so a couple of possible paths would clearly emerge from combining the data.

Assuming the satellite can only detect the distance of the signal in terms of radius, that should still allow them to plot a radius for each transmission. If the radii are spaced further apart, the a/c was flying more in the direction of the satellite whereas if the radii are closer together, the a/c was flying more along that radius.

Furthermore, they know fuel on board and have historic meteorological data to estimate the distance the a/c traveled from the last point of contact to each 'ping' using a range of airspeed and altitude predictions. Where the two radii intersect, there's your probable location of the a/c at that point in time.

Therefore, iinstead of these arcs they should be able to plot circles for each 'ping' transmission received.

Is that too simple?

[Gabriel]

Assuming the satellite can only detect the distance of the signal in terms of radius, that should still allow them to plot a radius for each transmission. If the radii are spaced further apart, the a/c was flying more in the direction of the satellite whereas if the radii are closer together, the a/c was flying more along that radius.

Furthermore, they know fuel on board and have historic meteorological data to estimate the distance the a/c traveled from the last point of contact to each 'ping' using a range of airspeed and altitude predictions. Where the two radii intersect, there's your probable location of the a/c at that point in time.

Therefore, iinstead of these arcs they should be able to plot circles for each 'ping' transmission received.

Is that too simple?

Yes. You are assuming (but not saying it) that the airplane flies constant groundtrack and groundspeed between pings that are about 1 hour apart.

But that's basically what I had in mind when I said that it would be interesting to have all the pings. The circumference with center in one last known position and "radius = groundspeed * time to next ping" will not be the place where the plane was by the next ping but a bound to it. The plane will have been at or inside that circumference, so from all the arch obtained from the satellite, you now keep just the part that lays inside this other circumference, and since you have many possible points of new "last known position", the error propagates as add new pings, archs and circumferences.

If there was similar data from a second satellite out there, it would be much simpler.

[EconomyClass]

What possible use is it to anybody to have the pilot able to turn off any of this stuff? I assume they engineered it that way for some specific purpose, but I'm baffled what it could be. I definitely think there should be locator stuff that no one has access to.

[Evan]

Yes. You are assuming (but not saying it) that the airplane flies constant groundtrack and groundspeed between pings that are about 1 hour apart.

But that's basically what I had in mind when I said that it would be interesting to have all the pings. The circumference with center in one last known position and "radius = groundspeed * time to next ping" will not be the place where the plane was by the next ping but a bound to it. The plane will have been at or inside that circumference, so from all the arch obtained from the satellite, you now keep just the part that lays inside this other circumference, and since you have many possible points of new "last known position", the error propagates as add new pings, archs and circumferences.

If there was similar data from a second satellite out there, it would be much simpler.

Ok, but even just from the data available, a series of 'pings' received about an hour apart, each with an identifed distance from the receiver, known weather condtions and known airspeed range requirements at various altitudes, you could do much better than two broad arcs like this. I mean, if a 'ping' is received four hours after LKP it is not going to be coming from the part of the arc closest to LKP. It's not going to pinpoint anything because of the variables involved, but it could show more or less a trend and placement of the a/c at the time of the ping could be greatly reduced. Certainly another receiver would reduce that even more. It's hard to believe nothing else picked that up. I'm confident there is more going on than is being exposed to the press.

That said, if it went down in the Indian Ocean and floating wreckage was not found within the first few days I doubt it will be ever be found, or at least not until future broad-scanning technology can locate it in such deep waters.

[Leftseat86]

Yes, and you can put all the world resources in a search effort in point A that will yield nothing if the plane is in point B. The search didn't find the intact airplane after all, did it?


Because if the insurance company finds out that you committed suicide they will not pay the $ 1,000,000 to your wife, for example.


Laws of which you evidently don't understand a thing.


Or, that the plane did crash or explode precisely at the point where these signals ceased. Or wait, is the plane still sending signals?


Ok, show me ONE SINGLE TELECOM COMPANY reporting that they had one of these phones in their network after the plane went missing and we'll start talking. Such a thing was said, not even as a rumor.


And what is a blac box transponder? Oh, I forgot: Nothing!


