Lost Jet’s Path Seen as Altered via Computer
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The plane was hijacked and there has been contact with Malaysia/China/USA. One of the conditions for hostages to be held safely is that the Authorities do not make this public.
This would explain:
- the otherwise unbelievable delays and pure misinformation by the Malaysian government. Stalling for time.
- the fact that they did not publicly do background checks on all passengers until recently. They already know who the hijacker is. Now that there is pressure because of elapsed time and that people are seeing holes in the story, they need to be seen to be doing something.
What makes this implausible:
- it still does not explain where the plane landed and has been hidden without trace in the interim (perhaps they know - NW Pakistan, NE Afghanistan maybe, and just can't get to it without harming the hostages)
- it would be a diplomatic nightmare to have countries using their assets in a futile search when Malaysia already knows what has happened. (On the other hand, if they took 20 countries into their confidence then they would definitely have had a leak by now.)
- talking of leaks - I am sure even if it was a tightly held secret that they were in hostage negotiations, someone would have made it public by now. That's just the way things are these days.
EDIT: Formatting
Specifically addressing public background checks on all passengers: These are people whose families are grieving. The have a completely reasonable expectation of privacy, and I don't think there is good reason to ever publish any but the most rudimentary of information on these individuals.
Can you imagine a loved one dying in mysterious conditions and then have Reddit shred through their background information and publishing conspiracy theories about a link between their experimenting with drugs in college, a painful divorce and how that means they might be a suicide-hijacker (or whatever)?
1: I'm not saying there's no value in it, there are clearly some capable people pitching in left and right, but it's a radical paradigm shift in investigation, and while you're looking for a missing aircraft is a time for sticking to procedure, not undertaking paradigm shifts.
Examples of this are the delay between the two comms engines being switched off; the Rolls Royce engine data; and their military satellites.
All of this information was gleaned from reliable sources [their own military, the engine manufacturer, the normal ATC systems], and you are 100% correct in that it should have been verified before being released. But, my point is that the delay between the time the information first came to light [even through leaks] in release was just too excruciating long to comprehend. In the interim flatly they denied that the information even existed. I can only assume that some of the leaks from "official sources" were in part because they knew that materially[1] important reliable information was being held back.
On another note - I do feel for the families. The mis-information, delays and incorrect denials are only adding to the speculation. There must be a better way to report information.
[1]= Materially important to quelling speculation. Material to re-directing the futile searches in the wrong places.
However, if true... You'd expect DevGru or Legionnaires or whatever the Chinese equivalent is to have acted by now.
Except that this is exactly how the Malaysian government usually operates. I have lived there for a year and can tell you that the Malaysian government is incompetent. Also they are used to talking to the local media which they control (and who is also incompetent).
> the fact that they did not publicly do background checks on all passengers until recently. They already know who the hijacker is. Now that there is pressure because of elapsed time and that people are seeing holes in the story, they need to be seen to be doing something.
See above.
I agree that the government is incompetent, partly because of cronyism and largely because of terribly applied affirmative action.
However, I did think that the enormous international support combined with international pressure would have helped mitigate this. They seem to respond well to international pressure - I always believed that most of their best achievements (of which there are a few) have come as a result of the perpetual pissing contest with neighbouring Singapore (not that I am sure Singapore even cares!).
Edit: the satellite getting ACARS pings is apparently geosynchronous, so triangulation is not possible, but...
What is the arc of the final position based on? The Earth is not flat, and geosynchronous satellites are at about 36,000 km altitude (compare to Earth's radius of about 6375 km). Shouldn't the position, if based on ranging from a geosynchronous satellite, be much closer to a straight line (and actually dipping to lower altitudes in the center)? Why does the graphic appear to depict a range from a point low over the Indian ocean rather than a point in geostationary orbit?
What possible location or ranging information could create an arc like that? If the ping was not to a geosynchronous satellite, that raises questions—the ping couldn't have been from the ACARS system, and it would mean triangulation might be possible.
