Malaysia Airlines loses contact with B777-200 / MH370 enroute from KUL to PEK

Ok so I read the Malaysia military claim they tracked the plane via radar, knew it turned around, crossed over Malaysia and flew near Pulau Perak at the northern approach to the Straight of Malacca. Malaysia's Air Force chief Gen. Radzali Daud states that.
Were they searching that area while initially sending a substantial search party to an area they knew the plane wasn't? The more info that is reported, the more I shake my head.

 

Gary I'm not sure I'm understanding this post. I'm guessing Comm 2 or 3 are your channels. Are you a pilot and while flying monitor 121.5, sort of like a police scanner? Or, as a passenger on a plane you wear headphones with a radio and can listen to communication between your plane, towers and/or, other planes that have activated the distress?

 

He's doing what everyone is supposed to be doing, per the FAA-- listening to 121.5 on his second radio, while using his first radio to talk to ATC. I do it too.

Most of the time, 121.5 is reasonably quiet, so it's not an issue to have both turned on at the same time. For that matter, depending on how busy the airspace is, ATC is fairly quiet as well in the high altitude enroute environment.

 

That is what I am reading too, also the bit about women being invited into the cockpit. No one is claiming to have downed it, maybe its parked somewhere under camoflage, or it was ditched in the sea. Really really odd.

 

It seems like they're hiding something, to me.

 

Ok got it, thanks.

If a distress comes over 121.5, and you are piloting an aircraft, are you given further instruction as to areas or air space to avoid over that channel?

 

I don't know the 777 at all. But on other jets I have touched, there is a maintenance area with a locked door, only accessible from the outside on the ground, that houses the CVR, FDR and ELT.

 

Was the cockpit compromised????

"An Australian TV station reported that the first officer on the missing plane, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had invited two women into the cockpit during a flight two years ago. One of the women, Jonti Roos, described the encounter on Australia's "A Current Affair."

Roos said she and a friend were allowed to stay in the cockpit during the entire one-hour flight on Dec. 14, 2011, from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur. She said the arrangement did not seem unusual to the plane's crew.

"Throughout the entire flight, they were talking to us and they were actually smoking throughout the flight," said Roos, who didn't immediately reply to a message sent to her via Facebook. The second pilot on the 2011 flight was not identified..."

Might be a factor...

 

I'll second that.

 

Yeah, if we read the same story the Malaysian Airline said they didn't want to be distracted by investigating those accounts while focusing on the potential tragedy at the present. Like this hasn't been looked into yet?

 

I don't see this as a big issue as these modern planes pretty much fly themselves and I've also been thinking about the potential hijack theory ... and ... nowadays somebody would have said something to someone via their mobile, or heck taken a video and uploaded it to Youtube.

So how could they hijack a plane without anybody saying anything at all?

Well I guess they could have grabbed a child passenger and said if anybody moves or talks or touches their phone the kid gets it, but I still reckon somebody would have pushed a button on their mobile, etc.

Or did they fill the plane with sleeping gas so all passengers went to sleep while they were in the toilet with gas masks on? As the plane would have been on auto pilot the plane would not have altered course with both pilots asleep. They take over the flying and change course ...

IMO for the hijack theory to be possible it had to involve ground crew too, so if I was investigating I'd be drilling them, and if the plane did fly as per the military claim then surely that indicates a hijacking and it makes no sense that the military could track it for so long but not civilian radar? Also if it flew as low as some have said over land (Pulau Perak) surely somebody would have alerted the police, etc.

I guess we are seeing how used to planes flying around we now are and how big the world really is that this can happen and it's just vanished.

At this stage they have to be looking in completely the wrong place or it has not crashed IMO.
Pete

 

CVR and FDR are in the overhead above the rear galley.

 

It's far simpler than that. Cell signal jammers are cheap and widely available.

 

It's ridiculous to say such a thing. I assure you sir that no airliner flies itself. The 777, or any large airliner (either modern or antique), is an extremely complicated piece of equipment and it requires two well qualified people to operate it. The fact that it has a very sophisticated autopilot capable of safely making auto-landings under conditions of zero-zero weather conditions is NOT the same thing as "flying itself". I can guarantee you that if both pilots are incapacitated, the end of the flight will be punctuated by a big ball of fire.

Unfortunately, this myth of sophisticated airliners flying them selves is over-sold by the media and for some reason professional pilots do little to dispel this fantasy. If you have a chance to get a pre-takeoff cockpit tour and you express amazement at the huge number of gauges and switches, chances are one of the pilots will say something like, "Oh, any idiot could fly this airplane. It's easy."

Why commercial pilots do that I simply don't understand. When I was a co-pilot I used to bite my tongue when the Captain said something like that. As a Captain I never let my co-pilots denigrate their job in that way. Flying an airliner is not some kind video game.

Have you ever met a physician at a cocktail party who said, "Oh, brain surgery is a snap. All you need is a sharp knife. Any Boy Scout could do it."?

Does an air traffic controller say, "Any kid who can play Pong could do this job."?

How about a lawyer who says, "Oh, the law is all about doing a little reading and then writing confusing text using fancy words. Abu down at the 7-11 has a word processor and a thesaurus, so I'm going to ask him to take over my practice when I go on vacation."

An aircraft with an autopilot no more flies itself then a car with cruise control can drive itself.

 

PSk I totally agree with you. In the past, people in the cockpit, not smart but maybe not a big deal, as you said the plane practically flies itself. What is ridiculous is the girls took photos of themselves with the captain in the cockpit, 2 years ago when it happened. The Malaysia Airline is brushing off the 'allegations' that this happened. This was reported on the local 'News8' channel tonight along with showing their photos.
That was filler in the reports, I get a kick out of how the crazy stuff surfaces at just the right time.
The report with statements from the Malaysian Military Gen. reported the plane flying at 29,528ft. and not the original 35k ft. I'm not sure I could tell the difference, never mind in the dark of night. I probably wouldn't look twice.

