Missing Malaysian Aircraft – is it possible…

I think the issue is that anything is odd given the available evidence.

Indeed.

and it appeared to have more fuel than necessary on board….

There are a variety of reasons for which they will often take more fuel than they strictly need, especially when flying over water.

Well not really. A lot of aviation stuff uses “americanisms” as standard. Meanwhile vertical stabilizer is actually a far more specific term than tail (which would tend to include the horizontal stabilizers, part of the fuselage and typically the APU among other stuff). The photos posted are of the vertical stabilizer, not the tail. The tail isn’t actually a type of vertical stabilizer at all – if that was the case, what other types of vertical stabilizer do you think there are? A better analogy might be you posting a picture of a tyre and saying “here’s a photo of my wheel”.

Just to add to this discussion, and not trying to be a pedant, I’ve always known the tail surfaces as a tail fin and tail planes, to distinguish the vertical and horizontal flying surfaces at the back from the wings in the middle.
Just easier to say than ‘vertical stabilizer’ and ‘horizontal stabilizers’.
I know what I mean by those terms, anyway. 😀

One of my favourite books when I was younger was called Hijacked – about a plane that got hijacked and the hijackers forced the plane to land on a remote island – maybe someone has took this book to heart.

Also, its one thing landing it on a desert island or whatever and they may even have room to take back off again but how the **** would they fuel it.

Several thousands of gallons of kerosene takes up a fair amount of space and you can’t exactly siphon it into the tanks…

You also have to ask the question, why would the hijackers crash land at sea where no one would know?

Hijacked, didn’t intend to crash, something went wrong?

Hijacked, intended to crash into a populated place, pilot bins it in the ocean to limit fatalities?

All pretty awful. I’m probably like other people who thought this stuff just couldn’t happen any more when everything seems tracked all the time.

I thought how do you get a Parrot through customs and hide your accent?

I can just imagine it, ‘Take me to Cubarrr!’

There is a precedent for hijackers hijacking a plane and flying it until it ran out of fuel, it’s happened before, so it’s not so implausible. Obviously flying the aircraft until it runs out of fuel may not have been their original intention. However post 9/11 I really don’t think this would happen. The cockpit doors are armored and in the event of a hijack the pilots wouldn’t open the door to the hijackers, they would raise the alarm and land the aircraft. Plus there would be plenty of opportunity for passengers to send text messages and make phone calls. Whatever happened happened without the passengers or cabin crew knowing. They obviously thought they were on their way to Beijing until the end.

I’m favoring the pilot suicide theory. It’s the only way the aircraft would be turned around deliberately and flown for at least 4 more hours with no communication to ATC. No other theory makes sense, not even the asphyxiation theory (due to cabin pressurisation problem), because the pilot turned the aircraft around and if he did that because he suspected a malfunction then he would have radio’d it in and called an emergency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961

Plus there would be plenty of opportunity for passengers to send text messages and make phone calls

Really? Over the sea?

Greek tanker spots suitcases

If they have engine data showing it flew on for hours how does the data end, eg does it stop abruptly or show signs of fuel loss or normal landing signs

If they have engine data showing it flew on for hours how does the data end, eg does it stop abruptly or show signs of fuel loss or normal landing signs

I heard (could be very wrong) that the engine data wasn’t being saved, because the airline didn’t pay for that option, but the engines still tried to contact home, but didn’t actually transmit the data.

Did I make this up or did someone else hear it?

brant – Member
Greek tanker spots suitcases

POSTED 1 HOUR AGO # REPORT-POST

Links been hijacked 😉

brant – Member
Greek tanker spots suitcases

POSTED 1 HOUR AGO #

No. It didn’t. It was warned to watch out for them.

Not exactly, and not really anything to do with the engines or whether or not there was a contract. It’s been described on pprune as “pinging” – what appears to have been happening is “keep alive” messages on the Inmarsat link, which keeps the system appraised of what satellites it is in contact with, so that it is ready for use when required – presumably normally voice comms given they don’t seem to have used that link for telemetry.

Hence no data at all from the aircraft, no engine data, no speed, no altitude, not even position. What they do have if I understand correctly is a roundtrip message time which allows them to place the aircraft on a circle a certain distance from the satellite. This then results in the northerly and southerly location “corridors”, with the ends of these corridors the range of the aircraft at the time of the last “ping”. The reason for two separate corridors rather than a single arc is that part of the possible circle is within coverage of another Inmarsat satellite which didn’t receive the “ping”, hence this part is also removed from the possible locations.

^ it also stopped off somewhere and had a couple of additional engines fitted too! according the that picture.

Good spot; otherwise convincing.

I’m more interested in this Melissa and what she got up to on her hols.

I understand she went to Malaysia and got invited into the cockpit…

I’m more interested in this Melissa and what she got up to on her hols.

At this point I would usually post a link, but it’s too sunny to get banned.

