TIGHAR
Chatterbox => Extraneous exchanges => Topic started by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 17, 2014, 10:45:46 AM
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A Malaysian airliner with 295 people on board has crashed in Ukraine on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, amid allegations it was shot down.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28354856 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28354856)
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Horrible news... May they rest in peace.
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Forgive my ignorance, but why would a flight path go right over a known war zone? I realize it is becoming increasingly hard to avoid them now-a-days, and I think I know that there are "routes" (laymans term) in the sky that planes follow, but isn't there a reasonable alternative?
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Forgive my ignorance, but why would a flight path go right over a known war zone? I realize it is becoming increasingly hard to avoid them now-a-days, and I think I know that there are "routes" (laymans term) in the sky that planes follow, but isn't there a reasonable alternative?
You would have hoped they had learned from similiar incidents in the past Brian.
Iran Air Flight 655 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655)
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007)
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Barbarians (http://it.flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS17/history/20140717/1000Z/EHAM/WMKK).
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Barbarians (http://it.flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS17/history/20140717/1000Z/EHAM/WMKK).
Can't help but notice that today's flight is taking a different route....more to the east.
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As did all the previous flights.
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One report says they diverted for weather.
We will NEVER know what's on the black boxes either. They are on their way to Moscow.
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There's an awful lot of reports and transcriptions doing the rounds already in the build up to yet another 'conspiracy theory' I would guess. Best wait for the accident investigation before drawing too many conclusions. At least there is something to investigate this time, wreckage, FDR and CVR. As long as they get to the truth and find out exactly what happened, no matter how unpleasant it may or not be, that's all they can do.
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There's an awful lot of reports and transcriptions doing the rounds already in the build up to yet another 'conspiracy theory' I would guess. Best wait for the accident investigation before drawing too many conclusions. At least there is something to investigate this time, wreckage, FDR and CVR. As long as they get to the truth and find out exactly what happened, no matter how unpleasant it may or not be, that's all they can do.
Really think there will ever be a real accident investigation to amount to anything in this case? I don't.
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Really think there will ever be a real accident investigation to amount to anything in this case? I don't.
Depends on who does the investigating really. History tells us that carefully tailored investigations can give you the results you want. In this case a Malaysian Airlines American made plane crashing on Ukrainian soil almost guarantees that none of the previous nationalities will be involved in the investigation. Which guarantees it happening again and again. Previous shoot downs of civilian aircraft.
Here is the evidence
1940s
Kaleva OH-ALL
KNILM PK-AFV
BOAC Flight 777
1950s
Cathay Pacific VR-HEU
El Al Flight 402
1970s
Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114
Korean Air Lines Flight 902
Air Rhodesia Flight RH825
Air Rhodesia Flight RH827
1980s
Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870
Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Polar 3
Air Malawi 7Q-YMB
Iran Air Flight 655
T&G Aviation DC-7
1990s
September 1993 Transair Georgian Airline Shootdowns
Lionair Flight LN 602
2000s
2001 Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
2003 Baghdad DHL attempted shootdown incident
2007 Balad aircraft crash
2007 Mogadishu TransAVIAexport Airlines Il-76 crash
2010s
2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight 17
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Just keep in mind - this was no accident. It was the outcome of an act of belligerence.
All the black boxes could possibly tell us is what happened up to the lethal missile strike, with slim chances of much useful about what followed. Arguably that might include what vitals were destroyed or compromised by the strike - which was quite likely crippling to multiple systems, including primary structure on a large scale.
How to prevent this kind of event lies not with understanding the mechanics of this crash, but in recognizing the realities of the kind of war going on in that part of the world and related threats throughout the globe and dealing with them with fortitude. Political commentary is not appropriate here, so I'll leave it at that generic level of discussion.
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The black boxes give information on quite important details in cases of shoot downs of civilian aircraft, navigation details, altitude, transponder, communications etc... all vital when flying near or over areas of disputed territory. Not that we have ever learnt anything from previous incidents, see list above. Obviously it goes without saying that these are despicable acts of violence no matter who is to blame, be it Russia, Ukraine, USA as examples from the list of previous shoot downs. Questions need to be asked as to why civilian flights are allowed to overfly disputed territories or we will see this happening again and again, see list.
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Questions need to be asked as to why civilian flights are allowed to overfly disputed territories or we will see this happening again and again, see list.
I think it's real simple - the answer is money. Gas is expensive. Flying around a problem area makes a flight more expensive to the airline, resulting in smaller performance bonuses for the executives and less profit for the shareholders, or the government if it's a state-owned enterprise.
The airlines gamble with their passenger's lives that nothing will go wrong as they shave a few thousand dollars off the flight's cost. The reason it's called gambling is because sometimes, you loose. This was one of those times. Sympathies to all of the families whose lives have been torn apart forever.
