Twenty passengers on missing flight 370 worked for Freescale Semiconductors

[Wytnucls]

The evidence is pretty much ironclad now that the plane ended up in the Indian Ocean.
Something more tangible would be preferred, but pieces of the airplane may never be found.
It is heart wrenching for the families, but there is no sense keeping them in limbo, when there is no hope to find anybody alive.

[EEVblog]

You mean like they just did telling the families without having found any actual confirmed debris yet?

  you think the "experts" mis-dopplered?

No, but I think it's quite poor form to tell the families it's all official without actually having seen or photographed any confirmed debris yet. Especially so given the shamozzle this thing has been in terms of communication.

[EEVblog]

They suspect the pilot to have done all this, but it could have been the new guy in the cockpit (the co-pilot). Until the flight recorder (the black box) is recovered we'll never really know what exactly happened.

Even if they recover the back box intact, it only records the last two hours of cockpit audio before the engines are shut down. So if it was a ghost flight, or the crew were taken out at the turn around point, there will be no audio to know who if anyone conscious was at the controls when it crashed.

Either way, their is nothing to stop it happening again. Maybe it's time for them to do something about it, although how would you exactly stop the pilot or co-pilot doing this?

You can't, and any possible solution to do so would introduce others problems that may be worse.

But then, as it's such a rare occurrence, maybe just say sod it and take it as just another one of lifes dangers? .. Their are plenty more risks in life that are much more likely that we each face in each and every day.

There are no shortage of ways for a single person to take out large numbers of people in their care with them.

[EEVblog]

You can learn a great deal from recorded sounds, whether it contains human chatter or not.

Sure, but it likely won't resolve the issue of who did it (if it was deliberate)

[BravoV]

With the latest development of the announcement made by the "Prime Minister" level that officially declared there are no survivors, even though there are no hard proofs, speculations now have a bunch of new fresh branches :

* Either the Malaysian govt. are cracked open under pressures that they just gave up by declaring that to make their life easier.  Although very unlikely (still not 100% sure), "WHAT IF" there are a survivors ? 

* They know "something" that is a hard proven fact but still a top secret to public, that made them so bold to announce it.  Still but why announce it knowingly they can't expose it yet ?

Which your pick ? or any other else ?

[BravoV]

If the plane has indeed gone down out there in the deep wide open ocean, their will be NO survivors now, it's been far too long since the day they took off.

Agree, its just we're talking human lifes here, you just can not easily & arrogantly declare they're gone just like that without any hard proof, not even a single tiny plane debris. 

What is wrong with a bit (just a tiny bit) of "humble" attitude that honestly announce that its a very-very tiny chance to see them alive, instead of "gloriously and officially" declare they're ALL dead. 

[Wytnucls]

If the plane has indeed gone down out there in the deep wide open ocean, their will be NO survivors now, it's been far too long since the day they took off.

Agree, its just we're talking human lifes here, you just can not easily & arrogantly declare they're gone just like that without any hard proof, not even a single tiny plane debris. 

What is wrong with a bit (just a tiny bit) of "humble" attitude that honestly announce that its a very-very tiny chance to see them alive, instead of "gloriously and officially" declare they're ALL dead. 

Are you suggesting they should be lied to, against all evidence and left on tenterhooks for weeks on end, until maybe, just maybe, some flotsam is found? That wouldn't be honest.

[BravoV]

Are you suggesting they should be lied to, against all evidence and left on tenterhooks for weeks on end, until maybe, just maybe, some flotsam is found? That wouldn't be honest.

What hard evidence are you talking about ? As we speak of now of course.

So are you saying that the expressions of "tiny-tiny chance of seeing them alive" vs "they all confirmed dead" is just the same for you ?

[EEVblog]

Very likely, but we can't not try, we just don't know for sure what will be found.

Of course, the search can't stop until the black box is found.
But unfortunately, once the ping dies in week or two (if it's even operational), it might be very tricky to find in the deep expanse of the Indian ocean because the debris on the surface could be many hundreds of km from the original crash site, almost at a minimum. So finding the original crash site where the black box likely is could be just put luck. Unlike the Air France crash where they knew were the crash site was within a day, but it still took them 2 years to find it.

Unless of cause we're still being drip fed unreliable info from the incompetents involved in it all.

Guaranteed.

