Malaysia Airlines Flight Goes Missing En Route to China

[EC]

You basically have it straight.  Just guessing here, but so long as the transponder itself can function, it would probably continue to "ping" the satellites even if the engine was submerged in water, so long as the transponder hasn't received a proper shutdown sequence from the aircraft itself.

It seems that after this, none of the transponders or other communications systems should be accessible from within the aircraft and they should all have independent power sources that also cannot be disconnected from within the aircraft.

You are correct. The engine transponders can not be shut down unless they are physically removed from their reserve power source, there is no facility to switch them off from the cockpit. It is an integral part of the engine and has it's own battery back up. Lifespan of the battery varies from 12 to 20 hours. Not every aircraft has engine transponders, they are normally applied to the first 50 of a new production run.

[Oceander]

Here's an interesting little tidbit from today's updated WSJ story:

The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent "pings," the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped. One of the people, an industry official, said it was possible that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.

I suppose it could be possible that the aircraft was landed and powered down after the last ping and before the next; otherwise, the above suggests that it crashed after the last ping.


What I'm a little curious about now is what sort of cat-and-mouse game is really being played behind the scenes here?  The NTSBA and the FAA must have known that these aircraft continually "pinged" satellites even if the equipment was put in standby, and I would think that checking with Boeing first to see if they had anything before sending out several tens of ships and aircraft and hundreds of people to do a detailed search of the sea under the aircraft's last known civilian radar location.

[EC]

Here's an interesting little tidbit from today's updated WSJ story:

I suppose it could be possible that the aircraft was landed and powered down after the last ping and before the next; otherwise, the above suggests that it crashed after the last ping.

Pings are every 15 minutes, on average (different airlines have different timings.). Landing and shutting down in 15 minutes from 35,000 feet is not exactly likely in a 777. On a normal flight you are at 10,000 feet or so and 40 miles out at 20 minutes to landing.

[Oceander]

Pings are every 15 minutes, on average (different airlines have different timings.). Landing and shutting down in 15 minutes from 35,000 feet is not exactly likely in a 777. On a normal flight you are at 10,000 feet or so and 40 miles out at 20 minutes to landing.

If 15 minutes then obviously it wouldn't happen.  I was going with the original info I'd read saying the pings were once an hour.  That implies that either someone finally figured out they were pinging and shut that system down, or else the aircraft came apart/blew up/crashed, what have you, within a 15 minute time period.  I would assume that an aircraft could gain enough velocity to go from cruising altitude to sea level in less than 15 minutes (disregarding the fact that it wouldn't necessarily be the gentlest of landings when it did reach sea level).

[Gazoo]

Here's an interesting little tidbit from today's updated WSJ story:

I suppose it could be possible that the aircraft was landed and powered down after the last ping and before the next; otherwise, the above suggests that it crashed after the last ping.


What I'm a little curious about now is what sort of cat-and-mouse game is really being played behind the scenes here?  The NTSBA and the FAA must have known that these aircraft continually "pinged" satellites even if the equipment was put in standby, and I would think that checking with Boeing first to see if they had anything before sending out several tens of ships and aircraft and hundreds of people to do a detailed search of the sea under the aircraft's last known civilian radar location.

Exactly. I think I asked this earlier in this mess. The Obama admin near an election likes to NOT fess up to ANY folks that are ON THE RUN, ya know.

[Bigun]

Hmmm....one would think that considering the amount of hours over open water, that they would construct a water proof/air-tight environment on the equipment.

Once the aircraft is in the water the engines will no longer be running since they will have been severely damaged. The ENTIRE purpose of THIS particular system is to report performance data on the Engine itself so there would be no point to doing as you suggest.

Once in the water other equipment on the aircraft begins sending out audio pings (once per second) which are easily detected by any sonar equipped vessel in the area.

Naval antisubmarine aircraft can also listen for these sounds but would first have to drop sonobouys into the water. These bouys are built to detect even the faintest of AUDIO signals in water and report what they are hearing to the aircraft circling overhead.

[Gazoo]

Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed?

From Jethro Mullen, Barbara Starr and Jim Sciutto, CNN

(CNN) -- Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia.

Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.

The radar data doesn't show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.
 
Andaman Island reporter: 'No plane here' 'Significant likelihood' plane in ocean
The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. That makes some investigators think the plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing.

Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected.

But Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice.

Indian authorities own the only four airstrips in the region, he said.

