Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 vanishes without trace

[2hats]

Desperate to put the boot in to Boeing after Air France...

To be fair, I suspect Airbus Group would like it to be resolved almost as much as Boeing as there are undoubtedly lessons they can learn.

(Just to add that a significant part of the AF447 incident was down to crew training/inexperience; the pitot icing event was recoverable).

 

[Sirena]

I saw the headline of the Daily Express today.

It read "CRAZED PILOT'S SUICIDE PLUNGE"...

Now, I know that the circumstantial evidence may be pointing approximately to that sort of conclusion but I don't think that headline would have been considered acceptable if the pilot had been British or American.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

To be fair, I suspect Airbus Group would like it to be resolved almost as much as Boeing as there are undoubtedly lessons they can learn.

Yeah, but no lols, gotta take 'em where you can with this situation.

(Just to add that a significant part of the AF447 incident was down to crew training/inexperience; the pitot icing event was recoverable).

IMHO the poor piloting skills, and clearly there were some, have been much overblown by the vested interests in the investigation.

Clearly Airbus would like 100% of the blame shifted on to the pilots. Air France would be in a tizz; bought a shite plane or got shit pilots?*

The facts are the plane was critically damaged by weather events that Airbus's very expensive and modern airliner couldn't cope with. Having not followed the whole thing that closely, have the issues with the sensors been resolved yet?


* Shit pilots would be cheaper for Air France.

 

[2hats]

The facts are the plane was critically damaged by weather events that Airbus's very expensive and modern airliner couldn't cope with.

The same type of event, pitot icing->airspeed misinformation->drops to alternate law and autopilot disconnect, occurred on other flights (several AF, TAM, NWA) and they were manually recovered by the flight crews.

Having not followed the whole thing that closely, have the issues with the sensors been resolved yet?

You're looking for Airworthiness Directives 2009-0195 from EASA and FR Doc E9-21368 from the FAA. In summary: yes (it was a particular model of pitot from Thales that was prone to this problem).

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

The same type of event, pitot icing->airspeed misinformation->drops to alternate law and autopilot disconnect, occurred on other flights (several AF, TAM, NWA) and they were manually recovered by the flight crews.


You're looking for Airworthiness Directives 2009-0195 from EASA and FR Doc E9-21368 from the FAA. In summary: yes (it was a particular model of pitot from Thales that was prone to this problem).

With the relentless drive to automation, with the eventual aim to do away with two people who cost airlines around £400K PA sat up front, surely the manufacturers should be doing all they can to make sure that planes that supposedly fly themselves actually can fly themselves?

 

[2hats]

With the relentless drive to automation, with the eventual aim to do away with two people who cost airlines around £400K PA sat up front, surely the manufacturers should be doing all they can to make sure that planes that supposedly fly themselves actually can fly themselves?

(Some of) the conspiracy theorists would have you believe that that is what flight 370 is all about...

 

[existentialist]

In my experience the fact alone that one is suicidal usually has little impact on their ability to make moral judgements; rather, suicidal people are more willing to do the wrong thing if they think it's 'worth' it. I'm not saying it's black and white and I can't give you a neat, clear-cut theory on what I think is ok and what isn't. But generally I wouldn't condemn someone who stepped out in front of a train but I would condemn someone who deliberately crashed a plane that was also carrying passengers and crew.

I've been there, a lot of people have. I'm sure that most would agree with me when I say it's quite possible to plan to end your life but still think that taking another's is abhorrent.

Then we must agree to differ. I don't dispute what you're saying about the abhorrence of someone taking others' lives in the course of suicide, but that was never my point, and seems not to be particularly relevant, given that the perpetrator, assuming the suicide completes, is dead anyway. I'm not going to waste my time or mental energies condemning someone who is not in a position where that condemnation can be any use.

 

[2hats]

e2a: am intrigued as to whether the insets are true to the locations indicated (they may of course be processed and/or other spectral channels at the same geographical location) or whether the back image is simply 'wallpaper'.

Someone else has been pondering the same: amateur hour at the malaysian remote sensing agency.

 

[eskdave]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok

 

[2hats]

Trying to differentiate between white caps and potential items of interest on Tomnod is a little difficult without at least knowing what wavelength images are captured at but there are some intriguing images turning up from the right neck of the woods.

Thai and Japanese imagery now pointing to hundreds of objects in the area.

 

[frogwoman]

Was the pilot still alive when he crashed it then?

 

[kebabking]

Was the pilot still alive when he crashed it then?

no one knows, or can know until the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder get recovered.

i'd be interested to know about the auto-pilot systems and whether they 'kick-in' and try to glide the aircraft once it runs out of fuel if theres no input from the flight controls - anyone know?

 

[gentlegreen]

i'd be interested to know about the auto-pilot systems and whether they 'kick-in' and try to glide the aircraft once it runs out of fuel if theres no input from the flight controls - anyone know?

It'd never be able to glide the aircraft well enough.

 

[weltweit]

It'd never be able to glide the aircraft well enough.

Why not? is there some reason?

I think a computer could be made to glide. Speed up by pointing down, maintain more than stalling speed through descent angle, what to do then? ..... when descent inevitably meets ground.

