Missing Malaysian Aircraft – is it possible…

at this point one of them would have text somebody they love just incase worse case scenario

I don’t think we can draw too many conclusions from this – mobile phones don’t work everywhere!

The only scenario that seems to hold water is the robbery scenario, something valuable in the hold so make the plane dissapear while half inching it.

I think you’re missing another highly plausible and sensible scenario:

no conclusions nope – but given the plane did a uturn over malaysia for no reason what so ever (at present and the transponder was turned off just before), if it had been alight and on fire at that point (which you’d expect given thats where it suddenly diverted back on itself), the passengers would have been informed something was wrong surely?? or even if they were still unaware the pilot or similar would have been able to do so? even with a mobile, id have thought in those 8 hours flying, especially at the start of the u-turn they would have had some form of signal between 240 people to make an emergency call!

and theres the co-pilot too, unless of course both of these people were under the influence of somebody else and instructed not to do anything

its just very very fishy, i think theres already been to many variables to ever say this was just a disaster, and mechanical failure or smoke overcome everyone, if there was smoke and it continued for hours surely there was a fire, and fires spread, they dont last for 8 hours continuoulsly flying with god knows how much fuel in the tanks, surely they would have blown too

again its baffled everyone really, and as its so baffling it probably suggests foul play somewhere, probably via a very very clever pilot who knew what he was doing

How does onboard fire + venting cabin pressure and climbing to starve it of oxygen + onboard oxygen runs out before they can safely descend = incapacitated crew/unconcious passengers/fire out, and a ghost flight to nowhere that disappears without trace?

Just call me Columbo. 🙂

The thing the fire theory doesn’t take into account is the fact that contact was lost at the point of comms transfer between Malaysia & Vietnam. That timing may be coincidental, but if I was trying to make a plane vanish, that would be the best time to do it as there is going to be a longer period before anyone notices that they aren’t in contact. You’d have to be on the flight deck at this point waiting for this to happen. I think that is suspicious, but anyone who thinks that we are doing anything but guessing at this point is deluding themselves.

CobraKai – London.

The Megashark is as likely as most of the other theories being spouted!!!!! Says it all really.

How does onboard fire + venting cabin pressure and climbing to starve it of oxygen + onboard oxygen runs out before they can safely descend = incapacitated crew/unconcious passengers/fire out, and a ghost flight to nowhere that disappears without trace?

Build in the turns after it had crossed Malaysia into that scenario (as confirmed by Thai and Malaysian miliatry radar).

Build in the turns after it had crossed Malaysia into that scenario (as confirmed by Thai and Malaysian miliatry radar).

Oh, that was megashark.

I have wondered in general…

What happens if both the Captain and Co Pilot both die on the flight deck whilst the door is locked?

Does the cabin crew know the code for the door?

Or does the aircraft just keep flying until it runs out out of fuel with lots of people trying to break the door down? Horrible way to go…

Does the cabin crew know the code for the door?

They know how to get in, yes.

An instance of the cabin being accessed after the crew were incapacitated (Helios 522)-

Clicky

Does that not make them a target for hijackers then? Open the door or I’m gonna cut your face off scenario?

Holy shit I’ve just read that link. What a way to die for the guy trying to save that flight! Gutting!

id hope if it was oxygen loss that the passengers were also all unconscious rather than awake for the entire flight

id hope if it was oxygen loss that the passengers were also all unconscious rather than awake for the entire flight

Emergency supply only lasts long enough for a descent to below 10,000′, so if it stayed at cruising altitude they’d all be unconscious / dead.

^^^ the link to the greek one, stated an air steward entered the cockpit 2 hrs after air loss!

Dan, I work LL buz/wob and bpk’s and lam/bnn inbounds. Don’t have much to do with kk.

This has been clarified and is not proven.
[/quote]

Both pretty well established facts – the turns based on radar tracks from 2 different countries. I’d suggest that scenarios which don’t allow for those happenings are far, far less likely. No matter how implausible a deliberate flight into the South Indian Ocean might seem, it’s about the only one which does fit with the known information, so anything else is less likely.

BTW the pilots didn’t deliberately climb to starve a fire of oxygen – that’s not in any standard procedure for fire.

I didn’t think it was likely, to be fair – but this whole thing is such a mystery, the only scenario that seems entirely unlikely is that the culprit will be unmasked by Scooby Do, and he would have got away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky kids.

low oxygen due to fire, pilots tried to reprogramme plane to fly back knowing O2 was short, but messed it up/ never finished it?

ACARS wasn’t definitely turned off before the last Tx. The last recorded response was beforehand, but it only pings every hour, therefore it could have been turned off at any point in between the two pings, which takes in the period both before and after the last voice contact.

CobraKai – I fly both LL & KK, so no doubt we’ve spoken!

ACARS is a satellite communication system used when out of normal radio range – basically a satellite based txt msg system. It automatically sends a report from the a/c to ATC when a waypoint is crossed. Over the Atlantic, for example, waypoints are often 45 min apart, so no msg for 45 min doesn’t necessarily mean it was switched off 45 min ago. If the link is actually terminated, the other party is notified, so ATC will know exactly what time the link terminated.

As for mobile phones, there is NO Mobile coverage at high altitude. Also, more than 5 miles offshore I doubt you’d get a signal either, so no matter what happened you wouldn’t get people using mobiles.

Helios522- That is a very sad read. At least he went down fighting, if you could say that with decorum.

