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Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With 777 en Route to Beijing

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  • Originally posted by Peter Kesternich View Post
    Well - I'm wondering if you have ever been to this part of the world. It's not as backwards as many people think, and I am pretty confident, that we will hear the real story, and probaner than later.
    China and Malaysia yes, I've been. "Backwards", no. Corrupt, yes. Extremely corrupt. Malaysia is typically considered worst in the world for busniess corruption and Vietnam follows right along. China and Indonesia are right there with them. Graft, fraud, bribery, and corruption are rampant. Hell, they make doing business in Rome look good.

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    • Originally posted by Peter Kesternich View Post
      As far as I know, Cambodia's air defenses and air force are almost non-existent. Vietnam on the other should have a fairly sophisticated air defense and they would most likely scramble a Su-27s to see what's coming at them.
      Yes, you are most likely right about Cambodia, they do not seem to have a/a missiles in their inventory, only guns. I will have a look at Jane´s tomorrow to verify.

      Regarding Vietnam, they recently bought at least two SA-20 (S300 PMU1) which are perfectly capable (depending on type) of hitting targets at distances from 75 km upwards. As you say, they also have russian fighters.

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      • Originally posted by Evan View Post
        They were one-way tickets. These were not tourists.

        One way tickets, purchased together with two stolen passports. This sounds organized and sinister to me.
        Well, apparently we have hundreds or thousands of people flying on fake/stolen passports everyday and not downing airplanes.

        These two guys could be simply two "friends" doing something illegal that is irrelevant for this disaster (illegal immigration, escaping prosecution, smuggling...). Then again, maybe not...

        --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
        --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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        • Originally posted by retox View Post
          China and Malaysia yes, I've been. "Backwards", no. Corrupt, yes. Extremely corrupt. Malaysia is typically considered worst in the world for busniess corruption and Vietnam follows right along. China and Indonesia are right there with them. Graft, fraud, bribery, and corruption are rampant. Hell, they make doing business in Rome look good.
          But why would business corruption prevent us from knowing what happened to the aircraft, once the data recorders are recovered?

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          • Changing angles again, sorry for not staying on the same subject!

            We have read that there were no signs of equipment malfunction transmitted over ACARS (as opposed to the AF accident where I seem to remember that there were more than 50 individual errors flagged). Now, ACARS probably sent other messages during the 40 minutes flight. At least I have not seen any reference to the ACARS, whatsoever.
            Can anyone say whether the ACARS transmitting device may be MELd?
            That would be a valid reason for not receiving any messages..
            (In fact it would be extremely interesting to see the ME list, for this flight, just to tick a few boxes.)

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            • Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
              Well, apparently we have hundreds or thousands of people flying on fake/stolen passports everyday and not downing airplanes.

              These two guys could be simply two "friends" doing something illegal that is irrelevant for this disaster (illegal immigration, escaping prosecution, smuggling...). Then again, maybe not...
              I agree, sounds like illegal immigration to me. With an european passport, they can work and live in any european country.
              A Former Airdisaster.Com Forum (senior member)....

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              • Originally posted by retox View Post
                China and Malaysia yes, I've been. "Backwards", no. Corrupt, yes. Extremely corrupt. Malaysia is typically considered worst in the world for busniess corruption and Vietnam follows right along. China and Indonesia are right there with them. Graft, fraud, bribery, and corruption are rampant. Hell, they make doing business in Rome look good.
                I agree, I have done business in those countries. Let me add India in that list. Blackmail, bribery and extortion is very normal in there.
                A Former Airdisaster.Com Forum (senior member)....

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                • Originally posted by Passion for flying View Post
                  Can anyone say whether the ACARS transmitting device may be MELd?
                  That would be a valid reason for not receiving any messages..
                  (In fact it would be extremely interesting to see the ME list, for this flight, just to tick a few boxes.)
                  For that matter, can the ACARS be easily disabled to prevent it from transmitting data? The radio can obviously be disabled (or just not used), you can presumably change the transponder code easily, you could hypothetically fly below radar. But is the ACARS transmitter always on?

                  As I understand it, flightaware uses ACARS transmissions to track planes, does flightradar24 do likewise? Just pondering the discrepancy whereby flightaware's tracking appears to stop whilst still above land, yet flightradar24 continues out into the sea for a good 10 minutes further. My assumption is that both do use ACARS but are reliant on listening stations picking up the signal and maybe in that part of the world, flightradar24 has a listening user closer to the coast and able to receive for longer?

