Malaysia Airlines plane crashes in South China Sea with 239 people aboard

[dphantom]

I'm at the point where I wouldn't be surprised if the plane landed at the airport in China next week and everyone on board is like "what we've just been gone a few hours". That's how weird everything about this is.

indeed

 

[Darwin333]

Even if you took away the on/off switches from the transponder, pilots still have access to circuit breakers. Plus there may be the need to power it off it the transponder starts transmitting some erroneous data and messing up ATC.

Can't ATC filter out specific signals? There must be a better option than giving someone the ability to make the plane go virtually invisible. Even some sort of backup system that just beeps so it can be triangulated? It can't possibly be that difficult.

The second question is answered by money. Doing satellite updates would cost a lot of money to get a system in place for something that is an extremely rare event. I am sure it is coming withing a few years though,

It may be rare but how much do you figure they are spending on this search right now? How about the Air France search?
I can purchase a sat phone that would work damn near anywhere for relatively cheap. How much could it possibly cost to upgrade them to send a very short data burst? I'm talking just lat and long, not the entirety of the data stored in the black (orange) box.

 

[Fern]

-snip-
How much could it possibly cost to upgrade them to send a very short data burst? I'm talking just lat and long, not the entirety of the data stored in the black (orange) box.

$300 million per airline per year.

A 2002 study by L-3 Aviation Recorders (LLL) and a satellite provider found that a U.S. airline flying a global network would need to spend $300 million per year to transmit all its flight data, even assuming a 50 percent reduction in future satellite transmission costs. And that’s just a single airline.

http://www.businessweek.com/article...-keep-black-box-flight-data-trapped-on-planes

Fern

 

[werepossum]

$300 million per airline per year.


http://www.businessweek.com/article...-keep-black-box-flight-data-trapped-on-planes

Fern

Darwin's been talking more about an SOS type transmission. No extra bandwidth needed on routine flights, but a burst at impact. Alternately, a burst when instruments record significant problems or programmed deviations from flight plan - although that last would require some programming and interface costs. If programmed to send a burst at impact it might not work, but would surely be cheap as it could use an acceleration sensor. A more expensive system could be tied into the databus for failures or unacceptable parameters. A burst of ID plus latitude and longitude at minimum safe height without landing gear deployed could also work, although besides the databus it would need some sort of mapping or radar ability given that landing at Miami would be a significant crater at Denver. Just using the aircraft's height reading would probably work 99+%.

But surely a ruggedized black box transmitter tied into GPS coordinates and using an acceleration sensor could get off a burst with just latitude and longitude before failing in most accidents, without costing millions of dollars. And not being used in normal flight operations, there would be no reason to have a cut-off accessible from within the plane. For that matter, making it a beeper which squawks ID plus latitude and longitude every few minutes if the normal power or transponder output fails/gets shut off surely wouldn't add that much cost either.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Don't these planes offer satellite internet access? Why not tie a GPS unit into that?

 

[davmat787]

Darwin's been talking more about an SOS type transmission. No extra bandwidth needed on routine flights, but a burst at impact. Alternately, a burst when instruments record significant problems or programmed deviations from flight plan - although that last would require some programming and interface costs. If programmed to send a burst at impact it might not work, but would surely be cheap as it could use an acceleration sensor. A more expensive system could be tied into the databus for failures or unacceptable parameters. A burst of ID plus latitude and longitude at minimum safe height without landing gear deployed could also work, although besides the databus it would need some sort of mapping or radar ability given that landing at Miami would be a significant crater at Denver. Just using the aircraft's height reading would probably work 99+%.

But surely a ruggedized black box transmitter tied into GPS coordinates and using an acceleration sensor could get off a burst with just latitude and longitude before failing in most accidents, without costing millions of dollars. And not being used in normal flight operations, there would be no reason to have a cut-off accessible from within the plane. For that matter, making it a beeper which squawks ID plus latitude and longitude every few minutes if the normal power or transponder output fails/gets shut off surely wouldn't add that much cost either.

Expect to see in the near future black boxes that transmit data live in addition to recording it. They are coming, but are still in the development stages.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Okay lets see no debris.......no explosion......I would say that's a fair bet!1
Hijacked...now waiting for the reason....


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Investigators have concluded that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday


No motive has been established and no demands have been made known, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory.
"It is conclusive," he said.
He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane's communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar.

The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into a flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials previously have said radar data suggest it may have turned back toward and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital.

Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance, adding it may have been "an act of piracy."

While other theories are still being examined, the U.S. official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777's transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe.

The Malaysian official said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.

Why anyone would want to do this is unclear. Malaysian authorities and others will be urgently investigating the backgrounds of the two pilots and 10 crew members, as well the 227 passengers on board.

Some experts have said that pilot suicide may be the most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight in 1999.

A massive international search effort began initially in the South China Sea where the plane's transponders stopped transmitting. It has since been expanded onto the other side of the Malay peninsula up into the Andaman Sea and into the Indian Ocean.

