A fire (whether from matches, Li-Ion batteries or Romulan Ale leakage) would set off a series of characteristic events and almost certainly leave time for a pilot message or complete mayday. Since it did not result in destruction like the Air France flight, I can’t come up with a scenario that starts with total communication loss, crew incapacitation, and continued flight for several hours.
Unless all the related communication and tracking gear wiring goes through a choke point that could be affected by a hot, fast-moving fire, and such a design flaw seems very unlikely in a late-design craft like a 777.
If you’re counting hijackers as pilots just because they’re at the controls, then include the Ethiopian crash already cited. If you include other airline employees attacking the pilots, then add FedEx 705 and PSA 1771 and Pacific 773. There may be others that don’t come to mind immediately. And, you do have to include Egyptair 990 because only the Egyptian government refuses to officially accept what is obvious to anybody else who looked at the report.
I think even more would like to know, one way or the other.
I’m losing track with all these pages in this thread and the news reports, but was there more than just the one sharp turn recorded in the South China Sea? Because I’m thinking it’s going to turn out to be something catastrophic happened, the pilots made that sharp left to try to get to the nearest airport, then everyone died and the plane kept flying straight west on autopilot until it ran out of fuel.
I’m including the September 11 hijackers as pilots because they were licensed pilots, even if not officially rated for the airliners they stole that day.
Some of the other incidents you mention would also qualify under that criteria. Thanks for adding them to the list.
I suspect that both engines falling off in mid-flight is pretty rare, too. But if see both engines fall off a plane before it crashes, you’re not going to say “well, it couldn’t have been the engine falling off, that almost never happens”.
The evidence in this case points towards a deliberate act by those in the cockpit. Which is what the Malaysian government has said. They haven’t publicly pointed the finger specifically at the pilot, but they are investigating him, because that exactly what you do in a situation like this.
I believe the evidence is that it flew from one navigation waypoint to another several times, indicating either human control (and “following the road” because that was easiest and ingrained), or an emergency autopilot function.
That was when the plane got to the Strait of Malacca. To first get there, it had to turn west (or southwest) and cross over the Malaysian Peninsula. Most accounts show a single turn to the west from the original flight path, but I’ve seen a map or two that first shows a 180 degree turn back toward Kuala Lumpur, then a second turn to the west. The radar (from Thailand or Viet Nam?) that came a week late apparently showed that as well. An official of that government even mentioned a reversal of direction back toward Kuala Lumpur. Damned if I can find it now, though.
For those of you who have not seen this thread, apparently, it’s in a forum in which pilots post and like any other Internet forum, you can’t really be certain just how true these posts are, but you may find it very interesting nonetheless:
Treat it with a great deal of skepticism. The signal to noise ratio at PPRuNe is low at the best of times, and these incidents just make it worse. I was, until today, up to date with all 300+ pages of that thread and many posts from about page ten onward go something like “I haven’t read all the posts but [question or theory that has been asked/debunked repeatedly]”.
That was what had been said earlier and that is the primary evidence against a technical issue, but the Malaysians have, in a very vague way, backed away from those statements, saying a few days ago that “there were no additional waypoints added to the flight plan”. Unfortunately the words they used “flight plan” and “routing” don’t actually contradict previous assertions that it had flown via published waypoints and their wording is too vague to be able to tell what their intent was. With a carefully worded statement they cast doubt over previous statements but not in a definitive way. After that I gave up trying to analyze things too much.
We know it turned west, we know it flew back across the peninsular and we know it has ended up either to the north or south ultimately so at least one other turn was flown. And that’s about all we’ve got. We also know it was responding to the satellite for hours after it disappeared. My main goal in these threads has been to try and focus the theories such that they fit with the info we’ve been given and in that vein to point out flaws in theories that don’t match what we’ve been told or erroneous assumptions about flying that non-aviators (and many aviators who don’t fly airliners) may have. When the information is so fluid, old theories can sometimes gain new momentum.
There is no emergency autopilot routine that will fly to various waypoints. An autopilot is a dumb machine that will do what the pilots tell it to do. The pilots can either manipulate the autopilot directly with heading, speed, climb and descent commands etc, or they can manipulate it via the FMC by entering waypoints into the FMC flight plan and engaging the “NAV” mode. The autopilot will then track by whatever waypoints are in the FMC. If the last waypoint in the plan is reached and no further instructions are given the autopilot will behave in various ways depending on the aircraft type. Some will follow the same course they were on prior to the last waypoint, some will revert to heading mode. If left in heading mode or nav mode there will be no heading changes after the pilots are incapacitated. Changes in wind will affect the track flown by an aircraft on a constant heading but at the speeds they fly the changes are very minor, normally less than 10°.
Yes, any emergency that required a landing at the nearest airport would involve a 180° turn when the nearest airport is behind you. Smoke, fumes, or fire in the cockpit, cabin, or cargo hold would be the main scenario that would prompt an immediate return to an airport. A depressurization would not necessarily require a change of flight path, it would normally involve a descent to a safe altitude, ideally 10,000’, and then a check of the fuel and a discussion with the company as to where the best place to go might be. An engine failure would not require any immediate action either, again it would involve dealing with the failure itself and then assessing fuel and commercial requirements to make the best decision about where to go. Often it is best, if fuel allows, to get the passengers to their planned destination and then work out the logistics of recovery flights from there.
