Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 vanishes without trace

[Barking_Mad]

Reply from Flightaware:

I am very sorry for this confusion. We actually did not have any coverage on the flight during the time period between 1:49 and 1:51. We lost tracking of the plane at 11:02 and the system then started displaying the flight in estimated positions based on its last known location and the destination.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA/tracklog

This flight operates outside of our primary coverage area so tracking can sometimes be limited.

Best regards,

Andrew Taylor
FlightAware

 

[goldenecitrone]

''Long story short, the aircraft passed through a dimensional fabric opening,....''

yes. really.

Too many Stephen King stories.

 

[2hats]

Apparently the final recorded route (via USG sources) is as below. Via Reuters:

They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading - following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities.

In a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 35,000 feet about 90 miles off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called "Igari". The time was 1:21 a.m..

The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called "Vampi", northeast of Indonesia's Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.

From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called "Gival", south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called "Igrex", on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.

The time was then 2:15 a.m. That is the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Bloody hell.

What do we think then? Hijacking of some kind? Bearing in mind that technically hijacking could also have been done by one of the pilots themselves or by someone else on board.

The Malaysian government have really got themselves into a fucking hole over this, for being so cagey with the information and backtracking all the bleeding time. I know it's a long shot that there could have been survivors, but at the very least being able to get to the plane quickly would have helped with the suffering of the relatives and friends of those on board.

 

[Indeliblelink]

There's an airport at Port Blair on the Andaman islands. Some Indian Navy & Airforce based around there too.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Well, unless it really was some truly clandestine cloak and dagger stealing stuff, we'd have heard by now if they had landed at any airports by now. And as much as I love a good spy story, I doubt it would have been possible.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Here are the plots of those last four co-ordinates according to the data from Flightaware's website.

What's a map of Hong Kong got to do with any of this?

 

[Indeliblelink]

@VP - No, but it might have been heading for it before crashing.

 

[purves grundy]

There's an airport at Port Blair on the Andaman islands.

Case closed.

 

[Dr Jon]

Experts suspect suicide bid by pilot of missing Malaysian plane

 

[Barking_Mad]

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Indian Navy is confident missing
Malaysian Airline flight 370 not near Andaman Islands because it
would have been detected by radar, said a naval official, who
declined to be identified as the official isn’t authorized to
discuss the matter publicly.
• Says the area is a key shipping route, heavily patrolled by navy to prevent pirate attacks
• There is continuous radar detection system close to Andaman Islands that would have picked up the plane

 

[laptop]

This is gonna be a film one day, right?

At least one.

One with snakes?

 

[Indeliblelink]

Radar ranges, not all of these would be on 24 hrs a day though.

 

[Citizen66]

Too many Stephen King stories.

Blates The Langoliers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Inmarsat provides a satellite service for business class passengers on flights.

14 March 2014: Inmarsat has issued the following statement regarding Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Routine, automated signals were registered on the Inmarsat network from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 during its flight from Kuala Lumpur.

This information was provided to our partner SITA, which in turn has shared it with Malaysia Airlines.

more info

David Coiley, vice president of aviation at Inmarsat, declined in an interview to discuss the specifics of the Malaysia Airlines case. But he said that in general, such signals are very reliable. ‘I‘d say way over 99 percent. It’s highly unusual to get a false positive that the system was still operating when in fact it wasn’t,’ he said.” [...]

Coiley, the Inmarsat executive, told Frank that the pings received by its satellites would not include data on altitude or a plane’s position.

 

[2hats]

There's a report (don't have a reference yet) that the Indian military have been directed to a precise location.

 

[Barking_Mad]

There's a report (don't have a reference yet) that the Indian military have been directed to a precise location.

Apparently a CNN story - but i cant see anything.

 

[Barking_Mad]

We know the aeroplane was fitted with a satellite system that enabled it to pass information to the ground during flight. It is my understanding that this system, operated by London's big satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat, received an automated signal from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at least five hours after the plane was reported lost.

There is no way that signal could have been sent unless the plane was intact and powered. These types of satellite systems can pass a range of data, even voice calls.

But even if the last communication was a simple, automated ping carrying no real information, its receipt alone should make it possible to work out an approximate position for the aircraft at the time of that last signal. This may well explain why the US has now sent search teams to the Indian Ocean.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26572172

 

[Barking_Mad]

Tomnod (digital Globe) has had more than 20,000,000 map views.

 

[Barking_Mad]

I was thinking the same myself...

"There appears to be a high probability of a 4+ hours flight in a "9-11" transponders off situation. In the US/Euro they have scrambled the interceptors for far less than this incident. How do we reconcile a hijack style flight with zero response from the military?

1. it was detected, ignored, no action taken and the military kept quiet.
2. it was detected, action was taken and military kept quiet.
3. it was not detected. The military genuinely had no awareness, military telling the truth. Therefore the region has no effective air defense monitoring.