Could it be a range from a low earth orbit satellite, or an over the horizon communications system? In the middle of the Indian ocean? The only thing even close to that is Diego Garcia, but the illustrated location is several hundred miles north of Diego Garcia. I'm discounting over-the-horizon radar, because I think that would have to mean they knew which blip was the missing plane, and isn't the only way to know that to be tracking it?
What about the second to last known signal, or the third to last? Given that we're not talking about arcs from points low over the Indian ocean, but from a point in high orbit, and the plane can only be within an ~8 mile slice from max altitude to the ground, and given that the earth is also curving away from the satellite, how can the arc of possible positions from the final ping cover that much ground?
Australia has radar coverage of some of the southern area where the plane might have been. Are we to believe nobody's checked Australian radar logs to eliminate part of the southern arc of final positions depicted?
Is this search being run by incompetent officials, or are they releasing purposefully incomplete or inaccurate information to the press, or is there some mysterious reason why they generated an arc like that from a geosynchronous satellite and why prior ACARS pings or radar logs don't help narrow the search area at all?
Yes they will - the INMARSAT satellites are in geostationary orbit.
The arcs are derived from the areas where there is no overlap of coverage between those satellites.
the "4 or 5 undisclosed-to-the-public satcom ping data" might remain undisclosed due to a) already having been used to provide the resulting location estimate of the "last ping" or b) the data being deemed uninteresting or c) the usual combination of bureaucracy, secrecy, perceived nefarious aims and observed incompetent means.
You wouldn't be the first to call the Malaysians incompetent.
Vietnam has voiced concerns over "receiving 'insufficient information' from the Malaysian side." China, too, has found "'too much confusion' over Malaysia’s release of information."
The FT blames Malaysia's opaque political system. Malaysia has been lead by one party since 1957. The press is "either state-controlled or is instinctively government-leaning". Malaysia's system of affirmative action, which extends to the government, makes matters worse. It has fostered "a system where appointments are not always made on merit." Worse, "not only are non-Malays excluded but competent Malays are excluded as well if they happen not to be on the right side of the political divide."
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/307829fe-aac7-11e3-83a2-00144...
Unlikely? Sure. Far-fetched? Not as far-fetched as many other ideas that have been floated recently.
I recently bought a highly realistic 777 model for MS Flight Simulator X [1], and it has a very good replica Flight Management Computer. Also, when you purchase the software, it comes with thousands of pages of manuals for the real jet.
You can see the FMC being programmed inside the simulator here [2].
[1] https://www.precisionmanuals.com/pages/product/777LRF.html
If you "pull the busses" do the engines still have the ability to send their telemetry data?
Sad as it is to say, at this point I think the most likely cause is a bizarre pilot suicide. That night one of the pilots likely allowed a dark, dark thought they once had to overtake them for some reason.
First this person programmed a set of remote 5-letter nav waypoints into the FMC without the other pilot noticing - not a difficult task by my understanding. Most likely to hide the evidence for insurance reasons, or just out of shame, to hide his actions from the world (a long flight also ensures the CVR will tape over the relevant bits after its 120min loop - CVR/FDR is one of the few things that cannot be disabled from the cockpit of a 777).
After the radio handoff, the other pilot left the cockpit for a moment. The perpetrator then set the transponder to standby and disabled ACARS messages from being sent via both VHF and SATCOM. Finally, in order to ensure hypoxia took hold quickly, he set the plane to climb as high as the autopilot would take it (which ended up being ~FL450), and then depressurized the plane, quickly and painlessly killing everyone aboard, including himself. Multiple airline pilots in the airliners.net forums have been discussing these possibilities and they seem to agree that all of these things can be performed by a single pilot, in a few minutes time, entirely from the cockpit. The ghost plane then flew the programmed route until running out of fuel.
While this is certainly bizarre, unlikely, and hard to fathom, I posit that it is the least unlikely scenario, because it can be done entirely by one person whose motives we don't understand. Historically, there have been many people who have done bizarre, horrendous things for motives we can't begin to understand - whether due to insanity, sociopathy or zealotry. I truly hope I'm wrong, but I just can't see a grand multinational hijacking conspiracy as being more likely than a sad man wishing to end his sad life in an evil way.
