According to latest information, the likely crash site is under the Indian Ocean garbage patch. It suggests some pretty maniacal planning, as in "no place within radius of possible travel where search will be harder". Is it possible the captain hated Chinese, to the extent where he'd commit suicide just to killl some? Are they looking at his psychic profile like they did the guy who crashed Germanwings?
Read more:Ocean Infinity Sets Out to Find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
The Government of Malaysia announced on Wednesday that Ocean Infinity’s proposal to resume the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been accepted.
https://www.flyingmag.com/ocean-infi...IwMTQ3ODM1OAS2
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"Latest report from the ATSB indicates that the flaps were most likely retracted and the rate of descent accelerated to about 25,000 fpm" the debris as a result of the impact at this high speed would be hard to trace I think.
25000 fpm! You have to love it!Originally Posted by oliviadavid
Fascinated by this mystery and frustrated by the fact we'll probably never get the true answer. If we ever find the wreckage somehow, even modern recorders won't tell us what happened at the presumed "interesting" time right? We'll just get three hours(?) of hum and some non-interesting flight data.
Having read about the Helios/Payne Stewart incidents, I guess there's still a slim chance of this not being what we all expect it to be.
Well, 25000 fpm is 250 kts*. That's certainly a total air disaster but not enough to "pulverize" the plane. Air France crashed at more than 10000 fpm and there were big chunks left.
Now, the problem is that it is suspected (based on aerodynamic models and flight simulations) that, unlike Air France that was in a stall with an airspeed of 100 and something knots, the MH plane was in a spiral dive. A spiral dive with the plane not stalled and descending at 25000 fpm will certainly means overspeed. This can effectively mean a basically pulverized plane where the black box would be the largest part. But I would not be surprised if the plane broke apart in flight, which would mean big chunks again.
*it is amazing that the combination of non-decimal garbage factors you guys do in the imperial units can lead to 100 fpm = 1 knot. One knot is one nautical mile per hour and one fpm is one feet per minute. I will not comment on the difference between hour and minute, the former being 60 times greater than the second (well, I did comment), but a nautical mile is a minute of latitude (what mean that the circumference of the Earth is 60 minutes per degree times 360 degrees = 21600 arc-minutes = 21600 miles). The foot was defined as 12 inches, and the inch as three lengths of a barleycorn, and the barleycorn as the length of a grain of sound ripe barley being taken out the middle of the ear, well dried. THat all this time and length factors craziness conspire to produce a 1:100 ratio is certainly outstanding!!! (even when it is not exactly 1:100, rather 0.99:100).
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The voice recorder would record only 2 hours, but the flight data recorder should have the full flight and previous flights too. And if the memory can be recovered from other components (especially the QAR) then very interesting data can surface, like the pilot actively depressurizing the plane or programming the FMS for a south Indian Ocean route.
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What's not impossible is possible, but "slim" is an understatement.
Helios and Payne Stewart kept flying straight. This plane made several turns.
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Thanks for clearing that up. I guess the first turn could be due to the emergency, but the 2nd and 3rd are harder to explain in that scenario I'll concede.
So this is the scenario I have in my head:
At the gulf of Thailand during a handover between two countries the captain lures the FO out of the cockpit (or he is cunning enough to have waited this out until the day he takes a toilet break). He then puts his oxygen mask on, de-pressurizes the aircraft, and refuses entry for his FO while turning the transponder off.
The shouts and banging on the door are mere distractions. Who are they to interfere with the all-knowing captain and his grand plan to out-wit the industry. This is not just any captain, this is a man who basically lives and breathes aviation. He's obsessed by it to the point of having an own simulator at his house. But all the routine and safety has finally got to him. It's time to put all this knowledge to use. It's time to "create" an accident.
He makes a sharp turn so he can pass over his own house in Malaysia. Partly because he's sentimental, partly to play a joke on the investigators trying to solve the puzzle.
He now heads out towards the southern Indian ocean, while descending to a breathable altitude since his oxygen supply only lasts for a finite amount of time. He sits alone in the cockpit, finally in full control of his aircraft without the disturbance of all those other annoying humans. The first engine flames out. The second engine... The ram turbine deploys, and the captain manually glides the aircraft towards the ocean...
