Missing Airliner

[P220]

Vietnamese Pilots have spotted an oil slick on the water where they are searching for the missing plane.

It's also being reported that two of the passengers on board were using passports reported stolen a year ago.

This probably means the worst and that the evil did it's work again.

 

[Comrad]

They'll never admit it was terrorism, nobody has and nobody will. Planes just fall out of the sky sometimes. yeah sure. All I can think of is here we go again.

 

[moe smith]

Planes just fall out of the sky sometimes. .

They do. Remember the Rockaway crash after 9/11? Knee jerk was to think it was terrorism. It turned out not to be the case. We just have to sit tight and let it play out, for now.

It's sad when you have to hope it was "just" a catastrophic structural failure but that's the world we live in.

 

[Iggy]

Comrad,

Don't you know the war on terrorism has been won. This has to be pilot error.

 

[Jessie]

They do not just fall out of the sky from cruise altitudes with no sort of communication period. If there was a break up or explosion from that altitude there would be wreckage everywhere, not just an oil slick.
This one stinks bad.

 

[Fishslayer]

If it was terrorism I would have expected somebody to take credit by now?

 

[george minze]

In days of old terrorists wanted somebody to claim responsibility not necessarily the actual group that committed the act...There was the feeling that one way or another there would be a reckoning. It would come by a plane or drone high in the shy or some action by a special warfare group with little fanfare...Now we are not feared, our resolve is weak and we have become so self absorbed with other things that we will find a reason not to act......It is I'm afraid to say...The Bully in the playground theory. Unless somebody knocks him on his butt he will keep pushing people around, People just do not fear us anymore, justified or not.....I hoped after Osama we would once again Speak Quietly and carry a real BIG STICK....Just my pinion I hope I'm wrong. I am afraid that I am not wrong.......Sadly

 

[MrJT]

Well it looks like two passengers used stolen passports.... sounds like terrorism. I guess they're still searching the ocean around the oil slicks.

 

[DCWilson]

It's a six hour flight to Beijing from KL and contact was reportedly lost at two hours in. That's not over water between Malaysia and Vietnam, so I discount the oil slicks. It's over northern Thailand or Laos, depending on the course set. If the plane went down, it will be on land and possibly in mountains. If it was taken over and forced to ditch, it will be elsewhere in the Gulf of Thailand or possibly in the South China Sea near the northern boundary of Vietnam.

If the plane came apart in the air or hit the water at great speed you would expect to find numerous small pieces of floating debris. No such crash evidence has been found, as I understand it.

AFTERTHOUGHT AND CORRECTION: I was relying too heavily on maps from the news services. After looking at a globe, I can see that a great circle route that was lightly modified to address sensitive issues of air space might have flown over water slightly to the east of Vietnam and then turned a little for a direct approach to Beijing. If the plane is in the water, it's in the South China Sea, not the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand where most news media have been placing it. I don't know where the suspect oil slicks are located. I would still expect to see floating debris -- clothing, seats, cushions -- if the plane had hit the water hard either as a unit or in pieces. We need some significantly improved reportage of this incident from people who actually understand geography, flight paths, and the number of miles or kilometers covered during a specific length of flight time.

FURTHER UPDATE SUNDAY MORNING. Now it appears that the 2-hour statement was in error. There are reports now that the flight disappeared from radar about 1:30 a.m. local time, or less than an hour after departure. This would put it over water in the area wher searches first began. Malaysian Airlines released a geographical position that is not widely reported in news accounts but made it into a China News Service and a BBC report that I could find: 065515 North (longitude) and 1033443 East (latitude). Now the terms latitude and longitude are reversed, which is alarming and may be the fault of a news organization rather than the airline, but the positional information by itself puts the disappearance over water between the Malaysian peninsula and the southern tip of Vietnam. So searchers are apparently looking in the right area.

There is some evidence from military radar that the plane may have turned back shortly before disappearing, and it is also reported this morning that a search operation was started off the west coast of Malaysia on the chance that the plane overshot the peninsula on an emergency return.

The known information may be getting a little better, but a lot of it is still confusing and hard to put together in a sensible package.

I continue to hold out hope for survivors, who may exist if the plane ditched and people could get out before it sank.

 

[pawncop]

At any rate, a prayer for the lost and families, friends left behind. I think it is appropriate the airlines will report souls on board.

 

[moe smith]

They do not just fall out of the sky from cruise altitudes with no sort of communication period. If there was a break up or explosion from that altitude there would be wreckage everywhere, not just an oil slick.
This one stinks bad.

IF. That's probably the biggest two letter word in the dictionary.

What IF they lost the elevator. The 777 is a two person cockpit. Suppose the Captain or First Officer headed to the back for a bathroom break, airplane goes out of control, one person in the cockpit to try and wrestle it back to straight and level flight, but he can't (remember Egypt Air 990?) and based on the attitude of the airplane it's physically impossible for him to get any help, or even put out a mayday. What IF he doesn't follow protocol and neglects to be strapped in or don an oxygen mask while he has the flight deck to himself?, Lose the elevator suddenly and even he can't make a futile attempt at recovery. Though able to delay the inevitable, a flight crew wrestled with a stuck jack screw on an Alaska Airlines airplane's elevator off the coast of LA a few years back. They made a valiant attempt at it until it finally snapped and they lost all control of the aircraft. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder painted a clear picture of the chaos in that cockpit when the screw snapped, and it was ugly.

Frankly I'm in the camp that believes Egypt Air 990 was intentionally flown into the sea by the co-pilot but I only cite that incident as an example of an airplane who's attitude made it almost impossible for the Captain to even make it back to the cockpit to help.