If you're thinking of replying to this with your own theory, let me just add that I say all of this not to add flame to the fire of speculation, or to accuse a potentially innocent man of mass murder, but to try and finally put the whole thing to rest in my own mind - I seem to have been rather obsessed with the whole story over the past few days. While the past week has been a flurry of information and misinformation, it's quite likely we will never know what happened to MH370, at least not for a very long time. We need to find the explanations for ourselves that allow us to come to peace with the incident personally, so that we can collectively move on at some point.
"Quoting nupogodi (Reply 178): Now, mandala, I have another question for you: I have heard that the outflow valves will not allow cabin altitude to drop below 14000ft as long as bleed air is working. Can you confirm or deny that? Is it possible to completely depressurize the aircraft without turning off in the "inflow" (don't know the jargon) ? If so, wouldn't the flight deck and cabin quickly grow incredibly cold? Or do you think intentional decompression is a valid hypothesis?"
"Turn pressurization to manual, open the valves... it will depressurize... Wanna make it quicker, just turn off the bleeds too (inflow)... Just pressing a few buttons... the longer button is the outflow valve in manual... Mandala499"
If anyone has information proving otherwise, I'd definitely be interested to hear it. Certainly a bit of a scary thought.
Also, it neither problematic nor scary nor weird. The pilot can kill everyone on board in any number of ways. You're putting your life in his (or her) hands every time you step on the aircraft. Same goes for your city bus and taxis...
Just as communications equipment can be turned off if they pose a fire risk, it should be possible to vent the plane (after descending to a breathable altitude) if the system fails and the cabin begins to overpressurise. It's probably worse than depressurising since it could the plane to explode...
As background, I fly a twin engine piston airplane that's pressurized (Beech 58P). Different level of responsibility from a 777-ER (I have only 6 seats, including my own), but many of the same basic design principles apply.
My cabin is pressurized by air coming off the turbos (the turbos "make" higher than ambient pressure air, and that is fed into the cabin after passing through a restrictor and an intercooler). Turbines (jets and turbo-props) pressurize from bleed air (also high pressure air created in the engine, but via a different physical mechanism.)
If I have an engine or turbo failure, I need to be able to isolate the cabin from the smoke/fumes/fire that may be present on that engine. So, I have a red knob that can isolate the cabin from the feed from that side (and another knob that will isolate the other side).
Similarly, I have a cabin pressure controller, and on that a cabin dump switch. The controller controls a single outflow valve at the rear of the cabin, about the cross-section of a roll of toilet paper, and there is a second, spring-loaded valve of the same size that's designed to automatically open if the cabin were at risk of over-pressurization.
It would be trivial for me to dump the cabin quickly with a single switch. This results in a cabin rate of climb of over 3K feet per minute, which is painful on the ears, and within minutes the cabin will climb to the aircraft altitude. (I test virtually all of the systems annually prior to the annual major maintenance event, such that if a system has failed, I can have it addressed during major maintenance.)
Why is there a dump switch at all? Dumping the cabin is a great way to clear the cabin of smoke, so in the event of an electrical fire or smoke, once the situation is contained, I can dump the cabin, venting all the toxic smoke inside to the outside, with a supply of "clean" higher-pressure air entering at the front. Once the smoke has cleared, I close the outflow valve to re-pressurize the cabin from the engines.
The point of this wall of text is that aircraft are designed assuming that someday something will fail. When it fails, the pilots, assumed to be the "good guy", need to have the best chance possible to react.
All common, and many uncommon, failures have a specific checklist response, sometimes with initial items from memory. (With an engine on fire, you want to perform the initial response from memory, backing it up later with the written checklist.)
No plane is designed to protect the occupants from a pilot intent on killing everyone on board. The pilot has any number of ways to do that, so it's counter-productive to prevent the 99.99% emergencies from being responded to by a well-intentioned pilot in order to prevent the occasional madman from killing all aboard.
A human has to be seriously mentally ill to kill over 200 people during a planned suicide.
When the transponders are turned off and communication can't be established shouldn't jets be scrambled to intercept or find that aircraft immediately? Military radar on jets would have found that aircraft if it was still in the air, right?
