Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 vanishes without trace

[Hulot]

Is difficult to perform stolen passport check in a lot of countries. In much of Africa there is no fixed line network and mobile telephony remains sketchy and sporadic. How can you check an Interpol database hosted in France or wherever? Malaysia arguably doesn't have that problem.

Do they not - in international airports at least - have at least enough connectivity to access ticketing systems?

 

[Barking_Mad]

Oil slick not linked
A sample of the oil slick spotted on Saturday in the South China Sea has been found to have no connection to the missing plane, according to the New Straits Times.

#MissingMH370 : Oil slick sample found about 100 nautical miles off the coast of Kelantan is not from MH370: MMEA

— New Straits Times (@NST_Online) March 10, 2014

 

[Barking_Mad]

Craig Murray. On another note - what you never hear about is the people who make the maintenance mistakes that lead to some of these accidents. What happens to them when they find out it was their mistake that killed a couple of hundred people?

There is no evidence at all that the Malaysian plane was brought down by terrorists. The Air France plane crash in 2009, for example, was caused by ice crystals in the pilot tubes giving incorrect air speed readings to the autopilot – this was because the plane had been incorrectly cleaned with a pressure hose rather than damp cloths. Most air crashes are caused by faulty maintenance procedures.

The two people on board with false passports were routed on to Amsterdam, and the obvious explanation is that they were illegal immigrants who had bought stolen passports. This is very common indeed. I know from my own diplomatic experience that passports frequently have to be replaced by tourists who no longer have them …

It is a peculiar [kind] of terrorism which does not seek to claim “credit” or publicise what has been done. No suicide videos have emerged. That the Uighurs would attack a plane from a state of their fellow Muslims is a ludicrous claim. Do not be taken in by the Ministry of Fear and its media lackeys.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/03/the-propaganda-of-death

 

[mauvais]

Craig Murray. On another note - what you never hear about is the people who make the maintenance mistakes that lead to some of these accidents. What happens to them when they find out it was their mistake that killed a couple of hundred people?

I don't know if you mean personally (e.g. emotionally) but in terms of blame apportionment and punishment it's a sensitive line to tread. Typical air accident investigation organisations (e.g. AAIB) aim to find causes without pointing the finger, and the culture is therefore one of openness to a greater degree than might naturally prevail. This structure doesn't exclude the possibility of prosecution, but if you start jabbing at people and saying 'you did X, you're off to prison' then next time people will cover things up and you won't get the systematic industry-wide improvements that have made incidents like this extraordinary.

It's rarely that simple anyway - e.g. someone pressure washes a plane because they weren't trained, or weren't supervised, or were given the wrong maintenance procedure etc.

 

[ffsear]

Happened with flight BA 5390. Maintenance guy installed the wrong bolts in the widscreen which blew out mid flight and the captain got sucked outside the cockpit and died. Can't see that he was charged though

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

 

[Barking_Mad]

I don't know if you mean personally (e.g. emotionally) but in terms of blame apportionment and punishment it's a sensitive line to tread. Typical air accident investigation organisations (e.g. AAIB) aim to find causes without pointing the finger, and the culture is therefore one of openness to a greater degree than might naturally prevail. This structure doesn't exclude the possibility of prosecution, but if you start jabbing at people and saying 'you did X, you're off to prison' then next time people will cover things up and you won't get the systematic industry-wide improvements that have made incidents like this extraordinary.

It's rarely that simple anyway - e.g. someone pressure washes a plane because they weren't trained, or weren't supervised, or were given the wrong maintenance procedure etc.

Thanks. I meant both ways I suppose. Just read a Japanese flight that crashed due to a faulty repair job led to a number of mechanics taking their own lives. Then there was this where the US Air Force knowingly hounded a man for their mistake, until he too committed suicide. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135113,00.html

 

[Barking_Mad]

Happened with flight BA 5390. Maintenance guy installed the wrong bolts in the widscreen which blew out mid flight and the captain got sucked outside the cockpit and died. Can't see that he was charged though

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

Not a job i'd be doing in a hurry. One small mistake and you kill people.

 

[mauvais]

the captain got sucked outside the cockpit and died.

He'd probably beg to differ!

http://www.pprune.org/where-they-now/311443-capt-tim-lancaster.html

 

[Barking_Mad]

A Thai travel agent who booked the men with stolen passports onto the missing plane, has told the FT that the tickets were arranged with an “Iranian contact” on behalf of clients looking for cheap tickets to Europe.

Benjaporn Krutnait, owner of the Grand Horizon travel agency in Pattaya, Thailand, said the Iranian, a long-term business contact who she knew only as “Mr Ali”, first asked her to book cheap tickets to Europe for the two men on March 1. Ms Benjaporn initially reserved one of the men on a Qatar Airways flight and the other on Etihad.

But the tickets expired when Ms Benjaporn did not hear back from Mr Ali. When he contacted her again on Thursday, she rebooked the men on the Malaysia Airlinesflight through Beijing because it was the cheapest available. Ms Benjaporn booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines via a code share arrangement.

