Flight 370

[sparks03]

I'm not sure if I've read this somewhere but didn't the flight make an unannounced turn back towards the airport it had taken off from? Suggests that something was going wrong on the flight before it was lost. 

 

 In terms of debris even with the Air France crash out of Brazil a couple of years ago they found some wreckage almost immediately even if it took years to locate the rest of the plane. Bizarre happening this. 

[Clunkclick]

I wonder if, being unable to gain access to the cockpit, terrorists used gas (Easy enough to fill a plastic pillow, small head rest, shampoo bottle, aerosol can with a liquid that will sublimate to a gas).

 

One report early on, said the back channel aircraft to aircraft communication, had the crew "Mumbling".

 

One Pprune post speculated that the aircraft may have been guided to crash on to one of the many coral atolls in the area - it would be a night ditching, no moonlight - chances of that working ?

 

 

Nick

[dazz600]

Special reports gonna be on sky news half past 2,4,6 and 8

Just another note - I remember an accident investigation I once saw where on a completely normal flight the pilot locked the other crew out of the cockpit and ditched head first

All because he had problems going on in his life

Just another theory

Had second thoughts and turned round then ditched anyway?

[Scribbler]

The reverse is true. Many parts will float but only if separated from the body of the aircraft (foam insulation, etc). Some pieces will be large - just like at Lockerbie.

 

Only my humble opinion but I would say the original comment is true. Most people would expect the plane to submerge on impact with the water but the surface tension at terminal velocity would explode the plane on impact. There would be little difference in the wreckage of the plane hitting water to one hitting concrete. So I would say a mid air explosion would cast a greater debris field making it harder to pinpoint a location. Although I am very sceptical about and accident being the cause. It would require a sudden total loss of power to make a distress call impossible In this case the plane would freefall even in the hands of the most skilled pilot the impact speed would be enough to explode the plane into lots of fragments which some would be boyant making them visible to recon. So I think most likely the plane exploded in the air. My guess is its down to the two Iranian passengers or the plane was intercepted by china or Russia. I know china had many of its own on board but if they had a motive then they would do it and it could have been mistaken for a Japanese plane. China has been sabre rattling recently over disputed airspace so this fits in. There was apparently a Ukrainian and a Russian on board. Which both countries deny, So this raises alarm bells. The ruskies as we know like to used more subtle methods to dispose of people such as Polonium 210 but its possible they tried to make this look like an accident. Either way its unlikely foul play wasn't involved.

[Clunkclick]

Allegedly the authorities aren't telling the whole the whole story right now.

 

The telly said that if the plane had crashed in one piece they would have expected to have found the debris by now since it would be concentrated in one area.

If it was blown up st altitiude it would be ahrd to find since the bits would be spread so much further.

 

I'm surprised that nothing has been found yet, I'd had thought that quite a few bits of plane would float. Admittedly I know nothing about aircraft design.

 

Personally I suspect either a suden breakup or bomb simply because there was no mayday.

But then the French aircraft in 2010 crashed without mayday due to pilot error.

Any bombs likely to be in the fuselage either as hand luggage or main luggage compartment. The engines, @ 13,000lbs a piece would still be intact and would probably shear off the engine pylon (As they are designed to do under minimal "Out-of-envelope" conditions) and plunge to the ground in about 3 minutes from 35,ooo feet.  Noting that WW2 Grand Slam bombs @ 22,000, albeit faired more aerodynamically and harder than a Trent engine, when dropped from, a Lanacster flying at 250 knots at 25,000 would reach  a terminal velocity of 670 -1000 mph at ground level (670 being the speed of sound) and would penetrate 40 metres of earth before exploding. . . . what residual speed would the remains of a Trent engine hit the seabed at, seabed being only 50-70 metres below the surface. I reckon probably 60 miles a hour. I don't think I'd fancy being hit by 6 tonnes of engine doing 60 miles an hour - I'd report loudly.

 

And still no seismic report - Lockerby caused a 2 on the Richter scale and the Kursk exploding a 4

 

Nick

Edited 11 March, 2014 by Clunkclick

[KenONeill]

I wonder if, being unable to gain access to the cockpit, terrorists used gas (Easy enough to fill a plastic pillow, small head rest, shampoo bottle, aerosol can with a liquid that will sublimate to a gas).

 

One report early on, said the back channel aircraft to aircraft communication, had the crew "Mumbling".

 

One Pprune post speculated that the aircraft may have been guided to crash on to one of the many coral atolls in the area - it would be a night ditching, no moonlight - chances of that working ?

 

 

Nick

Any thoughts on how this gas device turned off the SSR?

[Aspman]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9231855/Air-France-Flight-447-Damn-it-were-going-to-crash.html

 

Interesting reading and shows just how wrong you can get things through human error.

 

noting that the current incident was a Boeing so the findings ^ don't apply.

 

Probability is that the plane crashed or blew up a long way off course so it's taking that much longer to locate wreckage. I doubt there were any gasses etc involved. Lets be honest you could hijack an aircraft by holding a sharpened pencil to the neck of a steward.

 

Most of the security you see in airports is to protect you against the newspaper headline threats (security theatre). Any intelligent person is capable of doing damage/ taking down to a flight with the right motivation.

