Malaysia Airlines Says It Lost Contact With Plane Carrying Over 200
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http://my.news.yahoo.com/mas-aircraft-goes-missing--says-air...
It sounds very grim, but we learn from our mistakes. Although blunders in mission-critical situations like aviations can cause loss of life, we save many more by learning about what happens in scenarios which we aren't prepared for. With AF447, we had to wait years for the investigation. It's likely this one will start faster.
My condolences to the families of everyone involved. It's a sad day for aviation – the first fatalites of the 777's spotless record – and a much, much more solemn one for everyone onboard. May they rest in peace.
Having any information about their last minutes, where they might be, is a "good thing" relative to the over all "bad thing" that happened.
I just want to remind you that the observation he made was simply a matter of pointing out that, as aircraft safety records have improved, the accidents that do happen seem so startling because of their rarity. And really, it's quite true. Modern aircraft are technological marvels, and it's difficult to think of one simply falling out of the sky. Granted, structural failure, controlled flight into terrain, loss of instruments or instrumentation (as in AF447 where instruments were deprived of important information due to icing), disoriented pilots, and any number of other things conspiring against what is otherwise a very safe method of travel. Hence the shock.
The reality of the situation is well captured by kunai's comment. We can only learn to further improve the airline industry through such accidents. It's a tragedy of limitation and of our inability to see into the future.
But, when you stop to think about it, what better way to honor the dead than to make sure whatever accident claimed their lives never happens again? That's why this is important.
Every time I go on an airplane I would pray to get back on the ground safely. Everyone feels the fear when the airplane starts shaking or descending rapidly. Despite all the safety and escape plans, if an aircraft is doomed to crash/break apart/blow up, the chance of staying alive is so slim. And people on the airplane know they are about to die and that fear could last from a few seconds to a whole minute. That's a horrible way to die! I mean if you were on a bus and crashed on the high way, that's probably a few seconds. If you are lucky you could jump off the bus before the impact.
This might be off topic, but this is also the exact reason why terrorists like to hijack airplane (I don't want to raise a holy war on airport security here, just let me finish my thoughts here, please!). And you are right, we have to learn through accidents and that's unfortunate. We do that all the time. I count myself a lucky one because I am still alive. I hope I don't become the next victim. I hope this will not happen again.
Sure a missing screw on a passenger seat is unlikely to cause the airplane to crash. Any redundancy can fail at critical moment.
This is not true. Sometimes aircraft have mechanical problems - pitot tubes icing over, for example. There
An aircraft is severely over engineered for its job. Commercial aircraft have landed with gaping holes in the fuselages, engines on fire, landing gear stuck shut. There are very, very few parts of the plane that are single points of failure.
Some people are understandably nervous flyers. People do get scared when an aircraft starts shaking, and that's natural, but what you should remember is that the aircraft is designed to shake. Pilot error is a far more common cause of accidents than mechanical failure.
Remember, you're far, far more likely to be injured or killed driving a car than taking a plane. It's one of - if not the - safest form of transport out there.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20111125/1869
This plane took off with 30 screws missing. But if it was under critical moment (extreme weather or mechanical failure), going with 30 screws could have a chain impact and eventually lead to a fatal crash.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/13/door-falls-off-plan...
This is another lucky incident at 1000 feet. Imagine this at critical moment and at 20k, 30k altitude! I would suppose some passengers would die if that happened.
Remember, you're far, far more likely to be injured or killed driving a car than taking a plane. It's one of - if not the - safest form of transport out there.
I think that's up to argument and depends on how one look at the issue. Is plan safer? There are more corners, more cars, more trains than aircraft combined at any given time. And the most important thing to consider is getting help. I have to press hard on this: if you are in the air, the chance of you surviving is low. Even on the ground after a serious car accident at a reasonable location, most patients could receive proper medical treatment within minutes. But when you are in the air? In the case of gunman I could try to escape on the ground but not really in the air.
You get it man. I've always found that statistical comparison with car accidents very lame and misguided. The sheer feeling of helplessness when you are in a plane, and think something is seriously wrong.
Read both your comments. My thoughts are very similar to yours in this matter. I am very afraid to fly. But of course its not always avoidable.
Due respect to the "technological marvels", but some times I wonder, why can't planes be designed in a way, that they are safe even if they fall. I have no freaking idea, how this can be done. Just a wish.
No, you both don't get it. It's not debatable.
Lets start with the numbers in [1]. There is says that ~25% of the plane crashes are fatal. Also, since 1997 there's been no more than "1 [death] for every 2,000,000,000 person-miles". So let's (incorrectly) assume that all accidents were fatal, so the rate would be no more than 4 deaths for every 2billion miles/person, or 2 deaths per 1billion miles/person.
Now we look at [2] for car fatalities. Let's use the USA numbers: 8.5 deaths per 1 billion vehicle kms. This works out to 5.2 deaths per billion vehicle kms. A quick google search indicates that the average vehicle occupancy in the US is ~1.6 [3]. This turns our figure to 3.25 deaths per billion miles/person.
