Malaysia Airlines 777 loses contact...not found

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Originally Posted By: Pablo
All those people were loved by somebody. Some of them were on work travel with family waiting at home.

Yeah, people die all the time. But man, my wife, my kids could be waiting to hear something right now. Unimaginable.

Prayers. Live life, give. Peace be with you.


+1
 
Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Originally Posted By: Turk
Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle


Water has NO give at high speed. Surface tension means it WOULD be like hitting concrete!


Baloney.




Why don't you shoot some rifle bullets into water and then come back and report what happens to the bullets, please.


Friends, perhaps there's some over-stating, OF Course it ain't going to slide like a hot knife through soft butter... But it ain't going to be stopped exactly like "Concrete". There will be a little give in the water.

Prayers to all involved, family & friends. This is so tragic.
frown.gif
 
From CNN:
"Of the two passports in question, the Italian one had been reported stolen and was in Interpol's database, CNN Law Enforcement Analyst Tom Fuentes said, citing sources at Interpol.

Additionally, no inquiry was made by Malaysia Airlines to determine if any passengers on the flight were traveling on stolen passports, he said. Many airlines do not check the database, he said.

Rahman, the Malaysian aviation official, declined to say whether the airline or Malaysian authorities had checked the database."

Emphasis mine.
That's going to change.
 
Originally Posted By: Pablo
All those people were loved by somebody. Some of them were on work travel with family waiting at home.

Yeah, people die all the time. But man, my wife, my kids could be waiting to hear something right now. Unimaginable.

Prayers. Live life, give. Peace be with you.


+1. So sad.

I remember walking through a store it that sold TVs in a mall, when TWA 800 went down, so the footage was being shown on every screen.. and they kind of knew where and yet it was still so helpless, so sad, I can't start to imagine this.
 
Strange you cant use a stolen credit card that has been reported but you can you a stolen passport? You would also think these planes would have some type of balloons that are released when these plane sink?? Must be a good reason why they don't I'm sure.
 
Originally Posted By: Blaze
Strange you cant use a stolen credit card that has been reported but you can you a stolen passport?


And yet our Gov can catalog all our emails and phone calls....no reasons those passports weren't flagged other than pure incompetence or malfeasance.
 
Originally Posted By: Pablo
Originally Posted By: Blaze
Strange you cant use a stolen credit card that has been reported but you can you a stolen passport?


And yet our Gov can catalog all our emails and phone calls....no reasons those passports weren't flagged other than pure incompetence or malfeasance.


It almost would have to be incompetence. The photos on the passports wont even match the people using them unless they altered the passport photo somehow but I have noticed when using my credit card and getting asked for my drivers license they rarely pay attention and carefully match my photo to me.
 
I find it hard to believe that with our robocruisers out there that we don't know what happened to the 777 and that we don't know where the remains are. We have a big presence in the south china sea.
 
Originally Posted By: L_Sludger
I find it hard to believe that with our robocruisers out there that we don't know what happened to the 777 and that we don't know where the remains are. We have a big presence in the south china sea.


To what "robocruisers" are you referring?
 
Let's look at just how "easy" it is to cover the Earth with continuous surveillance.

Our Aegis class Cruisers (perhaps known as "robocruisers") have a continuous all-aspect surveillance range of 100 NM, covering an impressive volume of space. They can focus the beam to get longer ranges, but we're talking about coverage in all directions in this assumption set. So, 100NM = 185 KM. The area covered by the SPY-1 radar is then πr2, or 1.08×10(5) square KM.

The Earth's surface is 510.1 million km². If the Oceans are 70% of that total (and they are, roughly), then there are, roughly 360 million km² of ocean surface to be watched.

So, to cover the surface of the sea with radar cover that has no gaps would require roughly 3,400 Aegis ships, equally distributed...slightly more to account for inlets and coves, but again, this is a rough estimate of coverage required to track everything, everywhere, all the time.

The US Navy, the largest Navy in the world, has an impressive set of 22 Ticonderoga-class cruisers and 62 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers...those 84 ships would, at best, not quite cover .02% of the ocean surface at a given time.

