MH370 - Call for Search & Rescue Help

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#1013451 26-Mar-2014 21:57

gzt: Best conclusion from the evidence is a crazy pilot planning hard to create a mystery and unexplained death. Yet to know if insurance might be a partial motive in that thinking.

But really there is much not known. Erebus for instance showed that a lot can come out afterwards and there can be many motives for governments and corporations misleading the public.

Next stage is crash investigation and black box recovery which looks to be a drawn out process if ever at all.

You would really hope that pilot suicide wasn't what happened, because it has ramifications for anyone flying, as to whether you can trust your pilot, and whether there shouldn't be some form of override on the ground. A lot of people and companies have a vested interest in this case, so it really needs to be answered. Any major disaster like this really needs to be solved, and the fact that it crashed where it did makes it probably one of the most difficult places in the world to find it. Whether that was planned or not is the question, and I guess the flight investigators can check this by the timing of when the flight plan got changed. But there seem to be conflicting stories about this. The quote I heard, was that it is not just finding a needle in a haystack, it is having to find the haystack to begin with. Or it is like finding an object the size of a stapler in an aerial photo, if the search area was the size of NZ.

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#1013452 26-Mar-2014 21:57

estimated by "primary radar" whatever that thing is

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#1013463 26-Mar-2014 22:06

Boeing state the maximum service ceiling is 43,100 feet, a little over 13000 meters. @Technofreak - what does the word "service" mean? I'm imagining it means the maximum height it is rated to fly at rather than the maximum height it can actually fly to.

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#1013466 26-Mar-2014 22:11

networkn: Was the fact the plane reached 44000FT A guess or did it actually happen? I thought the planes could not reach that height?

AFAIK, it was reported in the early days by Malaysian authorities - from radar. But that primary radar altitude won't be accurate, and as we know, the transponder was not functioning.
The altitude limit isn't because of (ie) pressure differential load on the airframe etc. It's because jets with wing-mounted engines are at risk of fuselage damage in case of uncontained engine failure, and at above 40,000 feet there is much reduced chance for passengers to survive even with oxygen masks and immediate rapid descent.
I'm not sure about comments above that it couldn't have reached that altitude with loading (fuel) at that time. Presuming that someone "rogue" was at the controls, then fuel burn and keeping engines within normal operating parameters may not have been a priority. But anyway, that report of altitude is not verifiable (unless they find the FDR "black box")

The airlines and manufacturers keep pushing to increase flight ceilings - because the fuel economy increases. FAA push back - because of the limits of survival for passengers at those altitudes if something goes wrong. And the manufacturers push back again, because the main perceived risk of sudden decompression (uncontained engine failure) is always reducing - the engines are much more reliable than they used to be.
... and then, after Airbus pushed very hard to get ceilings raised for the A380, a Qantas A380 experiences uncontained engine failure. That was a very big deal.

It could make one cynical - about one's safety being calculated with statistics and argued in such a way. However, most air disasters are attributable to CFIT (controlled flight into terrain), regardless of a sequence of mechanical failures that precede that outcome, in the end the pilot could have avoided the crash.

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#1013487 26-Mar-2014 22:34

@Fred99 - interesting info, cheers.

Fred99: It could make one cynical - about one's safety being calculated with statistics and argued in such a way.

I'd be more inclined to call it realism rather than cynicism. NZTA certainly operate like this, using statistics to justify or deny roading decisions. However - is there actually a better way?

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#1013511 26-Mar-2014 22:42

Dratsab: @Fred99 - interesting info, cheers.

Fred99: It could make one cynical - about one's safety being calculated with statistics and argued in such a way.

I'd be more inclined to call it realism rather than cynicism. NZTA certainly operate like this, using statistics to justify or deny roading decisions. However - is there actually a better way?

No - probably not. People don't understand stats - your chance of winning 1st division Lotto on a Saturday is about the same as your chance of dying in a car crash that day, but lotto comes only once a week, and most of us drive every day.