Whichever way this turns out the air defense has got some explaining to do."

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

The app info comes from Flightware's website. Flightaware gets its data from the FAA's central computer (excluding military and VFR flights). Take a look at Flightaware's own website for the data. HERE

Scroll down to 17:49. All other data either side of it is listed as estimated, those 4 entries are supposedly not. Im not saying it's correct im just surprised it's not been mentioned in all the "theories" about what has gone on. Oh and it is moving.

Additionally i worked the following out to see if the latitude and longitude match up with the distance travelled at the 777's cruising speed. It would appear that although the data might well not be reliable in terms of it being the flight itself, the figures do tally fairly well (given a few basic assumptions).

I've messaged Flightaware asking for an explanation, as im sure there is one as nobody could be stupid enough to miss this.

I've not looked at this properly, but does the time start at 11.00am(ish) rather than Malaysian time?

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Tomnod (digital Globe) has had more than 20,000,000 map views.

Got quite interesting yesterday, but also incredibly frustrating on the Facebook page!. The amount of people who thought they'd found it, intact, without looking at the scale thingy below. It was obviously not the plane. It was what looked like a search plane, and I assume military, because you could even see the camouflage.

Early hours, when they'd put up the map for Straits of Malacca (or it may have been yesterday), someone even asked if that was a skull they could see I think I saw someone this morning ask if he could see a boot. I think there's also quite a few people who assume the maps are live. There's also some wanting maps from the night (early hours) it happened. Quite what they hope to see shortly after midnight in the pitch black (other than fire/explosion), I'm not sure.

It also completely wiped out all my progress on one log-in (ie. nearly 1500 tiles) so I gave up as I didn't want to go over the same space again. Logging in is also glitchy. Sometimes it will let me in, other times it won't, and I just search as a guest/new member

Lots of curious bits tagged yesterday though that didn't look like whales, trawlers, container ships or oil rigs

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Apparently the final recorded route (via USG sources) is as below. Via Reuters:

'kinell, so way off any area that's been/being searched

 

[Pickman's model]

max fenig and sophisticated aliens. it all hangs together.

 

[Pickman's model]

'kinell, so way off any area that's been/being searched

it's always in the last place you look...

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Bloody hell.

What do we think then? Hijacking of some kind? Bearing in mind that technically hijacking could also have been done by one of the pilots themselves or by someone else on board.

The Malaysian government have really got themselves into a fucking hole over this, for being so cagey with the information and backtracking all the bleeding time. I know it's a long shot that there could have been survivors, but at the very least being able to get to the plane quickly would have helped with the suffering of the relatives and friends of those on board.

But (and I could e completely wrong about this), wasn't it a case of it was only primary radar that picked up the flight? Primary radar doesn't pick up flight numbers/IDs etc. from what I can remember, so although they knew of a plane going that way, they didn't know it was MH370? (Although I suppose considering the situation, they should have looked at all possibilities immediately (but then I don't know how these things work)

 

[Barking_Mad]

Surely with the map search it would have been easier to write a piece of software (if it doesn't already exist) that sorts through all the maps and highlights irregularities? It's only sea and cloud, it must be reasonably easy.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Surely with the map search it would have been easier to write a piece of software (if it doesn't already exist) that sorts through all the maps and highlights irregularities? It's only sea and cloud, it must be reasonably easy.

and oil rigs, boats, ships, planes, tiny islands, shallow waters, oil slicks, whales...

What would have been better would be for Tomnod to have supplied pictures of oil rigs, ships, trawlers etc. so fewer people would have tagged them as debris

 

[2hats]

But (and I could e completely wrong about this), wasn't it a case of it was only primary radar that picked up the flight? Primary radar doesn't pick up flight numbers/IDs etc. from what I can remember, so although they knew of a plane going that way, they didn't know it was MH370? (Although I suppose considering the situation, they should have looked at all possibilities immediately (but then I don't know how these things work)

Almost certainly the primary radar coverage was patchy and so positively tying the target through several areas of coverage in order to constrain the route would be difficult without additional data points. The Malaysians simply couldn't be sure. However the Inmarsat data provides some of those points but, given the amount of RF the aircraft would be emitting (UHF sat uplink, VHF, HF, weather radar, even passenger's phones - I wouldn't be surprised if a handful were on and not in flight mode), it may well have been a bit of a beacon in the Indian Ocean for some expensive toys in the possession of a few folks with VA and MD zip codes. After all, they have form for locating the occasional sat/mobile phone user.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Surely with the map search it would have been easier to write a piece of software (if it doesn't already exist) that sorts through all the maps and highlights irregularities? It's only sea and cloud, it must be reasonably easy.

Did you actually see how small an area those maps covered as well? I was a bit when I saw what a tiny area we were working with.

No doubt there's people on the Tomnod Facebook page (not been on there today) demanding maps of the Indian Ocean little realising how tiny a percent Tomnod would provide them with to look at