MH370, flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has gone missing.

kazooka wrote:

This showed up on my facebook feed today:

https://plus.google.com/106271056358...

If true, then I think that pilot can claim the mother of all bad days: your political party collapses, your wife leaves you, your plane catches fire and crashes into the ocean, and the entire world decides that you were probably a terrorist.

This is the most reasonable explanation I've heard so far. Given the extremely terrible quality of modern news media (yesterday CNN was talking with some one about how he was "sure" his partner on the plane was still alive) it's impossible to say whether this reasonable, non-terrorist story has actually been ruled out by people in the know, or if no one is talking about it because it's not interesting enough.

Honestly, in all of my speculation about the sharp turn I have been assuming that there wasn't a big airport directly on that route, because I assumed that if that was the case at least one of the talking heads on the screen would posit "hey, maybe that was a course correction for an emergency landing".

Also, his story provides an alternative for my other question that led me to assume hijacking. "Does a mechanical problem exist that would force such a course change, but not cause the airplane to crash within 4 hours?" Smoke inhalation taking the pilots out of commission would definitely qualify.

Higgledy wrote:

I just hope they find the plane one way or another. It must be torture for the families not knowing for certain if they have lost family members or not.

So very, very true. I could not agree more, I hope they find it if only for that reason.

Kazooka's link is quite plausible, unless the ACARS was shut off before the last transmission. It also doesn't explain the climb to 45,000 feet and then the descent to regular cruise again. But it has the virtue of accounting for the systems being shut down quite well.

Pretty horrific scenario, though.

So, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but with over 200 people on the flight no one left a cell phone on?

garion333 wrote:

So, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but with over 200 people on the flight no one left a cell phone on?

They wouldn't have been anywhere near any cell phone towers, unless a passenger had a satellite phone only the pilots would have been able to communicate with anyone.

Congratulations!

Full of beefy goodness

concentric wrote:

Congratulations!

Full of beefy goodness

O_o

Wrong thread?

Quintin_Stone wrote:
concentric wrote:

Congratulations!

Full of beefy goodness

O_o

Wrong thread?

He knows something!

GET HIM!

concentric wrote:

Congratulations!

Full of beefy goodness

MH370, choose your tag!

Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:

So, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but with over 200 people on the flight no one left a cell phone on?

They wouldn't have been anywhere near any cell phone towers, unless a passenger had a satellite phone only the pilots would have been able to communicate with anyone.

Assuming they landed somewhere, at some point they'd likely have pinged a tower.

Clearly, the prevailing wisdom is that they didn't land anywhere and are likely out to sea, but if they had been hijacked and landed just about anywhere someone's cell phone would've pinged something, yes?

garion333 wrote:
Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:

So, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but with over 200 people on the flight no one left a cell phone on?

They wouldn't have been anywhere near any cell phone towers, unless a passenger had a satellite phone only the pilots would have been able to communicate with anyone.

Assuming they landed somewhere, at some point they'd likely have pinged a tower.

Clearly, the prevailing wisdom is that they didn't land anywhere and are likely out to sea, but if they had been hijacked and landed just about anywhere someone's cell phone would've pinged something, yes?

I think you may be underestimating how big the ocean is and how limited in range cell phones are.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
concentric wrote:

Congratulations!

Full of beefy goodness

MH370, choose your tag!

Oops. But based on the coverage I am seeing on CNN, MH370 deserves a tag. My 17 month old daughter and I are in Georgia visiting my parents, who have CNN on non-stop all day long. They just had an industrial psychologist who answered every question with, "I don't know - I haven't really studied the situation."

I think that it must have landed in the Andes and the passengers met up with the survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash.

I was reading the NY Times article posted a few posts back and they raise a point tht had somewhat occurred to me. What doesn't compute is the turn, a deliberate action. If this had been a pilot performing a murder suicide, why not just dive forward??
I vividly remember the EgyptAir tragedy particularly because I'd taken a New York - Cairo flight with that airline just a year before. And as I recall, that's exactly what the pilot did, just tipped the nose downwards sending the plane plummeting into the Atlantic. What's the point of turning before that??