A friend of Mr Ali paid Ms Benjaporn cash for the tickets, she said, adding that it was quite common for people to book tickets in Pattaya through middle men such as Mr Ali, who then take a commission.

 

[sim667]

This gives me the heebee geebees, Im going on a long distance flight in a few weeks.

 

[Idris2002]

I read the wiki about the Air France flight that crashed after leaving Rio. Dear god, that must have been one hellish way to go - three minutes of a nose up free fall from 35,000ft into the sea.

Air France pilots have a reputation for machismo that makes them fly through the worst weather, even if a wiser person would fly around the storm, or head back to their starting point. My boss refuses to fly with them anymore.

 

[2hats]

There are a couple of reports of debris off the SE coast of Vietnam (several hundred km from the last reported position). It will take several hours for this to be explored.

e2a:

Hong Kong's Air Traffic Control Center reported on Mar 10th 2014 around 17:30L (09:30Z) that an airliner enroute on airway L642 reported via HF radio that they saw a large field of debris at position N9.72 E107.42 about 80nm southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, about 50nm off the south-eastern coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea and about 281nm northeast of the last known radar position. Ships have been dispatched to the reported debris field.

 

[joustmaster]

A plane with a vertical speed of 0 suddenly increasing to -10,000 fpm is a pretty large acceleration

Without doing any calculations, I would say its an acceleration of just less than 10m/s/s

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Not a job i'd be doing in a hurry. One small mistake and you kill people.

My ex-brother in law's a top engineer at Heathrow. If you saw the state of the cunt you'd go by train!

 

[Dan U]

The two people travelling on stolen passport 'looked like Balotelli' according to a Malaysian official quoted on twitter.

 

[Spymaster]

Air France pilots have a reputation for machismo that makes them fly through the worst weather ....

Really?

 

[goldenecitrone]

He'd probably beg to differ!

http://www.pprune.org/where-they-now/311443-capt-tim-lancaster.html

Good job they held on to him. Don't suppose he would have survived a trip into one of the engines.

 

[ffsear]

Really?

too much of "the right stuff"

 

[Idris2002]

Really?

 

[maomao]

Happened with flight BA 5390. Maintenance guy installed the wrong bolts in the widscreen which blew out mid flight and the captain got sucked outside the cockpit and died. Can't see that he was charged though

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

Read it. He didn't die.

Eta:whoops, should read to the end before commenting.

 

[ffsear]

Yep, mistakenly thought he did

 

[Errol's son]

Do they not - in international airports at least - have at least enough connectivity to access ticketing systems?

Certainly not in all airports. Also, often immigration don't really care about which flight you are going on just that you have paid all fines owed in that country. It is down to the airline to check that the passenger has the right visa, valid passport etc for the route.

If someone slips through with a very high quality forged passport or whatever, the airlines often successfully argue in court that they could not be expected to spot that fake passport as their business is flying aircraft and not fraud detection. That is the job of immigration. Airlines can often get let off fines in these cases where it is hard to spot the dodgy passport.

What is needed is greater cooperation between immigration and airlines to keep people with false documents off flights. But immigration officers arent the easiest of people to work with!

 

[mauvais]

I did like this from PPRuNe:

Animals

Just wondering,

were any animals being transported as freight on that flight.

I.e. Lions or tigers, if so is it possible that they broke free from their cage and somehow got into the cockpit ?

 

[2hats]

I did like this from PPRuNe:

Only a couple of steps beyond "the KGB have stolen it to distract world attention from the Ukraine" or "the North Koreans have it in a hangar as a present to congratulate the Supreme Leader on recent election performances"?

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

This gives me the heebee geebees, Im going on a long distance flight in a few weeks.

I went on a flight to Thailand around a month after September 11th. Didn't even occur to me the plane would be targetted. Stop being so worried and start looking forward to it (unless it's for work of course!)

 

[Barking_Mad]

I did like this from PPRuNe:

Tigers on a plane. I can see it now.....

 

[Hulot]

Snakes. There was that documentary.

 

[Spymaster]

Lol, I wasn't taking the piss.

Got a link?

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

With the passage of another day it seems pretty clear now that the flight tracking websites were right, and the initial reports in the press/from the authorities were wrong about it being '2 hours into flight'.

eg in a BBC article from today ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26506961 ):



Certainly in general there are gaps in flight tracking coverage, so people should not make use of the raw data without understanding it fully, but I'm glad we have such additional sources of info with which to crosscheck official shite and sloppy journalism.

Which is why in an earlier post I was asking about how far off the east coast of the peninsular the plane would have travelled in that time assuming it wouldn't be descending (as would be the case if the flight was only going to Kota Bharu or Terengannu airports which are an hour's flight time from KL).

Why are they now looking on the West Coast? Isn't that a bit of a waste of manpower?

 

[Idris2002]

Lol, I wasn't taking the piss.

Got a link?

No, 'twas just something I heard in a Freetown pub one night.