[EEVblog]

Are you suggesting they should be lied to, against all evidence and left on tenterhooks for weeks on end, until maybe, just maybe, some flotsam is found? That wouldn't be honest.

No need to lie, just the truth. "We don't know yet" is the truth, as is "All evidence points toward it crashing here, but so far we have not recovered anything" is also the truth.
What if this "wreckage" actually turns out to be garbage or something else? which, whilst remote, is still a very real possibility, as has happened the other week. That could be worse than saying we simply aren't 100% sure yet.
IMO they shouldn't have come out and declared it done and dusted without having recovered real tangible proof of wreckage they could actually show everyone. Doing so simply shows how desperate they are to appease people, and that's really bad form, and has been the officials problem time and time again in this investigation. It takes as long as it takes. That sucks for the relatives and friends but unfortunately life can suck sometimes.

[Kjelt]

I think they did the right thing this time by informing the relatives what they now know so they can start grieving and find peace.
How long must you wait? As Dave said it can take years and years and it might never be found out what really happened.
So do you wait till you have 100% certainty and physical proof before you have to inform the relatives?
In that case some relatives would have been already waiting for over 69 years now to find any rest because some events are never ever solved:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19

[BravoV]

I think they did the right thing this time by informing the relatives what they now know so they can start grieving and find peace.
How long must you wait? As Dave said it can take years and years and it might never be found out what really happened.
So do you wait till you have 100% certainty and physical proof before you have to inform the relatives?
In that case some relatives would have been already waiting for over 69 years now to find any rest because some events are never ever solved:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19

Since your country flag is Holland, which is a developed country, I guess you've never have to deal with bureaucrats at developing/less developed country, right ?

Let me tell you the real deal here, which is probably you don't even realize or aware what that announcement will affect. By officially declared they're all "officially" dead, especially by the no.1 guy in the country, this means ...  ... the search & rescue effort, energy, resources, time, money ... etc can be reduced down to "necessary" level, and so on .....  , hell, they will quote the Flight 19 if needed as a reason in their announcement like you just did.

Just a reminder of what was happening not too long ago, not the same case, but there is a moral story IMHO that worth something -> Here

[firewalker]

What is the size of the ring buffer of the new solid state type of voice recorder? Is it still ~2 hours? If so the CVR will be missing some critical data.

Alexander.

[EEVblog]

I think they did the right thing this time by informing the relatives what they now know so they can start grieving and find peace.
How long must you wait? As Dave said it can take years and years and it might never be found out what really happened.
So do you wait till you have 100% certainty and physical proof before you have to inform the relatives?

Yes, otherwise it's stating the bleeding obvious for appeasement or political purposes.
People are not stupid, they know the plane crashed.
What they don't want is further bullshit, incompetence, and lack of evidence, which is all the officials seem to have come up with so far.
It seems relatives are not happy after the announcement:
http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/se-asia/story/angry-chinese-relatives-mh370-passengers-plan-protest-malaysia-embassy-2
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/466734/MH370-Angry-relatives-try-to-storm-Malaysian-embassy-in-Beijing

The problem is that this announcement would have been ordinarily fine in itself under other circumstances. But when you factor in the peeved off relatives and the way they have botched the whole thing again and again, the least they could have done now is to have shut their mouths and waited a few days until a boat can find some actual wreckage. It doesn't need to wait years, just at the least the courtesy of finding some actual wreckage first before mouthing off.

An official government announcement does usually serve one purpose though, it allows them all to be declared legally dead, which allows commencement of sorting out their affairs.

[firewalker]

It seems strange that not even one military satellite didn't pick the plane's change in course, red flag it and mark the crash site.

Alexander.

[Kjelt]

Well I do not think they could have said anything to not angry those people, biggest damage was already done from the start (how can you loose track of a plane and not know directly about it and take action).
But you are right that they could have waited a bit more for evidence searching vessels to have had at least a try/go for it.

It seems strange that not even one military satellite didn't pick the plane's change in course, red flag it and mark the crash site.

Yeah thought about that as well but it is not a high strategic area such as Afghanistan/Pakistan/Nord Korea etc. and we still do not know what the evidence exactly was that now surfaced.

[firewalker]

With Helios 522, when contact was lost the civilian responsible for the communication contacted Hellenic Air Force and within minutes fighter jets was accompanying the 737.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

They lost a plane from radar screens and didn't notified military radars/satellites?