Now, to cover just the 3.5 million km² of the South China sea would take only 32 ships...but that's nearly half the US Fleet...and that fleet is busy across the globe...
 
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"Nosedive": there would have been a radar record as it descended from 30000+ feet. Planes don't do that unless there's a catastrophic failure and/or the flight crew is incapacitated at the same time.

Carbon Monoxide: Plane would have been on autopilot at that altitude, and would have kept flying for some time.

Hitting water: if an airplane is diving towards the water, it typically disintegrates, leaving both an oil slick and debris on the surface. If it is a controlled landing (like Sully) then the plane will be largely intact.

I'm going with Quattro Pete's theory about an explosion. Couple that with the stolen passports used to board the aircraft and it points, at least for me, to an act of terrorism.

Last I heard Interpol's database was being searched with the images of the two passengers that used the stolen passports in an attempt to identify them.
 
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Originally Posted By: Kuato
"Nosedive": there would have been a radar record as it descended from 30000+ feet. Planes don't do that unless there's a catastrophic failure and/or the flight crew is incapacitated at the same time.

Carbon Monoxide: Plane would have been on autopilot at that altitude, and would have kept flying for some time.

Hitting water: if an airplane is diving towards the water, it typically disintegrates, leaving both an oil slick and debris on the surface. If it is a controlled landing (like Sully) then the plane will be largely intact.

I'm going with Quattro Pete's theory about an explosion. Couple that with the stolen passports used to board the aircraft and it points, at least for me, to an act of terrorism.

Last I heard Interpol's database was being searched with the images of the two passengers that used the stolen passports in an attempt to identify them.




I would tend to agree it may be terrorism, but one BIG question I have is IF it is an act of a terrorist group.....why no statement or confirmation from any of these groups? After all, not much terror in a terrorist organization that doesn't lay claim to anything.
 
Originally Posted By: andrewg
Originally Posted By: Kuato
"Nosedive": there would have been a radar record as it descended from 30000+ feet. Planes don't do that unless there's a catastrophic failure and/or the flight crew is incapacitated at the same time.

Carbon Monoxide: Plane would have been on autopilot at that altitude, and would have kept flying for some time.

Hitting water: if an airplane is diving towards the water, it typically disintegrates, leaving both an oil slick and debris on the surface. If it is a controlled landing (like Sully) then the plane will be largely intact.

I'm going with Quattro Pete's theory about an explosion. Couple that with the stolen passports used to board the aircraft and it points, at least for me, to an act of terrorism.

Last I heard Interpol's database was being searched with the images of the two passengers that used the stolen passports in an attempt to identify them.




I would tend to agree it may be terrorism, but one BIG question I have is IF it is an act of a terrorist group.....why no statement or confirmation from any of these groups? After all, not much terror in a terrorist organization that doesn't lay claim to anything.

This, either way it is sad. Wonder if we will ever really know what happened.
 
Originally Posted By: Astro14
Let's look at just how "easy" it is to cover the Earth with continuous surveillance.

Our Aegis class Cruisers (perhaps known as "robocruisers") have a continuous all-aspect surveillance range of 100 NM, covering an impressive volume of space. They can focus the beam to get longer ranges, but we're talking about coverage in all directions in this assumption set. So, 100NM = 185 KM. The area covered by the SPY-1 radar is then πr2, or 1.08×10(5) square KM.

The Earth's surface is 510.1 million km². If the Oceans are 70% of that total (and they are, roughly), then there are, roughly 360 million km² of ocean surface to be watched.

So, to cover the surface of the sea with radar cover that has no gaps would require roughly 3,400 Aegis ships, equally distributed...slightly more to account for inlets and coves, but again, this is a rough estimate of coverage required to track everything, everywhere, all the time.

The US Navy, the largest Navy in the world, has an impressive set of 22 Ticonderoga-class cruisers and 62 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers...those 84 ships would, at best, not quite cover .02% of the ocean surface at a given time.

