Malaysian Airlines Flight Missing, Presumed Crashed

[nevets88]

Haha, someone made a Langoliers reference to me about an hour ago.  Re: this theory. Honestly, this might explain the erratic use of waypoints in the Strait of Malacca. He was zig-zagging around waiting for another 777 to come along to use that last waypoint, at which time, when one came along, he chased after it and shadowed it.

Then that's somewhat traceable, no? At least one can narrow it down to all the 777s flying in that area.

[David in FL]

It strikes me that if a bad guy had his own 777 that he could fill with explosives, that could be a bad thing....

[JetFan1983]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JetFan1983

Haha, someone made a Langoliers reference to me about an hour ago.

Re: this theory. Honestly, this might explain the erratic use of waypoints in the Strait of Malacca. He was zig-zagging around waiting for another 777 to come along to use that last waypoint, at which time, when one came along, he chased after it and shadowed it.

Then that's somewhat traceable, no? At least one can narrow it down to all the 777s flying in that area.

Yea, the article I linked to on page 4 believes that if true, the 777 he shadowed would have been Singapore Airlines Flight 68, whose flight path crossed locations on the northern corridor they are searching.

[Lihu]

It strikes me that if a bad guy had his own 777 that he could fill with explosives, that could be a bad thing....

The fact that we can't find it now, seems to indicate that our radar tracking systems are not quite as good as we thought. So, if they put a long lost Russian Nuke inside it (Like one of those big heavy old outdated 200M ton Hydrogen bombs lost somewhere in the Ukraine), it could wreak havoc somewhere?

Although radar is not all that perfect, I am sure we could detect the 777.  As long it doesn't fly below 500 meters or so, we should be able to track it in time to destroy it before anything really bad happens?

Where's Tom Clancy when you need him?

[RandallT]

So the latest timeline is: 12:41am- Takeoff 1:07am- Last ACARS 1:19am- Copilot says "Alright, good night" to ATC 1:21am- Transponder stops 1:30am- Last civilian radar contact with plane 1:37am- Next ACARS does not occur 2:15am- Last military radar contact with plane 8:11am- Satellite last contact "ping" (giving broad arc possible) I wish they'd include: 1. What are details of military radar? How long monitored? 2. How do we know about altitude changes? There's talk of climb to 45,000ft. Rapid descents. Flying at low altitude for tactical terrain maneuvers. How do we know that? Military radar? 3. What about the other satellite "pings?" 8:11am was the last so what were the others? How many? Can't some smart person look at the other arcs from those pings and plot possibles courses? 4. What are the known course changes? Remember talk of hitting waypoints? Was it heading northwest toward Andoman Islands or not? They haven't discussed that early route after going back across Malay peninsula in a while. Maybe that's sensitive intel that they don't want publicly discussed anymore?

[Al B Tross]

First of all, much like others have commented already, I find this whole situation/story fascinating from the logical and reasonable explanations one could deduce from the information available (at least what's been made public) to the most dynamic of conspiracy theories being thrown around. Bottom line, thou, is that a massive structure chock full of electronic equipment vanished in the night like a fart in the wind. That's some real David Blaine/Chris Angel/David Copperfield chit right there. Levity aside, my heart goes out to the families trying to make some sense of this and deal with the situation - I can't imagine what it's like trying to deal with this. I'd be out of my mind. Perhaps it's been answered already but my question is a simple one. How in the hell is it possible/permissible in today's day and age with the ever-lurking threat of terrorism, etc. for there to be an option to disable transponders/communication on commercial airliners? I can understand that military planes would want to go off the grid or otherwise eliminate the ability to be detected, but wouldn't you want to hardwire one of the systems that not only serve a primary purpose but also would be a secondary or back-up safety feature for situations like this (especially if there are as many radar "blind spots" around the globe as we're hearing about)?

[MS256]

First of all, much like others have commented already, I find this whole situation/story fascinating from the logical and reasonable explanations one could deduce from the information available (at least what's been made public) to the most dynamic of conspiracy theories being thrown around. Bottom line, thou, is that a massive structure chock full of electronic equipment vanished in the night like a fart in the wind. That's some real David Blaine/Chris Angel/David Copperfield chit right there. Levity aside, my heart goes out to the families trying to make some sense of this and deal with the situation - I can't imagine what it's like trying to deal with this. I'd be out of my mind.

Perhaps it's been answered already but my question is a simple one. How in the hell is it possible/permissible in today's day and age with the ever-lurking threat of terrorism, etc. for there to be an option to disable transponders/communication on commercial airliners? I can understand that military planes would want to go off the grid or otherwise eliminate the ability to be detected, but wouldn't you want to hardwire one of the systems that not only serve a primary purpose but also would be a secondary or back-up safety feature for situations like this (especially if there are as many radar "blind spots" around the globe as we're hearing about)?

