Strange Plane Disappearance...

[Joe Guy]

The technical problems are: How close would the planes have to be to appear as one? How would he connect with the other flight and not be detected?

I heard a pilot on radio say that the plane that wants to hide wouldn't need to be very close to the other one. It could fly high above the 777 and radar would only pick up the 777. It would take much skill but it wouldn't need to be tailgating like most of us probably imagined it would.

[RayThom]

Way too much thinking for me.

Occam's razor... copilot suicide.

[rubato]

The technical problems are: How close would the planes have to be to appear as one? How would he connect with the other flight and not be detected?

I heard a pilot on radio say that the plane that wants to hide wouldn't need to be very close to the other one. It could fly high above the 777 and radar would only pick up the 777. It would take much skill but it wouldn't need to be tailgating like most of us probably imagined it would.

For the very short time they were directly above the radar detector only. From the side, where they would be for a longer time that would not be the case. At it assumes that there is only 1 radar which can cover each location; highly unlikely.

yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

Way too much thinking for me.

Occam's razor... copilot suicide.

That would explain some, but not all, of the peculiarities of this disappearance.

For an even better "Occam's razor" explanation, try this:

A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
BY CHRIS GOODFELLOW..03.18.14.....6:30 AM

There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi.

We know the story of MH370: A loaded Boeing 777 departs at midnight from Kuala Lampur, headed to Beijing. A hot night. A heavy aircraft. About an hour out, across the gulf toward Vietnam, the plane goes dark, meaning the transponder and secondary radar tracking go off. Two days later we hear reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar, meaning the plane is tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca.

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–-you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.

Take a look at this airport on Google Earth. The pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport.

When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest.

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.

There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes, this happens with underinflated tires. Remember: Heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long-run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)

What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–-looking elsewhere is pointless.

[my emphasis]

Read the whole (longer) article here:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh ... ical-fire/

[rubato]

He makes a good case for it. It jibes with the fact that the pilot was very experienced; a 'solid citizen' type. It was hard to imagine someone like that going so far off the rails and deliberately killing a planeload of people.


yrs,
rubato

[Joe Guy]

[Econoline]

Now that's one theory I haven't seen yet: someone magically transformed that Boing 777 into an Airbus A380! No wonder no one can find it!

[Guinevere]

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... 354ij.html

The Aussies are on the trail of something....

[Gob]

For an even better "Occam's razor" explanation, try this:

A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines JetA Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
BY CHRIS GOODFELLOW..03.18.14.....6:30 AM

Only it very likely didn't happen that way - as considerable information that was already in the public realm contradicts the story. By Tuesday evening, writers and commentators were picking Goodfellow's post apart.


"Goodfellow's account is emotionally compelling, and it is based on some of the most important facts that have been established so far," writes Jeff Wise in Slate. "And it is simple - to a fault."

"While it's true that MH370 did turn toward Langkawi and wound up overflying it, whoever was at the controls continued to maneuver after that point as well, turning sharply right at VAMPI waypoint, then left again at GIVAL," he says. "Such vigorous navigating would have been impossible for unconscious men."

And:

Goodfellow's theory fails further when one remembers the electronic ping detected by the Inmarsat satellite at 8:11 on the morning of March 8. According to analysis provided by the Malaysian and United States governments, the pings narrowed the location of MH370 at that moment to one of two arcs, one in Central Asia and the other in the southern Indian Ocean. As MH370 flew from its original course toward Langkawi, it was headed toward neither. Without human intervention - which would go against Goodfellow's theory - it simply could not have reached the position we know it attained at 8:11 a.m.

There still should have been a distress call, Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board crash investigator, told NBC News.

"Typically, with an electrical fire, you'll have smoke before you have fire," he said. "You can do some troubleshooting. And if the systems are still up and running, you can get off a mayday call" and pilots can put on an oxygen mask, Feith said.

Nine hours after its first article on the subject Business Insider ran a follow-up, with reaction from pilots.

Michael G Fortune, a retired pilot who flew 777-200ERs like the Malaysia plane, said it was unlikely the crew would have shut off the transponders to deal with the fire.

"The checklist I utilized for smoke and fumes in the B-777-200ER does not specifically address the transponder being turned off," he said.

Another 777 pilot told the website that putting on oxygen masks would have been the first priority for the crew, preventing them from being incapacitated.

[Econoline]

Yeah, I came across that response to Goodfellow's theory (you left out the part of the Slate article where the author quoted Einstein: “Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.”)--and I thought I posted a follow-up post here (which apparently got lost in the æther) pointing out that yes, it's *ALL* just speculation, every single one of the theories out there, and every single one has something wrong with it or something it leaves unaccounted-for.

We really won't know anything until the FDR and VDR--and/or the plane itself--are located. If ever.

Inigo Montoya: I must know...
Man in Black: Get used to disappointment.
Inigo Montoya: 'kay.

[Gob]

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)

[Lord Jim]

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)

I've been trying to apply Sherlock's Maxim to this; the problem is that eliminating the impossible has proved to be a daunting task...

It appeared that the Aussies might have found something from satellite footage in the South Indian Ocean, but now that two P3's and a P8 (a state-of-the-art reconnaissance plane that can detect an object as small as a submarine periscope in roiling seas) have come up empty handed, that's starting to look like yet another dead end...

