Malaysia Airlines flight MH370-Updates and Discussion

jamo2oo9 · 24-03-2014 09:23PM

I've been browsing through this topic for a while and I saw the picture of how far the plane could've gone but I can't find it anywhere. Can someone link it again please. I want to see could the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, 2500km away from Perth due to lack to fuel?

jasonb · 24-03-2014 09:30PM

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

I've been browsing through this topic for a while and I saw the picture of how far the plane could've gone but I can't find it anywhere. Can someone link it again please. I want to see could the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, 2500km away from Perth due to lack to fuel?

I don't have that picture, but don't forget it was two weeks ago that it crashed, so the debris has had a lot of time to travel. So while the aircraft might not have had enough fuel to reach that point 2500km away from Perth, the debris could have travelled a lot in these last two weeks...

J.

homerjay2005 · 24-03-2014 09:32PM

Jack1985 wrote: »

CVR records for two hours, there used to be a requirement of 30 minutes - Regards the FDR it records about 25hrs of data.

so, it records for two hours and stops or does it record continuously, recording the last 2 hours of the flight, wiping over anything else previous?

surely the latter would make most sense.

Iwannahurl · 24-03-2014 09:34PM

How new satellite data confirmed Malaysia Airlines plane was lost

The aeroplane had Inmarsat’s ‘Classic Aero’ satellite system, which collects information such as location, altitude, heading and speed, and sends it through Inmarsat’s satellites into their network.

This ‘ACARS’ (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) was switched off or interrupted early in the flight, meaning no such information was available to track the plane.

However the Classic Aero system still sent hourly ‘pings’ back to Inmarsat’s satellite for at least five hours after the aircraft left Malaysian airspace, the company discovered.

These pings contained no data – they were just a simple ‘hello’ to keep the link open – however their timing and frequency contained hidden mathematical clues.

The company looked at the ‘Doppler effect’ – tiny changes in the frequency of the ping signal, caused by the relative movement of the satellite and the plane (the Doppler effect is the reason why, for example, police sirens are a different pitch or frequency depending on whether they are travelling toward you or away from you).

This analysis allowed Inmarsat to map two huge ‘corridors’ for the plane’s possible location, in big arcs stretching thousands of kilometres north and south of the point where the last radar contact with MH370 was made.

Australian and US experts took this information, added some assumptions about the plane’s speed, and narrowed the southern option into an area of ocean that could be realistically searched.

Meanwhile, Inmarsat went back to its satellite data. Its new analysis found that the northern route did not quite correlate with the frequency of the pings from the plane – meaning the plane must have been heading south.

It also suggested that the plane had been travelling at a steady cruising altitude above 30,000 feet.

They compared satellite data from MH370 with that from previous Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 flights, going back a few weeks, in order to better model the movement of the plane.

“This really was a shot in the dark,” Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat told the BBC. “It’s a credit to the scientific team that they managed to model this.

“Just a single ‘ping’ can be used to say the plane was both powered up and travelling. And then by a process of elimination comparing it to other known flights and established that it went south.”

The UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch also contributed to the analysis.

Brilliant detective work. Sounds like MH370 was a 'ghost' plane flying for several hours...

wil · 24-03-2014 09:36PM

homerjay2005 wrote: »

so, it records for two hours and stops or does it record continuously, recording the last 2 hours of the flight, wiping over anything else previous?

surely the latter would make most sense.

continuous loop so the last 2 hours. Not sure what triggers it to stop, water/crash????

Mountainsandh · 24-03-2014 09:37PM

relaxed wrote: »

I am not sure that you get my point, suppose the pilot can't switch the transponder off, suppose they introduce extra GPS tracking to know where the plane is - its not going to change the outcome, if the person flying the plane wants to crash it knowing where the plane is won't change the outcome.

9/11 solutions were different, locking the cockpit for example prevented terrorists storming it.

I just don't see how knowing where the plane is will change the outcome if the person in control wants to crash it.