Eleima wrote:

I was reading the NY Times article posted a few posts back and they raise a point tht had somewhat occurred to me. What doesn't compute is the turn, a deliberate action. If this had been a pilot performing a murder suicide, why not just dive forward??
I vividly remember the EgyptAir tragedy particularly because I'd taken a New York - Cairo flight with that airline just a year before. And as I recall, that's exactly what the pilot did, just tipped the nose downwards sending the plane plummeting into the Atlantic. What's the point of turning before that??

Turning and then flying for something like four more hours.

Suicidal ideation usually precedes suicide for a good length of time, but the time between deciding to commit suicide and acting on that decision is typically swift. Pop culture has a preoccupation with characters who plan elaborate suicides that take a good deal of time to finish, but most suicides don't have elaborate plans and generally use means at hand.

This hijacking doesn't seem to follow the pattern of suicide, while that EgyptAir flight does.

Paleocon wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:

So, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but with over 200 people on the flight no one left a cell phone on?

They wouldn't have been anywhere near any cell phone towers, unless a passenger had a satellite phone only the pilots would have been able to communicate with anyone.

Assuming they landed somewhere, at some point they'd likely have pinged a tower.

Clearly, the prevailing wisdom is that they didn't land anywhere and are likely out to sea, but if they had been hijacked and landed just about anywhere someone's cell phone would've pinged something, yes?

I think you may be underestimating how big the ocean is and how limited in range cell phones are.

Maybe I'm not saying this correctly. If the plane crashed into the ocean I COMPLETELY understand why we wouldn't have a cell phone signal.

If the plane was hijacked and landed somewhere I find it much tougher to imagine that the place they landed didn't have cell phone coverage near an airstrip.

Then again, remote places in Australia and Africa are likely to not have coverage.

garion333 wrote:

If the plane was hijacked and landed somewhere I find it much tougher to imagine that the place they landed didn't have cell phone coverage near an airstrip.

Then again, remote places in Australia and Africa are likely to not have coverage.

I think you're being first-world-blinkered. Yes, you may be hard-pressed to find an airstrip in the US where there is no cell coverage.

But I suspect that you'd be hard pressed to find an airstrip in Africa that *does*, outside of heavily urbanized areas, where a hijacker wouldn't be landing anyway.

Concentric, I both love and hate you right now because you're making me laugh and it hurts. XD [size=8](see self indulgent parent thread)[/size]

Edit: I just spoke with my dad on the phone and he says the plane is probably "lost" in an alternate reality.
Too soon?

It's also possible that the hijackers collected all passengers' the cell phones.

garion333 wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:

So, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but with over 200 people on the flight no one left a cell phone on?

They wouldn't have been anywhere near any cell phone towers, unless a passenger had a satellite phone only the pilots would have been able to communicate with anyone.

Assuming they landed somewhere, at some point they'd likely have pinged a tower.

Clearly, the prevailing wisdom is that they didn't land anywhere and are likely out to sea, but if they had been hijacked and landed just about anywhere someone's cell phone would've pinged something, yes?

I think you may be underestimating how big the ocean is and how limited in range cell phones are.

Maybe I'm not saying this correctly. If the plane crashed into the ocean I COMPLETELY understand why we wouldn't have a cell phone signal.

If the plane was hijacked and landed somewhere I find it much tougher to imagine that the place they landed didn't have cell phone coverage near an airstrip.

Then again, remote places in Australia and Africa are likely to not have coverage.

35km is about the far outside limit of GSM cell phone range to a tower. Even at half that distance, you would have difficulty maintaining a long conversation. CDMA is considerably shorter ranged than that.

The fact that we can maintain conversations along major interstates between cities is a testimony to the investment in communications infrastructure, not the range of the technology. This would likely not be true of just about anywhere in Malaysia outside of major cities. That goes triple for Vietnam.

Jonman wrote:
garion333 wrote:

If the plane was hijacked and landed somewhere I find it much tougher to imagine that the place they landed didn't have cell phone coverage near an airstrip.

Then again, remote places in Australia and Africa are likely to not have coverage.

I think you're being first-world-blinkered. Yes, you may be hard-pressed to find an airstrip in the US where there is no cell coverage.

