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Author Topic: Malaysian Flight 370  (Read 391302 times)

Dave Ross Wilkinson

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #210 on: April 10, 2014, 03:29:33 PM »

I have to now quote from the former DOT Inspector General Mary Schaivo (yes, I watch CNN for MH370 info), or rather her paraphrase on the CNN web page:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/10/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

'...She said the reported dip could have occurred in response to a loss of pressure, to reach a level where pressurization was not needed and those aboard the plane would have been able to breathe without oxygen, or to get out of the way of commercial traffic, which typically flies at higher altitudes.
That would have been necessary had the plane's transponder been turned off and it lost communications. "If you don't have any communications, you need to get out of other traffic," Schiavo said.

"We still don't have any motive and any evidence of a crime yet," she said, adding that most radar can track planes at altitudes below 4,000 feet, so the plane's descent may not have indicated any attempt by whoever was controlling it to hide.'

I agree with Ms. Schaivo.  No proof, nothing but conjecture that the pilot was up to no good.  I realize that those here have lots more experience in aviation than I. My only credentials being that I've flown (only as a passenger)  on every commercial US airliner from DC-3, DC-6 to 777.  And I am older than dirt and unusually stubborn.  Just don't hit me again, OK?  I'm with you guys.

Dave Wilkinson
 
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Gus Rubio

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #211 on: April 10, 2014, 03:37:49 PM »

Good to hear they found the pings again.  As others here have said, they're getting close.  And to echo Ric's wondering, I'm amazed there has been no floating evidence spotted.  Hate to say it, but bodies should float for a time, and there are plenty of other things in a plane like that that will float as well, and for longer.  I would think that the currents in the search area would be known, or easily established (weather would of course make that harder to rely on).  And there has to be some kind of computer models that they can use to test assumptions and scenarios, resulting in debris patterns they can search for.  Right?  I'm about as far from an expert at this sort of thing as you can get an still be a human, but that has to exist. 

Interesting parallels with the AE/FN search, down to the use of the same Bluefin AUV.  History repeats itself.  But just as we will find AE/FN, they will find MH370.  Lots of smart people searching for both planes.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #212 on: April 10, 2014, 04:07:50 PM »

'...She said the reported dip could have occurred in response to a loss of pressure, to reach a level where pressurization was not needed and those aboard the plane would have been able to breathe without oxygen, or to get out of the way of commercial traffic, which typically flies at higher altitudes.
That would have been necessary had the plane's transponder been turned off and it lost communications. "If you don't have any communications, you need to get out of other traffic," Schiavo said.

"We still don't have any motive and any evidence of a crime yet," she said, adding that most radar can track planes at altitudes below 4,000 feet, so the plane's descent may not have indicated any attempt by whoever was controlling it to hide.'

 I don't challenge her when we're on the air (that would be rude) but there are lots of things that Mary says that don't make sense to me.  Somebody turned off the transponder then heads for the deck to avoid traffic?  What sense does that make?   Most radar can track planes at altitudes below 4,000 feet?  Radar is line of sight.  How low it can pick up a target depends on how far it is from the target and whether there is any intervening terrain. 
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JNev

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #213 on: April 10, 2014, 04:19:27 PM »

'...She said the reported dip could have occurred in response to a loss of pressure, to reach a level where pressurization was not needed and those aboard the plane would have been able to breathe without oxygen, or to get out of the way of commercial traffic, which typically flies at higher altitudes.
That would have been necessary had the plane's transponder been turned off and it lost communications. "If you don't have any communications, you need to get out of other traffic," Schiavo said.

"We still don't have any motive and any evidence of a crime yet," she said, adding that most radar can track planes at altitudes below 4,000 feet, so the plane's descent may not have indicated any attempt by whoever was controlling it to hide.'