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#1013533 26-Mar-2014 23:17

Looks like they have now found the crash area with 122 objects spotted http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/26/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

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#1013534 26-Mar-2014 23:19

chilling shiver down my spine.

for the families' sake I hope they get something

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#1013853 27-Mar-2014 13:27

joker97: chilling shiver down my spine.

for the families' sake I hope they get something

I am somewhat surprised that planes and ships haven't yet spotted anything, but I think we are under estimating the scale of the area, and the location is probably one of the most difficult places to search. Especially as it is always moving with currents. If you didn't want a plane to be found, that is the place to crash it. I just hope it doesn't span too long for the families sake. They are going to need a lot of luck to find the black box I think, but hop that is also found soon, as even after finding it, it can take a long time for them to analyses it and to actually know exactly what happened.

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#1014182 27-Mar-2014 21:14

Dratsab: Boeing state the maximum service ceiling is 43,100 feet, a little over 13000 meters. @Technofreak - what does the word "service" mean? I'm imagining it means the maximum height it is rated to fly at rather than the maximum height it can actually fly to.

It depends on the aircraft. For a lot of smaller aircraft the service ceiling is where they can still climb at 50 feet/minute.

For other aircraft it may be a certification issue. The aircraft I fly is certified to 25,000 feet, I understand it is capable of higher especially at light weights but the limit is due to limits of the oxygen system.

On some aircraft it is an airspeed limit. As altitude increases the margin between the stall speed and maximum speed reduces to the point you cannot go any faster due to airframe aerodynamic limitations but you cannot go any slower otherwise you wil stall. It's called coffin corner and occurs at high altitudes, 40,000 to 50,000 from memory and higher, the altitude at which it occurs varies by airframe.

I'm not sure what the limiting factor is for the 777 so far as service ceiling goes but it will likely be one of these factors.

Fred99: MH370 was cruising at 35,000 ft. That would have been the highest practical altutude for that weight, they would step climb as the weight burned off. Sure it would be possible to get it higher by converting speed to height but doubtful they could zoom climb from 35,000 to 43,000.

A higher altitude could perhaps be achieved by abusing the engines though I'm doubtful what climb rate they would be able to achieve and would guess it would take well over ten minutes to get from 35,000 to 43,000.

Remember what I mentioned above about stall speed and max cruise speed. This may limit climb at that weight, though I'm only guessing about this.

I think it's doubtful MH370 ever got to 43,000 when it was reported to have done so.

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#1014249 27-Mar-2014 23:09

my head is confused now - i watched a CNN clip saying Kota Bahru airport (couple of hundred km from vanish point) has a runway 2400m long (google confirms) ...

if the pilot had any problems he would have tried to land there. right there. but no, apparently (unless they can show evidence we cannot be sure) it went right across malaysia, turned north, then headed south into the indian ocean.

if all these are true then someone deliberately did it. hard to believe hijackers would go to all the trouble to crash into the indian ocean. maybe there was a struggle ... but how do we tell ...

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#1014253 27-Mar-2014 23:26

joker97: estimated by "primary radar" whatever that thing is

Rotating radar tower sending radio waves with interrogation request and awaiting response.

As for the FL430, I think they threw that out the window as a bung calculation from doppler/estimation

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#1014276 28-Mar-2014 00:58

Fred99:
mattwnz: I think some form of aircraft failure is the most likely cause, but I think it maybe a certain series of events that led to something, rather than just a single thing. I mean these things are built by humans, so they aren't perfect. So they may have seen a warning somewhere, and they started turning things off, and that in turn led to something else happening that had never been tested. I think the host plan theory, where both pilots were unconscious and noone from the cabin was able to get into the cockpit is a bit of a scary scenario . Noone in the cabin can communicate with the ground, as they are locked out. Unless they find the black box soon, I think people will continue to search for it for years, and it will become a bit like finding the titanic.

