Malaysia Airlines 777 loses contact...not found

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Originally Posted By: Astro14


Actually, there are more places than this that it could have landed...because they use only the criterion of 5,000 feet. Since that fails to take into account the ability of the runway and taxiways to support a 777 without crumbling, it's clear that by "landing" we mean "airplane on ground" not "airplane on ground, undamaged, and able to take off again". So, a sufficiently long farmers field would work...since you only care about getting on the ground, and not exactly in fly able condition.

Another skin deep analysis of a complex problem, reaching a specious conclusion.

Sigh...

On most of those airports, the concrete would break, rendering the airplane unmovable. It would then be visible by satellite overflight. If it was actually being hijacked, and they wanted to hide the plane, it would be at one of very few airports that has 1) sufficiently strong runways and taxiways and 2) hangar space for a 777....


I don't think the plane would be unmovable on many runways, it would crack or damage them for sure, but on most subsoil, the plane isn't going to sink into the ground through a runway of 1-3' of pavment/concrete plus the aggregate base. I'd assume the load restrictions of a runway would be based on damage with continuous use, not from a maximum load for a landing or two.
But I also imagine it didn't land on a runway anyways unfortunately...
 
Originally Posted By: Blaze
Originally Posted By: ryansride2017
After 10 days, I don't think the debris field would be tucked so close to the plane.
Hard to say. If that plane is broke in pieces there are thousands of objects inside that plane already broke loose so I would imagine "wave action" and tides will continue to throw items out of the plane over a long period of time. There will be a debris field close to the plane for some time I would think.


The floating debris disperses pretty quickly as wind and current act on it and all the pieces have different buoyancy and profiles that change the effects of wind on them.
Much of the debris that floats initially will sink quickly as it soaks, or water penetrates voids that made it float in the first place.

The debris field on the ocean floor will be very dispersed as the pieces sank at different rates, and at different times, so that the currents affected them all differently on the way down.

Took us a month to find pieces of an F-14 in 100 foot deep water 80 miles off the Virginia Coast. Only found about 1/2 of the jet, even though most of it didn't float...debris field on the bottom was over a mile wide and 12 miles long. Most of the floating stuff was never found, even though we had a precise fix on where it was lost (radar) and had ships there the next day picking up things like tires that were still floating.
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Astro14


Actually, there are more places than this that it could have landed...because they use only the criterion of 5,000 feet. Since that fails to take into account the ability of the runway and taxiways to support a 777 without crumbling, it's clear that by "landing" we mean "airplane on ground" not "airplane on ground, undamaged, and able to take off again". So, a sufficiently long farmers field would work...since you only care about getting on the ground, and not exactly in fly able condition.

Another skin deep analysis of a complex problem, reaching a specious conclusion.

Sigh...

On most of those airports, the concrete would break, rendering the airplane unmovable. It would then be visible by satellite overflight. If it was actually being hijacked, and they wanted to hide the plane, it would be at one of very few airports that has 1) sufficiently strong runways and taxiways and 2) hangar space for a 777....


I don't think the plane would be unmovable on many runways, it would crack or damage them for sure, but on most subsoil, the plane isn't going to sink into the ground through a runway of 1-3' of pavment/concrete plus the aggregate base. I'd assume the load restrictions of a runway would be based on damage with continuous use, not from a maximum load for a landing or two.
But I also imagine it didn't land on a runway anyways unfortunately...


Most 5,000 foot runways are not constructed as you assume.

You've not seen 40,000# planes sink into asphalt taxiways that should have been able to hold them, once they had been parked.

The tires on airplanes are inflated to 200 - 350 PSI, depending. So the loading is several times what a vehicle like a truck would produce.

The zero fuel weight of the 777-200 full of people and luggage is roughly 400,000 lbs...that's more than 90% of those listed airports can handle...
 
This has turned into such a crazy story. I thought sure that it was crashed into the water but now with other info about fuel and the planes range I guess it could have been landed someplace. I still think it would be pretty hard to hide something like that but I will leave all the guesses to experts here because it is fun to read!
wink.gif
 
Originally Posted By: morepwr
This has turned into such a crazy story. I thought sure that it was crashed into the water but now with other info about fuel and the planes range I guess it could have been landed someplace.


It could have landed in the water, too. A good way to avoid debris field.
 
Thanks Stranger. That sure illustrates what happens when 200,000 # is placed on a surface that was not designed for it. By the way, it takes about 160' of surface to turn a 777 around...if you go inches from the gear on one side and make the tightest turn to inches from the gear on the other side. The gear itself is almost 75' from side to side, so a 75' runway isn't easy...you would have to be within one or two feet from centerline or the wheels end up in the dirt, and the airplane crashes as they dig in...

