Malaysia Airlines 777 loses contact...not found

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Unless all of this is somehow a false lead it looks like the probable location of the aircraft wreckage has been found. But it will take days to confirm all of this and a long time to recover the wreckage. But maybe the black boxes can be recovered fairly quickly.

The only real concern, at least according to the media reports I've read, is that there are a few other beacon devices (aside from aircraft ones) that use such a frequency. But, hopefully, this is the real McCoy.

 

[Merkava_4]

Maybe now somebody will get the bright idea to extend the battery life to 60 days !!

 

[Garak]

I'm going to guess that would require far more paperwork, red tape, and testing than we could possible imagine.

 

[Trajan]

Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
Originally Posted By: Trajan
And you looked at the wrong ones. Which one of those is a 777-200ER?


All I did is search under '777'.

If I was prepaing for a college exam, then I might've tried to get the exact model number.

Not that hard

 

[Mystic]

It is going to be slow work. Even if they have found the signals coming from the black boxes they have to still try to narrow down the exact location as much as possible, and the black box batteries may not last too much longer. The ship towing the detector has to go slowly back and forth, and just to turn around takes a long time because they are hauling that detector on a long cable.

Just to send that Blue Fin device down to do a side sonar scan and possible photographs takes a long time. A long time for it to get close to the bottom and a long time to scan and a long time to return to the surface.

I am figuring on at least a few days to confirm that the aircraft wreckage is at that location. But if those are in fact the signals from the two black boxes we should have confirmation pretty soon. They are currently looking at an area of about four square miles unless they have to increase the size of that. Lots of strange things can happen to signals from that deep in the ocean. They may have to increase the size of the search area. And the Chinese allegedly detected signals from an area a considerable distance away.

It is so deep they might not be able to recover all of the wreckage. But the main thing is to recover the two black boxes. From the available evidence right now it looks like the two black boxes are separated by some distance. Which indicates the airliner is broken up. But nobody can explain why no wreckage has been found on the surface of the ocean. The experts on TV were saying that either a soft landing was attempted on the surface of the ocean and that would explain the lack of wreckage. But the airliner would have broken up on the bottom. Or the aircraft went into the ocean nose first at very high speed.

In the area that they are searching the ocean floor is about 2.8 miles down from the surface. But it some places it is deeper in that area and the aircraft wreckage could be even deeper than 2.8 miles. The maximum operating depth of the Blue Fin is something like 20,000 feet and right now they are looking at about 14,500 feet.

 

[xfactor9]

If the BB's are not found in the next couple of weeks, I believe the wreckage may never be found, at least not in our lifetimes. The search area for AF447 was 1000 times smaller, and they had narrowed down where the plane crashed to within a several miles, and it STILL took 2 years to find the wreckage.

MA370 is not a needle in a haystack, it's a needle in the Grand Canyon.

I think this will go down as one of the greatest aviation mysteries in history

 

[Mystic]

Well, they have not been able to pick up the signals from the black boxes again. Maybe the batteries died or maybe something else but it looks like they will keep trying for a while to pick up the signals again.

If they can't pick up the signals again they will have to try to locate the wreckage by using side sonar to image the ocean floor.

My best guess is that the signals they picked up were from the black boxes. Heck, they listened to one signal for about two hours. But now that the signals have stopped it is anybody's guess how long it will take to locate this airliner wreckage. I do think they will find the wreckage of this airliner. But it could be anywhere from a matter of days to years. And winter is coming and they may have to stop operations if the weather gets really bad.

This is speculation but it seems from all of the available evidence that somebody flew this airliner deliberately down to the south Indian Ocean, apparently to maybe make some kind of statement and to commit suicide. I cannot understand why people seem to think it is okay to take other people with them. Some kind of weird mechanical failure that would make this possible seems very unlikely. And supposedly all of the other members of the crew and all of the passengers were cleared. If somebody did take over the cockpit and fly the airliner, maybe to try to launch a terrorist attack against some target in Australia, they apparently underestimated how much fuel they had. It would have taken about two more hours worth of fuel for this airliner to reach Australia.

 

[Vikas]

When they listened to the sound, were they able to identify its direction too? If so, with that and knowing their own GPS coordinates (how accurate fix do they have? Few feets?), can't they just "dive down" there?

 

[Mystic]

That signal was very faint. It was not necessarily in the same area where the ship was. And thermal currents in the ocean and other factors can cause the signal to appear somewhere where it is not. Eventually they will have to put that Blue Fin device into the water and see what they can find on the ocean floor. The batteries on the black boxes will definitely be dead after the airliner has been not located for 40 days.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Well, they have not been able to pick up the signals from the black boxes again. Maybe the batteries died or maybe something else but it looks like they will keep trying for a while to pick up the signals again.

If they can't pick up the signals again they will have to try to locate the wreckage by using side sonar to image the ocean floor.

