How in the world can we lose an entire jumbo jet today?

A laughed as soon as I saw that and here's why...... about the 3:25 mark onwards, I'm sure you'll never think a safety demo is boring ever again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O53q8MlGAFk

<img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />

Classic. I'm venturing a guess that since a bullet went through the fuselage, while flying at 8,000 feet, that the gun probably was not handled as per the policy directives. <img src="<>/crazy.gif" alt="crazy" title="crazy" height="15" width="15" />

Rolls Royce figured it out! Their system broadcasts engine data to the sky and they read and monitor it real time for their clients. Granted, their engines aren't on everything in the air...but their system seems to have decent coverage since they seem to be the one legitimate source of data that indicated this flight went on for some time. Too bad that data was focused on just engine info.

I mean, seriously...in today's day and age where you can by 100GB of cloud storage for $1.99/month it's just not THAT much info. Nobody needs to monitor it other than to make sure things are working - it just needs to be available should you want to analyze it.

Insurance companies offer wireless trackers that you can plug into your ODBC port in your car to (supposedly) give you a discount if you are a good driver (that might not be beneficial to some)...obviously that won't work over the ocean but it's just not that hard to collect and maintain data. A ping of data every 5 minutes from a jet relaying speed, heading, altitude, and location isn't that complex.

True, but as we are hearing today, Malaysian Airlines didn't even pay for the Satellite Communications, I've got to wonder how much of the required, and incidental mx they were doing. Did I mention it's about money?

Safety costs money. Training costs money, mx costs money, sat com costs money.

Didn't they do something like that in the Die Hard movie?

Because that could happen.

Then the bad guys already know what Bruce Willis has coming for them which will keep us plenty safe.

read an thought provoking idea this morning...if the plane did actually change altitudes, what are the possibilities they climbed to that absurd altitude to affect the cabin pressurization in some way to incapacitate the passengers? How does the timing of that work out with the supplemental oxygen duration for the passengers vs. pilots?

Can exceeding the service ceiling for the plane do, or allow a pilot to do, something to the cabin pressurization for 15 minutes?

so if some bad dudes were to

capture

the plane, kill the crew/passengers (maybe by this altitude thing Jake proposed), to use it later for some nefarious purpose, wouldn't people be able to track the plane when it's airborne again and over some area with radar?

If it changes its signals (however you could do that) and re-paints the plane...?

Or would it get picked off the minute some radar operator notices an

unmarked

(or no transponder) plane going through their airspace? And send some nicely painted fighter intercept jets to get close-up and personal with the plane?

Storage is not network bandwidth. That said the apparent occasional phone home data stream from the engines wouldn't take that much.

I don't think that the altitude would be required to eliminate the passengers. The oxygen masks for the passengers do not have a pressure supply. They wouldn't last too long at 39,000 or 45,000ft

Small pressurized planes have a way to decrease cabin pressure by control of bleed air and outflow valves. I would assume the 777 would not have a way to manually decrease cabin pressure.

still... if I were wanting a 777 for doing bad things to others, what use would it be now that everyone knows it's missing (callsign, ID, etc)?

When I crank it up again, I'm sure it would be

visible

in many different ways (all the different telemetry devices and transponders) so I probably couldn't go fly it all over without being detected.

Could they part it out and make money that way? Kind of risky chop-shop, but the Somalis seem to like to hijack ships so I guess it COULD happen..>?

Yes, in fact all commercial airliners have both an automatic mode and a manual back up for cabin pressure control. Most of the newer Boeings actually have 2 automatic controllers and manual back up (757-767-777-747's)

If a person knows hot to operate the system in manual, it's an easy thing to open both outflow valves and turn off the pressurization system, and let the cabin altitude climb up to cruising altitude. Now, you would NEVER do this, unless you had smoke/fire and you were below 10,000'.

Yes, in some Hollywood movie, staring Bruce Willis, I'm sure the pilots did just that, and the pilots put on their O2 masks, and all the people in the back, including the would be hijackers, passed out from lack of oxygen. But they would wake up when you descended to below 14,000' or so.