 

[gentlegreen]

Well for a start it probably wouldn't know to land with the nose up enough - and then there's the undercarriage... and then there's what direction the crashing waves are going.

 

[kebabking]

It'd never be able to glide the aircraft well enough.

would imagine that the AP would be able to do it brilliantly, it just wouldn't be able to do it indefinately - hence i wondered if it would try...

 

[gentlegreen]

Oh I see what you mean - adjust the trim to compensate for no engines ...
Well for a start the turbine generator seems to have to be lowered manually ..

 

[kebabking]

Well for a start it probably wouldn't know to land with the nose up enough - and then there's the undercarriage... and then there's what direction the crashing waves are going.

i asked about gliding it, not landing it - and automatic landing systems are very good these days, the US Navy uses them to land fighters on aircraft carriers...

i would imagine that at the point where 200 tons of aircraft hits the sea at 130+kts, which direction the waves are going becomes somewhat immaterial.

 

[laptop]

I think a computer could be made to glide. Speed up by pointing down, maintain more than stalling speed through descent angle, what to do then? ..... when descent inevitably meets ground.

The question is probably less "could it" than "has it" been made. Outside of Gimli, there's not been much call for gliding skillz. And in that case:

[The pilots] searched their emergency checklist for the section on flying the aircraft with both engines out, only to find that no such section existed.[3]

 

[Citizen66]

So is there anything concrete as of yet? I've only been faintly following this really but there now appears to be suggestions that the plane ended up somewhere in the Indian Ocean and the Captain had relationship problems. Is that the gist so far, gabi ?

Let's be realistic shall we? The cockpit was hijacked by fuckwits looking forward to their dozens of virgins in a few hours.

What a wonderful religion. I hate all religions, but Islam certainly wins this race. Idiots.

 

[Citizen66]

Of course if it turns out not to be then this will just have been an exercise in airing your prejudices.

 

[2hats]

i'd be interested to know about the auto-pilot systems and whether they 'kick-in' and try to glide the aircraft once it runs out of fuel if theres no input from the flight controls - anyone know?

I don't know for sure but I suspect it goes something like: when fuel exhaustion is reached, the flight computers will lose a number of data inputs (loss of power). There should be a short switch via battery to the ram air turbine which will automatically deploy in such a scenario**. But the RAT only powers a few vital systems (basic navigation, hydraulics to handle a subset of flight controls). I don't know if the RAT would power the autopilot but that's probably moot as the primary flight control system will, on fuel exhaustion and loss of a number of sensor inputs, degrade to secondary or direct modes wherein the autopilot would disconnect anyway (I could imagine that in the case of fuel exhaustion the autopilot isn't designed to work as flight crew intervention would be anticipated). Consequently, without pilot input, one would imagine the aircraft would inevitably, and in a short space of time, either roll and yaw to one side and thus spiral to the surface, or pitch trim would bring it to a stall and then dive. An extended glide would need flight crew.

** Now that could be the source of the final, partial, aperiodic handshake seen by Inmarsat as power switches and systems start to reset or it might be an indication of a sudden change of course (eg turn and dive) and the antenna now less favourably oriented towards the satellite.

 

[DownwardDog]

no one knows, or can know until the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder get recovered.

i'd be interested to know about the auto-pilot systems and whether they 'kick-in' and try to glide the aircraft once it runs out of fuel if theres no input from the flight controls - anyone know?

It's type dependent. The left engine was an enabling discrete on the 757/767 AP so that definitely wouldn't do it.

 

[DownwardDog]

i asked about gliding it, not landing it - and automatic landing systems are very good these days, the US Navy uses them to land fighters on aircraft carriers...

The AP is cued from the precision approach radar on the ship on carrier landings so it's not quite fully autonomous AP operation.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Plane may have been going faster than thought, which means a new new search area

http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/documents/28032014MH370Update23.pdf

 

[tombowler]

Plane may have been going faster than thought, which means a new new search area

http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/documents/28032014MH370Update23.pdf

I read about this first thing today and thought, they have all this satellite data of areas of debris but now they are going to leave that to look someplace else, I am not seeing the sense in it right now.

 

[Dogsauce]

The British media must be getting massively impatient, waiting so long for an iconic image of something like a floating tailfin to use as a header logo in articles or background for news reports.

 

[maomao]

The British media must be getting massively impatient, waiting so long for an iconic image of something like a floating tailfin to use as a header logo in articles or background for news reports.

They've obviously decided to run with it until the plane turns up. Which given the size of the plane compared to the Indian Ocean could be fucking years.

 

[Indeliblelink]

Someone mentioned on Channel 4 News the other night that the cockpit voice recording part of the black box only has a record of the last 30 minutes of any flight (ie before a crash). So even if they find it there might not be anything on it as the important time was when it was still near Malaysia, hours earlier.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Someone mentioned on Channel 4 News the other night that the cockpit voice recording part of the black box only has a record of the last 30 minutes of any flight (ie before a crash). So even if they find it there might not be anything on it as the important time was when it was still near Malaysia, hours earlier.

I guess the bit when it was near Malaysia went something like, "What do you mean you haven't got the map?" "I thought you were bringing it!" "Shall we ask someone for directions?" "Nah, I reckon if you turn left it will be down there somewhere..."