"There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar islands and land," he said.

The Malaysian government said Friday it can't confirm the report.
And a senior U.S. official on Thursday offered a conflicting account, telling CNN that "there is probably a significant likelihood" the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Regardless, India has deployed assets from its navy, coast guard and air force to the south Andaman Sea to take part in a search for Flight 370, the country's Ministry of Defense said Friday. The Indian navy is leading the operation, and its Maritime Operations Center in New Delhi is coordinating the effort, the ministry said.

Indian search teams are combing large areas of the archipelago. Two aircraft are searching land and coastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and two coast guard ships have been diverted to search along the islands' east coast.

The jetliner, with 239 people on board, disappeared nearly a week ago as it flew between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing. The flight has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials. Authorities still don't know where the plane is or what caused it to vanish.

Suggestions of what happened have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to hijacking to pilot suicide.

Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday that the hunt for the plane was spreading deeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

"A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses the search," said Hishammuddin Hussein, the minister in charge of defense and transportation. "But this is not a normal investigation. In this case, the information we have forces us to look further and further afield."

On Friday, the United States sent the destroyer USS Kidd to scout the Indian Ocean as the search expands into that body of water.

"I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this," Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7th Fleet told CNN of the scale of the search. "It's pretty incredible."

"It's a completely new game now," he said. "We went from a chess board to a football field."

More on the landing theory

James Kallstrom, a former FBI assistant director, said it's possible the plane could have landed, though he added that more information is needed to reach a definitive conclusion. He referred to the vast search area.

"You draw that arc and you look at countries like Pakistan, you know, and you get into your Superman novels and you see the plane landing somewhere and (people) repurposing it for some dastardly deed down the road," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.

"I mean, that's not beyond the realm of realism. I mean, that could happen."
Even so, he acknowledged the difficulty of reaching firm conclusions with scraps of information that sometimes conflict.

"We're getting so much conflicting data," he said. "You veer one way, then you veer the other way. The investigators need some definitive, correct data."
Other developments

On the seventh day of efforts to find the missing Boeing 777-200, here are the other main developments:

• Another lead: Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event was recorded in a nonseismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?sr=tw031414malaysiaairlines9aVODtop

[Bigun]

Here's an interesting little tidbit from today's updated WSJ story:

I suppose it could be possible that the aircraft was landed and powered down after the last ping and before the next; otherwise, the above suggests that it crashed after the last ping.


What I'm a little curious about now is what sort of cat-and-mouse game is really being played behind the scenes here?  The NTSBA and the FAA must have known that these aircraft continually "pinged" satellites even if the equipment was put in standby, and I would think that checking with Boeing first to see if they had anything before sending out several tens of ships and aircraft and hundreds of people to do a detailed search of the sea under the aircraft's last known civilian radar location.

They probably did exactly that but, as you suggested up thread, that data would not have been of much use to them until all of the math had been worked out and that would take some time!

[Oceander]

Exactly. I think I asked this earlier in this mess. The Obama admin near an election likes to NOT fess up to ANY folks that are ON THE RUN, ya know.

I don't think it's that parochial.  Malaysia could have asked Boeing for the data as well, even though Boeing says that Malaysia Airlines didn't sign up to receive the data itself (apparently Boeing always gets the data even if the airline involved doesn't want it).  I suspect that the US gov't, various European gov'ts, and possibly the Malaysian gov't, knew about the data and knew where it had gone, but didn't reveal that knowledge because they didn't want to tip their hand to the hijackers that they had a pretty good idea which direction the plane had gone.  That would have made it much easier to catch the hijackers if/when they revealed themselves by, for example, making a threat or a demand for ransom.

If that were the case, they would still need the search and rescue effort to take place - and they would need it to take place at the last known good location - or else the hijackers would suspect something was up.  My guess is that the information finally became public yesterday because either (a) the governments involved never received any threats or demands from the hijackers and finally concluded that the plane had most likely gone down - it could be as simple as something like the hijackers assuming the plane had more fuel than it actually had and they just ran out of gas over the ocean before they got to their destination - or (b) it became impossible for them to keep it quiet any longer once some journalist dug down deep enough to find the tidbits about the maintenance data being sent to a satellite uplink - which would explain why the first stories alleged that Rolls Royce had been getting data because the typical descriptions of these systems focus on the maintenance and engine-performance uses of the system.