-To kill everybody via hypoxia you don´t need to climb to Flight Level 450 (45k feet). FL350 works just as good, the difference in the time of useful consciousness is 10 to 15 secs (from 35' at 350 to 15' at 450), not worth the trouble of climbing and possibly stalling the plane. After that time you either pass out or you start not knowing what you are doing.
-You don´t need to turn and fly for 6+ hours to random points, just keep your flight plan and selected altitude and the airplane will behave like the Helios (flying till the end of the flight plan and then holding till running out of fuel)
-Why flying for 6 hours if you want to suicide? passenger oxygen only works 15 min (time enough to reach a breathable altitude), the portable oxygen tanks for the auxiliary crew will work for 30 min more or less.. Look at this video of hypoxia test at 25k feet to see how fast you pass out http://youtu.be/hSrGfElyfVE
-why disconnect the communications? you only need to ignore them. why bother with the ACARS?
So far all the things are more consistent with a hijacking done by someone with some knowledge of flying a plane (like asking pilots to shut down coms, climbing descending, turning, introducing a waypoint), but not enough to know that flying at FL450 it´s so unstable for a plane like this, or that you´ll eventually will run out of fuel.
Also I must say that all theories are taking in to account good and skilled pilots and rational decisions at the cockpit (maybe from the hijacker). The captain really seems to be a skilled professional, but I don´t know about the flight officer. Friends of mine who are flying at Asian companies complain all the time how awful the instruction and flying skills are there. For example the pilots of the Asiana that crashed at SF just lacked basic flight skills, like using the thrust levers to do a normal landing. At china the flight officers are NOT allowed to take off, land or touch the controls below 1000' (How can you be a pilot without knowing how to land?, what happens if the captain has a heart stroke?). But I don´t know how good it´s pilot instruction at Malaysia Airlines.
I´ve seen very strange results during simulators when trying to solve emergencies, and all where very capable pilots. After all airplanes are very complex systems working in very different scenarios. Corrected procedures and system fixes are constant even on models that have been flying for 20+ years.
What I mean is that yet another possibility, is that the weird behavior is caused by some kind of emergency that went wrong somehow while trying to fix it, maybe due to a momentary bad decision that made everything more difficult, or just plain incompetence.
Also you can not trust all the theories and data they are releasing, it might be a bad interpretation, or just plainly wrong. For example, look at the Malaysian government, they told everybody that they lost track of the flight at one point. Everybody supposed that it was the actual point where they lost ALL contact (primary, secondary and acars), but it was just the secondary radar...and it took them almost a week to realize this. As this point is the ABC of Search and Rescue knowledge, I can not even imaging how many things they are screwing during this search..
edit to finish an incomplete sentence edit 2 missing words and improving some sentences
The initial behaviour of the plane around the time the transponders went out seems very possible to explain in terms of a less-than-perfect response to a sudden emergency. But how could one square a) making a series of direction and altitude changes over a longish period of time, well after the initial incident, b) no attempt to communicate at the same time and c) at most, limited damage to the plane's systems with d) no foul play? It seems that at least one of those has to give...
Additionally, none of the mechanical failure theories explain the aircraft flying towards Antarctica / Australia.
Might be easier to believe the asteroid strike theory...
At simulators we practice all the normal emergencies, that will cover you 99,5 of the times. Most emergencies are simple, but some times something that is not known even to Boeing happens. Or it´s a simple emergency but you take the wrong steps. This happens more frequently to pilots who passed a lacking instruction method (like the one I describe that´s happening at china), but can happen to anyone.
The Air France crash was due to a no emergency situation (they just needed to keep altitude, and engine thrust selection to keep a normal flight and recover the instruments) that was converted in to a crash due to a misinterpretation and wrong piloting skills.
Can't most people hold their breath a lot longer than that? 30 sec seems like a minimum for the average person.
Also remember that pressure is droping fast, if you hold your breath you'll have barotraumatism at your ears surely and maybe at your lungs, it happens for scubadivers if they hold the breath while surfacing.
