I had fairly well concluded that the most likely cause was a fire disrupting the electrical and control systems, when CNN now say the sharp left turn was pre-programmed 12 minutes before sign off from Malaysian Air Traffic control, which was followed fairly quickly by that left turn.
CNN claim to have this from an US official, from data sent back before the reporting systems went off. It is hard to know what to make of it: obviously there are large economic interests that much prefer blame to lie with the pilots rather than the aircraft. But if it is true then the move was not a response to an emergency. (CNN went on to say the pilot could have programmed in the course change as a contingency in case of an emergency. That made no sense to me at all – does it to anyone else?)
I still find it extremely unlikely that the plane landed or crashed on land I cannot believe it could evade military detection as it flew over a highly militarized region. Somewhere there is debris on the ocean. There have been previous pilot suicides that took the plane with them; but the long detour first seems very strange and I do not believe is precedented. However if the CNN information on pre-programming is correct, and given it was the co-pilot who signed off to air traffic control, it is hard to look beyond the pilots as those responsible for whatever did happen. In fact, on consideration, the most improbable thing is that information CNN are reporting from the US official.
Hold on. It’s a repeat.
24 hour rolling news… which is “1 hour recorded then played over and over” !
Madness !
In “other” BBC News
One in Five people would turn down an invite to a gay wedding.
I for one wouldn’t say “no” to Catherine Zeta-Jones marrying Demi Moore.
That means I’m in the “yes please” camp ?
Thanks NR & James, so the journalist who said that about over writing is unaware of the varieties of BB available, quelle surprise.
You can tell their ignorance by the lack of intelligent questions, asking a relative… ‘ so how did you feel when you heard the plane had disappeared’ is just about their level !
“We have not detracted from our main purpose which is to identify the plane”
That’s what the Malaysian minister for Chaos.
Even I find that a tad strange.
He means “find the plane” doesn’t he ????????
Katie
The reporting is becoming really mad now.
Mind you, the SAR is becoming crazy. I’d be pee’d off if I was flying a P3.
Bump, bump, bump, and swing it round. Bump, bump, bump and again.
And with one engine “off”.
The tea cups will be all over the show.
‘Bump bump bump with one engine off’ ???
Such aeronautic terminology James…..made me laugh !
Normally in aviation EVERYTHING is normally an abbreviation.
Then VFR and IFR
Which gets translated to “Very ******* Risky” and “Incredibly ******* Risky” !
And the classic SLF for pax “Self Loading Freight” !
From Twitter on latest exciting discoveries:
“Paddy McGa… It’s a suspicious UFO. Unidentified Floating Object.”
“John McGu… It’s like in Father Ted with the perfectly square piece of dirt. This piece of debris is suspiciously square.”
Radio news: “Planes photographed suspicious Floating Objects in the new search area. We’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow to find out what they are.”
I like this comment, ‘ Pistorious shot down MH370, he thought it was an intruder’.
CLASSIC ……..CNN has now confirmed , that, ‘planes need fuel to maintain altitude.’
Tends to be a requirement…in my experience.
Here’s the ‘screen shot’, Katie. Lol.
https://squonk.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/cnnflight-1024×768.jpg
Sorensen
Somebody found a picture of the malaysian clone airplane parking in tel aviv.
The web site where he got it from was immediately censored and the photographer is now facing troubles because “he took that photo in a protected secret area, according to israeli officials”.
http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/index.html
Hilarious Ben.
James , I’m sure you’re grateful to CNN for giving you that vital information……….. !!
FYI for recent sim test
“We used a zero fuel weight of 175 tonnes. We let it run out of fuel at FL 250 in track hold and alt capture. However it would not make any difference what mode it was in as everything would drop out. In real life one engine uses fractionally more fuel per hour than the other and there is typically a difference between main tanks of a few hundred kilos, so we had a 300 kg difference between the contents of the left and right tank.
When the first engine failed TAC (Thrust asymmetry compensation) automatically applied rudder. The speed reduced from 320 knots indicated to 245 knots indicated. It was able to maintain 245 knots and FL250. When the second engine failed the rudder trim applied by TAC was taken out and the trim went to zero. The autopilot dropped out and the flight controls reverted to direct mode. The speed initially came back to 230 knots but then the nose started to lower. The nose continued to lower and the rate of descent increased to 4,000 feet per minute, the nose kept lowering and the descent rate increased to 7,500 feet per minute with a bank angle that increased to 25 degrees. The speed at this point had increased to 340 knots indicated, above VMO but there was no horn as it was on limited electrics. About this point the RAT (Ram air turbine) chipped in and the CDUs and copilot’s PFD (Primary flight display) came alive. The flight controls stayed in direct mode.The eicas screen was full of messages like pitot heat, flight controls, APU fault (The APU had tried to autostart due double engine failure but failed due no fuel to start it) low fuel pressure etc.