But I suspect that you'd be hard pressed to find an airstrip in Africa that *does*, outside of heavily urbanized areas, where a hijacker wouldn't be landing anyway.

Well, I looked at coverage maps and Australia and Africa are the only regions that seem to have gigantic holes in coverage.

Paleocon wrote:

35km is about the far outside limit of GSM cell phone range to a tower. Even at half that distance, you would have difficulty maintaining a long conversation. CDMA is considerably shorter ranged than that.

The fact that we can maintain conversations along major interstates between cities is a testimony to the investment in communications infrastructure, not the range of the technology. This would likely not be true of just about anywhere in Malaysia outside of major cities. That goes triple for Vietnam.

Well, I wasn't thinking that a conversation would've taken place, but that a signal had been received from a phone to a tower. The giant whole, and there are many, in my thinking is that while a phone receives a signal from a tower my assumption is it would send some sort of signal back automatically. That seems like a stupid assumption on my part.

kyrieee wrote:

It's also possible that the hijackers collected all passengers' the cell phones.

And of course, there's this.

Wired had a story today that posits that everything that happened was because there was an electrical fire on board.

The course change was because the pilot wanted to reach the closest open airport. The communications going down was actually a standard operating procedure for an electrical fire: pull the main busses and restore the circuits one-by-one to isolate the bad one. And even then the procedure is to restore what's needed to fly and navigate before worrying about communications.

Even the increase in altitude to 45,000 feet (which was only recorded by distant radar and might not actually be accurate) might have been a last ditch attempt to starve the on-board fire of oxygen.

garion333 wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:

So, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but with over 200 people on the flight no one left a cell phone on?

They wouldn't have been anywhere near any cell phone towers, unless a passenger had a satellite phone only the pilots would have been able to communicate with anyone.

Assuming they landed somewhere, at some point they'd likely have pinged a tower.

Clearly, the prevailing wisdom is that they didn't land anywhere and are likely out to sea, but if they had been hijacked and landed just about anywhere someone's cell phone would've pinged something, yes?

I think you may be underestimating how big the ocean is and how limited in range cell phones are.

Maybe I'm not saying this correctly. If the plane crashed into the ocean I COMPLETELY understand why we wouldn't have a cell phone signal.

If the plane was hijacked and landed somewhere I find it much tougher to imagine that the place they landed didn't have cell phone coverage near an airstrip.

Then again, remote places in Australia and Africa are likely to not have coverage.

I have seen some speculation that the climb to 45,000 was to kill our incapacitate the passengers, though I'm a little fuzzy on how you would depressurize the cabin without risking the aircraft.

If it did make it to land, presumably in the middle of nowhere Australia, an off the grid island or some remote valley in Eurasia, it is probably a case of no cell coverage.

OG_slinger wrote:

Wired had a story today that posits that everything that happened was because there was an electrical fire on board.

The course change was because the pilot wanted to reach the closest open airport. The communications going down was actually a standard operating procedure for an electrical fire: pull the main busses and restore the circuits one-by-one to isolate the bad one. And even then the procedure is to restore what's needed to fly and navigate before worrying about communications.

Even the increase in altitude to 45,000 feet (which was only recorded by distant radar and might not actually be accurate) might have been a last ditch attempt to starve the on-board fire of oxygen.

You mean this potential explanation?

Badferret wrote:

I have seen some speculation that the climb to 45,000 was to kill our incapacitate the passengers, though I'm a little fuzzy on how you would depressurize the cabin without risking the aircraft.

This is a bunk theory. There's no practicable difference between 35k and 45k altitude in terms of how lethal an environment that is to a person.

I'm a little hazy meself, as I'm a propulsion guy, and environmental control systems (ECS) are not my wheelhouse, but at the very least, a hijacker in the cockpit could close all the engine bleed valves that provide pressurized air to the ECS (thereby starving it of the air supply to maintain cabin pressure). I daresay there's circuit breakers for many ECS components in the cockpit that would effectively disable the ECS from being able to maintain cabin pressure too. Meanwhile, the hijacker in the cockpit could put on the flight crew oxygen mask to prevent himself from being incapacitated.