When an airplane crash into the ocean, the only transmitting device is a pinger that sends short-range sound signals into the water, so you have to be with an underwater microphone NEARBY to detect the signal.


Everything points to someone intentionally controlling the plane and disabling the location and communication systems.

Could this mean that the intention was to land the plane somewhere?
Yes.

But all the same hints make it possible that this was a murdercide by one or both of the pilots where they didn't want the plane to be located so nobody can prove that it was a suicidal action (with the implications that this has, for example, for an insurance policy).

Gabriel don't even bother dissecting a "news" article from naturalnews.com. That website is a conspiracy theory nutcase hotbed, it's an arm of infowars.com run by that Alex Jones guy. The reporting, if you can call it that, is absolutely ludicrous to the point that it could be considered satire, but unfortunately these people actually believe this crap.

Posting it here is of absolutely no use whatsoever unless you're getting a laugh out of it.

[Gabriel]

The reporting, if you can call it that, is absolutely ludicrous to the point that it could be considered satire

[Warning: Off topic]

I agree. It was so ridiculous that I had to check twice that it wasn't from The Onion. But The Onion's report makes more sense.

Malaysia Airlines Expands Investigation To Include General Scope Of Space, Time
‘Why Are We Even Here?’ Officials Probe

NEWS • News • ISSUE 50•10 • Mar 13, 2014

Assuming the actuality of wavefunction collapse, Malaysia Airlines officials say flight MH370 could currently be located in any possible alternate future.

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KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA—Following a host of conflicting reports in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 last Saturday, representatives from the Kuala Lumpur–based carrier acknowledged they had widened their investigation into the vanished Boeing 777 aircraft today to encompass not only the possibilities of mechanical failure, pilot error, terrorist activity, or a botched hijacking, but also the overarching scope of space, time, and humankind’s place in the universe.

The airline, now in its fifth day of searching for the passenger jet carrying 239 passengers and crew, has come under fire for its perceived mishandling of the investigation, whose confusing and contradictory reports have failed to provide definitive answers on everything from how long the missing plane remained aloft after losing contact with air traffic controllers, to whether the flight made a radical alteration in its heading, to the very dimensions of space-time and the nature of reality, and what exactly it is that brought us into existence and imbued us with this thing we call life.

Additionally, the airline confirmed it had expanded its active search area to include a several-hundred-square-mile zone in the Indian Ocean as well as each of the seven or 22 additional spatial dimensions posited by string theory.

“We continue to do everything in our power and explore every possible lead—both Cartesian and phenomenological—to locate the aircraft as quickly as possible,” said Malaysia’s civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, who went on to say that authorities were still actively seeking tips from anyone claiming knowledge related either to the flight, or to the mechanisms by which consciousness arises, or to the question of why anything physical and finite exists instead of nothing at all. “At this stage, we can’t rule anything out: not crew interference with the transponders, not a catastrophic electrical failure, not the emergence of a complex topological feature of space-time such as an Einstein-Rosen bridge that could have deposited the flight at any location in the universe or a different time period altogether, nothing.”

“Could a parallel universe have immediately swelled up from random cosmological fluctuation according to the multiverse theory and swallowed the flight into its folds, or could ice have built up on an airspeed sensor? Those are both options we are currently considering,” Rahman added. “Everything’s on the table. That is, insofar as anything exists at all, which we’re also looking into.”

Rahman assured the press and families of passengers that officials would not rest until they locate the plane, provided that sensory experience can be verified beyond the existence of one’s own mind. Malaysian authorities also cautioned that they were dealing with an unprecedented aviation mystery and that it could take months to ascertain the airliner’s exact fate as well as, for that matter, the fate of mankind itself, assuming a linear theory of space-time in which the future is unknowable and objects travel in a forward trajectory which, authorities hasten to add, is not necessarily the case.

In addition, airline sources attempted to assuage an uneasy public by noting they had brought in top crash investigators from the Malaysian, Vietnamese, and Chinese governments, as well as U.S. Navy personnel, Boeing technicians, leading quantum physicists, theoretical cosmologists, metaphysicians, epistemologists, and determinist philosophers to help scour all conceivable and as yet inconceivable locations in which the plane might be located.