I guess you could take the plane up to 45,000' and depressurize it, stay up there until you think everyone in the back is dead, and then come back down, but you've only got 1hr. of O2 for yourself, less if you are at 45,000'.

It happens all the time...in Hollywood. (insert large eye roll emoticon)

Actually, I was referring to that one where they changed the ILS settings and had that plane crash into the ground.

but yeah, didn't the other movie with John Leguizamo as a delta force dude try to re-capture a hi-jacked plane in mid-air with the stealth fighter? and disarm a bomb with a soda straw?

So, supposedly the pilot was a political fanatic, and the object of his political passion has apparently just been jailed hours before the flight took off for

Homosexuality

which is being seen in Malaysia as a political persecution.

The pilot also supposedly made radio contact indicating all clear with the control tower AFTER the first antenna went dark, which rules out catastrophic failure. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html)

I saw that same story on one of my pilot web boards yesterday, it was later debunked as nonsense, the wife and kids thing, and if he's on his way to work, I doubt if he'd know that one of his 'leaders' was being jailed, just hours before the flight departs, because he's busy, getting ready to fly! Not watching CNN!

More grasping at straws....

You do realize the Malaysian Government, and Malaysian Airlines, has lots of reasons to blame this on the Pilots or Boeing, right?

If someone hijacked it, ie. Radicalized Muslims, it makes the Government, and the faith of peace, and their airline security, look bad.

So Blame the dead guys.

Works every time!

Timbo,

I'm just putting out there what I've read. I don't know much about the motivations behind the airlines or the government.

However, in this day and age of connected devices, all it takes is a tweet or a message from a friend to his cell phone and in a matter of seconds, news of his political heart-throb being jailed would have reached him. He wouldn't have to watch CNN to find out.

Yeah, and based on that tweet, he then decided to take the plane, to make a statement...

except he forgot to make a statement.

Go back to motive. Find a real motive. He had opportunity, obviously, but if he was going to do it to make a statement, why didn't he just make a radio call, ie. AMF! and roll it over and take it into the water?

Anyone really think it flew for 7 hours, and then went into the sea? Only if everyone was already dead from smoke/fumes and it was on autopilot.

Or...it was hijacked by morons who couldn't find Pakistan on a map!

but what would you do with it then? Let's assume they could find Pakistan (which apparently didn't happen, but whatever), could they hold the passengers hostage that long to extort money later for their return?

Can you sell the jet without raising suspicions?

I must admit, the accident hypothesis seems more plausible than the others at this point...

You can try to sell it. You could fill it with high explosives and fly it anywhere you want, until someone finds you and shoots you down.

The problem I see with a lot of these NYT reporters is, they are trying to apply First World logic and technology, to a Third World country's military radar system, and their logic. And I think the Malaysians are trying to point fingers in every other direction, other than make it a shoddy mx issue/accident.

If hijackers were smart enough to take over the ****, then turn off the transponders/radios, etc. and turn it, and fly a course, to somewhere, they should have had a destination in mind. Maybe they are sitting on a runway in the middle of nowhere. They would have to be VERY well trained in 777 FMS Operations to even find such a remote runway, in the dark.

And I'm sure there are lots of satellite photos being taken and poured over as we speak, of every square inch, of every runway, on every island, in that part of the world, looking for a slightly used 777 sitting up on blocks in the bushes out back...

If it was one of the pilots, he missed his opportunity to make a statement. He could have flown it right into downtown anywhere on that island, screaming Jihad all the way, on the radio.

If it was hijackers, why did they take it, and where did they go? They too could have flown it into any major city in Malaysia, Viet Nam or China, ala 9-11 that night.

So I'm going with mechanical issues.

But Air Malaysia doesn't want to hear that...

The mx issue is sounding more and more likely to me too. Clearly the US has issues with putting things back together correctly as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/travel/delta-plane-wing-panel/

Timbo,

Would you consider 3rd world airlines as more or less profitable than the US based ones?