I don’t know how various other companies run but I generally find that the pressure to be on time is not high. On the flightdeck we are normally ready well before the passengers have finished boarding so we have time to do things properly. In the cabin it is not safety critical if the cabin crew take the odd shortcut to help speed things along (not that they should). If we have a technical fault that results in a delay then we are used to our days being very fluid and generally have a come-what-may attitude. We tell engineering what the problem is and they fix it or they don’t. It’s not our problem if the flight ends up being late or cancelled, we just go with the flow. It is rare that I feel rushed.
You should be concerned about tired pilots though, that is an ongoing issue and I gather the US is only just catching up with the rest of the western world in terms of having safe flight and duty limits. The pay in the US is also very low in some of the regionals and that can result in pilots commuting very long distances to work if their base is too expensive to live in. These seem to be problems unique to the US.
The main problem with the fire theory (any type of fire) is that fires typically end badly quickly. For a fire to take out the electrics and the pilots but to then let the aeroplane continue flying for hours on end is unheard of as far as I’m aware. The waypoint tracking, if true, puts the fire theory to bed, but as I mentioned earlier the Malaysians have backed right away from that.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be a valuable forum, but the moderation is either non existent or very heavy handed. A lot of crap is allowed to stand but if someone does cross the line, posts are simply deleted.
For the sake of clarity, it is possible one or both pilots acted deliberately in a criminal way. And yes, we can’t ignore speculation but it seems to me that “the pilot was a psychotic or terrorist” has bubbled to the surface and become the dominant public point of view.
My thoughts too and the “wreckage” is in line with the flight path to the suggested emergency landing field.
Occams Razor says the simplest explanation is the most likely.
There was a catastrophic emergency, the circuit breakers were pulled, the pilots and passengers were overcome by hypoxia, the aircraft flew itself until out of fuel.
The deviations of the flight path possibly occurred because the plane had local way points loaded but when no further commands were given by the pilots, the plane resumed its last directed heading. South-west.
Also radar is not precise. There is a chance the deviations are artifacts of degraded reflections, bearing in mind nobody was specifically watching this aircraft to record an accurate track.
That was an entirely different situation so comparing the two mishaps is logically fallacious.
[ol]
[li]Different ocean[/li][li]Different model of plane[/li][li]Different direction of travel (Air France hardly deviated from its original course)[/li][li]Different weather conditions[/li][li]Different time of year[/li][/ol]
The differences are so great that even experienced pilots on television are being careful not to compare the two incidents too often as they know that it would be incorrect to do so.
Had the Malaysian government been more forthcoming about the information that they had and had their federal aviation authorities been more forthright about collecting the necessary information in a timely manner, the search could have been started in the correct area far sooner and if there was floating wreckage it could have spotted before it sank.
I used to work on aircraft in the military and I have been following aviation my entire life. I’ll stick with my assessment until I’m proven wrong by evidence and events.
The relatively paucity of aircraft mishaps per millions of miles flown per year states pretty clearly that even the most terrible of airlines still aren’t that bad. While I wouldn’t fly on any of the carriers currently prohibited from landing in the EU, even if I had to, I would know that the chances of my being involved in a fatal air crash of a scheduled airline flight approaches lottery win odds levels.
It almost certainly wouldn’t happen in a normal lifetime.
If you look back at history, the 1960s through the mid 1980s were the most dangerous time to fly as the numbers of flights increased and things not done today (flying through microbursts, multiple landings attempts,a non-sterile cockpit below 10,000 feet,etc) were routine. Even then major airline accidents were rare enough that they made the news when they occurred.
Again, most airlines are going to be safe enough to fly on and the few which are not will almost find themselves out of business. Or least having to improve their flying and maintenance standards to meet the requirements of the remainder of the industry.
The thing about third world airlines is that the alternative is third world busses, and those are no joke. I had a favorite mountain where the pastime was counting the burned out wrecks as you passed- and the number would get pretty high.
I’ve had my moments and the great regional airlines of the world (I’m looking at you, Lucky Air), but the only times I’ve truly thought I was actually going to die were on ground transport.
The Telegraph has released an unofficial transcript of the communications between air traffic control and the missing plane from the time it was taxiing to the runway, to the final message from the first officer. The Telegraph says the Malaysian prime minister’s office has refused to release an official version of the transcript.
The only thing that stood out for the “analysts” who looked at it was an unnecessarily repeated message from the plane that had been sent six minutes earlier. It happened to coincide with the last signal from ACARS at 1:07 a.m.
As a passenger, I see the hustle and bustle of processing passengers in busy airports and getting them on board, but I have to admit that whenever I see pilots and cabin crew in the terminal, they always appear trouble-free and in good spirits, not rushed at all. Now I just have to worry about the amount of sleep they got.
This is like some kind of giant game of Hold 'Em where the player countries are all unwilling to expose their hands. We can’t tell truth from bluff from bullshit. Remind me not to fly in that region.
While Malaysian military radar picked up the plane in the Strait of Malacca, the Indonesian military claims it didn’t find anything. The plane must have flown either along the strait between the two countries or right over Indonesia, so I tend to think they’re not being entirely honest.
