777-200 Missing

[pgviper]

Originally Posted by Maestro

Here are some more more information on the plane heading to India

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mis...reports-n52561

And here is a map of the what they believe was the flight path

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BirwabjCIAACtVF.png:large

The U.S. government already knows what happened to that plane. There is no way that it just "disappears" with the technology that we have today. They are probably going to keep giving out clues on what to do, playing a game of hot/cold.

[italia]

Originally Posted by pgviper

The U.S. government already knows what happened to that plane. There is no way that it just "disappears" with the technology that we have today. They are probably going to keep giving out clues on what to do, playing a game of hot/cold.

I'd be surprised if our government tracked every passenger air flight every day. There are 93,000 flights per day around the world.

[u2b]

[/u2b]

[PSUSMU]

Originally Posted by italia

I'd be surprised if our government tracked every passenger air flight every day. There are 93,000 flights per day around the world.

Well then you're naive.. you better believe they do, but radar has its limitations.

[italia]

Originally Posted by PSUSMU

Well then you're naive..

Or someone is paranoid.

[Billup]

Originally Posted by PSUSMU

Boeing 777 found: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/for/4370884298.html

Leave it to a New Yorker to make a joke out of lost lives.

[Maestro]

Lets put it this way, Google tracks your ever move better than airlines can track where their planes are.

[PSUSMU]

Originally Posted by italia

Or someone is paranoid.

You live in Tennessee. I live in DC and work in gov't IT. I bet you'd be surprised if the gov't tracks all 3 billion phone calls per day too, huh?

[NemesisX]

Originally Posted by italia

Or someone is paranoid.

It's easy to track things. That doesn't mean the government has active, human eyes on that massive pile of data everyday. It's simply stored away, perhaps after being filtered through some sort of course filtering algorithm to weed out obvious terrorist threats, for example.

I'm not saying this is actually the case. I'm just saying this isn't an implausible scenario to me.

[italia]

Originally Posted by PSUSMU

You live in Tennessee. I live in DC and work in gov't IT. I bet you'd be surprised if the gov't tracks all 3 billion phone calls per day too, huh?

No. None of us are surprised about our government tracking phone calls in the US. It's old news. But, it's one thing to track everything in our country or continent or airspace, but another to track everything around the world. Does the US Government track every phone call made from Zambia to neighboring Mozambique, or every call from Samudrapur India to Muradpur India?

[SteveMD]

Originally Posted by pgviper

The U.S. government already knows what happened to that plane. There is no way that it just "disappears" with the technology that we have today. They are probably going to keep giving out clues on what to do, playing a game of hot/cold.

Wow. Tin foil hat much? You think the US Gov gives two shits about a routine Malaysian Airways flight across the South China Sea?

I'm guessing you thing that spy sats cover every square inch of the earth 24/7. This just isn't the case. The chances of a satellite capable of taking images (i.e. not broadcasting Playboy Channel) being over that plane when it went down are tiny. The real world is not like '24'.

[Soorena]

I found the whole situation shady. Think about it. Malaysian military says they didn't know the dot shown on their radar indicated that it was the flight 370 that was supposed to be hundreds of kilometers on east. And per their saying the transponder was off. So a military let an unknown plane that doesn't respond to calls fly over their lands and not shoot it down? Either they are hiding something, or we can invade Malaysia by just paper planes and some matches.

Originally Posted by Maestro

And here is a map of the what they believe was the flight path

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BirwabjCIAACtVF.png:large

Is the map legit? If so then it shows a human is at charge not autopilot.

[SteveMD]

Originally Posted by Soorena

I found the whole situation shady. Think about it. Malaysian military says they didn't know the dot shown on their radar indicated that it was the flight 370 that was supposed to be hundreds of kilometers on east. And per their saying the transponder was off. So a military let an unknown plane that doesn't respond to calls fly over their lands and not shoot it down? Either they are hiding something, or we can invade Malaysia by just paper planes and some matches.

There appears to be some doubt that the RMAF tracked the 777 at all so that may all be irrelevant.

[Sara]

Originally Posted by jwzimm

Not really. An airplane can fly at any altitude (up to it's ceiling of course). AF447 went down because the pitot probes iced up. Those probes are used to determine air speed. The airplane started getting conflicting numbers from it's three pitot probes and the autopilot basically said "F this" and turned it over to the pilots. The pilots reacted incorrectly and tried to troubleshoot the air data malfunction rather than just flying the damn airplane. This resulted in them putting the airplane into a stall and start losing altitude. It got away from them to the point where it was completely unrecoverable and it pancaked into the ocean.

Classic example of pilots becoming over-reliant on the automation and losing their basic stick-and-rudder skills unfortunately.

But didnt the stall warnings kick in because the plane was too low over the ocean once the auto pilot disengaged because of the the frozen pitot probes?

[richardbb85]

looks like they r getting close to the plane

[jwzimm]

Originally Posted by Sara504

But didnt the stall warnings kick in because the plane was too low over the ocean once the auto pilot disengaged because of the the frozen pitot probes?

The stall warning is based on airspeed. If the airplane doesn't know what the airspeed is, how can it work? The autopilot disengaged at cruise altitude as soon as the probes started reporting conflicting speeds. The airplane was still in stable flight and controllable at that point. The correct response from the flight crew should have been to recognize the failure of the pitots and put the airplane into a known, good configuration. This involves putting the engines at a fixed setting and the angle of attack at a known value. The airplane is designed to fly at known, good speed in this configuration. That would allow the flight crew time to properly troubleshoot the failure and determine what to do next. What they did instead is look at the speeds they were seeing and try to determine which was right. That is very wrong. When your air data is suspect you disregard it, not argue about it.