Well, that depends on what time frame you want to use. After 9-11, every major US Airline went bankrupt.

But in 2013, the Big 3 US Carriers (Delta, United and American) made HUGE money.

Delta alone netted about $2.7 Billion in 2013. That's a record for this industry...and still they can't tighten down an access panel.

I read that Malaysian is in financial trouble right now, so...? We know they don't pay for Sat com, but Delta only pays for it on our international fleet, not our domestic airplanes.

I'm sure you're feeling mighty fine about Delta mx right now Timbo: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/delta-plane-loses-wing-panel-during-flight-n54306

Technically Southwest never declared bankruptcy following 9-11, but it takes them 12 hours to change a tire on a Boeing 737 parked 15 minutes from the factory...no one is perfect.

Brucat, if the numbers I read back in the Air France crash period were accurate, ~80% of water landings by airliners had at least a few survivors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing. I have a family member that has survived a water ditching. As PIC of a single-engine, 1970's tech piston powered aircraft that often flies over water, I think about this a lot. All the gear won't save you if you can't get out of the airplane through door or window!

It truly is sad that we don't know where this bird is, after 11 days and several countries satellites involved. Would an EPIRB not be picked up via satellite in that part of the world? They have coverage in the Southern Ocean and Indian Ocean. Further, China doesn't build the cameras in our spy satellites or many of the components, MAYBE a few of the integrated circuit chips. They may have caught up but the tech involved in making the camera mirrors and lenses is some pretty high-end stuff...I'm sure they bought the Russians designs but I've only started to see the Chinese offering the manufacturing technology that could remotely build these in the past decade or so.

Finally I agree with most of Timbos hypothesis, especially the electrical fire-military aircraft have the FCC's in different parts of the plane for this very reason. If that's not it, +1 to the Aliens.

Southwest is not considered a Major US Carrier, that's why I didn't include them. Alaska and Hawaiian didn't declare bankruptcy either. They don't fly internationally and their biggest airplane is a 737. But that's also why they didn't go bankrupt.

After 9-11 and the global recession, a lot of International customers stopped flying. That crushed all the big International carriers who were operating wide body airplanes around the globe, half empty. That's why they all filed for bankruptcy and that's why the big 6 merged to become the big 3.

If the airplane went down in the Indian Ocean, while everyone was looking in the wrong ocean, for a week, well, any debris field is going to be widely scattered by now, so they'd have to do sonar drags all over the entire Indian Ocean to find it. If it went in fast and hard, it may have broken up and there may be some floating debris washing up on downwind shores some day soon, then we'll know for sure.

But it took searchers two years to locate the Air France jet, and they knew where to look, heck they had a piece of the tail floating on the surface. Unless this jet shows up again as a flying bomb, I doubt they will ever find it, but they'll blame the pilots. It's the easiest way to solve their security and mx problems.

So how much is a 777 worth in a chop shop?

Anyone remember the hijacked 767 that went into the water?

There were some survivors, because it crashed close to shore.

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqKdVo_IcGs

(btw, that's me in the speedo, right at the beginning) ;^)

I can't stand all the idiots on TV freaking out that it's such an outrage that such a

huge aircraft

disappeared without a trace. As big as a 777 is compared to a guy standing next to it, it might as well be microscopic once in that ocean.

I hate to speculate on this, but I would think that if it were terror-related, there would be someone taking public, plausible credit by now. I think that leaves it to rogue pilots, or probably more likely, mechanical failure. I'm sure I'll be proven wrong, but that would be fine if it means they find the plane.

Mike

EDIT: I do remember that video. As flat as that water looked, and as controlled as the descent appeared, it still broke into lots of pieces. That's why I originally asked the question: outside of the Hudson or a small lake with no waves, is it possible to come out as cleanly as Sully?

If you like plane crashes, here's 10 minutes worth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlNoza8oAZw

Watch the B52 at 4:30. They were practicing for an airshow.

The two most dangerous words in Aviation:

Watch This!