I accept that you’re a pilot of these things, so maybe should know, but I’m afraid that is incorrect – ACARS is a datalink protocol which is used over VHF and HF as well as Satcom – in fact from the information provided Malaysian had no contract to send ACARS over Satcom, so updates were only via VHF.

Can’t find a reference right now, but I’m fairly sure they did determine that ACARS was acually turned off before the last radio message, rather than it simply failing to report again – there was much discussion of this issue on pprune. I think they also determined that the transponder was turned off before the last radio message, but less sure about that. I believe it was also suggested that the last ACARS report had the programmed turn back in it (well before the last radio message), but that may have been a rumour.

Oh and kimbers, as already discussed above that scenario doesn’t fit in with the very well established fact of the turns after passing over the Malaysian peninsula.

Aracer – you are correct. ACARS is being used as a term to cover all datalink communications between the aircraft and ground agencies, whereas in reality there are many independent systems, all controlled and linked through central processors. I was trying to talk in laymans terms, as being discussed elsewhere.

I don’t know exactly what Malaysian Airlines 777’s have on board, but I’m pretty certain what we are talking about is the CPDLC system, used to keep datalink comms between the a/c and ATC in remote areas, such as the South China Sea. It’s pretty hard to tell, as much of the info released is from news agencies, on whom the intricacies of such details are lost.

It’s worse than that – most of them seem to be willfully ignorant of many of the important details of how aircraft systems (and comms systems in particular) work, hence are actually misreporting stuff. I should point out that whilst I don’t have any direct experience of the aircraft systems we’re talking about, as mentioned upthread I have worked on comms systems on military aircraft and know quite a bit about stuff like this in general (apart from being an aviation fan and so knowing quite a bit from that perspective).

aracer, I was only talking about the acars not the turns. I’ll find you the link, clarified by the malaysians that they do not know for sure if the ACARS was deliberatly turned off before the last transmission.

The Malaysians had a change of mind as to when the ACARS was switched off.

Thanks Imnotverygood.

Quote below from here, scroll down to Monday

Malaysia said it believed the final spoken words from the plane came from Fariq, the co-pilot, not his colleague or an intruder on the flight deck. However, they appeared to backtrack from their earlier belief that the words were spoken after communications devices were deliberately switched off.

The co-pilot of the missing Malaysian plane’s last words heard from the cockpit were ‘all right, good night’, according to the airline’s chief executive
The voice communication came at 1.19am, two minutes before the plane’s transponder was seemingly turned off. While the last signal from the Acars data communication system came earlier, at 1.07am, it was not due to transmit again until 30 minutes later, Hishammuddin, the interim transport minister, told reporters, meaning that could have seemingly been turned off at any point before 1.37am.

So they say the last transmission was made between the possible window of when ACARS went off..
It still leaves the window open for accident rather than deliberate.

& the part of the system they seem to be referring to is the FMS interface automatically reporting the a/c health to Airline Ops.

Ah, fair enough – I’d missed that. I’ll take back my comments about ACARS being turned off (what is explained there is what I assumed the situation was before it was stated that they knew it had been turned off). It seems I was also incorrect about the transponder.

We are however still left with the turns, confirmed by two sets of radar, which do not correspond with any scenario involving the pilots being disabled.

We are however still left with the turns, confirmed by two sets of radar, which do not correspond with any scenario involving the pilots being disabled.

No but they do not preclude some kind of evolving diasater..

What sort of evolving disaster would result in a series of turns and the aircraft then flying on for another 7 hours? All of this with the pilots incapacitated.

Whatever explanation you might have for that, it is doubtless far, far less likely than the more straightforward explanation of it all being flown deliberately. I’m still not sure why people are so reluctant to accept that explanation.

I suspect there was a zombie out break on the plane and to save civilization as we know it the pilots flew it out over the most remote bit of ocean they could find before crashing it into the sea.

It’s the apparent lack of motive aracer

Ming the Merciless – Member

I suspect there was a zombie out break on the plane and to save civilization as we know it the pilots flew it out over the most remote bit of ocean they could find before crashing it into the sea.

Anyone who’s read World War Z knows that an ocean isn’t enough to stop teh zombies!

I do not have an explanation, I have absence of evidence, therefore it is all conjecture.
Could have been deliberate, could have been an accident.

I’m happy to accpet whatever conclusion comes out of the investigation.
Right now I am not 100% convinced that the investigators have got it all correct and I think there is still a possibility that none of the “debris” identified so far is from mh370.
That may well change in the next few hrs..

What sort of evolving disaster would result in a series of turns and the aircraft then flying on for another 7 hours? All of this with the pilots incapacitated.

two assumptions there.

The plane was powered up for 7 hrs
The pilots may not have been incapcatiated.

Imagine somehow losing all comms, and only having partial control of the aircraft, and gradually bleeding to death..
All are possible.

I suspect there was a zombie out break on the plane and to save civilization as we know it the pilots flew it out over the most remote bit of ocean they could find before crashing it into the sea.

You’ve clearly failed to take the megashark into account there. 🙄

eg united airlines 232 had engine failure which flung engine parts into the controls, and hence suffered loss of flight controls and was crash landed using the engines to adjust lift etc (read the link).
The same could have happened and the pilots could have been injured and struggled to regain control, and gradually bled out..

Preposterous as it sounds, there are many possibilities. What is believable? Dunno, whatever the evidence shows us.