So, as of yesterday, the jig - whatever it was - was up and now the true likely location of the aircraft has been released to the public because either the secrecy is no longer needed or because it can no longer be plausibly maintained.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the governments involved came to the conclusion on Wednesday that the plane had most likely run out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean, which is why they no longer needed to keep the fact of the data transmissions secret any more.

[Gazoo]

I don't think it's that parochial.  Malaysia could have asked Boeing for the data as well, even though Boeing says that Malaysia Airlines didn't sign up to receive the data itself (apparently Boeing always gets the data even if the airline involved doesn't want it).  I suspect that the US gov't, various European gov'ts, and possibly the Malaysian gov't, knew about the data and knew where it had gone, but didn't reveal that knowledge because they didn't want to tip their hand to the hijackers that they had a pretty good idea which direction the plane had gone.  That would have made it much easier to catch the hijackers if/when they revealed themselves by, for example, making a threat or a demand for ransom.

If that were the case, they would still need the search and rescue effort to take place - and they would need it to take place at the last known good location - or else the hijackers would suspect something was up.  My guess is that the information finally became public yesterday because either (a) the governments involved never received any threats or demands from the hijackers and finally concluded that the plane had most likely gone down - it could be as simple as something like the hijackers assuming the plane had more fuel than it actually had and they just ran out of gas over the ocean before they got to their destination - or (b) it became impossible for them to keep it quiet any longer once some journalist dug down deep enough to find the tidbits about the maintenance data being sent to a satellite uplink - which would explain why the first stories alleged that Rolls Royce had been getting data because the typical descriptions of these systems focus on the maintenance and engine-performance uses of the system.

So, as of yesterday, the jig - whatever it was - was up and now the true likely location of the aircraft has been released to the public because either the secrecy is no longer needed or because it can no longer be plausibly maintained.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the governments involved came to the conclusion on Wednesday that the plane had most likely run out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean, which is why they no longer needed to keep the fact of the data transmissions secret any more.

NOTE TO SELF: Never half joke with Oceander or you will get a complete dissertation and the theory of the calipitor and the calapitor. 

[DCPatriot]

Seems to me that if it was the plane they wanted, they'd just steal one off the tarmac in the middle of the night...after neutralizing the control tower.


.....at least that's what Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger would do.   

[Oceander]

Seems to me that if it was the plane they wanted, they'd just steal one off the tarmac in the middle of the night...after neutralizing the control tower.


.....at least that's what Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger would do.   

Or go after a cargo jet.  Stealing a cargo jet would be less high-profile and would engender much less of a public outcry and search-and-rescue efforts.  You wouldn't even have to go after Fedex, UPS, or DHL, but one of the local or regional freight haulers.

[Gazoo]

Seems to me that if it was the plane they wanted, they'd just steal one off the tarmac in the middle of the night...after neutralizing the control tower.


.....at least that's what Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger would do.   

I was thinking this as well. It would alert authorities and eventually the 6th and 7th fleet or the one fleet we have remaining after Obama<----------JOKE

I have not had to travel internationally in awhile but the little bit of domestic I have done I noticed A LOT of mid eastern pilots. So it would be a cake-walk for them to infiltrate as a pilot.

[flowers]

Malaysia Airliner Communications Shut Down Separately, US Officials Say

http://gma.yahoo.com/malaysia-airliner-kept-pinging-indication-crashed-indian-ocean-194746310--abc-news-topstories.html

Two U.S. officials tell ABC News the U.S. believes that the shutdown of two communication systems happened separately on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. One source said this indicates the plane did not come out of the sky because of a catastrophic failure.

The data reporting system, they believe, was shut down at 1:07 a.m. The transponder -- which transmits location and altitude -- shut down at 1:21 a.m.

This indicates it may well have been a deliberate act, ABC News aviation consultant John Nance said.

U.S. investigators told ABC News that the two modes of communication were "systematically shut down."

That means the U.S. team "is convinced that there was manual intervention," a source said, which means it was likely not an accident or catastrophic malfunction that took the plane out of the sky.

U.S. officials said earlier that they have an "indication" the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.

It's not clear what the indication was, but senior administration officials told ABC News the missing Malaysian flight continued to "ping" a satellite on an hourly basis after it lost contact with radar. The Boeing 777 jetliners are equipped with what is called the Airplane Health Management system in which they ping a satellite every hour. The number of pings would indicate how long the plane stayed aloft.