I don't go with the mechanical failure theories. Too much would have had to fail - and for whatever could have caused those failures to also not "take out" some critical system to keep the plane in the air just doesn't add up.
The alternative explanations are pretty awful, but if a rogue pilot had the secure cockpit to himself, he could depressurise the cabin, easily outlast the oxygen supply to the passengers, the other pilot and cabin crew, and then have the plane to himself. There were reports that the plane climbed to 43,000 feet after the transponder was disabled - which fits in with that scenario, as survival time would be minimised. Above 40,000 feet, the oxygen masks for passengers are not very effective (the masks for the cockpit are quite a different type - and are effective - if you know how to use them) Once that time had elapsed - with a "safe margin" he could drop altitude long before his oxygen ran out and repressurise the cabin - as everybody else will have died. IMO, this is probably what happened.

+1

Pilot suicide is not without precedent. There are two other recent cases where pilots have committed suicide and taken the entire airliner with them:

SilkAir Flight 185 - 1997
Egypt Air, Flight 990 - 1999

Wall of text follows:

I have maintained large Boeing Twinjets (mainly from an electrical, instrument and oxygen point of view) in the past and me and my colleges can think of no combination of failures that can cause anything remotely like this. Simply put the aircraft is specifically built to be extremely fault tolerant - most systems are triple redundant. You just can't take out the power supplies of 7 radios and 3 transponders in a fire etc without also taking out Nav systems, satellite R/T's & auto pilots & the reset of the plane - which remained working perfectly for 7 hours. The wires run side by side. It just can't happen like it did by accident, especially on a fly-by-wire aircraft.

The whole mystery is too well planned to be an accident. The point the 3x transponders were turned off and it changed course was perfectly timed to avoid detection. It was definitely piloted to the Indian ocean, and in a manner to emulate a scheduled flight so as to avoid the curiosity of casual radar operators. The climb (weather or not it was to 4x,000 feet or not) was also not likely caused by a fault, or an emergency response by the crew. It was most likely to accelerate hypoxia to prevent the locked out crew from breaking into the flight deck. I.E. the other pilot who would have immediately realised what was going on when the cabin depress'd with out a corresponding std procedure emergency decent in response. (perhaps the other pilot was almost through the door, and the flying pilot climbed in an extreme fashion in desperation to stop the 'good guys'). (If the radar data has a high enough resolution, it would be interesting to see if the aircraft was being flown roughly to cause the 'good guys' to loose their footing).

The flight deck has vastly more oxygen and vastly superior oxygen masks than every other oxygen supply on the aircraft. The flight deck bottle is the size of a large scuba dive bottle, the cabin crews bottles are about twice the volume of a soda-stream bottle. Passengers pyrotechnic oxygen generators run for only 7 minutes.

People were likely dead/unconscious before it re-crossed Malaysia, otherwise the crew would have attempted to communicate via cell phone as it overflew land

My guess is that after setting course for Antarctica the pilot in charge would have allow himself to succumb to hypoxia (depressurised again or went off oxygen), leaving no one one aboard who was not yet dead any chance of regaining consciousness.

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#1014278 28-Mar-2014 01:03

tripper1000:
Fred99:
mattwnz: I think some form of aircraft failure is the most likely cause, but I think it maybe a certain series of events that led to something, rather than just a single thing. I mean these things are built by humans, so they aren't perfect. So they may have seen a warning somewhere, and they started turning things off, and that in turn led to something else happening that had never been tested. I think the host plan theory, where both pilots were unconscious and noone from the cabin was able to get into the cockpit is a bit of a scary scenario . Noone in the cabin can communicate with the ground, as they are locked out. Unless they find the black box soon, I think people will continue to search for it for years, and it will become a bit like finding the titanic.