Take a look at this 5,000 field. Nice place. Flown from there. http://www.airnav.com/airport/KMVL

No place to turn around. Stressed for 25,000 #. A 777 landing there would buckle the surface and become a permanent part of the airport...
 
I worked for an airline for many years and flew often for my work. I always laughed when the flight attendant said "in the event of a water landing".

Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
It could have landed in the water, too. A good way to avoid debris field.
 
Originally Posted By: Turk
I hope this scenario is not the case.........

The passengers were killed immediately.
That's why it went up to 45,000 feet.

The cabin was depressurized when the captain said 'good night' and turned out the lights. All on board lost consciousness and when he brought it up to 45,000 feet, they all died within minutes.

That is why their cellphones continued to ring in their pockets and purses when relatives called. They were all dead. There would be no resistance nor counterattack.

They wanted that plane - that was the prize.

They have it as it did not go into the water, but flew for 7 hours. It is now in Pakistan being fitted for its final mission.



Yep. You may have it, although no sure about Pakistan. Over the weekend, the two interesting pieces are that the captain's life was falling apart and the co-pilot gave the good night message AFTER the transponder was turned off. So they may have been working together.

Further I believe that since the transponder was turned off, the plane was invisible to commercial radar and military radar may have picked it up, but hey it was just another airliner in the corridor used by airliners. They didn't bother to check every airliner blip in the corridor to see where it came from, if it was on time and whether it had turned of its transponder.

So it raised no suspicions and passed right through. Maybe landed in some salt flats somewhere. Hmmm...
 
So sad, this was almost certainly planned and those folks are probably dead now.

The following is from a good friend who flew Special Forces missions and then worked in commercial airliners for the rest of his career. The man who wrote the letter is still working and flies the 777. Obviously, no name here, just some extra stuff we don't all know.

"Just a quick update with what I know about the Malaysia 777 disappearance. The Boeing 777 is the airplane that I fly. It is a great, safe airplane to fly. It has, for the most part, triple redundancy in most of its systems, so if one complete system breaks (not just parts of a system), there are usually 2 more to carry the load. It’s also designed to be easy to employ so 3rd world pilots can successfully fly it. Sometimes, even that doesn’t work…as the Asiana guys in San Fran showed us. A perfectly good airplane on a beautiful, sunny day…and they were able to crash it. It took some doing, but they were able to defeat a bunch of safety systems and get it to where the airplane would not help them and the pilots were too stupid/scared/unskilled/tired to save themselves

There’s many ways to fly the 777 and there are safety layers and redundancies built into the airplane. It is tough to screw up and the airplane will alert you in many ways (noises, alarms, bells and whistles, plus feed back thru the control yoke and rudder pedals and throttles. In some cases the airplane’s throttles ‘come alive’ if you are going to slow for a sustained period of time) All designed to help. But, it’s also non-intrusive. If you fly the airplane in the parameters it was designed for, you will never know these other things exist. The computers actually ‘help’ you and the designers made it for the way pilots think and react. Very Nice.

Now to Malaysia. There are so many communication systems on the airplane. 3 VHF radios. 2 SatCom systems. 2 HF radio systems. Plus Transpoders and active, ‘real time’ monitoring through CPDLC (Controller to Pilot Data Link Clearance) and ADS B(Air Data Service) through the SatCom systems and ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) thru the VHF, HF and SatCom systems. The air traffic controllers can tell where we are, speed, altitude, etc as well as what our computers and flight guidance system has set into our control panels. Big Brother for sure! However, most of these things can be turned off.

But, there are a few systems that can’t be turned off and one, as reported by the WSJ, is the engine monitoring systems (not sure what the acronym for that is, but I’m sure there is one….it’s aviation…there has to be an acronym!). The Malaysia airplane, like our 777-200’s, use Rolls Royce Trent Engines (as a piece of trivia….Rolls Royce names their motors after rivers….because they always keep on running!) Rolls Royce leases these motors to us and they monitor them all the time they are running. In fact, a few years back, one of our 777’s developed a slow oil leak due and partial equipment failure. It wasn’t bad enough to set off the airplane’s alerting system, but RR was looking at it on their computers. They are in England, they contact our dispatch in Texas, Dispatch sends a message to the crew via SatCom in the North Pacific, telling them that RR wants them to closely monitor oil pressure and temp on the left engine. Also, during the descent, don’t retard the throttle to idle…keep it at or above a certain rpm. Additionally, they wanted the crew to turn on the engine ‘anti ice’ system as the heats some of the engine components.

The crew did all of that and landed uneventfully, but after landing and during the taxi in, the left engine shut itself down using it’s redundant, computerized operating system that has a logic tree that will not allow it to be shut down if the airplane is in the air…only on the ground. Pretty good tech. Anyway, the point was, that RR monitors those engines 100% of the time they are operating. The WSJ reported that RR indicated the engines on the Malaysia 777 were running normally for 4 to 5 hours after the reported disappearance. Malaysia denies this. We shall see.