^^ provided for some provocative speculation, take it for what it's worth
Nope. It was more intentional than that. Either the FO just happened to go to the toilet or the captain just killed him. He disconnects the transponder, he pulls the circuit breaker of the ACARS, depressurizes the plane to kill the rest of the paxs and flies to where nobody will look for them and where any debris will be either under thousands of meters of water or mostly turning in an oceanic gyre. But well before the end, he runs out of O2 himself and the plane keeps flying on AP until it runs out of fuel where it falls in a spiral dive (this is perhaps the only similitude with the Payne Stewart case). He made one mistake: he didn't fully disconnect the satellite system. While the system as inactive and not sending messages, the parts that makes the "handshakes" with the satellite was still alive. That's the only reason why we know they went don in the Southern Indian Ocean.
And the above account is not speculative in nature. There can be variations (the FO killing the captain, a terrorist gaining control of the cockpit)m but that's pretty much what WE KNOW happened.
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FO seemed too high on life for my liking. Freshly dinged pilot, young, just about to get married etc. Given what we know about the apparent premeditation of it all, he appears too inexperienced for me to pull this off.
Terrorist seems unlikely, turning off the transponder etc seems almost counterproductive to their usual goal, and a lone maniac wouldn't bother with it.
That leaves the captain, and even though nothing concrete has been dug up (aside from the speculative simulator finds), he's what left after process of elimination.
I keep going back to the SilkAir tragedy. The flight crew were roughly the same age.
I think if the plane had been manually gliding towards the ocean we'd have found much larger portions of wreckage by now.
Gabe, I can send you copy of the letter I posted 4/1/14 if you don't remember it.
I sort of remember it. Not the details, but an hypothesis that would explain the occurrence as an unfortunate accident with no wrongdoing from anybody.
I never bought it. I don't remember how do you explain the loss of coms, transponder, ACARS but then the plane keeps making very precise and controlled turns for many minutes in a very prescribed route to end up in a place close to where he ended his flight in his personal flight simulator. Again, I don;t remember the details, but I do remember that I didn't bought it then, and I don't buy it now.
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You obviously did not remember it at all!
4/1/2014
I am willing to bet money that this was a well thought out plan by the Captain of this aircraft. It was probably something that was planned for at least a year if not more.
His financial records and insurance policies will come to light and play a major role in all of this or there is some kind of religious or political implication. This guy has had a long time to plan this operation. He did his “homework” as far as identifying the most difficult place to recover the aircraft after he “disposed” of it. The Indian Ocean is one of the deepest in the world.
Here is my scenario of what I think went down:
Once airborne, the Captain takes out the First Officer. This probably was 10 to 15 minutes into the flight. The aircraft climbs to its assigned altitude of FL350 on course to the planned destination. Alone in the cockpit with the ability to start pulling circuit breakers, he first disables the passenger oxygen system. He dons his oxygen mask and slowly raises the cabin so as not to alert the flight attendants. Time of useful consciousness at FL350 is around five minutes. After he is satisfied that they have been unconscious for 30 minutes or so and now dead from anoxia (and he can view the back from the cockpit cameras), he re-pressurizes the airplane so he can do his dirty work. He then starts the systematic shutdown of all of the communication equipment. Now he starts his course deviations to throw off anyone that maybe watching his primary radar target. After he is satisfied that he has placed enough “confusion” into the mix, he now inputs the coordinates of his researched deep zone in the ocean into the FMS, executes the command and sits back and thinks about what he is about to do to himself and the 200+ poor bastards in the back that are going down with him.
Ok. I agree. I obviously didn't remember it at all. I was obviously confused with someone else's comment I don't remember by whom.
So, about what you say... yes, something like that. Except that I don't think that he kept the plane pressurized all the way. I think he was dead by the time the plane run out of fuel.
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UPDATE: Seabed Constructor has just arrived in the new search area.
AirDisaster.com Forum Member 2004-2008
Keep an eye on this site with the latest updates from Richard Cole @ Ocean Infinity
AirDisaster.com Forum Member 2004-2008
This article describes a scenario in which an electrical fire could have been a possibility, and the crew opting to head for Langkawi.
https://www.wired.com/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/
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