[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by RSR

What I find baffling is that in this day and age, when even a cheap Chinese white-box smartphone that is lost can be found, or even a wild animal can be precisely tracked with a simple collar, a large commercial airliner that costs a quarter of a billion dollars just vanishes into thin air without a trace

This airliner has multiple systems that reported data back to Airline and other companies, all were turned-off. It is believed that that was done intentionally.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=22894802

[anujmishra]

Originally Posted by one-77

Read somewhere that Boeing 777s have black boxes that can emit signals and can be tracked for upto 30 days even if the plane had fallen into the ocean.

Don't know the authenticity of this info though.

It is there is almost all planes not just Boeing 777. But the range of signal is not that much. It gets only activated in case of crash. There are some limitations when it is down under deep sea.

Also, the black box is painted with orange colour so that it can be seen from distance. If one knows the site of crash in that case only this black box signal helps.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by RGK

Sorry to ask about this.
Is there any chance that an avid enthu guy would have experimented some new things on a live flight?
Will automated critical settings be allowed to override by pilots in a flight?

Originally Posted by saket77

To answer your questions, my opinion is that since it is all speculation, but yes, the pilot may have tried something out of the books and manual override can overrule autopilot.

Just to be clear on this: In any plane the pilot can switch on or off or override the auto-pilot at anytime!

The autopilot provides vertical and lateral guidance. Which means it can fly the plane to a particle direction, a heading and an altitude. The auto throttle controls the engines/thrust and is required to maintain a certain speed or to add or reduce thrust when ascending/ descending. These two system can work together to fly more or less the whole flight, from take of landing. I.e. fly the complete track from a vertical/lateral and speed perspective.

At any point in time for any reason the pilots can switch between flying manual and using the auto throttle and or the autopilot. The use of these systems are largely dictated by company procedures and policies. But its up to the captain to ultimately decide what to do and how to deploy these capabilities during the flight.

Various systems are programmed to respond in certain ways, within certain ranges to inputs, either from the yoke, the throttles or other handles and levers. These sort of settings can not be changed by the crew. Or a flight SIM enthusiast for that matter.

There is one thing that this captain probably has done many times. He is a very experience captain and a very enthousiastic flight SIM pilot. He is most likely active on SIM forums, just like me. On some of those forums you will find very detailed discussion on various topics. In depth technical discussion and I have seen many cases where nobody could come up with the exact answer. In many cases the real pilots on those forums will chirp in and check out who certain things work on the real plane.

See for instance, this very detailed technical discussion, where it is an actual 777 pilot that tries something out.

Years ago I had question on how on Boeing 747-400 the position logic algorithm worked. I have several Boeing and Operator manual and they all said something different. Nobody could help, until a 747 pilot tried a few things out during a flight.

So, I would say real pilots that are also SIM pilots are very likely to be trying things out in their real cockpit. And it will actually be very beneficial, because with it comes a greater in-depth knowledge. They don't fiddle around with any critical automated parameters or anything as such. They just observing, very detailed normal responses and reaction of the system they are using everyday

Originally Posted by srishiva

Hopefully they will add transmitters which cant be switched off to relay identification and co-ordinates (then not everyone should be able to access this information).
Engines and some other equipment did send some satellite based pings to ground.

Regarding phones ringing, once the called party is identified in a location and notified of the call, the ring tone is given back to the calling party. There could be something buggy also But the called party wouldn't have been at 30,000 feet mostly.

Let me quote a friend of mine, a fellow Dutchman, also called Jeroen, who lives in the USA and works in the aviation industry as communication expert engineer:

Much, not all, of the tracking and telemetry technology is there purely for commercial reasons only. The vast majority of ACARS is not for safety, but for dispatch management, some maintenance, and weather.

FANS-1/A and the upcoming LINK2000+ systems use ACARS for safety, mostly a combination of automatic 5-minute position reports over the oceans (i.e., outside any radar cover area) and limited textual air traffic control (CPDLC). These systems are widely used over the Atlantic and Pacific, and will be used over mainland Europe soon, but typically they are less well-represented in the Oriental area.