That's like saying negotiations with hostage takers or kidnappers are pointless.
There is also the damage limitations aspect to be taken into account : when there are clear indications that a plane is to be used as a weapon, it is sort of handy to know its whereabouts.

I really don't see why the outrage, I really don't see why people would fob that off with : "what's the point ?" comments.

Would a fireproof box + immediate alarm simply do the trick ?

In the unlikely event of this particular system malfunctioning pilots would know immediately that they have a set number of minutes to find a landing spot, just like with other fires.

donkey balls · 24-03-2014 09:39PM

wil wrote: »

Are all incidental items eg pallets, crates, plastic trays, plastic parts readily identifiable?

Is it the norm to carry commercial cargo on passenger jets?
I presume that is a commercial decision, but what, if any industry specific regulations are there restricting the carrying of certain, potentially hazardous cargo on passenger airliners?

I doubt you could rule out fire. Carbon monoxide from a small fire could have quickly incapacitated crew and passengers
Are there CO alarms fitted.

I don't know how to take that sort of comment.
Who knows how many years it will take to discover the cause.
Without even knowing that, this has highlighted issues that many might consider sensible to be addressed, today.
I doubt most professionals would have that as their first impression. Of course they are trusted, they ask them to carry hundreds of people, thousands of miles out over an ocean in a metal box and still deliver them safely the other end. Cant think of how much more trust you could give.
However they are humans, not gods, and gravity NEVER takes a break, so you have to consider the unexpected and unknown (all varieties)
Even known situations such as a stroke, food poisoning, CO poisoning don't necessarily have an emergency solution at 30,000 feet

AFAIK they have up to 7, some watching passengers, and traffic and can be used for traffic incidents as well as driver safety,

Why does everything have to catch fire:eek:
Should be possible to design it with aircraft safety in mind.

So exactly the time you would hope to have this record this data might be the time you have to pull it.
Hmm, needs a rethink.

Bit surprised it's so short, digital/ mp3 recording should be far longer.
If they fell unconscious early in this flight, all this early info is possibly lost.

The majority of freight throughout the world travels in the belly of commercial pax airlines,All DG are checked and are split in to two categories cargo aircraft only(CAO) and freight for pax aircraft,Airlines make their money by using the cargo holds for freight and strict regulations regarding the carriage of DG freight is adhered to.
Also each aircraft ULD(Container/pallet) has it's own unique serial number including the airlines prefix,As for a fire on board the crew would have been in a catch 22 if they used oxygen which is an oxidizing agent the fire would have spread quicker.

brandon_flowers · 24-03-2014 09:41PM

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

I've been browsing through this topic for a while and I saw the picture of how far the plane could've gone but I can't find it anywhere. Can someone link it again please. I want to see could the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, 2500km away from Perth due to lack to fuel?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/17/world/asia/search-for-flight-370.html?ref=world&_r=0

Savman · 24-03-2014 09:49PM

Difficult to believe somebody sat in the cockpit for nearly 7 hours knowing plane would eventually ditch into the ocean. Does not bear any hallmarks of a suicide mission either by sabotage or hijacking.

They could have ditched it pretty much any time, so waiting hours for the engines to run out of fuel seems implausible.

Tea 1000 · 24-03-2014 09:56PM

Bill G wrote: »

So it can malfunction and cause a fire and the pilot can't remove power to it? Great idea.

Jack1985 wrote: »

Who in their right mind would want that?

This is yet more of it from the sarcasm twins. Give it a break lads, what are ye? People who failed at becoming a pilot so instead join aviation forums throwing snotty comments at folk with all your "knowledge"?
Besides, how many systems are currently on a flight that the pilot can't turn off? How come you're not complaining about those?
Also, haven't ye heard about airtight or fireproof cases? You'd swear people were proposing impossible solutions that would be scientifically impossible to implement.

relaxed wrote: »

I am not sure that you get my point, suppose the pilot can't switch the transponder off, suppose they introduce extra GPS tracking to know where the plane is - its not going to change the outcome, if the person flying the plane wants to crash it knowing where the plane is won't change the outcome.

9/11 solutions were different, locking the cockpit for example prevented terrorists storming it.

