Apparently the weather has been horrible there the last couple of days. So, not only can the stuff not be seen, it may no longer be afloat. And winter is coming in.
Substantial pieces of the airframe (well, only the rudder on the 777-200, but other sections on newer models). Sections of overhead bins or wall paneling, held together by wiring or other debris like rafts. Even broken pieces of wing or tail, with sealed sections to keep them afloat - the plane’s fuel tanks would be empty, remember.
What if the parts they find were made in China:http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php?topic=3751.0
Unless those parts were the reason for the crash, who cares?
What was reported was a burning plane falling into the South China Sea.
Thanks for the information. What’s the source for this flight data? Can anyone point to any public references about this?
According to this CNN article, the British satellite company was able to measure the Doppler effect on the “handshake” pings to the satellite to determine the course of the flight, eliminating the possibility it flew north to South Asia. That leaves only the southern path, to the Indian Ocean.
You’re welcome. See post #1001 at the top of the page.
True, but a correction: MalaySIANS of Chinese ethnicity are as Malaysian as anyone else. The tensions are between them (about 28 percent of Malaysians) and ethnic MALAYS (about 61 percent of Malaysians).
I think most of the passengers were actual Chinese, not Chinese Malaysians. But the tensions you mention are still a contributing factor, surely, since pretty much anyone who works for the Malaysian government (including pilots, air crash investigators, etc.) are ethnic Malays.
Just a few weeks ago, there were stories in the local press about Chinese property developers targeting Malaysia. Now suddenly the stories are all about Chinese shunning Malaysia due to this incident.
Since the plane belongs to Malaysia’s flag carrier and it originated IN Malaysia, there’s no legal way that Malaysia would be (or could be) kept out of the matter. Frankly, unless the Chinese open up their pocketbooks, just who is going to pay for the recovery is still up in the air. It’s going to cost tens of millions dollars and it isn’t going to result in the recovery of too much more than perhaps the recorders, some pieces of the fuselage and perhaps some of the remains.
I see that the PM has already started to note that the search for the missing aeroplane won’t be ‘open-ended’.
No, he said he saw a plane on fire for 10-15 seconds heading 90 degrees from the normal flight path.
If the Lithium batteries caught fire that would have been a real problem because they go off like fireworks triggering each other. A fire suppression system is like a tanker fire truck without accesses to a hydrant. When it’s empty it’s done. If it doesn’t stop the chain reaction then the batteries will continue to set themselves off.
And I’m not arguing this was what happened just pointing out a possible scenario based on information available. A fire at 35,000 feet is about as bad as it gets in a plane.
What is confusing is the earlier stipulation that it flew a pattern with changes in direction. Did it fly a straight route back from it’s last known location or did it change directions multiple times?
If someone saw it on fire then there’s no way it flew on for hours. Fires are bad things, they take you down very quickly, they don’t just selectively destroy systems while leaving others untouched. If it was a short fire that took out the crew and the comms suite then no one would see it from the ground. If it was a big enough fire that it was seen from the ground then it didn’t keep flying for hours. The facts don’t fit. I think the batteries are a red herring, sudden decompression followed by hypoxia is a better theory that explains a turn and the aircraft flying on.
Agreed and that is a critical question. There is a report that another 777 has been flown on the same path as MH370 so the radar images can be compared, and apparently they match.
Still, I’m a bit leery of “reports” since some information such as that from CNN has proven to be fantasy. If this was a catastrophic incident (by far the most likely explanation) then we’d expect a straight track back across Malaysia into the blue beyond. The zig up to the Andaman Sea doesn’t fit - did it actually happen?
The difference between those cases and the current one is that those two aircraft were already climbing. The Helios jet would’ve had its cruising altitude set in the altitude selector and the autopilot is set to climb and then level off at that altitude. It requires no pilot input after the initial setup.
The Learjet is slightly different in that it didn’t level off at its intended cruising level but crucially it was climbing when the pilots became incapacitated and so the fact that it kept climbing is no mystery. The reason it didn’t level off may come down to how the autopilot works or it could be that the pilot had lost the plot when he was setting the cruising altitude.
Those two aircraft also climbed to reasonable altitudes for their type. The Learjet is a real performer that can attain it’s certified cruising altitude a lot easier than a heavy airliner can. The Helios jet climbed to an altitude that the crew had calculated it could achieve at the flight planning phase of the day.
The reason it is implausible for the B777 is that it was already cruising in level flight and it, apparently, climbed to an altitude a couple of thousand feet above its certified cruising altitude. To get the B777 to climb would require pilot input into the autopilot and to get it to climb as high as it did would actually require doing a zoom climb, ie using the speed from level flight and converting that into altitude. You end up very slow though.
None of this is impossible but it is unlikely. The behaviour of the Helios jet and the Learjet by comparison is not only possible but expected.
I have always thought that the climb was an unusual data point and I still don’t trust that that information is accurate.
I think that the likely theories comes down to what the aeroplane actually did after the first turn off track. If it tracked via waypoints then hijacking or similar would be most likely. If it just flew straight all the way to the search area then I agree that some form of malfunction would be more likely. I think the climb information is weak and a good theory doesn’t necessarily need to account for it. A straight fire or a straight decompression seems too simple to account for what happened. A mixture of the two might be closer to the mark, or just an explosive decompression that takes out some of the avionics. I hope we find out but I’m expecting we may never get to that point.
Ok, going with the decompression theory why was the transponder turned off?
New satellite images show 122 objects within the search area.
I think that is the real question, and so far I have not seen any mention of whether or nor those performing this analysis feel the complete dataset of pings are consistent with the 3 or 4 turns the plan is reported to have made according to radar.
Just found this: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/images-from-britains-aaib-on-mh370/893/
The difference between the expected an observed values early in the flight is interesting.