In all cases, there is little redundancy in these systems. One VHF radio, useless beyond 200 nm of a ground station. One SATCOM, mostly Inmarsat and more and more Iridium, which are not reliable if you disturb the plane. And one HF, even less reliable under good conditions. The system uses exactly one of these at a time to relay stuff and switching radio can take up to ten minutes.

In all cases, emergency stuff is done by voice, period.

The idea that it is simple to track all aircraft out there is quite misinformed. The aircraft know where they are, yes, but there is no global simple reliable cheap lightweight broadband communication system. It is all commercial, very few parts of the system are government/military (GPS comes to mind). Somebody needs to pay for this, and it is the passenger, not the tax payer.

Regarding the ringing tones, see my earlier post. By the way, my professional field is Telecommunication and I have been rolling out and managing Mobile System for twenty years all over the world.

Originally Posted by RSR

What I find baffling is that in this day and age, when even a cheap Chinese white-box smartphone that is lost can be found, or even a wild animal can be precisely tracked with a simple collar, a large commercial airliner that costs a quarter of a billion dollars just vanishes into thin air without a trace (as the Malaysians would want us to believe).

A humble hiker or mountaineer wandering off the beaten path can use a satellite-based tracker which would enable each and every step of his/hers to be tracked by family and friends, and locate him/her to a precise spot in most parts of the world, should the need arise. All this for a mere 179 EUR, which converts to 15k INR:

http://www.findmespot.eu/en/index.php?cid=100

Why can't airlines have something much more sophisticated and capable than this humble device in each plane of theirs?

Even small local taxi and truck operators seem to have real-time GPS tracking for their fleet consisting of a handful of vehicles. Why wouldn't a large international airline want to secure it's very expensive assets (planes) and the lives of hundreds of its customers and employees?


Actually being able to spot something is a very different story though. All one sees is vast, empty stretches of water. In some places, cloud cover prevents one from viewing stuff on the surface of the ocean. Considering the huge expanse of ocean, it's difficult to spot any object (ship or boat), let alone MH370 or any debris. Still, crowdsourcing the search efforts by sharing those high resolution images online is a brilliant idea!

See my earlier quote from my friend Jeroen on some of this.

Being able to spot anything in an ocean and or sea is incredibly difficult. There are many stories from people lost at sea who saw ships and planes (that were looking for them) from very close by and they never got noticed.

Jeroen

[sandeepmdas]

Looks like the world's focus will be on our own navy and air force in the forthcoming days.

Map linked from:
https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2014/03/...d-flight-path/

A more detailed map can be seen here:
http://airinfodotorg.files.wordpress...0-11-55-54.png

[manas27587]

Why does it feel like a sad ending movie story to me?

Plane got hijacked. Was being diverted to somewhere and then someone tried to overpower the hijacker in the plane and a bomb blows up by mistake .
I say by mistake else it would've been blown over land or rammed into a building to cause more damage.

[RSR]

It's now one week since the 777 vanished into thin air, and no one seems to have even the slightest clue about what happened to the airliner and all those poor folks on board the aircraft. Or so it seems.

At least, that is how it seems to ordinary people like us. Make no mistake, there are bound to be some (possibly several) "non-ordinary" people who already know exactly what happened to the aircraft and the fate of those on board. Whether or not the truth about MH370 will be revealed to the ordinary people of the world, will be known by the events of the next three weeks.

Even a child who has been allowed to fully develop his/her innate inquisitive abilities would know by now that this is no ordinary airline disappearance/accident. Even if (or rather, when) wreckage of the aircraft is found somewhere and even if the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are recovered and analysed, the official accident investigation report will turn out to be either inconclusive or superficial. One can be sure of this. The world mainstream media will cease coverage of the incident soon enough, and move on to other interesting things that bring in the money.

