MH370 - New Development

[Aldo]

This is some of John Sampson's oxygen fire theory

Dutch

 

Thanks for the explanation, I don't fly commercial airliners and therefore don't understand the intricacies associated with that operation, the suicide option still doesn't make sense to me in the way this scenario played out (I trust the guys up the front not to go top themselves on my flight). I guess we will just have to wait until more pieces are found and hopefully the investigators can come to a plausible conclusion.

 

The people I feel for is his wife and kids, imagine if this was you or Brett and 90% of the world opinion is that you were loopy and decided to commit suicide taking a couple of hundred people with you, and your wife and friends are at home saying no my husband/friend wouldn't do this it must have been something else, but because the investigators haven't been able to come to a conclusion it becomes a given that something sinister (you) must have caused this accident.

 

If this is a suicide who do we the flying public trust? I have 4000 plus hours as a passenger in commercial jets all round the world, I trust Brett N implicitly and know he won't flip out on me tomorrow and commit hari kari but I don't know most of rest of you at all (I know you from this forum and based on how you conduct yourself here I don't think you would do this either) but I can't have you, Brett or a few others I know fly every sector I'm on.

 

I've often wondered what would happen if I arrived at the door on boarding and said to the hostie I would like to have a quick chat to the Captain and FO to check their credentials (log books, medicals, qualifications etc) to see if I want to go ahead as a passenger on this flight I would probably get locked up and tagged with being loopy myself. If one in ten (and I don't know if that is the actual number) people in the world suffer from some sort mental illness or condition, that means one in ten of the guys up the front probably suffer the same, not a very comforting thought as a passenger with my life in your hands.

 

Allan

 

 

[onetrack]

I was convinced initially MH370 could not have been a planned suicide, then the Germanwings crash happened. We do know that the GW FO was definitely mentally ill, yet the docs didn't pick up any suicidal intentions.

 

The problem with the MH370 crew, we have no indications that either crew member had ever experienced severe depression or suicidal thoughts, or had ever seen a doc with regard to either.

 

The Malaysian Govt, the Malaysian culture, and the Malaysian Airlines management is very opaque, and they refuse to divulge any information or evidence of importance, unless they are absolutely forced to, because they consider any loss of face as a humiliating thing for the nation overall.

 

I cannot remember any aircraft crash where an aircraft flew for so long, and changed course multiple times, into a region that is one of the most isolated places on the planet. This is what is troubling me.

 

There had to be someone alive on board, changing the course of the aircraft, nothing else fits the scenario. Then the fact that it changed course to one of the most isolated regions on Earth, surely could not be by pure accident.

 

As far as the trust factor goes, well - we trust drivers of other cars, to do the right thing, when we're on the road. But I have known of dozens of cases of "suicide by car". Most are simple suicides, they drive into a big tree at speed.

 

However, I have seen one devastating accident where a Commodore driver purposely swerved into a semi-trailer to kill himself. The semi then collided with another semi travelling behind the Commodore - and then another semi-trailer ran into the wreckage. The total vehicle devastation had to seen to be believed. Both of the trucks that collided head-on were totally destroyed. A passenger in one truck was killed.

 

But this Commodore driver isn't alone in his suicide stunt. I can recall one on the Narrows Bridge in Perth where a depressed suicidal individual swerved into an oncoming Mercedes, because he hated rich people and blamed them for his plight.

 

He killed the bloke in the Merc as well as the blokes young son. The suicide merchant survived, as always.

 

There have been a lot more of these style of vehicle suicides - with a number of fatal crashes where the police are suspicious that it was suicide, but they have no concrete proof.

 

There have been a lot more "suicides by car", than there ever has been suicides by air, so I actually feel a lot more comfortable in an aircraft, than I actually do on the road.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

I cannot remember any aircraft crash where an aircraft flew for so long, .

Payne Stewart's famous crash, top USA Golf Pro, Lear Jet flew for 4 hours until empty ...