It's not clear, however, whether the satellite pings also indicate the plane's location.

The new information has greatly expanded the potential search area into the Indian Ocean.

"We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean," the senior Pentagon official said.

The official initially said there were indications that the plane flew four or five hours after disappearing from radar and that they believe it went into the water. Officials later said the plane likely did not fly four or five hours, but did not specify how long it may have been airborne.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “It's my understanding that based on some new information that's not necessarily conclusive, but new information, an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean, and we are consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy.”

Carney did not specify the nature of the “new information.”

Pentagon officials said that the destroyer USS Kidd was being moved to the western part of the strait of Malacca at the request of Malaysia and is heading towards an area where the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea meet. The ship has helicopters aboard that can scour the area.

The U.S. action came hours after Malaysian officials said they had extended their search into the Andaman Sea and had requested help from India in the search for the missing plane and its 239 passengers.

Investigators also said today that U.S. officials gave them reasons to keep searching the waters west of Malaysia, far from the flight path of the Malaysia Airlines plane.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that the search’s “main focus has always been in the South China Sea,” which is east of Malaysia and along the plane’s route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But the search was extended earlier this week to include water far to the west on the other side of Malaysia.

“We are working very closely with the FAA and the NTSB on the issue of a possible air turn back,” Hishammuddin said, referring to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.

“They have indicated to us that based on the information given by the Malaysian authorities, they — being the FAA and NTSB — the U.S. team was of the view that there was reasonable ground for the Malaysian authorities to deploy resources to conduct search on the western side of the peninsula of Malaysia. Under the circumstances, it is appropriate to conduct the search even if the evidence suggests there is a possibility of finding a minor evidence to suggest that ... the aircraft would have been there.”

[NavyCanDo]

I just can’t see it being stolen and landed in any location on the planet without it being seen by someone, or its signature showing up again on ground radar.   And if it was how do you hide something that big so long?   It just not  plausible.    I   think the answer is a lot more simple,  the initial search area was around 2000 miles off of where it actually crashed.    There is a lot of water and ground yet to search. Eventually something will be found.

The motive of a deliberate crash will be a lot harder to understand.   I would bet the flight crew is having their computers, social media, and phone records gone through for any clue, such as suicide, extortion, terrorism, etc.   

[NavyCanDo]

Seems to me that if it was the plane they wanted, they'd just steal one off the tarmac in the middle of the night...after neutralizing the control tower.


.....at least that's what Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger would do.   

The Barefoot Bandit was able to steal planes a lot eaiser than that.    I agree, stealing a plane mid flight full of passengers for the purposes of using it later for an EMP or another 9/11 is a plot left for a dumb  Hollywood  movie.   

[happyg]

I just can’t see it being stolen and landed in any location on the planet without it being seen by someone, or its signature showing up again on ground radar.   And if it was how do you hide something that big so long?   It just not  plausible.    I   think the answer is a lot more simple,  the initial search area was around 2000 miles off of where it actually crashed.    There is a lot of water and ground yet to search. Eventually something will be found.

The motive of a deliberate crash will be a lot harder to understand.   I would bet the flight crew is having their computers, social media, and phone records gone through for any clue, such as suicide, extortion, terrorism, etc.

I agree, as well as the passengers. I tend to think if the passengers had a clue about what was going on, they would fight back. If so, that leads me to believe one or both pilots were in cahoots.

[NavyCanDo]

The plane took off at 12.41 am so most of the passengers were probably sleeping or trying to at that point into the flight, and  may have not noticed anything. They couldn't see anything out the window, and if it was a slow desent  before it crashed or took a nose dive, there was probably no action they could take.

[Rapunzel]

With the tracking devices being manually shut off my suspicions are narrowing in on the First Officer - Fariq Ab Hamid, a 27-year-old Malaysian.

Bingo.. And really low flying hours, too... I am suspecting he is an AQ trainee plant... remember Bojinka (sp) they never give up on something, just plan and bide their time.

[Chieftain]

I just can’t see it being stolen and landed in any location on the planet without it being seen by someone, or its signature showing up again on ground radar.   And if it was how do you hide something that big so long?   It just not  plausible.    I   think the answer is a lot more simple,  the initial search area was around 2000 miles off of where it actually crashed.    There is a lot of water and ground yet to search. Eventually something will be found.

