Malaysian Airlines MH370

[dutchroll]

I've actually been to Diego Garcia on a number of occasions. It's not the most "advanced" military base and it's no more or less secure than most other US bases other than the fact it is very isolated. Not only that, but although the base is run by the US, the island is "owned" and administered by the UK (e.g., the British provide Customs, etc). The units stationed at Diego and their role are mostly public knowledge and you can look many of them up on the internet (e.g., http://www.peterson.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=4740). The conspiracy theorists seem to be too lazy to bother doing this. The radar station is one of many in the US military satellite tracking network. It's not some super whiz-bang global surveillance radar (although there's normal air traffic surveillance radar at the air base just like every other air base).

 

There are a lot of permanent and transitory military and civilian personnel on Diego Garcia. Anyone who thinks the entire island/base population could keep a massive search and recovery effort for B777 debris secret is really having a total lend of themselves.

 

I have no doubt the many men and women, both military and civilian, on Diego Garcia are having quite a laugh at the conspiracy theories which have emerged about them. It would be providing them with quite a bit of entertainment on an island which is relatively devoid of entertainment facilities apart from a beach volleyball net outside the Officers' Club.

 

 

[turboplanner]

Nice to get a touch of reality.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Nice to get a touch of reality.

Damn! Another fascinating fantasy bites the dust.

 

 

[Teckair]

OK dutchroll do you have a theory you may be able to share? Being in the industry you could have a better idea than some.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Yep. Regrettably my theory is: Captain went nuts and decided he would make himself disappear with as little trace as possible. He locked the First Officer out of the cockpit, disabled ACARS, transponder and other systems connecting the aircraft with the ground by pulling the appropriate circuit breakers or switching them off, then flew a profile to avoid detection and programmed a route into the deepest most remote part of the Indian Ocean until the plane ran out of fuel. Possibly interchange First Officer and Captain roles.

 

His exact motivation for the way it was done might never be known. But people have very strange ways of ending it all. That we know for sure.

 

Precedents are SilkAir 185, and EgyptAir 990.

 

I can think of no other possible explanation (including fires, electrical failures, etc) that would cause a reliable jet like a B777 to suddenly stop all communications (not so much as even half a distress call), turn around, and fly into a deep part of the ocean after making several significant course changes until it ran out of fuel. The fact it returned satellite handshakes for several hours proves beyond any doubt that at least most of the rest of the plane was actually working just fine.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Damn! Another fascinating fantasy bites the dust.

Yeah Dutchroll, how about you stay out of this thread, you party pooper

 

 

[PA.]

Malaysian police investigation names MH370 pilot ‘prime suspect’

 

AN OFFICIAL police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 has identified the captain as the prime suspect — if it is proven human intervention was involved.

 

Captain Zaharie Shah became the focus of the special investigation in Malaysia after all other passengers were cleared of any suspicious motives, The Sunday Times reported.

 

After conducting 170 interviews, investigators noted strange behaviour by the pilot.

 

He had made no future plans - socially or professionally - and his home flight simulator was programmed with a flight path into the depths of the Southern Ocean before landing the plane on an island with a small runway.

 

The drills were deleted from the computer but specialists were able to retrieve the files.

 

 

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/malaysian-police-investigation-names-mh370-pilot-prime-suspect/story-fnizu68q-1226962811653

 

 

[dutchroll]

Well there you go (I hadn't seen that article). My theory may be right! Actually it's not rocket science. I just base it on the known facts that it flew on until estimated fuel starvation, versus the extreme unlikelihood of a B777 disappearing without trace unless assisted by human intervention in the cockpit.

 

 

[rankamateur]

That flight simulator setup is fairly extreme for a bloke who flies real ones for a living, he must not have had a life!

 

 

[dutchroll]

That flight simulator setup is fairly extreme for a bloke who flies real ones for a living, he must not have had a life!

Well quite some years ago we had a Captain (with family) who threw himself in front of a train when he reached retirement age.

You can get some personalities holding onto life a little too tight in the airlines sometimes.

 

 

[metalman]

In light of recent behaviour in Iraq ,maybe there is a rather large flying bomb sitting in a hanger somewhere ,,,waiting,,,waiting,

 

Just a thought ,

 

Matty

 

 

[facthunter]

I wouldn't place too much cred on having the simulator at all.

 

On another matter,,,People who throw themselves in front of trains etc are pretty inconsiderate of the driver. Nev

 

 

[alf jessup]

I wouldn't place too much cred on having the simulator at all.On another matter,,,People who throw themselves in front of trains etc are pretty inconsiderate of the driver. Nev

Nev

 

In all honesty mate after working up front on the trains many years back people in that state who throw themselves out in front of a train would not even notice another human being is right in their vision, they are out to achieve one thing which is normally quite successful first time around.

