Wasn’t it quite obvious from day 1 that it did crash somewhere and that place was likely the Indian Ocean? I mean the plane was not seen landing anywhere.
So this news is really nothing new?
Well, no, on Day 1 the obvious crash site was the South China Sea. The course reversal was a surprise to everyone.
Marley, isn’t Mandarin pretty widely spoken in Malaysia?
Of course. But it was assumed it was in some body of water.
I just hope they didn’t end it with “Thank you for using Malaysia Airlines. We look forward to your business in the future.”
I’m flattered that you think I know! According to Wikipedia, about a quarter of Malaysian citizens are ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is the most common variety spoken there. If that’s the case it shouldn’t be that hard to find people who can communicate with the families of the MH 370 passengers.
The Indian Ocean is a gazillion miles off the expected track in the other direction.
The Spanish Inquisition was more expected than this crash site.
Which makes it suspicious that the flight direction was planned to deliberately obscure the final fate. At least what we know so far is not inconsistent with that theory. Think of where we would be searching if not for the minimal satellite reporting that even the pilots didn’t know about.
If you draw a line from it’s last known location to the closest airport you get the search area. If this is where the plane is found it’s likely that there was an emergency and they turned back toward TGG (Sultan Mahmud Airport) and the plane continued on that course until all fuel was exhausted.
If they were to plot out the course based on this flight path then they might be able to match up the shadow of the plane (when the sun came up) to a known satellite position. that would give them a precise arc to search.
Yes, I’m now wondering if it was depressurisation/hypoxia after all. I understand that procedure is to descend immediately, not make a turn to a nearby airport, but maybe they simply made a mistake, everybody passed out, the end?
Depends how credible those early reports of several changes of course are, I suppose.
… but it doesn’t explain the transponder switching off.
I was going to say that. So they lose all cabin pressure, turn off their transponder and fly for another four hours without notifying anyone?
Doppler analysis and some trigonometry, from what I could piece together. It’s novel in the sense that it had never been done before in commercial aviation, due to circumstance.
A fire or other problem could have knocked out the transponder first. I know it was reported at first that that equipment was shut down at different times, but wasn’t that contradicted later on?
We don’t really *know *what happened in what order, or else there would be a coherent explanation.
Two problems with it being an intentional act by one (or both) of the pilots:
[ol]
[li]The pilots would have had no idea what was in that part of the Indian Ocean at that time - If a US Navy vessel was there and it was tracking aircraft at the time, then it could have alerted military and civilian authorities when a plane which was clearly off course disappeared from its radar screens.[/li][li]The plane flew for an extended period of time - Assuming that one or both pilots were alive that would be a LONG time to fly with an aircraft full of dead or incapacitated passengers - If they weren’t deceased, then you be risking one or more of them rushing the cockpit (although there wasn’t much that they could do) or perhaps using a cell phone or satellite phone to call for help. If they were dead, then things would get pretty foul in the aircraft very quickly as sphincter An hour or two, maybe.control would be lost by them. An hour or two, maybe. Longer than that, it would very difficult to be conscious and fly with that stench.[/li][/ol]
Point 1- sure they didn’t know if ships were in the area. But perhaps they didn’t care so much. What’s the risk, getting shot down? They may have decided on a suicide mission anyway, the motivation for it crashing in secret never to be found is unknown.
Point 2- If the passengers were dead, they of course started leaking bowels and bladders. It surely didn’t smell nice, but they weren’t back with them. If you’re on a suicide mission, a few hours of a stench coming through the cockpit door is probably not going to stop you.
Here’s an article on the technical analysis Inmarsat did:
“, Inmarsat’s engineers carried out further analysis of the pings and came up with a much more detailed Doppler effect model for the northern and southern paths. By comparing these models with the trajectory of other aircraft on similar routes, they were able to establish an “extraordinary matching” between Inmarsat’s predicted path to the south and the readings from other planes on that route.”
But that still leaves a huge area where the airliner could have crashed.
Two things:
[ol]
[li]If we presuppose a suicide mission, then why not just fly it into the water when they turned around? - Why travel for several more hours and THEN crash the plane? Or why not just aim it at a mountain and get things over with sooner?[/li][li]Not talking about someone urinating on your stoop in New York or San Francisco - Talking about the odor of several hundred befouling a confined space with a recirculating air system. It would orders of magnitude stronger than anything anyone has probably experienced in many years.Even the Helios Airways flight was apparently below the freezing point inside and that would have cut the smell way down.[/li][/ol]
The people on the Helios plane seem to have been alive at the time of the crash. Depressurisation incapacitates you but it doesn’t necessarily kill you.
Thanks Richard, that’s what I thought but hey, there’s only so much you can learn from MSFS and a geeky interest in aircraft.
What about a radar altimeter? If, hypothetically, MH370 had indeed been hiding underneath another plane, would said other plane have noticed this on that device?