 

1999 South Dakota Learjet crash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

[Aldo]

Payne Stewart's famous crash, top USA Golf Pro, Lear Jet flew for 4 hours until empty ...1999 South Dakota Learjet crash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An MU2 in WA 20 or so years ago I think it eventually crashed in the NT

 

But in this case I don't think all transponder interrogations were lost.

 

As I say I don't know and neither does anyone else at this point in time

 

 

[Marty_d]

DutchThanks for the explanation, I don't fly commercial airliners and therefore don't understand the intricacies associated with that operation, the suicide option still doesn't make sense to me in the way this scenario played out (I trust the guys up the front not to go top themselves on my flight). I guess we will just have to wait until more pieces are found and hopefully the investigators can come to a plausible conclusion.

 

The people I feel for is his wife and kids, imagine if this was you or Brett and 90% of the world opinion is that you were loopy and decided to commit suicide taking a couple of hundred people with you, and your wife and friends are at home saying no my husband/friend wouldn't do this it must have been something else, but because the investigators haven't been able to come to a conclusion it becomes a given that something sinister (you) must have caused this accident.

 

If this is a suicide who do we the flying public trust? I have 4000 plus hours as a passenger in commercial jets all round the world, I trust Brett N implicitly and know he won't flip out on me tomorrow and commit hari kari but I don't know most of rest of you at all (I know you from this forum and based on how you conduct yourself here I don't think you would do this either) but I can't have you, Brett or a few others I know fly every sector I'm on.

 

I've often wondered what would happen if I arrived at the door on boarding and said to the hostie I would like to have a quick chat to the Captain and FO to check their credentials (log books, medicals, qualifications etc) to see if I want to go ahead as a passenger on this flight I would probably get locked up and tagged with being loopy myself. If one in ten (and I don't know if that is the actual number) people in the world suffer from some sort mental illness or condition, that means one in ten of the guys up the front probably suffer the same, not a very comforting thought as a passenger with my life in your hands.

 

Allan

We know it happens, Germanwings flight 9525. I'm not by any means saying it happened here, but the people we trust with our lives are also vulnerable to mental illness. Pilots, bus drivers, cops, surgeons... it's very rare but it does happen. And as the recent "City in the Sky" series made clear, there's a million people in the sky at any one time.

 

However there's an almost infinite number of ways to die, and just like we don't quiz our surgeon about their state of mind before we go under their knife, I don't think it's going to do any good to worry that the pilot is feeling suicidal.

 

 

[Aldo]

We know it happens, Germanwings flight 9525. I'm not by any means saying it happened here, but the people we trust with our lives are also vulnerable to mental illness. Pilots, bus drivers, cops, surgeons... it's very rare but it does happen. And as the recent "City in the Sky" series made clear, there's a million people in the sky at any one time. However there's an almost infinite number of ways to die, and just like we don't quiz our surgeon about their state of mind before we go under their knife, I don't think it's going to do any good to worry that the pilot is feeling suicidal.

Marty

 

With 4000 plus hours as a passenger I'm probably not someone who would be considered to be worried about it either I'm just asking the question.

 

As for doctors yes I do check them out as best I can but I also have several friends who are high end doctors/surgeons who point me in the right direction.

 

By the way I'm not having a go at people with mental illnesses, it could well be a case of someone who's wife has just left them and has taken the kids and everything else, you just don't know.

 

Aldo

 

 

[onetrack]

An MU2 in WA 20 or so years ago I think it eventually crashed in the NT[

That would be the Beechcraft King Air 200, VH-SKC, that was carrying the 7 mining workers on a charter flight from YPPH to YLEO on Sept 4, 2000.

VH-SKC crashed about 65kms SE of Burketown, QLD after the aircraft descended into terrain with the engines still running. It did not deviate at any time during the flight.

 

The crash investigators could not conclusively determine the reason for the crash, due to excessive fragmentation of the wreckage, but it was suspected that hypoxia was the cause.

 

Investigation: 200003771 - Beech Aircraft Corp 200, VH-SKC

 

 

[dutchroll]

If this is a suicide who do we the flying public trust?

