Not at all. China stated several days ago they were using 12 of their satellites to look for the airplane. As you noted, going through the resulting data is quite a job so it doesn’t surprise me we didn’t get instant results.
Yes, apparently tens of thousands of people do this successfully each year, usually in connection with either illegal immigration or drug or people smuggling.
I am sure they are very frustrated, and who could blame them? The Malaysian authorities seem both incompetent and embarrassed.
You really don’t seem to get how things work. Unfortunately, life is often very complicated and this situation is extremely complicated. Technology isn’t the clean and definitive thing that you see on a TV show.
A lot of very smart people are trying to figure this out as various pieces of information trickle in. I imagine people would be more upset if there was a total information blackout until they all knew something totally definitive.
Out of curiosity, what would you have done differently if you were in charge of some part of this investigation?
[QUOTE=NBC]
A seismic event” consistent with an airplane crash has been detected on the sea floor close to where missing Malaysia Airline lost contact with air traffic control on Saturday, Chinese scientists said Friday. The signal detected by two stations in Malaysia noted a small tremor on the floor of the sea at 2:55 a.m. about 95 miles south of Vietnam, the scientists said in a statement posted on the website of the University of Science and Technology of China. “It was a non-seismic zone, therefore judging from the time and location of the event, it might be related to the missing MH370 flight,” said the statement. The area where the tremor was detected about 70 miles from where the Boeing 777 was last heard from, and 85 minutes after the jet carrying 239 people lost contact, according to South China Morning Post newspaper.
[/QUOTE]
Source: “Seismic Event” Close to Missing Jet Path: China Scientists – NBC Bay Area
They’ve retired the flight numbers 370 and 371. Now it’s 318 and 319. NPR link.
But there have been four more MH370 flights after the one that vanished, and before the number change. Link - scroll down to list. Presumably it takes a little while to update the systems.
Yes, I believe I admitted upthread that I wasn’t sure how this worked. To quote myself upthread,
As a spectator, I cannot even begin to speculate about what I might have done differently. I’m not in charge of the investigation, and that affects both the training I have in dealing with these types of situations and the (presumably) information available to me.
I actually have had a family member disappear (though not from a plane crash, he went hiking in the mountains and was never found). There was a week-long search involving dogs and helicopters, and his body was never recovered. We only had a general knowledge of where he disappeared, and I can tell you that if someone had said that he might be in a certain place, and then he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been too mad. What would have made me mad was if they had said “We have tracked him by satellite and determined him to have been here at this point in time,” and then later the usage of the technology and the veracity of the statement were called in to question. The information about the Milaysian military possibly tracking its whereabouts emerged days later, and the confidence of that assertion was later called into question. Same with the information about Boeing collecting information about the plane’s whereabouts.
I’m not sure where blame lies, or if blame is to lie anywhere, but I do know that anger is a stage in the grieving process and it does not always have to be directed at a particular person or group of people. If I had any suspicion that someone was withholding information (or distributing false information) that influenced where the resources were expended to try to find my family member, my anger would be exacerbated. Even if no one was doing this deliberately, I would still be mad. I would be grateful that such an extensive search party was organized to find my family member, but I would not be pleased with anyone who would seem to have led the searchers in the wrong direction.
No, that only happens on TV. In reality, there is no way to achieve real time coverage and high resolution at the same time.
Of course there are weather satellites with continuous coverage, but they are 22,000 miles up, in geostationary orbit. The resolution is measured in miles. They can see the light from large towns, but that’s about it.
There are also imaging satellites, both civilian and military. Some have high enough resolution to see an airliner. But because of the high resolution, they have small fields of view. The RapidEye satellite, for example, have 5 meter resolution (so a 777 would be 6 pixels long), and takes half a year to photograph the entire planet.
There was no certainty in any of this. They said, “we saw some stuff on a satellite image that might look like wreckage.” Then ships and surveillance planes went to the location and it turned out not to be the wreckage. In every case, they got pieces of data and acted on the lead but, unfortunately, the lead ended up not being useful.
If and when a reason for this tragedy is determined, it may be that there will be a legitimate focus for some anger. For now, getting angry at someone is irrational and it’s understandable that people with loved ones on the flight will have irrational emotions. That said, the investigators seem to be doing everything possible given the enormous complexity of this situation and the fact that technology doesn’t work in real life like it does in a James Bond movie.
If a plane caused a “seismic event”, as mentioned up thread, it would have to be a steep dive, no? Would the wings separate from the main body upon impact with the water?
If a hijacking was orchestrated by members of the crew (is that still called a hijacking?), isn’t it possible that the passengers didn’t even know it was happening? Even if the passengers noticed the change in course, it seems like the pilot could just make some announcement about needing to divert. That would explain no one calling for help.
They may have intended to take the plane to India or something, but didn’t properly compute the extra fuel requirements of flying at a lower altitude, and crashed out in the Indian ocean.
That’s my current theory, anyway. It seems pretty obvious, though, so I assume I missing some glaring detail. So I’m open to correction.
It seems like if some issue with their communication and navigation equipment caused them to turn back, the question “why didn’t someone use their cell phone to call for help?” is more valid than in a hijacking situation. If all other communication was down, it seems like cell phone use would be encouraged rather than discouraged, as with the hijacking situation.
If there were hijackers in the cabin and they said that anyone seen using a cell phone will get their throats cut, there might not be any phone calls made.
There may not be any towers close enough to the South China Sea.
Though there are rumors that there were cellular signals.
:dubious:
Exactly. I’ve seen people try to rule out hijacking saying someone would have called for help. But if they flew back over land and it wasn’t a hijacking, than it seems like someone would have called for help in that situation, and in that case, it wouldn’t be discouraged.
Even if the passengers knew they were being hijacked, once you narrow down for those who had phone, had signal (either a satellite phone, or while they were briefly over land), were willing to risk making a call, are were actually successful in making a call, you very easily end up with zero.
They have to have airport coverage and if the plane turned back to the peninsula it would have entered radar coverage by default.
Have any theories to date included the possibility that MH370 went the way of Helios Airways 522? Ie, plane lost pressure, crew and passengers fell unconscious and froze to death. Plane flew for 2 hours and crash landed. It happened in 2005
This whole story continues to not make a lot of sense. Here are some more details about the plane making some dramatic changes in altitude over the course of the flight.
Article reporting on alleged course changes and altitude changes: Radar Suggests Jet Shifted Path More Than Once - The New York Times
No they don’t. That’s my point. You are assuming they have airport coverage because that is what you are used to in the US. Not all airports in other parts of the world have a radar. And no I’m not just talking about little GA airports, I’m talking about domestic airports with significant airline jet traffic. Now Malaysia might have full coverage but it also might not. Unless you have a link to a radar coverage map, we just don’t know.
Here is an example of what I mean. This is a map of radar and adsb coverage in Australia at 10,000 feet. ADSB relies solely on a mode S transponder being on in the aeroplane. Note that the blue radar area doesn’t come close to covering all of the airports. Airports like Broome, Hobart, and Alice Springs have regular jet traffic but no radar.