The motive of a deliberate crash will be a lot harder to understand.   I would bet the flight crew is having their computers, social media, and phone records gone through for any clue, such as suicide, extortion, terrorism, etc.

Would you agree that by now as many of our national orbital reconnaissance assets as possible are trained on that entire segment of the planet??  It takes time to change the orbits and configure the satellite(s), more time to do an actual photo run and then more time still for a set of Mk 1 Mod 0 eyeballs to look at the take and make sense of anything there is to see.

I think a lot of people are just amazed that there really are still areas of the world where you can go lost without a trace.  But then again, what does anyone really expect of Vietnam's radar system, or Malaysia's, Indonesia's or any other country in that area of the world.  There are vast stretches of the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean that are completely out of touch and where even radio signals can be a challenge.

I do agree that you cannot land a 777 just anywhere, nor can you easily conceal one if you did land it.  And when a jet that big lands in the water it puts all kinds of floating trash in the water when it breaks up, and it would definitely break up if you ditched it. 

Not sure what is going on but it is getting mysteriouser and mysteriouser......

 

[olde north church]

Would you agree that by now as many of our national orbital reconnaissance assets as possible are trained on that entire segment of the planet??  It takes time to change the orbits and configure the satellite(s), more time to do an actual photo run and then more time still for a set of Mk 1 Mod 0 eyeballs to look at the take and make sense of anything there is to see.

I think a lot of people are just amazed that there really are still areas of the world where you can go lost without a trace.  But then again, what does anyone really expect of Vietnam's radar system, or Malaysia's, Indonesia's or any other country in that area of the world.  There are vast stretches of the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean that are completely out of touch and where even radio signals can be a challenge.

I do agree that you cannot land a 777 just anywhere, nor can you easily conceal one if you did land it.  And when a jet that big lands in the water it puts all kinds of floating trash in the water when it breaks up, and it would definitely break up if you ditched it. 

Not sure what is going on but it is getting mysteriouser and mysteriouser......

 

If the plane hit the water we would see bodies or very fat sharks.

[Chieftain]

If the plane hit the water we would see bodies or very fat sharks.

yes...and insulation, fiberglass panels, seat cushions, papers, clothing, luggage and all manner of flotsam.  Even if they ditched it deliberately, I cannot see how you get past ripping the engines right off the wings as soon as they touch the water.  And after seven days in the water just wave action would continue to break it up.

Wasn't it exactly that kind of debris that led to the finding of that Air France flight that went down in the South Atlantic a couple of years ago??  As I recall that took an inordinate amount of time to locate as well.

[Bigun]

Would you agree that by now as many of our national orbital reconnaissance assets as possible are trained on that entire segment of the planet??  It takes time to change the orbits and configure the satellite(s), more time to do an actual photo run and then more time still for a set of Mk 1 Mod 0 eyeballs to look at the take and make sense of anything there is to see.

I think a lot of people are just amazed that there really are still areas of the world where you can go lost without a trace.  But then again, what does anyone really expect of Vietnam's radar system, or Malaysia's, Indonesia's or any other country in that area of the world.  There are vast stretches of the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean that are completely out of touch and where even radio signals can be a challenge.

I do agree that you cannot land a 777 just anywhere, nor can you easily conceal one if you did land it.  And when a jet that big lands in the water it puts all kinds of floating trash in the water when it breaks up, and it would definitely break up if you ditched it. 

Not sure what is going on but it is getting mysteriouser and mysteriouser......

 

Getting  us to retask some satellites for this is one of many things the people who did it might potentially be trying to accomplish!

Just my suspicious nature maybe but that's what I would be thinking if it were my job.

[EC]

Getting  us to retask some satellites for this is one of many things the people who did it might potentially be trying to accomplish!

Just my suspicious nature maybe but that's what I would be thinking if it were my job.

Brother, you are retired. 

Though I figure you are right.

[Rapunzel]

yes...and insulation, fiberglass panels, seat cushions, papers, clothing, luggage and all manner of flotsam.  Even if they ditched it deliberately, I cannot see how you get past ripping the engines right off the wings as soon as they touch the water.  And after seven days in the water just wave action would continue to break it up.

Wasn't it exactly that kind of debris that led to the finding of that Air France flight that went down in the South Atlantic a couple of years ago??  As I recall that took an inordinate amount of time to locate as well.

A pilot said a plane dove from 35,000 feet nose first into the ocean would basically vaporize