Then with a max descent rate of almost 8,000 feet per minute the nose started to slowly rise and keep rising. We had dropped to about FL170 but the nose slowly rose up to 6 degrees pitch up and we started climbing at about 3000 feet per minute and the bank angle reduced to only 5 degrees. It climbed back up to FL210 at which point the speed had come back to 220 knots and then the nose dropped down again and we were soon back to descending at 8000 feet per minute. So basically a series of phugoid oscillations with bank angle between 5 and 25 degrees and pitch attitude between about 9 degrees nose down and 6 degrees pitch up. It was losing about 8000 feet and then gaining about 3 or 4000 feet with airspeed fluctuating between 220 and 340 knots.
We didn’t watch it all the way down due time constraints and stopped the experiment at 10,000 feet but it was consistent all the way down. Having watched it I can say with certainty that if the pilots were incapacitated and it ran out of fuel there is no way it could have landed on the water with anything like a survivable impact. Just passing on the info”.
So, I take it from that, when a large plane runs out of fuel ,James, it doesn’t glide down & pancake, it nose dives & ditches ?
Katie
An uncontrolled big one does… with high lift wings.
I do hope they were already dead.
Katie…
What I mean to say is, a plane can glide (for a certain amount of time).
But you will need inputs on the control surfaces.
The RAT will provide just enough electrical and hydraulic power for this.
Wether you can land on the sea, even like that, is another question.
An airliner has two (or four) large under slung engines. They will basically act as very large “water scoops”.
The guy that got his a/c down in the Hudson….did it somehow !
Of sim tests conducted afterwards, the failure rate was “rather large”.
It would be safe to assume that, such a crash in the Indian Ocean (uncontrolled) would have almost without doubt, killed everyone onboard.
A pilot with many hours (and MH370’s did) may have been able to “crash land” with a batter chance of “some” surviving (and outside chance of all ?).
BUT lets say for some reason you had zero comms. You could not shut the a/c down at all. You had zero fuel dump capability …and you managed to “burn off” enough fuel to “glide”….then in theory you maybe able to “crash” better and have some (or all) survive.
So head out to sea ! But stay near land for Christ sake.
That is your own salvation. And MH370 could have done that.
“Somebody found a picture of the malaysian clone airplane parking in tel aviv.”
Image of the alleged “clone” aircraft when it was in store at Lourdes prior to it going to Tel Aviv. Note that all Malaise identifying marks have been removed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeroportldef-gotpa/11468194974/in/photostream/
This aircraft is also owned by a private American company not the Israelis. The sort of “false flag” conspiracy theory suggested would only have the slightest chance of working if it was carried out somewhere the aircraft could’ve reached and at a time before it would’ve run out of fuel.
Even better here it is in Tel Aviv back in December, still minus it’s Malay markings.
http://img2.timg.co.il/forums/1_172737942.jpg
The aircraft is apparently awaiting dismantling and if it hasn’t flown for four months it would be in need of some serious work.
CNN is in full-on babbling mode, awaiting confirmation of wreckage in the new search are. To be fair, the on-air people and visiting experts have been at this almost continuously for three weeks now.
Quotes paraphrased: “What if the plane was equipped with remote control like a drone so that Air Traffic Controllers could take over in the event of a hijacking? Boeing holds patents on such a system, but they refuse to comment.”
They did express concern that such a system might be hacked by terrorists, but didn’t seem concerned that ATC is as likely to be mentally deranged or infiltrated/commandeered by terrorists as the flight crew themselves. Not to mention government agencies — Gladio Ops or enemies. Iranians took control of a US drone rather easily.
They also claimed the auto-pilot was incapable of taking off or landing. I thought that was incorrect and demonstrations were already done of flights with no human intervention, though it isn’t normal practice. Is a 777 capable of that?
James would know better.
One thing CNN said that makes sense: “Surely the US with superior intelligence capability knows where the plane went down. It would be unconscionable if they didn’t tell the investigators, though they might not do so in a way that revealed secrets. They could have suggested investigators take a look over here, at the new area, and the investigators juggled numbers to produce those coordinates.”
“CNN is in full-on babbling mode ”
The consequence of 24 hour rolling news. The time has to be filled somehow and when there’s nothing to report, no new developments, the tendency is to fall back onto waffle. I would question whether the US really does have a superior intelligence system, in the past it’s been notable for it’s failures above all else, but of course to it’s greatest supporters and greatest enemies it sees and hears everything.