Now, to cover just the 3.5 million km² of the South China sea would take only 32 ships...but that's nearly half the US Fleet...and that fleet is busy across the globe...


Yeesh. Thanks for putting my argument to sleep.
wink.gif



Now, I don't know (and do not want to know) the position of our fleet, or our fleet movements. Since that area is fairly busy and bustling, I thought it would follow that there we would have a robust military radar net around there.
 
Originally Posted By: FL_Rob
We are NEVER told the whole TRUE story.


There is a good documentary on netflix about TWA flight 800 that is worth a watch, and should give one pause for thought.
 
L_Sludger - our fleet is forward deployed, and we do have ships in that area...but there are gaps in coverage....that was my point: the plane may not have been on our radar, so to speak.

Having looked for a downed aircraft on a couple of occasions, I can tell you that the ocean is a very, very big place...

No to go OT, but since we're talking about what it takes to have good situational awareness, this is why the US Navy (among others) are investing in high-altitude, long endurance surveillance aircraft...the coverage provided by an aircraft at that height is considerable...

Google "Maritime Domain Awareness"...it's a huge field of pursuit...

Back on topic, one thing that isn't being discussed in the media is the satcom reporting from the airplane itself. The 777, like others, has computers on board that monitor the plane's systems and report faults back to maintenance via satcom datalink. Air France 441 reported several faults (airspeed, etc.) when it crashed. But no faults from this airplane? Makes me think that this was unlikely to be mechanical failure...
 
I haven't seen the TWA 800 "thought provoking documentary" yet...but I will tell you that I was flying/teaching the 747-400 at the time and that particular accident has been a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists.

Psychologically, people simply can't accept that things just blow up.

At the time, no one would accept the center tank fuel explosion...but airlines have since been required to install inerting systems in their airplanes to lower the oxygen concentration in empty tanks.

I've felt the heat from the packs in the belly of the 747...it's a huge amount of heat being moved around to keep that big cabin cool... It's easy for me to accept that the center tank on TWA 800 was very, very hot sitting above those packs.

I've also seen the fuel pumps from a 747 center tank when the thrust bushing failed - the excess shaft play allowed the impeller to hit the aluminum housing of the pump...and the motor would keep turning. We didn't know (Boeing didn't know either) that there was a systemic problem with pump thrust bushing failures until fuel filters started clogging with aluminum shavings from the pump housings getting chewed up. In a day, we had pump operating restrictions on our airplanes: no fuel loaded in the stabilizer, no running center tank pumps with fuel less than 7,000 lbs in the center tank. These restrictions had a big operational impact (nearly 30,000 lbs less fuel load for long range flights). We replaced all the pumps with new, redesigned ones.

But those pumps grinding away in nearly empty fuel tanks would have gotten hot, because the fuel itself keeps the pumps cool.

Hot pumps + fuel vapor + confined space = ?

Well...no problem in our case, not one incident. But things happen that weren't anticipated/expected...and while those explanations are mundane, they make a lot more sense than sexy conspiracy theories about massive military cover ups.

By the way, in 1984, a US warship shot down an Iranian airliner by mistake, half way around the world. In those days before the internet and instant communication, when sailors could only write letters home, the story was out within hours. The details were all published before the next day.

So, the TWA 800 theorists would have me believe that in 1998, with all the means of communication then available, and off the coast of the US, suddenly all the sailors involved would have kept perfect silence...that just doesn't pass the smell test...

Part of the problem with eyewitnesses in aviation accidents is the relative lack of understanding of what they see. It turns out that, under the stress of seeing a crash, that 90% of eyewitnesses recall the either completely in error, or with significant errors. In investigating aircraft mishaps, we had to be very, very careful in using eyewitness testimony, because it was nearly always wrong.

Further, research into human memory and its accuracy has demonstrated that human memory is subject to error. Worse, people tend to be unaware of their memory errors and may be overconfident in the accuracy of their memories, and the overconfidence actually INCREASES over time...so, now, inaccurate witnesses are certain that they saw a missile streaking up to TWA 800? Please...they've never seen a missile before or since, but they're credible as missile experts?
 
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