I believe that no matter which theory of how it got over the deepest part of the Indian Ocean and who set it on that course you prefer, it was most likely deliberate.

That would effectively make it a premeditated murder-suicide.

 

How do you protect against becoming the victim of a murder-suicide? Well how do you protect against being a murder victim? You pretty much can't. If someone really and truly wants to take you out tomorrow, they probably can, especially with a bit of forethought. There are mitigating factors like annual medical checks (fell through the cracks in the Germanwings case but overall they offer a chance to pickup mental health issues), flying with another pilot who might get suspicious and ask questions, etc.

 

However by and large, you can be quietly confident that we don't have many murderous b*stard pilots among us. I've occasionally flown with angry ones, and sad ones just like most people have probably experienced when working with others, but they've never taken it out on bystanders (eg, passengers).

 

So I wouldn't fret over it. There's far more chance you'll be run over by a taxi as you exit the terminal, than be deliberately killed by the pilot!

 

 

[Marty_d]

I think a bit of perspective is needed - yes mental illness is quite prevalent, according to SANE around 20% of adults will suffer from some form of mental illness every year. Of these around 15% of people seriously affected eventually die by suicide.

 

One would hope that the majority of cases for people working in high-responsibility jobs, like pilots, would have this picked up in the medical checks. Even for those that don't, how many would decide to end their lives by murder-suicide? And of those, how many would choose the risky and complicated option of crashing a full planeload of people instead of one of the more "conventional" (in the absence of a better word) forms of taking your own life?

 

Germanwings is the only pilot murder-suicide I can ever recall being reported. MH370 may turn out to be another, it may not. In any case I probably have more chance of being killed by choking on a chicken bone, but I'm not going to stop eating chicken any time soon.

 

 

[vixen]

I respect many opinions (especially Dutchroll) BUT I just don't buy "The Captain dun it" theory. I won't bore anyone reading this with my reasons why, and what I consider may have happened.

 

What I would submit here tho is that we MUST MUST MUST keep searching till we find it and find out what did happen!

 

Sorry to bring politics up but, just maybe, if we stopped wasting $200 mill on some daft plebiscite and put it towards this humanity may be a little better served.

 

Besides the gay community should have to suffer marriage, and divorce, just like us straights have had to!

 

End of rant - thank you.... plus tax.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Yeah totally agree.

 

I mean, if they find the wreckage and it becomes obvious that it was accidental and not deliberate, I will be the first to say "holy cow! I just did not expect that!"

 

However there are several precedents for pilot murder-suicide in commercial jets: Germanwings, Silk Air, and probably the Saudi Air one too.

 

For it to lose comms like it did but fly on for 7 hours on a totally different course which just happened to take it into the middle of the deepest part of a big ocean and disappear almost without trace.......well that is just bizarre. To have that happen simply due to an emergency - even a major one - requires a very complicated chain of events. Fires in aircraft for example generally go one of two ways: they either self-extinguish or get put out quickly, or they self-sustain past that point and quickly cause the total loss of the aircraft.

 

I don't like Sampson's theory because it cobbles together some very tenuous explanations for things, eg a hostie coming into the cockpit reaching right across the charred pedestal and panels to turn the heading knob to alter course (if it's even in the heading mode which they wouldn't know how to do). That and a number of his other conjectures make no sense to me at all.

 

 

[Yenn]

Why must we keep searching. It is a Malaysian plane, on a flight from Indonesia to China. Admittedly it went down in the part of the world that we look after for lifesaving searches, but I cannot see why "we" must pay for the search. Let the Malay, Indonesian or Chinese pay and if they won't come to the party, then the builders of the plane.

 

 

[Litespeed]

I am with you Yenn,

 

We should stop paying for this search- they should pay. It seems we keep paying because Julia Bishop jumped up and made a big deal of it at the start for political mileage.

 

 

[vixen]

Yenn & Litespeed:

 

Fair enough - I hear you and have empathy for your argument.

 

However, have you asked yourselves if your loved one(s) were on that aircraft would you have the same stance?