That is, even if we assume that all airplane accidents are fatal and we only count casualties from road accidents (completely disregarding the much higher number of injuries), it is roughly 50% riskier to use a car than a plane.
What do you find misguiding here?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...
[3] http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw...
The point is not the number of death or likelihood of getting into an accident. We are not comparing the 300k airplanes (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/584144.html) with "254,212,610 registered passenger vehicles" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite...) in the U.S. back in 2009. And yes, I know airplane now is equipped with auto-pilot which increases the safety of flying.
What we have been arguing is the likelihood to survive when an accident has occurred.
Compare the followings:
1. Heart attack during flying vs during walking/on a bus/on a train
2. Airplane crashes into ocean vs drunk drive crashed into another car on highway
3. Gunman hijack airplane vs gunman hijack a Starbuck
In every case, ground accidents are more likely to receive assistance than flying accidents, logically.
If we equip vehicles with auto-pilot system, will that make driving safer?
Living in the space is quite safe as long as nothing goes wrong. But in a zero-gravity environment, middle of nowhere, far away from Earth, living in the space is still more dangerous than living next to the most active volcano today. Why? Because you could relocate (if it's a sudden eruption, fine...). Yet given enough time and with a warning, one could escape from the island on their own or with helps before the eruption.
The number of cars and number of planes does not matter in the above calculation, because the numbers are normalized to miles/person. More planes in the air is not likely to increase those normalized numbers by any significant measure.
Now, (1) is a fair point and I must concede on that. (2) is already accounted within the numbers above. (3)'s casualties are also counted in the plane case, but not in the Starbucks case, so this actually detracts from your point.
Auto-piloted vehicles would be a huge safety measure in a not-so-distant future. However, there are lots of ethical/political issues that we need to overcome to require people to use their autopilots (e.g. who is liable when the autopilot screws up?)
The living-in-space comparison is way out of line. On the one hand, you don't fly to work: you fly occasionally when you need to do long distance travels. If you foresee any problems (you are sick, have heart problems, whatever) you just don't fly. On the other hand, your safest bet would be to not travel at all, yet you take the risk because you gain something from it. Now, if you decide that you do want to travel from the west to the east coast, the risk is simply lower if you do it by plane than by car. At least that's what the numbers say...
- Car is running at 80kmph on empty road and the engine stops working - the drivers waits for it to slow down and parks on the side somewhere and calls 911 (or some other number)
- Plane is flying at 10K feet level and engines stop working. Pilot takes his son's photo from his front pocket and has a close (probably last) look and then maybe starts praying if he is a believer.
Numbers, numbers, facts, facts. If these were to tell us how we should feel in a certain scenario there wouldn't be any branch of philosophy, psychology and all those shit.
It's a simple what-if: What if a plain stops working at high altitude and what if a car stops working at high speed. In case of a plane you brake, turn, up, down, stop - you are done.
You are talking about a highly pressurized canister of air travelling at the better part of the speed of sound way up in the sky, and it must be made as light as possible. It's a marvel they are as safe as they are.
> Remember, you're far, far more likely to be injured or killed driving a car than taking a plane. It's one of - if not the - safest form of transport out there.
Right, and this is an indication of how safe one can make things even given inherent risks in the technology. It's worth remembering how much we devote to this task. And there are plenty of near-misses that are just mind-boggling, like BA-9, for example, where the 747 flew through the ash cloud of a volcano and lost all four engines as well as rendered its windshield more or less opaque. And yet they still landed safely.
Aircraft are amazingly safe as they currently are. However structurally, there isn't a lot of room for redundency.
Of course, if you're lucky enough to survive the impact when one does crash, the smoke and fire from burning fuel is usually what kills...
Of course that crashed happened close to shore and rescues started quite quickly.
I doubt it. No emergency transponder recorded. No mayday heard. It was at night. This suggests one of two things to my mind:
1. catastrophic failure with no real time to adjust, like an inflight breakup, or
2. A lack of knowledge that the flight was flying into the ocean (AF447 comes to mind there but there are other cases).
Ditching a commercial aircraft in the ocean is not easy. It's going to be rediculously difficult at night, and right now there is no indication that the pilot was even trying to go for an emergency landing.
I wish I could be hopeful, but it really doesn't look good.
• Catastrophic structural failure
• Dual engine flame-out
• Clear air turbulence
• Human intervention, such as penetration of the cockpit or a bomb
• Accidental shooting-down
• Suicide of the pilot
Very sad. Only the third crash of a 777 since being introduced in the 90s.
[1]Confirmed 14 nationalities amongst the passengers, including:
China - 153 (including 1 infant)
Malaysia - 38
Indonesia - 12
Australia -7
USA - 4 (including 1 infant)
France - 3
Canada - 2
New Zealand - 2
Ukraine - 2
Russian - 1
Italy - 1
Taiwan -1
Austria - 1
Netherlands - 1
EDIT: And track log: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1...