The complete truth may not become public knowledge for several decades, possibly never. There is, however, a small chance, a faint glimmer of hope that one party in the know, or even one single courageous soul (at great risk to himself/herself) would spill the beans either directly or indirectly. It may have been very easy to suppress the truth in the age of the radio and the idiot box, but there is less chance of doing so in the age of the revolutionary invention that just turned two-and-a-half decades old.

[prashanthyr]

I have a feeling that the Americans know what's happened to the plane, but are deliberately keeping mum, lest they violate international protocol and more importantly expose their intelligence gathering capability.

CNN is reporting that the plane has likely crashed in the Indian ocean or bay of Bengal

[audioholic]

Just one noob question. If it has crashed in the Bay of Bengal or Indian Ocean, wouldnt the aircraft be spotted by at least one ground radar nearby? AFAIK there is no way to become radar invisible unless its something in the lines of the stealth technology.

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Just one noob question. If it has crashed in the Bay of Bengal or Indian Ocean, wouldnt the aircraft be spotted by at least one ground radar nearby? AFAIK there is no way to become radar invisible unless its something in the lines of the stealth technology.

I read in one of the articles in TOI where it was mentioned that the radar systems in the Andamans are not 24/7 operated. They are more need based, and used only when necessary. Also, there are zones which are not under radar scan. I read the article on the mobile app, so don't have the link handy.

[sandeep3in]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Just one noob question. If it has crashed in the Bay of Bengal or Indian Ocean, wouldnt the aircraft be spotted by at least one ground radar nearby? AFAIK there is no way to become radar invisible unless its something in the lines of the stealth technology.

If it was flying at a low altitude the chances of the being spotted on the radar is remote.

Having said that the black box emits a beacon signal for 30 days to identify the location but since the location is under water and due to the nature of the medium the signal reach ability is further deteriorated.

The mystery and questions that remains to be answered by authorities are as follows

Did the MH370 fly after loosing communication with ATC

Was the ACARs activated or deactivated , if deactivted why was it done ?(Was helpful in quantas A 380 engine failure case)

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by sandeep3in

If it was flying at a low altitude the chances of the being spotted on the radar is remote.

Did the MH370 fly after loosing communication with ATC

Was the ACARs activated or deactivated , if deactivted why was it done ?(Was helpful in quantas A 380 engine failure case)

In congested areas, spotting an object at low height will be difficult by radar due to stationary targets like mountains, buildings, etc. But over the sea, it should be easier.

Originally Posted by benbsb29

I read in one of the articles in TOI where it was mentioned that the radar systems in the Andamans are not 24/7 operated. They are more need based, and used only when necessary. Also, there are zones which are not under radar scan. I read the article on the mobile app, so don't have the link handy.

Though each radar might have a short range, but I think there should be quite a lot of military and navy radars which would have tracked the plane.

[Jaggu]

This is getting really interesting, Malaysian PM to give a media conference now. Its a hijack!

http://www.firstpost.com/world/live-...d-1424627.html

[saket77]

Big statement by Malaysian PM Razak on MH370: Based on new data, location of last communication was at possibly at border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

The news is on TOI as a running across script. But the revelation is shocking. The Jet flew over so many countries escaping the eyes of every one?

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Regarding the ringing tones, see my earlier post. By the way, my professional field is Telecommunication and I have been rolling out and managing Mobile System for twenty years all over the world.

Jeroen

Nice to know friend. You could have been rolling out a lot of what I would have helped standardized and developed then

Still I think nobody would have foreseen something like this and that is the reason not too much of technologies although available would have been used. Hopefully, this will force manufacturers to put more autonomous tracking tech into planes. Not sure if they can go as far as over riding a rogue pilot.

[volkman10]

Malaysia Airlines probe refocusing on passengers, crew

Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard," Najib told reporters. "Evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane."
He said investigators have not pinpointed a specific explanation, but have widened the search to two corridors, including the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border area and a swath from Indonesia to southern India.
"Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, we are investigating all major possibilities on what caused MH370 to deviate

Source:CNN