 I don't challenge her when we're on the air (that would be rude) but there are lots of things that Mary says that don't make sense to me.  Somebody turned off the transponder then heads for the deck to avoid traffic?  What sense does that make?   Most radar can track planes at altitudes below 4,000 feet?  Radar is line of sight.  How low it can pick up a target depends on how far it is from the target and whether there is any intervening terrain.

You're quite a gent and of course that's the 'right thing to do', but as I recall Schiavo was really more of an IG operative and not highly technically qualified.  If I got that wrong then hats off to the lady, but she's a technical dud in my book and has now underscored that with the radar comment.
- Jeff Neville

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Dave Ross Wilkinson

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #214 on: April 10, 2014, 04:23:36 PM »

I don't fair to say that we know that somebody switched off the transponder.  We know it went off, but we don't know if it was switched off. 
Dave Wilkinson
 
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #215 on: April 10, 2014, 04:39:01 PM »

I don't fair to say that we know that somebody switched off the transponder.  We know it went off, but we don't know if it was switched off.

As has been said by people who are far more familiar with the airplane than I, an electrical failure so massive as to defeat the multiple backup systems to the multiple back up systems would make the airplane unflyable.
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John Ousterhout

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #216 on: April 10, 2014, 08:31:31 PM »

Do the backup systems include resetting the transponder to the original settings?  The Cessna 152 I rent, with it's fancy new instrument panel, loses its memory if the main buss is pulled.  I'm curious what the default settings and headings might be for the 777 system?  I'm considering the situation after a massive electrical fault, at night, with traffic in the vicinity.   2 hours of data might not tell what happened.
Sorting out evidence of an airliner from the "normal" floating junk is a very difficult process.  Not many folks realize just how much junk is floating around out there.
Cheers,
JohnO
 
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #217 on: April 10, 2014, 08:38:20 PM »

Do the backup systems include resetting the transponder to the original settings?  The Cessna 152 I rent, with it's fancy new instrument panel, loses its memory if the main buss is pulled.

I don't know, but I suspect 777's systems are a wee bit more sophisticated than the 152's.
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Jeff Victor Hayden

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #218 on: April 10, 2014, 09:06:58 PM »

Occams Razor

:  a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

The black boxes will be the judges, if they can be found and recovered.
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JNev

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #219 on: April 11, 2014, 08:03:22 AM »

I don't fair to say that we know that somebody switched off the transponder.  We know it went off, but we don't know if it was switched off.

As has been said by people who are far more familiar with the airplane than I, an electrical failure so massive as to defeat the multiple backup systems to the multiple back up systems would make the airplane unflyable.

This one didn't smell like a massive, indiscriminant loss of power to me for that reason.  It had balanced flight for some time apparently (whichever direction...) which would require not only FBW still up but guidance from some source - whether human or silicon (even if random vector), until either the fires went out and went sea dart, or landed somewhere...

Latest pings said not from black boxes.  Running out of time on the 'good' pings that were heard.  Narrowed search, but still lots of deep, deep water.  Interesting time we live in.
- Jeff Neville

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JNev

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #220 on: April 11, 2014, 08:17:52 AM »

Occams Razor

:  a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

The black boxes will be the judges, if they can be found and recovered.

I hope they will be found but remain a bit pessimistic.

To me the razor suggests a deliberate, selective disabling of key systems (those that would betray airplane movement) followed by maneuvers that suggest a) a turn toward safety, maybe, or b) a turn toward hours of evasion and eventual disappearance. 

If the former, then a ghost plane could have developed one supposes, followed by loss in the sea, one also supposes.  A crew of healthy mind and body and intent is not likely to drift to a remote ocean area unless there were overwhelming mechanical reasons.  If that is the case then it would be awfully good to gain the remains - we need to learn how that happened.

If the latter, it's now moot - ain't going to work unless they just want to pile the missile into a backwater tower somewhere.  Rah.

What follows the latter condition is also counter to living memory of terrorist events where there is typically an eagerness for credit; why?  Premature?  If the purpose was to use the plane for bad reasons - secrecy still needed.  And it has failed, if so - Occam suggests to me if that was the case then it's too late - foiled, they'll never be able to do that now.  Nothing to brag about.