That said, the passenger oxygen masks will drop automatically when cabin pressure drops below a threshold (something like 10,000-12,000 feet pressure-altitude, I'm guessing - cabin pressure on a 777 would nominally be around 8,000 feet pressure-altitdue), and I would suspect that there's no easy way to defeat that functionality from the cockpit.

Either way, the climb to 45k has no bearing on disabling the passengers.

On an airliner there's only enough oxygen for the passengers to last an emergency descent to < 10,000 ft (well, a bit more but there's not a lot). If you climb to 45,000 ft with a depressurized cabin you kill everyone onboard.

LouZiffer wrote:

You mean this potential explanation?

Yes, that explanation.

And I'll admit that I purposely didn't read that original post because it came through Facebook/Google+ and read the Wired article because I knew that it at least went through some sort of editorial process. Doing that helps weed out the crazy, worthless content social media tends to generate, like Courtney Love's claim that she knew where the plane was based entirely on her looking at satellite photos of the ocean.

kyrieee wrote:

On an airliner there's only enough oxygen for the passengers to last an emergency descent to < 10,000 ft (well, a bit more but there's not a lot). If you climb to 45,000 ft with a depressurized cabin you kill everyone onboard.

For a passenger oxygen system that uses bottled oxygen, you're right.

A 777 is equipped with OBOGS (on-board oxygen generation system), which means that there's effectively an infinite supply. That said, there's almost definitely circuit breakers in the cockpit to disable it, as you want to be able to disable that source of deliciously flammable oxygen in the event of a fire.

Either way, I maintain that there's no practicable difference between 35k and 45k altitude in terms of passenger survivability. Both are lethal.

Note - it's been many years since I worked on 777, so I could be mis-remembering the details about OBOGS.

OG_slinger wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

You mean this potential explanation?

Yes, that explanation.

And I'll admit that I purposely didn't read that original post because it came through Facebook/Google+ and read the Wired article because I knew that it at least went through some sort of editorial process. Doing that helps weed out the crazy, worthless content social media tends to generate, like Courtney Love's claim that she knew where the plane was based entirely on her looking at satellite photos of the ocean.

Still, the Wired article has this:

There is no point speculating further until more evidence surfaces, but in the meantime it serves no purpose to malign pilots who well may have been in a struggle to save this aircraft from a fire or other serious mechanical issue. Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. There is no doubt in my mind.

No doubt in his mind? None?

Thanks to Google Earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times.

30 second gut check ftw! And an assumption about how many times he's been to an airstrip.

I'm all with the logic behind his article, but then he starts flying his freak flag for pilots and I lose credibility for him. Sure, his argument fits Occam's razor better than pilot turned suicidal, but it still contains an awful lot of assumptions.

(Note: Didn't read the Google+ post as I can't while at work.)

Jonman wrote:
kyrieee wrote:

On an airliner there's only enough oxygen for the passengers to last an emergency descent to < 10,000 ft (well, a bit more but there's not a lot). If you climb to 45,000 ft with a depressurized cabin you kill everyone onboard.

For a passenger oxygen system that uses bottled oxygen, you're right.

A 777 is equipped with OBOGS (on-board oxygen generation system), which means that there's effectively an infinite supply. That said, there's almost definitely circuit breakers in the cockpit to disable it, as you want to be able to disable that source of deliciously flammable oxygen in the event of a fire.

Either way, I maintain that there's no practicable difference between 35k and 45k altitude in terms of passenger survivability. Both are lethal.

Note - it's been many years since I worked on 777, so I could be mis-remembering the details about OBOGS.

Huh!
That's pretty neat. You learn something every day.

garion333 wrote:

I'm all with the logic behind his article, but then he starts flying his freak flag for pilots and I lose credibility for him. Sure, his argument fits Occam's razor better than pilot turned suicidal, but it still contains an awful lot of assumptions.

I agree with you. He assumed that the change in course was because the pilot was looking for another airport when, a few paragraphs later, he provides examples of experienced pilots panicking during a fire and failing to land at the nearest airport.

I simply find that more reasonable than the pilot was suicidal because of an election, that it was terrorism, aliens, the Bermuda Triangle, and all the other bullsh*t people have been mentally masterbating about now for over a week.