[ashphil]

What a disasterous happening! Our prayers are with all the family members of the crew and passengers who must be suffering without knowing what happened to their loved ones.
Why is it that in this day and age of electronics wizardry and intelligence we are not able to precisely point out what happened to this ill fated flight. Is every flight we board a potential disaster just waiting to happen?

[wildsdi5530]

How come the plane disappeared from Radar? I thought that most flights post 9/11 are under constant surveillance.
Also would there be no homing beacon?
In this day and age, with Big Brother always watching, It is scary that such an incident has happened without anyone knowing about it.

[dZired]

And now there is news that the missing aircraft has been traced around Andaman and Nicobar.

After a series of statements, that were discounted later, Malaysia's military has now said that it has traced the missing jet to an area near Andaman and Nicobar islands, the Reuters reports.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/...ds_917414.html

[SRKHYD]

Tried to use the following post to help the search, but no luck connecting to the sites. Posting to see if other can try:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/11/us...html?hpt=hp_c3

[drivingme.crazy]

Folks,

Forget pprune.org. I've been following Airliners.net. The amount of information flow in discussions and the speed in updating is too good. They are in part 16 of this topic with almost 250+ comments in each part. For sure you cannot start from part 1 unless you take a full day off from work.

Here's the link to the latest thread (part 16): http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo...main/6020112/1

[.sushilkumar]

Originally Posted by dZired

And now there is news that the missing aircraft has been traced around Andaman and Nicobar.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/...ds_917414.html

I Stopped trusting Indian media long time back. They can stoop down to any level to get TRP;s.

Fact is - Plane is still missing .

[shivshanker]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I think you need to be very specific in pointing out what you mean and why you think that is. The way I read it you are talking in very broad and general terms about automation and humar error.

So again, please explain in a specific example what ACARS data would add to flight safety that is not captured in the normal procedures, MEL and checklist a crew goes through.

Jeroen

@Jeroen,

I have been maintaining I am not from the Aiviation industry hence regret to inform you that I can provide no further explanation to you other than my broad and general thoughts. Which I standby.

If you do a google search for ACARS Data, you will find numerous hits which even detail out the format of these messages and all the inflight performance and error data that they regularly transmit back to the base in real time.

Now let me again try and spell it out for you;

1. By not having this data readily available at the RAMP, mind you this is not efficiency but mandatory, as without knowing how the airplane performed in flight, the maintenance ramp crew would be servicing the plane based on verbal communication. Now if the crew has missed noticing an something amiss in the performance of the aircraft, this would not be reported to the ground crew.

One Compromise, ONE RED Flag.

2. For Most Airlines the standard Turn Around Time for a 777-200 is around 120 minutes. I can tell you for a fact that the MH194/195 turn around at Bombay is less than 120 minutes. Boeing documentation clearly mentions, the Service checks at Turn Around are based on Airline policies, but they do recommend certain checks. Which in case of MH I do not think they are following.

Second Compromise, Second RED Flag.

If one has to keep at this, I am sure one will come up with lot more red herrings.

My surmise is very simple and clear, the ACARS technology was introduced in 1980's, there is a facility by the manufacturer to download Data to the base in real time. This was not a Linux based freeware which people can decide if they need it or not. This is a very sophisticated method of communication between the Aircraft, the crew and the base station.

Several Airlines are doing it to automate their processes, reduce human error and quoting you increase their efficiency. So the 261M$$ question is why not MH?

Disclaimer: Again these are general facts and my thoughts on this forum, I claim I am no expert in the Aviation industry but only an enthusiast and a frequent flyer on MH who is worried about his safety.

Note from Support - Originally quoted post edited out so reply to that post over here has also been edited.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by shivshanker

1. By not having this data readily available at the RAMP, mind you this is not efficiency but mandatory, as without knowing how the airplane performed in flight, the maintenance ramp crew would be servicing the plane based on verbal communication. Now if the crew has missed noticing an something amiss in the performance of the aircraft, this would not be reported to the ground crew.

Read my post. In flight pilots might communicate with maintenance verbally, but when its on the ground it can still be send automatically or be accessed by maintenance staff from the cockpit, just looking at the same exact data that is available to the cockpit crew sitting in the cockpit.

What data is mandatory? The ground crew doesn't need the cockpit crew perse. All the data is available and can be accessed though the FMS display in the cockpit.

