Missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 - Thread 5

[KenAdams]

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So Goldie after another day of no real news, what are your/your colleagues thinking?
I seem to swing wildly between various theories.

Thanks!

I've just looked at some of the images of the plane that Capt Sully landed on the Hudson. It looks as though those slides would have deployed onto the surface of the water horizontally, and presumably the passengers would have crawled out on the slides which were then detached.

Re rafts: presumably on water the slide floats level so you just sit on it?

That makes sense!

"So Goldie after another day of no real news, what are your/your colleagues thinking?"

No different than yesterday, really. Sceptical about the level of certainty of it being foul play. Hoping that it's found and we can all rest easier.

"I've just looked at some of the images of the plane that Capt Sully landed on the Hudson. It looks as though those slides would have deployed onto the surface of the water horizontally, and presumably the passengers would have crawled out on the slides which were then detached."

For an A320, that'd be about right. A 777 is over double the size and would likely stand taller in the water. But yes, it's probably not so much sliding as stumbling!

Not really OT but that reminds me. Ds1 reading through the bumpf on the plane when we went away and spots the safety card. Says rather loud, and dh is a scaredy-flier anyway "wow, i cant wait til the slides come out of the doors"

Tbh i kind of agree, its something you never 'in real life' see, do you. I am also weirdly jealous of my dads north sea chopper training (ie, they drop it in water and you have to get out).

When is it likely that they'll stop active searching? Obviously they'll keep looking but if nothing is found in the next what, week, or 2 etc when do we accept it as we'll likely never know & search is called off?

I've done no housework or shopping or anything for ages as I've been constantly refreshing this thread-(don't even bother checking the news as it's all on here), but I've dreamt about planes & terror activity for the last 3 nights running!

Are all the families together in a hotel or have any elected/been allowed to go home yet? The thought of the limbo that they're in is just unbearable.

"When is it likely that they'll stop active searching?"

It's so unprecedented in modern times, it's hard to know.

Permission please to go off-topic (though there is some relevance). When Goldie mentioned the difference between the A320 and the 777, I had a sudden memory flashback to when I was in my late teens, in the late '60s, and a member of the Royal Observer Corps. By then, the focus had moved away from plane-spotting (to detecting and tracking nuclear blasts) but there were still posters up on the walls of outlines of various aircraft (I think the most modern was the Trident). There were occasions back then when I saw an aircraft in the sky and could make a guess at what type of aircraft that was. (But the skies were emptier then, and I had better eyesight.)

The relevance is that I live very close to one of the flight paths for a provincial airport, 8 miles away (as the crow flies!). Because of the local topography, the flight path I can see aircraft following is probably relatively low-ish compared with my altitude. I certainly wouldn't be able to identify the type, and probably wouldn't be able to identify the livery either. That's why I'm sceptical about civilian eyewitness reports – an aircraft would have to be doing something extraordinarily different to be noticed, and the amount of time for visual observation/identification would be very short. But hopefully a good investigation would collate all observations, on a just-in-case basis.

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I'm surprised the sighting in the Maldives have been dismissed so quickly.

The Maldives military just said they can't find anything in their radar data, and voom, the sightings are toast.

Or am I missing something more ?

To me this makes sense:

Fire
Divert Langkawi
Overcome smoke
Plane continues into Indian Ocean
Overflies Maldives
Crashes into ocean

Few people seem to think this, because it can't be reconciled against radar/Inmarsat data.

But that's the real problem we don't know what that data is, so we can't rationally dismiss this type of theory.

Should I be worried about flying next week? I'm normally not fussed at all as I am a frequent flyer but this has me worried. Especially seeing as we have no idea how it happened so no idea how it can be prevented.

Achyfox, yet another expert I saw on TV this evening follows your line of thinking! but thought it was a decompression.

Nothing seems to have happened to any other planes allisgood1.

I don't understand what you mean by not knowing what the Inmarsat data is? What we know from the one ping is that it was on that arc and its engines had been on for at least seven hours by then. If it was low flying it wouldn't have been able to fly that long - see Goldie's comments on the Maldives:

By GoldieMumbles
The Maldives thing doesn't make a lot of sense to me. After all, if you'd gone to all that trouble to hide yourself, why would you fly it so every bugger on the island could not only see you but identify you. Like everything it's not impossible but I can't see why you would.
By GoldieMumbles
Just to answer an earlier question in the thread about the Maldives sighting - it is where the Aussies think it is, the Maldives sighting can't be true. It wouldn't get all that way at an altitude where you could make out the individual doors from the ground. Range is drastically reduced at lower altitudes due to the density of the air increasing the drag.

I don't understand what you mean by not knowing what the Inmarsat data is?

Well we really don't do we ?

For instance if the data distribution had significant variation it could be interpreted that the plane did follow that course or the variation could be attributed to random or systematic error.

If the Inmarsat data has significant variation it might be appropriate to give the last data point quite large error bars. eg 30-50 say.

You've lost me.

Flight time from KL to Male is about 4 hours (2000 miles). Then to get from Male back to the nearest point on the arc is at least that, by eye I think it's more like 2500 miles, 5 hour flight.

Are you suggesting the satellite is inaccurate to the tune of 1000 miles or so?

TheDoctrine, the technology that allows planes to land themselves on autopilot does exist, but I don't think its been deployed on many commercial airliners yet. My DB, who works on transportation safety regulation for the US government, says that the technology is so good that the FAA is considering dropping the requirement for a co-pilot and allowing planes to fly with just one pilot!

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I thought that post was going to finish "...with no pilots"

Doc yes it could be in significant error.
Problem is we don't know.

For instance if the transponder kit was in anyway affected by an electrical fire the extremely sensitive timing that is used to determine the distance from the satellite could be affected by a matter of microseconds, enough to generate significant location error.

If you think I'm wrong, feel free to just say so.

If it was terrorism related we would know. There are plenty of organisations monitoring "chatter". If something this significant was going on it would be picked up and there would be a noticeable increase in security generally and particularly around airports.

I got on a plane on the Thursday after 911, even if you had spent the previous week in a cave you would have noticed the difference.

No-one wants to say it; PPRuNe are referring to it as the elephant in the room. But there is an explanation that fits all of the available information, and doesn't involve any of these ever-increasing, far-fetched tin foil theories.

What theory is that?