I just don't see how knowing where the plane is will change the outcome if the person in control wants to crash it.

It's not that we'll be able to prevent crashes, it's that we'll know straight away where it is and where it went into the ground so we can find FDR's quickly and find out what happened. Instead we have 2.5 weeks of nothing, and now we have something, but it might actually be too late.

Bill G · 24-03-2014 10:00PM

Mountainsandh wrote: »

I tend to agree, and don't understand the outrage of others here.
When you have the responsibility of taking so many lives from A to B up in the air, you should accept a certain level of scrutiny.

Now, my question is : can the pilots disable the black box ?

If the answer is no, then there's a piece of equipment that cannot currently be disabled.

As I've stated before, yes, the pilots can pull the CB's on the FDR and CVR.

Tea 1000 · 24-03-2014 10:04PM

Bill G wrote: »

As I've stated before, yes, the pilots can pull the CB's on the FDR and CVR.

What about the system Rolls Royce use to gather reports from the engine?

pfurey101 · 24-03-2014 10:20PM

Tea 1000 wrote: »

What about the system Rolls Royce use to gather reports from the engine?

That is the Engine Health Monitoring system and it appears to feed through the ACARS - and we all know what happened to the ACARS.

Bill G · 24-03-2014 10:22PM

Tea 1000 wrote: »

What about the system Rolls Royce use to gather reports from the engine?

The FADEC? On some aircraft, yes they have a CB. On the 777 they are powered directly (and attached to) each engine. So shutting down the engine will remove the power to it.

pfurey101 · 24-03-2014 10:23PM

This seems to be the satellite in question - Inmarsat 5-F1

http://www.n2yo.com/?s=39476

Bill G · 24-03-2014 10:24PM

Tea 1000 wrote: »

People who failed at becoming a pilot so instead join aviation forums throwing snotty comments at folk with all your "knowledge"?

phew, for a second I thought you were talking about me

Tea 1000 · 24-03-2014 10:24PM

Bill G wrote: »

The FADEC? On some aircraft, yes they have a CB. On the 777 they are powered directly (and attached to) each engine. So shutting down the engine will remove the power to it.

So therefore there are systems that aren't such a fire risk that the only way to shut them down is to kill the engine?
Couldn't you put a firewall in the tail cone and section off the last meter or so and put a device there?

Tea 1000 · 24-03-2014 10:25PM

Bill G wrote: »

phew, for a second I thought you were talking about me

Every commercial pilot I met and know are all sound lads, so I suppose on average I'm bound to come across the exception sooner or later!!

Bill G · 24-03-2014 10:30PM

Tea 1000 wrote: »

Every commercial pilot I met and know are all sound lads, so I suppose on average I'm bound to come across the exception sooner or later!!

Well I'm not a commercial pilot, just a private one, so your generalisation is still safe

Bill G · 24-03-2014 10:33PM

Tea 1000 wrote: »

Every commercial pilot I met and know are all sound lads, so I suppose on average I'm bound to come across the exception sooner or later!!

And certainly not all the ones I know are lads! :-)

homerjay2005 · 24-03-2014 10:33PM

Savman wrote: »

Difficult to believe somebody sat in the cockpit for nearly 7 hours knowing plane would eventually ditch into the ocean. Does not bear any hallmarks of a suicide mission either by sabotage or hijacking.

They could have ditched it pretty much any time, so waiting hours for the engines to run out of fuel seems implausible.

induced decompression is highly likely though perhaps there is some scenario that could cause comms/acars to be cut, knocking out the entire cabin/cockpit yet still allowing the plane to fly until it ran out of fuel.

kona · 24-03-2014 10:36PM

Bill G wrote: »

The FADEC? On some aircraft, yes they have a CB. On the 777 they are powered directly (and attached to) each engine. So shutting down the engine will remove the power to it.