Originally Posted by shivshanker

2. For Most Airlines the standard Turn Around Time for a 777-200 is around 120 minutes. I can tell you for a fact that the MH194/195 turn around at Bombay is less than 120 minutes. Boeing documentation clearly mentions, the Service checks at Turn Around are based on Airline policies, but they do recommend certain checks. Which in case of MH I do not think they are following.

Why do you think MH is not following this? What does it have to do with ACARS?
See my earlier posts on the normal preflight cockpit checks in order to determine air worthiness.

Originally Posted by shivshanker

Several Airlines are doing it to automate their processes, reduce human error and quoting you increase their efficiency. So the 261M$$ question is why not MH?

Again, where does it say the process is not automated, from what I learned they have ACARS installed, they just don't broadcast during flight. I don't know why, but my guess is money. Every ACARS message cost money, the more the more it cost you. As I said before, read my post, I don't know how MH has implemented ACARS, but it appears they don't broadcast during flight.

Originally Posted by shivshanker

Disclaimer: Again these are general facts and my thoughts on this forum, I claim I am no expert in the Aviation industry but only an enthusiast and a frequent flyer on MH who is worried about his safety.

As I've said many times before on this forum. Everybody is entitled to their own facts. Just because they are your facts doesn't mean they are true. I know for a fact that a lot of my own facts are not true. I just don't know which ones. So I try never to be judgmental based on my facts.

And irrespective of this terrible incident, flying is still very, very safe. Lets close this chapter on ACARS, because really neither you, or me, have access to any facts. All I know is my own experience with ACARS, I don't have access to MH documentation and or policies. But I do know that not all airlines used the inflight broadcasting. And I have a reasonable understanding what goes on on the ramp in terms of maintenance activities and preflight checks, based on my own hands on experience of having flown jump seat on commercial jets very often. The little bit around MH ACARS implementation I learned mostly from what was discussed on PPRUNE, the professional pilots forum. Usually they get this sort of information right, but until we read the accident report everything is pure speculation and some of us confuse that with opinion and or facts.

Jeroen

Note from Support - Post edited. Please avoid getting into arguments with fellow members. You can use the report post feature to bring it to our attention or clarify with the fellow member offline via PM.

[vinay kamath]

breaking news at 8 am : China's satellites may have found images of three floating parts 79 feet x 72 feet , possibly from the missing plane's debris at the Southern tip of Vietnam !

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/12/wo...irlines-plane/

or is the plane beneath the Andaman Sea ?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by vinay kamath

breaking news at 8 am : China's satellites may have found images of three floating parts 79 feet x 72 feet , possibly from the missing plane's debris at the Southern tip of Vietnam !



http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/12/wo...irlines-plane/



or is the plane beneath the Andaman Sea ?

Lets hope this time it is actually the plane. Poor family and friends, cant begin to imagine what it must be for them, with so much confusion going on

[shivshanker]

Note from Support - Post deleted. Please avoid getting into arguments with fellow members. You can use the report post feature to bring it to our attention or clarify with the fellow member offline via PM.

[Jeroen]

Just came across this one:

http://avherald.com/h?article=4713ebe3&opt=0

Lets see if/how quickly the media picks this up and start asking question whether the MH incident and this Air India incident are related. In both cases the transponder stopped working.

Jeroen

[mazda4life]

A good graphic to gauge what the challenge is for the search operation teams

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ian-air-scale/

[saket77]

Originally Posted by vinay kamath

breaking news at 8 am : China's satellites may have found images of three floating parts 79 feet x 72 feet , possibly from the missing plane's debris at the Southern tip of Vietnam !

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/12/wo...irlines-plane/

or is the plane beneath the Andaman Sea ?

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Lets hope this time it is actually the plane. Poor family and friends, cant begin to imagine what it must be for them, with so much confusion going on

Unfortunately, it's not it again. It's in the news: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/w...w/31929701.cms

Strange that even with a massive operation, the Boeing could not be found as yet. Also, not finding the plane is another thing, but the Malaysian authorities are under fire for not co-operating in the expected manner with the partners in the search operation and with the families of the unfortunate ones on MH370. Hope there is nothing that they are hiding which may put their own credibility at stake.

[suresh_gs]

Is it not possible to develop amphibious planes. These will come in handy if there is a situation of landing in sea where the chances of survival will be far better than that of land

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_Be-200