News Contact lost with 777-200ER of Malaysia Airlines

[Linguofreak]

It makes no sense at all. I wonder if communication and navigation could have failed at the same time, but it is even more unlikely than a meteor impact. Without communication and severly degraded navigation, it would make sense to return and fly at low altitude at night for finding the airport from which they took off.

Electrical failure? That would knock out the fly-by-wire too, in which case the plane would then wander randomly until it crashed.

 

[Artlav]

Electrical failure?

Shouldn't there be redundant systems, batteries, RAT, etc?

Also, i find it quite strange that there are no primary radars in the area.
Shouldn't there be several radars from military bases capable of seeing the areas?
Do they keep records, that are available for cross-reference?

 

[N_Molson]

Well, they are enlarging the search area. We'll see.

 

[Urwumpe]

Shouldn't there be redundant systems, batteries, RAT, etc?

Exactly.

The 777-200 has 4 generators (2 per engine), one APU that automatically kicks in when AC power is missing, and a RAT, should the APU fail as well.

 

[fred18]

This is a real modern mistery...

all systems onboard are redundant, I don't think a simple electrical failure will put offline the flybywire and sayonara to 200 lives... If that's the case I will only fly on a world war 2 airplane from now on.....

The option of inflight sudden explosion is really strange... and if it's for a bomb why there, and why not coming out now... It is also true that Lybians didn't come out for Lockerbie as well, and if you think of 9/11 the Talibans immediatly stated that they were NOT involved... but anyway why in a flight from malaysia to china? ...

But anyway in flight sudden explosion would have produced traces that should have been found by the time... as correctly stated even the wrecks of AF447 were found within a week in the middle of the ocean where nothing is there except 6000 meters of water... and why the airplane seems to be last noticed so far from its original course without any radio contact...

that's a real puzzle...

 

[garyw]

Exactly.

The 777-200 has 4 generators (2 per engine), one APU that automatically kicks in when AC power is missing, and a RAT, should the APU fail as well.

Several fly-by-wire aircraft have had total electrical failure and none have crashed. As pointed out, in the event of electrical failure the Ram-Air-Turbine (RAT) is deployed.

 

[Screamer7]

Another thought I come up with.
What....oh how I hate that word "what", if the plane tried to make an emergency landing in the ocean somewhere?
We all know too well that the T7 is a very sturdy plane, as the Asiana crash demonstrated.
Only part of the tail assembly and one engine broke loose after hitting the seawall at more than 90 knots, and cartwheeling for some distance.
Maybe the fuselage is intact and it sank into the water, leaving little debris in the process.

 

[astrosammy]

The Avherald article now has three Chinese satellite images from the 9th,
showing large objects near the last know position.

 

[Urwumpe]

DigitalGlobe and Tomnod are also looking vor volunteers to look through satellites images (of dull empty ocean) and tag any interesting objects there (which are hard to find).

http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014

 

[Matias Saibene]

Although I have no knowledge of avionics and engineering think I have a little imagination and imagine the following scenario:

The plane flight runs its normal course . A passenger enters the cockpit and taken hostage pilots (and with them the whole aircraft ) thereupon forces them to turn off the radio and other communication systems. Then he forced the pilot to change course to a certain point , and forces him to land in the water (as in the case of U.S. Airways Flight 1549) near a boat that was waiting there, probably to kidnap all passengers for some reason. Meanwhile let sinking into the sea. The two passengers who had false passports were a smokescreen to distract the investigation.

That's what I imagine might have happened , I should clarify that I have no knowledge of aeronautics, or avionics, or criminology .

And with regard to the attention given to it in the media on the subject of the phones of the relatives were still ringing, I think is oversized to attract an audience (at least that's what they did in my country) .

 

[N_Molson]

Then he forced the pilot to change course to a certain point , and forces him to land in the water (as in the case of U.S. Airways Flight 1549)

Then he is very unprepared and very uneducated. Commercial airliners sea landings attempts almost always ended into disasters.

 

[Artlav]

probably to kidnap all passengers for some reason.

And then make no ransom requests for a week?
What are they waiting for?

A bit more plausible scenario is vice versa - let the passengers sink to the bottom, and keep the plane for some sinister purpose.

But the complexity penalty is still very high on that sort of a plan.

---------- Post added at 23:27 ---------- Previous post was at 23:24 ----------

and forces him to land in the water

Typical outcome of this looks like that:

Bad idea.