They can also be turned on regardless of engine being on. Just being pedantic

Tea 1000 · 24-03-2014 10:37PM

Bill G wrote: »

Well I'm not a commercial pilot, just a private one, so your generalisation is still safe

Thought as much!

kona · 24-03-2014 10:39PM

Savman wrote: »

Difficult to believe somebody sat in the cockpit for nearly 7 hours knowing plane would eventually ditch into the ocean. Does not bear any hallmarks of a suicide mission either by sabotage or hijacking.

They could have ditched it pretty much any time, so waiting hours for the engines to run out of fuel seems implausible.

Believe it or not it's happend before and caught on video , Ethiopian 767.

pfurey101 · 24-03-2014 10:45PM

It is also slightly possible that a sequence of events occured that were never considered in any probability model or in the millions of hour B777 hours flying..

For example (if memory serves me right) something happened in or to one of the engine combustion cans that caused a fire on board the BA 737 in Manchester. This wasn't supposed to happen but it did.

Also - in the early days of Airbus A330 and A340 fly-by-wire operations, I believe it was a Virgin A340 that needed to turn one way on approach to Heathrow. The pilot did his thing but a unique clash of variables and instructions amongst the millions of lines of code made the A340 turn the other way!

In both cases the fixes were implemented.

So they will stop at nothing to find out what happened here to ensure it can never happen again.

Mountainsandh · 24-03-2014 10:48PM

Bill G wrote: »

As I've stated before, yes, the pilots can pull the CB's on the FDR and CVR.

Tried a Google search on this, and it wasn't so clear cut (at all at all), but I'll take your word for it here. I think it was more a case of pilots being able to disable CVR but not FDR.

Anyway, what about a fireproof, bluetooth-y enabled system ?

What seems to be suggested is always to disable item to contain fire, well what if this system was already contained, well alarmed, with say, 30 minutes containment time (note that if it was self contained in a fireproof box, chances are there wouldn't be too much air in there to feed combustion) ?

https://iosafe.com/fire-protection

This protects from external fire, but I'm sure could be optimized (and is apparently pretty much operational) to prevent fire from escaping the box. (spring systems close vents and melting tabs seal them)
This buys you 20 minutes.

This was a very quick Google search, I suppose there are loads of similar products available, and plenty of engineers to design aircraft specific, and more performant ones.

By disabling a burning system, how many minutes do you gain, if at all ?

This black box does not have anything to contribute to the running of the aircraft if I understand right, so what's to prevent it from being completely independent ? If I understand right too, it can be powered from an electrical feed in the plane, but also has batteries. If the electrical power source can be disabled, then the machine will still function, so really, once you can disable the electrical link, and you have a well designed fireproof box, there is little excuse for the pilots being able to disable it.

Bill G · 24-03-2014 10:53PM

Tea 1000 wrote: »

Thought as much!

But it's my previous job as an avionics engineer on the 777 which probably lends a bit more weight to the discussions here....

Tea 1000 · 24-03-2014 10:58PM

Bill G wrote: »

But it's my previous job as an avionics engineer on the 777 which probably lends a bit more weight to the discussions here....

Previous job? <Snip>

Grandpa Hassan · 24-03-2014 11:04PM

kona wrote: »

Believe it or not it's happend before and caught on video , Ethiopian 767.

I had always assumed that a fire knocked out the comms and then the pilots. But having read the very eloquent pilot a few pages ago describing how all the fire theories made no sense (a post copied from pprune I think), I'm thinking that something along the lines of Ethiopian flight 961 is the most likely (or maybe something like the passengers taking out the hijackers after they had incapacitated the pilots)

ProfessorPlum · 24-03-2014 11:17PM

Boys and girls,
There's no problem with having fire proof boxes that are fed data and have their own batteries. We already have these. The bigger problem is a system that will communicate this data to the ground. In fact, we already have this too. Some folks here seem to think we need to isolate this system from the boys and girls up at the pointy end. The big problem with that is that the data needs to be transmitted to ground. That can happen via radio or via satellite communications. So the fireproof box is not the problem, its the communication system to go along with it. Lots of wiring, potential to interfere with other systems etc. There is no outrage as has been said. It is completely to do with safety.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370-Updates and Discussion

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