 

Talk to a surgeon. Anyone with a minimal amount of training can handle 99% of the cases they deal with. You know, the routine ones where nothing goes wrong. Where you truly need the surgeon (and the pilot) is in the 1% of cases where something does in fact go wrong.

Yes, any idiot could fly the airplane. Until something goes wrong and they can't.

 

Huge reality check! Your dead on with the myth of autopilot doing most of the work.

 

Once the course is set and the auto pilot switched on the plane does fly itself, just like a car drives itself if we never need to change direction.

Of course gauges have to be checked, etc. ... but they do fly themselves.

At an Alfa Owners Club meeting we had an ex-Air New Zealand pilot give a speech as he had recently retired and he said it was not uncommon for him to wake in the middle of a long haul flight and all the flight crew had been asleep. Apparently there are buzzers that go off if the plane thinks this situation has occurred. Note this presentation was ~20 years ago so might have got some facts wrong.

So my point is the plane would fly itself long enough for them to take over control, if that scenario happened.
Pete
ps: And yes of course in those 1% of cases we do need pilots but most of the time flights are boring routines. BTW: That ex-Air NZ pilot never had anything go wrong in his complete career!

 

of course you see working phones...the phones that are not compatible stay tucked away, many carry different phones for the different countries they visit... many change SIM cards for local access and reasonable rates vs getting invoiced for use half way around the world...most cell phones that one gets from their local vendor do not have universal international capability... many vendors require that the phone be "unlocked" by country for international use, better rates or just be recognized assuming the phone can use the available protocol and frequency...

 

What planet do you live on? I use one mobile phone when I travel and it works every where I go... I've used it in the following countries: US, UK, Europe, Russia, China, Singapore, NZ, Australia, Africa, Indonesia, ... I'm sure there are more that I've forgotten but I've never turned it on and found it to not work.

Again - I'm not sure where your information comes from. Those points you raise are interesting and in some cases valid (particularly cost of use when overseas) but the majority of phones work globally (that is the 'G' in GSM )

 

You make it sound so easy. And what are you implying sending the SAR team on a wild goose chase.

Yes, i think the Malaysian authorities overlooked, lazy, incompetence in a few things (missing passport, etc), but also, this is the first time this happened to MAS. Heck, or to anyone else in the industry. This thing doesn't happen often, it's not to say a daily case basis. Hence, you can't blame the head honcho to send the SAR team to where the plane was last detected/had contact.

 

This theory, based on a structural flaw fact, makes sense: Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: US issued warnings over Boeing 777s

And I guess could explain why the plane changed direction and flew in the opposite direction so low ... I can only assume though that the pilots were not using autopilot or something?
Pete

 

No, as a pilot I always monitor 121.5 on a secondary or third comm. There have been a number of times that Center can not correspond with an aircraft because of distance, and if i am in between, i will relay the transmission, commonly done by pilots. Also on the hour,every hour, a emergency test signal is done. off the hour, if an emergency signal is heard, i will report this signal , as well as it's DME ( distance) and direction of signal to the controlling authority, and report a distress signal, in case it truly is a problem, instead of a hard landing.
Gary Bobileff

 

You are describing the plot of the film "Airport '77."

 

That is accurate --- a 777 on automatic control is capable of going a long distance without need for intervention if weather, etc. does not perturb anything which would require substantial adjustment (overrides) be inputted by the pilot.

Along those lines, I'll pose this theory over here as more actual pilots are probably reading this thread rather than the same one going on in the Silver subscribed section.....

What do any of you with modern commercial transport pilot experience think of the plausibility of this scenario ? ---

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something fairly catastrophic happened --- but only in, and only affecting, the cockpit. This incapacitated (or mortally injured the pilots) and took out both the transponder circuits and the flight computer.

Now..... here's what could happen after that.....

1) With the flight computer out, the plane is still fully operational, but its navigation systems will default into "heading select" mode and the (intended) route information programmed into the flight computer is lost and that route will be abandoned. There is always a heading selected in this system mode ---- regardless of whether it is a desired heading or not (it may even simply be the last position it was left in the last time it was used).

2) With the pilots incapacitated, the plane continues to fly on its own and automatically retain level attitude and reasonable airspeed ---- however, it will also automatically turn to change flight path direction to the heading that was left in "select mode". Now, the plane is flying in the entirely new direction but it is still stable and controlled.

3) Without any other system intervention or anyone to override or input corrections ---- the flight computer can't because its non-operational and the pilots can't because they are incapacitated ---- the plane will simply stay on this new course until it runs out of fuel.

The passengers and remaining crew on board don't necessarily know this has happened ---- no announcement was made to them from the flight deck. And, planes turn / make course corrections all the time, so who would think it was anything to worry about ? Remember, this would be the auto-pilot system making this turn --- so it would be executed in a very controlled and smooth fashion --- some passengers may not even notice it all.

Also, this is a night time flight, so no one looking out the windows would have any idea that they were now flying along a different (wrong) course. Maybe, at some point the rest of the flight crew discovers this when they enter the cockpit to see if the pilots want a cup of coffee, etc. ? But, what are they going to do ---- they do not know how to fly the plane, and with the com systems still out, they cannot make contact with anyone for assistance or to send a distress call.....

4) So, after flying on its own for 3, 4, 5 or so more hours on its new, and wrong, course ---- the plane runs out of fuel and stalls out --- somewhere now, way out, over the middle of the Indian Ocean (projected from its last heading direction).