 

Alf

 

 

[tafisama]

Back to the never ending story.It`s now suspected there might have been power outage to engines leading to another puzzel.I think if it was engine fire the crew might have shut up swithes in order to extinguish the fire which support the early sighting by the Oil rig worker and later by the English Sailor.This also might explain the loss of height detected by the Military Radar.Maybe one engine was shut down and the last engine shut down after fuel exhaustion.How far can a Boeing 777 travel on one engine and what will its speed be and how much fuel does it use.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Handling an engine fire in a passenger jet is, believe it or not, pretty straightforward procedurally (despite the heart skipping a few beats) and very regularly practised in the simulator. Essentially the only switches to flick are Fuel Control, Engine Fire, and Fire Agent (Boeing) or Engine Master, Engine Fire, and Fire Agent (Airbus). Then you land ASAP. There is a fairly minor, barely noticeable shedding of electrical power until the APU is started but a single engine generator still provides all systems the pilot needs. That can't explain the loss of datalink, transponder, and radio communication.

 

An engine fire cannot incapacitate the crew - there is no physical way for smoke, fumes etc to get from the engine pod into the cockpit once the engine has been shutdown. If somehow they did become incapacitated, and had one engine shutdown, the plane would be flying at a much lower attitude with max continuous thrust on the remaining engine, but only burning fuel from one wing tank on the operative engine's side. Without crew intervention to transfer the fuel it would quickly develop a severe lateral imbalance, and even if that didn't eventually send it out of control, it would exhaust the fuel from that tank fairly rapidly due to the high thrust setting and low altitude (somewhere in the "200" flight levels).

 

It's totally improbable that it would've flown on for hours like that, conscious or unconscious crew.

 

I personally think the oil rig worker saw a meteorite or re-entering space junk and has talked himself into thinking it was the plane (come on.....he's an oil rig worker!). We see them often on clear nights in the cruise, They're usually pretty brief but can also be a super spectacular trail of flame sometimes.

 

 

[facthunter]

The engine fire is either put out or isn't .You have to descend immediately if you are at a limit cruise altitude, as you are above the height you can maintain on one engine (usually about 10,000 feet lower). The range on one engine is pretty good depending on your payload ( non Fuel) as you vary the cruise alt a fair bit on weight. You take a bit longer but everything works much as normal, except if your next engine fails it's not good so you would divert to the nearest suitable aerodrome. in normal ops. Nev

 

 

[dutchroll]

I know in our SOPs it's quite black and white - land at the nearest suitable airport. The only different scenario would be if the fire was continuing to burn outside the hot end in which case the "nearest suitable" may become "a patch of open ground which will give us half a chance" or "put it onto the water in a controlled fashion". ;)

 

 

[facthunter]

Indeed. If the light is still on and the last bottle has been fired.... I'd rather be fishing..

 

An in flight fire is about the worst thing that can happen to an aircraft (any aircraft). Can't stress enough to get it quickly and safely back on the ground...Nev

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Can't stress enough to get it quickly and safely back on the ground...Nev

You need ground first ....

 

 

[bexrbetter]

I personally think the oil rig worker saw a meteorite or re-entering space junk and has talked himself into thinking it was the plane (come on.....he's an oil rig worker!).

Inbetween changing drill rods you do anything to keep yourself awake and alert as the hum and resonance of the drill tries very hard to send you to sleep so lots of acute observations go on.

 

The sky is so clear out there that amazing detail stands out and you can't mistake an airliner for anything else, especially when you know the standard routes.

 

 

[dutchroll]

It was the middle of the night. There is no way anyone could tell a ball of flame from a distance was a plane.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

It was the middle of the night. There is no way anyone could tell a ball of flame from a distance was a plane.

Believe whatever you wish but I have worked on rigs in outback NSW and the ability to see things in the sky including airliners is fantastic and would be even clearer still in the middle of an ocean.

 

A number of our crews would also attempt to guess which flights/destinations they were.

 

 

[Exadios]

It was the middle of the night. There is no way anyone could tell a ball of flame from a distance was a plane.

One piece of info needed is the rig name. With this it would be possible to find its position and work out its horizon at 44,000'. I suspect that the plane was well over its horizon and could not possibly be seen.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

One piece of info needed is the rig name. With this it would be possible to find its position and work out its horizon at 44,000'...

You'd think each sighting would have been thoroughly investigated. There have been quite a few, some which sound as if they were reported before news of the disappearance broke- yet each has been dismissed by the authorities. I thought a couple of eyewitness reports would be worth as much as some vague pings on a sonar.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Yeah but they're not worth as much as a distinctive, targeted satellite handshake signal from a unique address.

 

As many people as you like can "see" MH370 burst into flames and plummet into the ocean. However Inmarsat received absolutely 100% verifiable satellite responses from that particular aircraft. The "handshake" is not a generic thing. It is targeted to the specific SATCOM system on a specific aircraft registration. No other aircraft can respond to the same handshake signal. If our Ops people get on the SATCOM and call "VH-QPR", it's not like the SATCOM on every single aircraft owned by our airline rings at the same time. Just VH-QPR. Likewise, the Inmarsat system pings a specific aircraft for a handshake signal.

 

The aircraft which was conducting the MH370 flight responded to satellite handshakes from the Inmarsat satellite for 7 hours after it "disappeared" (which coincides with the estimated time of fuel starvation based on the *known* quantity of fuel uplifted upon departure). No-one can wash this fact away with spurious night-time sightings of mysterious balls of flame. Regrettably a "handshake" does not provide any useful information. It is simply a "are you there?" - "yes I'm here" challenge-response system.

 

Sorry to rain water on the other theories which don't fit the evidence.