Fricking crashing airplanes

[rumborak]

Surprised to not see a thread about this. How crazy is it that they essentially lose a plane?!

What really stuns me is that a pilot is even able to switch off a transponder (which is one of the scenarios they're having why the transponder stopped transmitting). I can not imagine a scenario where a stop of positional communication to the ground would be desirable, especially when it would give a hijacker a means to let a plane fly completely in the dark.

[Chino]

Why is the method of turning of the transmission of a plane's position hardware based? If the plane is on, that should be on. No?

[JayOctavarium]

It is pretty insane.



I wonder... was Hurley on that flight?


-insensitive joke-

[Chino]

I chuckled. 

[rumborak]

Why is the method of turning of the transmission of a plane's position hardware based? If the plane is on, that should be on. No?

That's my point. What is the use for being able to switch it off? I mean, I can see the argument that the captain of a plane should ultimately have the control over all aspects of the plane, but being able to turn off something that should arguably never be switched off only invites abuse by hijackers, IMO.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

Langoliers

[gmillerdrake]

I honestly can't believe that plane has yet to be located. It's not like this is 1930. Couldn't "they" look at the passenger list and then from that list identify which of them had smart phones with GPS chips....then hone in on those chips? I don't know.....I'm long past my conspiracy days but this mystery is playing out nicely for some wild speculation. I've noticed headlines of crazy ideas and theories but haven't read any of them. The most likely scenario is this plane went down in the ocean far from where they are searching.

[JayOctavarium]

I honestly can't believe that plane has yet to be located. It's not like this is 1930. Couldn't "they" look at the passenger list and then from that list identify which of them had smart phones with GPS chips....then hone in on those chips? I don't know.....I'm long past my conspiracy days but this mystery is playing out nicely for some wild speculation. I've noticed headlines of crazy ideas and theories but haven't read any of them. The most likely scenario is this plane went down in the ocean far from where they are searching.

That's why this reminds me of a JJ Abrams TV show... it almost invites conspiracy.


There is no reason for the recorder to have been turned off. Wouldn't the place it was last seen on RADAR give an idea on where it is?  How far can it have gone after it was lost on RADAR? If it was hijacked and flown somewhere... wouldn't someone know? Planes just don't disappear.

[Chino]

I honestly can't believe that plane has yet to be located. It's not like this is 1930. Couldn't "they" look at the passenger list and then from that list identify which of them had smart phones with GPS chips....then hone in on those chips? I don't know.....I'm long past my conspiracy days but this mystery is playing out nicely for some wild speculation. I've noticed headlines of crazy ideas and theories but haven't read any of them. The most likely scenario is this plane went down in the ocean far from where they are searching.

That's why this reminds me of a JJ Abrams TV show... it almost invites conspiracy.

There is no reason for the recorder to have been turned off. Wouldn't the place it was last seen on RADAR give an idea on where it is?  How far can it have gone after it was lost on RADAR? If it was hijacked and flown somewhere... wouldn't someone know? Planes just don't disappear.

A 777 flies at like 600 mph. It had an additional 7 hours of fuel. Hypothetically, it could have flown 4200 miles in any direction (give or take for wind currents). It's been a while since I've done geometry, but I think that's 55,417,700 square miles. That's a big search area.

Why is the method of turning of the transmission of a plane's position hardware based? If the plane is on, that should be on. No?

That's my point. What is the use for being able to switch it off? I mean, I can see the argument that the captain of a plane should ultimately have the control over all aspects of the plane, but being able to turn off something that should arguably never be switched off only invites abuse by hijackers, IMO.

I'm trying to think of any possible safety protocol that would require the ability to turn that off. Maybe if a plane has to touch down and for national security reasons not publicly transmit where it was landing.

[Nick]

They were searching around where they last saw the plane on radar. Problem is that once a plane goes below a certain altitude it essentially can't be picked up on most radar systems. So if there was an issue that caused the plane to go down, but glide near the water for awhile (hijack or mechanical), but then eventually crash, we'd be searching in the wrong spot and and location getting devices, such as phones, would be underwater and useless.

It's the only scenario that I can think of that would cause this disappearance to happen.

[Chino]

It's the only scenario that I can think of that would cause this disappearance to happen.

There could have been an elaborate scheme in place where this plane managed to land somewhere in secret, but that's unlikely.

[JayOctavarium]

They were searching around where they last saw the plane on radar. Problem is that once a plane goes below a certain altitude it essentially can't be picked up on most radar systems. So if there was an issue that caused the plane to go down, but glide near the water for awhile (hijack or mechanical), but then eventually crash, we'd be searching in the wrong spot and and location getting devices, such as phones, would be underwater and useless.

It's the only scenario that I can think of that would cause this disappearance to happen.

Ok that makes sense. I wasn't even thinking about the limitations of radar

It's the only scenario that I can think of that would cause this disappearance to happen.

There could have been an elaborate scheme in place where this plane managed to land somewhere in secret, but that's unlikely.