“The bottom line is that we have a sophisticated aircraft fresh off a safety inspection with no prior incident of malfunction, flying in good weather at a cruising altitude,” Rahman continued. “Why didn’t the pilot send a distress signal? Why aren’t we finding a debris path? What are we to make of the contradictory radar information? Where did the universe begin and can it be said to have a limit or an edge? What is mankind’s role in it? Is there a God? If so, what is God’s nature?”

“It’s too early to answer these questions right now, but I can assure you that Malaysia Airlines will get to the bottom of it,” Rahman added. “Our top people are on it right now.”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/malaysian-airlines-expands-investigation-to-includ,35524/

[BoeingBobby]

“Could a parallel universe have immediately swelled up from random cosmological fluctuation according to the multiverse theory and swallowed the flight into its folds, or could ice have built up on an airspeed sensor? Those are both options we are currently considering,” Rahman added. “Everything’s on the table. That is, insofar as anything exists at all, which we’re also looking into.”


Someone is smoking crack!

[jfojoe]

What do we factually know about the ping prior to the 8:11 ping? Evan rightly points out that it's about radii, not arcs so it seems to me the only way any searching around arcs would be if the prior ping was on or near the same spot on the same arc...aka aircraft was parked or floating? Thanks all.

[Gabriel]

Someone is smoking crack!

Weed at most:

The Onion is an American digital media company and news satire organization. It runs an entertainment website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news.

The Onion's articles comment on current events, both real and fictional. It parodies traditional news websites with stories, editorials, op-ed pieces, and man-in-the-street interviews, using a traditional news website layout and an editorial voice modeled after that of the Associated Press. Its humor often depends on presenting mundane, everyday events as newsworthy or alarming or parodying the media's portrayal of news.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_onion

[BoeingBobby]

Released this afternoon:


There are three pieces of evidence that aviation safety experts say make it clear the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was taken over by someone who was knowledgeable about how the plane worked.

TRANSPONDER

One clue is that the plane's transponder - a signal system that identifies the plane to radar - was shut off about an hour into the flight.

In order to do that, someone in the cockpit would have to turn a knob with multiple selections to the off position while pressing down at the same time, said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. That's something a pilot would know how to do, but it could also be learned by someone who researched the plane on the Internet, he said.

ACARS

Another clue is that part of the Boeing 777's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was shut off.

The system, which has two parts, is used to send short messages via a satellite or VHF radio to the airline's home base. The information part of the system was shut down, but not the transmission part. In most planes, the information part of the system can be shut down by hitting cockpit switches in sequence in order to get to a computer screen where an option must be selected using a keypad, said Goglia, an expert on aircraft maintenance.

That's also something a pilot would know how to do, but that could also be discovered through research, he said.

But to turn off the other part of the ACARS, it would be necessary to go to an electronics bay beneath the cockpit. That's something a pilot wouldn't normally know how to do, Goglia said, and it wasn't done in the case of the Malaysia plane. Thus, the ACARS transmitter continued to send out blips that were recorded by the Inmarsat satellite once an hour for four to five hours after the transponder was turned off. The blips don't contain any messages or data, but the satellite can tell in a very broad way what region the blips are coming from and adjusts the angle of its antenna to be ready to receive message in case the ACARS sends them. Investigators are now trying to use data from the satellite to identify the region where the plane was when its last blip was sent.

GUIDED FLIGHT

The third indication is that that after the transponder was turned off and civilian radar lost track of the plane, Malaysian military radar was able to continue to track the plane as it turned west.

The plane was then tracked along a known flight route across the peninsula until it was several hundred miles (kilometers) offshore and beyond the range of military radar. Airliners normally fly from waypoint to waypoint where they can be seen by air traffic controllers who space them out so they don't collide. These lanes in the sky aren't straight lines. In order to follow that course, someone had to be guiding the plane, Goglia said.

Goglia said he is very skeptical of reports the plane was flying erratically while it was being tracked by military radar, including steep ascents to very high altitudes and then sudden, rapid descents. Without a transponder signal, the ability to track planes isn't reliable at very high altitudes or with sudden shifts in altitude, he said.

[Gabriel]

... it's about radii, not arcs ...

Now you did it. What?????