Twenty passengers on missing flight 370 worked for Freescale Semiconductors

[Kjelt]

wow that is a huge area. 
Yesterday was the international courtruling that Australia won against Japan and it's "scientific, yeah right" whalehunters, excellent result 
And yeah the military, we also thought like that but recently when Russia moved it's troops towards the Ukrain we are rethinking our investments 

[Wytnucls]

I'm beginning to think they'll never find anything. The pinger is all but dead, and the odds of having the gear in place to detect it and be in the right location to detect it in the remaining time is practically zero. All they have turned up is garbage, and the Indian ocean is a big-arse place. Seems like it'll just be pot luck if they recover anything at all, let alone actually find the crash location.

The search for the Air France A-330 took 2 years, in a much smaller area. Even then, finding it took a great dollop of sheer luck. A proper survey of an expansive area of the Indian Ocean floor, would be a massive undertaking, very slow and extremely costly.
I hope it will be done for the sake of the relatives and the airline industry, but realistically, the wreckage may never be discovered.

http://robots.stanford.edu/isrr-papers/final/final-37.pdf

[TerraHertz]

Dave said no more posts from you in this thread.

[CaptnYellowShirt]

The search for the Air France A-330 took 2 years, in a much smaller area. Even then, finding it took a great dollop of sheer luck.

But didn't they find some wreckage with in a few days? 

[SeanB]

AF went down with working ACARS, which gave a small search area. So far all they can say about MH370 is it went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Sodding big area of water, starting 3km from me. only thing they are sure of is it went down in the Indian ocean, not the Arctic or Atlantic. If it went in the Pacific then you basically have to find a small needle in a haystack half the size of the planet. even if it landed in Australia there is a very small chance of it being found in what is basically the world's largest sand trap. Saddam hid his planes in a much smaller pile of sand, and they have not been found yet, along with his gold.

[AG6QR]

Yes, with AF447, they immediately knew approximately where it went down, and aircraft spotted floating debris within the first couple of days.  Ships recovered the debris and positively identified it as being from that particular plane a few days later.

What took two years was finding the fuselage and the majority of the wreckage, including the black boxes, on the floor of the ocean.


In the MH370 case, there has been no floating debris yet identified.  If and when that does happen, the debris will have been adrift for a much longer time.  The distance between the floating debris and anything that might be on the ocean floor may be considerably larger than it was in the AF447 case.  So far, it's not looking like the MH370 search will be any easier or quicker than the AF447 search was.

Finding anything will be helpful, but it's possible that floating debris will still leave most of the serious questions unanswered.  The FDR and CVR would be very valuable in figuring out what was going through the pilots' minds when the transponder was shut off and the course was changed, and it should go a long way toward ruling out either hijacking, pilot suicide, or mechanical/electrical trouble of some sort.  But those recorders are very unlikely to be floating or easy to recover quickly.

[Wytnucls]

The CVR will only hold the last 2 hours of cockpit audio, but should still yield some clues as to what was going on aboard this flight.
(Incidentally, the original CVR system was developed in Australia and was first made compulsory by Australia)

[CaptnYellowShirt]

The CVR will only hold the last 2 hours of cockpit audio, but should still yield some clues as to what was going on aboard this flight.
(Incidentally, the original CVR system was developed in Australia and was first made compulsory by Australia)

Damn, Australia... AC/DC *and* the CVR. Next, you're going to be telling me that Australia gave the world the SCRAM jet or box wine.

[Wytnucls]

Not sure about the scramjet, but the inflatable escape slide, yes.

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

[CaptnYellowShirt]

I was re-reading the wiki article on the AF accident. It makes me so mad to see an accident like that happen because of a lack of basic airmanship. I mean, thrust at 100(+)% , stick pulled back to the stop, *and* maneuvering? If I died riding on the plane, I'd haunt him for the rest of eternity.

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

I just had an unrelated discussion at work and I had an idea - what if tracking system on plane was turned off as result of error due to bad user interface?
Trying to switch emergency navigation system they turned it off. Something like when I rented a car and trying to turn on wind shield defroster I opened a trunk (it was Buick I rented in US with obscure controls). I have UI problems like that quite frequently at work. Does anyone have high-resolution image of that panel?

[tom66]

According to other pilots, the turning off of the transmitter was almost certainly a deliberate action: it requires you to access several menu pages in succession and then set the mode to OFF.
The only real way it could not be pilot action would be fire/computer fault or maybe deliberate but as part of some checklist? (Radio malfunction check or something, not sure.)

[EEVblog]

According to other pilots, the turning off of the transmitter was almost certainly a deliberate action: it requires you to access several menu pages in succession and then set the mode to OFF.
The only real way it could not be pilot action would be fire/computer fault

Given that when planes crash, something has always gone horribly wrong (and usually a big succession of things), fire or some of major fault is the obvious culprit, by several orders of likeliness magnitude. None of the evidence really fits hijacking/deliberate suicide etc.

[pickle9000]

There is are a few things I've been thinking about.