LTM, who drives whenever he can,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP
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A couple of thousand feet don't mean much in terms of avoidance, and they were in or skirting a war zone - the "orange" boxes aren't going to provide much but fodder for Russian deniability.
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What I find to be the most credible hypothesis is that Russian separatists, with help from Russian technicians, were using a new (to them) missile system and, in their enthusiasm, mistook the Maylasian 777 for a Ukrainian military transport.
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What I find to be the most credible hypothesis is that Russian separatists, with help from Russian technicians, were using a new (to them) missile system and, in their enthusiasm, mistook the Maylasian 777 for a Ukrainian military transport.
Your hypothesis sounds reasonable to me as a starting point.
What folks need to understand is that the much-heralded 'black boxes' (orange, thanks...) are not going to yield anything except to some degree the tragic and sudden massive failure of systems and structure (no doubt wild excursions of g-load and systems in the nano-seconds leading up to the bitter end).
To understand this 'accident' (NOT) we need to look into the black boxes that are the minds of the war-faring people involved: all wars are hell, but this little nest of hornets is completely unbridled for taking down a civilian airliner. It is compounded by the lunacy of a civilian flight having been allowed anywhere near such conflict where any such weapons were in theatre (who knew).
Who is the big brother with the pockets to have made this fiendish toy available to a command structure it had cultivated that couldn't do better than this? Look to the 'bear' would be my hypothesis (DUH).
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Let's remember that the U.S. Navy mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner. The lesson is "steer clear of war zones." Stopping flights to Tel Aviv is a smart move.
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MH17 crash: UK investigators at Farnborough to examine downed plane's black boxes
The Dutch government has asked for the UK’s assistance in examining the "black box" flight recorders retrieved from the Malaysia Airlines flight shot down over eastern Ukraine last week.
Latest news is that they are in good condition and they haven't been tampered with. Whether they yield anything which might help with the investigation is another matter but, all avenues have to be explored. Whatever the result the impartiality of the analysis is at least assured.
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MH17 crash: UK investigators at Farnborough to examine downed plane's black boxes
The Dutch government has asked for the UK’s assistance in examining the "black box" flight recorders retrieved from the Malaysia Airlines flight shot down over eastern Ukraine last week.
Latest news is that they are in good condition and they haven't been tampered with. Whether they yield anything which might help with the investigation is another matter but, all avenues have to be explored. Whatever the result the impartiality of the analysis is at least assured.
Fascinating, but what's to be learned that isn't already evident? I doubt we'll find any surprises to speak of -
"At such and such time, there was a series of abrubt engine/airframe vibrations (violent vector changes / g accelerations) a nearly simultaneous sudden cabin decompression, loss of normal and essential electrical power, flight controls and instrumentation disruptions followed by vertical and lateral accelerations consistent with loss of primary flight control and the compromise of structural integrity of major airframe components, followed by a departure from stable flight path and loss of altitude as stability and thrust were in decay, followed by... end of signal."
Normally we wouldn't speculate like that of course, but in "operational terms", we're not talking about an "accident" here so I've applied license.
Think: we're looking at a flagrant combat event -
- At best we'll get a snapshot of the order of business of the death of an airplane and its occupants as it was assassinated by a missile;
- At worst, the tape will roll on and tell us more about the suffering that may have been endured by anyone unlucky enough to have survived the initial attack long enough to be aware of any portion of the fatal ride to the ground.
How much do you want to know?
What will we glean from it? "How to make transport airplanes systems and structures more resistent to enemy missile attack"?
I think not. I hope we will learn to better apply what Ric said so well above - avoid combat zones. And we have to face that a combat zone, these days, can be quite portable - so we have to learn to guard against that too. Maybe we'll see some form of missile avoidance applied commonly to transports in the future, I don't know. But it is ridiculous to believe that we'll ever 'harden' a transport to withstand a direct missile attack, no matter what we learn of how this bird failed from such an event.
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A lot of it comes down to money? What on this planet doesn't come down to money, in the end?
There are off-the-shelf anti-missile or missile decoy systems available right now. Air Force 1 certainly has them. El Al airline has a missile defense system on some of its overseas route jets. The question for penny-pinching airline execs is: How much safety can we afford? Is it possible to protect against EVERY conceivable threat? Do we even want to?
LTM, who prefers driving these days,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP
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There are off-the-shelf anti-missile or missile decoy systems available right now. Air Force 1 certainly has them. El Al airline has a missile defense system on some of its overseas route jets.
Ditto for FedEx. It's a laser system produced by Northrop Grumman that locks onto and confuses the missile's homing device. It can handle multiple launches. Effective but expensive.
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Those laser defensive systems are designed for shoulder-launched MANPADS. I'm not sure they'd be very effective against something like an SA-11 or SA-20.
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Those laser defensive systems are designed for shoulder-launched MANPADS. I'm not sure they'd be very effective against something like an SA-11 or SA-20.
Good point.