[Econoline]

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)

What if eliminating the impossible turns out to be impossible?

That's when Sherlock's Maxim becomes inoperable and the Princess Bride Maxim (which I quoted) takes over.

[RayThom]

Or, to paraphrase Sherlock's plagiarized line from Shakespeare's "Henry V", “The game is afloat”.

[rubato]

In the real world you can eliminate as much of the impossible as you like but what will remain are still mutually contradictory ideas.
In other words, things which cannot all be the truth. And no matter how much of the impossible you have eliminated you cannot know that you have eliminated all of it; or even how much of it remains. Eliminating wrong answers tells you nothing about what the right questions are. Conan Doyles' maxim is just clever-sounding but illogical and unworkable bullshit. Good enough for fiction. Not useful in the real world.

yrs,
rubato

[Jarlaxle]

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)

I've been trying to apply Sherlock's Maxim to this; the problem is that eliminating the impossible has proved to be a daunting task...

It appeared that the Aussies might have found something from satellite footage in the South Indian Ocean, but now that two P3's and a P8 (a state-of-the-art reconnaissance plane that can detect an object as small as a submarine periscope in roiling seas) have come up empty handed, that's starting to look like yet another dead end...

Or whatever they saw just...sank?

[Gob]

Malaysia's prime minister has announced that missing flight MH370 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Najib Razak said this was the conclusion of fresh analysis of satellite data tracking the flight.

Malaysia Airlines had told the families of the 239 people on board, he said.

The BBC has seen a text message sent to families by the airline saying it had to be assumed "beyond reasonable doubt" that the plane was lost and there were no survivors.

There were 227 passengers on flight MH370, many of them Chinese.

Relatives of those on board who watched the announcement at a Beijing hotel wept with grief, and some were taken away on stretchers by medical teams.

The announcement by Prime Minister Najib Razak came at a late-night news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

It was based on new analysis by British satellite firm Inmarsat, which provided satellite data, and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

The firms "have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth," Mr Razak said.

"This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

Mr Razak appealed to the media to respect the privacy of the families of the passengers and crew, saying the wait for information had been heartbreaking and this latest news harder still.

[Lord Jim]

It was based on new analysis by British satellite firm Inmarsat, which provided satellite data, and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

Okay, well given the fact that this analysis doesn't originate with the Malaysian government, I think we can assume the information to be reasonably solid...

So, given the things we now seem to know for a fact, we can now absolutely eliminate a couple of scenarios and begin to apply Sherlock's Maxim....

We can rule out the "Doomsday Plane" scenario...

With the "Northern arc" of the plane pinging response eliminated and the crash zone established at the end of the "Southern Arc", clearly there was no intent involved to get the plane to a landing area for some "Step 2' nefarious purpose...

We can also rule out the "This Can Be Explained By Accident" theory....

If this were a situation where there was some sort of malfunction on the plane causing a fire which gradually knocked out the communications and transponder capability, and the pilots reversed course in a frantic effort to reach a landing back in Malaysia, and before they could do so they were overcome by the smoke in the cockpit and couldn't complete their heroic effort...

Then given what we know about the plane's trajectory after it's last marking by military radar, and the fact that we know it continued to send these pinging signals for six hours, (which it wouldn't have done underwater) the plane should have crashed in waters well north of the apparent crash site....

Somewhere in the mid- Indian Ocean, off the the east coast of Africa...

If the wreckage of this plane is in the South Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia where it's being looked for now, (and where all the evidence indicates it should be) that means that someone, after the initial course reversal was executed, either laid in a second auto-pilot course (or flew it manually) intending to have this plane fly on for six hours just to ditch it in the most remote and deepest sea location within the fuel range of the aircraft...

Either terrorists or a psycho pilot deciding on this course of action seems highly improbable...(you'd expect either of them to crash the plane much sooner)

But once you've eliminated the impossible...

If the reported information is accurate, we now know the "what"...

But we're still a long way from the "who" or the "why"....

[Crackpot]

if they were flying blind adjusting course over open water may have been a bit difficult.

[Lord Jim]

That would mean they were still conscious and piloting the plane well after they made the turn and were crossing back over Malaysia...

Why didn't they attempt a landing then? While they were over land?

The whole "accident" theory is based on the idea that they made the turn intending to land, and then passed out and couldn't control the plane and bring it to a landing. If they were still conscious when they were out over the Indian Ocean, on the other side of Malaysia, (where the second course change was made) they'd have had plenty of time to try to bring the plane to a landing before then.

I fully understand why there are a lot of experienced commercial pilots speaking out in the media trying to support the "complete accident" theory...

They have a natural and understandable bias against believing that one of their own, a person like themselves, could turn to "The Darkside"....(Most of these guys are former military pilots, and they have a lot of justifiable pride in their professionalism and integrity...)

But they're acting like defense attorneys, not people looking dispassionately at the available evidence...

The "complete accident theory" just doesn't comport with the known facts...

Not if the plane went down where the plane appears to have gone down...

This doesn't mean that this had to be caused by a psycho pilot...

It could have been a terrorist act; the pilots could have been attacked by a terrorist or terrorists and the pilots may have been victims just like everyone else on the plane...

That scenario would not contradict the known facts...

But the "complete accident theory" just flat out doesn't work...