- The partial handshake at 0019, that is the last communication meaning the aircraft was lost between then and 0051. It was off the standard 1 hour. First is why? Was there a system trying to communicate? Next is that this is about a 30 minute window at least it was not a 60 minute window which narrows down the suspected area.
- I don't think they have attempted to fly a similar aircraft along the route. It's probably worthwhile if only to verify the satellite data. Flying the northern route is also valid to prove the validity of the data. Malaysia air must have an aircraft that could do the job and it would be good pr. Of course if they disable part of the com system another aircraft would need to fly along with them to ensure safety (radar presence).   
- Assuming that they ran out of fuel on the southern route what are the minimum and maximum ranges.
- Other than the plane landing on the Hudson river has there ever been a large airliner that landed in the ocean without breaking up? I can't think of any. That goes to the question of debris, the odds say that there must be floating debris if it broke up on impact with the sea.   

[TheBorg]

Cockpit transcript has been released
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2014/apr/01/mh370-cockpit-transcript-full

[echen1024]

Cockpit transcript has been released
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2014/apr/01/mh370-cockpit-transcript-full

Whether it's accurate or not... anyones guess.

[TheBorg]

Whether it's accurate or not... anyones guess.

After all that has happened so far, better to just wait a week for the edited and proofread version. 

[Wytnucls]

Switching the transponder off is easy. It is just a rotary on-off switch and could have been done by mistake, but unlikely.
Disabling the ACARS system is more complicated and involves many steps that most pilots would be unfamiliar with.
The SATCOM could also have been disabled, but it wasn't.
Altitude and speed information is crucial to calculate range and it is all guesswork, at the moment.
Successfully ditching a B-777 is feasible but fraught with danger, especially if done at night, in rough seas. If the plane was uncontrolled, it would be more like hitting a brick wall, with dire consequences.

[TheBorg]

The CVR will only hold the last 2 hours of cockpit audio, but should still yield some clues as to what was going on aboard this flight.
(Incidentally, the original CVR system was developed in Australia and was first made compulsory by Australia)

I'm no plane junkie but if this is all that the "black box" is, if the plane got depressurized (most likely IMO), and flew on for several hours, wouldn't the CVR just basically have a recording of static? (Correct me if I am wrong). I'm sure if the plane was found it would likely show signs of what happened, but no black box recordings wouldn't help matters for sure.

[pickle9000]

CVR, You should be able to hear the engines run out of fuel and cockpit alarms, impact.

[CaptnYellowShirt]

Cockpit transcript has been released
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2014/apr/01/mh370-cockpit-transcript-full

The double confirmation of FL350 is a bit weird. So is the lack of read back on MH370's final transmission.

[EEVblog]

I'm no plane junkie but if this is all that the "black box" is, if the plane got depressurized (most likely IMO), and flew on for several hours, wouldn't the CVR just basically have a recording of static? (Correct me if I am wrong). I'm sure if the plane was found it would likely show signs of what happened, but no black box recordings wouldn't help matters for sure.

The CVR records the last two hours before the last engine is shut down (or it crashes). In which case if it was a ghost flight then all you'd hear are the ambient cockpit and engine noises, and maybe some controls surfaces operating before the splat.

[ivan747]

Cockpit transcript has been released
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2014/apr/01/mh370-cockpit-transcript-full

The double confirmation of FL350 is a bit weird. So is the lack of read back on MH370's final transmission.

My thoughts exactly. It's like they had communication issues or were a bit busy, which is strange once you're up there, above 10,000ft.

[Wytnucls]

Yes, they should have read back the new frequency. Repeating the flight level is also strange, which means distraction or tiredness. More likely distraction as the flight had just started, even if it was past midnight.
Difficult to read much into it, but it could have been due to the first symptoms of a problem on board.

No much is being said about the Japan Airlines flight that tried to contact them 10 minutes later and got a garbled reply on the guard frequency, if I remember correctly. Perhaps they were on oxygen masks at the time and quite busy.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/08/pilot-on-way-to-japan-says-he-made-contact-with-missing-malaysian-flight/#

[cimmo]

The CVR will only hold the last 2 hours of cockpit audio, but should still yield some clues as to what was going on aboard this flight.
(Incidentally, the original CVR system was developed in Australia and was first made compulsory by Australia)

I'm no plane junkie but if this is all that the "black box" is, if the plane got depressurized (most likely IMO), and flew on for several hours, wouldn't the CVR just basically have a recording of static? (Correct me if I am wrong). I'm sure if the plane was found it would likely show signs of what happened, but no black box recordings wouldn't help matters for sure.

In addition to the CVR there is a separate digital recorder called the Flight Data Recorder (FDR).
An FDR records aircraft flightpath and system performance parameters; airspeed, altitude, heading, engine data etc.
Recording time for an FDR is many times longer than a CVR, often 17 - 24 hours. If the FDR is recovered, the entire history of this flight (except voice) should then be understood.

Some technical info if interested - including survivability standards:
http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Flight_Data_Recorder_(FDR)