Parting shot. If you travel by air, avoid the 3rd world airlines. Their operators and maintenance are substandard. Substandard when traveling by Bus or Boat isn’t so bad when the engines quit. You just stop on the water or by the side of the road. Not so in airplanes. My piece of advice….if traveling by air use 1st world airlines. So, that leaves USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most of Europe, Japan and just a few others. Avoid the rest….just my opinion. If you get a real deal on air fare from ‘Air Jabooti’…skip it. Oh, there are a lot of the ‘developing’ countries that use expatriate pilots from the 1st world. Emirates and Air Jordan come to mind and are very safe. As is Cathay Pacific. Air Pakistan and Egypt Air…not so much. Do the research or just drop me a note. I’ll give you my opinion.

And don't EVER get in an Airbus!!

That is all!"
 
As more and more info comes out, I begin to think this would be a grand starting point for a "Man from U.N.C.L.E." movie script. I mean, it seems bigger and more colorful than the usual news story, almost like fiction!
 
I am thinking more and more that the pilot of this airliner flew it into the south Indian Ocean. There is information coming out that he was a big supporter of this opposition leader in Malaysia and that he attended the trial of that opposition leader. And the opposition leader was sentenced to prison. The pilot is shown in a T-shirt that says something like Democracy Destroyed. So we have a potential motive. And yes it would be an elaborate suicide routine but maybe that pilot had more imagination than most people. If that airliner is not found people will be talking about this mystery for decades.

It would have been hard to get past all of the military radar in various countries if he had flown north. Plus flying at night through mountains, etc. Of course maybe something like bribery would work to get past some radar. Who knows.
 
Question to Astro and other pilots on the forum:

What is usual reliability of an ELT box? Can it be defeated? Does it not work in some of the cases? How many automatic ELT devices are hooked to 777-200?

Do ELT trigger on abnormal G's? Is free fall considered to be an "abnormal" condition? Is the communication to satellite instantaneous? If the answers are no, then I can understand that ELT itself can get destroyed on an impact but I was hoping that the design was such that ELT comes on few seconds before the impact. Are some of the ELT units designed to withstand that kind of impact? Are you personally discounting lack of ELT as not a significant factor?

Indeed, this has become more fantastic than any previous movie script but when you think about the souls and their relatives on this doomed flight, imagine what they must be going through right now!
 
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I always appreciate Astro's posts; I learn something every time I read one.

I didn't know that RR names their engines after rivers...and I also didn't know that they still OWN the engines, and just lease them to the airlines or aircraft manufacturer. Question: what benefit does RR have to maintain ownership of these and lease them out? And I suppose that it's the airline itself (Malaysia) that is the "owner" of the lease, and not the aircraft manufacturer (Boeing), right?
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
I am thinking more and more that the pilot of this airliner flew it into the south Indian Ocean. There is information coming out that he was a big supporter of this opposition leader in Malaysia and that he attended the trial of that opposition leader. And the opposition leader was sentenced to prison. The pilot is shown in a T-shirt that says something like Democracy Destroyed. So we have a potential motive. And yes it would be an elaborate suicide routine but maybe that pilot had more imagination than most people. If that airliner is not found people will be talking about this mystery for decades.


Exactly. I looked up the "democracy is dead" July 2013, thing. While it sounds like Snowden revelations to Americans, it was a stolen election in Malaysia. Now, the opposition leader is jailed.

http://anwaribrahimblog.com/2013/07/02/democracy-is-dead-in-malaysia/

It could well be that the mission was accomplished for the captain as this incident will bring some international light into Malaysian's corrupted state of things.

Disclaimer, I'm not supporting him, just stating the obvious.
 
The "opposition leader" is a inclusive democracy driven individual. The people in charge are the authoritarians. Be careful by whom and why that message is being propagated.
 
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
I always appreciate Astro's posts; I learn something every time I read one.

I didn't know that RR names their engines after rivers...and I also didn't know that they still OWN the engines, and just lease them to the airlines or aircraft manufacturer. Question: what benefit does RR have to maintain ownership of these and lease them out? And I suppose that it's the airline itself (Malaysia) that is the "owner" of the lease, and not the aircraft manufacturer (Boeing), right?


RR does the lease to protect their developmental rights. They want to know exactly how they are used and how they fail.

This is a good story, obviously stinky now, but we just may never know...
 
Originally Posted By: Astro14

But as has been pointed out; "anything is still on the table" - which includes the secret floating base of shadowy masterminds, the giant submarine operated by KAOS, alien abduction and relativistic distortion of space time...
...


Don't forget Doolittle's secret base at Shangri La, which is actually, sorta, in the vicinity of that northern corridor.
 
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