I agree with that. Plus if it's possible for a 777 to piggyback behind another aircraft and not be picked up on radar almost anywhere could be vulnerable to a rogue plane with weapons.

[jamo]

Perhaps it's been answered already but my question is a simple one. How in the hell is it possible/permissible in today's day and age with the ever-lurking threat of terrorism, etc. for there to be an option to disable transponders/communication on commercial airliners? I can understand that military planes would want to go off the grid or otherwise eliminate the ability to be detected, but wouldn't you want to hardwire one of the systems that not only serve a primary purpose but also would be a secondary or back-up safety feature for situations like this (especially if there are as many radar "blind spots" around the globe as we're hearing about)?

I was thinking the same thing. I assume there's some obvious answer I'm missing. Maybe regulations like that vary from country to country, airliner to airliner?

[nevets88]

Is it usually not possible to disable certain communication devices and someone bypassed security measures to disable them?

[newtogolf]

I was thinking the same thing. I assume there's some obvious answer I'm missing. Maybe regulations like that vary from country to country, airliner to airliner?

They believe that someone got into the E&E; (that I included a link to in an earlier post) and turned off the breaker for the transponder and communications.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al B Tross

First of all, much like others have commented already, I find this whole situation/story fascinating from the logical and reasonable explanations one could deduce from the information available (at least what's been made public) to the most dynamic of conspiracy theories being thrown around. Bottom line, thou, is that a massive structure chock full of electronic equipment vanished in the night like a fart in the wind. That's some real David Blaine/Chris Angel/David Copperfield chit right there. Levity aside, my heart goes out to the families trying to make some sense of this and deal with the situation - I can't imagine what it's like trying to deal with this. I'd be out of my mind.

Perhaps it's been answered already but my question is a simple one. How in the hell is it possible/permissible in today's day and age with the ever-lurking threat of terrorism, etc. for there to be an option to disable transponders/communication on commercial airliners? I can understand that military planes would want to go off the grid or otherwise eliminate the ability to be detected, but wouldn't you want to hardwire one of the systems that not only serve a primary purpose but also would be a secondary or back-up safety feature for situations like this (especially if there are as many radar "blind spots" around the globe as we're hearing about)?

I agree with that. Plus if it's possible for a 777 to piggyback behind another aircraft and not be picked up on radar almost anywhere could be vulnerable to a rogue plane with weapons.

The radar patterns from a radar are really blurry. Even the most sophisticated ones are pretty blurry once you get out far enough. This goes for any radar, even the huge synthetic aperture systems.

http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/desc/imagingradarv3.html

http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/

This is a video from the MIT short course on phase array radars.

Fun stuff.

The first course:

http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-ll-003-build-a-small-radar-system-capable-of-sensing-range-doppler-and-synthetic-aperture-radar-imaging-january-iap-2011/

The course that lets you make the phase array radar:

http://web.mit.edu/professional/short-programs/courses/phased_array_radar_sensor.html

Getting really cool:

http://web.mit.edu/professional/short-programs/courses/build_a_multi_channel_search_and_track_radar.html

Going to have to sign up for this one.

I'm working on a cheap (or not so cheap) 24GHz radar for golf. . .

[JetFan1983]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

Quote:

Originally Posted by JetFan1983

Haha, someone made a Langoliers reference to me about an hour ago.

Re: this theory. Honestly, this might explain the erratic use of waypoints in the Strait of Malacca. He was zig-zagging around waiting for another 777 to come along to use that last waypoint, at which time, when one came along, he chased after it and shadowed it.

Then that's somewhat traceable, no? At least one can narrow it down to all the 777s flying in that area.

Yea, the article I linked to on page 4 believes that if true, the 777 he shadowed would have been Singapore Airlines Flight 68, whose flight path crossed locations on the northern corridor they are searching.

OK, so I posted the shadow theory at 7AM eastern yesterday and CNN finally picked up the theory last night I guess. Why they don't just explain the entire theory to put it under the most scrutiny, I don't know.

Oh yea, the shadow theory doesn't involve following the plane... it involves flying directly above or below it. Say SQ68 was flying at 35K... well MH370 would be at 29500 feet or something.

Anywho... I wish they'd just bring some legitimate experts on to tell us if it is in fact possible to shut down MH370's TCAS while still being able to read the transponder outputs of SQ68, and not having SQ68's TCAS freak out that there's another plane dangerously close to it.

The discussion of the theory on TV doesn't even mention which possible plane MH370 would have used to pull this off... Just bring up Singapore Airlines Flight 68 so we can test it to see if it's possible? Or at least gives us all the possible flights -- specific flights -- MH370 could have used at the time of the last military radar contact in the Straight of Malacca. Come on, CNN. Debunk this one already... or give us reasons why it would actually be possible... like how the TCAS works if one plane shuts off its transponder.