Purchased some ill fitting garments by the looks of it.

She’ll catch a chill.

ampthill – Member
Plus there would be plenty of opportunity for passengers to send text messages and make phone calls
Really? Over the sea?

yeah but it crossed back over malaysia

would the phones not have been talking to cell phone towers?

Im assuming the authorities have the phone details of the passengers?

even if everyone was dead from asphyxiation (unless their phones were confiscated by hijackers and turned off) if the plane was anywhere near land the phones would be traceable

Whoever was behind all this seems to have thought through lots of detail. So perhaps a GSM jammer was being used also.

I’d been thinking about this phone thing as well. Almost certain that someone on the plane would have at least tried to send a message. Probably something like

WR BNG HJKD. LOOOOOOOOOOOooooOOO1111L!

sadly, but either way, the thought that not one of the passengers on board had made an attempt to communicate seems almost impossible. Moreover, given the overall addiction to mobiles across Asia, I’d imagine that lots of people would have tried. And then, if the plane crossed any reception, would have been sent.

So, options to debunk that?
All passengers gassed/incapacitated/or even killed
All mobiles ‘confiscated’ by alleged hijackers
Aliens have the plane and their cloaking device also blocks phone signals

can you depressurise the passenger cabin and retain pressure in cockpit?

IIRC the cockpits usually have a chemical oxygen supply to ensure oxygen for the pilots even if every other system fails.

EDIT – wrong way round – passengers get chemical oxygen, the pilots get it from an oxygen cylinder.

Cabin air pressure is just supplied by a bleed off the engines (except on the dreamliner). Don’t think the pilot’s supply lasts very long: more than the 3 mins the overhead masks give you but not 4 or 5 hours. IIRc it’s bottled air whereas the overhead mask as are a chemical generator. Enough time to get down to a safe altitude. Suppose you might be able drop the cabin temperature at the same time to stop people from waking up?

I am a bit rusty (been a while since I’ve been involved in designing a whole plane) but the pilots have a different oxygen supply to the passengers. The passenger air only lasts long enough to get the plane down to breathable air. The cabin crew have portable tanks so they can get around the cabin to help passengers and/or crew.

On thing to remember is the passengers should have had their mobiles turned off as they were on a plane. There may be a few who left them on silent.

edit: yes, passenger air is a chemical generator and I think pilots are tanks. It is possible to gradually drop the cabin pressure to make the passengers drift off without realising, or at very least by the time they do they are very disorientated and weakened they cannot do anything. You would need to avoid the masks dropping though but that should be possible by keeping the pressure just above the cut off for a long period. You may still need to drop it further but they may well be too weak or not conscious by then.

Cockpit air supply is around 10 – 15 minutes – enough time to drop to lower altitude basically.

On thing to remember is the passengers should have had their mobiles turned off as they were on a plane. There may be a few who left them on silent.

I reckon ten or twenty percent would have had them on.

someone always forgets to turn off, despite the announcements.

do phones still ping towers in airplane mode?
and im sure plenty of people forgot/ didnt want to turn them off

oh and to answer a previous question no it’s not really possible to de-pressurise the cabin but not the cockpit. The doors are reinforced after 9-11 but not strong enough for that. The pilots would just wear their masks.

Cabin air is 10-15 minutes, not sure about cockpit if it is different. I was sure is was in case there is a windscreen failure and even at low altitude the pilots would need masks due to the speed of the air. Should the main air supply fail and the decent takes longer than normal they obviously need to survive and stay awake to give the passengers any hope.

I reckon ten or twenty percent would have had them on.

most likely yes.

Yep, as above, lots of phones would still have been on. Internal flights I’ve taken in Asia have been quite an eye opener with people using their phones pretty openly once in range of land.

i fly the same domestic route weekly, 4 flights a week. Loads of people leave their phones on. Especially Iphones..

Here is an ace conspiracy theory

Seeing as everyone else is guessing….

Remember a few weeks ago there was a massive stabbing knife terrorist attack in China? Well it was in Kunming, look it up on a map… Yeah?

Chinese aren’t saying anything are they? They busy blaming Malaysia for all this, I think they shot it down. That’s why there’s no radar no trace, it was hijacked by Chinese terrorists and china ‘sorted’ it

It’s a rubbish theory

can you depressurise the passenger cabin and retain pressure in cockpit?

Further to this, it seems like whatever was done, was well planned – I don’t think it would need the two to be seperate, just the planning to have a supply of oxygen to hand. Then you lower the cabin pressure, and so what if the masks drop? That’ll keep them awake for another ten or fifteen minutes while you make soothing noises over the intercom about “nothing to worry about, just descending now, flight proceeding as normal”, and as long as you’re out of phone range no-one will be any the wiser.

I think we can discount an actual cabin pressure incident, but it has happened – chills my blood to think about the last few minutes of the cabin attendant… 🙁