NR…
Yep. You can use autoland.
On “mine”, you can also have the brakes set (level of braking) and program which taxi way you will be required to exit….and it’ll “brake” for that taxi way when you’ve landed rolled out. Clever or what ! (all done via GPS).
You can’t “pop out to make a cuppa” though.
You have to be there in case it throws a hissy fit.
The “bad news” is, it also data links to “the office” and records how far down the runway you managed to pitch it, before you got it down.
The thing is designed to fly…and fly it wants to do.
CNN (and the BBC) are now into “talking sh*te mode”.
Full on “sh*te”.
From the article in the Guardian summarizing today’s events:
“Officials close to the investigation told Reuters last week that the plane may have passed close to Port Blair, the capital of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 885 km further north-west from where Malaysia has said its military radar last detected it. ”
Fort Blair now, really?
James, what does this do to your previous plot and does it make any sense? If we are to believe this suggestion of the plane passing “close” to Ft. Blair, then it must have gone further North West direction than in your previous skyvector plot. Yes, that’d skirt indonesian radar alright, but what about Indian radar?
And if the plane went that far north-west, before turning south, surely it could not have gone as far as they claim the current location off perth is/
OH yes, and the Malaysian official claimed they coulld NOT reveal the path of the plane.
How shocking is that?
And how vexing for the bereft relatives?
Link to above quote:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/29/flight-mh370-fresh-objects-found-in-new-indian-ocean-search-area?commentpage=1
Thanks for your answer James, yes I was thinking of an unconscious or pilot less plane.
As you say Capt Sully did it on the Hudson,but a rare triumph.
I assume this is something a simulator that can’t play out or practice ?
Whichever way that plane came down I also hope it was instant death for the passengers,or that they were already unconscious.
Marlin.
This was said on the 15th, then silence.
‘A senior military official in Port Blair, capital of the archipelago, said Indian aircraft had combed waters stretching up to 300 nautical miles (550 km) offshore and overflown all 572 islands in the chain but “we don’t have anything so far”.
India’s Eastern Naval Command was investigating a separate rectangular ‘box’ 15 km wide by 600 km long, some 900 km east of Port Blair, but had found nothing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/15/malaysia-airlines-diverted-deliberately_n_4969855.html
They gave up after a few days………..
Katie, the link I gave was from the Guardian is from earlier today. That’s why I found that particular quote so puzzling. Why did it pop up here all of a sudden at this point in time?
Have a feeling it’s not just reporter carelessness or over-creativity. It was kind of glaring in the context of the search area having been moved 1100 km north west.
I agree Marlin.
Until now, there seems to have been an agreed silence on Port Blair & Diego Garcia….almost as though they were untouchable.
I don’t usually ‘do’ Youtube,but this was brought to my attention & worth watching on how to change a flight path & turn off a transponder. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Seir6EHhVc0&list=PLS3XGZxi7cBUE-Nb_YEIjVTNRmU_O0rhI
Marlin…
It’s confusing.
They are saying it was further North than they have previously said.
AND they are saying it passed “close to” Port Blair.
Firstly, the article also says
“Engine performance analysis by the plane’s manufacturer, Boeing, helped investigators determine how long the plane could have flown before it ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean”
The engines are made by Roll Royce (Trent Engines) and not Boeing.
So I wonder about the quality of the reporting.
Secondly
If it passed “close to” Port Blair, then I can only assume that the airport there does not have Primary radar ? Which I find VERY odd as it is a “Tri Services Command Base” for the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force (you think it would have Primary then, eh ?).
Further, I would imagine (for sure) that Port Campbell (South of Port Blair) would operate Primary radar (more likely than Secondary).
So all in all, very confusing indeed.
They say that the a/c flew “faster than first thought” and so covered a lesser distance. Now there has been some debate about this calculation as you require some additional “parameters” to run it.
The calculation and the theory is not difficult….but I don’t know where the other parameters came from.
You could take leg 1 (secondary radar track) and leg 2 (primary radar track) and work out fuel remaining. Then the “time” from last contact(s) up until the last “partial ping” (if that is indeed the end of the flight) then by factoring in such things as winds, you’d be “there abouts”.
Or you could just take a Primary radar track, with an intercept solution plotted….and you’d have it from that !
So…Port Blair ? Port Campbell ? Something else ?
P.S.
And that calculation does not take in altitude…and if that was constant.
Or if the “speed” is a constant.
That debate rumbles on !