Missing Malaysia Airlines MH370... Thread 4

[GoldieMumbles]

Thread 1

Thread 2

Thread3

Can I ask how they know that the change of route was done by typing keystrokes into the computer rather than manually? That suggests they were still receiving data from the plane.

"What about this theory ?"

I did kind of allude to that on the lastthread somewhere but there are a couple of things that don't stack up.

If it was just smoke, the cockpit crew have smoke hoods in the emergency kit in the cockpit, so could still fly the aeroplane.

If it was fire, the aircraft wouldn't stay in the air for (at least) 7 hours. The fire would burn through the fuselage if it was hot enough to burn through wiring and the aircraft would disintegrate (did happen on an aircraft with a wheel fire).

On this latter point, I got to thinking at work today about 'tankering'.

A lot of assumptions have been made about how much fuel was on board and therefore how far the plane could fly. But some airlines uplift a lot more fuel at home base, where they have a 'friendly' contract with the fuel supplier, than at outstations. They carry the additional fuel with them to the destination so that they don't have to buy as much there, where the contract is likely to be less favourable. You burn fuel to carry the fuel all that way but it can be cheaper than the purchase price.

So what if < speculation > it was tankering fuel to Beijing?

DH used to fly to the Philippines a lot. He went from Manila to Amsterdam non-stop on a 777-200ER quite frequently. That's 13 hours. If the plane was tankering, it may have travelled nearly twice as far as reported... It might, in fact, make it to Somalia or Yemen under cover of darkness flying ove rthe Ocean the entire way.

This is all speculation, not fact for those who may not be able to tell the difference

But it could explain a lot.

Goldie qs:

'Question for Goldie (please do come back!), do you think it is possible for Malaysian Airlines to have got timings wrong initially? Is it very complex to work out? It seems very odd to me...'

'Goldie can a 777 land on the ground without landing gear? Or would it be safer to try to ditch on calm seas, the likes of which you'd find in the middle of an atoll?'

Think that was the two.

"Can I ask how they know that the change of route was done by typing keystrokes into the computer rather than manually?"

Because it turned at very specific waypoints (according to the reports - I cannot personally verify this as fact as I wasn't on board so please don't blame me if it's wrong). If that's the case, it suggests mechanical precision. But it could be done by a good pilot.

The Goodfellow/ trying to divert to Langkawi island theory doesn't explain how/why the plane made the weird kinked track from vampi to gival to igrex waypoints though.

arcticfunky agree. Also don't like conspiracies around the pilots either especially as the communication disabling is up in the air.

I think they have released bugger all information really.

"do you think it is possible for Malaysian Airlines to have got timings wrong initially? Is it very complex to work out? It seems very odd to me"

Yes. I'm sure that they didn't know everything straight away.

"Goldie can a 777 land on the ground without landing gear? Or would it be safer to try to ditch on calm seas, the likes of which you'd find in the middle of an atoll?"

Not if you ever wanted to use it again but if you didn't care then yes. Sea vs rock is like rock vs hard place. Water landings are exceptionally tricky. To the best of my knowledge only two have ever been executed completely successfully by transport category jet aircraft carrying passengers.

"Don't worry if you can't answer this..."

This

goldie that's interesting about the fuel tankering.

The range on the BBC map is huge. It could have made it halfway across Australia. Although for what purpose I have no idea!

I seem to remember some suggestion that the plane might have been carrying enough fuel for the return journey as well but the official response was that it only had enough fuel for one way. I'm not sure how it was phrased but it may have left some wiggle room for there to have been some tankering going on. Is this an accepted thing to do or is it frowned up & therefore might be being hushed up?

Re Tankering - Malaysian airlines would know how much fuel was on board (and the possible range) though wouldn't they?

The pointing the finger at the pilots bit smacks of trying to divert attention. That's a supposition but it wouldn't be the first time. Given he was a bit anti-government, he seems a bit of a convenient target. But that's speculation.

Grubs up - I'll pop back in after din-dins.

"Is this an accepted thing to do or is it frowned up "

Not frowned upon at all - it's standard procedure for a lot of carriers. Especially if you can't be certain of either the supply or the quality at destination.

"Re Tankering - Malaysian airlines would know how much fuel was on board (and the possible range) though wouldn't they?"

Yes, but given the information that's been leaking out do you necessarily trust "them" to be telling the whole truth about everything, or even coming clean about everything they know?

Etainagain not sure if you saw them but there are a couple of articles I found. I don´t think it´s something anyone knows enough about hence the lack of discussion on the cyber angle. Or like Goldie they can´t discuss it.

www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-could-have-fallen-victim-to-worlds-first-cyberhijack-20140316-hvji3.html

www.itproportal.com/2014/03/12/was-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-brought-down-by-a-cyber-attack/

And this from meditrina which was also helpful.

^BTW, cyber security was mentioned in the Ch5 programme a few nights ago. I don't really understand this angle, so don't tend to comment on it.

But one observation - if it was cyber attack, it is using a new capability that may not be well understood or even thought possible. And it does raise the possibility that this is a test run of a prototype and that the plane was targeted purely at random. That would also be a scenario under which no one would claim responsibility, either because there are horrified geeks somewhere who never thought it would come to this with real people missing/dead. Or because the developers have further use in mind and do not want anyone to discover the capability and they it is them who have it.^

Sorry no idea why my italics are not working!

Think I might be becoming a bit of a Goldie groupie. Nice to have your posts highlighted so I don't have to search for them.

And thanks to all the other clever, knowledgeable women who are taking the time to post, it's good to have the benefit of scientific expertise rather than the ever more weird suggestions going around.

I asked on the other thread, in reference to the radar-shadow theory, Goldie one of the points you made was that it would've been difficult to remain hidden while changing direction. Would a route like the one the other plane would've been on be relatively straight with minimum turns or would the path have been more zigzagging? If it's fairly straight I'm wondering if the turns might have been in patchy radar areas so 'they' might've risked it.

By tankering- do you mean the plane was overfilled at KL or that it had extra reserves from its previous flight? In the latter case it would explain a normal plus reserve amount of fuel being loaded at KL but would effectively been a "top up".

Thanks Livingzuid

GOLDIE!

Counterspies was a pretty good autocorrection

YY Goldie, the initial news articles about the potential flight distance showed two arcs - a red one for how far MH370 could have gone on a normal fill-up, and a much bigger black one for potential with a completely full tank & good conditions. It went, as you say, right up into Russia and west over most of Africa and the Middle East.

This would mean searching a third of the planet!!

Anti-conspiracy theorists: you're wrong, I'm afraid. Huge, audacious 'conspiracies' happen all the time - some may call them good business, some may say creative problem-solving, but they certainly exist. We only hear about the ones that got caught; plenty don't. Pragmatists ridiculed critics of Nixon/Watergate, of Enron, of Jimmy Savile. Those critics put themselves at risk to get proof, unsupported.

I don't jump to 'conspiracy!' as soon as a question is asked. But, when things don't seem to add up - and there's big money involved - I am cynical.

"Would a route like the one the other plane would've been on be relatively straight with minimum turns or would the path have been more zigzagging? If it's fairly straight I'm wondering if the turns might have been in patchy radar areas so 'they' might've risked it."

The turns wouldn't be very frequent so they may have risked it if they knew where the radar cover was iffy.

"By tankering- do you mean the plane was overfilled at KL or that it had extra reserves from its previous flight?"

I mean that it was filled to the brim in KL.

Off to eat something now.

DH says I have spent far too long speculating on this thread (hate it when he is right) and he feels neglected so I´m off to bed. Let us hope for the relatives that there is more news in the morning.

Thanks for the great discussion all