I don't go with the mechanical failure theories. Too much would have had to fail - and for whatever could have caused those failures to also not "take out" some critical system to keep the plane in the air just doesn't add up.
The alternative explanations are pretty awful, but if a rogue pilot had the secure cockpit to himself, he could depressurise the cabin, easily outlast the oxygen supply to the passengers, the other pilot and cabin crew, and then have the plane to himself. There were reports that the plane climbed to 43,000 feet after the transponder was disabled - which fits in with that scenario, as survival time would be minimised. Above 40,000 feet, the oxygen masks for passengers are not very effective (the masks for the cockpit are quite a different type - and are effective - if you know how to use them) Once that time had elapsed - with a "safe margin" he could drop altitude long before his oxygen ran out and repressurise the cabin - as everybody else will have died. IMO, this is probably what happened.

+1

Pilot suicide is not without precedent. There are two other recent cases where pilots have committed suicide and taken the entire airliner with them:

SilkAir Flight 185 - 1997
Egypt Air, Flight 990 - 1999

Wall of text follows:

I have maintained large Boeing Twinjets (mainly from an electrical, instrument and oxygen point of view) in the past and me and my colleges can think of no combination of failures that can cause anything remotely like this. Simply put the aircraft is specifically built to be extremely fault tolerant - most systems are triple redundant. You just can't take out the power supplies of 7 radios and 3 transponders in a fire etc without also taking out Nav systems, satellite R/T's & auto pilots & the reset of the plane - which remained working perfectly for 7 hours. The wires run side by side. It just can't happen like it did by accident, especially on a fly-by-wire aircraft.

The whole mystery is too well planned to be an accident. The point the 3x transponders were turned off and it changed course was perfectly timed to avoid detection. It was definitely piloted to the Indian ocean, and in a manner to emulate a scheduled flight so as to avoid the curiosity of casual radar operators. The climb (weather or not it was to 4x,000 feet or not) was also not likely caused by a fault, or an emergency response by the crew. It was most likely to accelerate hypoxia to prevent the locked out crew from breaking into the flight deck. I.E. the other pilot who would have immediately realised what was going on when the cabin depress'd with out a corresponding std procedure emergency decent in response. (perhaps the other pilot was almost through the door, and the flying pilot climbed in an extreme fashion in desperation to stop the 'good guys'). (If the radar data has a high enough resolution, it would be interesting to see if the aircraft was being flown roughly to cause the 'good guys' to loose their footing).

The flight deck has vastly more oxygen and vastly superior oxygen masks than every other oxygen supply on the aircraft. The flight deck bottle is the size of a large scuba dive bottle, the cabin crews bottles are about twice the volume of a soda-stream bottle. Passengers pyrotechnic oxygen generators run for only 7 minutes.

People were likely dead/unconscious before it re-crossed Malaysia, otherwise the crew would have attempted to communicate via cell phone as it overflew land

My guess is that after setting course for Antarctica the pilot in charge would have allow himself to succumb to hypoxia (depressurised again or went off oxygen), leaving no one one aboard who was not yet dead any chance of regaining consciousness.

Seems beyond complicated. Easier would be this:

Ask Co-Pilot to get you some item from the rear of the plane. Lock door behind him. Point nose at ground, solution.

Since it's clear on your theory of suicide, he didn't care for the lives of any others, same would likely be said about anyone on the ground, so also an option, take off reach, reach say 2000 ft, push the nose at the ground hard and fast, co-pilot would have a) no time to react b) no time to recover the dive before hitting the ground. At 400-500Km/p into the hard surface of the ground, no survivors.

Also no note, and no (apparent) motive.

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#1014299 28-Mar-2014 07:05

It's not complicated at all and fits nicely with what I've said from the get go.

Motive? His world was crumbling around him.
Reasoning? He did not want the plane to be found. Ever. Most likely didn't know about the pings.

Plenty of people have killed themselves for far less than what he had going on in his life. Seems like a prime candidate for depression to me. Reasoning and logic go completely out the window when people have an episode and decide to check out - otherwise they wouldn't do it in the first place. Trying to overlay sane minded thought patterns after an event is a bit of a trap.

Edit: sent from phone so had to fix up some autocorrect errors - Swype seems to be becoming complete crap these days.

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