Plane was on autopilot.
After analyzing data between the plane and a satellite, officials believe Flight 370 was on autopilot the entire time it was flying across a vast expanse of the southern Indian Ocean, based on the straight path it took, Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan said
Well that’s a bit of a mis-statement. It’s almost always on autopilot. I think what they’re trying to convey is that it stayed on the last altitude and directional heading.
What they are trying to convey is that the new search area assumes plane didn’t glide very far away from the 7th and last arc after it lost power.
An assumption based on nothing more solid than a wish and a prayer. This logic of unresponsive crew because straigth path is complete nonsense.
The Australian Transportation Safety Board released a report today which is here (scroll down for the pdf at the bottom). This is just a report on where they think is best to look next. Lots of info from the satellite working group.
I suspect we already know everything we’re ever going to. If Capt. Shah shut off the transponder and ACARS breakers, he’d certainly have shut off the CVR and FDR breakers too. Finding the boxes wouldn’t help explain anything.
Deliberate manual disconnection of the CVR/FDR would, in and of itself, suggest deliberate malicious intent, though. It would be a suspicious act.
It would be similar to Silk Air 185.
We already know that from the shutdowns of the transponder and ACARS.
Frankly if the CVR was shutoff at the moment of takeover it may very well tell us more, if it was indeed a deliberate act. It might let us localize a single pilot in the cockpit, or hear signs of a struggle before the breaker was flipped off. If it wasn’t flipped off, we might get nothing but some breathing and aircraft noise/alarms, etc, which won’t tell us about the actual precipitating incident or takeover itself.
The voice recorder Black Box only records 2 hour long loops, so it would not provide any information at the time the plane diverted from the original flight path.
that would depend if it’s a VOX system. I don’t know if it is but I’m throwing it out there.
What is VOX?
Can one of our resident experts clarify how feasable it is to physically remove the FDR/CVR device during flight? For the 777 or large passenger jets in general.
I have been toying with the idea that the reason they didn’t find the plane near the pinger signal is that the plane isn’t near the pinger signal… as in not in the same deep sea location as the black boxes.
I don’t know enough about the maintenance procedures for these systems to figure out if it’s too much Sherlock Holmes.
Voice operated transmit. The recorder only records when someone is talking, not continuously. This is the opposite of PTT, push to talk where the pilot has to push a transmit button.
I’m certainly not an expert, but as far as I know it would be impossible to remove the FDR/CVR units during flight. They’re typically located in the tailplane and not accessible from the cabin.
I’m quit sure the FDRs are not accessible from within the cabin or cargo holds. Usually they are installed on the tail of an aircraft.
These parts, mainly the battery, need to be serviced infrequently. That would mean access requires disassembling a fuselage panel between the aft bulkhead and the tail cone. Quite possibly true, but it would be great to have definite confirmation. The only maintenance panel I’m aware of in that section is for the APU.
I believe also (but I’m not sure) that some models also have the black boxes in the E&E bay below the cockpit, although in the tail is the common wisdom and practice.
The loss of the ELT also raises a red flag for Moriarty being on board.
Although once again I don’t know how the system is designed to withstand power loss and impact damage. CNN said something or other about the ELT taking up to 50 seconds to complete a full emergency signal… that seems like an awful long time.
VOX = voice activated. Like most of the com and intercom systems in planes.
But are they in fact VOX or do they continuously record? From what I have read of CVR transcripts they also mention various background noises which leads me to believe they record continuously.
Then I doubt it’s a VOX system. Odd that they don’t have the capacity to store more than 2 hrs given compression technology. 16 GB of storage gives weeks of recording space.