 

[garyw]

The only theories that make sense to me are:

1. Catastrophic failure (bomb, fuel tank explosion, etc). Small enough debris that it sinks - very unlikely that something has happened like that as no one has seen anything and even in the most violent explosions debris is found floating on the water.

2. Shoot down - See Above.

3. Hijacking - Unlikely with today's flight deck security and procedures. Not impossible though but why no ransom demands? Could someone have stolen the plane for use as a weapon? That would need a terrorist with a commercial pilots license and experience on the 777. Not impossible but very Tom Clancy.

4. Pilot suicide - unlikely - see point 1.

5. Theft - Could one of the pilots have stolen the plane? If so, why? Possible but we're back with Mr. Clancy again. What cargo was it carrying? Anything unusual or valuable?

 

[n122vu]

I can't stop thinking about 9/11, Flight 93. It slammed straight into the ground, and there was practically nothing left. What would happen if a plane struck water in almost the same fashion, completely vertical at a high rate of speed? Would it be going fast enough that surface tension wouldn't rip the wings off, as in, would it stay intact as it plunged into the water at that speed?

 

[garyw]

I can't stop thinking about 9/11, Flight 93. It slammed straight into the ground, and there was practically nothing left. What would happen if a plane struck water in almost the same fashion, completely vertical at a high rate of speed? Would it be going fast enough that surface tension wouldn't rip the wings off, as in, would it stay intact as it plunged into the water at that speed?

No. it would explode in a very impressive way, debris would be scattered far and wide based on the ballistic co-efficient of the material. You'd have debris on the water and oil slicks.

There is no scenario that a plane could enter the water intact at speed. Have a look at EgyptAir Flight 990 where that pretty much happened.

 

[mojoey]

Not entirely true. Given a couple dozen hours in FSX with the PMDG 777 and some Real World weather modules, one could possibly navigate their way around an actual cockpit.

 

[Urwumpe]

Not entirely true. Given a couple dozen hours in FSX with the PMDG 777 and some Real World weather modules, one could possibly navigate their way around an actual cockpit.

No, not at all. FSX is not THAT realistic. Especially about the real world air. But worst of all, the switches would not be nicely sorted up on a computer monitor and switches would be important, that PMDG does not really simulate.

 

[Matias Saibene]

And then make no ransom requests for a week?
What are they waiting for?

When I wrote that post I was thinking about human trafficking.

What if the plane is not on the sea? It may be unlikely (because the sea is too big, but what if it was not?).

Here I have a question for those who know:
What is the most likely cause of the disappearance of this aircraft?

 

[N_Molson]

It seems, that the transponder ceased to emit when the plane got out of the 'radar' screens, but was picked by a military station 70 minutes later over the straight of Malacca, displaying FL270. That point is 500 kilometers away from the last known position. That's 428.6 km/h or 231 knots (Ground Speed). I'm not even sure that such an airliner can fly at 9000 meters so slowly ? So it would have gone there following an erratic course, or it dived under the RADAR cover (500 feet), went to Malacca (without being spotted by any ship) and climbed again to 27,000 feet before vanishing ?? That doesn't makes sense at all.

Now, when did it was picked for the last time by a real RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging) ? I mean, not only a position on a screen transmitted by the transponder ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Here I have a question for those who know:
What is the most likely cause of the disappearance of this aircraft?

At the current knowledge, we have to consider a wormhole the most likely cause of the disappearance.

---------- Post added at 09:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:04 PM ----------

It seems, that the transponder ceased to emit when the plane got out of the 'radar' screens, but was picked by a military station 70 minutes later over the straight of Malacca, displaying FL270. That point is 500 kilometers away from the last known position. That's 428.6 km/h or 231 knots (Ground Speed). I'm not even sure that such an airliner can fly at 9000 meters so slowly ? So it would have gone there following an erratic course, or it dived under the RADAR cover (500 feet), went to Malacca and climbed again to 27,000 feet before vanishing ?? That doesn't makes sense at all.

Now, when did it was picked for the last time by a real RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging) ? I mean, not only a position on a screen transmitted by the transponder ?

What you forget is the concept of a Feynman path: You only know its position and speed at time 1 and position and speed at time 2, and the time between. Now the plane could have travelled every thinkable path between these points, but only few such paths will be realistic.