Replying to the other comment, the first thing that you notice is you ears poping, maybe some discomfort at the sinus and finally you'll see the oxigen masks drop when the cabin altitude reaches 14500 feet. You wont feel how you are losing your cognitive capabilities till you pass out. Check the video I posted above to see how it works.
Are we just not there yet technology wise? I thought planes could in fact land themselves.
Edit: And if the report is correct and ACARS sent the information all along, why in the world did it take them 10 DAYS to find this out?
There was a theory posted here earlier that it was a fire that initially took out the transponder and possibly comms.
The fact that the plane has not been found is very strong evidence that it did not crash. If it crashed on water, some debris would most likely have been found by now. If it had crashed on land, someone would have noticed the resulting fire.
The in-flight fire theory is not plausible because the 777 is fly-by-wire. A fire severe enough to knock out the comms would almost certainly have taken out the fly-by-wire system as well.
And no, cell phones don't work at 30k over water, but they do work at 10k over land. Like I said above, the fact that no wreckage has been found is very strong evidence that the plane landed intact. At some point during that process the plane would have almost certainly come into range of a cell phone tower somewhere.
Isn't that what the oxygen masks are for?
False, nothing here is inconsistent with a mechanical problem. When the NTSB/FAA come out and say they've ruled out mechanical problems let me know.
> The fact that the plane has not been found is very strong evidence that it did not crash.
Almost everyone believes it has crashed. When the NTSB/FAA say otherwise let me know.
> A fire severe enough to knock out the comms would almost certainly have taken out the fly-by-wire system as well.
This seems like random speculation. Some of those systems would turned off by the flight crew intentionally as they go down a checklist.
The total lack of communication combined with hours of continued flight with course changes is inconsistent with any plausible failure mechanism. I have seen no plausible theory of a mechanical failure that can account for these facts.
> Almost everyone believes it has crashed.
So? This would not be the first time that almost everyone was wrong.
> This seems like random speculation
It is certainly speculation, but it's not random. I'm a pilot with a degree in electrical engineering.
> When the NTSB/FAA say otherwise
"We cannot rule out X" and "it is probably not X" are not mutually exclusive statements. (And, BTW, an inside-job hijacking and a crash are also not mutually exclusive.)
We cannot rule out anything until we know for certain what did happen. But that does not prevent us from drawing tentative conclusions what is and is not likely based on what we do know.
>The fact that the plane has not been found is very strong evidence that it did not crash. If it crashed on water, some debris would most likely have been found by now.
The current "most likely water crash" area has only started being searched today.
It would take an even more bizarre set of circumstances than hijacking to explain the behavior of the plane as we know it so far.
Transponders: disabled to deal with fire or as a result.
Closest possible airport: the one the plane turned towards was arguably the best one to go for.
Radio silence: disabled by fire.
Fr. Occam is pacing back and forth and stroking his beard on this one, that's for sure.
Or they could apparently have taken a second to activate the 777's Emergency Locator Transponder, powered by its own battery and with its own hardwired, non-computerised switch circuit to the cockpit.
You could imagine the aircraft accidentally flying (and transmitting over SATCOM) for hours with no other communications if there was some kind of crisis that completely cut off the pilots' (and passengers') ability to use the flight controls for the whole time (quite possibly by killing them) without damaging plane's systems much overall. Hypoxia or smoke inhalation seem plausible. Some kind of fire that completely destroyed the instrument panel without spreading too much further sounds vaguely possible. (IIRC at least one of the pilots had a habit of smoking while flying.) Surely both pilots couldn't somehow have locked themselves out of the cockpit behind the security door? The problem is that such a scenario is hard to square with a flight path that apparently included multiple changes of course and altitude long after any initial cockpit emergency https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7420894 .
That does raise the question of how many turns there really were, though. Earlier reports based on radar suggest that the plane made several course changes as it flew in a zig-zag around the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea west of Malaysia. If enough of those apparent sightings can be knocked down then an accident becomes more likely. Though even one change of direction onto one of the final SATCOM arcs, apparently without any effort to communicate at the same time, is a real head-scratcher if you assume no foul play at any stage.