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                  • Originally posted by sjwk View Post
                    For that matter, can the ACARS be easily disabled to prevent it from transmitting data? The radio can obviously be disabled (or just not used), you can presumably change the transponder code easily, you could hypothetically fly below radar. But is the ACARS transmitter always on?

                    As I understand it, flightaware uses ACARS transmissions to track planes, does flightradar24 do likewise? Just pondering the discrepancy whereby flightaware's tracking appears to stop whilst still above land, yet flightradar24 continues out into the sea for a good 10 minutes further. My assumption is that both do use ACARS but are reliant on listening stations picking up the signal and maybe in that part of the world, flightradar24 has a listening user closer to the coast and able to receive for longer?
                    As I have understood it, FR24 uses the aircrafts ADS-B transmissions for its information. This is, simply put, a retransmisison of the current GPS data of the aircraft.

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                    • Interesting. So could the flightaware data stopping earlier (assuming the screenshot posted earlier in the thread shows the end of signal and the site doesn't filter out the last 5 minutes or something?) be an indication that something was up with the ACARS transmissions before any incident occurred? Whether that 'something' is failure or tampering?

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                      • Originally posted by sjwk View Post
                        Interesting. So could the flightaware data stopping earlier (assuming the screenshot posted earlier in the thread shows the end of signal and the site doesn't filter out the last 5 minutes or something?) be an indication that something was up with the ACARS transmissions before any incident occurred? Whether that 'something' is failure or tampering?
                        I just checked, and Flightaware used ADS-B as well, plus aggregated data from various official sources. See here:
                        Der beste Flug-Tracker: Live Tracking-Karten, Flugstatus und Flugverzögerungen für Flüge der Luftfahrtgesellschaften, private Flüge und Flughäfen.

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                        • Originally posted by Peter Kesternich View Post
                          But why would business corruption prevent us from knowing what happened o the aircraft, once the data recorders are recovered?
                          At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, TWA800 happened here and a lot of people remain unsatisfied with the official report.

                          This happened in a region where corruption rules and there are a lot of competing interests (including Boeing) along with a dose of hostility between a few of the governments in the area. I'm inclined to believe what the NTSB comes up with above all but I'm not totally sure they are even beyond reproach as it relates to the politics in this region. I'll take off the tin-foil hat now.

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                          • Originally posted by sjwk View Post
                            For that matter, can the ACARS be easily disabled to prevent it from transmitting data? The radio can obviously be disabled (or just not used), you can presumably change the transponder code easily, you could hypothetically fly below radar. But is the ACARS transmitter always on?

                            As I understand it, flightaware uses ACARS transmissions to track planes, does flightradar24 do likewise? Just pondering the discrepancy whereby flightaware's tracking appears to stop whilst still above land, yet flightradar24 continues out into the sea for a good 10 minutes further. My assumption is that both do use ACARS but are reliant on listening stations picking up the signal and maybe in that part of the world, flightradar24 has a listening user closer to the coast and able to receive for longer?
                            You can disable anything you want in the aircraft. Just pull the appropriate circuit breaker.
                            A Former Airdisaster.Com Forum (senior member)....

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                            • Originally posted by sjwk View Post
                              For that matter, can the ACARS be easily disabled to prevent it from transmitting data? The radio can obviously be disabled (or just not used), you can presumably change the transponder code easily, you could hypothetically fly below radar. But is the ACARS transmitter always on?
                              Everything can be turned off. There must be some circuit breaker somewhere between some part of the ACARS system and its power source.

                              As I understand it, flightaware uses ACARS transmissions to track planes, does flightradar24 do likewise?
                              Neither uses ACARS. They use ADS-B received by a network of volunteers with a simple digital TV receiver antenna, a little hardware to connect that receiver to a computer, a software to "decode" the useful ADS-B data, and another software to upload that info to flightaware/flightradar and others. Of course, the computer must be left on at all times and permanently connected to the internet.

                              ACARS is not useful to track a plane's trajectory because it is event-based. It's the airplane who relies information about certain events.

                              --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                              --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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                              • Originally posted by Passion for flying View Post
                                Can anyone say whether the ACARS transmitting device may be MELd?
                                I guess yes. It's not something essential for the safety of flight in any condition and it is not a required data recording/relying system.

                                AFAIK, airplanes don't even need to have ACARS to be certified.

                                --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                                --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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