If that's the case, it sure is going to slow things down. As for the suicide theory, it's certainly possible. With respect to such a person committing suicide and taking out innocent people with them, well, we all know the solution to that. I guess we have to limit the number of airplane seats to 10 or less, and register planes, and have wait times before pilots can go up in the air. Oh, wait, that's another matter altogether.

 

[Mystic]

It does not matter if it is ten people or 200 people or 2000 people. To me I just cannot understand a suicidal person being willing to take all of those innocent people with him/her. I guess I just grew up in a different time.

I don't believe in committing suicide. But if a person is going to commit suicide why take the lives of innocent people who do not want to die? Of course today many people are thinking only of themselves and have no concern for others.

According to what has been reported by some news sources this pilot was apparently going through marriage issues and also a political opposition leader he supported had been sentenced to prison. He attended the trial of this opposition leader and was seen wearing a T-shirt that had words on it saying 'Democracy Is Dead.' He was related to the opposition political leader in some way. So there were apparently some reasons why the pilot would be very upset.

I don't know if the pilot decided to commit suicide or not, taking the lives of 238 people with him. But it has to be considered a possibility.

Supposedly all of the crew members (aside from the pilots) and also all of the passengers have been cleared of any terrorist connections. If in fact the aircraft was hijacked by terrorists I don't know what their intention was. Maybe to crash the aircraft into some Australian target. If so, they underestimated how much fuel they needed.

I think it is very difficult at this time to think this was some kind of a mechanical issue or fire on the aircraft. And in fact the Malaysian authorities have said that a criminal act was committed. I suppose some kind of incredible mechanical malfunction still could have occurred. It is very hard to imagine such a mechanical malfunction that would have caused all of the various course changes and knocked out some equipment such as the ACARS and the transponder but the aircraft was still able to fly on for several hours.

 

[expat]

Originally Posted By: Garak
With respect to such a person committing suicide and taking out innocent people with them, well, we all know the solution to that.


I don't

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

[UncleS2]

I just read that signals consistent with the black box were heard again Tuesday. Maybe...?

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
It does not matter if it is ten people or 200 people or 2000 people. To me I just cannot understand a suicidal person being willing to take all of those innocent people with him/her. I guess I just grew up in a different time.

I was just making a bit of a remark against some of the solutions we see to other high profile suicides we see where plenty of innocent bystanders are taken out. The media is pretty clueless at times

We're all told how magazine restrictions are a great solution to some of these shootings followed by suicide. So, in the same vein, the talking heads should be promoting airline seating capacity restrictions to "accomplish" the same thing. But, that would be stupid, and talking heads cannot take an insight from one set of circumstances and use it to learn about something completely different. After all, these people did inform us of the extremely closely guarded secret that a 777 doesn't stay in the air very well without fuel.

In any case, I'm loathe to try to place blame yet. Without evidence, all we've got is a missing plane, and not nearly enough to condemn anyone. And, you're quite right about terrorism. It's not exactly SOP for terrorists to steal a plane only to crash it in the middle of nowhere, without a trace, and without a claim or responsibility.

I'm not sure why Malaysia is rushing to the side of the criminal activity theory. It certainly may be correct. However, are they doing so because it's almost certain? Or, is it because they want to blame a politically unreliable pilot rather than answer questions about their country's airliner safety or pilot training?

Wreckers and saboteurs have been a rallying cry for a lot of years, to hide incompetence and poor planning.

 

[Mystic]

They have again picked up signals likely from the black boxes. The signals were pretty weak and at a slightly different frequency, so maybe the batteries are just about dead. But it helps that they have picked up signals again and they may be able to reduce the area to be searched by the Blue Fin.

It certainly looks like the airliner is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, probably in water about three miles deep. There are places in that immediate area that are about twenty thousand feet deep, so hopefully the airliner is not in that deep area.

They will not have complete confirmation that the airliner is there until they find the wreckage but I am now confident that the airliner is at the bottom of the ocean.

 

[hatt]

I'm going with they have no idea where the plane is. If they were picking up signals from the pingers for several days they'd have the thing pinpointed with an X.

 

[friendly_jacek]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
They have again picked up signals likely from the black boxes. The signals were pretty weak and at a slightly different frequency


Doppler effect. The plane is hiding and running away from them ships.

 

[Cutehumor]

I wonder how long this thread will be open. it took two years to find air france.

 

[Mystic]

They really seem optimistic right now that they will soon find this airliner. But actually getting those black boxes up and perhaps other wreckage from the airliner is going to be really tough. That airliner is probably something like 14,000 -14,500 feet under the water, and perhaps more. They are still going to use that pinger locator until the black box batteries are exhausted and then they will start the side scan sonar search.

It was incredible luck that they picked up the signals from these black boxes.

 

[antiqueshell]

Originally Posted By: Mystic

It was incredible luck that they picked up the signals from these black boxes.


Hmmm. The batteries were supposedly going to die yesterday and they just happen to get ping hits the day before? LOL

Sure nothing odd about that timing.

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