The plane had enough fuel to fly for at least five hours after its last know location, meaning a vast swath of South and Southeast Asia would be within its reach. Investigators are analyzing radar and satellite data from around the region to try and pinpoint its final location, something that will be vital to hopes of finding the plane, and answering the mystery of what happened to it

 

[cyclohexane]

Okay lets see no debris.......no explosion......I would say that's a fair bet!1
Hijacked...now waiting for the reason....


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Investigators have concluded that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday


No motive has been established and no demands have been made known, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory.
"It is conclusive," he said.
He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane's communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar.

The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into a flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials previously have said radar data suggest it may have turned back toward and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital.

Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance, adding it may have been "an act of piracy."

While other theories are still being examined, the U.S. official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777's transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe.

The Malaysian official said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.

Why anyone would want to do this is unclear. Malaysian authorities and others will be urgently investigating the backgrounds of the two pilots and 10 crew members, as well the 227 passengers on board.

Some experts have said that pilot suicide may be the most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight in 1999.

A massive international search effort began initially in the South China Sea where the plane's transponders stopped transmitting. It has since been expanded onto the other side of the Malay peninsula up into the Andaman Sea and into the Indian Ocean.

The plane had enough fuel to fly for at least five hours after its last know location, meaning a vast swath of South and Southeast Asia would be within its reach. Investigators are analyzing radar and satellite data from around the region to try and pinpoint its final location, something that will be vital to hopes of finding the plane, and answering the mystery of what happened to it

Takes them 1 whole week to think about searching the pilot's house?!? WTF? These government officials are in with the terrorist - we need to go "liberate them."

 

[TerryMathews]

I wonder what a 777 is worth on the black market.

 

[Nintendesert]

Thread title is misleading.

 

[boomerang]

Thread title is misleading.

The thread title is reflective of what was assumed to have happened at the time the post was made. It's a developing story.

 

[Genx87]

This just gets weirder by the day.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

So where did the plane land? On an Iranian Aircraft Carrier in the Indian Ocean?

 

[boomerang]

So where did the plane land? On an Iranian Aircraft Carrier in the Indian Ocean?

I'd say it's in a hanger somewhere in a country that hates us which doesn't narrow it down much. That's under the assumption that it's to be ultimately used as a weapon. It could be used against any country, but we're still the rotten SOB's of the world as far as I know.

 

[Jaskalas]

So where did the plane land? On an Iranian Aircraft Carrier in the Indian Ocean?

Since the assumption is hijacking, it makes sense that a landing site could have also been among the preparations. However, that does not guarantee that they reached their destination.

 

[CZroe]

Up it goes!!

WTF?! I quoted the OP twice in a row with the Tapatalk app and I keep getting this post instead. Weird.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I say it crashed in the Indian Ocean

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I wonder what a 777 is worth on the black market.

Probably close to nothing its far too easy to track.
Edit: obviously it can't be tracked, who would have thought a 777 would be the stealthiest plane on the planet.
Too easy to notice

 

[Jaskalas]

I'd say it's in a hanger somewhere in a country that hates us which doesn't narrow it down much. That's under the assumption that it's to be ultimately used as a weapon. It could be used against any country, but we're still the rotten SOB's of the world as far as I know.

As a weapon? Hell, if I believed in fairies, hated the west, and loved beheadings, I'd do it simply to have a 239 day marathon. Who'd want to fly on a plane after watching 239 get their heads chopped off? THAT is terrorism.

Using the plane as a weapon is thinking it through a little too much. I do not give our opponents that much credit. OTOH, it'd make a great transport for a dirty bomb, or chemical attack. Basically they have a bomber disguised as a civilian aircraft. Now just give it a transponder for another plane and...

 

[boomerang]

Dozens of Planes Have Vanished in Post-WWII Era

 

[Jaskalas]

Dozens of Planes Have Vanished in Post-WWII Era

1: We have GPS and constant contact with planes these days.
2: There are reports it flew 4-7 hours in another direction after dropping com systems making some erratic moves.

 

[CZroe]

Update: Oil slick where it went in has been found
...
Malaysia Airlines plane crashes in South China Sea with 239 people aboard

Wow. Both statements were incredibly premature in light of current understandings. Way to jump the gun there.

 

[Jaskalas]

Wow. Both statements were incredibly premature in light of current understandings. Way to jump the gun there.

I do not blame him per say, the media really jumped the gun on every detail. Suppose they were expecting accuracy from their sources.

 

[MagickMan]

So where did the plane land? On an Iranian Aircraft Carrier in the Indian Ocean?

A pilot who flew for Qantas for 15 years told me there are >300 landing strips on various islands, and in remote coastline areas, in that region.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

A pilot who flew for Qantas for 15 years told me there are >300 landing strips on various islands, and in remote coastline areas, in that region.

My guess is they're already looking at the one's that have airstrips long enough for a 777 to take off.