 

And, are you 100% confident of flying on a B777 again - knowing one has disappeared without explanation?

 

Fact is it is our 'backyard' and being a rich and (arguably) smart country we should show our empathy, generosity, & expertise.

 

IMHO we should keep going - like I alluded to, if we can spend $200mill on some dumb plebiscite that makes zip difference to anyone's safety we can spend it alternatively on something that might!

 

Dutchroll: can u tell me if the 777 electronics bay is accessible from outside the F/D like the 747, or is it like the A330?

 

 

[Litespeed]

I agree we should not have a plebiscite - we employ those tossers in canberra to do this stuff. They should grow some balls and make a vote on it.

 

I just think we are really searching for a impossible find- all at the same time that little to no effort is being shown to investigate pieces that float up onto distant islands. We should not rely on a interested bloke to bring parts back for us.

 

 

[onetrack]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - if the searchers had offered a substantial reward for floating or beached wreckage, and sent that message on foot out into all the little communities bordering the Indian Ocean, we would have had a pile of wreckage to examine probably 12 or 18 mths ago.

 

A few grand is nothing compared to what has been spent - but it would be like winning Lotto to subsistence fishermen and shoreline dwelling peasants - who would have combed the seas far better than any fleet of Orion P3's, and whatever else was involved in the aerial search.

 

An earlier find of wreckage, and more of it, would have probably assisted a lot more in determining what happened and where. Who knows what they could have found. It might have saved a lot of unnecessary trawling of the seabed, for precisely zilch result.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Dutchroll: can u tell me if the 777 electronics bay is accessible from outside the F/D like the 747, or is it like the A330?

It is accessible from outside the cockpit. That's pretty much a Boeing thing.

 

 

[Aldo]

I will be the first to say "holy cow! I just did not expect that

Dutch

 

I'm not saying you're wrong just I don't understand why you would make it last 7 plus hours and I have absolutely no idea what has happened.

 

Aldo

 

 

[dutchroll]

I don't understand either.....unless he (whoever "he" was) was unconscious or dead for the last 6 of them, after the course was set. They do know that satellite handshakes ceased after fuel exhaustion would've occurred. So it did fly for that long. Why would he bother sitting up there alive for so long when he knew what the end result was going to be?

 

 

[rgmwa]

Why would he bother sitting up there alive for so long when he knew what the end result was going to be?

That's something that I'm sure puzzles everyone. It's hard to imagine he spent the time wandering around an aircraft filled with dead passengers and crew, or simply sat there looking out the window waiting for the fuel to run out. The whole thing is bizarre. Even if they find the aircraft and the black boxes, while they might discover what happened, it still wouldn't explain why it happened.

 

rgmwa

 

 

[vixen]

It is accessible from outside the cockpit. That's pretty much a Boeing thing.

Thanks DeltaRomeo

 

and.. would the pilot O2 bottles be in the same bay?

 

No prizes for guessing where I'm going with this....

 

Cheers

 

 

[vixen]

I agree we should not have a plebiscite - we employ those tossers in canberra to do this stuff. They should grow some balls and make a vote on it.

hahah. Love it! Onya matey

 

 

[vixen]

DutchI'm not saying you're wrong just I don't understand why you would make it last 7 plus hours and I have absolutely no idea what has happened.

 

Aldo

I suggest we can be reasonably confident in assuming that for at least the last, say, 6 hours of flight all aboard were deceased.

 

How EERIE is that??

 

DR: Can I pick your brain again please? How long do most 777 pilot oxygen systems last? ... Let's say best case scenario - a 777LR?

 

I can probably troll thru PPRUNE and find this info but, quite frankly, that site mostly drives me nuts.

 

Cheers

 

 

[dutchroll]

Thanks DeltaRomeoand.. would the pilot O2 bottles be in the same bay?

 

No prizes for guessing where I'm going with this....

 

Cheers

Yes.....and?

 

 

[vixen]

Yes.....and?

Thanks.. and whats the duration of the pilot o2 on a 772ER ?