This incident is certainly disturbing on many levels and currently there are more questions than answers. The fake passport issue has been raised as a possible connection to terrorism, and it certainly may be the case. Two guys get on the plane with passports from different "non threatening countries", each carry seemingly innocuous components but once combined constitute a bomb. Sure, it could happen. But another angle to the passport issue is they may have been used simply to get into China in an attempt to bypass official hurdles. I'm told the Chinese passport/visa process is extremely tedious and maybe those two people weren't allowed back in China. Who knows?

I don't.

 

[Jessie]

I hear what you're saying but the airliners today communicate constantly with ground maintenance by themselves. Believe it or not some crews get messages from maintenance control while in flight telling them to check something out that they're watching develop. They see and record power settings, speeds, etc., etc. It's all sent thru an ACARS system that is totally autonomous.
So if an elevator separates or most anything else happen with engines, etc., maintenance control on the ground will know about it.
I'm sure there is a record of whatever happened that they're looking at now.
These things take some time to figure out why something did what it did and they won't say much until they know.

 

[moe smith]

I hear what you're saying but the airliners today communicate constantly with ground maintenance by themselves. Believe it or not some crews get messages from maintenance control while in flight telling them to check something out that they're watching develop. They see and record power settings, speeds, etc., etc. It's all sent thru an ACARS system that is totally autonomous.
So if an elevator separates or most anything else happen with engines, etc., maintenance control on the ground will know about it.
I'm sure there is a record of whatever happened that they're looking at now.
These things take some time to figure out why something did what it did and they won't say much until they know.

I'm familiar with ACARS. MY best friend of 20 years is a pilot for one of the majors, currently flying the San Francisco / Asia route. Beijing being one of the destinations, in fact. It is because of that friendship that my observations of incidents like these are what they are, tempered. Over the years I've learned that in aviation accidents, things may not always be what they seem. Remember the Air France crash in the Atlantic? It took years before they figured out what happened. And there are others, as you know.

There are alot of sick people out there doing horrible things and this may yet prove to be a product of their efforts. However, until I (we) see something more substantive than an airplane fell off the radar I'll have to withold my criticisms and or condemnations of the cause.

News reports, as most of us are aware, aren't always accurate. Let me give you an example just this morning. There's a story out there by one of the primary news aggregators that the "search area" has been expanded from 20 nautical miles, to fifty. Think about that for a second and, at a minimum, compute the distance an airliner travels at 600 miles an hour over 10 minutes (the time interval between ACARS auto location reporting). In short, that distance would be twice what the new "expanded" search area is, at a minimum. All the reports have been that "they don't know where the airplane went down". Some even stated "they have no idea where the airplane went down" but somehow they'd limited the search area to a small stretch of the projected path and scratched their heads when they came up empty. Which part are we supposed to believe?

I'll let caution be my guide on this while I pray for the families of those lost.

 

[Comrad]

China has some terrible terror problems and several countries have travel advisories but not the US.
Canada:Advisories
CHINA - Exercise a high degree of caution

There is no nationwide advisory in effect for China. However, you should exercise a high degree of caution due to the occurrence of isolated acts of violence, including bombings and protests.

The UK also had a warning.

 

[WuzzFuzz]

It'll show up on a episode of the Twilight Zone.....I saw a episode one other time. The lost airline did just that. It reappeared several decades later.

WuzzFuzz

 

[P220]

NPR just reported that there were actually 4 passengers with stolen passports

 

[moe smith]

NPR just reported that there were actually 4 passengers with stolen passports

Yeah, that angle of the story actually came out yesterday and is still being investigated. The part I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is Malaysia is waiting on permission from the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam to enter it's territorial waters to help in the search. Sounds like it's been a one horse show so far.

 

[Stevens]

Whenever we have an incident like this there is a mad search for the "Black Box" it seems that information could be transmitted and collected back on land in real time rather than a device that goes down with the plane, or keep both methods. The flight crew conversations and reactions would give a good idea of what happened not to mention the other flight data. From earlier posts it seems this is already done on some of the mechanicals.
Steve W

 

[moe smith]

Whenever we have an incident like this there is a mad search for the "Black Box" it seems that information could be transmitted and collected back on land in real time rather than a device that goes down with the plane, or keep both methods. The flight crew conversations and reactions would give a good idea of what happened not to mention the other flight data. From earlier posts it seems this is already done on some of the mechanicals.
Steve W

In the sailing community it's not uncommon to see several crewmembers on board with these......

SPOT Gen3

.......during long distance racing. They're cheap, dependable and offer a backup to the boat's position and communication electronics. It also can send a mayday at the push of a button. With position reporting times recorded and reduced to 2 1/2 minutes, that's a 75% increase in the last reliable position over the current (10 minute) aviation model. It's been used countless times to aid in search and rescue. You'll find positive testimonials about SPOT abound all over the internet. Why something this simple hasn't been incorporated into commercial aviation is dumbfounding to me. I've also thought the installation of a lipstick camera high in the tail and/or strategically placed around the aircraft to record flight surfaces to transmit to the ground, independent of the flight recorders, would go a long way in finding answers to some of these incidents by providing real time video evidence of the attitude and configuration of the airplane. None of this technology is new or untested. We watched solid rocket boosters fall off the shuttle in flight for years and could inspect the condition of re-entry tiles. 45 years ago we watched live video men on the moon. Our small steps since then have gotten progressively smaller. I suppose it all comes down to being penny wise and dollar poor.

 

[Cyrano]

I remember being told that when an aircraft comes apart in mid-air, the radar image blossoms because of all the separate pieces reflecting radar energy. I hadn't heard this happening in this case. If not, perhaps the plane went down in one piece for some reason.

It wouldn't be too hard to have telemetry that transmits the 'black box' information to some location on land. It's been done with Formula 1 cars for years. They have no instruments for the driver at all; everything is telemetered back to the pits where the enginers look at it.