Watch this turn out to be some huge  conspiracy via the Chinese gov't or something...

[rumborak]

I honestly can't believe that plane has yet to be located. It's not like this is 1930. Couldn't "they" look at the passenger list and then from that list identify which of them had smart phones with GPS chips....then hone in on those chips? I don't know....

Just to comment on this, GPS chips are completely passive. They never talk back to the satellite. The only way to get a cell phone's location is a) the GPS chip has a lock, which already is virtually impossible because a plane is a Faraday cage (and trust me, I've tried many times, I've gotten a lock once) and b) the cellphone would have to have a connection to a tower, which isn't gonna happen either.
You can also do basic triangulation with a phone's connection to the towers, but again that would require b).

[gmillerdrake]

I honestly can't believe that plane has yet to be located. It's not like this is 1930. Couldn't "they" look at the passenger list and then from that list identify which of them had smart phones with GPS chips....then hone in on those chips? I don't know....

Just to comment on this, GPS chips are completely passive. They never talk back to the satellite. The only way to get a cell phone's location is a) the GPS chip has a lock, which already is virtually impossible because a plane is a Faraday cage (and trust me, I've tried many times, I've gotten a lock once) and b) the cellphone would have to have a connection to a tower, which isn't gonna happen either.
You can also do basic triangulation with a phone's connection to the towers, but again that would require b).

Gotcha. I was assuming there was better GPS technology than that in a smartphone. Like a particular phone could be singled out due to serial numbers and then activate that individual GPS.

Given Chino's explanation of available fuel and possible distance traveled.....that plane could have crashed somewhere in the Pacific close to California...or basically, anywhere.

[jasc15]

I don't know what a transponder is like in a 777, but in general aviation planes the transponder is placed in standby when on the ground, and turned on just prior to takeoff.  However, at larger airports, like those at which most commercial aircraft operate, the transponder remains on while taxiing.  This is just to illustrate that there are different operating modes for transponders, not specifically how one works in a 777.

Regarding folks who say "I can find my lost iphone with an app, why can't we find a damn 235 passenger aircraft", GPS is only good for informing the device where it is.  It does not transmit this data unless it has access to some data infrastructure.  The western pacific ocean is not such a place.  I suspect most people here are tech savvy enough to know this.

Also, there is a data uplink service used by many airlines, but it is intermittent, and doesn't constantly stream data.  I've read lots of talk regarding this accident about using satellite data communication, but the cost of that can't be justified.  And to be clear, it's not a balance between the lives of passengers and cost of satellite data, but between the cost of search and rescue after the fact, and satellite data for all planes all the time.

[rumborak]

Interesting. A Chinese satellite image found another suspected crash area. Maybe this is the one.

[Jaffa]

I honestly can't believe that plane has yet to be located. It's not like this is 1930. Couldn't "they" look at the passenger list and then from that list identify which of them had smart phones with GPS chips....then hone in on those chips? I don't know.....I'm long past my conspiracy days but this mystery is playing out nicely for some wild speculation. I've noticed headlines of crazy ideas and theories but haven't read any of them. The most likely scenario is this plane went down in the ocean far from where they are searching.

That's why this reminds me of a JJ Abrams TV show... it almost invites conspiracy.

Personally, I've been leaning more towards the X-Files. 

[El Barto]

I've asked the question, as well, about why transponders are possible to disable. At the same time, there isn't a single system on that aircraft that doesn't have a circuit breaker associated with it, and as such there's nothing that can't be disabled. Also, I haven't seen any indication that the transponder was actually turned off. Just because they have no squawk doesn't mean that the airplane wasn't sending. ATC comes in two flavors: primary, which is a blip on a screen that shows altitude and bearing, and with a few sweeps course and speed, and Secondary Surveillance Radar, which sends back an altered return with flight data info embedded into it. What's happening over there is that the military reported some primary returns in various locations, but they don't get actual SSR data back from civvies (they use a different protocal, which while similar isn't the same thing (Identify Friend of Foe, if anybody's wondering)). Radar coverage isn't global, so the aircraft was likely moving in and out of various coverage regions which might or might not have had SSR.

As for the phone issue, that's a simple one. Cell towers are even less global. They're either underwater or they're not within range of a tower, much less the two or three required to triangulate the location.

@Nick, while you're correct, radar is pretty effective over water. It's topography that limits radar to certain altitudes. At sea level you'd pretty much have to be low enough to be behind the curvature of the Earth to hide from radar, and without a sextant and some charts I don't even know if that's possible. 

Lastly, I'll point out that Steve Fosset remained missing for a year and a half, and he was smack dab in the middle of So-Cal. Only found him because a hiker stumbled across him. Yes, it was a smaller plane, but they had a lot more to go by with a general location. In Malaysia they're looking for flotsam somewhere on the South China Sea.

[rumborak]

On a sidenote, is Richard Quest deaf or something? Or does he think yelling makes his words more important?

[billybobjoe1881]

There are reports of cell phones ringing when called, not going directly to voice mail like they should if the phones or dead, or at the bottom of the ocean.