[RandallT]

OK, so I posted the shadow theory at 7AM eastern yesterday and CNN finally picked up the theory last night I guess. Why they don't just explain the entire theory to put it under the most scrutiny, I don't know.

Oh yea, the shadow theory doesn't involve following the plane... it involves flying directly above or below it. Say SQ68 was flying at 35K... well MH370 would be at 29500 feet or something.

Anywho... I wish they'd just bring some legitimate experts on to tell us if it is in fact possible to shut down MH370's TCAS while still being able to read the transponder outputs of SQ68, and not having SQ68's TCAS freak out that there's another plane dangerously close to it.

The discussion of the theory on TV doesn't even mention which possible plane MH370 would have used to pull this off... Just bring up Singapore Airlines Flight 68 so we can test it to see if it's possible? Or at least gives us all the possible flights -- specific flights -- MH370 could have used at the time of the last military radar contact in the Straight of Malacca. Come on, CNN. Debunk this one already... or give us reasons why it would actually be possible... like how the TCAS works if one plane shuts off its transponder.

For what it's worth, some of the more senior members of "pprune.org" have ridiculed this idea. The site is like this one except instead of golf, it's for aviation rumors. The caveat is that the site has gotten so much attention in the past week that there are tons of newbies posting, frustrating the regulars to the point that many of just stopped discussing anything. Kinda like might happen if there were 100s of our recent trolls submit junk at once. It's harder and harder to find good info there.

I thought the most compelling thing from yesterday was that the final ACARS transmission at 1:07 included information that the computer flight plan was updated to include that left turn off course. That was a pre-planned turn!  Somebody prior to 1:07 entered that turn to the off-course waypoint into the flight management system! At 1:19 when the co-pilot said good night, he was calm and cool. At 1:21, the transponder went off and then they started the turn within a short time from that.  That is clear evidence that this was a planned turn off their original route, not a response to any onboard failure. If there were hijackers, the copilot gave little clue of that. His sign-off was non-standard, but certainly not obvious secret code to alert ATC of a problem onboard.

[nevets88]

Finally. Delegation of responsibilities. http://m.washingtonpost.com/world/malaysian-authorities-cede-search-control/2014/03/18/3d112454-ae91-11e3-96dc-d6ea14c099f9_story.html

[JetFan1983]

For what it's worth, some of the more senior members of "pprune.org" have ridiculed this idea. The site is like this one except instead of golf, it's for aviation rumors. The caveat is that the site has gotten so much attention in the past week that there are tons of newbies posting, frustrating the regulars to the point that many of just stopped discussing anything. Kinda like might happen if there were 100s of our recent trolls submit junk at once. It's harder and harder to find good info there.

Yea... I linked to that forum earlier in the thread. No, I agree with you. It's ridiculous. I just want them to rule it out officially is all.

I haven't checked that forum in a while though, so thanks for letting me know it was ridiculed. In the end, I'm still seeing the highest probability being a crash for some unknown reason at some unknown location in the ocean, Strait of Malacca, etc. But in the absence of information, my imagination can sometimes get the better of me.

The past couple days I feared this would become an Amelia Earhart situation, but today I think we'd have to find it eventually. There are just too many countries searching for it. Plus, thanks to wikipedia, I learned about Adam Air Flight 574 , where it was ten days before anyone found signs of wreckage, and that was even with information of where the plane generally was when it went down.

[RandallT]

Yea... I linked to that forum earlier in the thread. No, I agree with you. It's ridiculous. I just want them to rule it out officially is all.  I haven't checked that forum in a while though, so thanks for letting me know it was ridiculed.

Yah, I've found the pprune site less and less interesting just because the noise level seems higher, but I'll check once a day for a skim. I think I saw that shadow idea proposed and ridiculed, but who knows. Maybe the ridiculer was the troll. Hard to tell sometimes. I think we will get to a reasonable guess at some point, but nothing conclusive. Conspiracy theories will probably be more interesting, but the truth will likely be some sad story involving a single person with a deranged plan.

[dchoye]

This is sad, ironically I watched" Nonstop " movie few weeks ago .

The movie was with  Liam Neeson and the plot was based on a hijack plane while on route in the air.

I wonder if whoever was responsible got some ideas from that movie.

[iacas]

This is sad, ironically I watched" Nonstop " movie few weeks ago .

The movie was with  Liam Neeson and the plot was based on a hijack plane while on route in the air.

I wonder if whoever was responsible got some ideas from that movie.

I would think that since the movie just came out, it wouldn't leave very much time to plan the sort of thing.