Alexander.

[Wytnucls]

Not minutes, hours, nearly 2 hours to be precise (09:30 to 11:24). And the intercept only happened because the 737 was in a holding pattern.
The B-777 had just left KUL airspace, when the incident occured. It took a while to liaise with Vietnam's controllers who couldn't find the traffic on their scopes or communicate with it. They usually assume the aircraft is on the wrong frequency. They call on the emergency guard frequency and then ask other traffic in the area and neighboring control centers to try to establish some contact with the airplane.
All this takes time, before a search procedure is initiated. The lack of a transponder contact in all zones, initially meant that the aircraft probably crashed in the Gulf of Thailand.
Nobody thought at the time, that the aircraft turned around stealthily, heading towards the Indian Ocean. As the threat level is very low in Malaysia, it is not inconceivable that military radar coverage would be minimal, especially after midnight. I'm not even sure that the alarm was raised with the military in time to identify a target and scramble interceptors, as the plane was thought to be somewhere else.
Satellites are good at picking up distress signals, but not at finding stealth aircraft in the middle of nowhere, in real time.

[pickle9000]

I think lack of radar contact could be pilot related. If they new they had no transponder skirting the outside edge of military / primary radar to avoid getting shot at is conceivable.

[vk6zgo]

Not minutes, hours, nearly 2 hours to be precise (09:30 to 11:24). And the intercept only happened because the 737 was in a holding pattern.
The B-777 had just left KUL airspace, when the incident occured. It took a while to liaise with Vietnam's controllers who couldn't find the traffic on their scopes or communicate with it. They usually assume the aircraft is on the wrong frequency. They call on the emergency guard frequency and then ask other traffic in the area and neighboring control centers to try to establish some contact with the airplane.
All this takes time, before a search procedure is initiated. The lack of a transponder contact in all zones, initially meant that the aircraft probably crashed in the Gulf of Thailand.
Nobody thought at the time, that the aircraft turned around stealthily, heading towards the Indian Ocean. As the threat level is very low in Malaysia, it is not inconceivable that military radar coverage would be minimal, especially after midnight. I'm not even sure that the alarm was raised with the military in time to identify a target and scramble interceptors, as the plane was thought to be somewhere else.
Satellites are good at picking up distress signals, but not at finding stealth aircraft in the middle of nowhere, in real time.

I think it is quite likely other Nation's aircraft often contravene Malaysia's air space,the Military know about it,& no longer "hit the panic button",but just keep an eye on them.
Perhaps they were expecting just such a "fly through",& wrote off MH370 as one of those.

Mechanical/Electrical failure is,in my opinion,much more likely than any actions of the crew,or anybody else.

All the stories about the plane possibly landing somewhere were never anything but fantasy,in any case.

As soon as it was overdue long enough for the fuel to have run out.it was obvious MH370 had crashed somewhere,the question was always where?

And as for the Southern Indian Ocean,there's a whole lot of nothing out there!

[pickle9000]

I think it was mechanical or fire as well. I should have said if I was a pilot, the plane is on fire, no transponder I would head for the closest runway which is unarmed. 

[Psi]

It creeps me out thinking that the plane may have flown on for 6 hours by itself.


Engines running, autopilot flying the plane, everyone dead, mostly quiet.

A few hours later the dull sounds coming from passengers headphones begin to end one by one as movies finish on the flight entertainment system.

Quietly the plane continues for 5 hours with the flight computer making ongoing corrections for crosswinds to maintain course and altitude.

The fuel gauges slowly drift down until the silence is interrupted by cockpit alarms sounding as the engines flame out one by one....

A few extra minutes of dead silence follows....

Then the last words ever spoken on the plane are uttered by the flight computer over the cockpit speaker...

"Too Low,  Terrain" 

 

It sends chills down my spine

[pickle9000]

That is the stuff of nightmares and even worse it is very likely.

[Psi]

That is the stuff of nightmares and even worse it is very likely.

Everyone being dead from smoke/fumes is much better than being awake for hours panicking on a plane that no one can fly.

[pickle9000]

That is the stuff of nightmares and even worse it is very likely.

Everyone being dead from smoke/fumes is much better than being awake for hours panicking on a plane that no one can fly.

Still creepy, and hopefully there was no pain for the crew and passengers.