[Otomobil]

DigitalGlobe has started a crowd sourcing to help Search and Rescue operation for the missing Malaysian airline MH370.

Below is the link to their Tomnod platform. However, the site is experiencing unprecedented web traffic currently and hopefully it will be available for the volunteers to help timely.

http://www.digitalglobeblog.com/2014...ngmalayairjet/

[Soumyajit9]

The latest news says:

The Malaysian Air Force lost track of the plane over Pulau Perak, a tiny island in the Straits of Malacca -- many hundreds of miles from the usual flight path for aircraft traveling between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, the official said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/11/wo...t=hp_inthenews

EDIT:: I hope they start the searches on the land regions as well, instead of just the ocean.

[phamilyman]

Guys,

There is absolutely ZERO value in speculating about things. Even the media reports are confused. The report in the Berita Harian has been denied officially. All they are saying is that it turned back, but did not say Pulau Perak (westernmost point of Malaysia).
Here's an interesting link: http://www.lowyat.net/2014/03/was-th...-200-aircraft/

Other than that - http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...t-lost-98.html remains the only place AFAIK where the right level of qualified folks (actual pilots/technicians) are duking out possible theories.

Some folks had some logic about the phones ringing as being an artefact of how mobile systems operate rather than actually being in operation.

Folks like us are ill qualified to comment/speculate so let's just be united in our prayers for those who have almost certainly left us. Let's spare some time for tomnod instead (the crowdsourcing portal). Somehow I couldn't make it work - no way to sign up! Advice, anyone?

[Anand3553]

I believe the aircraft certainly had something malfunctioning and crashed in to the sea.
• If it was a hijack, the hijackers would have definitely raised their demands by now.
• If it had flown above land, the military which controls the area would have intercepted considering that it would have crossed a national border which would apply even if it had entered land and crashed in to an uninhabited area.
I am not sure if I am right, I am by no means expert in aviation theories, it is just out of my basic understanding.
It is very unfortunate that at an age when we can track lost mobile phones and wipe them remotely, we could not track an aircraft with a couple of hundred people in it with all the satellites above us.

[RSR]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

Let's spare some time for tomnod instead (the crowdsourcing portal. Somehow I couldn't make it work - no way to sign up! Advice, anyone?

I think getting ordinary folks around the world to chip in with the search efforts is a fantastic idea! But I tried it late night yesterday and now. It doesn't seem to work for me, either.

I don't know if it's an issue with the site not being capable of handling such huge traffic.

If anyone here has used the site, please share information on how you were able to do it. All I get when I go to the URL are the tomnod and DigitalGlobe logos.

[i74js]

Originally Posted by srishiva

DigitalGlobe has made available its high resolution images for search. About 25K people have enrolled to search the images.

Hopefully something will be found. They should try to put a satellite transmitter with its own battery that would keep reporting every second with altitude and location.

This is possible but requires a huge investment. The calculations worked out were about USD 300 million for a single airline with about a fleet of 100 aircrafts and thus was dumped.

[shivshanker]

Originally Posted by Vid6639

Looks pretty confirmed that the plane took a U-turn and flew towards Straits of Malacca.

Maybe, but in today's technological age it Day 5 today. It takes the military 5 days to analyze the RADAR data.?

Something is for sure fishy

Originally Posted by phamilyman

Guys,

There is absolutely ZERO value in speculating about things. Even the media reports are confused. The report in the Berita Harian has been denied officially. All they are saying is that it turned back, but did not say Pulau Perak (westernmost point of Malaysia).

@phamilyman, if you are still in KL it might be worth talking to a few locals out here, nowadays after the recent elections, a certain sect of the community is making their displeasure known more openly against the government.

One crazy theory that is going around here is that this could be an insurance scam as the A/C is insured for 2Billion USD.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Why is something "fishy"?

Jeroen

@Jeroen, people are smelling fish here, not sure if it is purely to malign the government, but from day 1 the story line is not making sense. for instance;

1. Day 1 : they claim the flight was two hours into the flight and it went off Radar after point IGARI.

Whereas, the Tower lost contact at 1.31 or at 1.40 and was trying to establish Radio contact till 2.40.

2. Day 1 : they say that the Aircraft was a minute outside Vietnam Air Space, when they did not know where the plane was this was pure ASSUMPTION

3. Day 1 : Again the press release stated that they have started contacting the next of Kith and Kin, yet maintaining all the time they are unable to locate the Aircraft. IMHO .. one uses the words nest of Kith and Kin, only if the inevitable happens.

4. Day 2-3 : The military Radar says they started a Return back to KLIA, and they showed the flightradar screen shot of the A/C making a slow right.

5. Day 5 : Now the latest news released to is that the plane made a left turn and came back to the straights of Malacca. Again which if I am not wrong is in the approach corridor for flights into KLIA from the Indian side of the world.

6. Day 3 : even before the military made a statement, the search was extended to the straights of malacca, why.?

7. MOST IMP : MH has a safety rating of 7/8 and yet not yet implemented ACARS, why.? ACARS is very important for the MRO functions of the Aircraft especially at the RAMP

Nothing seems to be coming together.

[Recompose]

Pardon my ignorance, why cant GPS on the plane/passengers' smartphones used to locate them? I believe there are agencies which can track locations even if the phone is switched off.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by shivshanker

@Jeroen, people are smelling fish here, not sure if it is purely to malign the government, but from day 1 the story line is not making sense. for instance;

7. MOST IMP : MH has a safety rating of 7/8 and yet not yet implemented ACARS, why.? ACARS is very important for the MRO functions of the Aircraft especially at the RAMP

Nothing seems to be coming together.