Also, by the time they realized they were in a stall and falling it was too late. Once you go past a certain point you can't recover. If you pull hard enough to arrest the fall before the ocean, you end up overstressing the airframe and ripping the wings off. They hit the ocean at approximately 10,000 ft/min. That is fast enough that it basically disintegrated the airplane on contact. Zero chance of survival.

[JuuS]

Originally Posted by jwzimm

You also fly in the US. Most US operators employ very well trained and capable pilots. The issue is the international carriers (specifically asian carriers). They do not have the ex military and enthusiast population to draw from so they get pilots without the basic training the comes from learning on Cessna's and graduating up.

No one is questioning US pilots capabilities here. I work directly with pilots and I know they know their crap.

Amazing how some of the best carriers in the world are Asian. But you couldn't be more wrong on your points. Seemed like you were back-pedalling once a real pilot chimed in. Cathay Pacific was built on the backs of ex military pilots. Back in the hay days, they were famed for landing in typhoon conditions when others chicken-out.

[jwzimm]

Originally Posted by JuuS

Amazing how some of the best carriers in the world are Asian. But you couldn't be more wrong on your points. Seemed like you were back-pedalling once a real pilot chimed in. Cathay Pacific was built on the backs of ex military pilots. Back in the hay days, they were famed for landing in typhoon conditions when others chicken-out.

So explain Asiana 214 then. The crew lost awareness of their airspeed and smacked a perfectly good airplane into the sea wall, killing 3 people.

"Back in the hay day" us the issue I am talking about. The pilots from those days are aging out and retiring. The new generation is coming in to take their place and are being trained to let the plans fly itself.

No backpedalling here either. I never commented on US pilots. My comments were directed primarily toward the Asian carriers that have been in the news of late.

This is all looking to be a moot point regardless. That plane did not crash. It was stolen. Likely by the flight crew themselves.

[Petros]

Originally Posted by jwzimm

That plane did not crash. It was stolen. Likely by the flight crew themselves.

How do you know that? And why would the pilots "steal" a plane? Is there a high demand for 777 spare parts on eBay or something?

[KingOfJericho]

Originally Posted by Petros

How do you know that? And why would the pilots "steal" a plane? Is there a high demand for 777 spare parts on eBay or something?

Not that I think it's likely, but someone wishing to do massive harm, a la 9/11, would love to have a plane of that caliber. It's not to sell it for scrap, but rather to wreck it in spectacular, although sinister, fashion.

[jwzimm]

Originally Posted by Petros

How do you know that? And why would the pilots "steal" a plane? Is there a high demand for 777 spare parts on eBay or something?

Of course I do not know that for certain. I am basing that assumption on the facts that have been released. It would take a very skilled and knowledgable person to know how to switch off not only the transponder but also the other comms equipment on the plane. You also have the fact that there was not a peep out of the airplane following its last normal transmission. If the cockpit was rushed and taken over the crew would have made a distress call before the cockpit was taken. You also have the fact that Inmarsat was receiving pings from the airplane up to 5 hours after communication was lost and the ELT has not been detected which indicates that the airplane did not crash.

As for the purpose, there could be many, all speculation. One of my biggest fears would be that they took the airplane to turn it in to a weapon. Land it somewhere remote and friendly, refuel it and pack it full of explosives or radioactive materials, and fly it to where you want to attack. I hope that is not the case but it does tick a lot of the boxes.

[Vic311]

Originally Posted by pgviper

The U.S. government already knows what happened to that plane. There is no way that it just "disappears" with the technology that we have today. They are probably going to keep giving out clues on what to do, playing a game of hot/cold.

Interesting, do you also believe in ghosts, beasts and things that go bump in the night?

It did just disappear with the technology we have today. That is why it is so concerning and bafflingly.

[Petros]

Originally Posted by KingOfJericho

Not that I think it's likely, but someone wishing to do massive harm, a la 9/11, would love to have a plane of that caliber. It's not to sell it for scrap, but rather to wreck it in spectacular, although sinister, fashion.

Originally Posted by jwzimm

Of course I do not know that for certain. I am basing that assumption on the facts that have been released. It would take a very skilled and knowledgable person to know how to switch off not only the transponder but also the other comms equipment on the plane. You also have the fact that there was not a peep out of the airplane following its last normal transmission. If the cockpit was rushed and taken over the crew would have made a distress call before the cockpit was taken. You also have the fact that Inmarsat was receiving pings from the airplane up to 5 hours after communication was lost and the ELT has not been detected which indicates that the airplane did not crash.

As for the purpose, there could be many, all speculation. One of my biggest fears would be that they took the airplane to turn it in to a weapon. Land it somewhere remote and friendly, refuel it and pack it full of explosives or radioactive materials, and fly it to where you want to attack. I hope that is not the case but it does tick a lot of the boxes.

The problem with this hypothesis is that a rogue plane taking off from an unknown location, flying with an unknown identity while maintaining radio silence will not really go very far. It'll immediately be intercepted by the airforce of a target country before it's in any position to strike. A 777 is not a small stealth plane that can slip under the radar until it reaches the centre of a densly populated major city.