[Harvey1978]

I'm convinced the authorities know ether where it is or what may have happened to it, as already mentioned the engine would be sending real-time information, surely once the the SSR signal had disappeared the Chinese military would have got it on their radar if they weren't following it already.  

[Clunkclick]

Any thoughts on how this gas device turned off the SSR?

As portrayed on TV, the passengers of the 9/11 hijacking that was destined for the Whitehouse bashed down the cockpit door using the "Dolly trolley" and that was with the cockpit crew still being able bodied - a small amount of plastique moulded into footwear with an overloaded mobile phone battery as a detonator might do the job as well. As has been suggested above just threatening the life of the cabin staff would probably persuade the cockpit crew to open the door.

 

According to Pprune, once you have access to the cockpit you can disable the electrical systems on these modern aircraft, including the battery back-ups very quickly one wag suggested (Presumably thru aircraft engineer knowledge) that pulling the engine  fire handle + flipping a battery switch was sufficient.

 

Anyway, the company are now saying its unlikely to be terrorists.

 

There were a couple of confirmed reports on PPrune that the aircraft had previously sustained wing-tip damage whilst manouevering on the ground and this had been repaired by Boeing. Additionally there was another report produced by the FAA saying that older hull 777's had been found to have corrosion and metal fractures at the wing root.

 

Nick

 

Nick

[Clunkclick]

I'm convinced the authorities know ether where it is or what may have happened to it, as already mentioned the engine would be sending real-time information, surely once the the SSR signal had disappeared the Chinese military would have got it on their radar if they weren't following it already.  

Interesting to know  whether any other aircraft in the locality suffered the same effect - might be indicative of fault in the ATC equipment or jamming from an external source or someone on board vertently or otherwise.

 

Just the sort of thing that one military entity might do to another just to see how they react.

 

Sources on Pprune were saying that the primary radar would be limited to 200nm range. But that doesn't have to be land-based, does it ? With all the superpower military interest down there that radar could quite easily be ship, airbourne or space based. That said its reported that relations between China and Vietnam have been strained recently.

 

If that is the case, might explain why the authorities are reluctant to own-up.

 

Nick

Edited 11 March, 2014 by Clunkclick

[seboni121]

Son is ****ting himself he's flying to kuala lumper in a week :(

[XLBaconDoubleCheese]

Make sure he has "find friends" turned on if he has a iPhone

[seboni121]

Find friends?

[Clunkclick]

Cold comfort at the moment - CIA Chief is contradicting the earlier  Malaysian statement, saying that terrorism can't be ruled out and the latest statement from the Malaysian airforce is that, after the civilian radar lost the sqwuak return,  they did track the aircraft way off course over the Straits of Malacca, on the west coast of the Malay peninsular.????

 

Could he go a different route ? He be alright on the way out, its the journey back which might be of concern - as it seems the security at KL departures isn't what it is over here.

 

Nick

Edited 11 March, 2014 by Clunkclick

[seboni121]

Flying with emirates so as you say pretty safe out but on the way back ?

[XLBaconDoubleCheese]

Find friends?

 

It's a app which enables other iPhone users to track each other on a map. Some reports are saying phones are still ringing, I though if only one of them was a iPhone with this app. Bit tongue in cheek, maybe the wrong time........

Edited 11 March, 2014 by matt1chelski

[seboni121]

Ah got it lol , best time for humour I think now that's tongue in cheek ! Security will be ramped up now big time

Edited 12 March, 2014 by damo
Reported post, stereotypical offensive comment removed

[XLBaconDoubleCheese]

Aside from some longer waits at the airport I'm sure he'll be fine. 

[Guy Incognito]

Brilliant. I am always getting kids vernacular mixed up but even I know that one "pops" a caps in some cads arse.

[seboni121]

Lol no just puts a cap in his arse

[Clunkclick]

P O S H applies:- Plane out, ship home.

 

-  though even ships are a bit dodgy in that part of the World.

 

 

Nick

[Xavier]

I haven't followed the latest media news. Looking at it from theory, a large plane doesn't just disappear from radar. So either it did because it failed catastrophically in flight, or there's a big cover up to hide the fact it didn't just disintigrate mid-air. Even if all engines failed and there was a rapid descent, it would be picked up on radar. An aircraft cruising at 30,000+ feet doesn't just vanish. Also, modern aircraft like a 777 don't just fall apart on their own without some catalyst or other external factor (missile, bomb)...

 

The lack of any maydays or other messaging from the flight crew is coherent with that: either it blew up instantaneously, or there's a cover up / sabotage which means their distress calls were either blocked in transmission or haven't been released to the media.

 

In any case, something doesn't smell right to me :( I feel for all the families.

[ilikeradios]

I'm not sure if I've read this somewhere but didn't the flight make an unannounced turn back towards the airport it had taken off from? Suggests that something was going wrong on the flight before it was lost. 

Yes, when this first became news,the BBC showed a recorded radar type track which clearly showed a veering to the right before the track abruptly disappeared. They haven't shown (been allowed to show??) it since. 

[Huskoda]

I posted a link to the flight radar history of the flight and you can see it turning back there. It's a bit odd in that it then shows it continue on over Vietnam

[hatchy]

Phones of some of the missing connecting and then hanging up. They wouldn't be connecting if the bloody plane was at the bottom of the ocean. Then the military coming forward after 4 days to say they tracked it going off course. I'm not one for conspiracy theories but something dodgy is going on here.