[rumborak]

I heard that, but that makes me scratch my head whether some of those people have never called anyone outside of their own country. That "when I hear ring tone, the other person's phone is ringing" thing is something that is true domestically, but I have had many calls to Germany where that rule didn't hold up. Frankly, the ring tone is used to buy time to establish connection, and that can mean it never reached the destination. Most people on the plane were Chinese, so this will have been relatives calling from mainland China to a Malaysian network.

[El Barto]

Yeah, anecdotal reports about how cell phones are supposed to work don't interest me in the slightest. If T-mobile showed up and said "uh, this is really fucking weird," we'd be onto something. Until then, it's just peculiarity amongst Asian cellular providers.

[rumborak]

It's definitely also the kind of situation where, people being desperate will cling onto any kind of marginal evidence, even if it's evidence they have formerly dismissed (pretty sure there will have been many cases where those same people had a weird cell phone connection, and simply shrugged it off).

[wolfking]

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/malaysian-airlines-flight-mh370-crash-site-found-by-chinese-satellite/story-fnizu68q-1226853195656

Possible pieces of the aircraft?  They seem to be right in thinking the debris would sink, but what else could these be?

[El Barto]

From what people familiar with the area are saying you can pretty much walk to Vietnam across all of the fishing boats out there. That area is chock full of flotsam. Plus, since we don't know what scale the Chinese satellite is providing we don't have a good idea of the size of that piece. Next, why were the Chinese searching the Straight of Malacca the other day? They had primary radar returns from that area. Now they're searching West of the flight plan? Also, that location is real close to being within the initial search area's 50nm radius. I'm surprised they wouldn't have found that Monday. Given how strange this whole thing is I certainly wouldn't rule out this being the wreckage, but there's a lot I'd want to know before I went buying into it right now.

[wolfking]

From what people familiar with the area are saying you can pretty much walk to Vietnam across all of the fishing boats out there. That area is chock full of flotsam. Plus, since we don't know what scale the Chinese satellite is providing we don't have a good idea of the size of that piece. Next, why were the Chinese searching the Straight of Malacca the other day? They had primary radar returns from that area. Now they're searching West of the flight plan? Also, that location is real close to being within the initial search area's 50nm radius. I'm surprised they wouldn't have found that Monday. Given how strange this whole thing is I certainly wouldn't rule out this being the wreckage, but there's a lot I'd want to know before I went buying into it right now.

The article says that these images were taken one day after it disappeared.  What the hell?  You're right, they should have found these right away.  Very odd.

[rumborak]

Just FYI, in terms of size, it's three pieces which are somewhere around 13x18 meters, 14x19 meters and 24x22 meters. That's not just regular flotsam, those pieces are huge. And they're right in the flight path where the plane should have been.

[El Barto]

Well, the Chinese didn't release them until later. Furthermore, just because you have satellite imagery doesn't mean you've looked at it all. It takes time to go plodding through all of this stuff, and you still have to know where to look. It's perfectly conceivable that they just didn't know what they had until today.

Regardless, it seems the Chinese did provide some scale, and not only are those peaces probably too big to still be floating, but they're actually too big to be from a 777. One of them is something like 20x20m, which would require it to be a wing splayed open lengthwise and unfolded, and even that might not be enough.

edit: Rumorak ninja'd me. However, they're outside of the flight path. N6.7 E105.63 Is the debris point. Last known SSR contact was about 220km ENE.

[rumborak]

Aren't the wings supposedly the part giving a plane the ability to float on water? Yes, the pieces are big, but I could totally see the wings getting ripped off at a hard water landing, and the wings stay afloat for a while while the fuselage goes down immediately.

[El Barto]

Aren't the wings supposedly the part giving a plane the ability to float on water? Yes, the pieces are big, but I could totally see the wings getting ripped off at a hard water landing, and the wings stay afloat for a while while the fuselage goes down immediately.

I suppose it would depend on the fuel state. Jet fuel is lighter than water, but not by a whole lot, so I can't see full tanks keeping a wing afloat. I suspect that there reaches a point where there's enough air combined with the somewhat buoyant fuel to offset the wing's weight. Still, I don't think you could find a section of wing that measures 24x22m.

[Dr. DTVT]

I know conspiracy theories are fun and all, but I'd like to remind everyone that when Air France 447 crashed five years ago over the Atlantic, it took five days to find that wreckage.

[Chino]

Apparently the plane flew for several hours after we lost contact with it.

https://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304914904579434653903086282-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwMzExNDMyWj

Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Very weird.

[gmillerdrake]

Do you think this could have been a Payne Stewart plane deal? Sudden loss of cabin pressure? It wouldn't explain the transponder being deactivated unless during the last few seconds of conciousness one of the pilots was panicked and confused as he was blacking out and accidentally shut it off?

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

I'm sticking with this:

Langoliers

[TimmyHiggy]

They can't hunt for phones because they were all switched off for "safety" reasons! Stupid bloody airline rules...