Why? The first years of life aren't disproportionately more valuable than the last.
>especially the ones from the US.
Does that really imply that they've lived "more" than everyone else on the aircraft?
>Why? The first years of life aren't disproportionately more valuable than the last.
Adults have a few decades of experiencing life over babies. Infants have just started. I'm personally not very sure of the existence of an afterlife to make up for it.
> Does that really imply that they've lived "more" than everyone else on the aircraft?
It implies that they've had a better standard of living, a fuller life than most people in the world. You know 40-60 hour work weeks, clean air, cleaner water, hot water... stuff like that. I've lived outside of the US in 3rd world countries in South East Asia as well as other parts. The standards of living in the US is way better than China, Malaysia, and Vietnam. So yes (except for other people from developed countries)
I will try to be more careful next time and better elaborate my thoughts. When you're sad, you tend not to think as straight. Also, at least I don't use throwaway accounts.
I know you're speaking philosophically, but that's not true in every context like a wrongful death lawsuit. The younger you are, the more your life is worth. The higher your earnings bracket, the more your life is worth.
That would mean an opening if there's an opening in the plane, while still above the ground, the plane is done anyway.
I think it's the fire or suffocation (the plane is sealed) if it falls in the water. I really don't know. Go over to reddit, there people there are better chances of an answer.
Lastly, ADS-B is not a solution for over the ocean position reports - the radio is not powerful enough to transmit data over the long distance (this is why we need to build so many ground stations in the US to actually use it). Not to mention, that ADS-B is not fully operational even in US.
71% of the world is ocean. The ocean is vast, and most of it has very little going on. Last month someone washed up having been lost at sea for over a year, having only seen two or three ships (which didn't stop). A few ships in 13 months.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jose-salvador-alvarenga-healthy-...
'Lost contact' therefore suggests something very wrong has happened.
Saying that you've lost contact with a jet is another way of saying that "it's probably crashed, but we don't have any solid proof yet."
At Beijing airport authorities have provided buses for relatives to go to a hotel about 15 kilometres away for further briefings. Associated Press reported one woman on the bus was weeping while saying on a mobile phone, “They want us to go to the hotel. It can’t be good!”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/08/malaysian-airli...
So the only viable option for streaming that kind of data is over a satellite link, except it should come as no surprise that when you most need the data the uplink won't work (maybe something ripped the fuselage and damaged the transmitter, power was lost, you no longer had line of site to the satellite because the plane rolled, etc).
There's no benefit. You are going to be sending people out to the plane anyway. If the plane is under the ocean you're going to investigate regardless. Flight recorders are designed to last - the Air France 447 recorders were finally found two years later, 4000 meters under water. Data links are unreliable, not there when you most need them, and not worth the trouble.
This is a fantastic point. I can't think of many accidents that were resolved by the FDR alone. The FDR tells a substantial part of the story, obviously (flight control positions, instrumentation data, etc), but the wreckage suggests where potential points of failure occurred. The importance of this cannot be understated, and I'd highly recommend watching (albeit rather dramatized) Crash of the Comet [1] and related videos for how important wreckage and metallurgical analysis has been in resolving otherwise difficult accidents.
To add to your comment, the FDR and CVR have demonstrated that they can function up to the point of impact (with some exceptions, such as a few accidents caused by severe in flight fires), which yields some very important telemetry as to the attitude of the aircraft, state of the engines, etc.
So really, if it's not broke...
And in part, the reliability of FDRs and CVRs has been such that a comparatively small number of those recovered were void of retrievable information. So my guess is that replacing them would require satellite links (which obviously exist) but 1) have complete coverage of the globe (remember, aircraft like the 777 have a huge range) and 2) would be recording real time flight data for every single aircraft in the air. Then you have the issues of costs, approval from the various industry regulators (FAA, etc), and probably no less than 5-10 years before acceptance. And that's being hugely optimistic. In many ways, there's a point where carting around your telemetry-recording device is actually the cheapest and most effective method. It's counter-intuitive to some, but again: Telemetry isn't easy. Or cheap. And it needs to be reliable.
It does appear that Iridium Satellite is proposing something of the sort [1]. And trawling the Interwebs yields some [2] interesting [3] discussions [4].
But chiefly, I think the limitation is mostly cost, and as objclxt points out, reliability is another issue that would need to be addressed. There are a lot of planes in the sky. [5]
[1] http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=6174
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/global/22blackbox...
[3] http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110620151102AA...
[4] http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58733-Why-plane-...
Lost contact: 2:40 AM
Announcement: 7:30 AM
And after 5 hours i imagine the fuel would be about out so after that one can with a very high accuracy say that it was worse that just a radio glitch.
It would not look good to say that the plane crashed and then one hour or so later it lands on some remote runway.