I would agree with your last statement, but that still doesn't mean there is a logical reason. I just don't understand why people jump to conclussions when so much is unknown, unconfirmed, unreliable. That in itself is reason for concern, because if anyting it probably shows lack of overall coordination, but even so. But I guess there are many instances in which people did not understand what was happening and jumped to conclussion, resulting in anything from conspiracy theories to witch hunts.

MH does have ACAR implemented. They just don't broadcast whilst in flight. So when the plane lands and is on the ground, they take a dump from ACARS and process the data on the ground. I'm not sure if there is any (known) correlation between broadcasting ACARS data and a safety rating.

If the plane had met with a catastrophic event (e.g. bomb or starting falling to piece for other reason) it can not be guaranteed that ACARS would be transmitting that data. It depends on how ACARS is set up. Even so, ACARS doesnt transmit continuously (its would get expensive for one thing). So it transmits in certain time intervals or when it gets triggered by certain events. (E.g. as in the unfortunate AF incident). So if events unfold quickly, it's doubtfull what you would be able to get out on a ACARS broadcast.

Originally Posted by Recompose

Pardon my ignorance, why cant GPS on the plane/passengers' smartphones used to locate them? I believe there are agencies which can track locations even if the phone is switched off.

GPS in your smartphones are only receivers. They dont transmit and neither does for instance a GPS handheld device. The GPS signal by itself is extremely weak, often compared to radio noise. So if underwater, assuming, the smartphone is still working the GPS is unlikely to pick up any GPS signals. Water, unfortunately has a huge attenuating effect on radio frequencies. The higher the frequency the more. That's why submarines to date trail antenna's many hundreds of meters long to pick up and transmit LF radio traffic.

Essentially the same is true for all cell phones. Under water they won't work.
Now there are all sort of stories on the web about being able to track locations of cell phones that are switched off. Maybe the CIA or NSA or the likes of them have a technology that can circumnavigate basic electrical principles this is unlikely. What is true, is that when you switch off your cell phone, it could be possible to trace you to that particular position. With what accuracy remains to be seen and depends a number of variables. But that is all based on the premise that the mobile network knows where you were in the first place. If you move away from that position, with your phone switched off, nobody will be the wiser.

When you board a plane and leave your phone on, as many of you will be able to attest it will work fine initially inside the plane. However, once you've taken off you will loose coverage and the mobile network will have lost you. Once you would get into range of a mobile network your phone would attache itself again. Might take a while as many of us have probably experienced. But in order for a third party to figure out where you are, they would need to know your mobile number and they would need to know in which Mobile Network your phone has re-attached.

To what extent Mobile Network and their operators/carriers offer or able to provide location support depends a lot on the carrier, technology, vendor of the Network equipment, local legislation etc.

So, underwater neither GPS or a Phone is likely to work in terms of being abl to receive and or transmit a signal. Under water, for other, obvious reasons, it is not ver likely smart phones would work for very long either.

If the plane is on the ground, and a smart phone has survived, is switched on, and has coverage and is set up to roam onto that Network, in theory you would be able to trace it and maybe get a location. You would need to know which phone to look for in which network to look for and take it from there.

Jeroen

[Dieselritzer]

Guys, check this link. It is amazing. I find complete logic in the way the possibility of what happened with the aircraft is mentioned.

http://mh370lost.tumblr.com/

[Thunderbird77]

Hope it is not one of those like the Bermuda Triangle incidents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ngle_incidents

[shivshanker]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

MH does have ACAR implemented. They just don't broadcast whilst in flight. So when the plane lands and is on the ground, they take a dump from ACARS and process the data on the ground.
Jeroen

I am not from the Airline industry, but having worked in the IT Industry a few MRO's for airlines where the backend has been integrated with ACARS.

Apologies, If I am appearing to be preaching, but the whole idea of having ACARS data from the A/C was to reduce workload on crew, improve data quality and availability, just in time spare parts etc. etc.

This was also supposed to be interfaced with flight scheduling and planning for providing sufficient time for turn around of the aircraft.

Now even in an Aircraft, which is supposed to be the epitome of automation and sophistication if we say one has to download the data manually, I see this as a big time negligence on part of the airline. B'cos in this type of manual intervention, the data has to be downloaded at the RAMP, taken back to the terminal wherein the data can be uploaded and analysed.

In places such as Bombay, where the turn around time is around 80-90 minutes, after a 5 hr flight, would the ground maintenance have the time to download data, upload to Servers in KL and wait for a revert from KL.

This is not a practical solution to a safety issue and IMHO the folks at MH are cutting corners and playing with the lives of passengers.

I did a couple of MRO projects with some of the Gulf Airlines in the mid 1990's, now even after so many years if an Airline like MH has not implemented an important feature like ACARS, I would say that this is a serious lapse.

[sgiitk]

Most surprising. No track on the Air Controller, no SOS, nothing. They do not even seem to know which direction it went. Onjly good thing an expert said on the box tht the black boxes give signals for 30 days! So there is still hope of locating it.

Also, I hear that reportedly the phones of the passengers are still ringing.

I thought this is the 21st century!

[suresh_gs]

Originally Posted by Dieselritzer

Guys, check this link. It is amazing. I find complete logic in the way the possibility of what happened with the aircraft is mentioned.

http://mh370lost.tumblr.com/

I guess it is a situation where slow decompression would have set in leaving all the members unconscious. The flight would have proceeded on auto pilot mode as long as fuel is available before crashing into the waters.
But the malaysian officials have said that the plane could have gone back from its intended route. How is this possible in auto pilot mode.
Or is it some case of hijacking or deliberate attempt by the crew member??

[kutts]

The US Government has reported that no explosions have happened in the area by looking into their spy satellite photography at that time.