Missing Malaysia Air plane

[KenAdams]

It's so sad. They still haven't found anything, but thinks it's crashed into the sea.

For anyone that hasn't heard

Goldie! Goldie! Goldie!

What do you think happened to it Goldie?

'I have Groupies!' Yep..

"What do you think happened to it Goldie?"

Anything I say would be speculation but it doesn't seem to be where it should be. The only rational, non-James Bond, theory I can come up with is that it had a massive decompression, as the aircraft descended the pilots passed out due to lack of oxygen (hypoxia). The aircraft reached the altitude that they'd programmed in but the crew stayed 'under' and the plane simply carried on til it ran out of fuel.

There's a bit of corroborating evidence - if this report is true then the mumbling would be the pilot speaking through a mask:

THE pilot of a Boeing 777 flying just 30 minutes ahead of the doomed Malaysia Airlines ¬aircraft was the last to make contact with flight MH370.
Vietnamese air traffic control requested the pilot make contact with MH370 to relay a message to contact authorities on the ground.
The pilot, who asked to ¬remain anonymous, told the New Straits Times that his aircraft, bound for Narita, Japan, was able to make contact using an emergency frequency.
"We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace.
"The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie (Ahmad Shah, 53) or Fariq (Abdul Hamid, 27), but I was sure it was the copilot.
"There were a lot of interference … static … but I heard mumbling from the other end.
"That was the last time we heard from them.
"We lost contact."

"I just want to know if I have a crush or a girl crush!"

Girl crush!

I knew it!

If there was decompression and they reduced altitude wouldn't they have come off auto pilot? And if they did and then passed out how did the plane carry on flying on manual control?

Disclaimer: these are probably really stupid questions!

Goldie: how come you know so much about this stuff? :)

Goldie I,too, wish to have interesting conversations around the fire with you about aircraft safety/disasters. (Sneakily I might add that my uncle invented the PAPI system used at airports and for the space shuttle landings and was given many awards for safety in the air.)

Anyways, tell us more.

So it may have crashed somewhere over mainland China along the route to Bejing or even more likely beyond the range of Bejing.

I would imagine there are lots of very remote, uninhabited parts of china where it could have crashed unseen.

Looking at a map of china if the plane had carried on past Bejing it could have ended up in Mongolia.

Goldie has a degree in aeronautical engineering and works in the field.

She has said it on this thread at least twice already, I am not a stalker. :o

But surely we have satellite cover of the whole earth so if it had gone to ground over any land, such changes to a remote area would have been noted by now?

back off Downton, she is mine!

"I would imagine there are lots of very remote, uninhabited parts of china where it could have crashed unseen."

If a plane can crash into a country undetected that means missiles can be fired into a country without detection.....is that right?

sorry, got lost sight of what threads is about

"If there was decompression and they reduced altitude wouldn't they have come off auto pilot? "

Yes and no. Yes, the autopilot would have disengaged but you use a little dial on the cockpit instrument panel to 'dial up' your new desired altitude, and the aircraft follows the instruction, automatically levelling off at the desired height. It still continues to work in altitude mode - well, it should itf it's functioning correctly. If the pilots were hypoxic during the automated descent the aircraft would level off and keep going on the heading it was last on until it was either upset (turbulence or soemthing) or it ran out of fuel.

"how come you know so much about this stuff?"

I have a degree in aeronaoutical engineering and I work ... - Oh, somebody said that already!

"So it may have crashed somewhere over mainland China along the route to Bejing or even more likely beyond the range of Bejing. "

I doubt that - if an unidentified aircraft had entered Chinese airspace they'd have gone up to identify (at least) and if no response... well... If they missed it, they'd never admit it as it'd be so embarrassing. It's more likely that the aircraft had deviated from that track - either the suspicion about it turning back to the Malaysian Penisula is right, in which case it would've gone down in the Indian Ocean, else it passed to the south of Vietnam, over bits of Indonesia (that are mainly jungle and radar cover down there is pretty poor at the best of times; worse at night) and came down in the Pacific somewhere.

"But surely we have satellite cover of the whole earth so if it had gone to ground over any land, such changes to a remote area would have been noted by now?"

Draw a circle, say, 3000 miles around Malaysia, and now imagine trying to spot the difference with the naked eye. The area is vast.

"Sneakily I might add that my uncle invented the PAPI system "

That's waay cool. Your uncle has saved many lives!

That's true. Never thought about China probably having a shit hot system to keep tabs on their air space.

Thanks Goldie!

Yes he did Goldie. He was a very clever man.

Downton

Presuming that the aircraft was not subscribed to the ACARS system would it still be likely that the satellite would still have been picking up a Ping from it but not collecting data? Is that a reason why it is suspected that the plane continued to fly for hours?

Presuming that the aircraft was not subscribed to the ACARS system would it still be likely that the satellite would still have been picking up a Ping from it but not collecting data? Is that a reason why it is suspected that the plane continued to fly for hours?

From today's news reports, they did have ACARS, they were suscribed to Rolls' power-by-the-hour and they did have Engine Health Monitoring (EHM). The EHM they have only makes a report when there's an 'event' - so it reported throttles fully open for take-off, then throttles back for climb, then throttles to cruise setting at top-of-climb. The press reports today indicate that the last ACARS message was at top-of-climb. There's no report on any other ACARS message from any other part of the aircraft - but that only means that they've chosen not to release the information if there's any information. The earlier, supposedly false reports, said that the EHM sent more messages. The Malaysian authorities denied this. Rolls are keeping schtum.