And nothing the powers that be care to have the public worried about either.  We should be more chilled by the prospect of a dead airplane wandering into the Indian Ocean to disappear than a stolen one that can be more easily understood.  I have severe personal about a fine Boeing so well proven suddenly having a devastating self-inflicted wound.  If a bomb, then how such massive crew and apparently passenger incapacitation yet airplane survival?  A failed hijacking?  Maybe something like that, but here the razor dulls for me.

I really do hope they find it out there, we need to know how it got to that place if that's the case.  Not just for closure but for the learning - tombstone lessons are the most costly and shouldn't be wasted. 

One last razor shot - the airworthiness regulators aren't very noisy on this one so far, so there must be a lot of confidence in the Boeing (as I also have)... so what do 'they' think really failed on that flight?
- Jeff Neville

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« Last Edit: April 11, 2014, 08:21:15 AM by Jeffrey Neville »
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Bruce Thomas

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #221 on: April 11, 2014, 08:31:16 AM »

... Latest pings said not from black boxes.  Running out of time on the 'good' pings that were heard.  Narrowed search, but still lots of deep, deep water.  Interesting time we live in.

Talk of "pings not from black boxes" reminds me of "The Hunt for Red October".
LTM,

Bruce
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JNev

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #222 on: April 11, 2014, 09:24:25 AM »

... Latest pings said not from black boxes.  Running out of time on the 'good' pings that were heard.  Narrowed search, but still lots of deep, deep water.  Interesting time we live in.

Talk of "pings not from black boxes" reminds me of "The Hunt for Red October".

Connery's finest hour as Ramius, indeed.

Guvmints do play high stakes games, one man's ping is another's epiphany.
- Jeff Neville

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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #223 on: April 11, 2014, 09:44:40 AM »

Occams Razor

:  a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

The black boxes will be the judges, if they can be found and recovered.

Ahh yes, William of Occam (or Ockham), c.1287 -1347, English Franciscan friar and charter member of TIGHAR.
His famous "razor" is often misunderstood to mean that the simplest answer is most likely to be the correct answer.  What Friar Will supposedly said was, "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praetor necessitatem" (Entities must not be multiplied without necessity).  In other words, the simplest answer that accounts for all the necessary entities is most likely to be correct.   In the case of MH370 we have an array of "entities" (facts) that can be most simply explained as the actions of a rogue pilot.  In the case of the Earhart disappearance we have an array of "entities" (radio bearings, distress calls, sightings, photographs, the castaway, artifacts, and on and on) that are most simply explained by the presence of Earhart on Gardner Island.
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Jeff Victor Hayden

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Re: Malaysian Flight 370
« Reply #224 on: April 11, 2014, 12:10:31 PM »

Wouldn't be the first time, by far.

Malaysia Airlines mystery: was it another 'ghost flight'?

http://www.smh.com.au/world/malaysia-airlines-mystery-was-it-another-ghost-flight-20140325-hvmn3.html

And, Swiss Air flight 111 gives us some insight into how something as simple as detecting a smell of smoke in the cockpit can rapidly develop within 13 minutes into total systems failure.

"About 13 minutes after the abnormal odour was first detected, the aircraft's flight data recorder began to record a rapid succession of aircraft systems-related failures. The flight crew declared an emergency and indicated a need to land immediately. About one minute later, radio communications and secondary radar contact with the aircraft were lost, and the flight recorders stopped functioning. About five and one-half minutes later, at 10:31 p.m. Atlantic daylight saving time (ADT), the aircraft crashed into the ocean about five nautical miles southwest of Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada. The aircraft was destroyed and there were no survivors."
The final report into the accident quite rightly cleared the crew however, it did question Swiss Air and consequently the crews procedures, safety methods and priorities in the case of smoke/fire in the aircraft.
This must be the place
 
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